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What do math dreaming, crowdfunding, and Sunday night heart palpitations all have in common? You'll have to tune in to find out!
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In today's episode, we dive into building your personal brand as a coach. You'll hear about "Connected Kelly," a coach who initially felt pressured to conform to an analytical persona in her big tech job, only to discover that her true strength—Connectedness—was what truly set her apart. You'll learn how she transformed her approach, leading to a more fulfilling and energized coaching practice. We also explore practical tips for building your personal brand, including how to identify the challenges you can help solve and how to communicate your unique value effectively. Whether you're an independent coach or working internally at a company, it's important to be specific in your messaging to connect with your ideal clients. So, if you're ready to make sure your coaching brand aligns with your personal brand, this episode is packed with insights and actionable advice to help you shine!
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Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management
Join us for this enlightening episode of VRTAC-QM Manager Minute, where we explore the transformative power of Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), also known as Performance-Based Payment (PBP). In the studio, we have Chip Kenney, Co-Project Director of the VRTAC-QM, and Lisa Mills, a consultant and subject matter expert in VBP, sharing their expertise. VBP is more than just a financial model—it's a strategic shift designed to drive better outcomes for individuals with disabilities. By aligning provider incentives with measurable performance outcomes, State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) can enhance the quality of services, improve consumer results, and optimize costs. Tune in to hear Chip and Lisa discuss how SVRAs can harness the power of this approach to revolutionize service delivery and create a meaningful impact. Whether you're considering adopting VBP or seeking to refine your approach, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss! Value-Based Payment Methodologies to Advance Competitive Integrated Employment: A Mix of Inspiring Examples from Across the Country Listen Here Full Transcript: Chip: Virginia reached out and they wanted to include value based purchasing specifically in their Disability Innovation grant. I said, this is an opportunity we can't pass. Lisa: Is there anything about our payment structure that incentivizes or rewards this kind of quality that we're saying we're not getting, thus reduce the amount we're investing in unsuccessful closures. Chip: When we can get to that point where we can identify and measure and demonstrate and get quality outcomes that will move this whole system a gigantic step forward. Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow. Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today are Chip Kenney, Co-Project Director of the VRTAC for Quality Management, and Lisa Mills, Consultant and Subject Matter Expert to the QM on Value-Based Purchasing. So here's a little context for our listeners. Value-Based Purchasing, also known as Performance-Based Payment, is a model that offers financial incentives to providers for meeting certain performance measures. And as state rehab agencies look to improve outcomes for individuals with disabilities, the quality of purchased VR services, and overall cost effectiveness. A Performance-Based approach might be an option, so I don't want to steal their thunder, and I'm going to let my guests discuss what they're doing today. So let's dig in. Lisa, lets' start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you find your way kind of into this VR space? Lisa: Sure. So I've been in the world of disabilities for my career, for the entire career. So, 33 years, I think where now I've lost count. But about 20 years ago, I got really interested in employment working with Self-advocates way back before there was such widespread support for ending Subminimum wage. You know, the support that we do see now, but that was at a time when that it wasn't even being discussed. But Self-advocates were very clear that they wanted to earn more money and have more opportunities. So I got interested in supported employment and why we weren't using it very much. And so I started working with Medicaid and long term support agencies on improving employment services and outcomes. Back then, there was something called the Medicaid Infrastructure Grants, which allowed states to create Medicaid buy ins for working individuals with disabilities. So I really dug in around what were we doing around employment services. And of course, that brought us to the relationship with VR. And about 16 years ago, I started working on customized employment and developing ways to pay for customized employment, and worked with a couple VR agencies at the time on payment structures for customize. And then most recently, I'm a mom of a transition age son who used VR supported employment services to get his first and second jobs, and he's been employed in competitive, integrated employment since 2020. He's about to turn 21 and that has changed his life. So I'm a firm believer. Carol: Good for him. That's really cool to know. I always love it finding out the stories people have, because you never know, we all get here a different way. But I love your path. So Chipper over to you. And I'm going to say Chipper because I'm naughty. He Chip is my colleague. So for our listeners I do like to rib Chip a bit. So Chip, how did you find your way into the VR space? Chip: So very similar to Lisa. My whole career has been in public rehabilitation for a bit then technical assistance centers, but fast forwarding to about 2009 was interested in customized employment and its applications, and the need for VR systems to have an employment system that really addressed what people with the most significant disabilities needed to be successful, and I was sort of glommed on to that space ever since. And then with the passage of WIOA, it just seemed a really necessary connection that VR agencies and systems have something new they can offer. People who would have considered going into sheltered employment now are coming out. What are you going to offer them that's new and different from when they went in and have been at it ever since, mainly focused on the implementation side of it, because there's a bunch of trainers in that space and they're all really good. But we learned early on that it takes an infrastructure to embed, implement and sustain customized employment over a period of time. And so that's been my focus the last several years. I mean, we're still learning a lot. And rate structure is part of that, which, I mean, I've known Lisa for years too, but rate structure is something every agency struggles with. And when the opportunity came to work with Lisa on this and move this forward, I thought, this is a big missing piece that we have to fill. Carol: Absolutely, I'm underscoring that 100% because we know we get a lot of rate work with our QM work and the whole idea and customized employment with that sustainability. You can have the great idea. And we're going to do the thing and we're all excited. But then what happens. Year one and two and three and four as it goes on and it all fades away. And we don't want that to fade away. We need to have that good sustainability plan. So Chip, how did you get involved in bringing Lisa on board? What was kind of the impetus of that? Chip: Virginia reached out. The state of Virginia reached out to us and they wanted to include value based purchasing. And they mentioned that specifically in their Disability Innovation grant, and somebody referred them to me. I mean, I knew a bit about it, but then as soon as I saw the Lisa connection and started reading her work on it, I said, this is an opportunity we can't pass, even though I don't have any experience. But Lisa brings all that and the knowledge and the background and said, it's really important to be a part of this. Carol: Very cool. So, Lisa, I understand you have a very unique superpower. You can speak and interpret languages across multiple partner systems. How did you develop that? Lisa: Well, I guess I'm a bit of a policy wonk. I did a lot of interviewing of people from different systems to try to understand what was going on with partnerships, what were the challenges. And this was probably 12, 13 years ago. I was doing some work with ODEP at the time, blending and braiding. And when I was doing a lot of my interviews interviewing the different partners, including VR, I figured out that a lot of what was going on at that time was sequencing. It was really not blending or braiding, and if we wanted to get to braiding and ultimately to blending, I felt like we really had to find what was going on then as something foundational, you know? And that's where I kind of coined the term sequencing and said, this is really what we're doing, but we can help people understand then what it means to switch from sequencing to braiding, what it means to switch from braiding to blending, and really start to get people interested in the advantages of moving away from sequencing. So it really was just wanting to dig into each system enough to figure out what solutions might improve collaboration and outcomes. Sometimes it can be easy to lay out all the issues, right? Everything that's not working, but to really dig into each system and figure out where could we align ourselves, where are we aligned, and we just don't realize it? That was more, I guess, the policy wonk side of me. Carol: I love that because I think I've been on lots of work groups over the years, I mean, I just have when we've worked between, you know, departments of education and your state Department of like maybe developmental disabilities or whatever you are calling it back in the day. And then in the VR system when we all had different ways of describing everything and we could get stuck in the what's the problem? Here's all the problems. We got problems. We have a million problems. Here's all the hundred problems we have to get through before we can get to a solution. But if you go in and go, I love that. Like, how are we aligned right now and what are the things that we could build off of right now instead of always focusing on that whole myriad of things? But I think understanding each other, how we speak about things and we may say the same word, but it means something different to each of us. Once we can kind of clear up that dictionary and talk the same language, it makes it much easier to comprehend what's going on in each other's systems and how that can then work together. I love that you have that. So what is the essence of Value-Based Purchasing? Lisa: So to me it's quality service combined with efficient service that results in quality outcomes. So I think about that. Efficiency without quality that would not lead to quality outcomes. We'd hurry up and do things, but we wouldn't really see the quality outcomes we wanted to see. And at the same time, if you have a quality service that goes on and on and on, you lose the cost effectiveness and you typically you lose the job seeker. They're going to give up or go find a job some other way. So to me, we have to recognize we need both quality and efficiency in the way services are delivered and that we have a set of quality outcomes we want to achieve. And we have to ask ourselves, to what extent are we getting those quality outcomes? And to me, if we can figure out a payment structure that balances rewarding quality and efficiency and is really clear about what is quality and service delivery, what is efficiency and service delivery, and then what are we looking for? As quality indicators and outcomes? We can design a payment structure that really will deliver on that. And I think as you start to think about that, you realize how the existing payment structures really aren't set up to do those things for various reasons. And that really, I think, helps people buy into the idea that there might be a better way to do this. And this idea of value based purchasing might actually have some legs. Carol: So that payment structure piece, that's my interest. How did you really dig in and kind of figure it out? Because it sounds good and I understand all the things you're saying about quality outcomes, but how when it comes down, like putting the rubber to the road, do you get at the nuts and bolts of figuring out the payment structure? Lisa: So everybody always wants that. Next they say, so tell me what it is. And I always say it is what you need to develop locally in your system. You need buy in from those who are purchasing and those who are providing, and you've got to bring them to the table in a constructive way. So in a really collaborative way, sometimes we talk about it as co-creation and you dig into what do we agree is quality service, how do we differentiate quality service from service that we would say is not high quality. And then what do we agree is efficient service? How do we differentiate efficient service from service we would say is inefficient but very important to VR agencies, at least those I've spoken to. Are these quality outcomes, the career path outcomes, the jobs with benefits, the jobs with more hours and better pay? You know, some of these things, you're just not necessarily seeing a lot. You're getting outcomes that you can count as a 26 closure, but they aren't the kind of quality outcomes that, and you see some revolving door effect of certain people who and I know that's a big issue in some states or you see a lot of dropouts in the process. So in every state it's important to sit together and figure out what should we be doing better, what does better quality look like, and then what is quality and efficient service look like? That's how you get the buy in to establish a payment structure that where people want to implement it and intend for it to work. I can certainly share examples of how that co-creation works going on elsewhere and what the ultimate outcome was, but that is what happened there. And I really like the idea that and really believe that you've got to do a local co-creation process to get to something everybody's bought into and something that has a high probability of working. I would never say, oh, Value-Based Purchasing is this. It's only this. Or you just take this model from this other state and you plunk it down here. That won't work. Carol: Yeah, I can see why you sing to Chip's heart there. Because he's all about systems work, you know, and that whole and everybody's systems in your state are so different. How you're set up, what your relationships are like between your providers and yourself and other entities and all of that. So I do like that you're speaking to that and you can't just pick up and replicate because you've got all your nuances that are happening in your state, and you need to understand those before you can get to the agreeable solution. That makes a lot of sense. Chip: And it's not only that, and we're finding this to be true now that providers are not a monolith, that there's not a state where you can go, okay, every provider looks like every other provider. There are a lot of uniquenesses, a lot of variables that have to be taken into account to bring at least the majority of them on board. And that's we're finding that to be true as every state system is different, every provider network or non-network is different. Carol: Absolutely. And even when you think about the states, kind of just the like the geographic challenges they have and the things that are going on, we've saw such an increase, especially after Covid with people moving and some of the states go like our cost of living in certain areas has gone up exponentially, like 300% or something. And so you've got everybody like, decided because they could work from anywhere. We're all moving to this town and then other areas become depleted, maybe from people, and there's less resources available and harder to get providers to serve an area even though you have customers there. I just feel like we have a lot of geographic and economic challenges across states, even tiny states. It's been super interesting. We've found that work as we've been just doing plain old rate setting with states, so let alone what you guys are digging into. So what are some of the biggest challenges in implementing this value based purchasing? Lisa: I would say the time it takes to do it right. I think sometimes state agencies and I'm not singling out VR, but they want quick solutions. You know, they think about it for a long time and then they say, okay, we want to do it. Let's get it done. Can we get this done in three months or can we, you know, and you have to say probably not in a way that would be successful. And so it is something not to take lightly and to really commit to invest in. I think there's a lot of additional benefits to doing this, including provider relationships and the learning that goes on. Providers now understand what it's like to step in the shoes of a funder. Funders understand what it's like to step in the shoes of a provider. I always think that helps with everybody getting on the same page and agreeing to a model they think will work, but it takes patience, it takes partnership. Some states are, they're very uncomfortable with bringing providers in. They tend to develop things and then release them to providers. So you've got to have a level of trust when you identify the providers you want to involve. I always encourage to identify who are your high performers. They are the providers you want this model to work for because you want more high performers and you want those that you have to expand their footprint, for example, to go into geographic areas that are underserved or to hire more staff. So always thinking about partnering with the high performing providers. But there's a bit of reluctance, you know, and risk in doing that and saying we're going to create something together. Lots of outside the box thinking. It's really hard to get away from payment models that you've been invested in for a long time. Milestone fee for service. Just to think beyond those can be very difficult, but I think once people start to and that's something I do, is kind of bring ideas and thoughts and stimulate thinking to get them to move away from those models and really say, what should we be paying for? What is important to value in the payment structure? I think it really gets to be very exciting, or at least I think so. You really need data to you cannot develop a model without good data. Sometimes the data is readily available. It's reports that VR agencies are already pulling out of their system. Other times the data's in the system, but they don't typically pull it. And so we have to work with them. And it helps to have a data analyst to assist with this process, to be able to pull pieces of data or data analysis and different ways that informs what we're doing. We want a data driven approach. And sometimes, of course, you probably know that data analysts are very, very busy or they're off doing something else. And it may be hard to get them committed to the work. Carol: Have you seen improvements since? I'm just thinking since WIOA and kind of the requirements that RSA has put on state agencies about collecting a vast amount more of data. Have you seen improvement as you're working with states that they actually have data they may not have had years ago that you can get at. I mean, there might be a little bit of a problem with the staffing or getting your data analysts to pull it, but that availability of the data you need to really to dig into this, that it's actually there. Lisa: Yeah, I do think the systems are pretty sophisticated, and it's a matter of helping them understand how to use more of the data they have, because we have the standard WIOA measures. We have the way that VR talked about its performance prior to WIOA but I think we're digging in to get it more data elements that help us understand. One of the most important things to understand is demographic information and how that affects maybe how difficult or how easy it is to serve someone. So, for example, adding criminal background to someone's demographic profile, or we know from history that, you know, that does create a challenge. So it's weeding out what are the things that differentiate people who VR would serve and try and understand better how that relates to cost. The other thing that's really important that I don't typically see is what's the average cost of a successful case? So I see this is the average cost of successful closures. So taking all successful closures and dividing it by the number and then average cost of unsuccessful closures, then average cost of a case. But for me what matters most is what are we paying for a successful case if we're including everything we're paying. So including all the that we're spending on unsuccessful closures in that and saying, basically this is what it costs to get a successful case, because we also have to pay for the unsuccessful closures and trying to focus on how do we reduce, how much we're paying for unsuccessful closures, and to really make sure more of the money that we're paying flows to successful closures. There's a little bit of complacency that goes on with every system where if we just compare ourselves to other states, we may say, look, we're doing better. We should be happy with our performance. We are better than 75% of the states. But if we stand back and compare that to people without disabilities and their participation in the workforce, I think that's when we say we're comparing it to school. Like if you got 60% on a test, would you pass it or would you fail it? So I think we have to challenge ourselves to say we may be doing better than so many other states, but we are not performing at a high level and we want to move up. We want to not just judge ourselves by other states. Now, 100% success is unrealistic. I don't think there's anybody who would disagree with that, but it's important for the providers and the funder to come together and say what kind of improvement above where we've been. Do we want to try to incentivize? Do we want to see and to develop the payment structure, to say we believe this structure will directly influence our ability to move those percentages up over time and thus reduce the amount we're investing in unsuccessful closures without reducing the number of people were serving, without cherry picking, but truly improving outcomes. Carol: I love that that is a good way to challenge the thinking that's going on out there, because people sort of, I don't know, poo poo or they just this is over there in that bucket and they let it be. And we're kind of complacent with just, you know, we're doing better but is better. What's the next state like. You know, like better than what. And so what does that matter. Chip: But I think I mean, the key to me is the concepts of quality, the quality of services and quality outcomes. And if you can define and you can measure and you can demonstrate quality of services and quality outcomes, it seems like you don't need to compare yourself with other states. You can say this is quality in our state. This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. These are the outcomes. So state by state national comparisons are way less important. So when we can get to that point where we can identify and measure and demonstrate and get quality outcomes that will move this whole system gigantic step forward. Carol: 100% Chip. So what would be your best advice for states as they're listening. Right. You know, they're listening in and they're thinking, well, I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. Like what would be the next steps? What should they do? Lisa: To me, it's, start the conversation. I find that the process of bringing state people together with providers, that they're all learning together about this different way of thinking, And it helps because it does take a little bit to get your mind around what Value-Based Purchasing is and how it's different from milestone payments or fee for service. And I've often seen like people have come up to me sometimes and said, you know, it was the third time I heard you talk that the bells finally went on, you know? And I said, that's fine. I think it's just the way it is. It's complicated in a way, because it's so different. So getting the conversation started and thinking about, you know, asking yourself questions like, is there quality in the outcomes that we want as an agency that we're not getting quality and service delivery? We don't feel we're getting quality and outcomes we're not getting. Then think about your payment structure and say, is there anything about our payment structure that incentivizes or rewards this kind of quality that we're saying we're not getting? Sometimes maybe there's something there. Sometimes you could say, no, there's absolutely nothing in the payment structure that does that. And then I always say, think about the providers that you think are doing the best work for you. Are they financially benefiting? Are they doing better financially. And in some cases I've seen no, there's no difference. I'm performing better, but financially that's not being recognized. And in other cases I've seen they're actually earning less because they're doing such a good job and they're very efficient. You know, they're producing quality with efficiency. They're actually doing more poorly financially than some of the providers who are performing at a lower level of quality. So I think when we start to think about those questions, people see that the need to try to figure out a different way to do things, then they're willing to, you know, let's talk about what this Value-Based Purchasing is what the principles are, how it's different, and begin to think about how we might bring our high performing providers into a conversation with us about this. Chip: My advice for states is that you're in this for the long haul. To Lisa's point very early in this discussion that this isn't a quick solution. That's something that can just be laid in the state and just immediately adapted. It does take that level of discussion, that level of understanding, collecting data. It's complex. And sometimes I think to myself, why am I choosing to get involved in the complexity of Value-Based Purchasing overlaid the complexity sometimes of customized employment, but I think in the end result we will have a much better system, much more equitable service delivery system for everyone, including providers, including customers and job seekers. But just keeping the discussion going on things like this, things that CSAVR presentations Getting this into the national discussion, I think, is the first step. Carol: Those are really good tips. Where outside of VR is Value-Based Purchasing being implemented? Lisa: So definitely in the Medicaid world, most of your listeners are probably aware of that, but mostly in the Medicaid world, it's on the acute primary care side. So hospitals and doctors, primary care physicians and things. So I always caution people there's things we can learn from that and those examples. But it's not a wholesale import those approaches over to VR. I don't think that would work. But there are some principles or strategies that we can use, like there's a concept called shared savings. There's some other things that I think we can think about and use, but we still have to develop something that's specific to employment. In my work on this around employment on the Medicaid side has been with the long term services and support agencies, the DD agencies, the mental health agencies, managed care organizations who are doing LTSS and employment is a perfect place to start with them around their thinking, around Value-Based Purchasing. They're facing some pressure. I would say some to use Value-Based Purchasing because it's seen to be working on the acute primary side of Medicaid. So they're saying, why aren't we using it in LTSS? And they want better quality and better efficiency too. They want to see people supported to achieve their highest level of independence. They want their high performing providers to do well. So we worked on it with employment because it's so obvious that fee for service, which is the typical payment model, disincentivizes all the things that we associate with high quality supported employment, the better you are at getting people jobs, the better you are at coaching and fading because you're good at it. We reward providers under fee for service with less money. And those providers are performing more poorly, end up with more money. So it's not hard to get people to see why fee for service doesn't work for supported employment. So we've worked on models for job coaching that pay for hours worked rather than hours of coaching, so that providers are appropriately financially compensated if they do better at fading, which goes back to what kind of job did they get people, as well as how good they are at coaching. That model incentivizes them to get people more hours. So if you start with 12 hours a week, that doesn't mean you stay with it. If they're doing well, the employer wants to increase that. The person wants that they can get paid more in the model. Fee for service providers don't get any financial remuneration for increasing people's hours worked, even though we say that's a goal. So that's been a lot of where we see some of the value based models developing. We're paying for things up front services like exploration, which I'm really happy to see the results of states that have added exploration and exploration to their waivers, because we now have a way to tackle people who say no thanks in a planning meeting or I'm not interested, or their families say that we've been paying for developing payment models for that. That's an outcome payment. So they complete the service, then they get paid based on the quality of the information they submit and the efficiency. So there are ways to align what we're doing. Providers certainly appreciate that they would like to be paid the same way. Typically once they experience being paid in a Value-Based structure. So that's where it's happening. But think about just the general business world. There are so many examples of payment based on performance or quality, right. Sales Salespeople earn incentives for sales. So business has long been doing this in terms of creating those kinds of incentives and even nonprofits. Now, United Way and others are funding nonprofits based on outcomes and deliverables. They're no longer funding them to just provide service. So I think if you look, we're seeing it everywhere, really. Carol: So you brought up a whole lot of points. If people are interested in more information, do you have resources we could send them to? Lisa: Well, in 2021, I did a publication that looked at examples from around the country that I'd been in some way involved in. That's on the Lead Center website as well as there are a series of webinars we did at the time with representatives from various states. I have a lot of information about what's going on in the Medicaid side. Et etcetera. So I guess I would say that was my thinking in 2021, I continue to learn and evolve my thinking, and I think we're at a point now where we're trying to do in Virginia, is move beyond both fee for service and milestones, because neither are working very well, right? So you've got some state VR agency saying we're paying fee for service. It's not working. Should we move to milestone? But if you talk to states who are using milestone, they will also say it's not working very well. Some of them are thinking about going back to fee for service. And I'm thinking, I don't think we should do either. I think we should work together to figure out what's the next way we attempt this that addresses the shortcomings of both. And I think that pathway is Value-Based Purchasing. Chip: and helping moving states to. Well, I'm a little concerned about the unknown. What we have may not be working now, but it's the known. I don't really know what's ahead, but I think where in Virginia at least, has done a really good job of creating that safe space. Like, let's explore this together and keep this comfort zone of what we currently have, but move forward into something that's more equitable and beneficial for them. Carol: So, Chip, if people wanted to reach out, what would be the best thing? Should they contact you or what would be best? Chip: Either one of us is if it's a state agency, probably me if it's others listening to this. Lisa. Carol: Do you want to give them your email address? Chip: It's r k e n n e y at SDSU (San Diego State University) dot EDU. Carol: Awesome. And, Lisa, do you mind sharing your email address? Lisa: No, but I'll warn you, it's long. So here we go, Lisa Mills l L i s a M i l l s, all one word, at M as in Michael, T as in Tom, D as in David, D as in David, dot On Microsoft, all one word, com. And that was my IT friends who gave me that ridiculously long email, which I hate. Carol: Holy smokes, that is long. Well thank you both. I really appreciate it. And I will put a link in our podcast announcement out to your publication from 2021 as well. Then folks could at least see that. But thanks for your time. I really appreciate the conversation. Lisa: Thank you. Chip: Thanks. We really appreciate this opportunity. Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Whether on a trip to Vegas, family reunion, or navigating the mountain's edge, our strengths are there every step of the way. The question is, are they guiding, protecting, and supporting you? Or are they getting in the way, causing conflict and confusion? In today's episode, we dive into the fascinating world of applying our strengths beyond the workplace. You'll hear us share some hilarious and relatable stories about how recognizing and celebrating each other's strengths can help you move from frustration to fascination, transforming everyday interactions into opportunities for connection and appreciation. If you're dealing with a frustrating situation using strengths at home, or just want to bring a little more joy into your relationships, this episode is packed with insights and tips to help you embrace your strengths in every aspect of life!
"Where did the time go?" "If only I had more time!" If you're looking for productivity hacks or time management tips – this episode is for you. We've all been there. We believe time is our most valuable resource. Unfortunately, this often leads to overwhelm and guilt when our expectations don't match reality. We don't accomplish as much as we thought we would, our "to do" list keeps growing, and discouragement creeps in. What if there was more to time management than meets the eye? Is time truly our most valuable resource? Listen in as we rethink time management.
“They” say we spend over 30% of our life at work. For some of us over-achieving, work-a-holics burning the candle at both ends, that percentage is likely even higher. If we're spending over a third of our lives working, shouldn't we love what we do? We think so. That's why in this episode we talk about another one of the “5 Clues to Talent”: Satisfaction. Come join us! Work With Us! BREA Roper Communication | Woo | Activator | Futuristic | Connectedness Talent development shouldn't be “one size fits all”, because each person is uniquely talented! Unfortunately, most leaders struggle to find and fuel the unique talent in yourself and others. If you're ready to find hidden talent and realize untapped potential – let's talk! I'm ready to customize a solution for any need, any budget. Connect with me at brearoper.com! LISA Cummings Strategic | Maximizer | Positivity | Individualization | Woo To work with Lisa, check out team workshops and retreats at the Lead Through Strengths site. For 1:1 strengths or life coaching, check out the Get Coached link. For independent coaches, trainers, and speakers, get business tools support with our Tools for Coaches membership. Takeaways for doing what you love…this week! Identify What You Love What brings you joy and satisfaction in your daily activities is a clue to your innate talent! Maybe it's the opportunity to learn, the sense of accomplishment when completing a task, coming up with creative ideas, collaborating with others…or something else. Whatever it is, understanding what you love to do. and why, can lead to a more fulfilling life – at work and home. Feel better. Do better. When you operate from a place of joy and fulfillment, you feel better yourself, and make more significant contributions to those around you. A win-win! By focusing on doing what you love and leveraging your strengths, you can enhance your overall well-being and positively impact your relationships and work performance. Remember, hard work doesn't have to feel hard. You can actually enjoy what you do. Finding what you don't love to do is not the same as finding what you do enjoy. Sure, making a list of what we didn't like about a task or activity can help us avoid those things in the future. But it won't necessarily lead you to what you do enjoy. And you deserve a life that's more than simply avoiding what you don't like. You deserve to thrive! Remember, hard work doesn't have to be hard. Align it with your strengths and it actually feels easy.
There are a range of outcomes from a genomic test. The results might provide a diagnosis, there may be a variant of uncertain significance, where a genetic variant is likely the cause of the condition, or there might be no particular gene found that is linked to the phenotype or clinical condition - also known as a "no primary finding" result. In this episode, our guests explore the impact of a "no primary finding" result on families, discussing the common experiences and expectations of parents and patients who undergo that genetic testing, and the role that hope plays in the experiences of children with rare and undiagnosed conditions. Today's host, Lisa Beaton, member of the Participant Panel at Genomics England is joined by Dr Celine Lewis, Principal Research Fellow in Genomics at UCL, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Jana Gurasashvili, a Genetic Counsellor, and Louise Fish, CEO of Genetic Alliance. "I think it's also really important to add that hope isn't necessarily lost when you don't get a diagnostic result. And in a sense, what can be really helpful is for genetic counsellors to reframe that hope...sort of giving it a different context." For more information on the SWAN UK project which supports families with children that have been through genetic testing but have not found a result following that genetic testing, visit the website. Read more about the study by Jana Gurasashvili and Dr Celine Lewis: The disequilibrium of hope: a grounded theory analysis of parents' experiences of receiving a "no primary finding" result from genome sequencing. You can read the transcript below or down it here: https://files.genomicsengland.co.uk/documents/Podcast-transcripts/Hope-for-those-with-no-primary-findings.docx Lisa: Hello, welcome to the G Word. Lisa: I think in the back of my mind, subconsciously, I had hoped that when we eventually got a diagnosis, it would – I don't know, bells and whistles, balloons going off, fireworks, etc. And then the experience of a letter thumping on the doormat, and I recognised the postmark quite quickly, and it was at that moment I suddenly thought, “Oh gosh, I haven't buried all these feelings of hope.” Because I opened that letter with quite trembly hands, and then this diagnosis or lack of diagnosis, you know, nothing had been found, and it was a bit… I don't know if it's been described as like a nail in the coffin experience, because I really hadn't realised I was still clinging to this hope all that time, and then again it was, you know, another, “No, nothing's there. Lisa: My name is Lisa Beaton and I'm a member of the participant panel at Genomics England. On today's episode, I'm joined by Dr Celine Lewis, the principal research fellow in Genomics at UCL, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Jana Gurasashvili, a genetic counsellor, and Louise Fish, the CEO of Genetic Alliance. Today we'll be discussing the impact on parents with children with rare conditions, who received a no primary findings result after diagnostic whole genome sequencing. If you enjoy today's episode, we'd love your support. Please like, share and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Can I ask all of us here present to introduce themselves, please? Celine: Hi everyone, I'm Celine, I'm a behavioural scientist in genomics at UCL Institute of Child Health, and I currently hold an NAHR advanced fellowship to look at the implementation of WGS, or whole genome sequencing, in the NHS. Jana: I'm Jana Gurasashvili and I'm a genetic counsellor at Northwest Thames Regional Genetic Service, and prior to that I was at Great Ormond Street, involved with consenting families to the 100,000 Genomes Project, and I also have an ongoing interest in the lived experience of patients and parents of genetic counselling and rare disease. Louise: Hi, I'm Louise Fish, I'm the chief executive of Genetic Alliance UK, and we are an alliance of around 230 charities and support groups that work with patients and families who have particular rare conditions. We also run a really longstanding project called SWAN UK, and SWAN stands for syndromes without a name. And the SWAN UK project supports families with children that have been through genetic testing but have not found a result following that genetic testing. So, it's clear they have a genetic condition, but science hasn't quite advanced far enough yet to tell us what that means and what that will mean for their child, and what that will mean for their family over the coming years. Lisa: And I personally can attest to the wonderful support that SWAN UK can offer because, as the parent of a still undiagnosed child, I have been involved myself with SWAN UK since my daughter was around the age of three to four years old. It's brilliant being a part of my big SWAN UK family. We first realised that there were some – I suppose something wrong with our daughter when she was around two weeks of age, but it wasn't something I could specifically put my finger on. I couldn't at that point have taken her to a doctor and said, “I don't know what's wrong but there's something wrong.” I just knew in my heart of hearts, probably because I have three elder children, that there were issues, and things weren't developing as they should. She cried a lot, she screamed a lot, she never seemed to be comfortable in any position when you held her, when she was asleep, when she was upright. It didn't seem to matter what you did, she was just a rigid, stuck child, for want of a better word. And all my mum senses were screaming, but it completely sounded ridiculous to take her to a doctor saying, “She feels wrong.” And I think that's quite a SWAN UK experience, from chatting to other families with similar situations. The parents just know that there's something not right, but it can be very isolating not to be able to identify kind of where that starts and what it is. In our case, it wasn't until our daughter was nine weeks old that things became much more obvious, that there were developmental concerns physically and medically, and at that point we went from my sort of mutterings that there was something wrong but I wasn't sure what it was, to a sudden hospital admission with quite a shocking turn of events. From something that had started out quite normally, as a routine visit to the baby clinic, to suddenly being seen by a troop of different paediatricians, and doctors coming in and out constantly, asking different questions, and sending us off all over the building for different tests and x-rays and imaging. And being given a partial diagnosis that our daughter had a condition called arthrogryposis, but it was clear that there was much more going on than that, and we would need referring to many more different fields. And that day really our diagnostic odyssey, for want of a better word, began. So actually, in terms of that diagnostic odyssey, many parents of children with rare undiagnosed conditions experience this, and when we agree to have genetic testing, we feel that we are going to get these answers straight away, and that every appointment that you go along to is going to be the one that brings you the answers. But certainly in our experience kind of 15 years on, that's not been the story at all. Celine, can I ask you to explain what the words no primary findings actually mean when a parent receives that regarding their child? Celine: So, there's a range of different possible outcomes from a genomic test. So, the results might provide a diagnosis to that patient and family, or other situations, there might be a variant of uncertain significance, so we don't necessarily know if the gene that we found, a genetic variant is the likely cause of the condition, or we might find no particular gene at all that we think is linked to the child's phenotype or clinical condition. So, that's what we mean really when we're sort of saying no primary finding. Lisa: Louise, would you be kind enough to explain what you think the impact of no primary findings means to families like my own, parents who don't have a genetic likelihood cause, just a gene thrown up to diagnose their child? Louise: Yeah, I think it's a huge challenge for families, and you'll obviously know that from your own experience. People go to have genetic testing hoping it will give them some answers, first and foremost, just to kind of understand, you know, what condition their child has and what the likely impact that's going to be on their child and on the child's life, and on the family's wider life. And I think one of the things that we really ask genetic counsellors and geneticists to do is help people understand before the genetic testing takes place that there may be nothing found from it, so that that kind of expectation is built in. Because people hope that they will get a diagnosis that will give them answers about what the impact of the condition will be on their lives. In a best-case scenario, access to a particular treatment that might be a huge help for their child, but at the very least, access to a range of services and support for their child. So, that kind of diagnosis is often seen by families as the key to unlocking a range of services and support that will help them and their families at what is the beginning of a lifelong journey. And I think when families get no diagnosis, there's a real concern on behalf of families, a, that they don't understand how their child's going to be affected by the condition. What we're really careful to say to families is, “Just ‘cos you don't have a diagnosis with a name, your child is still the same person they were before. They still have exactly the same bundle of needs as they had before, and you will still need to work with the NHS and with wider services to make sure that they can access speech and language therapy, and physiotherapy, and all of the services that they are going to need and you are going to need to help them live their lives to the full.” But I think that moment of not getting a diagnosis is when people feel I think real – the uncertainty continues, and uncertainty, we know, is a really hard thing to live with, and the lack of clarity about which services you'll be able to access. So, I think psychologically it's a massive impact on the family not to have the answers that they were looking for, or the key to the services that they were hoping would be there. Lisa: Thank you, Louise, yeah, I would definitely agree with that. We had a no primary findings result in I think it was 2019. It was a really bittersweet moment because my daughter's list of various different conditions kind of – by this point, named parts of difficulties for her spans over sort of two pages of A4, and yet on the letter back from the genomics service, it just says that, you know, nothing causative has been found. And so part of you is left wondering, well, how can there be all these different conditions or difficulties, and yet there's still nothing there? And I know personally, I had comments when she was much younger, every time a test came back, where people would say things like, “Oh well, that's great news,” and to some extent it was great news that something hadn't been found, but also if that hadn't been found, what was still out there? And that fear of kind of the unknown was extremely difficult. And also paradoxically, there was a sense of some very well meaning people saying things like, “Oh well, if they haven't found anything then there can't be too much wrong.” But yeah, I have a child who is tube fed and on multiple different medications, and cared for basically for 24 hours a day, so that doesn't really fit in with the picture of there not being very much wrong from a personal perspective. And I think it can make you as a parent/carer feel perhaps there's a tendency to downplay that there is an issue and that perhaps, you know, you're making it up, for want of a better word, and that sense of isolation around that can certainly be problematic. Celine, if I can come to you, that diagnostic odyssey, what are the common experiences and expectations of parents and patients who undergo that genetic testing from your perspective? Celine: Well, I think sort of parents go into genetics testing for a whole range of reasons really, and Louise has already alluded to many of these. Ones that I've come across in my own work include wanting to know why their child has a particular health problem, so that that child can access the most suitable treatments or therapies, or even access clinical trials. Even relief from guilt for many parents, a validation that the parents hadn't done anything wrong during their pregnancy to cause the child's condition, and that's hugely important really, to try and get that relief from guilt. Also to know whether future children might be affected by the same condition, and then more social reasons really, for example, making contact with other parents through support groups, or access to social and educational support. And I think there's also a drive from many parents to feel that they're doing everything absolutely possible for their child. I mean, particularly with something like the 100,000 Genomes Project, it was really a sort of first of its kind project, where patients were on a significant scale able to access this new whole genome sequencing technology. So, many of the parents taking part in that project felt like pioneers, and there was really a lot of expectations around whole genome sequencing in delivering a diagnosis for those parents who'd previously not been able to get hold of one. Lisa: Yes, I strongly can resonate with a number of the points you made there, particularly the feelings of guilt. I must have asked myself a thousand times whether, you know, something I did do, something I didn't do, something I thought of, something I hadn't thought of [laughter], all those questions that swirl around, particularly in the small hours of the night when you feel particularly alone. And yes, I can completely relate to that. And also although SWAN UK is primarily for children and parent/carers whose children don't have a diagnosis, actually a number of the parent/carers on there will have children with diagnoses that are so very rare that absolutely, you know, very, very little is known. They might be the only parent – the diagnosis, for want of a better word, they may have received may just be a series of kind of numbers and genetic dot-dashes, forgive my layman's terms there, but it may not actually help them any further along in terms of feeling that they know anything further or the direction of, you know, where that will lead their children, and that can feel very, very isolating, I'm sure, probably just as much for those of us who don't have that diagnosis. Louise: Yeah, just to add to that, I think that's absolutely right, Lisa, and I just want to give a shoutout – at SWAN UK, we tend to support families who don't have a diagnosis at all, or, as you say, a small number of families who do but have been part of the SWAN UK family for so long that we're very happy to keep them because of the support they're finding from other parents. We work really closely with another of our members, Unique, who are a charity that support parents in exactly the situation you've talked about, where people have finally got a diagnosis and it's that kind of relief of having a name, but it's a super long name, and you find out you're one of only three families in the world with that diagnosis. And so although there's a real I think comfort for people, perhaps if you have a five year old and you're meeting a family who have a 13 year old and a family of a 19 year old, then you start to see a little bit about how your child might develop, but there's not enough kids affected that you can be really certain about that. So, it gives you a little bit more information, but not the kind of wealth of information you were hoping for about how your child's going to be impacted by a particular condition, and what the future might hold for you and for them. So, SWAN UK and Unique very much work alongside each other to kind of support families on whichever part of that journey they're on, because there's still a huge amount of uncertainty for families with those super rare conditions, as you say. Lisa: Definitely, and I'm sure you'll be familiar, Louise, yourself if you get time to go on the online communities and seeing the question that pops up quite regularly when somebody has received a diagnosis of, “Can we still remain part of the SWAN UK family?” And they very much use that word, family, because I think they do feel that, although all our children are different, there are children with physical, medical, cognitive, a combination of all the above syndromes, conditions, etc, they feel that kind of embrace of all being in a collective club of rare and unique and undiagnosed, and that's very comforting to the members. Louise: Absolutely, yeah, I think that sense of belonging and being able to reach out to other families that you've been on that journey with for many, many years. You know, many of our families join when their children are like one or two, and they're still with us when, you know, their children are 26, 27 [laughter], and that sense of having that community and that family and that belonging is really, really important to people, I agree. It makes a big difference psychologically to be part of a community you can reach out to and ask the questions that perhaps you can't ask to other people. Lisa: Celine, can I ask you how many patients for the 100,000 Genome Project have had a no primary findings diagnosis back? Celine: Well, back in 2021, there was a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which reported that, in the initial pilot for the 100K, a diagnosis was found for around 25 percent of rare disease participants, and other studies looking at the diagnostic yield of whole genome sequencing have put the number anywhere between 25 percent to 55 percent, depending on the clinical indication. And we know that even already from the 100,000 Genomes Project, this pioneering project has led to more than 6,000 diagnoses being identified, and that number will obviously continue to go up as they explore the data and gather new insights. However, that still obviously leaves a significant number that won't get a result from whole genome sequencing, as many as half of those rare disease patients, and that was really the basis of the study that Jana and I worked on. So, we felt that there had been so much research really looking at the experience of parents who do receive a genetic diagnosis, and that a lot of attention rightfully does focus on the amazing successes of the 100,000 Genomes Project and genomic medicine more broadly, but actually that there is a considerable number of patients and parents and families who don't get a result, and we felt that it was important that we also focus on those parents and patients, and try and understand their experiences. Lisa: Yes, you can feel, if your child, for example, is under multiple different care specialists, that it can be quite hard, when you've just got this list of different names of things that are wrong, that you feel very much still out on the limb and forgotten about. But it's clear that, from your work, you're identifying that and pointing that back to the specialists, the consultants, to remind them that these parents and these children are still finding their ways through. Can I ask you, Jana, the study that was conducted, what would you say the main things from that study told us? Can you describe some of the emotions experienced by the parents, and what challenges that they have faced along that receiving the no primary findings diagnosis? Jana: Yes. So, many participants really felt very strong disappointment and sadness on receiving that no result, and for many, it kind of reflected the feelings they had had when they first realised they had a child and there was no diagnosis for their condition. And as Celine said, this was such a new technology that people had invested a lot of hope in, and so many felt that it had been their last chance of finding a reason for their child's condition, and that they'd come to the end of the road with that no primary finding result. And, well, one person described it as another door shut. And people talked about the actual toll taken, the emotional and physical toll, and one person described feeling low for several weeks following the result. And some talked about the timing of the result. Somebody got it as a letter just before Christmas, and so their whole family holiday that they'd prepared was marred by getting that news just before Christmas. And it often seemed to leave parents feeling isolated and unable to contribute to normal parental roles, such as going to parent groups, etc, because they felt that other mothers particularly - as it's mothers we were speaking to, other mothers, their experience of motherhood was so incredibly different to their own, and they felt a lack of support. And one parent actually talked about wanting to lock everyone in the house just to escape the feeling of judgement and pity from outside the front door. And some parents talked about finding it hard when other people would post on support groups that they had got results from the 100,000 Genomes Project, which was very difficult. And some talked about hope as finding it hard to keep hopeful but needing to keep hopeful. So, they talked of hanging onto a little bit of hope, as though that was quite an intense thing, which I think, Celine, you'll agree, that made us able to kind of identify that hope was really part of a coping mechanism for this whole process of going through this diagnostic odyssey. Celine: Yeah, people sort of talked about not wanting to let go of hope and the importance of hope, and that without hope, there was no sense of wanting to continue this journey of trying to find a diagnosis, and that it was still very important to people. And I think that parents did understand that, even though a no primary findings result now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't get a diagnosis at some point in the future. So, there's obviously the opportunity to do future reanalysis of the genome, particularly as we understand more about the function of different genes, and as new genes are added to many of the panels that we're using in whole genome sequencing. So, I don't think not finding a result means that there is no hope in these circumstances, but for many parents, they did talk about hope being too painful, and not wanting to be let down again, and really preferred to focus on the here and the now rather than necessarily focus on the future. Lisa: Yes, I can only speak from my own experience here, but I think I primed myself to actually forget about going on the 100,000 genomes sequencing because, having undergone genetic testing for certain conditions that they were quite convinced my daughter had from around the age of four months through to around the age of three years, I'd gone to so many appointments and thought, “Oh, this'll be the time that I turn up and somebody will tell me this is what is the diagnosis.” And when I then joined the 100,000 Genomes Project in 2015 with my husband and my daughter, the genetic experience, the discussions that we had at the time were very helpful in that it was made quite clear to me that potentially we wouldn't get a finding, and actually that any information that did come forward was perhaps unlikely to be hugely beneficial to our family at that point. So, I was quite clear what potential finding would mean to us. But I think in the back of my mind, subconsciously, I had hoped that, when we eventually got a diagnosis, it would – I don't know, bells, whistles, balloons going up, fireworks, etc. And then the experience of a letter thumping on the doormat, and I recognised the postmark quite quickly, and it was at that moment I suddenly thought, “Oh gosh, I haven't buried all these feelings of hope.” Because I opened that letter with quite trembly hands, and then this diagnosis or lack of diagnosis, you know, nothing had been found, and it was a bit… I don't know if it's been described as like a nail in the coffin experience, because I really hadn't realised I was still clinging to this hope all that time, and then again it was, you know, another, “No, nothing's there.” And I think because of the work I've undertaken with SWAN UK as a volunteer, and being quite involved in wanting to sort of educate myself and learn more, I did understand that, even though we had no primary findings, it didn't mean that the study, everything was closed to us. It didn't mean, you know, that things won't still be looked for. But equally, at the same time, it just meant that we had nothing yet to pin anything on at that point. And I think it's quite hard to pick yourself up and dust yourself off again, to be like, “Okay, we're still here, we're still circling that drain,” as it were. I think actually that takes us on quite nicely really, about what role hope has in the experiences of a child with rare and undiagnosed conditions. And again if I can just say that there's hope and there's realism, and somewhere along the way, if you've been on the journey for quite a long period of time like ourselves, you have to try and find a way of living with that hope and realism all at the same time. So, we're still hopeful that one day we might get some answers, but we're realistic that day to day we need to focus on the difficulties or the experiences that my daughter has, so that we can manage to give her the skills to live her life to the very best of her abilities. Certainly, that's our experience. And also I think if I'd let myself dwell forever on not having a diagnosis or a pathway specifically for that, it would have been quite difficult to carry on, pick ourselves up every day. What would you think about the role of hope there, Louise? What would you say your experience is from chatting to fellow parent/carers? Louise: Yeah, I think you've described it really eloquently and better than I'll be able to do, but when we talk to people, the phrase I always have in my head is kind of hope for tomorrow and help for today are the two things that people are looking for. So, making sure that that hope for tomorrow's still there both in terms of, you know, the NHS being really clear that it will provide support for individuals without a diagnosis, and there may be opportunities for reanalysis in the future as science makes future progress. And, you know, there is progress being made so fast at the moment in genomics and that's really welcome. So, making sure that people who've already had whole genome sequencing but not found anything continue to have access to that potential reanalysis I think is really important. As you've rightly said, Lisa, as well, thinking through in terms of hope for tomorrow, the opportunity to take part in clinical trials and to make that as easy as possible where treatments are being delivered, to have the opportunities to take part in trials for non-condition specific treatments, whether that's for epilepsy, which affects people across a whole range of conditions, or sleeplessness, which affects people across a whole range of genetic conditions. You know, there are both trials that only people who have a particular condition can take part in, and trials that are open more broadly, so making sure those opportunities are available as well, so that people have that kind of hope for the future. But alongside that, I think it's really important for the NHS to be clear with people about what help for today will continue to be available, and so we are working really hard with the NHS to emphasise the fact that when no diagnosis is possible, the NHS still needs to be clear to people about how they will be supported, whether that's through the genetics team or a particular discipline, perhaps the one that is the closest fit for their child's biggest need, whatever that may be, that they can still access more joined up care. So, you know, who is the person in the NHS, if you don't have a diagnosis, who's going to help you secure referrals to speech and language therapy, to physiotherapy, to learning disability nurses, and to the package of care that your child may need. Who is the clinician, if you don't have a clear diagnosis, who's going to be the person with the authority and the confidence to lead the multidisciplinary team, maybe up to 30 healthcare professionals who are going to support your child. You know, who is going to be the lead clinician that's going to pull that multidisciplinary team together and make sure that your child's not being prescribed stuff that's contraindicated, or that's going to help one element of their condition but make another element worse. So, we are really trying to work with the NHS to make sure they're thinking through, where will that support be for the family in terms of their healthcare. And alongside that, you know, many wider services like schools or social care or employers welcome the chance to talk to a geneticist or a genetic counsellor or nurse to understand what adjustments they might need to make for someone who clearly has a genetic condition but doesn't have a clear diagnosis. And so we're trying to kind of make sure the NHS is both focused on the kind of science side and making sure that the hope for future findings is there, but also the help side, and making sure that the right package of care is still available for families who clearly have a genetic condition. Lisa: Actually Louise, yeah, you've really summed it up excellently there, and whilst I am hugely grateful to the NHS and the various services, I can say, hand on my heart, my daughter has a huge number of professionals involved, both from the health side of things and social care side of things, and actually the person that kind of holds all that together is myself. And because we're under multiple different teams, every time a new medication, for example, is prescribed, I need to go back to our lead team, which in this case happens to be neuromuscular, and check that, for example, if gastroenterology have prescribed a medication, that it's not contraindicated from a neuromuscular side of things and so forth. It's all a bit like having sort of interlocking parts of a jigsaw, but perhaps no picture to follow [laughter], and that can be quite an isolating experience. And certainly, having chatted to fellow parent/carers, I know that's their experience as well. And I imagine, Celine and Jana, you found sort of similar experiences when conducting the research. Celine: Yeah, so my PhD actually was focusing on the sort of journey for parents as they go through the diagnostic process, and one of the things that came out really strongly from that body of work was how the parents were really carving their own care pathway, how they had to sort of push and fight to access services, but at the same time were the gatekeepers for their child's health. Having to make sure all the various teams and clinicians were kept up to date with all the different tests that they had and all the results. And, you know, at times, this could be really frustrating for a lot of parents, ‘cos they had to keep repeating their story over and over again, particularly ‘cos they didn't have a diagnosis. So, these parents really were having a very different parental experience to many of their friends and family, because their experience of being a parent to a child with an undiagnosed condition was really sort of as being a patient advocate, and as having to push and fight to access services. Lisa: Yeah, it's quite a unique experience. You are the specialist for your own child in that sense, I think would be the way I'd describe it. And I suppose over the years, I've got so used to sort of trotting out different medical explanations in terms that you can almost sound like you know what you're doing [laughter]. And a few times when I've been at medical appointments, and perhaps we've met a new specialist or consultant, they've said, “Oh, what's your field? What's your area of expertise?” And actually you just think, “No, I'm just a specialist in my own child” [laughter]. But that's quite an empowering feeling actually, so I guess that plays back into the feelings around hope and expectation, even with having an undiagnosed child. Lisa: When I was recruited to the 100,000 Genome Programme, we didn't actually as a family receive genetic counselling specifically, and I know that this is something that is incredibly important to many families, and how that can support you sort of going forward. We were quite lucky in our experience in that we knew that our daughter was definitely going to be our last child, so we didn't have the thoughts and insecurities around potentially what it might mean for any future children that we had. But certainly as my daughter has got older and she's asking her own questions, and our older children are at a stage in life where they're looking at potentially having families in the future, I know that those things have come up, and we're just still exploring what that will mean in the bigger picture. But can you tell us, Jana, really what can genetic counsellors do to help parents feel less isolated and better to cope with the uncertainty surrounding their child's condition? Jana: Yes, well, I'm sorry to hear you didn't have any genetic counselling prior to going on the 100,000 Genomes Project, because that consent conversation right at the beginning, before the whole genome sequencing, is really important. It's important to know what the range of outcomes may be, so that it may be that you might get a result, you might get a variant of uncertain significance, or you might get no result. And parents in our study did suggest that their sense of isolation when they got a no primary finding result would have been alleviated if they'd known how many were not getting results. So I think in the longer run, it's 40 percent perhaps received a result, so that's 60 percent that didn't receive a result, so those parents were not alone, but they felt very alone. And some suggested if they'd just had a leaflet really explaining that, and explaining that they'd still contributed to research and that that had been, you know, a good outcome in a sense, then they would have felt better about it. So, a lot of work can be done before the testing really, to explore how you might feel on that range of results, and then that way sort of prepare parents for how they're going to feel, and perhaps that helps them to have things in place, to know that it might be a vulnerable time with that letter, although that was particular for the 100,000 Genomes Project, to get the result in a letter in that way, and as you described, after such a long time, that you'd been able to forget that you'd been on the project. But to actually be a little bit prepared that it make take its toll on you might actually help with preparing oneself. It also might be helpful to include ways of promoting ways to enhance health and wellbeing for parents in terms of practical support, such as those things that you're already attempting to access, like the respite services, school support, support groups, and thinking about psychological wellbeing and ways of managing stress, psychological support for parents, and possibly spirituality based resources as well. And focusing maybe on what is known about the child's condition even without a diagnosis, so what's likely to be beneficial, and support parents in actively coping, such as what research they might be able to access, and continued medical support. And also actually having a named person within the genetics service, so they have someone to go to for any follow-up that has a name, and so they don't feel isolated from the genetic service. And signposting to those external resources, such as SWAN UK, can be very important as well, of course. Celine: I think it's also really important to add that hope isn't necessarily lost when you don't get a diagnostic result. And in a sense, what can be really helpful is for genetic counsellors to reframe that hope, if you like. So, one thing that we talk about in our paper is that it might be useful for health professionals to ask a question such as, “In light of the new information that we now have from the whole genome sequencing result, what are you hoping for now?” So in a way, it's sort of reframing that hope, sort of giving it a different context. Lisa: Definitely, and I think one of the things as well is that, because potentially for when parents were first recruited to a study such as the 100,000 Genome specifically in this case, that it might be quite a length of time between that initial recruitment and when the actual result comes out. And of course, in that time, with the advances in genetics, it's sort of somewhat of a Pandora's box really, isn't it, in that we're almost kind of finding the information out quicker than we actually know how to process it and what it potentially means. So actually if there's a genetic counsellor available to speak to those parents, or for those parents to be signposted to somebody who can say, “Well look, since you were recruited, actually this is happening, that's happening,” or, “These research projects are happening,” personally, I can say that is going to be really helpful and handy, and would have been really useful. I just know that for myself anyway and my family, that if there was a leaflet or something that had given me a way of knowing how I could contact somebody in the future, that would be really helpful. What ways do genetic counsellors use in maintaining a delicate balance between not creating false hope but also providing meaningful support to parents? What would you say around that, Jana? Jana: I think as we've already touched on, it's that managing expectations from the outset when the test is offered. So, not generating too much hype or excitement, but setting those expectations, giving that information about the diagnostic yield. Also, informing parents that what people do experience has been described as a rollercoaster of emotions. It's normal. You might also want to explore people, not only what they're hoping for, but also the outcomes that they might be fearing, and giving them a chance to voice those, because they can be very powerful things as well. A diagnosis might not be what you want to hear, so there can be a lot of ambivalence around wanting a diagnosis when it might actually be a life limiting condition, that you didn't really want that certainty. And also helping parents to explore how not receiving a result might feel, so that they've actually rehearsed it a little bit, and where they might go to when they need a bit of extra support. So, they already know, “I go and talk to my friends, that's where I get my support from,” so that they're kind of ready for it, and that might help them with that sense of isolation, but also validating these feelings. So, it's okay, it's okay to have that dip, it's okay to feel, that it's something that many people experience. And creating a safe space for people to feel that, so if they want to talk to a professional or a friend, that those feelings are validated. And in that way, kind of with that pre-counselling really, helping parents to develop their own set of resources, so they've got those to draw on. And as you've mentioned, Lisa, it's like having your own resources also helps generate that feeling of empowerment and control. And as Celine has said, it's really facilitating parents through that passage of reframing what you're hoping for, reframing what the future looks like, if you had one picture of a future. You need to become comfortable with the future you're now looking at. Lisa: Thank you, Jana. Louise, if I can ask you really, we've already touched on the role that SWAN UK can play for parents dealing with undiagnosed rare conditions, but perhaps if you could home in on that and explain in more detail the main focus of SWAN UK, and what that can do for parent/carers. Louise: So, what SWAN UK primarily does is bring together parents who are in a similar situation. So, we have a team of amazing parent representatives, who Lisa is one, who help us shape the support that SWAN UK can provide, and really make sure that it's based on a really strong understanding of what it's like to be a parent of a child with an undiagnosed genetic condition, and an understanding of that kind of expertise that parents who have been on that journey themselves will bring. So, we have a series of Facebook groups. Some of them are for different regions, so people come into contact with other parents in their area who are going through similar circumstances. Some of them are more around age. So, you know, we have Facebook groups for parents who are waiting for a diagnosis or have got a new diagnosis, and then we have a group called SWAN Graduates, which is for children who are older and over 18, so their parents can come together and share their experiences. So, it's really to help parents be able to talk to one another, to share their experiences, to support one another, and often to ask for advice. They're often kind of practical questions about, you know, “My child needs this kind of wheelchair, has anybody been able to source that from somewhere?” “My child's having real difficulties eating at the moment, can anyone give some advice on this particular challenge?” “This thing someone else has faced, how did you approach it? Where did you reach out for support?” So, that peer to peer advice and support is really at the heart of SWAN UK. And then what we try and provide around that is access sometimes to information events, where there's particular issues that are affecting a lot of SWAN families. So, we hope over the coming year to have a series of information events targeted at families with children who don't have a diagnosis, and some of it is just trying to have social events and bring people together again. We've had, for example, an active dads group in Wales, who've been bowling and wanted to go axe throwing, and really they just want to come together with other dads who are in the same situation, and being able to talk to one another and provide emotional support to one another. So, that's kind of the nub of SWAN UK and what we do, and then alongside that, that kind of fits in with Genetic Alliance's wider goal, which is much more around campaigning for improved services. So for example, the Genetic Alliance UK team has worked really closely with commissioners in Wales, who actually commissioned the first SWAN clinic, which is in Cardiff. That was a two year pilot, to see what support could be provided both to help SWAN families get a diagnosis, but far beyond that, to make sure that the care for families who don't have a diagnosis is better joined up. And that we feel has been a real success. Again, there hasn't been a really high diagnostic yield, there have been very few new diagnoses, but the support provided to the families who are in contact with that clinic, in terms of helping them access better joined up care both from the NHS and from services more widely, has been brilliant. And we're currently working with NHS England in the UK, who are exploring an opportunity to commission two SWAN clinics in England. So, that trying to kind of improve services, and then the third aspect of that is just working generally with the new genomic medicine service alliances as they emerge across England, to try and make sure they are thinking through what support they will need to continue providing to families who've gone for whole genome sequencing in future, not through a research project like 100,000 Genomes, but just through routine clinical practice and routine clinical diagnostics, what support will they need to provide for families who go through that process and don't get an answer. And that won't change the support they will need from the NHS. It will just mean that perhaps that clinic needs to play a more active role in helping them access those services. So, all of that kind of campaigning to have better services for family who have an undiagnosed genetic condition continues as well. Lisa: So, I think one of the things really just to finish off today, is of course looking at the future. Considering advancements in technology, would you say that future reanalysis of the 100,000 Genome Project is going to yield additional insights? Celine, can I ask you to comment on that? Celine: Yes, absolutely. As we understand more about the role and function of different genes, and as new genes are added to the panels, we will definitely be able to provide a diagnosis for more parents and more families. But I think we don't yet necessarily know exactly what that reanalysis will look like, and it's not really clear yet how this will work in practice. Lisa: And Louise, would you have anything else to add to that at all really? Louise: No, I think it is just that hope for the future and kind of help for today. I think the NHS needs to be equally clear about, you know, there's some amazing investment by the UK government in genomic research, and that's brilliant and we want that to continue, but equally we want the investment to be taking place into routine clinical services and diagnostic services, so that we can talk to people both about the hope of potentially getting a diagnosis in future, but making sure that the help continues to be available for as long as they don't have a diagnosis, and that help for families who don't have a diagnosis is going to be just as important. And what we try to ask for is both real clarity around what the NHS can provide, and really clear signposting to organisations like SWAN for families that continue to not have a diagnosis. And again, just to give an equal shout out to Unique, who are able to support families who have an ultrarare diagnosis, where perhaps they're the only person in the country with that particular diagnosis, or one of a handful of families around the world. Signposting to that peer to peer support will continue to be a really important part of the process as well, so that families can help one another, learn from one another, and just give each other support that they are kind of sharing that same journey and walking alongside one another on that journey as it continues. Lisa: And bringing this podcast to a close, can I just ask you really, any final thoughts, anything that you would sum up from your experience of researching the no primary findings and where we now are today? Celine: I think the main thing for me is just to sort of make it clear to parents that a diagnosis isn't necessarily a magic wand, even though it is obviously very important to a lot of parents. But that even without a diagnosis, we still have the opportunity to manage patients' symptoms, and often a diagnosis doesn't make a substantial difference, because parents are sometimes left with a lot of uncertainties and a lot of unanswered questions. So I think, and as Louise and Jana have said before, it's really sort of on focusing what we do know, and thinking about what we can offer and what support we can provide to parents and families even without a diagnosis. Lisa: Thank you very much to our guests today, Jana Gurasashvili, Celine Lewis and Louise Fish, for joining me as we discussed the impact of a no primary findings result. If you'd like to hear more like this then please subscribe to the G Word on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for listening. I've been your host, Lisa Beaton. This podcast was edited by Mark Kendrick at Ventoux Digital, and produced by Naimah Callachand.
This podcast episode delves into a powerful story of resilience and overcoming mental health challenges. Guest Todd Rennebohm shares his life-changing experience of a 911 call that not only saved his life but also opened up important conversations about mental health and addiction. Throughout the episode, Todd discusses his journey as a mental health advocate, a survivor of suicide attempts, and his recovery from addiction. From being diagnosed with chronic anxiety at a young age to battling alcohol and substance abuse, Todd's story sheds light on the connection between mental health and substance use. Todd emphasizes the importance of self-advocacy and seeking help within the flawed healthcare system. The episode also touches on Todd's book, which tackles the topic of mental health through a child's perspective, aiming to start conversations and normalize discussions surrounding mental health in families. ..................................................................................... Listen to Todd's podcast Bunny Hugs & Mental Health on Apple podcast or Spotify Follow Todd on Instagram @bunnyhugspodcast .................................................................................... RISING STRONG LINKS: Get new episode notifications: bit.ly/risingstrongupdates Follow us on Instagram: @risingstrongpodcast Facebook page - send your reviews and comments via the 'comment' button here: www.facebook.com/risingstrongpodcast WIN SWAG: · Email a screenshot of your 5-star review for a chance to win some Rising Strong swag! Lisa@LisaKBoehm.com Remember to follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode ..................................................................................... TRANSCRIPT: host/Lisa: In today's episode, we unravel the powerful story of a lifechanging 911 call that not only saved a life, but also opened up a conversation about mental health and addiction. Welcome to the Rising Strong podcast. I'm your host, Lisa, and today's guest is going to inspire you in so many ways. Tod and I met almost exactly one year ago at a mental health event where he openly shared his journey from the stage. He's a mental health advocate, suicide attempt, survivor in recovery from addiction, speaker, author and host of Bunny hugs and mental health. Welcome to the show, Todd. Todd Thank you. It's lovely to see you again. And at that exact same event a year ago this year, you were speaking at it. And so that was very exciting. Lisa: Right? It seems like we're like in a pinball game or something where we keep literally bumping into each other at these mental health events. So clearly, I really believe in the universe. When you meet people, it's for a reason. Todd: It's a reason. A season or a lifetime, I've been. Lisa: Told yes, or a lesson somewhere in there, I have a few lesson people. Todd: Well, yeah, that too. Yeah, sure. Right. Lisa So we're having this chat because you've had a long journey with mental health. How long does that go back and when did things start? Todd: Oh, boy. This could be a three hour episode if we wanted it to be, but it actually started in grade five. I was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer. When you're grade five, most kids don't have stomach issues that like 80 year old ceos of billion dollar companies have because they have so much anxiety and pressure and worry. But that is an ailment that kind of runs in my family. My grandfather had it and my mom has issues, so nobody thought anything of it. So they treated me for the physical part of it, but nobody really questioned why was there anxiety? Why does he worry so much? And that was the thing. Nobody called it anxiety when I was grade five. So I'm 46 years old, so that was almost 40 years ago. So, yeah, the word anxiety wasn't really a thing. It was more like, oh, you worry too much, or my mom would call it a nervous stomach. So the nervous boy love. It's called chronic anxiety, actually. So that's kind of when it started. And then in high school, I kind of was introduced to alcohol. Being in a small town mean, I say that, but I mean, kids drink everywhere. But that was very much the culture when I was that age in small town Saskatchewan. And a lot of my anxiety kind of, I don't know, it didn't go away, but I didn't worry about every little thing like I used to. And then, yeah, out of high know, drinking turned into more and more. And there's a lot of addiction to my family, a lot of anger issues with the men. So a lot of my anxiety and depression eventually turned into anger. I was bouncing around from job to job. It's so weird. I've been discussing this lately, how life can be very polarizing at all times. So it's like some of these moments, I look back and it's like, that was the darkest time of my life. But then I'm also like, oh, but I had so much fun, too. So it's like you can be miserable and happy at the same time, and it's hard to wrap your head around how that's possible. But I don't know if it's like different frequencies, so they're not actually overlapping, they're actually just happening at the same time or something. Anyway, yeah, I used to play in bands and stuff, and it was like, I mean, talk about touring with a band and stuff. It is so much fun, but also so anxiety inducing. And you're drinking all the time and you're calling home and the girlfriend's crying and upset and missing you. And so it's like, yeah, it's very polarizing. So anyway, I had cool things like that going through my life, but also just everyday kind of schlub stuff. Band breaks up, and then you're doing just labor jobs for minimum wage. So then my anxiety depression stuff kind of turns more into the anger. And I think I'd rather feel depressed than angry. I can't stand that feeling. I'd wake up angry and go to work angry just because I felt unfulfilled or something, or not satisfied with life and the drop of a hat. I would just be throwing stuff and smashing stuff, and it's not a good look. I mean, I felt like a child having a temper tantrum. Like, I've seen family members do it, and every time I'm just like, oh, my God, this is so, one, scary for people, two, just annoying. You just want to shut up. And then there I am doing it, and it's like, oh, my God, I hate this. But eventually I started drinking and using marijuana constantly, and my issues came to a head. I had a suicide attempt. I tried going to the hospital once and was basically turned away, which is kind of a reason for when I started advocating, because I went to the ER and was turned away. So then, yeah, eventually stuff came to a head again and I ended up. I quit drinking, and that was huge for my anger and my depression. Still working through anxiety, then Covid hit and more job bouncing around. Then eventually I was diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago. And so this fall I was working with EMDR therapists to maybe work through some of my trauma stuff. It's basically lifelong, and there's always, anytime you peel off a layer, there's another layer there that you could definitely work on. And whether it's you use the same strategies or the same tools that you used before, or you need a different strategy like EMDR, or a different diagnosis, like ADHD, a different medication, or a different perspective when it comes to therapies or different modalities. I'm just trying to get through the day without letting these extreme polar feelings pull me one way or another and just keep the balance, really. It's a journey. Lisa: I have a question for you. I just want to circle back to something that you said. Todd: Definitely. Lisa: In your opinion, do you think that there is a connection between. I don't want to just say mental health, but let's say anxiety, just because that's something you're familiar with. Do you think that there's an association, a link, a parallel between substance use, whether it's alcohol or drugs, and anxiety? Todd: I do, of course, everybody's different, but when I worked, because I worked at the treatment center I went to after I quit drinking for a couple of years, and it was quite obvious that addiction is a comorbidity of not just anxiety, but like PTSD, bipolar, different personality disorders. And really an anxiety is just a symptom of a greater thing quite often, too. So, yeah, I do think that substance abuse and anxiety, not only do they link, but they are a very common comorbidity of a lot of other bigger issues, including trauma. And I mean, trauma is also a huge contributor to personality disorders and things. It actually drives me nuts a little bit that when we say mental health and addictions, I wish we could just get rid of the addictions part, because it is part of mental health. When I say mental health or mental illness, it includes addictions. Someday it would be nice to just drop that. But for people that maybe don't understand, I don't know, they're still separated for some reason. Lisa: Absolutely. I found we were talking about this earlier before I hit record. Even amongst our own stories, we are not just this one silo, this single aspect of mental health. I really see mental health myself, as a massive umbrella. And under that umbrella. There are a myriad of topics, including addictions, including grief, including so, so many things. But you're right, the more I learn, and I feel like there's so much still to be learned, that trauma. Trauma, my goodness. I think if we could all heal our traumas, we would probably be far better off. But unfortunately, we live in this symptom, fix the symptom kind of society, right? So we kind of have to pick at the layers, as you say. We kind of maybe get a handle on one layer, and lo and behold, there's another layer to deal with. So interesting. Todd: Sorry, I was going to say also, even with my ADHD, I feel like that's a huge contributor to my anxiety, depression, substance abuse, maybe not the cause. I do think it caused those things, but also other things also contributed to those things. So it's very nuanced. It's all very complicated. There's no one treatment, one pill, one disorder, one diagnosis that's going to fix everything. For me, anyway. I'm finding that I think I have ADHD, but I also think I do have chronic anxiety. On top of that, I also do think that DNA has something to do with it. And nature versus nurture, like you were saying before, you throw spaghetti at the wall and you try different modalities and tools and things, and hopefully you figure out what's going to help you with that particular, I don't know, symptom or whatever. You peel another layer off and you go, okay, that's better. Now moving on to the next one. Lisa Exactly. And I'm certainly not an expert with a bunch of letters behind my name, but I do know that because we are all complex human beings and we are all learning so much more that I think the key maybe is being open. Right? Maybe we don't know what it is that we need or that what's going to, quote unquote, work. I don't know that we can be fixed as human beings as much as people try to fix us, but to cope better or to deal with the situation, whatever it looks like for us. Todd: Or change a belief system within yourself, right? Lisa: A mindset shift, whatever you want to call it. But I think the key is being open and like you say, to keep trying the things, even though you might not think that it's your thing. Like EMDR, man. Game changer. Game changer. When I first read about what it was and what was entailed, I thought, this is insane. I come from a long history of working in the medical system. I'm research driven. I'm data focused. And that EMDR, just when I was reading about it, I thought, well, I'm not so sure about this, but it was one of the greatest things that I did for myself and I cannot say enough about it. Todd: And I tell people all the time, even if it's a placebo and it works. It worked. So who gives a ****? Yeah. Lisa: So tell us about a visit that you had that involved a 911 call. Todd: Well, I'm getting so old. It was like eight years ago. And then it's like someone's like, no, that was like twelve years ago. It's like, oh yeah, I guess you were kidding. So I'm not sure how long ago it was. It was quite a while ago. So this was really some of my darkest times. The year before, I had drove myself to the hospital in Regina, in the ER, asked for help. None was given. And so I felt, as a man in a small town prairie, it was embarrassing for me as a man to go look for help, for emotions. It was huge for me to go do that and then to be told to go home. And basically I was super embarrassed. So I was like, all right, well, I guess I just got to suck it up here. I guess I was already on meds and kind of seen a counselor, but still, it was embarrassing to me. So over the year, I was a bad father, I was a bad husband, I was a bad employee, I was a bad son, and I was using marijuana, drinking all the time I was at a job. I wasn't finding fulfillment in whether that was at the job itself or just because I was in that frame of mind. And things came to a head one day and I had a few drinks in me already. I wasn't like super drunk or anything. My wife said something that triggered me. I don't even remember what. I don't know if it's a psychotic episode, but it's like a dream. I don't remember. I had people fill in some of the blanks, like even years later. But my wife said something and I snapped and I started punching myself in the face. I started slamming my head on the table and it freaked her out. She grabbed our kids. They were little at the time. She went out the door. And while I was there by myself, apparently I just put my head through the wall and I was slamming it as hard as I could against appliances of things. I was convinced in my mind that I just had ruined my life. My wife and kids are gone forever. Over that year, I not just had suicidal ideation, I mean, I was obsessed about it every night before bed, I was pushing knives against my throat and against my wrists, and I was doing really reckless behaviors at work that was dangerous, not for other people, but for myself. When people ask if you had a plan, when doctors are assessing you, do you have a plan? Are you suicidal? Do you have a plan? It didn't matter where I was during my day. I had places I could do things to take my life, right? I worked at the PFRA, at the tree nursery in indian head, and was like, that's a great tree. Mental note. Tools in my shop, I was, like, at work, it was like, didn't matter where I was. I had a plan. So things really came to a head, and, yeah, I was basically slamming my head against stuff. And then my brother showed up. He was the one I had a couple beers with earlier, and my wife apparently went to his place and said, what the hell were you guys doing? Like, you have to go help Todd. He's freaking out. And I pulled out a knife because I'd been practicing for a year, and this was it. And he tried to stop me, and I swung the knife at him, and then he jumped on top of me. He's a big dude. Got on top me and pinned me down. And apparently my sister was there too, and she's, like, trying to get me to smoke weed. To calm down, someone called the ambulance or called 911, and next thing I know, there's three or four police officers in my dining room. They don't know what the hell is going on. They see a knife on the floor. They see a big guy on top of another guy, and all hell breaks loose. Eventually, I'm screaming at them to shoot me. I'm begging them to kill me. I grab one of their guns. I didn't get it out of the holster, but I got my hand on one of their guns. And then things really escalated, and I had parts of my body that I didn't know had feelings that were hurting, because police are very good at detaining people, let's put it that way. And, yeah, they tied me up, and I just remember crying. Not sobbing. I mean, like, scream crying, begging them to shoot me. And I remember saying, like, you're hurting me. I'm tired of hurting. Stop hurting me. I'm tired of hurting. Kill me. Shoot me. But anyway, they detained me and got me in their vehicle, and they took me to my local hospital here in needing head, which then they put me in an ambulance and took me to Regina, to the general hospital, and they finally admitted me into the hospital there. But I remember pulling up. It was almost a year to the day that I tried going to the hospital on my own, and I thought, holy ****, this is what it took to get into the hospital this time, I'm handcuffed to a gurney, strapped to a gurney in an ambulance with two police officers on either side of me. But anyway, I got there. I spent a couple of weeks there, and, I mean, I could write a whole tv series just about the two weeks being in there. And I learned something while I was in there. I learned that you don't really get help in the hospital necessarily. It was a safe place for me to be to chill out for a couple of weeks till I was, like, got my wits about me again. And it did speed up the process to start seeing a psychiatrist because I was on, like, a year long waitlist. And once I got there, it was like, instantly I pushed up the waitlist. So there was that. And it was the beginning, I guess, of my healing process, even though it still took probably five years of really dark moments. There were a couple of kind of rock bottom moments after that, but that was kind of the major one that kind of got the ball rolling a bit. So that was scary. Lisa: Hey, rising strong listeners. If you've been enjoying the inspiring interviews on the podcast, we'd love your support to help us reach more listeners and hopefully gain some sponsorship. To do that, please, like, follow and subscribe wherever you listen to podcast. And here's a little extra incentive. Leave us a five star review, and you'll be entered to win some cool, rising strong swag. Your support means the world to me. Now back to the show. Well, what breaks my heart the most listening to that? Is that something, a situation so extreme is what it took for you to get some attention. Medical, professional, whatever. All the attention. Todd: Yeah. Lisa: How many people suffer in silence? Some people don't have these major breakdowns. That's terrifying that our system is so broken that it takes that much to finally get attention. And then what did your journey after that look like? Were you able to access a psychiatrist or a counselor? Did it tell us what that looked? Todd: Well, actually, while I was in there twice, aa came to my hospital room, and I was like, I shooed them away because I was like, well, I'm crazy depressed. I'm not an alcoholic. I have enough issues. I don't need to join a cult. I shoot them away. In the next few years, I was not thriving. Let's opposite. I was surviving, not thriving, let's put it that way. I was just going through the motions of my day to day. I kind of quit drinking on my own for a little bit, but I really upped my marijuana use because as a stoner, it's like, it's good for you, man. It helps my anxiety, bro. I know different now, but it drives me nuts when I hear people say that. It's not even addicting, man. And then I run out of weed and I have a nervous breakdown 4 hours later. It's my anxiety. Well, yeah, I wonder why I have anxiety. Anyway, I think it was a couple of years later. I did have another stint in the hospital. About a year after that, I had a kind of a bad weekend. It was only a couple of nights I spent in there. I'm doing my best. I'm self employed. Like I said. Eventually I start drinking again. I'm drinking, I'm smoking weed every day. And then I see in the newspaper that the health region or health district or whatever the hell it was called back then, they were laying off. I think it was like 20 some people from the general hospital, all from the psych ward, and I think it was something like 17 of them were psych nurses. And I thought, holy ****, like, I was in there. I know how I've seen how it operates, and I've seen how often security is called. At one point, security was called on me, and I ended up spending the night locked in a room with no bed. They just threw a mattress on the floor, and there was like, cameras. And I was like, security does not de escalate things like the psych nurses are trained. So anyway, I read this. I was like, how is this possible? And once in a while, anger, it's a good motivator. And I was so ****** off. Not like emotionally dysregulated anger. I was like, focused anger. I was like, this is bullshit. So I wrote, I don't know, a letter or blog. I don't know what I was doing. I just let my feelings out on. Well, it's not paper. It was on a keyboard. And I went through my. I basically told my story up to that point and how I thought this is all bs and all this stuff. And I talked about my suicide attempt, which I'd never really done publicly, especially in a small town. And I don't even remember doing this, but I sent it to a bunch of different media outlets and I posted it on facebook and stuff, and it blew up. It kind of went like, I don't know how many tens of thousands of times that letter got shared. I saw it on web pages, like in the states and stuff. Even. I'm like, what is going on? And the next day, it was like all the news outlets from Regina came out to indian head to interview me and talk to me about the stuff. So then I was kind of thrown into this advocacy role that I never thought I'd ever be doing. So then I felt like there was extra pressure on me. Now it's like, oh, okay, I've got people's attention, attention now, so let's keep this ball rolling and make some changes and make a difference. And within two months of having that pressure on me, not that other people were doing it, but my own pressure, I was in the hospital again, and I woke my wife up extremely intoxicated, told her I was going to harm myself and whatever. And that night, I wrote something on my computer. I considered it kind of a suicide note, but it wasn't really a suicide note. But again, a moment of clarity. I woke my wife up. Don't remember. I was so drunk. And that was the last night I drank, actually. I went to the small town hospital here in indian head, and I had an amazing doctor in town at the time, and he basically convinced me to go to treatment and start going to aa and stuff. And so I detoxed in the hospital here for a few weeks. And that really started. Well, actually. Okay, no, the other one started my journey. This was kind of mid journey now, but quitting drinking and quitting the marijuana and all that stuff, that was a huge thing. To this day, I have people reach out to me about a loved one they have, or even about themselves, and they're like, they're drinking, they're using, they're also depressed and all this stuff. And what do we treat first? The depression or the addiction? Again, no two people are the same for me. I had to get rid of that addiction before I could start healing about the anxiety and the depression and what was causing the depression and anxiety. That was the brown skin of the onion. I couldn't even get to layers until that big Chunk came off first. I'm assuming most people are like that, but again, everybody's different. Lisa Yeah. I think that is not a road that I have traveled, however, being on the sidelines of observing people in my life, I would say, from what I have observed, purely that I would concur with that. And so powerful. And it must be so difficult for loved ones spouses. May I ask how your marriage got through these years? I mean, that had to have been a massive strain. Todd: Oh, yeah. There was more than once where I wasn't sure we were going to make it. And I don't want to get too personal, but like I said, I was a bad husband. I was a bad father, I was a bad son. I was doing things that were against my own moral code. And then once you have some moments of clarity, you're like, what am I doing? This is not me. So she was amazing. My wife was amazing. After the first big stay at the hospital, I continued to see my psychiatrist and a counselor regularly. My wife knew somehow she's just a very intelligently, emotionally intelligent person. She knew that we couldn't work as a couple until she dealt with some stuff, too. So whatever I was going through kind of triggered some stuff in her. So she saw someone separately to deal with issues, traumas, and things she was dealing with, and then we would see someone together. So this was all happening at the same time. I was seeing my own person, she was seeing her own person. And then on separate days, we would see someone as a couple. And I really do feel like we got married young, like, we've been together for over 20 years, and I really do feel like we grew up together, even though we did know each other as children. We met when I was, like, 20 and she was 19 or something, but we really grew up together going through that. And then the next time when I was detoxing in the hospital and I quit drinking that night, it was shortly after that that I kind of wanted to leave the hospital and come home. And she said, like, I can't watch you do this to yourself anymore. I love you too much, and I just can't watch anymore. And she was like, if you are coming home, just come home to get your things, because I can't do this anymore. And I thought, oh, ****, okay, this is affecting people more than I thought. So I ended up staying at the hospital and detoxing and going through the whole thing the second time, it wasn't like she was mad or anything. I mean, I'm sure she was mad, but, yeah, it was just too. She was protecting herself and the kids. She's like, we can't do this anymore. I can't watch you do this anymore. And the kids are getting affected by it, and they're going to have traumas and stuff. Lisa: Do you think that hard line in the sand from her? Do you think that gave you a little nudge? A big nudge, maybe? Yeah. Todd: In addiction treatment, they're like, you're not doing this for other people. You're doing this for yourself. And it was kind of an ultimatum in a way, but also I was ready. I was so sick of it and I was just too scared. I was too scared to do it on my own. I didn't know how to do it. I was terrified. I tried for so many attempts to quit and to heal and it was too scary. So I'd quit. So generally, I don't think ultimatums work unless the other person is ready. Like I was ready. I just needed that nudge. And I tell people all the time too, that I think she had the harder end of the deal then. I've had people say, no, you can't compare pain, you can't compare traumas, and you can't compare, which is true. But as a parent now, it's like if my kids were going through it or my wife was going through the things I was going through, I don't know if I'd be able to stick around or just the sleepless nights, the absolute helplessness that she must have felt. God, I can only imagine how scary. Lisa Well, I'm glad that the two of you were able to work it through. I don't know the statistics, but marriage is hard enough on a good day to have extra stressors on it and so on and so forth. I mean, you clearly worked as a team, so I'm really glad to hear that. For anybody who might be listening, who is maybe at their lowest point struggling with either many of the aspects of mental health or addictions, what would be your advice to them? Todd: Oh man, there's so many things because there's so many levels to it. For one, keep advocating for yourself because the system does suck. And even when you're doing what your doctor's orders and you think things are going well, want more, demand more, get certain dates, whatever, like demand more. Because I guarantee you, I feel bad saying this because everyone I've ever met that works in addictions and mental health and in the health authorities, they're all sweet, lovely people, but the system, it's the system that sucks. And they know that. They even know that. So nothing against anyone that works in this field. It's just you have to demand more because the system will probably fail you at some point if you don't demand more. And I've seen it time and time again, and as far as we've come from my first suicide attempt to now, which has been about twelve years, it was only a year ago or a year and a half ago where that young guy was again told to leave the hospital in an hour later, he's found swim floating in the lake. So it's still happening. It's still not perfect. I know that there'll always be a certain percentage of people that get lost, but it's still very frustrating. And the other thing is, no one's going to do it for you. No pill, no therapist is going to fix you. You have to do the work. And that's the hardest part, is taking that first step to actually start doing the work. It took my wife saying, leave, I can't be around you anymore, to really start doing the work. I had seen a counselor for probably two or three years. Off and on. I wasn't doing anything. Like, I would go to the counselor session, I'd come home and not do anything to ask me to do. I'd be taking the pills and then be going like, why aren't they fixing me? Why haven't you cured me yet? And it's hard. It's simple. What you have to do is simple, but it's hard. It's not easy. It's a very simple plan on paper, but executing it is extremely difficult. It's painful, it's terrible. You think of having a broken leg, like the trauma of the broken leg, you don't even feel it at the time. It's the healing, it's the pain. That journey of healing sucks. And then it gets itchy under the cast and there's all types of things, and then you have to go through rehabilitation and all this stuff, like healing sucks, but if you don't do the work, you're just going to get gangrene and who knows what. It's kind of a weird analogy, I guess, but it works. So, yeah, it takes a lot of courage to heal, and unfortunately, a lot of people either don't get that nudge or they never, or something tragic happens before they're able to get into the mindset of doing the work. Lisa: I think you nailed it. There's no fairy godmother that's going to show up. No one is coming to save your butt. We've got to do the work ourselves. And you're absolutely right. It's simple, but far from easy. So one of the things I like to ask my guests on the podcast is what the word resilient means to you. Todd: I just used this word the other day, and I don't know if I've ever really used this word to describe myself or anyone other than Europe after World War II or something, but I use it the other day in a text to my know, life is still hard, whether it's financial or we were watching loved ones being sick. And like you said, even on a good day, marriages can be hard. So to me, resilience. When I think of the word resilience, I think of my wife and I, and I think of our family. And I said, we've been resilient in the past, and we're going to be resilient still, and we're going to get through this patch of it's not a relationship thing, but there's people around us that are suffering financially and kids are graduating, so we're borderline empty, nesting in a few months. So it's just a very transitional period in our lives right now for not just my wife and I, but for other people in our family. So when I think of resilience, I think of my wife and I, and I've never used that word to describe me or our relationship before. So it's kind of funny you use that word. You asked me about that today. Lisa: Well, when I started the podcast, and I knew I wanted to focus on mental health, but I knew that I also wanted to focus on people like you who really are resilient. And it's just really interesting to me because I do ask every single guest that question. Their answers are all varied, right? Because we're all unique snowflakes, but they're all the same at the same time. And I just find it so interesting. And I think it's your story that makes you resilient, right? I did a talk just a couple of weeks ago, and I said, unfortunately, we can't even talk about resilience until we talk about adversity, right? Because when we're sitting on a beach eating cupcakes all day long and the unicorns are running by, we're not growing, right? We're not becoming resilient. That's almost the opposite of resilience. So unfortunately, it does take adversity to get resilience. And like you are, you are that person. And I am so proud of you, Todd, so proud of you for the work that you've done, for the advocacy work that you continue to do. We didn't even get to your book. You've written a children's book, which I just think is just such a gift. It's such a hard topic to talk about. Yes, sometimes, daddy Christ, tell us just real quickly about your book and who it's for and where people can get a hold of it. Todd: Well, actually, the night I quit drinking and I said, I went to my computer and typed up a suicide note. It was actually the first draft of this book. So the night I quit drinking was the first draft of this book, and it was very different. It was the first draft, but it's basically the perspective of a kid watching his father go through depression, anxiety, and stuff. So the father never actually says anything in the book. It's always a conversation with the kid and the mother and the mother explaining to him that it's like having a stomachache. You're not well, so you have to get help. Sometimes you need rest. Sometimes you need medicine. Sometimes you have to go to the hospital. For whatever reason. I have a hard time tooting my own horn. But it's one of the things I'm very proud of, is that book. I think I've walked that fine line of making it realistic, but also not scary for kids. It's just this is what it's like. And kids do tend to understand physical things, so they can apply that to their emotions and to their mental health. And, yeah, it's gotten really great feedback from parents and from professionals. So, yeah, I'm really proud of it. lisa: Well, I think to me, the most important part is that it opens the door for conversation. Right. I mean, I am no parenting expert, but I do know that our kids don't necessarily learn from one conversation. Right. It's that constant revisiting topics. And a book for a small child is just a brilliant way to ease into it, open the door, make this a normalized part of conversations. Todd: Right, exactly. Lisa: It's very brilliant. And I'm, again, just so grateful that you were able to find the space and the heart space, really, to write that. So if people want to get a hold of your book, is it on Amazon? Todd Yeah, it. Yeah, if you go on Amazon ca. Or it's on some other websites and stuff, too. Yeah. Sometimes daddy cries. I wanted to add real quick that something I didn't expect with the book was opening up that conversation with the mother and the father, because probably 99% of the people that bought the book are females. So it's the mother or it's the mother of a child whose husband is suffering. Because for whatever reason, men. I don't know what it is. I talk about mental health all the time, and it's like 80% or 85% of my audience is female. And so it's like, I think men don't even know it's the problem because they either are drinking it away or getting angry. They don't realize their anger is actually depression or anxiety. Or whatever, so they don't even realize they're suffering anyway. That was a very interesting thing with the book, was finding that. Lisa: Absolutely. And maybe we'll come back and we'll do another podcast another time. But I think you critters, you males are absolute masters at a word I can never say. Compartmentalization, it's a big word and you just are able to put it somewhere. Push it down. I mean, not effectively. You don't get bonus points for doing that. But it's something that I think men do do, and I read something or heard something that we simple, right? We get better at what we do. So the more we push down, the better we get at pushing it down. The more we talk about it, the better we get at talking about it. So you know what? You are doing this world so much good by being a male voice speaking to mental health. And I know that eventually things will change and more men will know, opening up to this whole concept of doing the work. So I cannot thank you enough Todd for being here today, being vulnerable, sharing your story in such a raw and real way. Friends, make sure to check out Todd's podcast called Bunny Hugs and mental health. And make sure to follow him on Instagram at Bunny Hugs podcast. Stay well and be resilient and we'll catch you next time.
The Donor Conception Conversations Podcast is here! Watch every Monday on YouTube or listen, subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. In this episode of donor conception conversations, our guest, Wendy Kramer, will bust donor conception myths and teach you about connecting with donors and donor siblings (and how it doesn't have to be scary). She is the founder of the Donor Sibling Registry and has single-handedly moved the needle on disclosure and donor conception openness. If you are interested in any of the topics discussed in this episode... Subscribe to the YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@thecenterforfamilybuilding You can also find me and lots of great resources at https://familybuilding.net/ Join our community, We would love to have you. https://familybuilding.net/newsletter-sign-up/ Follow me here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecenterforfamilybuilding/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecenterforfamilybuilding/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/FamilyBuild TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@familybuildingcenter Looking for My Lifebook? https://a.co/d/deSACrM Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally inaccurate, confusing, and/or amusing transcription errors) Wendy: All of these parents, all of these contributors make a child who they are. Right. So when you realize that, then inviting in the rest of the contributors that you might not know, it's not threatening. They're not going to take your place. Your kid isn't going to like them better. You know, or I don't know, maybe they will, because kids like lots of people better than their parents, you know? Wendy: It's not a real fear. So I think the most important thing for parents to know is that this can be something an enriching thing for families, not a fearful thing. There's really nothing to fear. Nobody wants to come in and be a parent to your kids. And half-siblings are enriching you know, the more people to love your kids, the better. Lisa: Hi, I am Lisa Shuman and welcome to Donor Conception Conversations. This is a one podcast that will provide research based information, professional guidance and personal experiences about donor conception. This is the one place you can go to if you are a recipient or if you are considering being a recipient. If it's about donor conception, we are going to talk about it. Lisa: I'm your host, Lisa Shuman. I've been practicing as a therapist for three decades. I've won awards for my research, and I've seen thousands and thousands of donors, recipients and donor conceived children in my workshops at clinics and at my program, the Center for Family Building. I've learned so much over the decades, and I want to share that information with you so you can have a better journey and be more informed as a parent. Lisa: Today is the first episode, so welcome and I couldn't have a better guest. Wendy Kramer For those of you who don't know Wendy, she's the founder of the Donor Sibling Registry, and she has single handedly changed so much of our understanding about donor conception and changed so many lives by helping people connect with their donors and the donor-related siblings. Lisa: Her business was born from her personal experience and since its inception, she has witnessed the experiences of thousands of others around the world. Wendy, welcome. Can you provide us with a little bit more of an introduction and tell us how the Donor Sibling Registry came to be. Wendy: Surely. So first, thanks for having me. I'm honored to be guest number one. So let's see, the nutshell version of my story is that I was married in the late 1980s. My ex-husband experienced fertility issues, so we used a donor, an unknown person, back in 1989. And in 1990, my son Ryan was born. About a year later, my ex-husband and I split up. Wendy: He was completely out of the picture. So basically from that time on, I raised my son as an only parent. There was only one book out at the time about donor conception called Lethal Secrets by Annette Barron. And in the book she talked about the importance of being honest with your child. And I had thought that maybe when my son was four, five, six years old, he might start asking. Wendy: As it happens, he was about he was two and a half years old, came home from preschool and said, so did my dad die or what? And it was then I went, Oh my God, we're having this conversation. And we laid the very important cornerstone conversation of, you know, the sperm and the egg. And it was about a 40 second conversation. Wendy: Then he went on to ask the next question about choo choo trains. And so basically that was the beginning and it was the cornerstone conversation that we then could build upon as he got older and had more questions then as it would be. My son was a very curious child and by the time he was six years old he was looking at me saying, I want to know who my biological father is. Wendy: And at that point, I'm thinking, Oh my God, what have I done? What do I do? Like, of course you're curious, you know, and it just I think I was one of those people, and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this. I was so desperate to be a parent, I really didn't think about anything else but getting pregnant. Wendy: And I think a lot of doctors and clinics and sperm banks are all so focused on the getting pregnant that the other important stuff, the other important information that you should have to make an informed and educated decision. Those things just fall off the track there. So at that point realized my son had a right to be curious and a right to search for and find his close genetic relatives, his biological father and any half siblings he might have. Wendy: We basically at that point. So that would have been 1996 or so. We had to wait for social media to be invented. And finally, in 2000, Yahoo! Groups came to be and we started a little Yahoo! Group thinking that maybe we could help him find the answers he was looking for. And then maybe in the process help, you know, maybe one or two families find their half siblings or their biological parents, the donors. Wendy: And that was the beginning of the DSR in 2000 and now 22 years later, we have almost 84,000 members in more than 100 countries and we've helped to connect almost 24,000 of them with half siblings or donors with their biological children. So it was one of those like build it and they will come kind of things like we didn't know there was a need until we put it out there. Wendy: And obviously there was a great desire and a need. I think, before we came along. People were never told that they had the right to be curious or the right to search for genetic relatives. This whole industry is so shrouded in secrecy and thereby shame, you know, the shame of infertility, the shame of using a donor. And we kind of busted all that open and said, there's nothing to be ashamed of, especially for donor conceived kids. Wendy: And it's an innate human desire to want to know where you come from, your ancestry, your medical background, and your close genetic relatives. Lisa: Mm hmm. It's amazing Wendy amazing. So while we're thinking about that, maybe you can help our audience know a little bit about something else that I think is really important as you're sharing this information about having donor relatives that people get really tripped up about, and I think very few people have the accurate information about and that is the lack of a tracking system here in the US. Wendy: Well, yeah, I think that myth is perpetuated by the reproductive medicine industry, the sperm banks, the egg clinics, the egg agencies who claim to have limits on the number of kids that can be born for anyone donor. So that's really misleading because if you tell people you have limits, that leads one to believe you have accurate records and you know how many kids are out there. Wendy: And the truth is that no, nobody has accurate records, even in the egg industry where they claim that SART has all records. Not true, because in our egg donor research, our egg donor parent research, we found that more than 40% of egg donor families were never even asked to report their births. So those numbers are not correct. And we certainly know in the sperm donation industry where now we have many groups of half siblings, over 100 on the DSR or some even over 200. Wendy: Now those groups are growing and growing and growing that there is no accurate record keeping because that costs money. Whenever you ask in this industry, why is it like this or how come they don't do this or why won't this happen? Always the same answer one word money. It costs money to keep accurate records. It would cost money then to limit the number of offspring. Wendy: They wouldn't make as much money by selling all that sperm. Yeah. The fallacy is when we promise a number of families, we know in our research too, about a quarter of all sperm donors donate to more than one place. So even if in the future they became they had accurate record keeping, which, you know, I'll believe it when I see it. Wendy: You know, sperm donors go all over, egg donors do to we have serial sperm donors and egg donors that just go from facility to facility. So for donor conceived people, nobody knows how many half siblings you might have. And I tell this to my son and all donor conceived people every single day for the rest of your life holds the possibility of a half sibling coming along. Lisa: Yes. And what about also we have all these embryos that have been frozen for decades. Right. And last year, I think there was a child born from a 31 year old embryo and last year a 27 year old embryo. So we have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos and we don't know how many of them were part of a donor sperm donor egg. Lisa: And we don't know how many of them will be born now or decades from now. And so it's not really possible to have that information either, right. Wendy: Well, this is what happens when you have a multi-billion dollar industry with no regulation and no oversight. Right. Like what could possibly go wrong? A lot. But it's because there's no regulation and no oversight. Nobody's watching. Nobody cares to look over this industry. And that is in part because the SRM, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, keeps it that way. Wendy: They're big money, they're powerful. They have lobbyists, and they keep any and all regulation record keeping anything that would move this industry into being more responsible or ethical. They put the kibosh on. They do not want anything to change. Lisa: Well, let's talk about I mean, you know, in terms of the states, I mean, there are a lot of people who are advocating for these states to say we're going to regulate in our state and the states will say, yes, we're going to enact legislation that will allow us to regulate. But it can't be possible because those states cannot enact regulation. Lisa: How is the state going to be able to do that if there's no way to track donors? Wendy: Well, exactly. So I guess in that case, I can't say it could never happen. I'll just say I'll believe it when I see it. Lisa: Right. And so I think the tough part is that there are so many people who get on this bandwagon of the state, or that state is going to enact legislation to track donors. How can they possibly do that? Right. I mean, I'm sure you see a lot of people donating right through Facebook and social media traveling around the world and donating in other countries. Lisa: Right. And so how are we going to know? How can one state saying, I'm going to track all the donors who have ever been in this state? I don't I don't know how that's possible. Wendy: Well, it's not possible with the record keeping that exists right now. Lisa: Right. There's no state to do that. And it is completely. Wendy: It's not even possible because they don't have the records. You know, this industry has an amazing amount of floods and fires. Floods and fires like you could not believe where so many records have been lost. So it is so common for people to ask for records, either donor conceived people or the donors themselves or parents and the records are there offsite. Wendy: They're lost. They were ruined in a flood. They had a fire. So there's all the excuses that people get all the time for not having accurate records. But the bottom line is there are no accurate records. So, you know, that's where we are today. Could they become accurate in the future? Sure. They could become accurate at any time. Wendy: But the industry refuses to put the money and the time into being more ethical and responsible by having accurate records. They just won't do it. It's not like they're unable. Sure, they're able. They just don't do it right. Lisa: But I see many civilians who say, well, this state I'd like to use a donor from the state because the state is making efforts to enact legislation that would allow them to track records of donors. And I can't see how any one state could do that. No. Yeah. So it's really good for our listeners to understand that don't go to any particular state thinking that that's going to happen in that state because it's it's not possible. Lisa: Right. Wendy: It's state and it's also clinic or sperm bank. Lisa: Right. Wendy: So the clinics and the sperm banks are going to tell you everything you want to hear so that they can make a sale. Their job is to sell eggs and sell sperm. So if you go on their websites, you'll read a lot of information. That is not true because it's all marketing materials. It's all about making the sale. Wendy: You know, we have, you know, celebrity lookalike donors. We limit the number of kids to ten or 20 or whatever. And it's it's just none of it is true. It's just all marketing materials. Lisa: And they can tell their own donors not to donate a certain more than a certain amount of time. But just because they tell the donors doesn't mean the donors are going to do it. As you said, they can go to multiple agencies. They can donate to their friends, they can donate in other countries. So it's really important for our listeners to understand that because they really need to be able to be clear with their children. Lisa: Which brings me to my next point, which I think you could speak to our audience about, which is about donor related siblings and how it's so important for people to start to understand is hard as it may be to understand that it doesn't have to be scary to start to search if this is something that they feel ready to do. Wendy: Yeah, I think let's talk about that. But I think to give proper context here, we have to take a step or two back and go, why are the parents in this situation? Right. So why does this industry still mandate and promote the idea of keeping a human being from their close genetic relatives for 18 years? Nowhere in the world, nowhere in history has any society deemed that it is in the best interests of the people to keep them from their close genetic relatives for 18 years. Wendy: So why is that accepted practice in the sperm and eggs killing industry? I don't well, actually, I do know, again, it's money, right. Because they're going to put more money. Lisa: Well, we saw the same thing in adoption for many years. And adoption systems saying, you know, tell your children that your parents died in a fiery car crash and, you know, don't ever tell them. And then, of course, those adult adoptees grew up and said, you know, that's not right. And it's kind of we're kind of following the same story. Lisa: Well, but. Wendy: We've learned the reproductive medicine industry learned nothing from the world of adoption because they're still doing it. Decades later, they're still doing it. So they're doing it because obviously it makes more money. But the parents are sold this idea along with the gametes, so that we believe keeping our child from their close genetic relatives for 18 years is somehow in their best interests. Wendy: Right. And the whole thing the whole premise is crazy. So I think that's where we have to start. Like these parents are where they're at when contemplating connecting with donor siblings. They're there because of an industry that has promoted this whacky idea and sold it and made it mandatory that my child could not know his genetic relatives before he turned 18, which is absolutely insane. Wendy: There is no research that points to that being in anyone's best interest. Most specifically donor conceived people, and quite a lot of research that says it is in the donor conceived child's best interest to grow up knowing their relatives. Right. We don't keep our children from their cousins or their answer uncles or grandparents until they're 18 or until they ask about them. Wendy: They're the relatives and we introduce them, you know, when they're kids, because that's the right thing to do. So I guess I have to like just throw this question in there. Why is this okay? Why do people just take this as being accepted practice and in the child's best interest when it's obviously not so? So that said, here we are. Wendy: We now have thousands, millions of people who have donor conceived children, who have these have siblings, other children who were born from the same egg or sperm donors. Right. So I guess let's take one step back now. At the beginning, when you're buying your sperm or your eggs, there's an opportunity for the vendor, the sperm bank or the egg clinic or the agency to properly counsel and educate you on the importance of a child growing up, knowing their close genetic relatives, knowing about their ancestry, knowing about their medical history. Wendy: But the industry is failing parents and donors with not properly counseling and educating them on the importance of these connections. Because if people were properly counseled and educated at the front door to that clinic, they would not opt for the 18 years of anonymity. They would do what we have now dozens of egg clinics doing, connect the donors and the parents right from pregnancy or birth. Wendy: Why not? And yet there are still not. One sperm bank will do that, and the majority of egg clinics in the U.S. still won't do that. And we have to ask why, if it's in everybody's best interest to empower parents and donors to be in control of their own relations chip rate from day one and determine the depth and the breadth. Wendy: Maybe it's just medical sharing. Maybe it's becoming family to one another. But let the people decide that. Not a middleman saying we know what's best for you and your family and that is to keep you apart for 18 years. To me, absolutely insane. But here we are. Lisa: Well, let me ask you a question. This is something that I've experienced. And you tell me if you've experienced this. So as you I think, you know, I started one of the only open donor programs at a seen inside of a clinic on the East Coast that I know of. And typically, when I talk to parents or parents to be about the possibility of having an open relationship with their donor, and as you said, there's various levels of openness. Lisa: So there's all sorts of options. Very often they're afraid that that donor is going to be, all of a sudden, a parent to their child. Right. There's like this anxiety. It's about the infertility and the fears and anxieties. But then when I speak with the donors, very often the donors say the same things to me. They say, well, you know, I really don't want to be a parent to this child. Lisa: And so it's interesting that both of them, in my experience, I see over and over again, feel like they have to kind of be let off the hook for things. Wendy: Because this is the myth that perpetuates by the reproductive medicine industry. Parents are told, Oh, you need this eight years of anonymity because that donor is going to want to be a parent to your child. And donors are told, Oh, you want this? 18 years of anonymity. Those parents are going to come looking for you for money and they're going to want you to parent their child. Wendy: In reality, none of those things are true. Where did those people get those fears from? From the industry. So the industry can't wonder why these people feel this way is because these are the myths that the industry perpetuates. And I know I hear from egg donors all the time who say my clinic told me that, you know, parents are likely to come after me, they're going to disrupt my life and invade my privacy. Wendy: Parents are told that donors are going to want to come in and be a part of your life and parent your child a myth and a myth. But this is the myth that's perpetuated so that the industry can keep the 18 year separation there. And people can think that's in the best interest for them and their children. But it's all myth. Lisa: And then in reality, what happens and you tell me what happens in your reality. Once I... I break that myth for them and they decide, okay, we're going to meet the recipients are so happy and the donors all of a sudden where they once would have had, let's say, you know, an egg donor is going to have this medical procedure and she knows she's doing something nice for another family. Lisa: And now she sees the faces of these people whose lives she is changing. And she says, Oh, my God, I feel like this is such greater meaning for me. This feels so much better for me because I see these people. I really feel that I'm helping them. I really feel like I'm helping them heal these wounds and build their family that feel so much better to be able to connect with them so everybody makes out. Lisa: It's been great for everyone involved, but they are so hesitant in the beginning and so anxious about it. So what are your experiences of recipients and donors after they first meet? What's their experience of saying, you know, how was my first meeting and how is it different than last year? Wendy: Well, yeah. Let me take one step back and let's talk about what is that hesitation and that fear? What keeps families from not connecting? Right. And most usually what keeps families from not connecting is some kind of fear. Right. And the fear usually is from the non-biological parent, be it the mom, an egg donor family, the dad in a sperm donor family, or the mom in the LGBTQ family. Wendy: Right. It's the Non-Bio parent that most too often struggles with making these connections because it can feel very threatening to them. These people are that person has a connection with my child that I don't myself have. And if you're not a really confident person and secure in your parenthood, this can seem like a threat. This person is going to come in and usurp me and be insecure and I can't be right. Wendy: Again, this is all a myth, too. We're not taking away from a family by connecting. We're just adding to. So children need to be taught that who they are is this wonderful blend of nature and nurture. Right? We are who we are because of the parents that raised us and love us and take care of us and the parents that give us our biology. Wendy: 50% from the egg, 50% from the sperm. That's what makes us who we are. So to minimize any one of those contributors is not fair to a child. It matters who raises them and loves them. But it also matters who gave the DNA, the egg and the sperm. So you can't minimize or negate the importance of any of those parents. Wendy: So once. Once you realize that all the parents are important, at the same time, one is not knocking the other one out. One is not taking the place of the other. All of these parents, all of these contributors make a child who they are. Right. So when you realize that, then inviting in the rest of the contributors that you might not know, it's not threatening. Wendy: They're not going to take your place. Your kid isn't going to like them better, you know, or I don't know, maybe they will, because kids like lots of people better than their parents, you know, it's not a real fear. So I think the most important thing for parents to know is that this can be something an enriching thing for families, not a fearful thing. Wendy: There's really nothing to fear. Nobody wants to come in and be a parent to your kids. And half siblings are enriching. You know, the more people to love your kids, the better. Right. I mean, that's that was my thinking. Lisa: Who doesn't want different siblings in the ones they have anyway, right? Wendy: Absolutely. Lisa: Brother, little sister. Wendy: Totally. So, you know, and it's like, is there a guarantee you're going to like them? No. I mean, I always tell people, look around your Thanksgiving table. Do you want to hang out with everybody there? No, probably not. You want to hang out and spend time with the people that you're most like minded with. And this is true for connections for the parents who connect their, you know, minor donor conceived kids, for donors who are connecting with adult donor conceived kids, for parents connecting with other parents for everybody. Wendy: Is there a guarantee you're going to like each other and want to hang out? Nope. But that doesn't make these people any less your child's genetic relatives. And did they have the right to know these people as they're growing up? Absolutely. Why? Why would you keep them from their half siblings? You know, because we have too many people that come to the DSR as adults. Wendy: They see that their parents joined the DSR years ago but never allowed them to connect and know they're half siblings. And so you get these adult donor conceived people who are like, okay, wait a minute, I could have grown up knowing my half siblings and you didn't let me. Why? And there is no good answer. Except I was afraid. Wendy: I had fears, I was insecure, I was feeling threatened. You know what I mean? Lisa: So now we allay those fears. What is your experience with the recipients when they finally meet them? Don't they feel so much better that you know, it wasn't securing after all? Wendy: That's the same with disclosure. You know, for parents who haven't told, who are about to tell, they're in a state of fear like none I have ever seen before. They are filled with anxiety and panic about the impending telling the child. The truth. And I see that fear and that anxiety with the impending connecting with my donor or connecting with my biological kids, parents or connecting with half sibling families. Wendy: There's this anxiety that is there that really doesn't need to be there because that's the worst part, is the before. Once the connection happens, oh my God, people are elated and joyful and relieved to and excited about what the future might hold and, you know, it's all completely positive. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. And I hope that our audience can kind of take heart that that can happen, that they can feel that it's not so scary after all, that once they connect with these donor conceived siblings or the donors, that it won't be this fear that someone's going to come into your life or do things that you don't want them to do that, you know, just like everybody else, like Wendy is saying, you know, there's some people you're going to like, some people you don't. Lisa: But it's not their normal people. They're average everyday people just like we are. And it's such a nice thing to be able to gift and to give to your children that connects. It really is beautiful. Wendy: Absolutely. Well, in these groups, some people are really afraid of the large groups of siblings. Right. Like, okay, I could connect with five or seven or ten. You know, I just logged into the DSR and I see that I have 78 half brothers and sisters. Oh, my God, what do I do? Or my child has 78 half brothers and sisters. Wendy: Oh, my God. They're overwhelmed. They're afraid. What does this mean? Am I going to have, you know, dozens of people knocking on my front door? And no, everybody's extremely respectful. The people who have already connected usually they have like a welcoming committee, you know, of sorts, like they make soft landing pad for the new half siblings that come along these connections happen. Wendy: Like you as a parent or a donor conceived person or a donor, you are in control of this feed in the depths of how you make these connections. Right. So there's no right way or wrong way. Some people are like, Well, I'll just communicate via donor sibling registry message or email or Facebook for a little bit. Some people are like, Here's my phone number. Wendy: Let's meet at Starbucks tomorrow, you know, so there's different levels of feeling comfortable again, no right way or wrong way, but it's just important to make the connection for the minimum of sharing and updating medical information because of if you're saying right now, oh, well, my clinic or my sperm bank does regular medical updates, and then they give anyone who's to use that donor updated medical information. Wendy: That is 100% incorrect information. Most of the time, the only way to get updated medical information is by connecting the donors with the parents, with the donor conceived people. That's how you're going to get medical information, not from your clinic, not from your sperm bank. Lisa: 100%. I'm with you. And maybe on our next call, we should start talking about that because that is a really, really important topic for people to understand, particularly because, you know, people say, oh, my daughter is healthy. Well, you know, young, young people usually are healthy. But health changes over time. And if you don't know what's happening with your donor conceived siblings or your donor, how will you know? Lisa: Right. So those are really important pieces of information. And so I hope you come back on again. Wendy, I really love to have you back. Wendy: Thank you so much for having me. And I can't wait to tackle these issues one by one and help to better educate people. Lisa: It's wonderful. You're a gift to our industry, Wendy, and thank you so much for coming. And if you want more information, please to go on the Donor Sibling Registry. Is there any information for people to look for? Wendy: Come to the Donor Sibling Registry or I'm always available. My email is wendy@donorsiblingregistry.com and I'm available seven days a week. If you need any help, just email me. Call me. I'll be in touch. Lisa: That's great. Well, thank you. And that's such a gift. And I really appreciate it. And I'm sure everybody who's listening appreciates this. And thank you for joining us. If you want more, please subscribe and review and always you can find us on family building dot net. We'd love to have you as part of our community. Thanks so much.
What You'll Hear In This Episode:What does it mean to be ambivalent? Why do many women make everything else besides finding a partner a priority, when in actuality they deeply crave finding a partner. What's so good about having a partner to go through life with anyway? How judging men and being closed off to connections with good men is really a sign you're ambivalent.How being afraid to receive can be a sign of ambivalence. The most extraordinary journey is to actually go out and consciously search for a partner.Sex will only get you so far, you're going to have to learn how to get Emotionally Naked. Is the fear of ending up in another horrible relationship holding you back? Why feeling unlovable is also at the root of many ambivalent feelings.Continue On Your Journey: Lisa Shield | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Book a Call With LisaEmail the podcast at: podcast@lisashield.comQuotes: “Children are wonderful… parents, friends, all of those things are beautiful. But there is something about finding love and true partnership that is extraordinary.” - Lisa “Stop over-giving and just sit still.” - Lisa “I think the greatest gift in life is having a loving partner to share it with you.” - Lisa “So many of us women have so many walls up. We judge men, and we're hard on them, and we find something wrong with almost every man we meet, and it's heartbreaking.” - Lisa
This is the last crossover episode between OMG and Sound-Up Governance, a new podcast on the Ground-Up Governance platform (www.groundupgovernance.com). In this one, Matt Fullbrook speaks with Lisa Oldridge, a Performance Strategist in Calgary with expertise in governance, ESG, and investment in startups. Lisa helps us to explore the differences between what makes a good company good and what makes a good business good, and shows us that the people are what matter most. Matt Welcome back to Sound-Up Governance. Today's episode is the companion to the third edition of the Ground-Up Governance newsletter, which provides definitions for business, company and customer. I know I frequently use the words business and company as if they're interchangeable, even though they're often pretty different. That's fine. Of course, if I say business when I mean company, it doesn't hurt anybody or even confuse anyone too much. But still, I thought it'd be fun to talk to someone who could really help me to understand what makes a good business good, and how that's different from what makes a good company good. And of course, all of this is tied up with the needs, wants, hopes and fears of the customer. So I called my friend Lisa Oldridge, who describes herself as a performance strategist. She works with companies and boards of directors on governance, strategy, ESG performance, and more. Oh, and ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance and refers in general to stuff that's not directly related to money. Not only that, but she's the investment director at The 51 Ventures, which invests money in disruptive female-founded enterprises. Plus, in addition to being a corporate director, and a bonafide a governance nerd, she has also spent a big chunk of her life in institutional equity sales, portfolio management and research. So in other words, Lisa's spent a lot of time and energy being curious about what a good company or a good business looks like, and whether those companies or businesses are worth putting money into. And that's exactly where we'll start. When Lisa is on the outside, looking in, what gets her excited about a business, or maybe a small company that only sells a single product or service. Lisa So there's tons of problems out there. Whether or not it needs to be solved is another question. And often you see with founders, if you're talking about really teeny companies, you know, you've seen the typical entrepreneur, they're like, "Oh, my God, we got to solve this problem!" But it's really actually not a problem for that for many people, you want to see that there's a problem that exists, and they've come up with something that will solve this problem. It doesn't have to be like the optimized version of it. You've probably also heard about MVP, Matt MVP, or minimum viable product, or, as Lisa puts it, Lisa We also call it the shitty first draft of whatever it is, but you probably have a bit of traction there. IP is a big one IP or thought capital or moat Matt “Moat",” you know, just like a moat around the castle. It's something special about a business that makes it tricky for someone else to intrude on your territory by making it expensive or difficult to copy your technology, for example. Lisa And then competition, and actually it's a bad sign when you see that there's no competition, because it's usually especially if you come in and you see a founder or group that are pitching and they're like, "oh, yeah, no, we kind of, we've come up with the thing, but nobody else has!" A, it's probably not true. And B it just gives you a sense of their capacity for understanding future pivots and the market etc. Anyway, so that's more maybe a commentary on their character or their abilities or behaviors. Matt There's so much interesting stuff in what Lisa just said that it might be worth rewinding, 10 or 15 seconds just to hear it again. It made a huge lightbulb go off for me. To Lisa, an entrepreneur's understanding of their business can provide an important glimpse inside their character. We'll get back to that in a sec. I wanted a better understanding about this idea that creating something new with no competition might not be all it's cracked up to be. I mean, we've all heard the term first mover's advantage. Isn't that a thing? Shouldn't it be a good thing to be the first one to come up with an idea? I even said to her, "Lisa, I'm trying to do something new and fresh in governance. Am I messing up somehow?" Lisa Let me ask you this. Why is first mover advantage? The answer to everything? It's not! I think there's a presumption sometimes "Oh, I've seen somebody else with that. Therefore, it's not going to work. Right?" I think value proposition is the thing that you're selling or bending or creating or innovating on, it's as much where and how it lands as what it is. I had a mentor that that told me, a guy that I worked with, he was awesome. He was like, "Oldridge, the difference between being early and wrong is nothing!" Right? Even ideas that are completely original, still do have competition. And so I guess it's not a red flag to me if someone hasn't figured out who the person who's also doing... I don't know. lavender striped pogo sticks, but who's doing pogo sticks and who's painting toys, lavender. And so what does that look like? Because it also tells you about the customer! One thing that we one thing that I do see is novelty, almost taking precedence over will this actually be used by more than a few people, right? I would rather see a concept or like somebody innovating on a proven thing or direction or widget, but doing it in such a way that's original in the sense that it's adding more value to the end customer. Matt So even for someone like Lisa, who studies companies at their earliest stages, looking for the coolest new ideas, the biggest opportunities for innovation and investment, there might not be a difference between being first and being wrong? It made me think of the songs or books or art that I love the most. Sure, there's something fresh and original about them, but they also, you know, give a sense of familiarity. Building on what came before them. Sorry, I'm getting a bit abstract here. But the insight for new businesses is pretty profound. Before we go too much further, Lisa use the term "value proposition." It's one of those terms most of us have heard before, but what does it mean exactly? Lisa And value proposition it's business canvas, it's like the middle of it, like the jelly in the donut! It's what your product or service or widget or thing does for your customers to make things better, or to make them feel like things are better. Matt And this is how the customer ties into all this. A good business doesn't have to be completely new, it just needs to make the customer feel like things are better than they were without whatever product or service the business offers them. But let's get back to what Lisa said earlier about the character of the leaders involved. We know she looks at the competitive landscape, the value proposition and so on. But what else is she looking for Lisa The leadership and the team attributes. You know, are they dedicated? Do they have the horsepower and the grit and all that good stuff? And then I would probably single out the CEO or the founder, like the person who's in charge, as almost like a separate thing, because the earlier the stage of the company, the less actual crunchy information you have. And you're looking for leadership attributes, but then also just you know, the whole humility and brains. Matt All of this started to make so much sense. Sometimes from the outside, we can't really see the nuts and bolts that show us the potential of the business itself. So we need to rely on what we really can judge: character, humility, brains. So I wondered if the potential of a person matters so much, could a great leader maybe offset concerns about a bad business or a bad company? In other words, to someone like Lisa, what matters more the person or the business? Lisa Could you have, you know, like a superstar person with a not so great company? And what's better that or the inverse? And definitely the former. And that works all the way up with a you know, with with large organizations, I think probably even moreso. A great business with someone at the helm, that's not great, will eventually run out of momentum. You could still make money. In the meantime, though. Matt Whoa! We'll take on A founder with a B business over the inverse. In fact, a great business with bad leadership is at best a way for an investor to make a quick buck before the business dies. And you know, what's extra cool? In some cases, emphasizing the people side can create special superpowers for the company and the business. Lisa If you're talking about a business inside that company, or a vertical inside a company, or product line, or some kind of an offering. More often than not these days, you're talking about a bunch of people in a company that do a thing. And it's maybe different to the rest of the things that the company does, right? One of the organizations that I sit on the board of has had the situation where, you know, they did a raise, and then they acquired this business unit. And it's really cool hearing about the first couple of days about where it was like, "Okay, you're here because we want you not the thing, but we want YOU!" And over and above that being a good acquisition on paper, can you imagine what that did to the sense of, you know, engagement, and therefore performance, of the company, etc, etc. So it's like, and it doesn't require a lot of investment. It's not like somebody had to write a big check after the fact sort of have these people come on and be super excited about coming into work the next day. Matt And there you have it, right from someone who's in the middle of it, studying, assessing, developing and buying businesses and companies and thinking about customers and value proposition, competition and all the other things that can influence whether an idea will succeed or fail. What excites Lisa the most? Character, humility, brains, the people who run these businesses and companies. And emphasizing the importance of those people can further supercharge the organization's performance. In the next episode of Sound-Up Governance, I'll speak with Nick Chambers about communities and stakeholders. He's an executive search professional and governance expert who specializes in purpose-driven organizations. Thanks for listening.
Lisa Thompson is a Mountaineer, cancer survivor, and sought-after speaker and coach. She worked for 25 years as an engineer and in leadership roles at technology companies. In 2008, she began climbing and has summited most of the most challenging mountains in the world, including Mount Everest and K2. She's completed the seven summits reaching the top of the highest peak of each of the seven continents. Through her company, Alpine Athletics, and other platforms, Lisa shares her message of strength and resilience with corporate and private groups worldwide. She is also the author of “Finding Elevation” which chronicles her path from novice climber to world class mountain. Learn more about Lisa. Learn more about The Passionistas Project. Full Transcript: Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their Passionistas to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Lisa Thompson, a mountaineer, cancer survivor and sought-after speaker and coach. Lisa worked for 25 years as an engineer and in leadership roles at technology companies. In 2008, she began climbing and has summited most of the most challenging mountains in the world, including Mount Everest and K2. She's completed the seven summits reaching the top of the highest peak of each of the seven continents. Through her company, Alpine Athletics and other platforms. Lisa shares her message of strength and resilience with corporate and private groups worldwide. She is also the author of “Finding Elevation,” which chronicles Thompson's path from novice climber to world class mountain. So please welcome to the show. Lisa Thompson. Lisa: Great to be here. Thanks for having me today. Passionistas: We're really excited to have you here and hear your story. And, uh, we always like to start with the question. What's the one thing you're most passionate about? Lisa: Right now, I think this has changed over the years. I'm sure that's just the normal progression of a life, but right now I am most passionate about giving back to. Women in the communities that I love communities in Nepal and in Pakistan where I've, you know, really feel at home in the mountains and have spent a lot of time and have great memories there. And it's important to me to give back to those communities, especially the women. I recently started a nonprofit to support women in Nepal and specifically to support their education. It was shocking to me to learn that something like 58% of women in Nepal over the age of 15 have had. Zero education, none at all, which is just, you know, alarming on many levels. But in one regard, they're really the center of a Nepalese family and community. And the fact that there's been no formal education for so many of those women just felt like something that was, that I wanted to impact in a positive way. Passionistas: Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? Were you always interested in, in, uh, climbing and being outdoors? Lisa: So I grew up in the great mountaineering state of Illinois, where the highest point I believe is 120 feet. And it's so predominant that it actually has a name. Whereas in most states, if that elevation would not be named, so I didn't grow up. Aspiring to be a Mountaineer. I didn't grow up learning or reading about, you know, sir, Edmond Hillary or other sort of pioneering mountaineers. And I wasn't even really that athletic, you know, looking back, I grew up in a small farming community, uh, called Lincoln in the very center of Illinois. You know, every kid sort of makes the, the softball team or the volleyball team. I think there were a couple years where I did not even make it. I was so uncoordinated and unathletic a and I didn't grow up really with parents who pushed me to Excel. You know, I think part of their sort of distance is what motivated me to prove myself and to, you know, you know, back then it was about getting their attention. Lots of time in therapy talking about that. But one of the positives of that I've realized is that it pushed me to really want to Excel and to push myself mentally and physically. And that translated first, you know, I'm still by my account, but only person in my entire extended family to graduate from college, which is sort of sad, you know, to me, but it pushed me to do things that were unexpected. In my community and with my family. And so, you know, going to college was sort of the first step in that direction. I studied engineering, you know, not because I was super interested in it, but because I felt like that seems hard and I can probably make a decent salary when I graduate. And so I was fortunate to get a job with Hewlett Packard right out of college as an engineer, then it was, you know, that was the mid-nineties. I was the only woman at my level. And that taught me a lot. I was certainly not prepared coming from. You know, a very sort of hardworking farming-oriented family. I was not equipped to be thrown into a corporate environment at that age. I was 24. And so there was a lot of sort of flailing and trying to understand dynamics and politics. And I was often the youngest person in the room, the only female in the room. And. Upon reflection. Um, there were definitely some missteps, some things that I just, frankly didn't understand, cuz I was ill-equipped to be in that kind of environment. But one very positive thing that came of that was that through that job, I eventually moved to Seattle, which is where I live today. And here. You know, mountaineering, we're fortunate to be surrounded by the Cascade mountains and the Olympic mountain range. So climbing and mountaineering and just being in the mountains is really part of the culture in Seattle. When I moved here, uh, for that job still with, you know, it wasn't any longer with Hewlett Packard, but it was a derivation of that company. All the men at my level would go climbing on the weekend. And so I had no idea, right? I no, like I'd maybe been camping with my family, but I didn't like know anything about mountaineering. I didn't know what a crampon was. I had no idea the equipment, the gear, the, the, you know, the sort of aesthetic of climbing, nothing. But these men, you know, would go out on the weekends and they would come back to the office on Monday and they had all. You know, incredible stories. And again, it wasn't that I aspired to be in the mountains, but I aspired to be a part of their group. And I wanted them so badly to see me, the only woman on their team as capable and strong. And I wasn't getting that in the office environment. So this seemed like a way to do that. And instead of doing the totally logical thing, which would've been to say. Like oh, climbing. That sounds really cool. Can I come with you or can you tell me more about it? I just got frustrated. I got mad and eventually just decided I was gonna go climb my own damn mountains. And I had no, I again had no idea what that meant, but I started really just hiking around my house in the cascades. And then eventually in 2008, I attempted Mount Rainier, which is the highest mountain in Washington. And after that I was, I was just hooked spite no spite I was hooked at that. Passionistas: Do they know what you've accomplished since then? Lisa: I've lost track of them. I could probably, you know, through a network, get back to them, but I don't, I don't know. Probably not and they probably don't even, you know, these weren't bad guys at all. It just, I think didn't occur to them to ask me to join. And so they probably would have no reason to wonder like, Hey, I wonder if that girl ever climbed any mountains. Passionistas: You started to do this as, you know, a recreational activity, but then at some point that obviously shifted and you started to set these goals for yourself. So what inspired you to climb Mount Rainier and then to take it further from there? Lisa: Yeah, there was something about, so I didn't summit Rainier. My first attempt, the weather sort of turned bad on our second day and retreated. And, and I was relieved in that moment. I was happy cuz I just, I. Again, no idea what I was doing. Although I was with, you know, I was with a guide company and I was safe and all that, but I really just mentally wasn't prepared to be on a mountain and to just feel sort of the vastness of that challenge. And so I went back the next year before I got back to the parking lot in 2008, I was sure I was coming back. I tend to look at climbs like projects. And so even after that first year, I was like, okay, these are, you know, my backpack needs to be lighter. I need to have, you know, not red boots and have my own boots and just little things like that, that I started to like to learn and to, to tweak and adjust what I knew and my gear and my knowledge of the mountain. So I went back in 2009 and summited, and there was a moment, you know, where I sort of it's dark out and you're, you know, you can't really. Appreciate where you're at on the mountain and the sort of vastness of everything around you and the risk of falling. And because all you can see in the dark is just this little tiny circle of light from your headlamp. And so there was a moment where I remember looking what would've been east and seeing the sun just slowly start to split the horizon from the earth and. Just seeing like colors that were so magnificent and awe inspiring and thinking. This is an incredible experience and such a, a daunting place to be that taught me so much, so much humility to be learned in the mountains. When I got to the summit, I just had this incredible sense of accomplishment that I hadn't found anywhere else. I hadn't really gotten it from my parents as a kid. I hadn't gotten it at work. I, you know, graduated from college, any accomplishment I had had in my life until that point hadn't made me feel that way. And I loved that. I still love that climbing is. Obviously a very physical pursuit, but there is an enormous mental challenge that comes with climbing, you know, in any discipline of climbing. And I really loved that combination and I loved the idea of setting. Lofty goal and working hard and accomplishing it. And so I was completely hooked at that point. In two, I was 2009 and ready to just, I did, again, didn't know a lot about what to climb next, but I was sure that I was gonna keep doing it. Passionistas: You know, you were kind of inspired to do it by this being in this male dominated world. When you got to climbing, were there a lot of other women who were in doing what you were doing? Lisa” No. In fact, I, in the beginning was gonna name my book, the only girl, and it has changed. This is, you know, the late 2000s. It is getting better. You know, there's more diversity that the only, and first all black team summited Everest last month, which is incredible to see. And I was fortunate to play a small role in coaching them. So it's changing the dynamics, the face of, of people who enjoy the mountains is changing. But then I was. I don't always is maybe a strong word, but 95% of the time, I was the only woman on the team. And, you know, I was used to being in male dominated arenas, so that wasn't unusual for me, but I think it, you know, being an intense environment like climbing, just sort of heightened all of the challenges that come with that and made them much more potent. And it took me a long time to realize. Or to think about how I showed up in those roles. There was always the, like people doubted and people would say, oh, it's cute. I think you're gonna climb Mount Everest. That's a whole other conversation, but what I tended to think about myself and how I showed up in those situations. And at first I would just be one of the guys, I mean, so much so that they would undress in front of me and not even like, consider that there was a woman standing next to them. On Everest was the first time that I, that just didn't feel authentic to me anymore. It didn't feel right to laugh at crew. That were often, you know, demeaning to women. It didn't feel right to overlook little comments that just didn't sit well with me anymore. And so that was the first time. And there's a moment. And I talk about it in my book where I, you know, all men and I sort of separated myself from them for a minute because it just, I needed to feel like a woman and I needed to feel like myself in that environment. And, you know, at the time it. We're sort of arguing back and forth about my opinion about something versus theirs. But I realize now that it was me sort of stepping into my own strength and my own sort of persona as a woman and saying like this isn't okay anymore. And I'm not gonna just, you know, sit here and let it happen without saying anything. It's still challenging. It's getting better. But yeah, there were a lot of moments there just being, the only woman was a challenge for me. Passionistas: Do you think there are certain qualities that you, as a woman bring to a climb that's different than the male energy of a, of a climb? Lisa: And again, generalizing. Right. But I, I'm fortunate now that I get to coach mountaineers and I coach men and women. Um, and I, you know, I can see those nuances, even as I'm coaching them, women are much more interested in like the mental side. Of taking on a challenge, like a big mountain and making sure that they're very well rounded in their preparations. They wanna make sure that they're understanding the route. You know, they know where the challenges will be and that mentally they have the tools to get through them. And men generally, again, not always the case, but often just like they wanna like train and work hard and do all the runs and all the hikes and all the preparation climbs. And don't often sort of step back and say, There's a whole other side of this. There's a whole other, you know, facet to climbing big mountains. And, you know, my experience is that when you look at everything holistically is when you're the most prepared and when you're the most successful. And I think even on the mountains, you know, it's tough, there's difficult situations. And I find that women often add just a little bit more compassion to those situations. A little bit more empathy. and sometimes that's what you need to get through something that's difficult. So there's my experience. Yeah. There's a big difference between what men and women bring to those situations. Passionistas: So you, you have the successful Mount Rainier climb in 2009. What happens next? And how do you kind of plan where you go next? Lisa: Yeah, so I didn't do a lot of planning. I just knew, I knew I wanted to keep climbing more challenging things and there's, you know, back in the eighties, I believe it was a couple of mountaineers society. It would be really cool to climb to the highest peak of every single continent. And so I thought, okay, I'll just start doing that. You know, I don't know what to do. I picked the easiest, one of those, which was in Russia, a Mount called Elbrus and was successful there. So I thought, okay, well, Keep sort of on that track and climbing in the cascades as well, sort of, you know, like thinking, okay, I wanna be more independent and learn different skills, like building anchors and self-arrest and rope management. And so I, I would take excursions on the weekends locally to do those things. And then about once a year I would climb something big somewhere else in the world. And I was on that track and I had sort of decided. Mount Everest was kind of the next logical thing for me to climb just in terms of skill and difficulty. And at the time I felt like, oh, Everest is so commercial and there must be more interesting mountains in the Himalaya to climb. And so I had decided, and this really is a big moment. I think, in any mountaineers' career I had decided I was ready to climb in the Himalaya. So, you know, the Himalaya is this huge mountain range that bisects Asia and. It's special for a lot of reasons, but one is that. Most of the highest mountains in the world are there. And when we say high, in terms of mountaineering, we're talking about any mountain that's higher than 26,000 feet or 8,000 meters. And there's only 14 of those in the world. And so I, in 2015 thought, okay, I think I'm ready. Like I'm ready to try an easy one and just see how it goes. So. I picked that mountain, which is called Montes SL. And I was just beginning to prepare for it when I was diagnosed with cancer, you know, we, we've already established that. I'm a very stubborn person and I was a little cocky, you know, I was 42 years old. I thought and, and an athlete, like I ate organic vegetables. I wore my seatbelt. I floss my teeth. Like I, all those things that you are, you are taught to believe will keep you healthy. I thought I was doing it turns out I had a tremendous amount of stress in my job, which is, you know, like looking back and sort of analyzing how my body could get reacted that way to an external thing. It probably was a lot of stress at work, but nonetheless, I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the beginning of 2015. I was determined. Not to let cancer dictate my priorities so much so that I sat with my surgeon and said like, is there any way we could just postpone this whole cancer thing? Like, can we just like, how much could those tumors really grow in eight months? Like I just go do this climb and I'll come back and then you can do whatever you want with my body. When I get back and she very compassionately said that that would be a full hearty decision. I always remember that she used that word. And so I was very fortunate that I was able to get rid of the tumors in my, uh, breast with a bilateral mastectomy from which I did at the beginning in April of 2015. And I was, I mean, determination. Isn't a big enough word for how focused I was on getting my body ready to still travel to Nepal and attempt Montes SL. That autumn. And so I went, um, I was not, I was not a hundred percent. I had all, you know, all my doctors, all my care, healthcare providers knew what I was up to. They all thought I was a little bit crazy, but I had their support to be there. And. You know, their cell phone numbers, if anything went weird. And luckily it didn't, I didn't summit Manaslu in 2015, there was an avalanche above our camp. And, you know, the team felt that it just wasn't safe to continue. So we all turned around and I, I firmly believe that mountains and, you know, nature teaches us things. And so. When I got home, I, you know, I just sort of did some reflection about that climb. And I think sometimes you learn the most when you're not successful when you don't summit. But I realized that, you know, life is so fragile and that it's up to us. Each of us to define the lives that we will live. And so I became determined then to sort of reprioritize my life. My pause, my corporate career actually got a divorce and I decided to climb Mount Everest at that point. And, uh, went back to Nepal in 2016 to do that. Passionistas: So talk about that. Talk about preparing for that and you know, and the mental preparation, especially. Lisa: I learned a lot on Monte SL again, you know, success doesn't always mean you, you gain the most from a situation. And so I learned what my body was capable of. I knew that if I was healthy and trained, that I could be even stronger. And so I, I started working with a sports psychologist to really dig into the mental aspects. I was still a little bit unsure about what my body could do, you know, I, I, and I had. Probably four more surgeries before I went to Everest for reconstruction. So I depended a lot on a sports psychologist to just help me understand why Everest was important to me, what my body was capable of. To give me some really important tools that I use still today when things get difficult in the mountains to have something to focus on and to sort of rationalize what's going on around me and break it down into manageable chunks. So that was hugely helpful. I worked with a, a climbing coach as well to get me ready. You know, it was a very tumultuous time in my life as I was preparing to climb the most difficult mountain that I had climbed to that point. I was in the middle of getting a divorce. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep working. My dog died. Like all these, just so many things happened and looking back. It felt like just a really big reset, like the universe sort of saying, like, you know, that was your life then before cancer, and this is your chance to find your life after cancer. You know, that really is a big gift. I always think that cancer, I am grateful today in the moment I was not, but today I'm grateful for cancer because it showed me so many things about priorities and what life is about and how I want to spend it. I know that there's a book worth of conversation to be had, if not more about actually climbing Mount Everest, but kind of in general, what was the experience like? Passionistas: What was the biggest challenge that you faced in, in the midst of that experience? Lisa: Yeah, so climbing a big mountain, like Everest, I'll just provide a quick sort of background as to how it even. You know, it's, those mountains are so big, right? Your, your body could not possibly function. Even if you're breathing supplemental oxygen. It's not as easy as just walking to base camp and then starting to climb. There's a whole process of a climatization. Where you start at one camp climb to the next highest camp and then return to that first camp. And then you repeat that process gradually moving up the mountain, and that allows your body to change physiologically, to build more red blood cells so that you can survive at those higher elevations. And so for me on Everest as I was going through that process, I really felt in sync with the mountain in contrast to K2, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit, but I really felt like things just went smoothly. I felt like the mountain and I were working together and that we sort of [00:23:00] shared a level of respect. That, you know, ultimately ultimately allowed me to be successful, but that doesn't mean there weren't difficult moments. I recall climbing from camp three to camp four and it had been very, very windy. So, you know, hadn't slept at all the night before was lying in a very cramped tent. That was my side of the tent was actually can levered over the side of the mountain because it, you know, it was so steep. And, you know, a lot of emotional, like, is it too windy? You know, are we gonna have a chance to summit? We need to descend. And then it's a very quick decision by our team to like, we look, it looks like we have a window. We're gonna go up. I had sort of envisioned like having this moment to like get ready. And that was none of that. It was very rushed and harried and chaotic. And I, I walk out of the tent and I clip into the fixed rope with my, with my harness. and it was so incredibly windy that it kept blowing me over. And I remember these moments of just hearing the wind coming towards me from my left side, and then just lying face down on the ice to let it pass me by before I could continue. And that luckily subsided after, I don't know, a couple of hours or something. And, and then. I got to what I knew was gonna be the easiest part of that day, which is sort of a flat section that curves to the left towards a rock feature called the yellow band. And the yellow band is about 25 degrees. So it's not super steep. It's limestone. It would actually be fun to climb it at sea level, but as I'm walking towards it, I realize that I'm moving so slow and I'm actually. Like I get distracted by someone's glove, rolling down the ice. And my friend came up from behind me is like, what, you know, what do you what's going on? And I was like, I don't know. I just, I just wanna like lay down and I had run out of oxygen. So my brain and my, my muscles were not getting the oxygen that they needed to continue. I had a couple, I had a decision to make, I had a few choices in that moment. I could have turned around and gone back to camp three and said, you know, my climbs over or looked for more oxygen. I could have sat there in the snow and asked someone, probably a Sherpa to bring me more oxygen where I could have kept going. And. Those first two options just didn't feel right to me. And so I continued climbing. I will never forget. So climbing this relatively, you know, at sea level, easy section of rock and telling myself to just focus on the climber ahead of me and to never let him outta my sight, like just, he's not gonna get outta my site no matter what it takes. And I don't know how long it took me. I, you know, everything got really fuzzy at that moment. And I was still safe. I still had people around me and people knew that I didn't have oxygen, but I, that made that situation made me realize that we are so much stronger mentally than we believe or that, that we give ourselves credit for, because my body was literally like, it didn't have the gas that needed to continue. And it was just, I think my mind is pushing me, just willing myself forward to get through that situation. And the best feeling in the world. Like I hope nobody has to experience that, but I can't tell you how sweet it is to not have oxygen and have oxygen. Like, as soon as I got a fresh bottle, it was like, the world was right again. So a challenging moment. But like I said, I think mountains teach us things and you know, it taught me that I sort of have this untapped tool in my, you know, mental capacity that I really. You know, even now I feel like there's so much more potential to hone that skill of being mentally strong. Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast in our interview with Lisa Thompson. To learn more about her adventures and get a copy of her book, “Finding Elevation,” visit Lisaclimbs.com. We'd like to take a moment to share a special announce. We'll be hosting the third annual Power of Passionistas Summit, this September 21st through September 23rd, 2022. The three-day virtual event is focused on authentic conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. This unique gathering of intersectional storytellers and panelists harnesses the power of our rich community of passionate thought leaders and activists to pose solutions to the problems plaguing women today. Early bird tickets are on sale now at bit.ly/2022PowerofPassionistasTickets. We'd like to thank our sponsors — Melanie Childers, Natural Born Rebel, The Ossa Collective, Tea Drops, Aaron's Coffee Corner, Flourishing Over Fifty, Edith Espanola, Mermaid's Garden, Sara Fins Coaching, and Tara McCann Wellness. Now here's more of our interview with Lisa. That process of getting in tune with the mountain and going back and forth to the different camps. How long does that take? Lisa: It takes about a month, maybe six weeks. It just depends on weather and how fast people are moving People climbing in sort of the standard style climbing, big mountains and 8,000 meter peaks. Usually it takes about six weeks to, to two months to, to do that. So it's a long time. Passionistas: In 2017, you actually won an Emmy for something related to the Everest climb. Lisa: Right? So we, so this is totally serendipitous. So the expedition leader is named Garrett Madison He had endeavored to capture our climb in virtual reality, you know, technology has changed a lot since 2016. And so the way we did it was to strap all these GoPros sort of in a sphere and then carry that on a wand up the mountain and thereby, you know, create this 360 degree view. Of our climb. And then later some very smart people stitched that together and actually made it a virtual reality film, which is called capturing Everest. And, you know, I didn't know that was gonna happen when I signed up for that climb. There were, you know, a lot of. Sort of deals made and, and it just happened to be purchased by sports illustrated, um, and turned into this really cool documentary that later won an Emmy, not for my acting prowess, surprisingly, but for just the technology. It was the first time that anyone had captured virtual reality footage in that kind of an environment. You can find it on the sports illustrated website and on their app. And it's really, it's really fun if even if you don't have a headset, you can watch it in 360-degree video with your phone. And I will tell you, it will make you dizzy. Like even me having been there, it is very, very real to watch people, you know, climbing or walking across the ladder or climbing a steep part of, of the, the mountain. So I feel. You know, never in my life, if you've said like you could win an Emmy, I would like never thought that. So it was a really, really cool experience and cool to be able to just share that in a very tangible way, with cool technology, to people who, you know, may never endeavor to climb. But now get to have a little bit of a taste of what it's like. Passionistas: So that same year in 2017, you, um, became the first all American women to summit K2. So how did that differ from climbing Mount Everest and what unique challenges did you face on that? Lisa: Yeah. So it was 2017. I, I endeavored to go to K2 for the first time. My team actually fell apart. And so I didn't climb that mountain that year. I went back in 2018 and in 2017, the first American woman did summit. And I felt like, you know, I, I, this is still an important climb for me. It's something. I think being the first is very cool. I think not being the only is even cooler. And so it was important to me to just sort of continue showing what women could do in the mountains. So K2 is the second highest mountain in the world. It's about 800 feet shorter than Mount Everest. K2 is in Pakistan. It's on the border between China and Pakistan. Most people, like if I'm at a dinner party and you know, someone finds out that I've climbed Everest, they get super excited and they wanna know what that's like, and I'll say, yeah, but I climbed this other mountain called K2, which is actually like really, really hard. And they're like, yeah. But tell me about Everest. Did you see any dead people? So most people don't even know. You know, not even heard of K2, it's in a much more remote part of the world. For example, you know, the, the walk to Everest space camp is, you know, in a lovely valley, there are tea houses. There are commercial helicopters. There is an emergency room at Everest space camp. There is none of that. In the Karakoram mountain range in Pakistan, you are farther from any kind of definitive medical care that you'll probably ever be in your life. And that, you know, would involve a Pakistani army helicopter ride to a small hospital in a remote village. So it's, it's much more remote. The weather on K2 is also much more fickle. So it's, you know, known for just monster storms that sort of whip out of nowhere, dump a lot of snow. Cause avalanches. K2 is also steep from like the second you leave base camp. It is just unrelentingly steep and it is also known for a lot of rock fall. So you can imagine that my family was super excited to hear about me. Deciding to climb this mountain, I had just, you know, beat cancer. My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was climbing Mount Everest and, and died about a month after I got home. And so I sort of promised him that K2 would be the last, really dangerous mountain that I climbed. I was very determined to give it a go in 2018. And, and I was so fortunate that. Everything aligned, you know, the, I had a great team, the weather was decent and we were able to make it work. And, and, you know, and I mentioned earlier that I felt very in sync with Mount Everest and on K2. I felt every day like that mountain was trying to kill me, you know, in the form of rock falls in the form of other climbers dying. I just never really felt like I was in sync with that mountain. And there was a moment where again, climbing steep rock much steeper than the rock I describe on Everest. It's a section of the route called the Black Pyramid and it's at 25,000. And so in this moment I'm wearing a down suit. I'm actually breathing bottled oxygen because the climbing is so difficult and I'm attached to a rope. And that section of the mountain is sort of really like chunky, just unstable rock and there's snow and ice. And I wanted to quit. Like I wanted to just turn around. I fantasized about like reversing my direction on the rope and I thought I could be. Back at base camp in a couple of days, and I could get a helicopter to Islamabad and I could take a proper shower and like eat, you know, I'd really just let, like all the things my sports psychologist told me not to do. I just really let that real like play out. I wanted to turn around and I remember, you know, from somewhere there was a voice in my head that said, is this all you were capable of? And I realized that it was not all that I was capable of, that I was, you know, I was frustrated and I was tired and I was mad at myself, but I was capable of more. And so I kept just. Putting one hand above the other one foot above the other. And I knew that would be the hardest point in the mountain. And once I got past that, you know, the, the rocks were relented and it was more snow, which is my comfort zone, but there were many, many moments where I wanted to quit. So then what did that moment feel like when you finally reached the. So I remember climbing. So a couple days after that scene that I described with the Black Pyramid and we attempted the summit and, you know, the night before the summit, you're sort of, you're laying, I was laying in a tent with two other men in the middle position wearing my down suit boots. Like you don't really sleep. You just sort of lay there for a few hours, like waiting and breathing bottle oxygen. I had this sort of like checklist in my mind of like making sure that I had food in the right places, on my, down, in my down suit that I had like turned on my GPS device, like going through all those sort of pre-flight checklist things. And then we, we left for the summit and it's dark out and I knew the climbing initially would not be. The steepest part. I knew it would be a little bit chill for a bit, and then it was gonna get steeper. And I had, you know, that sort of pre-flight checklist. I had put new batteries in my headlamp. And as I'm climbing, I realize that the batteries are about are dying. They're dimmer than everyone else is. And I say, I'm fine. I have a, I have a spare set. It's close to my body. So they're not frozen. I stop, you know, with thick gloves, like fumble around, finally get the batteries in there. Good. Keep climbing, catch up with my team. And it happens again. And I don't have a spare and I can't expect anybody else to give me their spare. They're sort of, you know, they're sort of ethic and climbing that. You need to be self-sufficient up there. You can't rely on anybody else. And so I remember screaming at the guy in front of me, Rob Smith, a fantastic guy from Ireland, and he gave me his spare batteries. You know, it's very delicate exchange, right? If you can imagine we're in these thick gloves, we're on the side of a mountain, it's dark. And I just remember him like pushing that battery into the palm of my glove. And I remember thinking if you dropped this, that's it. The reason it was, I mean, obviously it was important to see, but we were about to cross, what's called the bottleneck traverse on K2, which is, you know, it's actually flat, but it's about, it's less than one boot width. And so you're walking and there's like two miles of air beneath you. And so you cannot make a mistake there. You obviously cannot have compromised vision there. And so literally without Rob's help, I would not have. I wouldn't have made it. And that moment, you know, several hours later, I got to the summit and I remember it was it's light out now and I'm climbing by myself and it's, it's very, um, unconsolidated snow. So I'm sort of take one step and, you know, I'm, I'm putting my boot print in other people's path. So there's a little sort of steps there and sometimes they would just break and you would just slide down and, you know, it's just incredibly frustrating and you exert a lot of energy. But I looked up and I saw where the snow met the horizon. I saw bright colors and I thought, that's it. Like those are other peoples standing there at the summit. And more than anything, I wanted to cry in that moment. But I was like, do not cry. Like you you're not there yet. And just to sort of bring things full circle I had, after my father died, I had, you know, carried his ashes to like every mountain. Sprinkle them on the top. And it was a very, you know, just peaceful sort of full circle moment to spread the last of his ashes on the summative K2, which is, you know, he never in his life could have imagined traveling to Pakistan. So it was fun to just sort of, not only to have him with me, but to be able to share that with him as well was really special. Passionistas: What is the coming down like physically and emotionally? Lisa: So, I'm glad you asked that question, Amy, because most people and I was very, very conscious of writing about this in my book because the summit is halfway like it is literally halfway and more mountaineering accidents occur on the dissent. Then then climbing up and that's because you're tired. Many people push beyond what they're capable of. You're you know, just logistically you're facing away from the mountain. Oftentimes gravity is not working in your favor. And so the dissent to me is very. Harrowing like it's I very consciously at the top of, at any big mountain do not celebrate because it is, you're not done. There is still a lot more work to do. And on K2 in particular, you know, we talked a little bit about like that moment on Everest, where I felt like I was sort of stepping into my own strength and on K2, I'm [00:41:00] descending, very steep ice face and. There are ropes there. And one rope is meant for climbers coming up. There are still some climbers ascending, and the other rope is meant for climbers who are descending. Another climber had, uh, started to ascend the rope that I was about to use to go down. And I scream at him. You know, he's very, he's far down the slope. He can't hear me. He's just sort of laying there. And I sort of looked, my friend Garrett was next to me and he recommended that I descend. Using not the most secure technique, a, a technique arm wrapping where you wrap the rope around your arm and you, um, you're connected to that rope with a safety carabiner. It's locked, but you lean forward and just walk face first down the mountain. And I had done it many times, but, but I, it just didn't feel right. To do it then. And I didn't even, I don't even know where this voice came from, but I just told him no, like I'm not, that's not how I'm gonna do that this today. And so I, you know, set up my repel device, which takes longer, is much safer, but you know, takes longer repel down to this man who's laying face first and the ice, not, he wasn't response, he was alive. I could, you know, he was alive. He did survive by the way, just before I get too far in the story. But he wasn't responsive to my, you know, yelling at him, trying to get him to move. And so I had to execute this very, very delicate sequence of moving my gear, you know, establishing a safe anchor, moving my gear around him on what I know, because I, you know, study this mountain intimately is. The place on that mountain where most people have died and thankfully it went well and he survived and, you know, I was able to continue, but that was a moment that, to me, that just underscores that [00:43:00] the dissent is so in some ways more important than the ascent in terms of difficulty. And that, that moment looking back, or I said to my friend, Garrett, like, that's not how I'm gonna do this today. I really felt like was pivotal in terms of me, sort of, this is a man that I've climbed with for years. I've always trusted him. He knows my capability. And so for me to just, you know, take a different tact, I think was, you know, just more of me, like stepping into my own voice and strength in the mountains, which is a good feeling. Passionistas: Can you compare for us the fear that you faced being diagnosed with cancer versus the fear you faced on a mountain like that? Lisa: Knowing how dangerous it is and if those are different and if you have the same or different tools to deal with both. Yeah, that's an awesome question. They feel to me like somatically, they feel very different. I feel like different kinds of fear. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I felt completely unprepared to deal with that scenario. It was not anything that I ever thought I would have to encounter or deal with in my life. And I felt out of control. I felt like, you know, my body was, had turned against me initially. I, you know, before I had a team of people to support me, I felt alone. And without like a path or a, you know, a guide to get me through this situation. And luckily that changed and I found incredible healthcare. It felt much scarier to be diagnosed with cancer in the mountains. I feel like, you know, I have, I understand what I can control and I have the skills to get myself through it. And I think fear for sure in the mountains. I, I believe that a little bit of fear is a good thing because I think that it keeps you focused. It keeps me alert to what's going on around me. If the weather's changing, if the route is changing, if. You know, someone climbing above me that doesn't look super safe, that little bit of fear sharpens my awareness too much fear. I think in the mountains and in fighting cancer can be stifling. And I think it can actually, you know, sort of stop you from progressing. But that's a, a really important question because they, for me are very different flavors of fear. Passionistas: So what's the next big challenge for you? Lisa: Yeah. So we talked about it a little bit in the beginning. I don't endeavor. I don't have any desire to climb anything more challenging than K2 in my life, but I do wanna keep climbing and it's become more important to me to give back to the communities, particularly in Nepal and in Pakistan, where I have just learned so much about myself and gotten so much from them personally. So I wanna, I wanna start to give back to those communities and in particular to the women who, who live in those communities. So along with some female mountaineering friends of mine, we were setting up a philanthropic climb for this fall to a mountain called Cholatse which is in, uh, Nepal. It's about 6,800 meters. It will not be the hardest mountain we've ever climbed. But the point is that we just wanna show that anything is possible when women support one another in the mountains. And so to us, that means. That our team will be fully comprised of women. I don't know if that's ever happened before. I think there've been some all women's climbs that maybe had support from men, but, and not that we don't like men, but like we just wanna show that women can do everything in the mountains that a man can do. And so we're building that team. We're super lucky to have a great, uh, Nepalese uh, climbing leader. Pasang Lama. She's helping us create a team of all women to, to cook, to carry loads, to plan, to do everything. And we just think it's an incredible sort of opportunity to raise some money for at least one, depending on how, how fundraising goes maybe more, but we want to. We're soliciting input for Nepalese women who have some educational related goal in their life. So if they wanna learn a trade, if they wanna open a tea house, um, if they weren't wanna learn about economics, like we want to be able, we wanna be the catalyst that helps that woman learn those skills so that she can better not just her life. But I think, you know, that sort of has this trickle-down effect and has the potential to positively impact generations. So. I'm, you know, just beyond excited to be a part of this team and we'll see where it goes. We'd love to do it, you know, multiple years, but we're all, you know, just we're dedicated and excited to, to climb with a purpose now. Passionistas: So what inspired you to write your book "Finding Elevation"? Lisa: I had always wanted to write, which I studied engineering in college, you know? I felt like I was very far away from that as, as an adult, but as a kid, I had a desire to write. And in my twenties, I tried out different topics. You know, none of them just sort of seemed to fit. And then when I was diagnosed with cancer, I really relied on journaling to, to get me through that and to be this, you know, sort of outlet for everything that I was feeling. And. Probably two years of journaling, I sort of realized that there were a lot of things that I had encountered that seemed to translate to other people. You know, that if I could share what I had learned, the hard way with another woman that maybe, you know, she would have an easier path than I did. And so it became really important for me to share. Um, and, and, you know, at the time I thought this will just be about cancer. And then as I continued to climb and I continued to learn more about myself and what I'm capable of and how to overcome obstacles, how to find your voice. Most of that through K2, it, it just really turned into a much bigger project than just journaling. . What was the thing you learned about yourself from writing the book that maybe surprised you the. I think I learned a lot about my childhood when I was writing. Um, I, and I, you know, I spent a year studying memoir at the university of Washington, and I remember like my, there was nothing about my childhood in, in an early draft. And my instructor was like, you can't leave that out. Like that's a part of, and I was like, yeah, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't super, like, it's kind of painful for me. I really don't wanna put it in here. Um, and of course it, you know, needs to be a more balanced story, et cetera, etcetera. And so by me sort of digging through that, I realized, you know, this sort of these traits that I have today and where they came from. And there was a lot of therapy in there as well. And it made me realize that, you know, something that. Because I said, my parents, you know, were not very reliable. They weren't always around. And, and that made me a very independent person. Um, there's certainly some downsides to that, but I think there's, I think there's always a silver lining. There's always some positive. Outcome, even of bad situations. And we often just have to look a little bit harder, like, you know, dig a little bit deeper to find them. But those I think are, you know, the real nuggets and like where, where we really learn why we are the way we are. Passionistas: Thanks for listening to our interview with Lisa Thompson, to learn more about her adventures and get a copy of her book, finding elevation, visit LisaClimbs.com Please visit ThePassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your Passions. Double your first box when you sign up for a one year subscription. Remember to sign up for our mailing list, to get more information about the Power of Passionistas Summit at bit.ly/2022PowerofPassionistasTickets. And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time stay well and stay passionate.
“I'd say my best piece of medical advice is to forget everything that you've been taught up until this point,” says Katie Green Holistic Healthcare Professional and Neuromuscular Therapist. “Give yourself permission to ditch the dogma, the doctrine. We're going to start over.” As a competitive runner in college, Katie began experiencing health problems, and noticed that the doctors she saw were interested only in treating her symptoms, rather than getting to the source of her problems, and solving them from the inside out. She attributes this to a profit-driven healthcare industry, one that is inextricably linked to all of the other major industries and government agencies. She treats her own patients by first interviewing them extensively about their lifestyles and backgrounds, before giving them a full body assessment. She is passionately focused on the next generation, whom she believes has the power to change the world. First, she says, we must change their education about nutrition and the way they think about food. On this episode of A Little Impolite, learn why greens are not the super food they've been made out to be, the best way to drink coffee to get the most benefits, and the new supplement Katie is most excited about. Quotes • “Nobody is honoring the innate brilliance—the intelligence—of our bodies. There's a fundamental reason why people are experiencing what they're experiencing. That was my goal: I wanted to know what health actually means, to me, to you, to the next person. I know it's not medication.” (18:19-18:38 | Katie) • “I think as both of you very well know, the world is dominated by corporate interest, and at the root of those interests is the pharmaceutical companies. They essentially run it all.” (22:04-22:16 | Katie) • “I know for myself and for a lot of other people, you're rewarded with food– and not some healthy organic fruit– you're always rewarded with garbage.” (36:24-36:38 | Lisa) • “So, these fantastic lettuce mixes that I buy at Costco filled with kale and spinach and dandelion leaves and all that good stuff is something I should not be eating?” (41:15-41:24 | Deevo) Links Connect with Katie Green: Website | www.greenlivinghht.com Instagram | @kdtgreen @greenliving_holistichealth Connect with A Little Impolite: Deevo Instagram | @fusionphotog Lisa Instagram | @lisastaffphoto Business Instagram | @sproutconnectors Here it is! Our gift to you. The free download for “All of the Tools You Need for a Healthy Relationship with Social Media”: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/62462253b3be600de2a2710c Interested in learning more about our all-inclusive photography workshop plus business incubator retreat known as Photography House? Click the link below! https://photographyhouse.net/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn4C58U6MRnBaJP8NOknYHg Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-body-business/id1360851323 Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sprout-connectors/support
SUMMARY: In this episode, we talk with Lisa Coyne about ACT For mental compulsions. Lisa Coyne addressed how to use Acceptance and Commitment therapy for overcoming mental compulsions. We cover how to identify your values using a fun little trick! In This Episode: How to use Acceptance & Commitment Therapy to manage mental compulsions How to practice Willingness in regards to reducing mental rituals and mental rumination A fun little Value Based tool for identifying your values. How to be curious instead of thinking in a limited way. Links To Things I Talk About: Stuff thats Loud Stop Avoiding Stuff https://www.newenglandocd.org/ ERP School: https://www.cbtschool.com/erp-school-lp Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com. CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 287. Welcome back, everybody. I am so excited. We are at Episode 6 of this six-part series of how to manage mental compulsions. You guys, we could not end this series with anyone better than Dr. Lisa Coyne. I don't know if you've heard of Lisa Coyne. I bet you, you probably have. She is the most wonderful human being. I have met Lisa, Dr. Lisa Coyne multiple times online, never in person, and just loved her. And this was my first time of actually getting to spend some really precious time with her. And, oh my gosh, my heart exploded like a million times. And you will hear in this episode, you will hear my heart exploding at some point, I'm sure. I am so honored to finish out the six-part series with Lisa. This series, let me just share with you how joyful it has felt to be able to deliver this as a series, as a back-to-back piece of hope. I'm hoping it has been a piece of hope for you in managing something really, really difficult, which is managing mental compulsions. Now, as we finish this series up, I may or may not want to do a recap. I'm not sure yet. I'm going to just see where my heart falls, but I want to just really first, as we move into this final part of the series, to remind you, take what you need. You've been given literally back-to-back some of the best advice I have ever heard in regards to managing mental compulsions. We've got world-renowned experts on this series. You might have either found it so, so educational and so, so helpful while also feeling sometimes a little bit like, “Oh my goodness, there's so many tools, which one do I use?” And I really want to emphasize to you, as we finish this out, again, so beautiful. What a beautiful ending. I almost feel like crying. As we finish it out, I really want to remind you, take what you need, take what's helpful, or – well, I should say and – try all of them out. Practice with each of the skills and the concepts and the tools. See what happens when you do. Use them as little experiments. Just keep plugging away with these skills and tools. Because number one, they're all evidence-based. I very carefully picked the experts on this series to make sure that we are bringing you evidence-based, really gold standard treatment. So, that's been a priority. Just practice with them. Don't be hard on yourself as you practice them. Remind yourself, this is a long-term journey. These are skills I still practice. I'm sure everyone who's come on the show, they are still practicing them. And so, I really want to send you off with a sense of hope that you get to play around with these. Be playful with them. Some of them will be we've giggled and we've laughed and we've cried. So, I want you to just be gentle as you proceed and you practice and remind yourself this is a process and a journey. That being said, I am going to take you right into this next part of the six-part series with Dr. Lisa Coyne. This is where we bring it home and boy, does she bring it home. I feel like she beautifully ties it all up in a ribbon. And I hope it has been so helpful for you. Really, I do. I want this to be a resource that you share with other people who are struggling. I want to be a resource that you return to when you're struggling. I want it to be a place where you feel understood and validated. And so, thank you so much for being a part of this amazing series. That being said, let's get over onto the show, and here is Dr. Lisa Coyne. ------ Kimberley: I literally feel like I'm almost in tears because I know this is going to be the last of the series and I'm so excited. I had just said this is going to bring it home. I'm so excited to have Dr. Lisa Coyne. Welcome. Lisa: Thank you. It's so nice to be here with you, Kim. Hi, everyone. What is a Mental Compulsion? Do you call it a Mental Compulsion or a Mental Ritual? Kimberley: Yes. So, first of all, the question I've asked everybody, and I really am loving the response is, this is a series on managing mental compulsions, but do you call them mental compulsions, mental rituals, rumination? How do you conceptualize this whole concept? Lisa: I would say, it depends on the person and it depends on what they're doing. I call them any number of things. But I think the most important thing, at least for me in how I think about this, is that we come at it from a very behavioral perspective, where we really understand that-- and this is true for probably all humans, but especially so for OCD. I have a little bit of it myself, where I get caught up in the ruminations. But there's a triggering thought. You might call it a trigger like a recurrent intrusive thought that pops up or antecedent is another word that we think of when we think of behavior analysis. But after that thought comes up, what happens is the person engages in an on-purpose thing, whatever it is that they do in their mind. It could be replacing it with a good thought. It could be an argument with yourself. It could be, “I just need to go over it one more time.” It could be, “I'm going to worry about this so I can solve it in advance.” And that part is the part that we think of as the compulsion. So, it's a thing we're doing on purpose in our minds to somehow give us some relief or safety from that initial thought. Now the tricky part is this. It doesn't always feel like it's something we're doing on purpose. It might feel so second nature that it too feels automatic. So, part of, I think, the work is really noticing, what does it feel like when you're engaging in this activity? So, for me, if I'm worrying about something, and worry is an example of this kind of doing in your mind, it comes with a sense of urgency or tightness or “I just have to figure it out,” or “What if I--” and it's all about reducing uncertainty really. So, the trick that I do when I notice it in me is I'll be like, “Okay, I'm noticing that urgency, that tension, that distress. What am I up to in my head? Am I solving something? Is that--” and then I'll step back and notice what I'm up to. So, that's one of my little tricks that I teach my clients. Kimberley: I love this. Would you say your predominant modality is acceptance and commitment therapy? What would you say predominantly you-- I mean, I know you're skilled in so many things, but what would you-- Lisa: I would say, it's funny because, yeah, I guess you would. I mean, I'm pretty skilled in that. I'm an ACT trainer. Although I did start with CBT and I would say that for OCD, I really stick to ERP. I think of it as the heart of the intervention, but we do it within the context of ACT. ACT for Mental Compulsions Kimberley: Can you tell me what that would look like? I'm just so interested to understand it from that conceptualization. So, you're talking about this idea. We've talked a lot about like, it's how you respond to your thoughts and how you respond and so forth. And then, of course, you respond with ERP. What does ACT look like in that experience? I'd love to hear right from your mouth. Lisa: Okay. All right. So, I'm going to do my best here to just say it and then we'll see if it sounds more like ACT or it sounds more like ERP. And then you'll see what I mean when I say I do both of them. So, when you think about OCD, when you think about anxiety, or even maybe depression where you're stuck in rumination, somebody is having an experience. We call it a private event like feeling, thought, belief that hurts, whatever it is. And what they're doing is everything that they can to get away from that. So, if it's OCD, there's a scary thought or feeling, and then there's a ritual that you do. So, to fix that, it's all about learning to turn towards and approach that thing that's hard. And there's different ways you can do that. You can do that in a way where you're dialing it in and you're like, “Yeah, I'm going to do the thing,” but you're doing everything that you can to not feel while you're doing that. And I think that's sometimes where people get stuck doing straight-up exposure and response prevention. It's also hard. When I was a little kid, I was really scared to go off the high dive. I tell my clients and my team the story sometimes where it was like a three-meter dive. And I was that kid where I would be like, “I'm going to do it. All the other kids are doing it.” And I would climb up, I'd walk to the end of the board, freak out, walk back, climb down. And I did this so many times one day, and there's a long line of other kids waiting to get in the water. And they were pissed. So, I got up and I walked out to the end of the board and I was like, “I can't.” And I turned around to go back. And there was my swim coach at the other side of the board with his arms crossed. I was like, “Oh no.” Kimberley: “This is not the way I planned.” How do you apply Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for OCD and Mental Compulsions? Lisa: And he is like, “No, you're going.” And I went, which was amazing. And sometimes you do need that push. But the point is that it's really hard to get yourself to do those really hard things sometimes when it matters. So, to me, ACT brings two pieces to the table that are really, really important here. You can divide ACT into two sets of processes. There's your acceptance and mindfulness processes, and then there's your commitment and valuing processes, which are the engine of ACT, how do we get there? So, for the first part, mindfulness is really paying attention on purpose. And if you want to really learn from an exposure, you have to be in your body, you have to be noticing, you have to be willing to allow all of the thoughts and sensations and whatever shows up to show up. And so, ACT is ideal at shaping that skillset for when you're in the exposure. So, that's how we think of it that way. And then the valuing and commitment is, how do you get yourself off that diving board? There has to be something much more important, bigger, much bigger than your fear to help motivate you for why to do this hard thing. And I think that the valuing piece and really connecting with the things that we most deeply care about is part of what helps with that too. So, I think those two bookends are really, really important. There's other ways to think about it, but those are the two primary ways that we do ERP, but we do it within an ACT framework. Using Values to manage Mental Compulsions Kimberley: Okay. I love this. So, you're talking about we know what we need to do. We know that rumination isn't helpful. We know that it creates pain. We know that it keeps us stuck. And we also know, let's jump to like, we know we have to drop it ultimately. What might be an example of values or commitments that people make specifically for rumination, the solving? Do you have any examples that might be helpful? Lisa: Yeah. I'm just thinking of-- there's a bunch of them, but for example, let's take, for example, ROCD, relationship OCD. So, let's say someone's in a relationship with a partner and they're not sure if the right partner is. Are they cheating on me? Are they not? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's this like, “But I have to solve if this is the right person or not. Am I going to be safe?” or whatever the particular worry is. And so, one of the things that you can do is once folks notice, they're trying to solve that. Notice, what's the effect of that on your actual relationship? How is that actually working? So, there's this stepping back where an ACT, we would call that diffusion or taking perspective self-as-context, which is another ACT, acceptance, and mindfulness piece. And first of all, notice that. Second of all, pause. Notice what you're up to. Is the intent here to build a strong relationship, or is the intent to make this uncertainty go away? And then choose. Do I want to work on uncertainty or do I want to work on being a loving partner and seeing what happens? Because there's so much we're not in charge of, including what we're thinking and feeling. But we are in charge of what we choose to do. And so, choosing to be present and see where it goes, and embracing that uncertainty. But the joyfulness of it, I think, is really, really important. So, that would be one example. Kimberley: I love that example. Actually, as you were saying, I was thinking about an experience of my own. When your own fears come up around relationship, even you're ruminating about a conversation or something, you've got to stop and be like, “Is this getting in the way here of the actual thing?” It's so true. Tell me about this joy piece, because it's not very often you hear the word joy in a conversation about mental compulsions. Tell me about it. Lisa: Well, when you start really noticing how this is working, and if you're willing to step back from it, let it be, and stay where you are in that uncertainty, all sorts of new things show up. Stuff you never could have imagined or never could have dreamed. Your whole life could be just popping up all of these possibilities. In that moment you stop engaging with those compulsions, you could go in a hundred different directions if you're willing to let the uncertainty be there. And I think that that's really important. I want to tell a story, but I have to change the details in my head just for confidentiality. But I'm thinking of a person who I have worked with, who would be stuck and ruminating about, is this the right thing? I could make decisions and how do I-- for example, how do I do this lecture? My slides need to be perfect and ruminating, ruminating, ruminating about how it works. And one day they decided, “Okay, I'm just going to be present and I'm just going to teach.” And they taught with a partner. And the person themself noticed like, “Wow, I felt so much more connected to my students. This was amazing.” And the partner teaching with them was like, “I've never seen you so on. That was amazing.” They contacted this joy and like, “This is what it could be like.” And it's like this freedom shows up for you. And it's something that we think we know. And OCD loves to know, and it loves to tell you, it knows the whole story about everything. And it's more what you get back when you stop doing the compulsions if you really, really choose that. It's so much more than just, “Oh, I'm okay. I noticed that thought.” it's so much more than that. It's like, yes, and you get to do all this amazing stuff. Kimberley: Right. I mean, it's funny. I always have my clients in my head. When someone says something, I'm imagining my client going, “But like, but like...” What's the buts that are coming? Lisa: And notice that process. But see, that's it. That's your mind, that's their minds jumping back in being like, “See, there it is again.” Kimberley: Yeah. Lisa: And what if we just don't know? Using Curiosity to Stop Mental Compulsions Kimberley: And this is what I love about this. I agree with you. There have been so many times when I've dropped myself out of-- I call it being heady and I drop into my body and you get this experience of being like, “Wow.” For me, I can get really simple on like, “Isn't it crazy that water is clear?” I can go to that place. “Water is clear. That is incredible.” You know what I mean? It's there to go to that degree. But then, that's the joy in it for me. It's like, “Wow, somebody literally figured out how to make this pen work.” That still blows my mind. Lisa: I had a moment. I started horseback riding again for the first time in literally-- I've ridden on and off once a year or something, but really riding. And actually, it was taking classes and stuff for the first time in 30 years. And they put me in this class and I didn't know what level it was. I just thought we were just going to walk around and trot and all that stuff. Plus, she starts setting up jumps. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is old body now. This is not going to bounce the way it might have been.” It's what means all these 15-year-olds in the class. Kimberley: Wow. Lisa: I'm third in line and I'm just on the horse absolutely panicking and ruminating like, “Oh my God, am I going to die? Should I do this? What am I going to do? Should I tell her no? But I want it and I don't know what I'm going to--” and my head was just so loud. And so, the two girls in front of me go. And then I look at the teacher and I go, “Are you sure?” It's literally the first time I've ever done in 30 years. She just went-- she just looked at me. And I noticed that my legs squeezed the horse with all of the stuff rolling around in my head. And I went over the jump and it was, I didn't die. It was really messy and terrifying. Oh my God, it was so exciting and joyful. And I was so proud of myself. That's what you get-- Kimberley: And I've heard that from so many clients too. Lisa: It's so awesome. Kimberley: I always say it's like base jumping. It's like you've got to jump. And then once you've jumped, you just got to be there. And that is true. There is so much exhilaration and sphere that comes from that. So, I love that. What about those who base jump or squeeze the horse and they're dropping into discomfort that they haven't even experienced before, like 10 out 10 stuff. Can you walk me through-- is it just the same? Is it the same concept? What would you advise there? Lisa: So, I think it's important to notice that when that happens, people are not just experiencing physical sensations and emotions, but it's also whatever their mind is telling them about it. And I think this is another place where ACT is super helpful to just notice, like your mind is saying, this is 10 out of 10. What does that mean to you? That means like, oh my gosh. And just noticing that and holding it lightly while you're in that 10 out of 10 moment, I think, is really, really helpful. So, for example, I have a really intense fear of heights where I actually freeze. I can't actually move when I'm on the edge of something. And I had a young client who I've worked with for a while. And as an exposure for her, but also for me as her clinician to model, we decided. She wanted me to go rock climbing with her, which is not something I've ever done, ever, and also fear of heights. So, I kept telling myself, “Fear of heights, this is going to suck. This is going to be terrible. This is going to be terrible.” And there was also another part of me interested and curious. And so, what I would say when you're in that 10 out of 10 moment, you can always be curious. So, when you're like, “Oh my gosh, I'm really scared,” the moment you're unwilling to feel that is the moment it's going to overwhelm you. And if you can notice it as a thought, “I'm having the thought, I don't think I can handle this. I don't think I'm going to survive this,” and notice it and be curious, let's see what happens. And so, for me, I noticed interestingly, even though I'm terrified of heights, I wasn't actually scared at all. And that was a shocker, because I was full sure it was going to be the worst thing ever. And so, notice the stories your mind tells you about what an experience is going to be and stay curious. You can always be curious. And that's going to be, I think, your number one tool for finding your way through and how to handle those really big, unexpected, and inevitable surprising moments that happen in life that are really scary for all of us. Kimberley: Right. And when you say curious, I'm not trying to get too nitpicky on terms, but for me, curiosity is, let's experiment. I always think of it like life is a science experiment, like let's see if my hypothesis is true about this rock climbing. Is there a way that you explain curiosity? Lisa: Yeah. Well, that's part of it, but it's also part like what you were describing. Isn't water cool? It's more than, is this true or not true? That's so narrow. You want, “No, really? What does this taste like?” And that's the mindfulness piece. Really notice all of it. There's so much. And when you start doing that, you'll find-- even if you do it outside of exposure, for example, as practice, you start to notice that the present moment is a little bit like Hermione's purse in Harry Potter, where you think it's this one thing, and then when you start to expand your awareness, you notice there's tons of cool stuff. So, in these big, scary moments, what you might see is a sense of purpose or a sense of, “Holy crap, I'm handling this and I didn't think I could. Wow, this is amazing,” or “I'm really terrified. Oh my gosh, my nose itches.” It could be anything at all. But the bottom line is, our bodies were meant to feel and they were meant to experience all the emotions. And so, there is no amount of emotion or fear or anything that we are not built to handle. Emotions are information. And to stay in the storm when it's such a big storm, when OCD is ramping you up, it teaches the OCD, “Actually, I guess I get to stand down here eventually, I guess I don't need to freak out about this so much. Huh, interesting. I had no idea.” I don't know if that's helpful or not. Kimberley: No, it's so helpful. It is so helpful because I think if you have practiced curiosity, it makes sense. But for someone who maybe has been in mental compulsions for so long, they haven't really strengthened that curiosity muscle. Mindfulness for Mental Compulsions Lisa: That's so true. So, start small. Don't start in the storm. Start with waking up in the morning and noticing before you open your eyes, what do you hear? How do the covers feel? Do you hear the birds outside your window? Start with that. And start in little moments, just practicing during the day. Start a conversation with someone you care about, and notice what your mind is saying in response to them, what it's like to notice their face. Start small, build it up, and then start practicing with little tiny, other kinds of discomfort. Sometimes we'll tell people like impatience. When you're waiting in line or in hunger or tiredness, any of those, to just bring your full awareness to that and be like, “What is it like inside this moment right now?” And then you can extend that to, “Okay. So, what if we choose to approach this scary thing? What if we choose to just for a few seconds, notice what it feels like in this uncertain space?” And that's how you might begin to bring it to rumination, be curious about what was the triggering thought. And then before you start ruminating or before you start doing mental rituals, just notice the first thought, and then you don't have to answer that question. And there's different ways to handle that, but curiosity is the beginning. And then stopping the compulsion is ultimately, or undoing it or undermining it in some way is going to be the other important piece. Kimberley: I'd love to hear more about commitment. I always loved-- when I have multiple clients, we joke about this all the time. They'll say, “I had these mental compulsions and you would be so proud. I was so proud. I was able to catch it and pull myself back into the present. And yes, it was such a win. And then I had another thought and you'd be so proud of me. I did the same thing. And then I had another thought and...” Lisa: You're like, “Was that the show that you just did right there?” It's sneaky, huh. Kimberley: And so, I'd love to hear what you're-- and maybe bring it from an ACT perspective or however you would. It's like you're chugging away. “I'm doing good. Look at me go.” But OCD can be so persistent. Lisa: It's so tricky. Kimberley: And so, is that the commitment piece, do you think? What is that? How would you address that? Lisa: So, if I'm getting your question right, you're asking about, what do we do when OCD hijacks something that you should do and turns it into a ritual? Is that what you're asking? Kimberley: Yes. Or it just is OCD turns up the volume as like, “No, no, no, no. You are going to have to tend to me or I'm not going to stop,” kind of thing. Lisa: Yes. That is a commitment piece. And it's funny because there's different ways that I think about this, but it's almost like a little child who has a tantrum. If you keep saying yes, every time they make the tantrum bigger, it's going to end up being a pretty big tantrum. And OCD loves nothing more than a good tantrum. Kimberley: So true. Lisa: And so, the thing you have to do is plan for that and go, “Yeah, it's going to get loud. Yeah, it's going to say whatever it needs to say, and it's going to say the worst thing I can think of.” And I have had my clients call this all sorts of different things like first-order thoughts, second-order thoughts, just different variations on the theme where it's going to ramp up to hook you in. And so, really staying very mindful of that and making a promise to yourself. One of my clients who helped us a lot in teaching but also in writing stuff that's loud, Ethan, I think said it in this really elegant way. He said, make a promise to yourself. That really matters, even if it's small. It doesn't matter how big it is. But one of his first ones was, under no circumstances, am I going to do X the compulsion? And keep that promise to yourself because if you-- anybody who ever woke up and didn't want to get out of the bed in the morning because, “Ah, too tired, it's too early. I don't really want to go to the gym.” If you know you're in that conversation with yourself about, “Well, maybe just one more minute,” you've already lost. And so, this is a good place again for that ACT piece of diffusion. Noticing your mind or your OCD or your anxiety is pulling you into, “Ah, let's just see if we can string you along here.” And so, what needs to happen is just move your feet and put them on the floor. Don't get into that conversation with yourself. And having that commitment piece, that promise to myself with the added value piece, that really matters. And one other thing that's sometimes helpful that I have-- I'll use this myself, but I also teach my clients, remembering this question: If this is a step towards whatever it is that's really important, am I willing to allow myself to feel these things? Am I willing? And remembering that as a cue. We're not here. It's never about this one exposure. It's about, this is a step towards this other life that you are fighting for. And every single step is an investment in that other life where you're getting closer and you're making it more possible, and just remembering that. I think that that's a really important piece. A Values Tool YOU NEED! Kimberley: Yeah. It actually perfectly answered the question I had, which is, you're making a commitment, but what to? And it is that long-term version of you that you're moving towards or the value that you want to be living by. Would you suggest-- and I've done a little bit of work on the podcast about values. Maybe one day we can have you back on and you can share more about that, but would you suggest people pick one value, three values? How might someone-- of course, we all have these values and sometimes OCD can take things from us, or anxiety can take those things from us. How would you encourage someone to move in that direction? Lisa: Well, actually, do you want to do a fun thing? Kimberley: I do. Lisa: Okay. So, let's do-- Kimberley: I never would say no to that. I would love to. I'm really curious about this fun thing. Lisa: All right. So, do you like coffee or are you a tea person or neither? Kimberley: Let's go tea. I'm an Australian. If I didn't say tea, I would be a terrible Aussie. Lisa: They'll kick you off. All right. So, Kim, think about in your life a perfect cup of tea, not just a taste, but a moment with someone maybe you cared about or somewhere that was beautiful or after something big or before something big, or just think about what was a really, really amazing important cup of tea that you've had in your life. Kimberley: Oh, it's so easy. Do I tell you out loud? Lisa: Yeah. If you want to, that'd be great. Kimberley: I'll paint you guys a picture. So, I live in America, but my parents live in Australia and they have this beautiful house on a huge ranch. I grew up on a farm. And we're sitting at their bay window and you're overlooking green. It's just rolling hills. And my mom is on my left and my dad is on my right. And it's like milky and there's cookies. Well, they call them biscuits. So, yeah. That's my happy place right there. Lisa: And I could see it in your face when you're talking about it. So, where do you-- does that tell you something about what's really important to you? Kimberley: Yes. Lisa: What does it tell you? Kimberley: Family and pleasure and just savoring goodness, just slowing down. It's not about winning a race, it's just about this savoring. And I think there's a lot-- maybe something there that I think is important is the green, the nature, the calm of that. Lisa: Yeah. So, as you talk about that, what are you noticing feeling? Kimberley: Oh my God, my heart just exploded 12 times. My heart is filled. That was the funnest thing I've ever done in my whole life. Funnest is not a word. Lisa: What if you could build your life around moments like that? Would that be a well of life for you? Kimberley: I think about that nearly every time I make tea, actually. Lisa: That's how you would help your clients, and that's one way to think about values. Kimberley: Wow. That is so cool. I feel like you just did a spell on me or something. Lisa: You just connected with the stuff that's really important. So, when you think about if I had a hard thing to do, what if it was a step towards more of that in your life? Kimberley: Yeah. Lisa: You see? Kimberley: It's so powerful. I've never thought that. Oh my God, that was gold. And so, that's the example. Everyone would use that, coffee or tea. Lisa: There you go. Just think about it. And it's funny because we came up with this in our team, maybe three months ago. We keep piloting just new little values exercise, but it's so funny how compelling it is. just thinking about-- gosh. Anyway, I could tell you about mine, but you get the point. Kimberley: And you know what's so funny too and I will say, and this is completely off topic, there's a social media person that I follow on Instagram. And every time she does a live-- and for some reason, it's so funny that you mentioned this, I love what she talks about, but to be honest, I'm not there to watch her talk. The thing that I love the most is that she starts every live with a new tea and she'll pause the water in front of you. It's like a mindfulness exercise for me. To be honest, I find myself watching to see whether she's making tea. Not that this is about tea, but I think there's something very mindful about those things that where we slow down-- and the water example, she's pouring it and she's watching the tea. And for some reason, it's like a little mini-break in the day for me. Lisa: I totally agree. It's like the whole sky, the cloud, and the tea and the-- Kimberley: Like Thich Nhat Hanh. Lisa: Yes. I can't remember the quote, but exactly. Kimberley: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that example. So good. Well actually, if you don't mind, can you tell us your tea? Because I just would love to see if there's a variation. So, what would yours be? Lisa: It was funny because I think I did coffee the first time I did this, but then recently I just did a workshop in Virginia and I was like, “Oh my gosh, tea.” And what came to mind was, when I took my 17-year-old daughter tracking in the Himalayas to Nepal, because I wanted her. She was graduating from high school and I wanted to show her that you could do anything and she really wanted to go. We both really wanted to go to Ever Space Camp. And every morning after trekking nine, 10, 11 hours a day where you're freezing cold, you're exhausted, everything's hurting, and it's also amazing and beautiful, the guides would knock at our door and there would be two of them. And one of them would have a tray of little metal cups. And then the other one would say, “Tea? Sugar? Would you like sugar?” And they would make you, they would bring you, and this was how you woke up every morning, a steaming cup of tea. Sometimes the rooms were 20 below zero. And you'd get out of bed and you'd be so grateful for that warm cup of tea. And that was the tea I remembered. Kimberley: Right. And then the values you pulled from that would be what? Lisa: That moment, it was about being with my daughter and it was about showing her, modeling courage and modeling willingness and just adventure and this love of being in nature and taking a journey and seeing, “Could we do this? And what would it be like?” And just sharing the experience with her. It's just beautiful. And the tea is right in the center of that. So, it's almost not even about the tea, but it's that moment. It's that time and that experience. So amazing. Kimberley: So amazing. Thank you. I'm deeply grateful. That just filled my heart. Lisa: I'm so glad. I feel so honored that you have had experience. I love that so much. Kimberley: I did. I always tell my clients or my kids or whoever is at-- when I was a kid, my mom, every afternoon when I came home from school, she'd say, “What's the one thing you learn at school today?” And so still, there's always one thing I learn and I always note it like that's the one thing I learned today and that was it. What an amazing moment. Lisa: I'm so glad. Kimberley: Okay. I love this. So, we've talked about mindfulness and we've talked about commitment. We've talked about values and we have talked about the acceptance piece, but if we could have just one more question around the acceptance piece. How does that fit into this model? I'm wondering. Lisa: It's funny because I always feel like that acceptance piece, the word, it means to so many people, I think, tolerance or coping or let's just make this okay. And it doesn't mean any of those things. And so, I've moved more into thinking of it and describing it as, it's like a willingness. What is under the hood of acceptance and am I willing? Because you cannot like something and not want something and also be willing to allow it. And it's almost like this-- again, it involves curiosity about it. It involves squeeze the horse with all the stuff. Get the feet on the floor, even though you're having an argument that's in your head. And so, sometimes people think about it as a feeling and sometimes it is, but a lot of times, it's willingness with your feet. When you think about moms and infants in the middle of the night, I don't think there was ever a moment when I was like, “Oh yeah, the baby's crying at 4:00 in the morning. I'm so excited to get up.” I'm feeling in my heart, no. It's like you're exhausted and it's like the last thing you want to do and 100% you're willing to do it. You choose. And so, that's the difference. And so, I think people get tangled up, not just thinking of it as tolerance, but also waiting for a feeling of willingness to happen. And that's not it. It's a choice. Kimberley: It's gold. Lisa: Yeah, seriously. I mean, it's the same thing. I learn it every day. Trust me, when I fall out of my gym routine or my running routine and I'm off the willingness, and then I'm like, “Yeah, that's not it.” And I have to come back to it. So, it's something we all struggle with. And I think that's really important to know too, but ultimately, it's a choice, not a feeling. Kimberley: Okay. That was perfect. And I'm so happy. Thank you, number one. This is just beautiful for me and I'm sure the gifts just keep going and flowing from this conversation. So, thank you. Lisa: Thank you for having me. Kimberley: Tell me where people can hear more about you and know your work? Lisa: Well, we're at the New England Center for OCD and Anxiety in Boston. We have recently opened in New York City and in Ireland. So, if anybody is in Ireland, call us, look us up. Kimberley: Wow. Lisa: Yeah. That's been really fun. And there's a few books we have. There's Stuff That's Loud written by Ben Sedley and myself. There's our newest book called Stop Avoiding Stuff with Matt Boone and Jen Gregg. And that's a fun little book. If anybody's interested in learning about ACT, it's really written-- the chapters are each standalone and they're written so that you could read them in about two minutes, and that was on purpose. We wanted something that was really pocket-sized and really simple with actionable skills that you could use right away. And then I have a new book coming out actually really soon. And no one knows this. Actually, I'm announcing this on your show. And I am writing it with my colleague, Sarah Cassidy-O'Connor in Ireland. We are just doing the art for it now and it's a book on ACT for kids with anxiety and OCD. Kimberley: When is this out? Lisa: Good question. I want to say within the year, but I don't remember when. Kimberley: That's okay. Lisa: But look for it and check out our website and check out Stuff That's Loud website. We'll post it there and let folks know. But yeah, we're really excited about it. And it'll be published by a UK publisher. So, it's really cute. So, I think the language will be much more like Australia, UK, Ireland for the US, which is really fun because I have a connection to Ireland too. But anyway, there you go. Kimberley: It's so exciting. Congratulations. So needed. It's funny because I just had a consultation with one of my staff and we were talking about books for kids. And there are some great ones, but this ACT work, I think as I keep saying, there's skills for life. Lisa: It really is. Kimberley: So important. How many times I've taught my child, even not related to anxiety, just the ACT skill, it's been so important. Lisa: Yeah. Mine too. I think they're so helpful. They were just really helpful with flexibility in so many different areas. Kimberley: Right. I agree. Okay. This is wonderful. Thank you for being on. Like I said, you brought it home. Lisa: We'll have our cups of tea now. Kimberley: We will Lisa: So nice to talk to you, Kim. Kimberley: Thank you. Lisa: Thank you.
Today's conversation about membership programs for humane businesses fits under the P of Product of the Humane Marketing Mandala. We're talking about the membership business model today. I recently recorded a muse episode about two books I re-read regarding this same topic, so if you missed that solo episode go back and take a listen. But today I brought in an expert of this topic, whom I just heard on my friend Leisa Peterson's podcast and loved her 'realness'. So today I bring to you Lisa Princic. Lisa is the owner of Scaling Deep. Over the last 12 years, she has helped 100's impact-driven business owners dive deep into their unique value and business models to build sustainable & profitable brands. Lisa helps coaches, consultants and professionals become thought leaders and increase their impact and wealth with membership programs. A staunch believer in business simplicity and intention, she helps her clients accomplish their goals by focusing on what to do AND what to ignore. Lisa loves a challenge with adventure and can often be found skiing or biking in the coastal mountains of BC. In this episode, you'll learn about membership programs for humane businesses as well as... Memberships in 2022 and what people want now (compared to 10 years ago) Difference between a community and a membership? the different types of memberships Pricing of memberships How to get members to stay And much more… Lisa's Resources Lisa's Website The Membership Success Blueprint Bootcamp Connect with Lisa on: Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening! After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast? The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers - a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact. — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. Sarah: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00] [00:06:00] [00:07:00] Hey, Lisa. So good to talk to you today. Thanks. Lisa: So great to be here. Sarah: Awesome. Yeah, we just recently connected and I love these connections where you're like, oh yeah, I have to have you on the show. And now you get all these pitches in your inbox. You have. So you, you must no, thanks. No, thanks. I just rather reach out to people that I really want to have on. So when I heard you on Lisa, the other Lisa, a podcast, I'm like, oh yeah, that sounded real authentic. Even though authentic is such a buzzword, but that's what I felt like when I listened to you. So Lisa: it's still a good word. I still like the word. Cool. Sarah: Good to have you. I'm looking forward to talking about memberships and how to kind of create a membership site or whatever community, whatever you want to call it, but build it in a [00:08:00] humane way, because that's what we're all about here on this show in a way that is probably not just all about. Scaling and going big or going home. And that's kind of the feeling that I got. I got when I heard you talk. And then I went over to your website and then your website is called scaling deep and I'm like, oh yeah. Tell me more. Yeah. Tell, tell me a bit about scaling deep. And then we dive into. Membership sites. Lisa: Yeah. Well, scaling team really means a lot to me and I probably don't talk about it enough. So thanks for, thanks for asking, because it really is about honoring our nature of wanting to, to grow and evolve. And we're not people who just, I mean, most people don't just want to get to a point and they're like, I'm done, I've stopped striving or trying things. I mean, because again, it's, it's our makeup, right? So denying that it [00:09:00] does get us into. It's like trouble. When we say we don't want to earn, or we say we don't want to grow, or we don't want to make something big because it's, it's what we're wired for all of us to different extents. So I think when we can figure out how to do it in a way that has more impact or that feels richer and feels more rewarding, then we're honoring that and we're still doing something good. And we don't necessarily have to do things that are changing the world overnight because that's a lot of pressure also, and we're able to just honor that, but then also just do more good with it. And I think that's a lot of people who I work with too. They are people who aren't necessarily motivated all by money and it's and yet earnings is a way to evaluate. Our success, our impact, and just how we're performing as humans. So it's a really challenging [00:10:00] balance and I really liked just the concept of, well, what would you do if you did grow naturally, would you be setting goals? Like I need to make this, this next year and setting huge team goals, or would you be also saying, well, how can we have like a greater impact? Like how can we make the experience better for everyone? If there's profit, for example, rather than just thinking about it as a, as an egocentric milestone that we're bragging to the world. And I think there's a lot more businesses out there like that than we know, but they're just not telling us how huge they are, because they're just growing naturally from doing good work. And there's a lot of memberships out there doing that. And they are the ones that are doing like loads and loads of ads or on every, or doing huge podcast tours and all that. And so they're growing in a meaningful way. So I think that that's just really what I stand for. And I want more people to recognize that you can have both. And if you deny growth, [00:11:00] It's frustrating also, because then we know we're not living our potential just because we say, well, I'm not interested in money. So there's this whole rabbit hole there of, I can really, what's gone on in my mind for how many years really that I won't get into. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. To two things come to mind. First of all, the ego. Yeah. It's like the ego keeps talking to us and say, But, you know, you should really go bigger and bigger and bigger. And what I've learned over the years, even though, like you said, I'm not motivated by money to the extent where it's almost like Lisa: becomes a problem. Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to get at. It does become a problem because then we're then in a way, we're like, what are we doing, working with? All this hard for free and not really earning a lot or earning enough from what we're putting out into the world. So monetizing the content and all that stuff has to, has to happen. And unless you're just not in that position and then that's a different, that's a different thing altogether. So I think that's where you [00:12:00] there's that balance. Because again, that can just be sabotage in some ways, like why aren't we spending more time? I'm feeling relaxed and peaceful around her family or something, then hammering towards something and then not earning enough. So again, it's a bit problematic. So that's why I think if we get into purpose, And we feel like we working as a good thing to do. Like it's, it's part of a a good way to live. I, we, we weren't really built for leisure, you know, all the time and we want to work towards good things. So if we can do that and then find the join, it put a reasonable amount of time in, and then. The rewards come together from fulfillment, also the earnings, because we're really in our, in our space. And I think that's really the answer. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. And you're right. That the society does always put success together with money, but. We're actually, I'm really challenging that I don't think that [00:13:00] needs to be the definition of success. I'd rather have a business where I'm not working all the time and, you know, making less money, but enough money for myself. And so I think that's also what you're saying with these membership that the membership business model, that's something that is actually. Feasible it's doable. Right. And it, it's not, it doesn't need to be in that slimy way where it's like, oh, I'm spending all my time at the beach while making loads and loads of money. That's not, that's not because that's kind of what the membership site model used to be in the days. It was like this lifestyle, Lisa: you know, all of online business, 10 years ago. All of them. When I first started really seeing everything online, it really was the laptop at the beach, like in the, in the early 2010 kind of era. I mean, that's what everyone was, was encouraging. So yeah. And members and any scalable model. I mean, I think what we're seeing [00:14:00] is that in general, in online business, people are, are kind of dropped that because they know that that's not real. And, and yet they're just saying. Grow in a way that allows you to kind of sell one to many. And, and then there are, you know, there's, trade-offs, there's, there's intense moments when you're growing a business based on some level of volume, there is launching, you know, there is, there are some there moments where you are going to work extra hard, but I think it's all about trying to find a sustainable balance because, you know, and truthfully. Most people are not sustainable. Like there, they are putting more in than they're earning in a membership model at the beginning. And that's kind of where I really want to come in and help people figure that out because we also don't want to be working for years and not earning enough and putting too much time into it. And you know, it's really got to work. It's got to work. After a certain period, like any startup, like [00:15:00] any business has got, there's gotta be a tipping point where there are more profit and it comes at easier, you know, at a greater ease. Sure. And we'll get into Sarah: that. I want to start kind of like what we said before, maybe, you know, 10 years ago, what a membership site was and what people want today and how that has maybe changed over time. I remember being a member of some of these sites. Sites or whether they recalled and it just downloads tons and tons of information downloads. And in the end, everybody just felt, and that's a big topic for me. Everybody felt more anxious. There was more anxiety because there was a huge overload of information and people are like, ah, now I feel still like a loser because I don't Lisa: know what to tell with that. And that was back in the day when we used to let people know. Tell us what success was and we did it discern. And because that was again, early days of online everything. And I think that's when we would say, [00:16:00] well, if we don't do all this, whereas now I think people are more savvy, no matter who they are and what sophistication they're coming into the space, they are saying like this isn't working for me or this, this isn't despite the fact that you're telling me, I need to follow these steps. Like I'm stuck here and it's not working. So I think we are, people are more vocal. So there's no one really able to get away with just saying I'm going to overwhelm them and then they will, they will stay because they'll feel like they should be doing something. I think the consumer is more savvy now, so that's changed. And that's why we really have to be a very. Mindful of sort of what we deliver as membership, business owners as well. Sarah: So more savvy. I would also add probably more conscious in terms of, you know, what I talk about, but I know you talk about it as well. The marketing piece it's like, how do we get people into our membership? Well, they're more savvy, but they're also more conscious. So they're going to know when you're. BSC me with all [00:17:00] this stuff that it's, it's just not realistic and feasible. So the consciousness has, has to me, has risen over the last few years as well. So yeah, Lisa: I'm connection. I think people, well, I mean, I'm, I'm hoping, so, I mean, I'm really hoping that people are. Buying for the right reasons. And I think that's the part that I find the biggest problem is one is how things are positioned in marketing. When we hear example after example, after success, story of success stories in a program that's had thousands and thousands and thousands of people in them. And then they're cherry picking like. A few people who were in the right place at the right time with the right niche and the right everything to, to have increased, like have done really well, really fast. And that's positioned like, that's the typical result when it's actually, yes, it's a testimonial, but it's all it's rather than saying, well, that only happened to like a half a percent of the people who've ever taken this program. So I think there is [00:18:00] still lack of ethics there around that, because. You when you were selling something that nobody can like look at touch, see, feel, and try on, and then return you. I think you need to actually, you can use real examples of this person got this benefit and allowed them to do this thing, but not blanketing it in a, we're not going to tell you the details. They just came, joined this thing. Got this miraculous result, you can do it too. So I think that's where I'm hoping people get still even more critical and, and discern what they're really actually getting because this smoke and mirrors thing is still happens all the time. Yeah. It's still Sarah: happening. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the different types of memberships, because I talked to you about kind of like a community. Membership sites. What's the difference. Oh, okay. Okay. I think you have three types Lisa: or, well, okay, so there's three. Okay. There's three models and three types. And I [00:19:00] know I could come up with some better language, but the three, so the three models I like talking about, and I'll just show you karaoke briefly, or this sort of idea of like, where does it fit within your business model? So there's like the warmup. Which it's the lead usually lower ticket, but I've got bigger ticket programs that I want to sell to these people. And that works really well. When you have a lot of people who come into your world or find out about you and just want to join something right away. There's the flagship model, which is kind of your all in one. Like this is the thing that you want to grow. And the only thing you want to grow, and you want to have all your deliverables in one place, like you want one program, and then there's the follow-up. Easy, easier, because if you've got a lot of one-on-one clients or people you've worked with in programs, you can simply invite them to continue doing the learning and the growth over time together that you started working on and more privately together. And then it just keeps them. Threaded to you. So tethered, I should say to you, so that, that those are like, those are ways to [00:20:00] think about it. Like how does it fit within your business model and what can you expect around like planning? Like what are you going to charge for it? I mean, if you've been charging expensive VIP days with clients, you can probably charge, you don't have to charge a super low, low amount when you for up work, because it's going to be a lot less than how they bought from you privately. So I just, I do like to put that out there because I want people to see. Why they're doing it, like, how does it fit within their model and the first place? And then second of Sarah: all, can I, can I just go in there, warm up is, is kind of an audience building almost, right? Yeah. Lisa: Okay. And he can work well for audience building if it's lower ticket and yeah. I mean, yeah. Cause it can be something that we could also be a loss leader. Like meaning if we have these amazing programs that we want people to do intensive work in, then we can have people come in to that. And if they don't, it doesn't even have to be profitable [00:21:00] if we're really getting our clients, our main earnings from the membership who buy into different programs. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good and interesting model. Yeah. And then I think you were asking sort of about like how to structure the membership when you have a membership and you're asking, okay, what are the components of it? And I think that's, what is that what you're asking? Like, what does, like, what really determines what's the membership? Yeah. Kinda Sarah: like, you know, is it content-based, is it community-based I remember those two types that you were mentioning, I just finished watching your four day. What is it called? Bootcamp? Yeah. Unfortunately that's over, but hopefully it'll do it again. So we'll link to a waiting list or Lisa: something like that. Yeah. But yeah, Sarah: you mentioned that the, those different structures, I don't know what you Lisa: call them. It's structure for deliverables. And this is the [00:22:00] sustainability piece actually, which is good to talk about because a lot of people, again, feel overwhelmed by what they think they have to create for their members every month. And then usually when they feel that way, they overwhelm their members by just trying to stuff too much. And so when I, when I look at what the three ways of delivering are in a membership, It, especially for a service provider, there is a mentorship. So I consider that live calls. It could also be a Facebook Q and a live all the way. I that, to me borders a little bit less on, on mentorship, because it's, it's hard to get Q and a, it's hard to ask the questions and have conversation in a chat when they're live. And then there's the education model, which really is content. I mean, there was someone in. That we had some VIP calls in the bootcamp this week, and there's someone who has templates and training. So every month she wants to deliver templates and trainings. So that is more of an education model. It may [00:23:00] have a community aspect of it. It may that the mentorships in the training, but it's less about being coached. And then there's a community aspect. And then I have someone in the inside the profitable membership club who has a live event every year and the people really want to stay the attendees, want to stay connected. So she has. Community-based membership that that goes throughout the year and that is, she's not providing, she's doing prompts and events and things inside that, but it's really about people staying connected and, and being inspired by the connections to take action and, and do the things that she's encouraging them to do for themselves. So those are three types and you can have all three. I just want people to really know what is your strength? Like? What is your strong. Suit in those three. And if you need to gradually build up because you don't have loads and loads of members you're, cause you'll have a lot more in a membership of a thousand people than you will have 10, because if you've got [00:24:00] 10, people are getting access to you and they're getting. Handheld a bit more. So you don't have to put in all the things that a thousand person membership would need to be successful because they're going to be a little more on their own and lost. If you don't have a few things, they can access in different ways. So that that's really just. How do you focus on the one thing that you will do consistently every month? Even if he changed like times call times and types of content and all that, it's just rather than feeling you have to stuff everything in and have everything firing because it doesn't have to, like I said, I don't mind because I have calls and I do. Guest experts and like, I've got good content in there. I don't feel like if everyone doesn't want to chit chat in the community all the time, I'm not necessarily going to put a prompt in every single day. Sarah: I love that. I just started a a Trello board for our community because I just really, really did not want to do Facebook, did [00:25:00] not want to do mighty networks. Did not want to do discord or slack. And yet the community wanted a way to be able to engage, which makes sense in between the calls. But I made it very clear that this is not going to be the place where I'm going to ask, you know, what did you have for dinner lights tonight, or what's your favorite, blah, blah, blah. And. And my people, they know that about we're all the same. We're like, no, no, no, we want a focused thing. And so Trello works really well for that. And I think that's also what you're telling your clients. It's like, choose what you're already good at and, and, and yeah. Make that even better. So Lisa: yeah, like to try to find what you like, if you don't want to be on Facebook. Don't get on Facebook unless you've got something so obvious that if you not on Facebook, because it's like, your interest is like people who love certain kinds of dogs that do certain kind of dog things, and you want to have everyone in the whole world [00:26:00] be part of it that you know, that, that don't have a lot of technical savvy. Sarah: So difficult on LinkedIn. Lisa: Yeah. Or, well, there's not, I don't even know if there's a proper group. Yeah, there is. But it doesn't work very well. You do want people just to show up and consume the content. And so. Even if I have a, have a slot community and it works really well, cause it's really organized. I love how organized it is. Probably similar to Trello in that it's kind of got some linear Ines to it and it's like, it's not I don't expect everyone to get all their information from there. I still email everybody every week with, and they all open their emails and that's still going to be probably. Full stop. Like every, every week, if you really want to know what's going on and don't want to miss something, then that going to go there. So I think that's just how you can run it until conversations can begin more organically and then you don't even have to be prompting. So if the goal isn't to get everyone to connect and get to know each other, On and [00:27:00] communicate regularly. If the goal is a different transformation, like I want you to be successful in this thing, then it doesn't have to be your number one focus because that's going to overwhelm you. And it's also going to overwhelm you. If you feel like people should be chatting it all the time when there's, when there's not very many people. I mean, there's a, there's a number that. One of my members actually shared with me. She said something about the rule of 99 and one you'll have one ambassador, really engaged person. Who's always in there and always talking, you'll have nine who are in, in and out, and then you'll have 90 who are alert and they're still not having small membership. That's what your probability of engagement is going to be. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing. What I love, what you're saying is like don't overwhelm yourself thinking that a membership site has to have thousands and thousands of videos already as you start. Right? Because obviously if we look [00:28:00] at some of the big membership sites that's. Lisa: There's history, right? There's a lot in there from the past. Sarah: Yeah. And so people can feel like, oh my God, I can never start one because I don't have all of this content. And so you're saying, well, then don't make it a content-based membership. Lisa: Well, or start with them. Like I actually am. We just have this call yesterday. And I actually have had couple content calls this week with bootcamp, people and members of the proper membership club. And. I like, I just say, look, layer, like, start with them. Like if you have month one, and you're just starting with your founding members and deliver a month of one, and if you have months to, because you're standing, starting with your foundational content, the things that are the most important, the things that you know best and that you believe people need first. So rather than opening it up like a. Choose your own adventure. I would say, look at it more like where do they need to begin and how do you take them together on it rather [00:29:00] than feel like you have a smorgasbord? Because I don't think people really want to dabble and you know, let's face it. Most things people can learn for free somewhere out there on the internet. So they're paying you for curation. They're paying you for a system to some extent to say like, or even just. Helping them remind them that they need to go back to the beginning. Like I always say that a lot of my members it's like, can you just go back to module one because they're still not doing the module one. Like they still won't go back to the foundation course or they're there. So I'm always reminding them to go back to that thing that they last said that they would do if there's. Launched their membership yet. Right. So I think that's where we have the, they're paying us in a way for that guide for that. It, it guidance. And even if we are like a large membership, there's still ways that people can ask I'm stuck. Where should I go? That's part of the benefit. And that is really the value rather than going out there on the internet and scouring it and trying to piece together a plan. Right. So I think that's where we don't. We can start just with. [00:30:00] Hey, here's a, I have a foundational course. That's nine modules. So I've started two cohorts of here's what we're going to work through this together week by week. And that's been how two enrollments worked in my membership program. I walked them through the modules and that was really helpful for them. So I think that's where you don't have to do that. But I also feel like if people are starting and you just have a hundred things, They're not going to want to go through a hundred things, right? Sarah: Yeah. It's just too, again, it's just overwhelmed. It's like, oh, where do I start? Why did I sign up for this I'm feeling? Lisa: Yeah. They get one thing a month. They get one focus a month that they're not paying unless, you know, well, and actually even at high ticket, depends on the value of that to them, but I, you don't have to give them. You know, a thousand dollars of value in the first month, if you're charging less than that. So you have to realize that that if it's a hundred dollars a month, then it's 10 months and they can pick up as they go. [00:31:00] And, and then if they have a founding members rate there, they're paying less than say someone else who comes in later and might be paying double per month. And they might have access to some past things, but they probably won't even go in there and look for it. I mean, people still don't even know how to get around mine and I don't have that much in there, but they still, I have the still direct them to what I think I want them to watch. Yeah. Or like, or looking at. Yeah, no, they, Sarah: they come for the ongoing, they don't come for Lisa: all this stuff. That's exactly. Most people that don't have the capacity to, to look through everything. Yeah. Otherwise you're video1044023036: spending Sarah: your time managing, say, you know, pointing people to where it is and that can. Cumbersome once you have a lot of members, Lisa: I end dimension. So you just need a really good roadmap when you start Sarah: or, or a help desk or Lisa: something. Yeah, absolutely. That's a good problem that we can deal with. Good problems. We just want to make sure that. We are not operating that way when we're not that big. Sarah: [00:32:00] Yeah. Let's talk about how do you keep members because, you know, first, I guess we're struggling. Okay. How do we get members? But really what we're wanting to do is it's a sustainable concept that people aren't going to stay and, you know, hopefully for a year, maybe even longer, depending on, I guess, depending on the type of membership site But how do we get people Lisa: to stay? So to me, it's a funny one. I really just think it comes down to be awesome and be a great deal, like really good value. Like people, whatever you're offering does need to be a good value exchange for them. I mean, people who use things even in a small way, Or appreciate that the resources there when they need it, like they will, they will stay because it's, it's a good value. And so that's why people often do a founding member rate because people are like, Hmm, [00:33:00] I might not use this next month, but I'm still paying half the price of people now or something like that. And they're like, okay. So if I skip every other month of actually doing something, it's still worth it to me or. They get on a call, they learn one really, really important thing that changes how they do things. And that ROI is huge. So I think first of all, you'd know who your ideal member is, and you have to be clear that if someone, like, for example, someone's in the profit membership club and they, they changed their mind about memberships or they're like, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to, this is not, not long, no longer my goal or I'm, I'm putting off indefinitely then. There, and then why would they stay? I mean, although if they're growing any kind of business, I still can help them in a way, but in their head they're like, oh, I'm here to learn about memberships there for, even if I'm learning about marketing and positioning and all the things you need to do for any program, it still means that it doesn't feel like it's the right fit for them. Or they're just [00:34:00] like, yeah. Or they're just taking a massive break and they're just going back to a one-on-one client. So they don't have to do any marketing or anything. So the point of that is that yes, I've picked that lane and saying I help membership business owners and people who want to launch them. That clarity brings people to me, easier her, like I'm here because I want this, this outcome. And then the trade-off is that you are not attractive to those who don't want that outcome, even though you could help them. But then that would water down the conversations and the focus and the sharing. And you just get really clear on who you help and what the transformation is. And then. That grows naturally because it's easy to share something that's easy to share. Right? So if you're clear about who you help and in what way, and you always talk to those people and you always produce content that would appeal to those people and et cetera, that's how you, that's, how you be relevant to them. And if [00:35:00] you're, if you're not. Sorry. It's the positioning really? That, yeah, all the positioning. I think it's all the positioning. And then as your membership matures, it is a little bit about the community and connection, because there are people who will stay because they just love you, or they love the other people they've met and they want to stay connected. And it is the mentor. There's some kind of mentorship connect community thing that is working for them. Helping them. Do more, better or less, you know, in an easier way. Like, it just, it does add value to them and you know, that stuff is priceless. Right. And people will know it. They will know if they're like, oh, I've networked. Or I met somebody and they, they, they gave me an opportunity that led to a client. And now I've paid for my membership for the year. I mean that, those relationships really do matter. So I think that that's why I'm not into all the tactics. Like you can do this thing and get them to do this [00:36:00] thing. I just want people to stay because it's the right for them, right? Yeah. And I want people who are committed, honestly. Like I, I know not, everyone's always committed to their goals all the time, but when you do get a group of people who are really committed and are following through and are taking action, you've got a really great place to be. And that's really the foundation of what you want for your membership. When you start our. Even if it builds slowly, you build that fire that can actually last and sustain because it keeps, you know, people who keep getting, like, adding to it who are, are, are also committed and then has sort of a life force of its own. That people can, that will see and feel, even if they're just lurking and saying, I'm not doing this thing yet, but I want to because look at all these other people, so they might be there for inspiration. Yeah. That brings me Sarah: to another question because usually the membership model is like pay monthly and [00:37:00] cancel whenever you want. Yeah. And that kind of contradicts to committed, you know, it's like, yes, we want you to commit, but yes, you can also cancel every month. So do we have to follow this model where it's like, you can cancel anytime or, or do we say we'd love for you to stay for three months at least, or, Lisa: or, yeah, I, I would, I mean, I even suggest that when you're launching. I suggest that because sometimes it might take a while to get your feet, you know, grounded and with what you're offering and how, and learning a few things. Then you do need to have a few months where you can. Yeah, a little bit of stuff worked out. So I would, yeah, I would, I would agree that it's good to get people. Like I had a few times where it was three months to start and then some people do a year. I mean, some people do longer and I think that's fine too. I think it's up to you. Because, yes, you'll get more committed. You'll get less. Like looky-loos like, you will get less people [00:38:00] who aren't committed and they won't join and then you just get more people. So there is a religious that trade off about what is the membership about to you anyway? Is it access to anyone at any time for when they need it or is it, is it really meant for people who are. Committed only and in a smaller group. And I think that's what you just have to decide. And what, what matters to you? Like what, what, and how kind of big your, your reaches and how much you're charging? Like could you, you know, could, could you sustain it if you didn't have some people here joining for maybe three to six months? Yeah, it's a, it's a personal choice. I mean, what really, to me, divine defines a membership is that you lose access when you cancel. So regardless you cancel you, you don't have the materials on like a course that you might have. And you've got lifetime access to it, which I think everything's starting to change a little bit on that. [00:39:00] And a lot of people are letting me losing, I guess, still stopping access to things when the time is up and they want them to keep paying, have continued access. So a lot of things are changing to subscription in general. However you know, you just decide on, on, what's going to get you a secure foothold to get started. And if you have a group of founding members and they're paying an irresistible price, that'll also keep them. Sarah: I do think, yeah, obviously everything is going much more in the direction of subscription, but living in the times that we are in right now, people are also kind of starting to count their subscriptions because you know, used to be new, to have a subscription now is like, Everything is subscription. And so people are really more mindful. Okay. Again, do I get value out of Lisa: this? Am I using Sarah: it? Yeah. So, Lisa: so you're, again, retention is about getting people to use it. Yeah. And, and, [00:40:00] and like, there's only so much within your control because if they're just not interested in the results any more than there. Then then they shouldn't be using it. And if they still are interested in the result, how do you bring them back in and remind them? What's what's here. That's, that's the communication piece. And it is okay to check in once in a while, if you haven't heard from a member and you're still small and be like, Hey, do you want to do a quick chat? I mean, I did one recently with someone who hadn't joined the community and hadn't showed up in a call and she's like, I've been really busy working in my. And in her career and, but I've been working through the course and I loving it and she's built through the whole court and she went through it kind of she's in academia very academically and went through all the modules. And I had no idea. So we make assumptions that people aren't using it to when they actually are. They're just not, we're just not seeing them use it. Yeah. Sarah: That's funny. Cause I. Community to humane marketing circle is more about community and it's a think tank to figure out and talk to each other about [00:41:00] what works in marketing and what doesn't work. So and it's interesting that, you know, there's members that are never on the call. And yet I see, because I use Kajabi, I see that they're watching all the replays and one of them is sending me an email every time after the call. And she's like, I get a lot out of it, you know, even though I'm not on the live calls, so you can't assume what people want. So if it works for Lisa: her, it works for me. Exactly, exactly. That's that's the other thing we have to recognize is that we can. We're not as in much control as another program where it's like, here's the, the set out, like we're going to meet three times a month. This is the time everyone has to show up because it's a mastermind. We're not running that kind of program. So we do have to let go a little bit and trust that people are going to self lead because that's what they're there for and make decisions that are right for them. And so that's so really just becomes about who are the people who are in the community. Sitting on the fence, not taking [00:42:00] action because they need, they need a little bit more guidance than that's. That's really who you have an ability to help, because really you do want people to get results too. You don't want people that are in there and happy to also keep paying, but then doing nothing. I mean, you do the swine. It's like, it's their choice, but the more of them that you can actually start to. Take action and be grateful for it and be good examples. That's really how you will become successful naturally in this model. Sarah: Yeah. It nurtures you as the host of the, of the membership or Lisa: the community. Totally, totally. Sarah: So good. I'm looking at the time and I think it's starting to get time to wrap up, even though I have tons of other questions we might have to do around two Lisa: anytime. Sarah: Yeah. Do you, do you tell them. Where people can find you maybe have something free that you want to [00:43:00] share, but tell us all about, Lisa: yeah. Well, the coolest thing I have is an app. So I have a scaling deep app, which you can go onto and get all the, like, get all the trainings that I have scattered around the globe. There there's some of them aren't even available. So there's a scaling team app that is, is there that you can access that. Cool stuff. And if you're not an app person, you can go head on over to my website, scaling deep.com. I have like a, a free download on how to set up, how to scale your business with a membership site. You can get that at scaling gate.com/playbook and yeah. Or just come find me. I've got a Facebook group. I've got all kinds of ways, but you can see all that. If you land on my homepage on my website. Wonderful. Sarah: I have one last question and that's what are you grateful for today or this week? Lisa: I think I just grateful right now for my energy because of how to an energetic week running the bootcamp. And I've just felt really good. I'm grateful that I've feel like I'm in purpose and I've been having so much fun [00:44:00] that I've been focused on serving sustainably in a way, and also building assets. So I'm less, I'm less, I'm doing it for reasons of like needing to meet. Hit certain goals or certain outcomes. So just really feeling grateful for the, for the momentum I'm creating in my business. And the trust that I know that things are going in the right direction, then that's just a really good feeling. We don't always have it. So I'm super grateful for that. Sarah: Yeah. And that's such a good, last word on, on memberships because we can get lost in those launches and just focus on numbers and how many new members do I need. So I think it's such a beautiful way to wrap this up and say, well, yeah, Enjoy the energy and, and enjoy serving the people who are there. So Lisa: we got a lot of the work or else we, yeah, it's not the right word. Sarah: Amazing. Thank you so much for being a guest on the humane marketing podcast. Lisa: You're so welcome. Thanks for having me.[00:45:00] [00:46:00]
How do you handle stressful situations? Everyone's built a little different — some people can take their hits on the chin and come out smiling. But not everyone can take those hits. The pandemic has taken its mental toll on so many people. Others might still be struggling with past traumas and dealing with anxiety. Their situation keeps them in a state of constant worry and hypervigilance. That state of mind doesn't only harm their mental and emotional health — it can make them sick and more prone to physical diseases. More than ever, it's time to begin mental healing from past traumas, so we can better cope with our daily stresses. Dr Don Wood joins us again in this episode to talk about the TIPP program and how it facilitates mental healing. He explains how our minds are affected by traumas and how these can affect our health and performance. If we want to become more relaxed, we need to learn how to go into the alpha brainwave state. Since mental healing is not an immediate process, Dr Don also shares some coping strategies we can use in our daily lives. If you want to know more about how neuroscience can help you achieve mental healing, then this episode is for you. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how trauma can put you in a constant state of survival and affect your performance and daily life. Understand that it's not your fault. Achieving mental healing will require you to learn how to go into an alpha brainwave state. Discover healthy habits that will keep you from entering survival mode. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: #183: Sirtuin and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #199: How Unresolved Trauma Prevents You from Having a Healthy Life With Dr Don Wood Check out Dr Don Wood's books: Emotional Concussions: Understanding How Our Nervous System is Affected By Events and Experiences Throughout Our Life You Must Be Out Of Your Mind: We All Need A Reboot Connect with Dr Don Wood: Inspired Performance Institute I Facebook I LinkedIn Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. 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Episode Highlights [06:05] The Pandemic-Induced Mental Health Crisis The pandemic forced many people into a state of freeze mode, not the typical fight or flight response. As people get out of freeze mode, there will be a rise in mental health issues. Teenagers are robbed of the opportunity to develop social and communication skills during this time. [08:24] How Dr Don Wood Started Studying Traumas Dr Don's wife grew up in a household with an angry father who instilled fear. He used to think that she would be less anxious when they started to live together, but she struggled with mental healing. She had an inherent belief that misfortune always follows good things. Her traumas and fears also led to a lot of health issues. She also was hyper-vigilant, which she used as a protective mechanism. However, this prevented her from being relaxed and happy. A person's environment can dictate whether they go into this hyper-vigilant state, but genetics can also play a factor. [15:42] How Trauma Affects the Brain Trauma is caused by a dysregulation of the subconscious. If your brain is in survival mode, it will access data from the past and create physiological responses to them. These emotions demand action, even when it is no longer possible or necessary. This dysregulation prevents you from living in the present and initiating mental healing. In this state, people can be triggered constantly, which interferes with their day-to-day life. [21:07] The Role of the Subconscious Your conscious mind only takes up around 5%, while the subconscious takes up 95%. Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real and imagined. In survival mode, people will keep replaying the past and think about different scenarios and decisions. You're left stuck because the subconscious mind only lives in the now. It does not have a concept of time. This process is the brain trying to protect you. [25:04] What Happens When You're Always in Survival Mode Being in survival mode will take a physical toll since it's constantly activating the nervous system, increasing cortisol and adrenaline. When you're in this state, your body and mind cannot work on maintenance and recovery. It is more focused on escaping or fixing perceived threats. Over time, this will affect your immune system and make you sick. To truly achieve mental healing, you need to get to the root cause of your problems. However, you also have to develop coping strategies to manage your day-to-day activities. [30:18] Changing Your Brainwave State Traumatic events are usually stored in a beta brainwave state. Changing your response to traumatic events starts with going into an alpha brainwave state. The beta state is usually from 15 - 30 hertz, while the alpha is lower at 7 - 14 hertz. Anything below that is the delta state, usually when you're in deep meditation or sleep. People who have trouble sleeping are usually in that beta state, which keeps processing information. It's only in the delta state that your mind and body start the maintenance phase. This phase helps not only with mental healing but also physical recovery. Learn more about Lisa and Dr Don's personal experiences with these brainwave states in the full episode! [34:30] Mental Healing and Physical Recovery Starts with the Brain Recovery is about genetics and the environment. In sleep, your mind will always want to deal with the threats first. It can only get to the delta state once it finishes processing these dangers. Your risk for developing sickness and depression rises if your brain can't do maintenance. Living in the beta state will make it difficult to focus. [41:40] It's Not Your Fault If you have a lot of trauma, you are predisposed to respond in a certain way. It's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with your mind; you just experienced different things from others. Dr Don likened this situation to two phones having a different number of applications running. Predictably, the device that runs more applications will have its battery drained faster. [44:05] Change How You Respond Working on traumas requires changing the associative and repetitive memory, which repeats responses to threats. You cannot change a pattern and get mental healing immediately—it will take time. That's the reason why Dr Don's program has a 30-day recovery phase dedicated to changing your response pattern. Patterns form because the subconscious mind sees them as a beneficial way of coping with traumas. This function of your subconscious is how addictions form. [47:04] Why We Can Be Irrational The subconscious lives only in the present. It does not see the future nor the past. It will want to take actions that will stop the pain, even if the actions are not rational. At its core, addiction is all about trying to stop the pain or other traumatic experiences. Survival mode always overrides reason and logic because its priority is to protect you. [50:57] What to Do When You're in Survival State In this survival state, we're prone to movement or shutting down completely. The brain can stop calling for emotions to protect you, and this is how depression develops. When in a depressed state, start moving to initiate mental healing. Exercise helps burn through cortisol and adrenaline. Once your mind realises there's no action required for the perceived threats, the depression will lift. [53:24] Simple Actions Can Help There's nothing wrong with you. Don't just treat the symptom; go straight to the issue. Don't blame genetics or hormonal imbalances for finding it hard to get mental healing. Find out why. Also, seek things that will balance out your hormones. These can be as simple as walking in nature, taking a break, and self-care. [56:04] How to Find a Calming Symbol Find a symbol that will help you go back into the alpha brainwave state. Lisa shares that her symbol is the sunset or sunrise, and this helps her calm down. Meanwhile, Dr Don's are his home and the hawk. Having a symbol communicates to all parts of your brain that you're safe. [59:58] The Power of Breathing Stress may lead to irregular breathing patterns and increase your cortisol levels and blood sugar. Breathing exercises, like box breathing, can also help you calm down because the brain will take higher oxygen levels as a state of safety. If you're running out of oxygen, your brain will think you're still in danger. Make sure that you're breathing well. It's also better to do nasal breathing. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘The purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run.' ‘People who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying “Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.”' ‘I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse.' ‘There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that.' ‘That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life, and everything else.' ‘I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong.' ‘If there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic because it's designed to protect you.' About Dr Don Dr Don Wood, PhD, is the CEO of The Inspired Performance Institute. Fueled by his family's experiences, he developed the cutting-edge neuroscience approach, TIPP. The program has produced impressive results and benefited individuals all over the world. Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors achieve mental healing from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Meanwhile, Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Down Syndrome to finish an Ironman competition. Interested in Dr Don's work? Check out The Inspired Performance Institute. You can also reach him on Facebook and LinkedIn. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn steps to mental healing. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Transcript Of Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have Dr Don Wood who, you may recognise that name if you listen to the podcast regularly. He was on the show maybe a couple of months ago, and he is the CEO and founder of The Inspired Performance Institute. He's a neuroscience guy, and he knows everything there is to know about dealing with trauma and how to get the mind back on track when you've been through big, horrible life events or some such thing. Now, when we talked last time, he shared with me his methodology, the work that he's done, how he can help people with things like addictions as well and depression, and just dealing with the stresses of life, whether they be small stressors or big stressors. We got to talking about my situation and the stuff that I've been through in the last few years, which many of you listeners know, has been pretty traumatic. From losing babies, to losing my dad, to mom's journey. So I was very privileged and lucky to have Dr Don Wood actually invite me to do his program with him. We share today my stories, how I went with that, and he explains a little bit more in-depth the neuroscience behind it all and how it all works. So if you're someone who's dealing with stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression, if you want to understand how the brain works and how you can help yourself to deal with these sorts of things, then you must listen to the show. He's an absolutely lovely, wonderful person. Now, before we get over to the show, I just love you all to do a couple of things for me. If you wouldn't mind doing a rating and review of the show on Apple, iTunes or wherever you listen to this, that would be fantastic. It helps the show get found. We also have a patron program, just a reminder if you want to check that out. Come and join the mission that we're on to bring this wonderful information to reach to people. Also, we have our BOOSTCAMP program starting on the first of September 2021. If you listen to this later, we will be holding these on a regular basis so make sure you check it out. This is an eight-week live webinar series that my business partner, my best buddy, and longtime coach Neil Wagstaff and I will be running. It's more about upgrading your life and helping you perform better, helping you be your best that you can be, helping you understand your own biology, your own neuroscience, how your brain works, how your biology works. Lots of good information that's going to help you upgrade your life, live longer, be happier, reduce stress, and be able to deal with things when life is stressful. God knows we're all dealing with that. So I'd love you to come and check that out. You can go to peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp. I also want to remind you to check us out on Instagram. I'm quite active on Instagram. I have a couple of accounts there. We have one for the podcast that we've just started. We need a few more followers please on there. Go to @pushingthelimits for that one on Instagram, and then my main account is @lisatamati, if you want to check that one out. If you are a running fan, check us out on Instagram @runninghotcoaching and we're on Facebook under all of those as well. So @lisatamati, @pushingthelimits, and @runninghotcoaching. The last thing before we go over to Dr Don Wood, reminder check out, too, our longevity and anti-aging supplement. We've joined forces with Dr Elena Seranova and have NMN which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, and this is really some of that cooler stuff in the anti-aging, and longevity space. If you want to check out the science behind that, we have a couple of podcasts with her. Check those out and also head on over to nmnbio.nz. Right. Over to the show with Dr Don Wood. Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a dear, dear friend again who's back on the show as a repeat offender, Dr Don Wood. Dr Don Wood: I didn't know I was a repeat offender. Oh, I'm in trouble. That's great. Lisa: Repeat offender on the show. Dr Don, for those who don't know, was on the show. Dr Don is a trauma expert and a neuroscientist, and someone who understands how the brain works, and why we struggle with anxiety, and depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. We did a deep dive last time, didn't we, into the program that you've developed. Since then, everyone, I have been through Dr Don's pro program. He kindly took me through it. Today, I want to unpack a little bit of my experiences on the other side, s the client, so to speak. Talk about what I went through. Dr Don, so firstly, welcome to the show again. How's it all over in your neck of the woods? Dr Don: Well, it's awesome over here in Florida. COVID is basically non-existent. Oh, yeah. Well, in terms of the way people are treating it, that's for sure. Very few people you see in masks now, everything is pretty much wide open. You can't even get reservations at restaurants. It's unbelievable. The economy is exploding here. There's so much going on. Yeah, I know the rest of the country, a lot of different places are still struggling with whether they're going to put mask mandates back on and all this kind of stuff but Florida seems to be doing very well. Lisa: Well, I'm very glad to hear that because any bit of good news in this scenario is good because this keeps coming and biting everybody in the bum. Dr Don: I know. Especially down there. You guys are really experiencing quite severe lockdowns and things, right? Lisa: Yeah and Australia, more so. Australia has gone back into lockdown. I've got cousins in Sydney who are experiencing really hard times in Melbourne and we've stopped the trans-Tasman bubble at the moment. Trans-Tasman was open for business, so to speak, with Australians being able to come to New Zealand without quarantine, but it's been shut down again. So yeah, we're still struggling with it, and the economy is still struggling with it but actually, in our country, we've been very lucky that we've managed to keep it out because they've had such tight controls on the borders. But yes, it's a rocky road for everybody, and it's not over yet, I think. Dr Don: Looks like it's going to continue, and that's creating a lot of stress. Lisa: Oh, yeah, perfect. Dr Don: This is what I've said. I think we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues because a lot of people have gone into freeze mode as opposed to fight or flight. Some people are in fight or flight. You're hearing about that on airlines: people just losing it, and getting mad, and fighting with flight attendants and passengers, and you see a lot of that. But I think that's obviously not the majority. I think most people are in that mode of just get through this, do what they ask, don't cause any waves, and just get this over with. So that's a freeze mode, and I think when people come out of freeze, you're going to start to see some of these mental health issues. Lisa: Yes, I totally agree and I'm very concerned about the young people. I think that being hit very hard especially in the places that have the hardest lockdowns. If you're going through puberty, or you're going through teenagehood, or even the younger kids, I think, they're going to be affected massively by this because it's going to be a big before and after sort of situation for them. Dr Don: And just the social. When we were teenagers, social was everything, I suppose. Learning how to communicate, and talk, and get along with other people, and good and bad. There were always struggles in school with learning how to get along with everybody but that is just sort of squashed. It's going to be fascinating to see when they do a study on the real true results of this pandemic. It's going to be a lot different than many people think. Lisa: Yes, and I think the longer you ignore stuff, is we're going to see it's not just the people are unfortunately dying and being very sick from the actual COVID, but the actual effects on society are going to be big. That's why talking about the topic that we're talking about today, dealing with anxiety, and dealing with stress, and being able to actually fix the problem instead of just managing the problem, which I know you're big on. So let's dive in there, and let's recap a little bit. Just briefly go back over your story, how you got to here, and what your method sort of entails in a helicopter perspective. Dr Don: Yeah, basically how I developed this was really because of the life that my wife led first and my daughter. My wife grew up in a very traumatic household with a very angry father that created tremendous fear. So everybody was... Just constant tension in that household. When I met her, I just realised how this was so different than my life. My life was in the complete opposite: very nurturing, loving. So I didn't experience that. I thought when she started moving in and we got married at 19, we were very young, that this would all stop for her. Because now, she's living in my world, my environment, and it didn't. She just kept continuing to feel this fear that something was going to go wrong and nothing is going to go right. She struggled with enjoying things that were going well. I would say to her, 'We've got three beautiful children. We've got a beautiful home. Everything's going pretty good; nothing's perfect. You have your ups and downs, but it's generally a pretty good life.' She couldn't enjoy that because as a child, whenever things were going okay, it would quickly end and it would end, sometimes violently. So the way she was protecting herself is don't get too excited when things are going well because you'll get this huge drop. So that was what she was doing to protect herself. I just had a lady come in here a couple months ago, who very famous athlete is her husband: millionaires, got fame, fortune, everything you want, but she had a lot of health issues because of trauma from her childhood. When I explained that to her, she said, 'That's me. Your wife is me. I should be enjoying this, and I can't get there. I want to. My husband can't understand it.' But that's really what was going on for her too. Lisa: So it's a protective mechanism, isn't it? To basically not get too relaxed and happy because you've got to be hyper-vigilant, and this is something that I've definitely struggled with my entire life. Not because I had a horrible childhood. I had a wonderful childhood but I was super sensitive. So from a genetic perspective, I'm super sensitive. I have a lot of adrenaline that makes me code for, for want of a better description, I'm very emotionally empathetic but it also makes me swung by emotional stimuli very much. So someone in my environment is unhappy, I am unhappy. I'm often anxious and upset. My mum telling me she took me to Bambi. You know the movie Bambi? From Disneyland? She had to take me out of theatre. I was in distraught. That's basically me. Because Bambi's mother got killed, right? I couldn't handle that as a four-year-old, and I still can't handle things. Things like the news and stuff, I protect myself from that because I take everything on. It's even a problem and in our business service situations because I want to save the world. I very much take on my clients' issues. I'm still learning to shut gates afterwards, so to speak, when you're done working with someone so that you're not constantly... So there's a genetic component to this as well. Dr Don: Absolutely. So yours was coming from a genetic side but that's very, very common amongst people who have had a traumatic childhood. They're super sensitive. Lisa: Yes. Hyper-vigilant. Dr Don: Hyper-vigilant. That was my wife. She was constantly looking for danger. We'd come out of the storage and go: 'Can you believe how rude that clerk was?' 'What do you mean she was rude? How was she rude?' ‘You see the way she answered that question when I asked that, and then the way she stuffed the clothes in the bag?' And I'm like, 'Wow.' I never saw her like that. She was looking for it because that's how she protected herself because she had to recognise when danger was coming. So it was protection, and I hadn't experienced that so that made no sense to me; it made perfect sense to her. Lisa: Yeah, and if someone was rude to you, you would be just like, 'Well, that's their problem, not my problem, and I'm not taking it on.' Whereas for someone your wife and for me... I did have a dad who was a real hard, tough man, like old-school tough. We were very much on tenterhooks so when they came home, whether he was in a good mood today or not in a good mood. He was a wonderful, loving father but there was that tension of wanting to please dad. Mum was very calm and stable, but Dad was sort of more volatile and just up and down. It was wonderful and fun and other times, you'd be gauging all of that before he even walked in the door. That just makes you very much hyper-vigilant to everything as well. Then, you put on, on top of that, the genetic component. You've got things like your serotonin and your adrenaline. So I've got the problem with the adrenaline and a lack of dopamine. So I don't have dopamine receptors that stops me feeling satisfaction and... Well, not stops me but it limits my feeling of, 'Oh, I've done a good job today. I can relax.' Or of reward. And other people have problems, I don't have this one, but with a serotonin gene, which is they have dysregulation of their serotonin and that calm, and that sense of well-being and mood regulation is also up and down. While it's not a predisposition that you'll definitely going to have troubles because you can learn the tools to manage those neurotransmitters and things like nutrition and gut health and all that aspect. Because it's all a piece of that puzzle, but it's really just interesting, and it makes you much more understanding of people's differences. Why does one person get completely overwhelmed in a very trivial situation versus someone else who could go into war and come back and they're fine? What is it that makes one person? Then you got the whole actual neuroscience circuitry stuff, which I find fascinating, what you do. Can you explain a little bit what goes on? Say let's just pick a traumatic experience: Someone's gone through some big major trauma. What is actually going on in the brain again? Can we explain this a little bit? Dr Don: Yeah, this is one of the things that... When I did my research, I realised this is what's causing the dysregulation: is your subconscious your survival brain is fully present in the moment all the time. So everything in that part of our brain is operating in the present. which is what is supposed to be, right? They say that that's the key, that success and happiness is live in the present. Well, your survival brain does that. The problem comes in is that only humans store explicit details about events and experiences. So everything you've seen, heard, smelled, and touched in your lifetime has been recorded and stored in this tremendous memory system. Explicit memory. Animals have procedural memory or associative memory. We have that memory system too. So we have both. They only have procedural, associative. So they learn through repetition, and they learn to associate you with safety and love, but they don't store the details about it. But we store all the details about these events and experiences. So this is where this glitch is coming in. If you've got the survival brain, which is 95% of everything that's going on, operating in the present, accessing data from something that happened 10 years ago because something looks like, sounds like, smells like it again, it's creating a response to something that's not happening. It's looking at old data and creating a physiological response to it, and the purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run, to escape a threat. But there's no threat. It's just information about the threat. That disrupts your nervous system and then that creates a cascade of chemical reactions in your body because your mind thinks there's an action required. Lisa: This is at the crux of the whole system really, isn't it? This is this call for action to fix a problem that is in the past that cannot be fixed in the now. So if we can dive a little bit into my story, and I'm quite open on the show. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I was working with Dr Don, I've been through a very, very traumatic few years really. Lost my dad, first and foremost, last July, which was the biggest trauma of my life. And it was a very difficult process that we went through before he died as well. And there's a lift, as you can imagine, my brain in a state of every night nightmares, fighting for his life, he's dying over, and over, and over, and over again. Those memories are intruding into my daily life, whereas in anything and at any time, I could be triggered and be in a bawling state in the middle of the car park or the supermarket. Because something's triggered me that Dad liked to to buy or Dad, whatever the case was, and this was becoming... It's now a year after the event but everything was triggering me constantly. Of course, this is draining the life out of you and interfering with your ability to give focus to your business, to your family, to your friends, every other part of your life. I'd also been through the trauma of bringing Mum back from that mess of aneurysm that everyone knows about. The constant vigilance that is associated with bringing someone back and who is that far gone to where she is now, and the constant fear of her slipping backwards, and me missing something, especially in light of what I'd been through with my father. So I'd missed some things, obviously. That's why he ended up in that position and through his own choices as well. But this load, and then losing a baby as well in the middle, baby Joseph. There was just a hell of a lot to deal with in the last five years. Then, put on top of it, this genetic combination of a hot mess you got sitting before you and you've got a whole lot of trauma to get through. So when we did the process, and I was very, super excited to do this process because it was so intrusive into my life, and I realised that I was slowly killing myself because I wasn't able to stop that process from taking over my life. I could function. I was highly functional. No one would know in a daily setting, but only because I've got enough tools to keep my shit together. so to speak. But behind closed doors, there's a lot of trauma going on. So can you sort of, just in a high level, we don't want to go into the details. This is a four-hour program that I went through with Dr Don. What was going on there. and what did you actually help me with? Dr Don: So when you're describing those things that were happening to you, what was actually happening to your mind is it was not okay with any of that. It wanted it to be different, right? So it was trying to get you into a state of action to stop your father from dying: Do it differently. Because it kept reviewing the data. It was almost looking at game tape from a game and saying 'Oh, had we maybe run the play that way, we would have avoided the tackle here.' So what your mind was saying 'Okay, run that way.' Well, you can't run that way. This is game tape. Right? But your mind doesn't see it as game tape. It sees it as real now, so it's run that way. So it keeps calling you into an action. And especially with your dad because you were thinking about, 'Why didn't I do this?' Or 'Had I just done this, maybe this would have happened.' What your mind was saying is, 'Okay, let's do it. Let's do that.' What you just thought about. But you can't do that. It doesn't exist. It's information about something that happened but your mind sees it as real. That's why Hollywood have made trillions of dollars because they can convince you something on the screen is actually happening. That's why we cry in a movie or that's why we get scared in a movie. Because your mind, your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real or imagined. So that's actually happening. You were just talking about the movie with Bambi, right? When you were little. 'Why is nobody stopping this from happening?' So your mind was not okay with a lot of these things that were happening, and it kept calling you to make a difference. That's what I never understood my wife doing. That before I really researched this, my wife would always be saying, 'Don't you wish this hadn't have happened?' Or 'Don't you wish we hadn't done this?' What I didn't understand at the time, because I used to just get like, 'Okay, whatever.' She'd go, 'Yeah, but wouldn't it have been better?' She wanted to get me into this play with her, this exercise. Lisa: This is going on in her head. Dr Don: Because it's going on in her head, and she's trying to feel better. So she's creating these scenarios that would make her feel like, 'Well, if I had just done that, gosh that would have been nice, thinking about that life.' And her mind seeing that going, 'Oh, that would be nice. Well, let's do that. Yes.' So she was what if-ing her life. And it was something that she did very early as a child because that's how she just experienced something traumatic with her father. In her mind, she'd be going, 'Well, what if I had to just left 10 minutes earlier, and I had have escaped that?' Or 'What if I hadn't done this?' So that's what she was doing. It made no sense to me because I hadn't experienced her life, but that's what she was doing. Her mind was trying to fix something. It's never tried to hurt you. It was never, at any point, trying to make you feel bad. It was trying to protect you. Lisa: Its job is to protect you from danger and it sees everything as you sit in the now so it's happening now. I love that analogy of these... What was it? Two-thirds of the car or something and... Dr Don: So goat and snowflake? Lisa: Goat and snowflake. And they're going off to a meeting and they're late. And what does the goat says to snowflake or the other way around? Dr Don: So snowflake, which is your conscious mind, your logical reasonable part of your mind, there's only 5, says the goat 95%, which is your subconscious mind. Who runs into a traffic jam says, 'Oh, we're going to be late. We should have left 15 minutes earlier.' To which goat replies 'Okay, let's do it. Let's leave 15 minutes earlier because that would solve the problem.' Lisa: That analogy is stuck in my head because you just cannot... It doesn't know that it's too late and you can't hop into the past because it only lives in the now. This is 95% of how our brain operates. That's why we can do things like, I was walking, I was at a strategy meeting in Auckland with my business partner two days ago. We were walking along the road and he suddenly tripped and fell onto the road, right? My subconscious reacted so fast, I grabbed him right, and punched him in the guts. I didn't mean to do that but my subconscious recognised in a millimeter of a second, millionth of a second, that he was falling and I had to stop him. So this is a good side of the survival network: stopping and falling into the traffic or onto the ground. But the downside of it is that brain is operating only in the now and it can't... Like with my father, it was going 'Save him. Save him. Save him. Why are you not saving him?' Then that's calling for an action, and then my body is agitated. The cortisol level's up. The adrenaline is up, and I'm trying to do something that's impossible to fix. That can drive you to absolute insanity when that's happening every hour, every day. Dr Don: Then that's taking a physical toll on your body because it's activating your nervous system, which is now, the cortisol levels are going up, adrenaline, right? So when your mind is in that constant state, it does very little on maintenance. It is not worried about fixing anything; it's worried about escaping or fixing the threat, because that's the number one priority. Lisa: It doesn't know that it's not happening. I ended up with shingles for two months. I've only just gotten over it a few weeks ago. That's a definite sign of my body's, my immune system is down. Why is it down? Why can that virus that's been sitting dormant in my body for 40-something years suddenly decide now to come out? Because it's just becoming too much. I've spent too long in the fight or flight state and then your immune system is down. This is how we end up really ill. Dr Don: We get sick. I was just actually having lunch today with a young lady and she's got some immune system issues. And I said, 'Think about it like the US Army, US military is the biggest, strongest military in the world. But if you took that military and you spread it out amongst 50 countries around the world fighting battles, and then somebody attacks the United States, I don't care how big and strong that system was, that military system was. It's going to be weakened when it gets an attack at the homefront.' So that's what was happening. So all of a sudden, now that virus that it could fight and keep dormant, it lets it pass by because it's like, 'Well, we can let that go. We'll catch that later. Right now, we got to go on the offensive and attack something else.' Lisa: Yeah, and this is where autoimmune, like your daughter experienced... Dr Don: About the Crohn's? Yep. Lisa: Yep. She experienced that at 13 or something ridiculous? Dr Don: 14, she got it. Then she also got idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis which is another lung autoimmune disorder where the iron in the blood would just cause the lungs to release the blood. So her lungs just starts filling up with blood. They had no idea what caused it, that's the idiopathic part of it, and they just basically said, ‘There's no cure. She just needs to live close to a hospital because she'll bleed out if she has another attack.' Only 1 in 1.2 million people ever get that. So it's very rare so there's no research being done for it. They just basically say, ‘If you get it, live close to a hospital.' That's the strategy. Lisa: That's the way of fixing it. Dr Don: And so both of those are autoimmune, and ever since we've gone to the program, she's hasn't had a flare-up of either one of those. Because I think our system is directly now able to address those things. Lisa: Yeah, and can calm down. I think even people who haven't got post-traumatic stress like I've had or whatever, they've still got the day to day grind of life, and the struggle with finances, and the mortgage to be paid, and the kids to feed, and whatever dramas we're all going through. Like we talked about with COVID and this constant change that society is undergoing, and that's going to get faster and more. So this is something that we all need to be wary of: That we're not in this. I've taught and learned a lot about the coping and managing strategies, the breathing techniques, and meditation, the things, and that's what's kept me, probably, going. Dr Don: Those are great because they're... Again, that's managing it but it's good to have that because you've got to get to the root of it, which is what we were working on. But at the same time, if you don't have any coping, managing skills, life gets very difficult. Lisa: Yeah, and this is in-the-moment, everyday things that I can do to help manage the stress levels, and this is definitely something you want to talk about as well. So with me, we went through this process, and we did... For starters, you had to get my brain into a relaxed state, and it took quite a long time to get my brainwaves into a different place. So what were we doing there? How does that work with the brainwave stuff? Dr Don: Well, when we have a traumatic event or memory, that has been stored in a very high-resolution state. So in a beta brainwave state because all your senses are heightened: sight, smell, hearing. So it's recording that and storing it in memory in a very intense state. So if I sat down with you and said, 'Okay, let's get this fixed.' And I just started trying to work directly on that memory, you're still going to be in a very high agitated state because we're going to be starting to talk about this memory. So you're going to be in a beta brainwave state trying to recalibrate a beta stored memory. That's going to be very difficult to do. So what we do is, and that's why I use the four hours because within that first an hour and a half to two hours, we're basically communicating with the subconscious part of the brain by telling stories, symbols with metaphors, goat and snowflake, all the stories, all the metaphors that are built-in because then your brain moves into an alpha state. When it's in alpha, that's where it does restoration. So it's very prepared to start restoring. And then, if you remember, by the time we got to a couple of the traumatic memories, we only work on them for two or three minutes. Because you're in alpha, and so you've got this higher state of beta, and it recalibrates it into the same state that it's in. So if it's in alpha, it can take a beta memory, reprocess it in alpha, takes all the intensity out of it. Lisa: So these brain waves, these beta states, just to briefly let people know, so this is speed, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the speed at which the brain waves are coming out. So in beta, like you'd see on ECG or something, it's sort of really fast. I think there's a 40 day... Dr Don: It's 15 to 30 hertz. Lisa: 15 to 30 hertz and then if you're in alpha, it's a lot lower than that? Dr Don: 7 to 14. Lisa: 7 to 14, and then below that is sort of when you're going into the sleep phase, either deep meditative or asleep. Dr Don: You're dreaming. Because what it's doing in dreaming is processing. So you're between 4 and 7 hertz. That's why people who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying, 'Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.' That's where your nightmares are coming from. It was trying to get you into a processing to fix that. but it couldn't fix it. So it continues, and then when you go below 4 hertz, you go into delta. Delta is dreamless sleep and that's where the maintenance is getting done. Lisa: That's the physical maintenance side more than the... Dr Don: Physical maintenance. Yeah, because that's not processing what it experienced anymore. What it's really now doing is saying, 'Okay, what are the issues that need to be dealt with?' So if you're very relaxed and you've had a very... Like me, right? I played hockey, so I had six concussions, 60 stitches, and never missed a hockey game. The only reason now that I understand I could do that is because I'm getting two or three times more Delta sleep than my teammates were. Lisa: Physical recuperative sleep. Dr Don: Yeah, I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse. I didn't know that was going on with my friends. Nobody talked about it. I didn't see it in their homes, but they were all dealing with that. Lisa: So they are not able to get... So look, I've noticed since I've been through the program. My sleep is much better, and sometimes I still occasionally dream about Dad. But the positive dreams, if that makes sense. They're more Dad as he as he was in life and I actually think Dad's come to visit me and say, ‘Hi, give me a hug' rather than the traumatic last days and hours of his life, which was the ones that were coming in before and calling for that action and stopping me from having that restorative sleep. I just did a podcast with Dr Kirk Parsley who's a sleep expert, ex-Navy SEAL and a sleep expert that's coming out shortly. Or I think by this time, it will be out, and understanding the importance, the super importance of both the delta and... What is the other one? The theta wave of sleep patterns, and what they do, and why you need both, and what parts of night do what, and just realising...Crikey, anybody who is going through trauma isn't experiencing sleep is actually this vicious cycle downwards. Because then, you've got more of the beta brainwave state, and you've got more of the stresses, and you're much less resilient when you can't sleep. You're going to... have health issues, and brain issues, and memory, and everything's going to go down south, basically. Dr Don: That's why I didn't understand at the time. They just said 'Well, you're just super healthy. You heal really fast.' They had no other explanation for it. Now, I know exactly why. But it had nothing to do with my genetics. It had to do with my environment. Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way but to do that, we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us. Dr Don: That's, at the time, we just thought it was all, must have been genetics. But I realised now that it was environment as well. So maybe a genetic component to it as well, but then you take that and put that into this very beautiful, nurturing environment, I'm going to sleep processing in beta what I experienced that day and then my mind basically, at that point, is 'What do we need to work on? Not much. Let's go. Let's start now doing some maintenance.' Because it wants to address the top of item stuff first. What is it needs to be taken care of right now? Right? Those are the threats. Once it gets the threats processed, then it can then start working on the things that are going to be the more long-term maintenance. So then it'll do that. But if it never gets out of that threat mode, it gets out for very little time. Then, if you're getting 30 minutes of delta sleep at night and I'm getting two hours, it's a no-brainer to figure out why I would heal faster. Lisa: Absolutely, and this is independent of age and things because you've got all that that comes into it as well. Your whole chemistry changes as you get older and all this. There's other compounding issues as it gets more and more important that you get these pieces of the puzzle right. Do you think that this is what leads to a lot of disease, cancers, and things like that as well? There's probably not one reason. There's a multitude of reasons, but it's definitely one that we can influence. So it's worth looking at it if you've got trauma in your life. People were saying to me 'Oh my God, you don't look good.' When you start hearing that from your friends, your people coming up to you and going, 'I can feel that you're not right.' People that are sensitive to you and know you very well, and you start hearing that over and over, and you start to think, 'Shit, something's got real. Maybe I need to start looking at this.' Because it's just taking all your energy your way, isn't it, on so many levels. The restorative side and the ability to function in your life, and your work, and all of that, and that, of course, leads into depressive thoughts and that hyper-vigilant state constantly. That's really tiresome rather than being just chill, relax, enjoying life, and being able to... Like one of the things I love in my life is this podcast because I just get into such a flow state when I'm learning from such brilliant... Dr Don: You're in alpha. Lisa: I am. I am on it because this is, 'Oh. That's how that works.' And I just get into this lovely learning in an alpha state with people because I'm just so excited and curious. This is what I need to be doing more of. And less of the, if you'd see me half an hour ago trying to work out the technology. That's definitely not an alpha state for me. Dr Don: That's where they said Albert Einstein lived. Albert Einstein lived in alpha brainwave state. That's why information just float for him because there was no stress. He could then pull information very easily to float into. But if you're in a high beta brainwave state, there's too much activity. It has trouble focusing on anything because it's multiple threats on multiple fronts. So when we have a traumatic event, that's how it's being recorded. If you remember, what we talked about was there's a 400 of a millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious mind seeing the information and it going to your consciousness. So in 400 millionths of a second, your subconscious mind has already started a response into an action even though your conscious mind is not even aware of it yet. Lisa: Yeah. Exactly what I did with rescuing my partner with the glass falling off the thing. I hadn't reached that logically. Dr Don: It's funny because that's one of the things that I talked about ,which is sort of, give us all a little bit of grace. Because if you've had a lot of trauma, you're going to respond a certain way. How could you not? If your mind's filtering into all of that, of course you're going to respond with that kind of a response because your mind is prone to go into that action very, very quickly. So we can give ourselves a little bit of grace in understanding that of course, you're going to do that, right? And not beat ourselves up. Because you know what I talked about with everybody, there's nothing wrong with anybody. There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that. So you had multiple... Think about we have a hundred percent of our energy on our phone when we wake up in the morning, right? Fully powered up. You fire the phone up and eight programs open up, right? And mine has one. Lisa: Yeah. You're just focusing on what you need to. Dr Don: Then noon comes, and you're having to plug your phone back in because you're out of energy. Lisa: That's a perfect analogy. You're just burning the battery. My all is a hundred windows open in the back of my brain that is just processing all these things and so now, I can start to heal. So having gone through this process with you, like you said, we worked on a number of traumatic experiences, and I went through them in my mind. And then you did certain things, made me follow with my eyes and track here, and my eyes did this, and then, we pulled my attention out in the middle of the story and things. That helped me stay in that alpha state, brainwave state as I probably now understand while I'm still reliving the experience. That's sort of taking the colour out of it so that it's now sort of in a black and white folder. Now, it can still be shared, and it hasn't taken away the sadness of... Dr Don: Because it is sad that these things happen but that's not the response for an action which is that fear or anger, right? That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop, because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life and everything else. Lisa: Wow, this is so powerful. Yeah, and it's been very, very beneficial for me and helped me deal. For me, it also unfolded. Because after the four hour period with you, I had audiotapes and things that are meditations to do every day for the next 30 days. What were we doing in that phase of the recovery? What were you targeting in those sort of sessions? Dr Don: So if you remember what we talked about, we have two memory systems. The explicit memory is what we worked on on that four hours. That's detail, events, and experiences. Once we get the mind processing through that, then we have to work on the same memory animals have, which is that associative repetitive memory. So you've built a series of codes on how to respond to threats, and that has come in over repetition and associations. So the audios are designed to start getting you now to build some new neural pathways, some new ways to respond because your mind won't switch a pattern instantly. It can switch a memory instantly, but a pattern is something that got built over a period of time. So it's like a computer. If I'm coding on my computer, I can't take one key to stop that code. I have to write a new code. Yeah, so what we're doing over the 30 days is writing new code. Lisa: Helping me make new routines and new habits around new neural pathways, basically. Dr Don: You don't have that explicit memory interfering with the pathways. Because now, it's not constantly pulling you out, going back into an action call. It's basically now able to look at this information and these codes that got built and say, 'Okay, what's a better way? So do we have a better way of doing it?' Or 'Show me that code. Write that code.' If that code looks safer, then your mind will adopt that new code. Lisa: This is why, I think for me, there was an initial, there was definitely... Like the nightmares stopped, the intrusive every minute, hour triggering stopped, but the process over the time and the next... And I'm still doing a lot of the things and the meditations. It's reinforcing new habit building. This is where... Like for people dealing with addictions, this is the path for them as well, isn't it? Dr Don: Yeah. Because I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains, and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong. It's literal. 'Did that stop the pain? Let's do that.' Because it's trying to protect you. So if you've now repeated it over and over, not only have you stopped the pain, but you've built an association with a substance that is seen as beneficial. Lisa: Because your brain sees it as medicine when you're taking, I don't know, cocaine or something. It sees it as essential to your life even though you, on a logical level, know that, ‘This is destroying me and it's a bad thing for me.' Your subconscious goes, 'No, this is a good thing and I need it right now.' Dr Don: Because it's in the present, when does it want the pain to stop? Now. So it has no ability to see a future or a past. Your subconscious is in the moment. So if you take cocaine, the logical part of your brain goes, 'Oh, this is going to create problems for me. I'm going to become addicted.' Right? Your subconscious goes, ‘Well, the pain stopped. We don't see that as a bad thing.' I always use the analogy: Why did people jump out of the buildings at 911? They weren't jumping to die. They were jumping to live because when would they die? Now, if they jump, would they die? No. They stopped the death. So even jumping, which logically makes no sense, right? But to the subconscious mind, it was going to stop the pain now. Lisa: Yeah, and even if it was two seconds in the future that they would die, your brain is going... Dr Don: It doesn't even know what two seconds are. Lisa: No. It has no time. Isn't it fascinating that we don't have a time memory or understanding in that part of the brain that runs 95% of the ship? Dr Don: It's like what Albert Einstein said, ‘There's no such thing as time.' So it's like an animal. If an animal could communicate and you say, 'What time is it?' That would make no sense to an animal. 'What do you mean? It's now.' 'What time is it now?' 'Now. Exactly.' Lisa: It's a construct that we've made to... Dr Don: Just to explain a lot of stuff, right? When something happens. Lisa: Yeah, and this is quite freeing when you think of it. But it does make a heck of a lot of sense. So people are not being destructive when they become drug addicts or addicted to nicotine, or coffee, or chocolate. They're actually trying to stop the pain that they're experiencing in some other place and fix things now. Even though the logical brain... Because the logical brain is such a tiny... Like this is the last part of our evolution, and it's not as fully... We can do incredible things with it at 5%. We've made the world that we live in, and we're sitting here on Zoom, and we've got incredible powers. But it's all about the imagination, being able to think into the future, into the past, and to make correlations, and to recognise patterns. That's where all our creativity and everything, or not just creativity, but our ability to analyse and put forth stuff into the world is happening. But in actual, we're still like the animals and the rest of it. We're still running at 95%, and that's where we can run into the problems with these two. Dr Don: Because you got two systems. You got a very advanced system operating within a very primitive system, and it hasn't integrated. It's still integrating, right? So if there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic, because it's designed to protect you. So there's no reason and logic that will come in if there's a survival threat. It's just going to respond the way it knows, does this Google search, 'What do we know about this threat? How do we know to protect ourselves, and we'll go instantly into survival mode.' Again, there's the reason and logic. Why would you jump out of a building, right? If you applied reason and logic, you wouldn't have jumped, right? People will say, 'Well, but they still jumped.' Yes, because reason and logic didn't even come into the process. It was all about survival. Lisa: Yeah. When the fire is coming in it was either... Dr Don: 'Am I going to die out now or I'm going to move and not die now?' Lisa: Yeah, and we're also prone to movement when we're in agitation and in an agitated state, aren't we? Basically, all of the blood and the muscles saying, 'Run, fight, do something. Take action.' Dr Don: That's why when people get into depression, it's the absence of those emotions. Lisa: Yeah, and people feel exhaustion. Dr Don: Yeah. The mind kept calling for an action using anger, for example, but you can't do the action because it's not happening, so it shuts down to protect you and stops calling for any emotion, and that's depression. So the key to get out of depression is actions. It's to get something happening. So in a lot of people who are depressed, what do I tell them to do? 'Start moving. Start exercising. Get out. Start doing things.' Right? Lisa: So I run ultras. Dr Don: Exactly. Perfect example, right? Lisa: Yeah, because I was. I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life at the time when I started doing ultra-marathons. To run was to quiet the pain and to run was to be able to cope and to have that meditative space in order to work through the stuff that was going on in my life. And I know even in my husband's life, when he went through a difficult time, that's when he started running. So running can be a very powerful therapeutic, because there is a movement, and you're actually burning through the cortisol and the adrenaline that's pouring around in your body. Therefore, sitting still and that sort of things was just not an option for me. I had to move. And it explains what, really. It's calling the movement. Like it was a movement because I couldn't fix the other thing. Dr Don: That's what they'll tell you to do. To get out of depression is to move. What I say is the way to get out of depression is to get your mind to resolve what it's been asking for. Lisa: It's going a little deeper. Dr Don: Yeah. So it's going down and saying, 'Okay, why has it been getting you angry and now, it shut down from the anger?' Because it's been trying to get you in your situation. 'Don't let Dad die. Don't let this happen.' Right? So because you couldn't do it, it just shuts down. Makes perfect sense but when we get to the resolution that there is no action required, there's no need for the depression anymore. The depression will lift because there's no more call for an action. Lisa: I can feel that in me, that call. Anytime that anything does still pop up, I sort of acknowledge the feeling and say, 'There is no call for action here. This is in the past. This is a memory.' So I do remind myself that when things do still pop up from time to time now, as opposed to hourly. I go, 'Hey, come back into the now. This is the now. That was the then that's calling for an action. This is why you're doing thing.' Even that understanding
In this special episode of the BG Ideas podcast, we present a roundtable discussion about the significance of Kamala Harris's appointment to Vice President, brought to us by the Center for Women and Gender Equity and the Division of Diversity and Belonging. Titled “Being the First but Making Sure You Are Not the Last.” This panel was moderated by CWGE director Dr. Kacee Ferrell Snyder and features three guests: Dr. Melissa Miller, Dr. Kathleen Kollman, and Dr. Lisa Dubose. Announcer:From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.Musical Intro:I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.Jolie:Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Big Ideas podcast brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies, and the director of ICS.Jolie:What follows is a round table discussion hosted by BGSU Center For Women and Gender Equity about the first woman and person of color to serve as the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. Titled Being The First, But Making Sure You Are Not The Last, this conversation has been adapted for the Big Ideas podcast.Jolie:This panel was moderated by CWGE Director, Dr. Kacee Ferrell Snyder and features three guests. Dr. Melissa Miller is Professor of Political Science at BGSU and a former ICS faculty fellow. Dr. Kathleen Coleman is a lecturer of English at the Ohio State University and a recent graduate of BGSU's American Culture Studies PhD program.Jolie:Dr. Lisa Dubose serves as the Director of Human Resources for Employee Relations and Professional Development at BGSU, where she also earned her doctorate in leadership studies, and she has taught for the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.Jolie:Due to the ongoing pandemic, this round table was recorded remotely via computer. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees.Jolie:Bowling Green State University is situated in the Great Black Swamp in the lower Great Lakes region. This land is the homeland of the Wyandotte, Kickapoo, Miami, Potawatomie, Ottawa, and multiple other Indigenous tribal nations, present and past, who were forcibly removed to and from the area.Jolie:We recognize these historical and contemporary ties and our efforts toward de-colonizing history. And we honor the Indigenous individuals and communities who have been living and working on this land from time immemorial. Kacee:Hello, thank you all so much for being with us. My name is Kacee Ferrell Snyder. I am the Director of the Center For Women in Gender Equity and the co-Director of the Center For Violence Prevention Education at BGSU. Today, we have some great guests with us to talk about our new Vice President, Kamala Harris, the first woman, and first woman of color into this role of Vice President of the United States.Kacee:In our program today, being the first, but making sure you are not the last, is presented by the Center For Women in Gender Equity and part of the Division of Diversity and Belonging. Our round table participants today are Dr. Melissa Miller, she is an expert on American politics with a specific focus on elections and voting behavior, women inAmerican politics, public opinion in the media. She teaches courses in American government, political parties, voter behavior, women in America, politics, and research methods. In 2016, Dr. Miller was named Master Teacher, which is the highest teaching award on campus.Kacee:Dr. Kathleen Coleman completed a PhD in American culture studies at Bowling Green State University in 2020, so congratulations. She's currently serving as a lecture of English at the Ohio State University. Her research focuses on representations of gender in film, television, literature, and other popular culture texts. Dr. Coleman is working on turning her dissertation, If She Were President: Fictional Representations of Female US Presidents in Film, Television, and Literature into a Monograph.Kacee:And Dr. Lisa E. Dubose is a duly certified Human Resources Administrator with nearly three decades of experience in public and private sector industries. She is currently employed as Director of Human Resources for Employee Relations and Professional Development at Bowling Green State University, where she also earned her EDD in leadership studies. She has instructed as an adjunct at two universities, which include teaching for the past two summers an accelerated master's level, strategic human resources course for the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.Kacee:So thank you all so much for being here for our round table discussion. I'm really excited to hear from all of you and hear your perspectives. So we're going to kind of dive right in here if we could. My first question, and I'm going to ask all of you to answer it. And Dr. Coleman, if you could start, share what your initial reaction was when you found out that a woman was nominated for the VP slot, and/or that there was a woman VP elect?Kathleen:Yeah, it was very exciting. I really didn't think that would happen. I was finishing my dissertation on a similar topic, right as the last woman who was still running for President dropped out of the race. I was literally finishing the last few bits of my manuscript that day that she dropped out. So to find out that Kamala had been picked as Joe Biden's VP choice, I was delighted.Kathleen: And then to have them actually win, I was also delighted, but again, I was surprised. All of my research was indicating that things were not necessarily going to go in that direction for this election cycle, because historically, we've had a lot of trouble getting women past a certain point in that process. And even the women have made it all the way to even the top of the ticket as a party nominee, a major party nominee, no woman had yet actually won the electoral college.Kathleen:So it was a sense of both joy and relief. And also, man, I'm going to have to revise a lot of stuff now in my work, but I'm happy to do that. I think it's a great reason to do that. So yeah.Kacee:Thank you, Dr. Miller?Melissa:Yeah. I actually have two responses. The first was when Joe Biden named Kamala Harris to be his VP nominee, which happened in August. I wasn't surprised, and I think that's kind of a cool thing, that in fact, there has been some normalization of women on a presidential ticket running for President. There had been two prior nominees for Vice President on a major party ticket.Melissa:And there had been a weeks long Veepstakes that I'd been following closely. Joe Biden had signaled that he would name a woman all the way back in March during a debate with Bernie Sanders, so I wasn't surprised. It was more like,"Oh, okay, good pick." I immediately went to my political science brain, "Okay. What does she bring to the ticket?" Et cetera, et cetera. Melissa:But then fast forward to the Saturday after the election which was the day that it became clear and was basically announced in the media that the Biden-Harris ticket had won. I was driving with my teenage son and I suddenly got this chill, and I turned to my son and I said, "I don't know if you understand what a big deal this is. We have our first woman VicePresident."Melissa:I started pumping my arm and my teenage son said, "Mom, you need to calm down or we're going to have to pull over." So for me, it was a little bit of a delay, but a real sense of the historic nature and a real turning of the page in women's political history in the United States.Kacee:Thank you, Dr. Dubose?Lisa:Yes. I mirror what my colleagues have stated. The level of excitement that I had was significant. It's significant because now there was representation of someone who lookedlike me, as a woman, as a Black woman, and as a researcher whose study was on the experiences of leadership advancement of African-American women. It told the different story, and just like my colleagues said, the information that I had gleaned over the time period where I was doing my research showed something else because that's what history dictated.Lisa:But this was a time of a shift, of a change during such an uprising of social injustice related issues. And so the excitement had many layers of it, but of course, key is representation is everything. When you have someone of a diverse background that looks different than what we had typically been seeing over the centuries that we have existed in this country, it tells us that there is acceptance.Lisa:So my initial feeling was that of excitement. And then as a person of color who experienced certain types of discrimination, and who has, as a human resources professional, investigated those types of discriminatory behaviors toward people that didn't look like the majority, I also had a little bit of fear, "What is this going to mean for the ticket? Will this ticket be allowed to actually push forward and win? And will there'll be additional threats that may not have been a consideration if a male had been selected for this position?"Lisa:And so I let that fear be overcome by the joy and excitement to say, "You know what?" It's a new day and we have to be a part of this continuation of change through conversations just like this. And so it's important for us to continue to talk about, yes we can, yes we are, yes we will. And then the third element is that I happen to be in the same sorority as Kamala Harris.Lisa:So as a Senator, and now as the Vice President, she is my sorority sister. So I am very happy to be able to state that as well, but it's very meaningful and I believe it's going to assist in helping to change the dynamic and the fabric of how we move forward in our country.Kacee:Thank you all so much. So Harris talks a lot about those who have come before her, and how important they have been to paving the way for her. She's also said that, although she's the first, she will not be the last woman or woman of color in this position.Kacee:Why do you think it's taken so long for a woman to be in one of the highest positions of government? And why do you think we still have not seen a woman in the highest position? So Dr. Dubose, do you mind starting? And then Dr. Miller?Lisa:Absolutely. Well, we all know the research that is surrounding the glass ceiling, and when it comes to women in the workplace and how there's this impenetrable wall or ceiling that exists, that says, "You can see what's out there for you, but we're not going to allow you to break through that ceiling to achieve it."Lisa: So that barrier is something that's real, there're entire commissions that have done research about it. A Federal Glass Ceiling Commission is one of them, and there's significant research on the Department of Labor website that talks about these trends. Now, when it comes to a woman of color, there's an additional element that is of concern, which is called the concrete ceiling.Lisa:So with the glass ceiling, you see it, but you can't attain it, where there are significant barriers. With the concrete ceiling, what it's stating is we don't know about it, we don't hear about it, and the intent is for us not to achieve that. So that's the precursor of all of the types of barriers that have existed, that prohibited women and women of color from advancing.Lisa:So as we move forward down the continuum of what's happened in our government, there were laws that were put into place to try and abate those issues, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one of them. And that's Title VII, where it really addresses any kind of marginalization and making sure that there's an entity that is reviewing those kinds of cases that are coming forward, at no cost to those individuals that are feeling as if they're impeded. So we're beyond 50 years with that law, but guess what? We're still facing the same thing.Lisa:So the history of our country has said, "No, you women need to stay in a particular place. You can't have too much ambition. It's okay if you have this level of position, but not the senior level position. It's great for you to be support, maybe beside, but not ahead." And that's not true. We have to catch up with what other countries have done and how they've had women in senior leadership roles, running countries and making a huge difference. We're a super power, so our super powers have to be advanced by understanding that we are able, we are capable, we are knowledgeable, and we are forces to be reckoned with. And if we're at the table, we bring an entirely different discussion, an element that helps us move forward. Lisa:So it has hindered in the past, but every time we make an advancement, it chips away at that ceiling that's glass, and that ceiling that's concrete, and we're going to keep chipping away at it.Melissa:If I can just tag along on everything that Dr. Dubose said, and also add that everything that's true in the workforce, there's been a sort of a companion thread of research among gender scholars in political science and in women's studies, that those very same barriers have been present for women.Melissa:Just to put this in historical context, the first woman to run for President was Victoria Woodhull, who was born in tiny Homer, Ohio. And she ran for President in 1872 as the nominee of the Equal Rights party. She was famously caricatured in a political cartoon by Thomas Nast as literally the devil. But let me just underscore, that's quite a long wait until 2020, the first woman to be elected Vice President. Melissa: The office of President of the United States is the most masculinized elective office, probably in the world. And the traits that people associate with it are strength, decisiveness, authority. These are not stereotypically feminine traits. Stereotypically feminine traits are things like compassion and empathy, and caring, and that's not historically what Americans have been looking for in their President. So there has just been plain outright sexism among voters.Melissa:Now, that of course, has been chipped away at, in the feminism's first wave and the second wave. A lot of progress had been made and women began to enter elective office in greater number, but still that highest glass or concrete ceiling had not been broken. And there are some additional reasons why we have yet to see a woman as President.Melissa:One is that there just are so few women in the pipeline. We think of those stepping stone positions to the office of Vice President, or the office of President. And they are sitting US Senator, sitting Member of Congress, Governor of a key State. And when you think that even as we sit here today, women are just 27% of the US House and 26% of the Senate, and only 18% of Governor's mansions, there just aren't that many women that are there in those stepping stone positions.Melissa:Why is that? Well, so few women run for office and when they do run, they tend to wait until their children are grown up. Whereas a man might run for office for the first time, maybe at the local level, in his 30s. A woman, when she runs for office for that first time, tends to be in her 40s or 50s, which then means she's going to have a much more abbreviated career and won't get up to that maybe US Senate position. Melissa:So that is another key factor. I am just so thrilled, however, that this one glass ceiling has been broken, again, to begin to normalize women at the pinnacle of American politics. And hopefully that will lead to more women being excited, picturing themselves and envisioning being involved politically, and eventually running for office.Kacee:My next question is how does Harris' multiple identities, woman, she identifies as Black, Indian American, she's a daughter of immigrants, those are some of the identities that she holds, how does that play into her role as VP? And Dr. Miller, if you would like to answer that, and if anybody else wants to chime in after, that would be great.Melissa:First, let me say that those multiple identities were a factor in herbeing chosen, and that didn't surprise me at all. And in my view, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The number one reason anybody gets chosen as Vice President is because of something they bring to the ticket. So we think back to Barack Obama choosing Joe Biden to be his Vice President. Joe Biden had that lengthy resume in Washington, DC, a lot of foreign policy credentials that the ticket needed, that Barack Obama felt would help him get elected. Melissa:So now we look at Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris and the fact that she was a woman, and a woman of color in particular, was a real nod, an acknowledgement that women and people of color were absolutely essential to winning in November. So this pick in that regard was normal. She was picked because he felt that she would help him win.Melissa:In terms of those identities going forward, one thing that we'll be looking for is how visible and how prominent of a Vice President she is. In recent decades, Vice Presidents have been more active and been given more responsibilities by the President of the United States. And so I hope that we will see Kamala Harris play a very visible role as a governing partner, because again, the more visible she is, the more she is a role model, the more that normalizes women at the pinnacle of American politics. Melissa:So I'll be interested in watching for what portfolio she has as Vice President, and whether it might dovetail with some of those multiple identities, but at a minimum, if she's visible, she normalizes women and women of color in American politics. And I think will serve as an inspiration to women to hopefully run for office themselves.Kathleen:Can I add something to that too? That's an amazing answer, but I also want to point out that for any of us who take or teach women's studies courses, that we often instruct undergraduates in the idea of intersectionality when by Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, and we think of intersectionality sometimes as being, here's how your identity markers interlace to increase oppression basically, that someone, if they're a person of color, if they're a person of a non-masculine gender, that it can be a detriment to their success.Kathleen:But I think that in terms of deciding who he wanted to be his Vice President, that Biden was looking at the fact that intersectionality can, as Dr. Miller said, help with representation and help the Vice President speak to multiple constituencies. So I think that multiple constituencies can take inspiration from the new Vice President's identity markers, and that those are all good things.Lisa:I agree with it and I will build on that even further. I used as a reference point in my research, Dr. Siddle Walker and Sneary, and they built upon research talking about the ethic of justice with Rawls and the ethic of care with Yale again. And added to it, it's not just the male perspective we need to consider, it's not just the female position that we need to consider. We also need to add that diversity element into it.Lisa:And when you ask a person who has been typically marginalized, you understand with a little bit greater depth, instead of thinking, "Well, I believe this is what they need." No, it's an inclusive conversation that allows us to give our voice, lend our experiences, which makes the overall outcome better, and it reaches a broader audience. And I'll give an example. There's a couple of different groups that Vice President Harris has mentioned in her acceptance speech.Lisa:And she talked about her experience within sorority life and what that means to the Divine Nine, which is the historically Black sororities and fraternities. And then also, historically Black colleges and universities. That is a huge factions of hundreds of thousands of individuals who could individually vote, but the level of influence that permeates from that group is significant.Lisa:And so that movement was expanded. So you have the female, you have the person of color, you have the educational background that sometimes had been underrated saying, "They can't accomplish certain things," and it has been demonstrated to be inaccurate. And so with this accurate review of who was selected, who was able to show and share that these experiences of her life brought her to the point of being qualified and capable, it's significant, and it made all the difference in the election. So I agree exactly with what my colleagues stated.Kacee:Thank you. I'm going to jump to a question because I think it relates to some of the things that you're talking about. Amanda Clayton, who's a political scientist at Vanderbilt University said that, "Women can either be seen as leaders or they can be seen as feminine, and two don't go together." And so this classic double bind, how do we get past that? How do women who want to go into politics, or who are in politics handle that?Melissa:Let me just say that for listeners to recall, one of the most prominent memories that many of us will have, and it's easy to Google, you can easily Google this and watch it on YouTube. And it was just shocking, but it really brought to millions of television viewers, the double bind in Technicolor. And that was a 2008 Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, where one of the reporters on the stage pointed out in his question to Hillary Clinton, that New Hampshire voters did, according to the polls, think that she was more qualified to be President, and had the experience necessary for the job more so than her male competitors, and Barack Obama in particular.Melissa:The reporter then went on to say, however, that New Hampshire voters didn't like her as much as they liked Barack Obama. And would she like to respond to that? That was sort of the double bind in a nutshell, that she had the qualities to be President, but it's another way of saying sort of like, "You're not feminine enough." One good bit of news I can report from the world of political science is that recent research on this question is suggesting that the double bind is not as pronounced as it used to be for women on the ballot.Melissa:So there was an interesting study by Deborah Jordan Brooks of Dartmouth, and she did a series of experiments in which she asked voters to read a mocked up news article that she made it look like an actual news article, about a US Senate candidate. And there were different news articles that she used. One was about a candidate who broke down, crying on the campaign trail. One was about a candidate who showed anger on the campaign trail.Melissa:And then at random, the people who participated in this experiment, they only read about one candidate. They either read about a candidate named Karen, or they read about a candidate named Kevin. And that was the only difference in what these voters read about in terms of these candidate descriptions for Us Senate. And guess what? There were no significant differences in how the candidates were rated.Melissa:So she interpreted this as evidence that maybe we're not any more penalizing women for appearing too feminine, and read that as sort of weak, not strong enough, susceptible to crying, nor do they penalize women for being real strong as when they show anger on the campaign trail. So that's one of several studies in recent years that at least in politics, we are no longer penalizing women on the campaign trail when they rub up against that double bind. So I think there has been progress made.Lisa:And I will add to that because I remember watching the four-part biopic of Hillary Clinton. And one of the comments she made is, "I wish I would have been more aggressive, but I was told that I should not come across harsh." And so in that moment, I think she believed that she could have changed the potential outcome if she would have followed her instinct, versus the advisement that people give on what people are thinking, and what people are writing.Lisa:One of the things that we have to become more comfortable with as women and women of color is being our authentic selves, because when we're taking on characteristics that are being pushed on us, it's not going to ring true. And so we should have the same rights to be authentically ourselves, to speak about things that are of value, speak of experiences that we've had from our lenses, that will build more rapport with audiences that look like us or audiences that support difference.Lisa:And so I think it's really important for us to be more conscious of controlling the narrative, and not always responding to the questions that are being asked of us in a way that's a lose-lose situation, but redirecting the question to say, "I appreciate the question you asked, let me tell you this." And speaking the truth of what their capabilities, qualifications are, because you will be penalized if they think you're too feminine, you'll be penalized if they think you're too masculine.Lisa:So just be your authentic self, which says you're qualified to do the work and speak to that, instead of emotions that are continually tried to be placed on us, to have to respond to. So even though the individuals may ask an innocent question, it can be skewed. And so we have to make sure we're prepared for that.Kacee:Thank you. Dr. Coleman, I think your research is so fascinating. And I am wondering if you can share a little bit more about prior to the election, the only examples that Americans had of President or Vice President came from popular culture, as far as women go in that role. So programs like Veep, if any of you have seen that, and Commander-in-Chief.Kacee:So to what extent did movies and television shows help pave the way for Vice President Harris' election, versus hinder the progress that she has made?Kathleen:Well, the examples of female presidency that are in popular culture texts in the 20th century are overwhelmingly negative to varying degrees. There's not a lot of them up until about 2000, and most of my current research has focused on 20th century representations, and those have been incredibly problematic. Those that are actually shown as somewhat positive, have still an air of the ridiculous around them.Kathleen:They're in either cartoons or comedies, or pieces with a little bit of unreality about them. There's a science fiction movie, for example. So having certain genres be represented with a female President, lends it an air of implausibility, whether or not that female President is shown as competent or not.Kathleen:And then as we get into second wave feminism, the representations actually get more negative up until about the late 1990s. In the 1980s, we see several incredibly, I would say direct pieces of backlash against women's pursuit of higher political power. We see comedies that are farces. We see there's a novel where the female President is completely insane, and we see just generally a lot of this masculine angst, where the first gentleman is a little bit more centered than his wife, even though she's presumably the one in more power, and that he is just endlessly full of a lot of complicated feelings around his wife having more political power than he does.Kathleen:So I think that these representations, even if they were designed to put the idea in the minds of the public and the audiences of women could achieve the presidency legally, it's a possibility, that it ended up having the perhaps deleterious consequence that it makes the voters think negatively of the idea, even if that wasn't the creator's intent.Kathleen:Once we see getting into the 21st century, there're more representations, there're a ton of novels. And then as you mentioned, Veep and Commander-in-Chief maybe the most notable examples, but bear in mind, Commander-in-Chief, even though that was actually an overtly positive portrayal of a female President, it only lasted one season. And it was very much designed to be the female West Wing.Kathleen: And you can see a lot of commonalities between those two shows, and yet unlike the West Wing, even though they're arguably of similar quality, Commander-in-Chief did not last nearly as long, and the main difference being this one is showing a female President. The West Wing is showing a male President.Kathleen:Veep, as wonderful as that show is and relatively high quality, she's not a competent leader at all. And similarly, House of Cards, we've got a high quality program, but the female President is arguably duplicitous and has a lot of political machinations, and she's really out for herself. So they have been gaining in number, which I think does help normalize it as an idea. But in terms of whether the character is shown as a positive leader, we really haven't seen that too, too much.Kathleen:I will say, there are several novels from the early 2000s that do show competent female presidential leadership, but unlike television and film, novels don't necessarily hit the zeitgeist as much. You don't necessarily have the wide audience as you do for visual media.Kacee:Thank you. So we've been talking a lot about politics at the national level, but representation obviously is important at every level. And I think you all have talked about that throughout your questions here. Do you all have any thoughts about having a woman and a woman of color at the VP level, is going to affect us at a local level?Lisa:As I stated earlier, representation is everything. And when you see someone looks like you, it is encouragement to say, "I can accomplish this too. Let me look to see what it is that Vice President Harris has that allowed her to achieve this level of success, and how do I need to equip and prepare myself in order to be able to do that at a local level, because she had to start the same way any other politician traditionally starts?"Lisa:And so with that, it's important for us to make sure that we're developing those pipelines that Dr. Miller talked about, and making sure that we have mentors and sponsors that are able to help with that development. And some of the outcomes of the findings from the research that I did, and where I was interviewing highly successful women who are over major organizations, they had achieved levels of experience being an African-American woman, and a lot of it talked about making sure that you're gaining the experience that you need, that you're having networking as a part of who you are and what you do on a regular basis, and not just touch points, but meaningful networking to say, "How is it that I can be successful?"Lisa:Now, the benefit of having social media and technology the way we have it now, while you can have interpersonal relationships and having dynamic conversations, you also have the ability to research and watch footage of others that can help with your development. So if it's something that you're interested in doing, making sure that you're finding someone who can help sow into you information that can help with your growth and development. Lisa:And it doesn't just have to be from a woman. It can be from others who can assist in understanding the process, doesn't mean that you have to follow it exactly, but getting that historical understanding and seeing what you can build and how you can navigate through that process to make the change that you're wanting to make.Lisa:So I think part of it is making sure that you have this fortitude, this courage to strike out and do something that's different, understanding that you may not be a part of the majority number wise, but you can be a part of the change that does happen. And so, as long as we are willing to nurture one another, we all have different skillsets. We all have different types of research, but our backgrounds and what we have to contribute all are factors that can assist someone or many in being able to reach their personal goals. And so I think that's the value of having a variety of lenses at the table experiences knowledge basis because it all works together.Melissa:I will just say that I think it may be some time before we see the effect of having Vice President Harris in that very visible national role, as well as other women. And so to the extent that there are women at the national level in prominent positions, it has this effect of young girls, young women, and all women really, of beginning to visualize themselves.Melissa:So there may be a little bit of a delay, but I'm happy to report that women... I should say girls who are in their pre-teens, their teen years now, watching the inauguration today, watching the next four years, there's going to come a point when they don't remember that the US ever didn't have a Vice President who was a woman, right?Melissa:So sometimes it takes some time, but I think what we can all hope for is that more girls and young women and women in general, women from diverse backgrounds, women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds, do enter public office because as we've alluded to throughout today's conversation, women bring a different voice to the table, and it's a voice that needs to be part of the conversation.Melissa:So there may be a little bit of a delay, but at the local level, I'm looking forward to seeing it become that women aren't the anomaly, that they have for so long been on the ballot.Kacee:Thank you. Are there any other final thoughts that you all would like to share?Melissa:I'll just share one quick one, which is, if listeners out there want to accelerate the advancement of women in politics, it's very easy for you to take action. Just ask a woman to run for office, whether that's local office, whether it's City Council, or school board, or mayor, or County Commissioner, women are much more likely to run for office if they're asked to do so.Melissa:Men are much more likely to just take it upon themselves to run and not wait to be asked. It's an important ingredient in getting women on that ballot, is that they get recruited by others. So that's something we can all do, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, or an independent. If we are ever going to get women in those pipeline positions that will lead to a woman elected President someday, we need women in these lower level offices with the years it takes to get to the US Senate or get into a Governor's mansion. So that one day we can have a woman President of the United States.Lisa:And I'll make a quick comment. Businesses are a microcosm of our government, and from my human resources lens, it's important for us to ensure that when we are in positions that allow us to have influence, to use that influence to make sure that we're not just talking about diversity, we're not just talking about belonging or inclusion, and we're not just placing something on our website because it looks fantastic, but mobilizing it to make sure that there are provisions that are made to make these things move forward, to bring equity into the workplace more fully.Lisa:So that means that we have to put the money and the resources to make that happen, and understanding that it's not just a function of one department and division, it has to be the responsibility of everyone that is employed within organization to say, "This is the part that I am accountable to do to make these changes, and the best way to do that is policy development." But beyond that is including it in essential functions where that any individual that is in leadership, that's responsible for hiring, whether it's internally or externally, they are measured about how they're moving forward the goals of the organization. If there's a measure in place, then action will happen. It's easy to take action, you have to just do it.Kathleen:I want to add too that taking action and encouraging real life political movement and women in business, that if you're an artist and you feel like art isn't activism, art absolutely is activism because as Dr. Dubose said multiple times, representation matters. So if we have better representations on women in political power, I think that it will continue to help normalize it to audiences.Kathleen:So if you're an author, content creator, or even just some kind of influencer, you want to amplify the voices of people doing this kind of work well, use your position, use your power, use your voice to do that.Kacee:Thank you. Those calls to action, I think are exactly what I was hoping to hear. It's a great way to wrap this program up. So I want to thank you all again. I know that everyone is incredibly busy and I feel like I got so much out of this conversation personally, so I know that everyone else will as well.Kacee: So again, thank all of you so much for being here. This is an exciting time. It's a challenging time, and I hope that everyone has a fantastic day. And thank you again. Jolie:Thank you for listening to this special episode of Big Ideas, and thank you to Kacee Ferrell Snyder, Melissa Miller, Kathleen Coleman, and Lisa Dubose for the thoughtful conversation. Special thanks to the Center for Women and Gender Equity, and the Division of Diversity and Belonging. Sound editing for this episode was provided by DeAnna MacKeigan and Marco Mendoza.
We live in a fast-paced world, with more everyday demands. And we know that we need good health to keep up. Nutrition, exercise, and mindfulness are often hailed as important pillars. However, there is something even more fundamental for better health—sleep. Sleep ensures we can actually perform. With better sleep, we'll be living better lives. But, how many of us actually prioritise sleep? Dr Kirk Parsley joins us in this episode to explain how sleep affects our lives. Poor sleep can significantly change our bodies and performance. He also shares that we can achieve good sleep through lifestyle changes. A better life is not about taking more supplements or using gadgets and tools; it's about creating new and better habits. If you want to know more about the science of sleep and how sleep affects our lives, then this episode is for you. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how sleep affects our lives and why it is so fundamental to our health. Understand that it's more important to change our behaviours and lifestyle rather than depending on supplements. Discover the ways we can create the right conditions for better sleep. Resources Get Dr Kirk's Sleep Remedy here! Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! A new program, BoostCamp, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! Listen to my other Pushing the Limits episodes: Episode with Mark Divine Connect with Dr Kirk: Website I LinkedIn I Instagram I Facebook I Email You can also get the free downloadable resource on decreasing stress before sleep here. The Unbeatable Mind Podcast with Mark Divine Dr. Kirk Parsley - How to Supercharge Your Sleep Dr. Kirk Parsley on Sleep And Longevity Melatonin Supplementation with Dr John Lieurance in the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. 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Episode Highlights [03:28] How Dr Kirk Started Working on Sleep Dr Kirk used to work for the SEALs. Later on, he enrolled in the military's medical school. After getting his degree, Dr Kirk became the manager of a sports medicine facility for the military. Here, he worked with other medical experts. Those in the military will usually lie to healthcare providers so they won't get excluded from work, but they tend to be more honest with Dr Kirk because they have worked with him before. After testing for vitamin deficiencies and adrenal fatigue, Dr Kirk realised that many of his patients were taking Ambien, a sleeping drug. After learning more about sleep, Dr Kirk realised that every symptom his patients were presenting could be explained by poor sleeping. [17:31] Sleep's Various Cycles With a sleep drug, you are just unconscious and not sleeping. Proper sleep needs to go through a repetitive pattern of deep sleep at the beginning of the night and then REM sleep by morning. The different cycles are important since they affect our bodies in different ways. Sleep can help boost your immunity and memory! Learn more benefits in the full episode. [20:12] How Sleep Affects Our Lives If you don't give yourself time to recover, sleep pressure can accumulate and have progressively worse effects. If you go to bed with high stress hormones, this can worsen your sleep. Poor sleep then leads to higher stress levels, and the cycle gets worse. People who get poor sleep age faster, not just in appearance but also in their physiology. Poor sleep can lead to protein structure breakdown, decreased blood supply, aged tissues, and more. As we age, we also face the problem of not repairing as fast. This is how sleep affects our lives. [23:56] The Foundation For Better Health We are often taught the basics of health are sleep, nutrition, exercise, and stress management. However, these pillars cannot function without sleep as their foundation, emphasising how sleep affects our lives. For example, exercise becomes counterproductive when you're sleep deprived because you're not recovering. Poor sleep can also change your insulin sensitivity and gut biome, which changes your nutrition levels. Because of how sleep affects our lives, it should be our priority. Sleep deprivation is the fastest way to break someone down, this is why it's used as an interrogation technique. [28:35] How Do We Sleep? We need eight hours of sleep a night. Make your sleeping routine simple. The more complex it is, the more likely you will fail. First, convince yourself that sleep is important. We are all born to sleep, and we don't need to learn how. Before electricity, people used to fall asleep three hours after sunset. Tune in to the full episode to learn more about the neurochemical process of sleep. [35:36] Creating the Right Conditions for Sleep During sleep, our senses still work, but they don't pay as much attention to external stimuli. For our ancestors, the sunset will lead to decreased blue light, decreased temperature, decreased stimuli, and increased melatonin. Better sleep is just creating these conditions in our environment. If we take melatonin, we should be careful to take only small amounts. [39:20] Melatonin Supplementation Some have argued that melatonin supplementation does not downregulate our brain receptors, but there are no definitive studies on this yet. In fact, measuring melatonin is difficult due to its quantity and concentration in each part of the brain. It's okay to take melatonin supplements but not in physiologic amounts. [45:15] Can We Reverse Aging? You need to understand your genetics and what ratios will work for you. While good habits and supplements can improve your overall health, we don't know if it undoubtedly reverses age. Our bodies are more complex than we think. Shorting yourself two hours of sleep can change over 700 different epigenetic markers. We can only describe biology. We don't know how to manipulate it most of the time. Dr Kirk also shares his experience with hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the full episode. [1:03:36] Paradigm Shifts in the Medical Industry There is a lot of dishonesty in both the media and the medical industry. Many doctors and medical experts have been silenced on potentially better cures, especially during this pandemic. Western medicine is effective in treating the sick, but it doesn't keep people from getting severely sick in the first place. A lifestyle change is more important than taking supplements. [1:12:22] The Importance Of Behaviour Change People often don't want to work on their behaviour because taking medicine is easier. We also need to be aware of how the food industry is tapping into our addictive mechanisms to keep us eating more. Caffeine consumption can also ruin our sleep. More than 200 milligrams can give the opposite effect of staying awake and alert. Learn exactly how sleep affects our lives, together with caffeine and sugar consumption, when you listen to the full episode. [1:19:40] Widespread Impressions on Sleep and How It Affects Our Lives People have grown to believe that sleep is for the weak and lazy. This belief also impacts our children, especially since they are still developing. Losing two hours of sleep can decrease testosterone and growth hormone by 30% and increase inflammation by 30%, among others. Dr Kirk delved into researching how sleep affects kids after giving a lecture for American kids overseas to professionals in the school system. Kids' brains are still developing. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to simulate things, experiences a shift during adolescence. [1:26:34] How Sleep Affects Our Lives as Kids Dr Kirk delved into researching how sleep affects kids after giving a lecture for American kids overseas to professionals in the school system. Kids' brains are still developing. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to simulate things, is formed during adolescence. Furthermore, adolescents also require more sleep because of a shift in their circadian rhythm. Requiring kids to do more with less sleep interferes with their development. [1:31:40] How Sleep Affects Our Lives When We are Sick A new field in medicine called chronobiology is studying how sleep deprivation precedes any psychiatric disease or psychological flare-up. An Ivy League hospital managed to get their patients off medication by regulating their circadian rhythm and chronobiology. [1:34:34] It's More Than Switching Things On and Off Medications can be difficult to get off because they have too many side effects. For example, most antidepressants are not just working on serotonin. Instead, they affect several neurotransmitters as well. Physiological doses are artificial and can cause you more trouble. Learn how sleep medication and affects GABA receptors that slow down the brain when you listen to the full episode. [1:41:17] Dr Kirk's Sleep Remedy Dr Kirk discusses how cavemen took around three hours after the sun went down to fall asleep. In the present day, what can people do in those three hours? To fall asleep, stress hormones need to come down due to lifestyle. Dr Kirk's Sleep Remedy involves getting the proper ratios of substances. His product comes in the form of tea, stick pouches, and capsules. [1:46:27] Dr Kirk's Final Advice Change your environment by decreasing blue light and stimulation. Learn to slow everything down. Just like how you slow everything down to get a kid to sleep, so should you do the same for an adult. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘You aren't actually sleeping when you're on sleep drugs. You're just unconscious. Your brain is dissociated, but it's not sleep.' ‘Often, if you're sleep-deprived, more is worse for sure. You don't really need to do any exercises. You just stay active until you've recovered, and then you can exercise again.' ‘Insulin sensitivity is decreased by 30%, just by losing two hours of sleep. One night with two hours of sleep. So you go from sleeping eight hours of sleep to six. If you're pre-diabetic, you're waking up diabetic.' ‘Even though I'm known for sleep, the hardest thing for me to coach people to do is to sleep.' ‘The most sleep-deprived years are the most horrible years of the brain development.' ‘Get rid of the blue light. Decrease the stimulation. Lower your body temperature. That's sleep hygiene.' ‘Part of lowering stress is just slowing down your thinking. You can't work on your computer until 9:59 and get in bed in 10 and think you're gonna be asleep.' About Dr Kirk Dr Kirk Parsley was a former Navy SEAL who went on to earn his medical degree from Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda in 2004. From 2009 to 2013, he served as an Undersea Medical Officer at the Naval Special Warfare Group One. He also served as the Naval Special Warfare's expert on sleep medicine. Dr Kirk has been a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine since 2006 and consults for multiple corporations and professional athletes. He gives lectures worldwide on wellness, sleep, and hormonal optimisation. He believes that many diseases and disorders are unnecessary complications of poor sleeping habits. We can achieve the highest quality of life possible by changing this habit problem. Interested in Dr Kirk's work? Check out his website. You can also reach him on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and email. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn how sleep affects our lives and what we can do about it. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of the Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by www.lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hey everyone! And welcome to Pushing The Limits. This week, I have another amazing guest for you. I managed to get some incredible people. I have Dr Kirk Parsley with me. He is an ex-Navy SEAL, and also a medical doctor. A little bit of an overachiever, this one. He spent many years in the SEALs, an incredible man. He also was involved with the first sports medicine rehabilitation centre that was working with the SEALs, an incredible expert on sleep. And that's what we do a deep dive into today. We also talk about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We also go into areas about the current state of the medical system, one of my favourite topics. And I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really, the most important thing is around sleep. Sleep is something that all of us, I think, are underestimating its importance. And that this is the biggest lever, not food, not exercise, not meditation, not mindfulness, not anything else. Number one of all leverage points is sleep. So how the heck do you get enough sleep? What is enough sleep, and how to get it is what this episode is about. Before we head over, I just want to remind you we have Boost Camp coming up. This is our eight-week live online program. There, Neil Wagstaff and I, my business partner and longtime friend and coach are doing. And we're going to, if you want to come and hang out with us live every week and learn everything about upgrading your life, basically, your performance, how to optimise all areas of your life, then we would love you to check the information out, head over to peakwellnessco.nz/boostcamp. On that point, if you're also interested, come and check out our flagship program, which is our epigenetics program, where we look at your genetics, and how to optimise those specifically, all the areas of your life: your food, your nutrition, your exercise, your mood, and behaviour, your hormones, all these important areas, specifically to your genetics. One-on-one time with us and help us to understand everything about your genetics. It's an incredible platform and amazing AI technology behind us. And we'd love you to check that out. Go to peakwellnessco.nz/epigenetics. Or reach out to me if you didn't get that. We will also have the links down in the show notes, if you want to just click over to that. Or you can just head over to my website, www.lisatamati.com. And hit the work with us button for our programs listed on there as well. So without further ado, now over to Dr Kirk Parsley. Well, hi, everybody! And welcome to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have a superstar, who is a good friend of Commander Mark Divine, you may have heard previous weeks on my podcast. We have Dr Kirk Parsley with us today. Welcome to the show. Dr Kirk Parsley: Thank you. I feel very welcome and happy to be here. I'm still here. I'm happy to be sharing this airspace with you or whatever it is sharing. Lisa: I'm really super excited. I've heard you a number of times on Mark's show and just thought how hefty you're on because you're such an expert. We're gonna dive into a little bit into your background, but you're an absolute sleep expert. So I'm really keen to help my audience with their sleep, and their sleep patterns, and all of that good stuff. But before we get into that, we were just chatting about genetics and endurance. So, give us a little background. You've been a Navy SEAL. You've been in the military, in the naval military. So give us a bit of background on yourself, personally. Dr Kirk: Yes. So ironically, I actually dropped out of high school. I was a terrible student my whole life, didn't have any interest in school. And after you don't do well for long enough, you just convince yourself that you can't do well. And so you're just, ‘I'm just done. I can't do it'. I was always very physical, very athletic. Just fortunately, genetic lottery, I won, just be an athletic and strong guy. And it came pretty easy to me. But I worked hard at it because I didn't do school work. So when I dropped out of high school, to join the military and do the hardest training in the world. And that was what the SEAL training was supposed to be, as the toughest training in the world like, ‘Well, I'm gonna go do that.' So I went to do that. This was a way long time ago. This is 1988. So, it was long before anybody knew what SEALs were. They didn't have the notoriety they have now for sure. And when I would come home from the Navy and tell people as I was a Sealer, like, ‘What do you mean, you work for SeaWorld or something? What do you do?' Kinda. So, I went through SEAL training, I would say I made it through SEAL training, I became a SEAL. That was pre-9/11, obviously. So we didn't have the combat that the SEALs of this generation do. So it's not really comparable. We were still mainly working in Southeast Asia doing police work and training other militaries. I did three deployments. It was really the same thing over, and over, and over again because there was no combat. So you just did the same training, and then you deployed, and then came home, and you did the same training. And of course, I was like, ‘Maybe, I'll go do something else.' And I thought I would be—I was dating a woman who would become my wife. She was getting a master's in physical therapy. And I was reading her textbooks on deployment to make myself a better athlete. And I thought, maybe I could be a physical therapist. And so I started working, I started volunteering in a physical therapy facility in San Diego, called San Diego Sports Medicine Center. And it had every kind of health care provider you could possibly imagine. And this building, it's just this healthcare Mecca. It's the most holistic thing I've ever seen to this day. I decided pretty quickly, I didn't want to be a physical therapist, but I don't know what else I wanted to do. But I got to follow the podiatrist around, and acupuncturist, and massage therapists, and athletic trainers, and conditioning coaches, and the orthopedist, and the family practice, and the sportsmen. I just got to follow them around and see how everybody worked. And a group of young doctors there, who were probably only five or six years older than me, and they were saying, ‘Well, you should go to medical school.' And I was like, ‘Pump the brakes, kiddo. I didn't even graduate high school. I'm not getting into medical school.' And then the senior doctor overhears the conversation. He comes out of the office. And he says, ‘Kirk, the question isn't, “Can you get in?” The question is, “Would you go if you've got in?”' And I said, ‘Of course, I'd go.' So, well, there you have it. So, he sort of shamed me into it/ I studied hard and got really good grades. And then when it came time to apply for medical school, this was pre-Internet, so you had to go to the bookstore and get your book review and look and see what schools are competitive for. And when I was going through one of those books, I found out that the military had their medical school. The military was a closed chapter in my mind. I'd done that. That's something that I figured I'd always do in my life. But it was never meant to be my whole life. And so I had done that. I was, I figured I was done. But I was already married and had kids. And I was like, ‘Well, the military will pay me to go to medical school. Or I can pay someone else to go to medical school and my wife can work while we're in medical school.' I made enough to support my family and go to medical school for free. And then to pay off in the military's, they'll train you to do anything. You have to give them years of service and your job. So once you finish your medical training, you have to be a doctor for the military for eight years. And so I figured, ‘I'll get back to the SEAL teams, I'll go pay something back to the community that helped me, was hugely formidable in who I became in my life.' And went back to the SEAL teams, really well-prepped to do sports medicine and orthopedics. And I knew quite a bit about nutrition, and performance, and strength and conditioning. I was pretty sure I had the exact pedigree. When I got there, they had just gotten the money to build a sports medicine facility, which was actually their vision was exactly what I told you that I worked in in college. That's exactly what they wanted to build. I'm like, ‘I got this.' So they put me in charge of building this out. And I was a significant part of us hiring everyone we hired. So we hired our first strength and conditioning coach, our first nutritionist, our first PT, our first everything. We built our own sports medicine facility. And then orthopedics was coming through every week, and they had to do rounds there. And we'd have pain rounds, pain management rounds come through. We had an acupuncturist coming through. And we hired all these people from the Olympic Training Center, and professional sports teams, and the best colleges. And so, we had all these brilliant people who knew way more than I did about what they do. Lisa: So you went from there to there. Dr Kirk: Yeah. And so at that point, I was the dumbest person around, right? Because we had all these experts in every little niche that I knew this much about. We hired experts who knew that much about. And so in the military, when you're the dumbest guy, they put you in charge, right and say, ‘Well, you manage this,' right? And so, I'm managing all these people who know more than I do, however that works. But my office was in this facility that we built. The SEALs are a lot like professional athletes in that you put them on a bench, so to speak, right? Because they're injured, they need some help. So they can't work. It's the worst thing. Worst thing. So when they see a health care provider, they just lie because they don't want to be— Lisa: They don't wanna be taken out. Dr Kirk Parsley: They will take money out of their pocket, and go into the city, and find a doctor to treat them so that the doctor at work doesn't know, so they don't get put on the sideline. But because I was a SEAL, and there were still a lot of SEALs at the SEAL team. It was close enough to my time. There are still a lot of SEALs at the team who I worked with, and I trained with, and deployed with. And so they knew me. And I had a good reputation. And so they trusted me, and they come in my office and they say, ‘Let me tell you what's going on with me.' They reported this litany of symptoms that didn't have any pattern that I could recognise. And so they were saying that their motivation was low, that they're very moody, that they couldn't concentrate. They're super forgetful. Their energy was low. Their body composition was shifting. They felt slower, and dumber, and colder. None of them were sleeping very well. They're all taking sleep drugs. They had low sex drive. They had a lot of joint pain, a lot of inflammation. And I didn't have the slightest idea. I'm like, ‘And I know it sounds like you're obese and 65. But I'm looking at you and you're not. So I don't know what's going on.' I just started testing everything I could possibly test. I tested literally 98 blood markers. They were giving 17 vials of blood. Now just shotgun approaches, test everything, and see what's abnormal. And I started seeing some patterns. And they had really low anabolic hormones, so the DBTA, and testosterone, and dihydrotestosterone, pregnenolone. All of that was low. They really have high inflammatory markers. They really had poor insulin sensitivity for how healthy I knew they were, and how well they ate, and how much they exercised. But it's still within the normal range. But it wasn't. Everything was in the normal range. But everything that should be really high was just like barely in the normal range. And everything that should be really low, it's just barely inside of that range. They didn't have a disease. And I was a medical doctor, so I had learned how to treat disease, then they didn't have disease. So I was like, ‘I don't know. What am I going to do?' So that led me to having to train with outside providers. And fortunately, at that time, the SEALs did have the reputation. They'd already done all these amazing things. This was in 2009. So, I think they'd already shot Bin Laden and at that point. So I could call anybody, right? I'd watch somebody's TED Talk, read their book, I'd see them lecture. And I'll just call them and say, ‘I'm a doctor for the West Coast SEAL team. Could I come train with you? Can I consult with you? Can I ask you some questions?' And everybody was generous and said, ‘Absolutely'. So I get to learn a lot really quickly. I take a lot of leave from work and just go sit in these guys' clinics for four or five days. And just pick their brain, go see patients with them, and take notes, and learn. And then I just call them every time I have a question. And I just got to learn really quickly. It's like this team of experts who knew everything about the alternative world. I was trying to treat people for adrenal fatigue. And I was trying to treat people for vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which are obvious from what was going on. And I couldn't quite figure out what it was. And about 100 patients into it, and probably after 30 guys came in, I could have told everybody, they could just sit down. I'll tell you what you're going to tell me. I could have just just route it off; it's so similar. And about 100 guys into it, embarrassing that it took so long, but I remember this guy telling me that he took Ambien every night. What do you guys call it? Stilnox, I think, right? I was married to an Aussie, so I know a lot. I mean, I know you're not an Aussie, but I know a little bit about your world, as in your language. And I remember putting a note in the margin, ‘Seems like a lot of guys take an Ambien.' Then I go back through everybody's records, 100% of the guys who had been in my office were taking Ambien. So I thought, ‘Well, maybe that's an issue, right?' So, let me go look at the side effects of Ambien. And it was a fairly new drug. And the pharmaceutical industry, they get to cherry-pick their data. So they were like, ‘Oh, it's the safest drug ever. There's nothing, no problems.' And I'm like, ‘I don't quite believe that.' Unfortunately, like every other doctor in America, I didn't know anything about sleep. I never had a single class on sleep in medical school, didn't have the foggiest idea what should be happening. I knew what you called a mechanism of action on this drug, which means molecularly what does it do. Well, it binds GABA receptors and has an effect called GABA analog, and benzodiazepines are the same, things like Valium. And so that's about as much as I knew, Well, what is GABA doing? What is GABA supposed to do? And then you can't really understand that without understanding what's actually going on in sleep. Then, I had to learn about sleep physiology. And what's supposed to happen during sleep? And what are the normal shifts and changes? And what does that do? And if that doesn't happen, what effects do you get? So after studying quite a bit, I figured out the general Occam's razor principle of the thing with the least assumptions is, literally, every single symptom that these men told me about, could be explained by poor sleep. Now, I didn't think that it would be, right? I wasn't naive, but it could have, then, right? So if this was definitely the most powerful thing, because being a Western doctor I wanted to give them Cortef and raise their cortisol. I wanted to give them testosterone and raise their testosterone. I wanted to get like, I wanted to give them medication to improve their insulin sensitivity. I wanted to just go in there and do it. But I couldn't do that, right? Because you can't give SEALs medication that they're dependent upon. Because then, what if they go out on the field, and they don't have their medication, they can't do their job and it's a waste. So that puts people on the bench, that disqualifies people. So I couldn't do that. I had to figure out, well, what else can I do? So like I said, sleep seemed like the unifying theory. So let me see about that. And this was right around the time that everybody was catching on to the important vitamin B3. And that was associated with poor sleep. So, I tested all my guys. Every one of them had low vitamin B3. So I'm like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to give them vitamin B3. I'm going to be a hero. Everyone is gonna love me. I'm the best doctor ever.' And it helped a little bit. But it wasn't everything. Like I said, I had this epiphany with this sleep drug. And once I learned enough about the sleep drug, you aren't actually sleeping when you're on sleep drugs. You're just unconscious. Your brain is dissociated, but it's not sleep. Because sleep has to have, as one of its criteria, you have to have this predictable sleep architecture. You have to be going through these sleep cycles that take you through these different stages. And a particular pattern is repetitive, and it's primarily deep sleep in the beginning of the night, and almost exclusively REM sleep by morning, and you have to do that transition. If you don't do that, then it's not sleep. It can be partially sleep, if you're just getting poor sleep. But I was having these guys do sleep studies. And they were coming back with 99.9% of their sleep study being stage 2 sleep, which is just the transition. It's what we call a transitional sleep phase. So it's not deep sleep or REM. So they weren't really getting any of the benefits of sleep. And of course, that's an oversimplification. They're obviously getting something, or they'd be dead. But we don't know what they're getting. That's all we know is that healthy sleep does this, and when you go through these cycles, we know these things happen. Like when you're in deep sleep, we know that's when you're the most anabolic, and you're secreting your anabolic hormones like growth hormone, and testosterone, and DHEA is being ramped up, your immune system's being ramped up. We know this happens. And then we know in REM sleep, what's going on in the brain: the physiological changes, forming more durable neural tracks, that neurological memories, shifting things from working memory into long term memory, pruning off useless information, these little buttons that grow on the side of your nerves that are starting to bud new information. You're like, ‘I don't need that.' You clean up all that. You get rid of weak products and you get the brain working better. The whole purpose of going to sleep tonight is to prepare myself for tomorrow, right? Whatever I do today, that's what my brain and body are gonna think it needs to do tomorrow. It's gonna use today as a template to try to make me better tomorrow at doing what I did today. And if I don't get enough sleep, if I don't get to restore, I still have to do tomorrow. And how do I do that? Well, I do it the same way you do anything. I'm stressed out. I use Marinol and a bunch of cortisol and DHEA. And I start robbing all my nutrients for my cells. My blood glucose is going up, I'm getting fuel sources that way, epinephrine and norepinephrine stimulate my brain and my tissues to be able to get energy where there's really no energy there. And then I'm going to bed with these really high stress hormones, which are supposed to be low when I sleep, and then I'm trying to sleep with high stress hormones. Then, I get worse sleep. Then, I need more stress hormones tomorrow. And that's what breaks people. In fact, when you see somebody who doesn't sleep well for even six months, they look so much older. ‘Why does he look old? That doesn't make sense. Is it just because they're tired? Is it tired old?' But if you think about it, you're born into this contract. You're born into this contract; you can't get around. It's just like you're born knowing you're going to die, 100% certain you're going to die. There's also this other contract that certainly is your body ideally worked for about 16 hours, and it needs eight hours to recover. That's the way it works. That's what you're born into. There's small variations there. But obviously, you can't get around that. If you don't get those 8 hours, you didn't recover from those 16 hours. And so if you think about it logically, obviously, when you're a kid, you need more sleep. So it's not a great example, when you're really young. Kids actually sleep a lot more than eight hours by and large, but you see them actually getting better every day, right? They're growing. They're getting smarter. They're getting more coordinated. You can see that every day. But if you think about, say, like, once you hit 25, and your brain's fully formed, and everything's static. If you could recover 100% every night, and wake up the next morning as good as you were that other morning, you wouldn't age, right? There would be no aging because you would have recovered 100%. Lisa: It's very important, yep. Dr Kirk: Everything that you're deficient in, if you're missing 10%, you're going to age that 10%. And if you're missing a little more, you're going to age faster. So when you see people who haven't been sleeping well for a year, they are literally older because they've been recovering less and less every night. So yeah, there's a breakdown in their protein structure. There's decrease in their blood supply, their peripheral vascularisation. Their tissues are aging. There's a buildup of waste products that aren't getting out, and that's toxic. And that's damaging the mitochondria and forming more senescent cells, and all these other things, they're building up. And every marker that we have, even genetic marker, when you look at your children and linked methylation on the genes. Every marker, they look older. And then when you look at them, they look older. That's why. That's really what aging is. It's really just the absence of being able to recover 100% every night. And as we get older, we just don't repair as fast. And that's, unfortunately, when most people quit sleeping as much. And now that's double whammy there. You're getting twice the aging effects that way. And there's no reason to sleep less when you're old. It's typical, but it's not something you have to do. I've had 84-year-old women who haven't slept more than 4 or 5 hours in 20 years, and I get them to sleep eight hours a night. Lisa: I've got one over there who's rustling around, walking around behind me. She's 80 years old, nearly. Hey, mum. And she's struggling with sleep in the early morning hours. And therefore, you know her memory and things. So I want to pick your brain on that. Can I just slow you down a little bit because we just covered a ton of ground here. Dr Kirk: You just asked me about myself, and I just couldn't stop. Lisa: No, but you were on an absolute roll. So I didn't want to interrupt you because there was so many things, but my brain's just going like, ‘There's so many questions!' Dr Kirk: That was just meant to be an overview. Lisa: That was an overview. Now can we dive deeper into some of the weeds because now I understand why you've become, classically, the sleep expert because obviously that was the biggest leverage. In other words, this is the biggest leverage point that you see. When we think of the SEALs, we think of the SEALs as being these gods of amazingness that can do everything. But what you're saying is like these guys are pushing their limits: endurance, and in fatigue, and all things like that. And so they're going to be the Canaries in the Gold Mines in a way because they're going to be coming up against the limits of everything. For you to say, as an ultra marathon, so I've come up against the limits in certain ways, like with sleep deprivation. And I sort of understand some of the things now that you were talking about. So you've ended up finding out that this is probably the biggest leverage point in anybody's life, basically, for their health is their sleep. So people, take a bit of a grip on that one. It's not necessarily the food or nutrition, it's the sleep. Would you agree? Dr Kirk: When I first started lecturing, I used to say there were four pillars of health: sleep, nutrition, exercise. And then the fourth pillar is audience dependent. It could be mindfulness, stress medication, it could be community, whatever it is that controls your stress hormones, and your emotions, and your mood, and all that stuff. Then after a while, I shift to there's three pillars sitting on the foundation of sleep. Because if you take the sleep away, none of those are going to work. There's nothing you can do. In fact, if you exercise when you're sleep deprived, it's counterproductive because you're not recovering. And we all know that you don't actually get better when you exercise. You damage yourself when you exercise. Then when you sleep, you recover, and you come back stronger. When you deprive yourself of sleep, you change your entire gut biome, you change your insulin sensitivity. You change everything here. And now your nutritional status doesn't work anymore. And when you don't sleep well, as I said, you increase your stress hormones. So you can do the mindfulness training and all of that stuff, meditate and all that, but you're just going to bring yourself down maybe to where you would have been if you just slept well and didn't do any kind of training. It's really the foundation for everything. And I say that all the time. It sounds hyperbolic, but I'm 100% convinced it's true. There's nothing that you can do that will, nothing that will break you faster than poor sleep, and poor and insufficient sleep. There's a reason we use it as an interrogation technique. Lisa: Exactly. Yeah. Dr Kirk: There's a reason we break people down, intentionally, this way because it depletes all your resources. It interferes with your brain function, your willpower, your problem solving, your speech, your ability to formulate plans, your motivation, your mood. Everything goes almost instantaneously with one night of lack of asleep. Never mind keeping somebody up for three or four days in a row. They're just a mess. They're just in input mode. They just want you to just, ‘Tell me whatever I have to do. I'd do it. Then I'll sleep. Anything I can do to get sleep, I'll do it.' You don't have to rip people's fingernails out of stuff. You just deprive them from sleep. Conversely, there's nothing that will improve the quality of your life and your performance faster than sleeping. Well, if you're an inadequate sleeper, which most people are. They don't even know they are. Everybody has these 30-day challenges and 60-day challenges. I'm like, ‘I only need seven days.' Again, one week where sleep is your number one priority. And you do everything right, and you get eight hours of sleep, at least eight and a half hours in bed every night, and you're sleeping approximately eight hours a night. And give me that for a week. And then, if you're not convinced this the most powerful thing, go back to wherever you're going. But nobody's ever gone back. Lisa: A lot of us, I can hear people saying, ‘Yeah, but I go to bed, and I can't sleep. And I wake up at 2 am. And my brain is racing and I've been told to do some meditation. And maybe it's my cortisol.' Let's look now because if we haven't got the message across now that sleep is the number one thing that you should be prioritising about everything that you do, we haven't done very well for the last half an hour. How do we sleep? What foods do we need to eat before we go to bed or not eat? What supplements can we take? You've got your sleep remedy that we'll get into a little bit. What routine can I do to optimise? What light-dark cycles? All of these things that can be leveraged points for us in optimising our sleep. And how do we test that we're actually in that deep-sleep phase? What are one of the best tools that you've found to work that out? So that was a mouthful, but yeah. Dr Kirk: So the first thing we need to do is get away from that phonetic question right there, which is what everybody's going through in their heads up like, ‘What about this? What about that?' And so my job is to make this really simple. Because simple things we can do, and the more nuanced your plan is around sleep, the more likely it is to fail. And we're doing big, macro movements here. So the very first thing is, what you said, I think we've already covered. The very first thing is to convince yourself that sleep is the most important thing. And to make it your priority for at least one week to get everything going. Now, when I say your priority, I mean the true meaning of that word. There's only one thing there's nothing else, that's the one, including raising your kids, and your dog, and your exercise routine, and everything else. The most important thing is to sleep. The most important thing for winning. If you aren't quite convinced yet go to PubMed, or go to Google Scholar, or something like this, then put in sleep and anything else you care about: being a parent, mood, dating, sex drive, athleticism, strength, endurance, concentration, memory, I don't care. Whatever it is you care about—strength and this, strength and business, strength and I don't care. Anything you want. Read to your heart's content. It will convince you that the one good thing about sleep, in the sleep sciences, it's not actually controversial. There's no one out there saying, ‘Oh, you don't really need to sleep.' Everybody agrees. There's nuances and people are different. Everybody agrees you need about eight hours of sleep a night. And just convince yourself that is the most important thing. Once you're there, that's the most important thing. After that, recognise, ‘Okay. I'm going to make this my number one priority.' Recognise that you're born to sleep. You don't need to learn; you need to unlearn some stuff, right? You're designed to do this. And this should feel good. You should enjoy sleeping. You should usually look forward to going to bed and waking up in the morning, like, ‘Man, I feel so much better. I'm ready to go do my day.' This should be as easy as selling sex but it's not. People resist this forever. I have no idea why. It's great. Why don't you like sleep? I've always liked sleep. So then you just think, ‘Okay, when did sleep go bad for humankind?' Probably in the last seventy years. Lisa: Yeah, when we got electric light. Dr Kirk: That's about it, right? It's only been, really since rural electrification, right? Since they got electricity out to everybody. That's really when it started. When you look back in America just 100 years ago, look at people's journals in the winter, they spent like 14 hours a day in bed. That's a certain thing they do. So if you think about it, and just say, ‘I know this is simple. I'm going to let myself fall into it.' And then I'll tell you, there's all the sleep hygiene. You can get on the Internet, and you can find, ‘Oh, do this. Drink a hot cup of tea. Drink milk. Do this. Make your room really cold. Make your room really dark. Make your bed really soft. Make your bed really hard. And get a white noise machine. Get rid of all the EMF.' A million people are going to tell you all sorts of different things to do. And I'll cut through all the BS, and then you can pick and choose. The real answer is all of that stuff works, to some extent. All of that's important to some extent. The way I work with clients is at least 95% of all the successes is from lifestyle. And then all these little gadgets, and your mitigation tools, and supplements, and all this stuff back, that's the other 5. It's 95% behavioural. So you just look back, how did we evolve to sleep? Nobody teaches people how to sleep, right? You're born as a baby; you sleep. So how did we sleep as adults in cultures 100 years ago? Well, when the sun went down, we fell asleep about three hours later, and we woke up around the time the sun came up. It was pretty much that easy. Okay, so let's reverse engineer that a little bit. I think most people know that blue light is a stimulus for being awake. We don't truly have a sleeping program. If you think of it like software, we don't have any sleeping software. We just have lack of awakening software. So we have things that go on in our brain and body that make us still awake and make us interact with our environment. And then when you take those things away, we're in what we call sleep. The blue light, actually, has nothing to do with the vision. There's nerve cells in the back of your eyes. It senses blue light. That's all they do. And then they fire pathways back to the circadian pathway membrane, essentially. And then the pineal gland secretes melatonin. The melatonin is a hormone, the starter pistol. It initiates all these cascades. And then one of the cascades that it initiates is the production of this peptide called GABA, capital G-A-B-A, gamma-Aminobutyric acid. And what that does is it slows down the neocortex. When you think of the human brain, the picture of the human brain, we all have that big, wrinkly, massive crescent shape. That's what we call the neocortex. And that is how we interact with the world, right? All of our senses get processed in that, and then all of our movement is processed from that, right? So when we're asleep, all that's really different with our sleep, about in a general sense, right? There's nuances in every neuron and every molecule. And then, in the neural sense, there's a barrier between us and our environment is how it's phrased. What it means is we aren't paying attention to our environment anymore. Our eyes obviously still work, right? You can turn the light and you can wake somebody up. Our ears still work, you can make your noise and wake somebody up. Our sense of touch still works. You can shake somebody. They can roll into something sharp, and their pain receptors will wake them up. Heat will wake them up. Cold will wake them. So we still work. Everything still works. We start processing it. We're not paying attention to it. What helps us do that is GABA. So GABA involves neurons. A neuron has what's called a resting potential. So there's like an electrical current in here. And when you put in enough electrical current, it goes like this. And that neuron fires. And then, does whatever it does and forms pathways. Well, GABA lowers that. Now, it takes more energy to make that thing fire. And you can overcome this by just putting a lot of energy into the cells. So if you've ever been exhausted, woken up exhausted, didn't get enough sleep for whatever reason. Like, ‘I'm going to go to work. I'm gonna come home. I'm going straight to bed. I'm gonna sleep 12 hours a day.' And then your friends talk you into going out or you get a cup of a drink. You stay up ‘til midnight, ‘I feel fine.' And then you suffer again the next day, right? Because you just overcame that. You can actually read about this because this still exists, believe it or not, they're still I think 35 or 45 pretty large communities around the globe that have never experienced electricity. And they just lived like hunters and gatherers. They go out. And the men go out and hunt. And the women pick, and nurture their kids, and weave. And just when you think of your caveman doing, they still live like that today. And we study these people. And we did actigraphy. So it's not true sleep, say. It's just movement to know when they're likely to be asleep. And what we find is, the sun goes down. Again, the blue light goes out of their eyes. It fires, the brain starts secreting melatonin that leads to a cascade of 365 billion other chemical changes in the brain, right? But that initiation has to happen. Once that initiation is going, one of the things it does is secrete GABA, increase GABA production in lots of regions of the brain that starts slowing the brain down. The sun goes down. They don't have electricity, right? The best they have is a fire. So what else happens? Their body temperature goes down. So when the sun goes down and it is dark, we can't see well at night, we can't see very far. So there's way less stimulus, right? They don't have flashing lights. They don't have loud music. So there's not much to stimulate them. So they sit around a fire. Maybe if they're lucky, if not, they just stare around the dark, and they have some quiet, calm conversations, and then they drift off to sleep. That's all sleep hygiene is. That's it. Those three things: decrease the blue light, decrease the stimulation to your brain, and drop your body temperature. You need a cool place to sleep. One of the things that you can do to speed these things up is to concentrate the right nutrients in your brain. If you are going to take melatonin and just take a very, very, very, very small amount. You just want to initiate. You don't want to put so much melatonin in your brain that your brain doesn't need to make melatonin because then you start running insensitivity to melatonin, and now when you take it away, you don't have, you're essentially melatonin deficient because you've downregulated the receptors, and your brain is not sensitive to melatonin anymore. Lisa: Can I just stop in the first, one second. Dr John Lieurance is his name and he was on the Ben Greenfield podcast, and he's written a book about melatonin. And he argued that melatonin, interesting work, doesn't downregulate when you take melatonin, and doesn't cause that downregulation. All the other hormones do. If we take testosterone, we're going to downregulate our own testosterone, if we take right whatever. He said that they didn't. And he was advocating in his book for actually, super-physiological doses of melatonin. Certainly when you're doing things like jetlag, or whatever you're trying to reset, but also for a raft of other ailments to help with many diseases. Have you heard of his work or? Dr Kirk: I'm familiar with him and his work. Lisa: Yeah. What's your take on that? Because I was like, ‘I don't know.' Dr Kirk: So, I disagree, obviously. Lisa: Yeah. That's what I want to know. Dr Kirk: But specifically, so what he's talking about, 90% of his work is about the antioxidant. Lisa: Yes. Is it an antioxidant? Yep. Dr Kirk: The studies that he's quoting are saying that melatonin doesn't downregulate. We don't know for sure. It's like, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. The only way we would know is if we could actually drop a catheter into somebody's brain and sample their fluid in their brain 24 hours a day and study this over months. And so we can't say for sure. We can do animal models. Again, it's hard to quantify because from the time the sun goes down, which is about three hours before you'll fall asleep, to the entire time you slept, until the sun comes up, you're looking at somewhere between 11 and 12 hours. That entire time your brain will only produce five to six micrograms of melatonin. Lisa: Tiny amount. Dr Kirk: So how do we study, right? It's really hard to study, and you think of it in a mouse model, how much smaller the quantities are we're looking at that point. And the concentration of melatonin in each region of the brain is not the same, it depends on some cells in the brain can actually be stimulated by melatonin. It's somewhere. It's different. And same with GABA. GABA doesn't go to every region of the brain because it can stimulate regions of the brain. But what we do know, so first, I always go with, we don't know anything. We have research that makes us believe certain things are likely to be true based on the best science we have right now. So we don't know anything. And I believe that to be true about everything in science. Just wait a week, it might change. But what we do know is that every other hormone does this. Lisa: Yes. Dr Kirk: But if it doesn't do this, it's the only hormone in the body that doesn't. Pretty unlikely. But what we do know with 100% certainty is that it does downregulate melatonin receptors. Lisa: Right. Dr Kirk: It can take away melatonin receptors. If I normally have 10 melatonin receptors, and I go down to just having one, now even if I'm sprayed with melatonin, I only have one. And I have to have this supersaturation for this one receptor to do all this work. And if I go down to normal physiologic levels of melatonin and this one receptor, there's just getting an occasional melatonin coming by, I'm going to be, it's no different. It doesn't matter whether I'm not producing enough, or I don't have enough receptors, it's the same end result. You have to have melatonin binders stuffing pulled into the cell to have it function. Lisa: So can I ask one question there like, so for elderly, who, from what I understand, in my basic research on melatonin, is that their melatonin production goes down with age, and, therefore, they could benefit from melatonin supplementation. Is that a thing or? Dr Kirk: Yeah, I agree. And so what happens is that the pineal gland calcifies just like our arteries. And every vessel, everything in our body calcifies, right. That's sort of aging. Lisa: One of the majors. Dr Kirk: And so it calcifies, and you do almost certainly secrete less melatonin, right? And again, the only way we would know is to drop a catheter into somebody's brain. But I'm not saying that you shouldn't take melatonin at all. I'm just saying you shouldn't take super physiologic. So his example of when you're speaking about the melatonin work earlier, right? His example is, well, this is a great antioxidant. Now, if I do these super physiologic amounts, there's all these benefits to it. Well, if I give you 10 times the amount of testosterone that your body ordinarily has, you're gonna feel fantastic. If I give you something that secretes a bunch of epinephrine and norepinephrine, like cocaine. And you have this huge rush of norepinephrine; you feel fantastic. And you're super productive, and your brain's really sharp. Does that make that a good idea? I don't think so. I don't deal with anything super physiologic. Again, I'm the behaviourist, and 95% of all your health is going to come from re-approximating the way you revolt. This body takes hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to this planet. And now we're just like, ‘No, we're smarter. Like I'm a 35-year-old biohacker. I read a bunch of books. I know I can do it better than–” We know nothing about the body. Lisa: Can we all mean for people–we also know that people tend to die. If we wanted to extend our healthspan and their lifespan, but healthspan mainly, can we, with hormone replacement therapy, there's a raging argument: should you be on hormone replacement therapy, should you not? If you're wanting to optimise. Now, there's downsides. And you need to understand your genetics, and you need to understand all of those aspects. There is benefits for us to taking testosterone or DHEA or all these things in the right physiological doses of, say, a 30-year-old, like, I'm 50 or 52, I want to be at the level that I was, say at 30–35. I understand my genetics, I know where my risk factors are. I can keep an eye on all of that sort of stuff. Can I all meet that so that I live and function longer? Because I think the core question here is how do we optimise? Yes, we've developed like cavemen but then they die at 70–80, as well. Can we extend that with the knowledge that we currently have? Dr Kirk: Well, so I don't ever promise anybody that I can make them live longer. I say, ‘You might live longer from this.' If you think about it, think about it this way: at first, we talk about what sleep does, right? And if we could catch up every night, we wouldn't age. So what are we doing when we're doing things like hormone-replacement therapy? We're doing metabolomics. And we're doing all sorts of supplementation around that, or we're doing artificial things like hyperbaric, and near-far IR sauna, and ice baths, and doing all these steps to stimulate the production of the thing. Of course, now we have antibiotics, and we have all sorts of treatments to keep people from dying as young from certain diseases. So certainly, we should be able to either, probably add years to your life. But if not, definitely we can add life to your years, right? If you're going to die at 80 either way, one version of this, you could die hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, another one you're dying in a little chair in a nursing home. So I don't know. The question is, even with the longevity work that people are doing, really smart guys like Sinclair and all these guys are doing all these things, and they're doing all these things with clearing senescent cells, we're doing all these things with peptides. And now I give my patients peptides for certain things. I don't know nearly as much about the longevity stuff as I'd like to. And we and we're reversing aging genetically, right? We're going in there and saying, ‘Actually, over the course of a year, with a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of tries, a lot of modalities, really focusing on your lifestyle and doing everything. Ideally, we can actually, probably, reverse your genetic age a little bit.' Are we actually reversing age? I don't know, we made your telomeres longer. The increased the methylation on your genes, and those are markers for age, does that reverse it? We don't really know, right? Lisa: We haven't been around long enough to work it out. Dr Kirk: Right. It's like with omega-3s. If your omega-3s are this, then we know that certain things go this way. Well, but if we supplement your omega-3s, is that the same as you having that nutritionally. Or vitamin B3? Is that the same? We don't know. We're thinking that it probably is. And we're thinking if we're reversing the markers we know for genetic aging that's making you genetically younger. But maybe there's some totally different information in there on aging that we don't know anything about yet. That's possible, too. I think from what I know about you, you probably agree with me. I think epigenetics is more important than genetics, anyway. You have certain genetics and you change half a dozen things about your day, and your epigenetics are totally different. If you short yourself 2 hours of sleep, you change 735 different epigenetic markers from just 2 hours. All your pro-inflammatory ones are the ones turning on, and all of your anabolic ones are the ones turning off. And again– Lisa: That's still the biggest leverage point, isn't it? Dr Kirk: It's still a crazy complex to think that you can decipher what 735 changes in epigenetics mean. We have some ideas of what certain things, how does all that work in synchronicity, but even though we're the smartest animal on this planet, we still have a very feeble mind. Lisa: We're still dumb. Dr Kirk: When it comes to understanding the complexity of our bodies, we can't understand the complexity of the planet, much less our bodies. And life is just this amazingly complex thing. We don't have systems in our body. We divide the body up in systems as a way to learn it so that we can systematically learn and we can test about the learning, but the body doesn't work in systems. Lisa: I have such an issue with it, too. It's nothing like the way that the medical model breaks us all down. Dr Kirk: The reductionist model doesn't work for life. And if you think about it, most of biology is purely descriptive. All of it is, we've come up with better and better ways to test things and look at things, and then we can describe what's going on. We don't know how to manipulate it most of the time. If we do, it's really clumsy. And it's causing 500 other changes because we wanted to flip this one switch this way. Then what are the downstream effects? We don't know. We'll find out in like 30 years after 100,000 people go through this. It's really clumsy. I don't know if can I make somebody live longer. I'd never make that claim. But can I make people look, feel, and perform better? Absolutely. I can do it all the time. And me, personally, like you're saying, I just approximate use. Their arguments, there are people out there saying, ‘Well, these hormones will cause this or that.' I'm like, ‘Okay. If high estrogen levels cause breast cancer, why don't young women get breast cancer? Older women, they're the ones who are getting breast cancer, why?' That thing with men and prostate cancer, giving them testosterone is gonna cause prostate. No, it's not. If that were true, then a 20-year-old would have prostate cancer, and a 60-year-old wouldn't, right? It's a lack of this. And I think breast cancer is a lot like prostate cancer. What we know with prosta
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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about delegation and how you can utilise it to make the most out of your job. Discover the two different flow states that come into play when you're doing what you love best. Listen to a variety of enlightening stories that show how pursuing what you value can change your life. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to the Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: #198: How to Prioritise and Reach Your Goals with Dr John Demartini Connect with Dr Demartini: Website | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube Check out Elon Musk's interview on 60 Minutes. A new program, BoostCamp, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! Episode Highlights [04:21] Achieving the Improbable No matter what obstacles you face, you will get up again if you have a big enough reason. Each of us has a set of priorities. At the very top is our destiny, which is non-negotiable. When you're pursuing what you value, you'll continue regardless of pleasure or pain. By delegating low-priority things, you can go on pursuing what you value. [09:20] The Importance of Delegation As long as you're doing your top priority, something that produces the most per hour, it doesn't cost to delegate. Delegation frees up your time so you can pursue something that makes more income. However, when you don't recruit the right person, you end up losing money because you're having to micromanage and getting distracted. [14:07] Hiring the Right People Do the basics, such as references and background checks. Dr Demartini specifically asks what applicants would do if they never had to work another day in their life. If they don't answer something close to the job description, he turns them down. Don't hire somebody who can't see how the job you're offering can fulfil their highest value. Tune in to the full episode to hear how Dr Demartini helped one of his applicants pursue what they value! [26:06] Job Security vs. Pursuing What You Value Dr Demartini shares a story about how he guided a young man to chase after his dreams. He sees this man eight years later, the owner of eight franchises. Many people stay in their jobs because of security. However, quitting work and pursuing what you value is your choice. Dr Demartini's recalls a time when he accompanied a ditch digger to work. He was so proud of his job, as he brings water—and life—to people. It doesn't matter if the job seems small, as long as you're pursuing what you value. [44:30] Taking Pride in What You Do When your identity revolves around pursuing what you value, the higher your pride is in your workmanship. You'll excel in whatever you do, as long as you're pursuing what you value. People who are pursuing what they value go beyond what is expected of them. Whether you start early or late, you can always begin pursuing what you value. Master planning is a way to get there quickly. [46:26] The Neuroscience of Flow States There are two flow states. The manic flow state is a high that does not last long, as it is driven by the amygdala and dopamine. You get into your real flow state when you are pursuing what you value—something truly inspiring and meaningful. In the real flow state, you're willing to embrace both pain and pleasure while you are pursuing what you value. Dr Demartini likens the two states to infatuation versus love. Infatuation is short-lived and only sees the positives; love endures even the negatives. Manic flow is transient; real flow is eternal. [53:33] Finding the Middle and Paying for Quality You shouldn't get over-excited about good things and over-depressed about bad ones. Stay in the middle. Looking at the downsides isn't cynicism. It shows that you have grounded objectives. Dr Demartini's father, who is in the plumbing business, carefully considers all variables before taking on a project. As such, he charges more than competitors. People will be more willing to pay for your work once you explain what sets it apart from others. If you get defensive about your work, you start to sound arrogant. Instead, try to be informative about the value of what you offer. [1:03:32] Staying Stable and Flexible Dr Demartini is neither excited nor fearful about the future. He looks at both sides so that he does not become too elated or depressed. Emulating this can help you be stable enough to keep pursuing what you value. Over support leads to juvenile dependency, while challenges encourage independence. Adapt and do what needs to be done. If you can't delegate it to others, learn to do it yourself. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode [05:34] ‘Nothing mortal, can interfere with an immortal vision.' [07:00] ‘There's wisdom in not doing low priority things; there's wisdom in not pursuing something that's not truly and deeply meaningful to you.' [23:18] ‘Don't ever hire anybody who can't see how the job description you want can help them fulfil their highest value.' [44:37] ‘The pride in workmanship goes up to the degree that it's congruent with what you value most.' [50:26] ‘Fantasies aren't obtainable, objectives are.' [54:31] ‘If you're overexcited, you're blind to the downside.' [1:06:22] ‘People can be really resourceful if somebody doesn't rescue them.' About Dr Demartini Dr John Demartini has been a public speaker for nearly 50 years. He is a world-renowned specialist in human behaviour, researcher, author, and educator. He empowers people from all walks of life by sharing his knowledge on self-development and financial wellness. One of his fields of interest is personal development where he has developed a curriculum of programs. One of his seminars, The Breakthrough Experience, uses his revolutionary techniques, the Demartini Method and the Demartini Value Determination Process. If you want to learn more about Dr Demartini and his work, you may visit his website. You can also see him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you were inspired to start pursuing what you value, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they too can be pushed to go after their passion. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of the Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa, brought to you by www.lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: I want to welcome you back to Pushing The Limits. This week, I have Dr John Demartini. Now you may recognise that latter name. He's been on the show before. And he's definitely one that I want to have him back on again. He is an incredible teacher, and educator, and author of I don't know how many dozens of books. He's been working in the personal development in space for 50 years, I think. Incredible man. I hope you enjoy part two of this very in-depth conversation about upgrading your life–how to grow your businesses. We talk about also how to reach your full potential. And what sort of things we put in our own way. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr John. Also, I would like to let you know we have a Boost Camp coming up. This is a, not a boot camp. It's all about upgrading your life. This is all about being the best version of yourself that you can be, upgrading everything in your life from your health fundamentals to things like sleep, and understanding your brain better your mood and behaviour. Lots and lots of science, and lots of information, and stuff that's going to be actually practical stuff that you can implement in your life to improve how you're performing your health, your vision and purpose in life. And aligning all of these things together. I hope you'll come and join us. This is an eight-week program that is live with Neil Wagstaff and myself. Neil is my longtime coach and business partner. And he runs all the programs with me that we do with epigenetics, with running hot coaching, and so on. And he is an incredible teacher. I do hope you'll check it out. You can go to peakwellnessco.co.nz, peakwellness, p-e-a-k, peak wellness dot co dot NZ forward-slash boost camp, b-o-o-s-t-c-a-m-p. To find out more, and come and join us, it's going to be a fantastic writer and you're going to learn an awful lot and get to hang out with a whole bunch of people while you're doing it. So check that out. I also like to remind you too, of our Patron program. We have a Patron program for the podcast to help us keep this on-air, keep us great content, to help us keep the mission going. If you're into doing that, please, for the price of a coffee or a month. Sorry, a coffee a month, you can be involved in this project. And you can also get a whole lot of exclusive member benefits for your troubles. So check all that out at patron.lisatamati.com, p-a-t-r-o-n dot lisa tamati dot com. Right. Now, over to the show with Dr John Demartini. Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Pushing The Limits. I'm super excited to have an amazing name back again for a second round, Dr John Demartini. Welcome to the show, Dr John. It's fabulous to have you back again. Dr John: Demartini: Yes, thank you for having me back. Lisa: It's just–I was so blown away by our conversation last time. And I know you do thousands of these interviews and in the work that you do that you probably can't even remember what you talked about. But it was a real life-changing episode that ended up– we dived into some of your medical work earlier. We went all over the place with your breakthrough experience. I just felt like we didn't quite cover all the bases that I want to tap into your great knowledge. Having you back again today, and today I thought we'd look at things like I want to dive into things like, ‘How do we achieve the impossible?' I've been doing a lot of work and researching around, what is it that makes incredible people incredible? And that they had the ability to overcome incredible odds and difficulties and obstacles in order to achieve some possible things. And I'm pretty much into a lot of the big thinkers out there. So I wanted to start directly if that's okay. How do we achieve the impossible, Dr John? Dr John: Well, I don't know. Maybe that's a bit of a metaphor–the impossible is impossible. Lisa: But yeah, it's a metaphor. Dr John: Improbable, the improbable. Lisa: Yeah. Dr John: When the why is big enough the hows take care of thems elves. When you have a big enough reason for doing something, no matter how many obstacles you face, you get up again. And there was an interview. There was an interview by a gentleman I think from 60 minutes with Elon Musk. And they asked him after having three launches explode back to back. ‘You ever think about giving up?' He looked at the guy and he says, ‘I never give up. I'd have to be incapacitated.' Meaning that his mission to go to Mars is too important for any obstacle that might arise to stop it. I would say nothing mortal can interfere with an immortal vision. Each of us, as you know, have a set of priorities. And the very top, top, top priority is non-negotiable. It's where human sovereignty and divine providence come together, where you feel that it's impossible for you not to fulfil your true destiny. I feel that way with my mission of speaking. I just felt that that was my destiny when I was 17. And I've been doing it 48 plus years now, be soon 49 in a few months. So if you'd have a big enough reason for doing it, you'll see the challenges on the way, not in the way. It's like Edison, a thousand ways to that didn't work for the light bulb to get the light bulb. There was no option about getting a light bulb, he knew he would come up with an answer, he just kept, ‘Okay, that doesn't work. Okay, next. That one doesn't work, next.' When things are lower on your value, you'll do it if there's pleasure; you'll stop doing it if there's pain. When something's tying your value, you'll do it regardless of pleasure or pain. And you'll see both of them on the way, not in the way. So there's wisdom in not doing low-priority things. There's wisdom in not pursuing something that's not truly and deeply meaningful to you. People who do that build incremental momentum that reaches an unstoppable state, an inertia that's unstoppable. That's the key to extraordinary things. And when it's truly aligned with your value, your identity revolves around it, you feel it's impossible for you not to do it. It's not an option; it's who you are. Lisa: So this involves looking at your values determination, how to sort out what your real– because I think this is where a lot of us come unstuck. We have lots of things we want to do, and we're curious about lots of things and have lots of passions, and it's sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, in order, distilling down that vision so that you're actually hyper-focused and being able to concentrate on the things that you need to concentrate on. I know that's something that I definitely struggle with, when you have so many things that you're interested in. But you're really right when you say like, for me, with my story with my mom, if you remember bringing her back from the mess of aneurysm, there was a non-negotiable. We were doing it, and I was going to get her back or die trying was the attitude that I went inwards. That means sacrificing whatever it took to get to that place. And then we do get there, you know? Dr John: Well, the thing is not to pursue low-priority things, and to know what those are, and say and delegate everything other than what's important. I don't do anything but research, write, teach. Those are the three things I love doing. But it's all about educating people in human behaviour. So that's the one thing that is non-negotiable that I do. Then I delegate everything else away. That way, you don't have to be distracted and run down. What drains you is doing low priority things. Lisa: Yeah. And this is a lot– yeah, this is a lot that a lot of people, especially startup entrepreneurs, and people that are just getting there, finding your way, are struggling with: the whole delegation thing when they don't have a team around them. What sort of advice do you want to give to people who are at the beginning of their career and don't have a team yet around them to help do all those aspects of it that are draining the hell out of their lives? Dr John: Well, what you do is you ask the question, ‘How is doing this action temporarily until I can find somebody to delegate it to helping me fulfil my mission?' Link it to your brain. Reframe its words. You see it on the way, not in a way, with the knowing that you're going to delegate it. And then, it doesn't cost to delegate. It costs not to. As long as you're doing what's highest in priority that produces the most per hour, it doesn't cost to delegate. Because you're releasing yourself to do the most important thing that produces the most income that produces more than the cost of the delegation, and that they can produce. And yet the person that would love to do that inspired to do that but doesn't have to be motivated to do that. They will spontaneously do it without even thinking about it, you can free yourself up. In 1982, end of 1982, I hired somebody to take care of my financial things: paying payroll, paying bills, bank reconciliations, all that stuff. Because I was sitting there in October of 1982. I was sitting there doing a bank balance, like, ‘What on earth am I doing?' I didn't want to do it. It was distracting, time-consuming. And while I was doing it, I didn't want to think about clients because it was interfering. I needed to get this done, and I'm pushing clients away. I freed that up, and I have not gone back, nor even seen a chequebook. That's 1982. Lisa: Gosh I would love that. Dr John: I can't even tell you what a chequebook in my company looks like. Lisa: Or accounting or any software. Dr John: I don't have any of that stuff. I have somebody that does that. That's their job. I– because that's a 20 to $50 an hour job. And why do I value my time? Well, I can make thousands per hour, and tens of thousands per hour. Lisa: But what about the people that can't make the ten thousands of per hour or the thousands per hour, and there's still a net, they're still in taking that leap into getting the first person in the team on board and the second person. I think there's a lot of people in that, jumping from, say, the $100,000 mark to the million-dollar mark of a turnover in a company where it's chaos. I think it's chaos beyond that as well. But it's that getting the initial, taking that risk when you don't have a solid income yet, and yet, you're taking a risk on hiring a business manager or hiring whatever, even assistants. Dr John: If you have a clear job description and you have a clear actions that you can do that can produce more per hour than having to do those things, and you can see, ‘Well, I'm doing five hours a day doing trivial. If I had those five hours, could I go out and close deals?' If you're willing to do that it doesn't cost, ever cost, to hire people. Lisa: Yeah. So it's a mindset shift, really? Dr John: Yeah. Because what happens is you think, well, if you're not going to be productive, and they're now, you're just going to pay somebody to do something you were doing, and you're not going to go produce more per hour than it's going to cost. But it frees you up to do something that closes a deal or makes a bigger deal. Makes more income. You're insane not to do it. Now, in my situation, I saw that if I was out doing presentations and taking care of clients, I can make more than tenfold what is going to cost, 20-fold to 100-fold what I was going to pay somebody to do it. It's a no-brainer. It doesn't cost to hire somebody. Unless you do it ineffectively. You are somebody who doesn't love doing it, you're pushing him uphill, is not inspired by it, and you have the skill by it, and you're micromanaging him and you're having to distract yourself, and you're not doing the thing that produces. That's why it costs money. Not because of delegation, but inadequate delegation. Lisa: So in other words, recruiting the right people to your team is a huge piece of this and getting the right— So what are some of the things that you do when you're analysing somebody to take on into your team? What are some of the processes that you go through from an entrepreneurial standpoint? Dr John: Well, I do all the basics: references and checks and those things. But I just sit them down when I meet them if they get through the screening. I sit down with them. I said, ‘If I was to write a check right now for $10 million and handed it to you, and you never had to work another day in your life. What would you do with your life?' If they're, they don't say what the job is or close to it, I say, ‘Thank you very much.' I walk away. Lisa: Right? Because they're not. That's not the key thing. Dr John: That's not their dream. Can I share an interesting story? I don't think I shared this before. Sorry. If I had, just tell me, cut me off. When I was in practice many years ago, I was hiring a manager, and I was scaling up and delegating more and more. We were down to two people's potentials: one was a woman, one was a man. And the man was in for that evening, about five o'clock. I worked till six, usually, but at five, I was telling my patients, five o'clock, this gentleman comes in. He had passed much of the things I thought. But he came into my office. He had a little briefcase, is about 54, looks like a violator jet, this guy. He comes in, sits down on the edge of his chair, and he says, ‘Wow, this is a great opportunity. I've had the opportunity to work with your company would be fantastic. I'm awe-inspired.' I said, ‘Great. Hope you don't mind. But I just got a few questions.' And I had a check. This is back before I got rid of my checks. I got a check that my lady at the front organised. I had the check in front of me. And I said, ‘Your proper name is?' I put his name on the cheque. I wrote 10 million US dollars. Lisa: It was a real piece? Dr John: I didn't sign it, but I just put it there. I made sure he saw it. Because any facade he might have, if he saw a check with $10 million on it, his name on it, that's going to distract him. Because the infatuation of that's going to throw any facade that he might try to put on me, ultimately. So I said, ‘If I was to hand you this cheque,' and I showed him the cheque. ‘And I gave you $10 million upfront, and you never had to work another day in your life. What would you do?' Lisa: What did he say? Dr John: And he leaned back in his chair like this. He goes, he relaxed a second. He goes, ‘Wow, if I had $10 million. What would I do? I would manufacture furniture. I have a hobby. I love making furniture. I'd make furniture and open up furniture companies.' I said, I got up. I said, ‘Thanks very much.' He stood up and he was like, ‘What?' He said, ‘Well, did I get the job?' I said, ‘No.' ‘Do you mind if I ask why?' I said, ‘Very simple. I'm hiring you for a management position. You said if you had $10 million, you'd love to make furniture. If you're a great manager, how come you haven't managed your life in such a way where you can do what you love?' He just looked at me and he just paused because that's a very good question. ‘And I have nothing I could say, except, you just woke me up.' I said, ‘Thank you,' and I escort him out. I watched him walk with his head down slowly to his car and sit in his car for a few minutes to just process that. He's like going, ‘Whoa. I thought I'm looking for a job. I'm enthused, I'm really excited, everything else. And I just got slammed with a reality check of what was really important to me. And the real truth was, is I love making furniture.' So he sat in that car, and finally slowly drove off and we ruled him out. We ruled the girl out. So we had to go through another round. Yeah. Lisa: And so this is part of the process. Dr John: Three weeks had gone by. And all of a sudden my assistant said. ‘Dr Demartini, there's a gentleman here a few weeks ago that was looking for a job. He's back.' ‘Alright, okay.' He said, she said ‘Should I just sent him back in?' I said, ‘Yeah.' I come down to the same office, same thing, comes in. I'm sitting in the same place, you sit in the same place. But this time, he walks in with a paper bag, a big paper bag, large paper bag with handles on. He said, ‘Dr Demartini,' shook my hand. He said, ‘Dr Demartini. I was here a few weeks ago,' I said, ‘Oh. Yeah, I remember you.' He said, ‘You changed my life.' I said, ‘How so?' He said, ‘When I was enthusiastic looking for the job, I've been looking for a job for three months. I didn't find one. I thought when you said, if I'm such a good manager, how come I haven't managed my own life? And you nailed me. I was a bit depressed after that, and I had a soul searching, and I had a conversation with my wife. Part of the reasons I was taking on jobs is for security instead of doing what I really love to do. And so after that conversation, I told my wife that and I said, “If I was to go out and try to build my own company in furniture manufacturing, would you endure the, whatever we go through to get there?” And she hugged him, and she says, “That's what you've always wanted to do. We'll make ends meet. We'll find a way.”' He started his company. He started telling people he's there to make furniture and he started making pieces of furniture. He made a bed, and he made a dresser, and he started making furniture and stuff. He also made it available that he could do interior in homes that were being built. He started letting people know in his network. So he's back in my office three weeks later, and he told me that that's the best thing ever happened to his life. He says, ‘I've already got commissioned $5,400 worth of product with the furniture, and that's in three weeks. I'm on track, probably for making $10,000 to my first month now. And that's more than what I was probably going to get paid.' I said, ‘Congratulations.' And this is what he said to me. He said, ‘You have no idea how much more energy I have, how inspired I am. I don't care about how many hours it is I'm working. I'm staying up, and I'm a different man. I'm loving it. I'm in, I now understand what an entrepreneur is, a bit.' And he said, ‘But this is what I want to do. Because you gave me such a gift. When I came in your office, I noticed the wood. Because you filter with your polar nuclei of your diencephalonic thalamus. You put, you filter reality coin, what you value most. So he noticed the wood in my office. He said, ‘And I noticed that you had Kleenex boxes sitting on these little rolling carts. It would really be honourable for me if I could actually take those little Kleenex boxes, and melt my Kleenex box systems on your wall that match your wood. All you do is lift them up on a hinge, put the Kleenex box and pull the tissue, put it back down to replace it. And then you have more space on your thing, because I noticed you had less space on there than probably ideal. It really means a lot to me if I can put them in all your rooms.' I said, ‘I would be honoured to have those in there. And I want you to do me a favour. I want you to put your card on the bottom of each one. So I can, for referrals.' He said, ‘I would be glad to do that.' He said, ‘But that would mean a lot. Because you just changed my life.' He ended up doing what he really loved to do, grew his business. I got complimentary things in all my rooms, which was an added bonus. But it just goes to show that people, when they're doing something that's deeply meaningful, truly inspiring, high in priority, they excel. So don't ever hire anybody who can't see how the job description you want to help them fulfil their highest value. Lisa: Be it personal and be it roles. And not this division of the company. Dr John: The actual actions. So you make sure you have a job description with all the actions and you ask your potential candidate: ‘How specifically is doing this actually going to help you fulfil what's most deeply meaningful to you?' If they can't answer it, don't hire them. If they answer with enthusiasm on all those things, you get them, grab them. If they don't, don't worry because they're going to be microman— you're gonna have to motivate them. Motivation is a symptom, never a solution to humanity. Lisa: And in changing that, I've got a friend Joe Polish. If you know Joe, he's a very famous marketing man and an incredible connector and so on. He talks about, he was talking about entrepreneurship one day, I forget the context of the situation. But he teaches about entrepreneurial things, how to do it. He's hugely successful. Someone said to him once, ‘You've had the same assistant for the last 21 years, for how many years, a lot of years. If she's been hearing you talk about how wonderful it is to be an entrepreneur to do all these things, how come she hasn't gotten that information and runoff and become her own entrepreneur?' He called the lady over and he said, ‘Why is it that you still with me?' He knew the answer. But she answered, ‘Because I don't want to take on the risk. That's not my job. That's not my passion. My passion is to serve Joe and be the person in the backstage setting all those things up. That is my highest power. That is what I love. That's why I'm still here. I love working with Joe, and I love his mission. And that's what I'm happy doing.' That's the key, is not everybody should be an entrepreneur. Or everybody should be having the same mission. It's that she understands what her passions, what the job is. Dr John: If everybody was an entrepreneur, who would be working for him? Lisa: Yeah. We'd have a hell of a mess. And being an entrepreneur is a long, arduous, often difficult, lonely road full of holes, along the way, potholes. It isn't for everybody, but for people like you and for me, it's, I can go for it. I've got to be running my own ship. And learning from people like you is great for me because then I can see what helps my next steps and what I should be doing. Instead of— Dr John: Can I share another story? Lisa: Go for it. Dr John: So, right about the same time when I was hiring that other person, a young gentleman, late 20s, I'm guessing, mid to late 20s, came into my office, and asked if he could have a meeting with me. And he worked with Yellow Pages. There used to be a thing called Yellow Page. Lisa: Yeah. I'm old enough. Dr John: They were ads, telephone ads. You put a listing, it's free. But if you put a listing with a little box or a little ad in it, it's a little bit more. You bought the Yellow Page ad. So he was trying to sell Yellow Page ad. So he sat in my office. And he started to do this little spiel. And I had the time. So I took a moment to do it. Because I was curious what the prices were. And at the end of his little spiel, and not even to the end, three quarters through, I stopped him. I said ‘Stop. Just stop.' That was the worst presentation. That was so off. I said, ‘This is not what you want to do in life. What do you really want to do in life?' And he looked at me and he goes, ‘That bad?' And I said, ‘It was bad.' ‘I bet you haven't sold anything.' He says, ‘No, I haven't.' I said, ‘This is not you. What's your heart? Where's your heart? What do you really, really, really, really dream about doing in your career?' He said, ‘I want to be in the restaurant business.' I said, ‘Go to a restaurant today to get a job there, and work your way up until you own your restaurant.' He goes, ‘Well, I needed to hear that. Because I respect you and I needed to hear that from you.' And then I sold him a little audio cassette tape that I'd done, called The Psychology of Attainment. And he bought it, it was only 10 bucks. He walked out with his $10 thing to listen to because I knew if he listened to it, it would encourage him to keep it going. He left there. Eight years go by, never seen the guy again. Eight years go by. I had moved to a new office. And I was on my way to go have lunch with my CPA. He picked me up. I came downstairs, he picked me up, took me to this little Super Salad restaurant nearby because we both had less than an hour to eat. So it's quick. Get in there and get a salad. You walk in and this Super Salad is a thing where you get a tray, and it's got a whole bunch of foods. And whatever it is they weigh it, and they charge you the acquired weight. So you get salad. You pay less if you get something with it. As I walked in, and we started going to the line, I saw that young man grown up eight years older in this suit, talking to another man in a suit. And I said, ‘If you don't mind going get me a tray. And I'll catch up. I see someone I must say hi to.' I walk over to this guy. He's talking this man. He's not paying attention to me. I'm standing right next to him. And as he's talking I'm just standing there waiting for him to finish. All of a sudden he finishes, the guy starts to walk off he turns around as if he's going to say, ‘Can I help you?' Lisa: Yeah, he didn't realise this. Dr John: And obviously he looks at me and he goes, ‘Oh my god. Wow, wow.' He shook my hand, and ran off and got the other guy to come here, ‘This is the guy I told you about.' And he told him, ‘This is the guy.' And the guy said, ‘Oh, thank you. I'd love to meet you. He's told me all about you, he said you changed his life.' And I said, ‘Well didn't know until today. What impact– Lisa: What are you doing? Yeah. Dr John: But the guy told me, he says, ‘I have eight franchises. I come into my restaurant. That was the manager. I'm checking up on my restaurants and I'll go to the next one. I check them out once a week, I go make my rounds.' He said, ‘That day, I got me a job at Super Salad. I worked myself into a management position for over two years. As I was saving the heck out of my money, which your tape set said to do, I bought into the franchises and I got eight franchises.' Lisa: Jesus! Just from that one tape, that one conversation, see this is the impact– Dr John: I said to him, ‘You just inspired me.' It brought a tear to my eye to know that– because I thought maybe I was a bit tough on you. He said, ‘Sir, you did the most amazing thing to my life that day. Because the truth is, I wanted to be in the restaurant business. And now I am.' Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing The Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that, we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a Patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's p-a-t-r-o-n dot lisatamati dot com. We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us, everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us. Lisa: You've encouraged him basically to have faith in the dream and to– because everybody else, like your family, often your friends, often are, ‘You can't leave that safe job.' I've had this conversation with my husband who's a firefighter. And he says like, ‘I can never leave the fire brigade because it's what I've always done. And that's how I've always, you know, it was my passion,' and so on. And I said, ‘Yes, but you don't have to stay there. That's your choice. Opt for security and– If you want security, if you want to do something, then do it. Life is short.' Dr John: All I know is that if you're not doing something you're inspired by, life can be pretty horrible. I see people. I didn't, I used to get, I lived in New York for a while. And we lived in Trump Tower there, fifty-sixth and fifth, right underneath Donald, so I knew Donald. So I live there for 29 years. And sometimes, you can take taxi. Sometimes, you take, when we're going in the airport, I got a limo. But just going around the city, sometimes I'd have a taxi. I get in the taxi and I– if there was a mess, sometimes I'd pass it by. I go, ‘No, smelly. No, no respect.' But again, in a taxi– if I'm in a hurry, it's hard to get, right? It's 3:30 to 4 o'clock march, I get in whatever I get, because I don't want to wait another 20 minutes. But I get it and I go, ‘How long have you been driving a taxi?' And they'll say a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, whatever it may be. I said, ‘Do you love it?' Some will look in the mirror and go, ‘Pays the bills, man.' And I said, ‘But do you love it?' He goes, ‘Are you kidding, man? If I got a thing in New York, you got to be nuts.' And they have that attitude. Of course, the car is usually a mess. It's got ripped holes in it. It's got cigarette burns. It's got a little bit of an odour. You know it's not taken cared of; it's not clean. But then you get in another car. And, ‘How long have you driven a taxi?' ‘28 years.' I said, ‘Do you love it?' ‘I love it. I get to meet people like yourself. I meet the most amazing people every day. My father was a taxi driver. My grandfather was a taxi driver in New York. I know every city, every street, I know every part of the city. Here's my card. You want some water?' ‘Sure.' ‘Anything you need to let, give me feedback about my car, please tell me. If there's something not in order, if somebody left something there, if it's dirty, let me know. I'd like to make sure that everybody gets a good experience in my car. If you want to know about the city, you just ask me. Anytime you want to go anywhere in the city, you contact me. And there's my card, I will take you, and I'll make sure you got the best thing, and I'll be on time for you.' He was just engaged. And he loved it. And of course, I got his card. And I called him. And sometimes when I was going around the city, I would use him. He would even come back and pick me up. Lisa: And it shows you that it doesn't matter if you're cleaning toilets or you're a taxi driver or you're at the garbage disposal. Whatever job you're doing, do it well, for starters. That can be your mission in life, is to provide that service. It doesn't have to be taking on the world and flying to Mars like Elon Musk. It's just, do your job; do it well. I don't, I just– I have issue too, with people who just doing the job, getting the paycheck, not doing the job with passion. You can tell. I walk into my gym and there's a new lady on reception who is just beaming from ear to ear, fully enthusiastic. I see her training; she trains like a maniac. She's just always happy and positive. When somebody comes into that gym now, they get a positive smiley receptionist. ‘Come in' and ‘How was your day?' The contrast to the other person that works at the gym who's surly looking, never smiles. And if you, say ‘Hello, how are you doing?' It's like, ‘Mmm.' And you think, ‘Wow, that is just the difference between someone who's just, “I'm so lucky to be here” and “I'm working.”' Dr John: They're engaged versus disengaged. Can I share another story? Lisa: This is great. Dr John: Right. My father, I started working for my father when I was four. He owned a plumbing business. He wasn't a plumber. He's an engineer, but he had plumbers working for him. And my job was to clean the nipples. And they sound a little sexual, but it's actually, these little pipes and couplings, so it's interesting. But I used to scrape them out with a brush and oil them to make sure they would be preserved because they'll get a little rusty sitting around. Then, my dad would then, every once while, not every day, but most of the time, would give me the opportunity to go out with the plumbers to go on calls to learn plumbing. Everyone, so he would say, ‘Well, you're going to go with Joe today. You're going to go with Bob. You're going to go with Warren. You're going to go with…' And this one day, he said, ‘You're going to go with Jesse.' I spend part of the day with Jesse. And Jesse was a ditch digger. He was an Afro-American man that was a ditch digger. And I said, ‘You want me to go with Jessie, am I going to dig a ditch?' He said, ‘Yes. I want you to go with Jesse.' I said, ‘Why?' He said, ‘You'll know when you get back.' ‘Okay.' So I go out with Jesse. We drive to this house that is about a 35-year-old house that needs a new water main from the street, the main from the street up to the house. And so he got a T-bar out, and he got a hose, and he got some paper, and he got a sharpshooter, which is a special shovel, and a little round-headed shovel, and a level and a string. This long string thing wrapped up on this piece of wood. And some, and another stick. The stick that had string around it where there are two sticks on either end. You could open them up unravelling. He stayed one at one place, stayed the other place, exactly where the line is going to go. Then he took a T-bar and went down into the ground to make sure there's no roots, no rocks, no anything that might interfere with the laying of a pipe. Then he watered it to make sure that you could go and if you dug it, it was just wet enough that it wouldn't crumble if you turn the sod over. And then he lined paper on one side of it. And then he showed me how to dig the ditch. I would go down to exactly the width of the sharpshooter, which is how deep it had to go. And then we would turn it over onto the paper. And that meant that the grass wasn't even cut, it was just folded over. Right. And we had a perfectly straight ditch. And then he showed me how to create the ditch with this other little thing. And it would go on top of the sides. It wouldn't fall off into the grass. It would just be on top of the paper, and on the inside. Then he took the level and he made sure that the grade was perfectly level from one place to the other because if you have a dip in it, water will sit there and rust and it'll wear out quicker. But if it flows exactly in line, you don't get as many rusting. We put this pipe down, pretty perfectly clear, perfectly graded. We levelled it, made sure it was perfectly level. We installed it to the house, into the main. We then put some of the dirt back over it. Put the sod back on, patted it down, watered it, squished it down, loosened up the grass so you couldn't even tell it had ever been done now. And we had a brand new waterline done. And when you're done, you could not, until you could walk around, you couldn't tell it was done. It was perfect. And then we got in the truck and started to drive off. And I asked, you know, Jesse, his name was. I said, ‘That was neat.' You know, I'm a young kid. And I said, ‘Call me J for John.' He said, ‘J, I have the greatest job on this planet, the greatest job a man could ever, ever, ever ask for.' And I said, ‘What do you mean?' I thought he's a ditch digger. He said, ‘Without water, people die. I bring life to people. My job is the most important job. They can't bathe. They can't drink. They can't make food. They can't do anything without my water pipe. I had the most important job on this planet. And I bring water to people. Without water people die.' And I thought, ‘Whoa.' And I came back and he said to me, ‘My job is to do such an amazing job that they call the office and complain that we never came.' Lisa: Because they can't see where he's been! Dr John: It's so immaculate. They don't believe that somebody came and they'll call and cuss out your dad. “Why is it not, why did you not do the main?” And your dad knows. Tell them, “If you don't mind just walk out. They will see that the main is there.”' They're unbelievably astonished that there was no mess and it's perfect. And he didn't tell us about Jesse, and the respect he does when he does water main. He knew that if I would go out there and learn from him, here's a man that does what he loves. Yeah, and he's the ditch digger. And in those days, you didn't make a little bit, you didn't make a lot of money. Lisa: And I love that. And it just reminds me of my dad. He was always cleaning up at the garden. He was a firefighter professionally, but he would be, every spare moment, gardening somebody's garden, cleaning up, landscaping, doing it. And he worked on films as a landscape artist and so on. He was always the one that was cleaning everything up, everything was immaculate by the end of the day. Whereas every, all the other workers were just, ‘Down tools. It's five o'clock, we're off,' sort of thing. Drop it and run. Everything was always a mess. My dad, he always had everything perfectly done. And was, always came home satisfied because he'd spent, when he wasn't at the fire brigade, he spends his day with his hands in the dirt, out on the sun, physically working in nature, and loving it and doing a proper job of it. So yeah, it just reminded me because he taught us all those things as we were growing up too. And would take us and teach us how to paint and teach us how to, all of these things. Dr John: The more something is high on your value that you're doing, your identity revolves around your highest value. Whatever is highest on your value, your identity revolves around. As a result of it, the pride in workmanship goes up to the degree that it's congruent with what you value most. Because you're inspired and love doing it. And it's, your identity goes around it. So my identity would rather revolve around teaching. So I'm inspired to do teaching. I can't wait to do it. Whatever high an individual's values is what they're going to excel at most. And they are wanting to do it not because they have to, but because they love to. People do something they love to, completely do a different job than people that have to. They're creative, innovative. They go out of their way. They don't care if they have to work extra time. They don't care about those things because they're doing what they love. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. You have some fabulous stories to illustrate the point. So whatever you're doing people, do it properly, and do it with passion, and try to get to where you want to. You might, this just takes time to get to where you want to go. You come out of school, you're not going to end up being near the top of your game. But you have to start somewhere and head towards what your passion is. I wanted to figure— Dr John: If you start out right at the very beginning, master planning, you can get there pretty quick. In 18 months, I went from doing everything, to do the two or three things that I did most effectively. I delegated the rest away. But my income went up tenfold. Lisa: Wow. Yeah. Because you were actually doing the things that mattered the most. Dr John: Me going out and speaking and me doing the clinical work was the two things that I was, because that's the thing I went to school for. That's what I wanted to do. I didn't want to do the administrative or I didn't want to do all that other stuff. Hire people to do that. That freed me up. Lisa: Yeah, it's a fantastic message. Now, I wanted to flip directions on you if I could, and I've been doing a lot of study around flow states and optimising. How do we build into ourselves this ability to be operating at our best, which we've been talking a little bit about? What neurotransmitters are at play when we're in a flow state? How do we maintain this over time to remain inspired and not be worn down? We think about flow state or I don't know how to put this into words, people. By that I mean, it's that state where you're just on fire, where everything's happening really well, you're at your genius place, your talents are being expressed properly, and you're just in it. I would get that when I'm running, or when I was making jewellery and I would, time would disappear, and I'd be just in this otherworldly place, almost sometimes. How do we tap into that? Because that is where we as human beings can be our optimal, be our best. Have you got any ideas around that as far as the neurotransmitters and the neuroscience of flow states? Dr John: Yes. It boils down to the very same thing I was saying a moment ago: not doing low priority things. There's two flow states though, and they get confused. Maybe people have confused a manic elated, utopic, euphoric high, which is a fantasy of all positives, no negatives in the brain that makes you manic. That flow state is a hypocriticality, amygdala-driven, dopamine-driven fantasy high that won't last. Then there's a real flow state. When you're doing something that's truly inspiring and deeply meaningful, you get tears in your eyes getting to do it. You're not having a hypocriticality, you're having a supercriticality, where the very frontal cortex is actually activated, not the lateral but the medial one, and you're now present. It's the gratitude centre; it's grace. There you're in the flow because you're doing something you really love to do that you feel is your identity. That's where time stops. Some people confuse a manic episode with that state. But a manic episode crashes. But the real flow state is inspired. That's when you're able to do what you love doing consistently. When Warren Buffett is doing, reading business statements, and financial statements, and deciding what companies to buy, this is what he loves doing. For me, I'm studying human behaviour and anything to do with the brain, and mind, and potential, and awareness. I'm that way. I can lose track of all time and just be doing it for hours. It's not a manic state. That's an inspired state. An inspired state is an intrinsically driven state where you're willing to embrace pain and pleasure in the pursuit of it. You love tackling challenges and solving problems, and you'll just research and research or do whatever you're doing, and you just keep doing it because you won't stop. That's not a manic episode. Although manics can look similar, there's a difference. Though a manic state comes from the dopamine, you got a high dopamine, usually high serotonin, you got encapsulants, endorphins. But you also don't have, you're not perceiving the downsides. You're just seeing all upsides. You are blinded by little fantasy about what's going to happen. And that eventually catches you, because that it's not obtainable. Fantasies are not obtainable, objectives are. Eventually, the other side comes in, and osteocalcins comes in and norepinephrine, epinephrine, cortisol, the stress responses. Because all of, all of a sudden your fantasy's not being met. But when you think you're going after the fantasy, just think of it this way: when you're infatuated with somebody, you're enamoured. You're in this euphoria. All you see is the upside, and you're blind to the downside. Actually, at this time, you say, ‘I'm in love.' No, you're infatuated. And then when weeks go by, and months go by, you start to find out, ‘Oh, I was fooled. That person I thought was there is not who I thought.' And you find out about this person. And that's short-lived. Yeah. When you actually know that human beings can have both sides, and you don't have a fantasy of one side, but you embrace both sides, and know that they're a human being with a set of values. If you can communicate and articulate what you want in terms of those values, you now have a fulfilling relationship. It's a long term relationship. It's not volatile. It's not manic depressive. It's just steady. That's the one that's the flow. That's what allows the relationship to grow. The manic thing is transient. The real flow is eternal. Lisa: So it's the difference between being in love, and infatuated, and being in actual true real long-term love. Dr John: Well, infatuation, people confuse with love. If I have an expectation on you to be nice, never mean; kind, never cruel; positive, never negative; peaceful, never wrathful, giving, never taking; generous, never stingy; considerate, never inconsiderate. If I have a fantasy about who you are and I'm high because I think I've found this person, that's ‘Oh, well, it's all one-sided.' It's not sustainable. No one's gonna live that way. But if I have an expectation, if they're a human being with a set of values, I can rely on them to do what's highest on their value, and nothing more. I respect their value, I see how it's serving my value, and I can appreciate what they're committed to, and don't have any expectation except them to do what they do. They won't let me down. And I'll be grateful for them. Lisa: Why didn't you tell her that when I was a 20-year-old finding the wrong people in my life? Relationship-wise, are you going after the wrong types of people? Dr John: If you go after it a little infatuation, you have to pay with a broken crush. You never have a broken heart; you have a broken fantasy. Eventually, it helps you actually learn to go after what's in your heart. Lisa: And value what is really important. Gosh, wouldn't it be nice to have had never met a lot sooner? Dr John: There's no mistake, so much happened, because you wouldn't be doing this project. Lisa: No. Then this is what every piece of crap that's ever come your way in life has got an upside and a downside. Because I hear in one of your lectures talking about this: don't get ever overexcited, and don't get really depressed. It's always in the middle. You put it so eloquently, it was, whenever something good happens to you, don't get too overly excited about it. And whenever something bad happens to you, don't get overly depressed about it. Because there's something in the middle of there. You're not seeing the downsides of that good thing, and you're not seeing the upsides. I've actually integrated that now into my life. When something good, I used to have this thing, ‘Oh my god, I have this breakthrough. I've had this breakthrough.' And ‘This happened to me.' And then I'll go and talk about it. And, because I'm a very open person and I found actually that's not good in a couple of ways. Because I'm overexcited about it. I've ticked it off in my brain almost as being happened. Dr John: If you're overexcited, you're blind to the downside. Lisa: Yeah. And you think it's already happened. Say you meet someone, new possible job, or it's a possible contract, or something like that. And you got all excited about it. Because you've got you've initiated the process, but in your brain, you've already ticked that box and got the job and you're off. Dr John: Then you undermine it. And you said it's related about a job opportunity. You usually have it taken away from you. You're mostly unready for it. If you're really ready for the job opportunity, you're going to know what it's going to take workwise to be able to get paid. You'll already get the downside and your objective. And know, ‘Oh, that's gonna be 28 hours of work here.' Lisa: That's not cynical, that's not cynicism. That's actually not realism. Dr John: It's grounded objectives. People who keep grounded objectives don't have job opportunities taken away from them. But people who get elated about it, brag about it, talk about it, almost inevitably disappears. Lisa: Wow. Okay. And so you got to be looking at, I've elated— a couple of opportunities come up that are possibly I'm thinking about doing. I'm like, ‘That one's gonna take so much work in this direction. That means going to be the sacrifice for you.' And the old me would have just gone, ‘Yeah. Let's do it, jump in. And I'm like, ‘Am I just getting old or is this actually a better way to be?' Dr John: My dad taught me something as a plumbing industry. He'd have to, they'd say, ‘Okay, we're going to build this house. Here's all the plumbing that's going to be involved in it.' They'd see the plans. He'd have to do an estimate. What would it cost to produce all that, put that together? If he got elated and he didn't do his cost, by the time he finishes, he didn't make any profit. But if he does his due diligence and knows all the responsibilities, what happens if it rains? What happens if there's delays? What happens if the permits are delayed? He puts all the variables in there and checks it all off. He then goes in to the customer and says, ‘This is what it's going to cost.' He said, sometimes the customer would come to him and say, ‘Well, yeah. But this other one came in at $10,000 cheaper.' My dad would sit there and he would say to him, he said, ‘I want to show you something. I guarantee you, the man that comes in at $10,000 cheaper, is not going to be thinking of all the variables. You're going to end up not having the job that we're going to do. Let me make sure you understand this. You may not hire me, and that's okay. But I want to make sure you're informed you make a wise decision. Because if you don't, you're going to go pay that side to save $10,000, it's going to cost you an extra 10.' Lisa: Yep. Been there, done that. Dr John: Well, my dad used to go through it, and with a fine-tooth comb, he explained all the different variables. He says, ‘Now, what I want you to do is go back to the person that's giving you those things and ask them all those questions. If they didn't think about it, they're going to either not make money off you and they're not going to want to continue to do the work. Or they're not going to do a great job because they're losing money. Or you're going to end up getting a thing done, then they're never going to want to do follow up and take care of you again as a customer. So here's what it costs. I've been doing this a long time. I know what it costs. I know what the property is. So I'd rather you know the facts, and be a little bit more and make sure it's done properly. Then go and save a few bucks and find out the hard way.' Here's the questions they go check. They came back to my dad. Lisa: Yep. When they understood that whole thing. And I think this is a good thing in every piece of, every part of life. It's not always the cheapest offering that's the best offering, which you learn the hard way. Dr John: I had somebody come to me not too long ago, maybe four months ago, earlier this year. And said, ‘I go to so and so's seminar for almost half the price of your seminar. Why would I go to your seminar?' And I said, ‘That's like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Volkswagen.' I said, ‘So let me explain what you're going to get here. Let me explain what you're going to get here. Then you can make a decision. If you want that Volkswagen outcome, that's fantastic. If you want a Rolls Royce, I'm on the Rolls Royce. I'm going to give you something about here.' And once you explain it, and make the distinctions, people will pay the difference. Lisa: Yeah. And that's– in a business, you have to be able to explain to them as well. When I was a jeweller, when I started, I was a goldsmith in a previous life. And we used to make everything by hand and it was all custom jewellery, etcetera, back before China and the mass production and huge factories and economies of scale really blew the industry to pieces. For a long time you were actually in that hanging on to one of those and not transitioning into the mass production side of it because I didn't want to, but not being able to represent the value that actually what you were producing: the customisation, the personalisation, the handmade, and people wouldn't understand that. You end up chopping your own prices down and down and down to the point where it no longer became a viable business. And that was the state of the industry and so on and so forth. But people could not see the difference between this silver ring and that silver ring. That one's a customised, handmade, personalised piece that took X amount of hours to produce. And this is something they got spit out of a production line at a team and other people are wearing. But people can't see the value difference. Dr John: Yeah, you have to, you're responsible for bringing it to their awareness. If you've been to a sushi restaurant, they have this egg that's in layers. I noticed that to get some nigiri with an egg on it with a little seaweed wrapped around it, it was like $4 per piece. And the other sushi was like $2 at the time. I thought, just an egg. Why would it be that much? And then I thought, and then I watched him prepare one, and how many hours it took to prepare one of those slabs of egg because he had to do it in layers. We had to loony take a pan, take an egg, poured in the egg, cook it just a certain level. And then lay that, scramble it, laid on top layer to time while it's hot, and layer by layer by layer by layer and cut it and everything else to make that thing. And I realised that is an individual egg-layered piece of egg. And I realised after seeing him I go, ‘That's a $10 egg.' Lisa: This is cheap. Dr John: I was thinking, ‘How the heck does he do that for four bucks? How did he make any profit out of it?' I never questioned it after th
Are you having a hard time achieving good health? Do you find that no matter what you try, you can't seem to hit your fitness goals? It's not really your fault — wellness is hard to achieve when the food industry sells unhealthy food. Fortunately, there's a way out. In this episode, Prof Grant Schofield shares how we can optimise our metabolic health in the modern environment. He discusses the advantages of being metabolically flexible, especially for athletes. We also talk about how sugar addiction and chronic stress can lead to severe physical and mental consequences. Likewise, we delve into the importance of making research more understandable for people. If you want to improve your health and achieve a state of healthy metabolic balance, then this episode is for you! 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover how to become metabolically flexible and fat-adapted. Find out the truth about the keto diet and its effect on your metabolic health. Learn how chronic stress can lead to severe brain damage. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Connect with Prof Grant: Website | Facebook What The Fat? Book PreKure: A place where you'll learn about health & wellness From Prof Grant's blog: Who cares about what humans have eaten in the past? How to reverse the diabetes epidemic in 3 years. Fast This Way by Dave Asprey Patrick McKeown and James Nestor Huberman Lab Podcast by Dr Andrew Huberman Episode Highlights [03:34] Prof Grant's Background Grant liked science and sports from his early childhood. He wanted to study physical education in university, but his family told him to take up engineering. He eventually ended up studying physiology and psychology. Grant then got into triathlons while he started his academic and research career. He focuses on fitness, nutrition, sleep, and well being. He has written books on fasting and diets for reversing sicknesses and enhancing performance. [10:41] Metabolic Flexibility Can Be Trained A long time ago, humans used fat as a primary fuel source when resting and moving around. In contrast, the modern, average person doesn't burn fat, especially when at rest. Grant thinks that people can reverse this and train to be metabolically flexible. People who have metabolic inflexibility tend to have a low supply of readily available energy. Grant prescribed a diet and workout training programme to a client. This person eventually became fat-adapted and broke a record in the triathlon he joined. [17:54] The Truth About the Keto Diet The initial process of getting into the keto diet is strict, but after around three weeks, however, it becomes sustainable. Unless you have therapeutic reasons to do so, you don't need to stick to the keto diet all the time. Some people believe that the keto diet isn't good because our genetic ancestors had short lifespans. Grant and Lisa argue that the cavemen's lifespans were shorter because of other reasons. [24:18] The Addictiveness of Food Lisa thinks that the quality of our food is horrific: a lot of processed food is unhealthy and addictive. Grant also observed this through his research. Sugar, in particular, is often overused in our food. Sugar addiction can be especially harmful because our bodies are not predisposed to coping with it. The food industry has many tactics to make unhealthy, addicting food sound healthy. Listen to the whole episode to hear Grant's research and battling the food industry's tactics. [34:57] The Metabolic and Mental Health Crisis Mental health problems are becoming more and more prevalent amongst New Zealand youth. Because of the faulty healthcare system, the youth often turn to medicine for their mental health problems. We have a metabolic crisis involving obesity, diabetes and the brain. Our metabolic balance can be interrupted by antidepressants. Instead of taking medicine, Lisa thinks the youth should be taught how to manage their health better. [43:41] About Glutamate and Stress Our brains produce glutamate when we are stressed. There is an inhibitory system called GABA that inhibits the effects of glutamate. When you are chronically stressed, this amino acid keeps getting pumped out and can overwhelm your brain. Too much glutamate in our system can kill our brain cells and damage the brain. You can combat glutamate toxicity through various methods. Learn how when you listen to the full episode! [58:02] Making Science Understandable for Everyone Lisa mentions the works of Patrick McKeown and James Nestor. Grant applauds their approach of translating science into something understandable while not dumbing it down. Lisa thinks that most health systems treat most people as idiots and don't explain the science behind health well. [1:03:26] Grant's Parting Advice It's difficult to reach a state of good health and homeostasis in our current world. However, it's not impossible. Grant advocates for everyone to use their voice to overwhelm the industries that promote unhealthy living. 7 Powerful Quotes From This Episode ‘The thing is, with addictions, of course, is that people go because everyone is not addicted to it, doesn't mean it's not a thing.' ‘Sugar is definitely one of those things that is one of the hardest addictions I think, not that I've been addicted to anything else but it's a bloody hard addiction to get rid of and stay on top of.' ‘We're fighting a war here, and we've got kids that are already diabetic and before they're even teenagers, and this is a coming huge disaster for the healthcare system.' ‘We've got a metabolic crisis with obesity and diabetes, but guess what? The most important metabolic organ is your brain.' 'Now I understand the need for health fundamentals like sleep, hygiene, and movement, and exercise, and sunshine, and the right diet, because diet is a huge piece of the puzzle because your gut and your brain are connected.' ‘We weren't designed for long-term stress. We're designed for acute fight or flight.' ‘Let's treat people as if they have got a brain in the head. Just because they don't know the jargon. You can explain the jargon.' About Prof Grant Prof Grant Schofield is a Professor of Public Health at Auckland University of Technology and the director of the university's Human Potential Centre (HPC). His research and teaching interests include wellbeing and chronic disease prevention. Prof Schofield is committed to unlocking people's peak performance through consulting. His motto: 'be the best you can be'. Grant has been interested in human health and performance ever since he started his career. He first took up psychology, went into sport and exercise psychology, then into public health. Prof Schofield has a diverse background and has an interest in biology, medicine, public health, and productivity management. He covers various health topics in his blog and book. If you want to connect with Prof Grant, you can follow him on Facebook. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn how to optimise their health. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week I have another wonderful professor with me who is going to share some insights and the latest research and I'm really, really excited for this interview. I have Professor Grant Schofield, who is the Professor of Public Health at Auckland University of Technology. He's also the director of the University's Human Potential Center, located at Millennium Campus up in Auckland. His interests lie with dealing with chronic disease and well being and prevention around degenerative diseases, obesity, metabolic disorders. He's a very, very interesting man, he's written a number of books along with his team. I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. We're pretty frank and upfront about our beliefs, and they're very much aligned so I really enjoyed this talk with Professor Grant Schofield. Before we head over to the show, just a reminder to check out our patron program, www.patron.lisatamati.com, and I'd also love you to check out our flagship epigenetics program. Our epigenetics is all about understanding your own genes, and how to optimize them for your best health. So looking at areas from your food, to your exercise to the what times of the day to do things, your chronobiology, that's called looking at your mood and behavior, your what parts of the brain you use most dominantly, and this is a very powerful program that has changed really, hundreds of lives. We've now used it for a number of years in the corporate space, as well as in the athletic space, as well as with people dealing with different health issues. So if you want to find out more, go to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program. We've also got out Running Hot Coaching. Don't forget that, www.runninghotcoaching.com is the website to go for our online run training system. It's all personalized, customized to you to your next big goal, you get video analysis, a consult with me all in the basic package and plan for your next event, including everything from your strength to your mobility workouts, as well as your run sessions and advice around eating and mindset. So check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. Right, over to Professor Grant Schofield at the Millennium Center in Auckland. Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a superstar. I have a guest that I'm really, really excited about speaking to because this is a very learned gentleman and an elite athlete and someone who I greatly admire. I have Professor Grant Schofield to guest. Welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you, Grant! Prof Grant Schofield: Hey, Lisa. Yeah, thanks for having me. And, yeah, I've been following you from a distance for years. And you know, just enjoying your achievements love, and it's so great to have you on the show. Lisa: And likewise in reverse. So thank you very much. It's a real honor. So today we, I reckon we just gonna dive into some of the stuff that you've been researching and what's on your mind at the moment, because you've got so many areas that I could go down, you know, looking at high fat diets and obesity and diabetes and prevention. Then we can look at the weight paper that you've just recently released, which I've, I just studied and went, ‘Wow, that was all about glutamate and toxicity and all that'. Well, that's new, that was all new to me. So which direction and firstly, give us a bit of an introduction to you in your background and your sporting career and all of that sort of stuff. Grant: Yeah. So, like, I'd always, something that always interests me in my life is things that I was sort of good at, and I was only good at it because I like doing them was, not so much school, but science and biology. I just liked it. I just like learning about that stuff. I was right from the very start of school and this is just something that continued to happen. I also like doing sports. I was just like one of those kids who is into the sports and I was okay. It was like, every New Zealand kid plays rugby. I wasn't that great, but I played it, you know, I've got on the 15 rugby and all this sort of stuff and that sort of thing. And the school I said also had rowing as a sport, which Yeah, and they did a performance level. So it was to win the national championships. And they so, the crews I was in, trained hard. And there was high-performance aspects, as long as they were in hindsight of nutrition and psychology and training and the broad range of things that good teenage athletes get involved with. Then of course, they don't finish as when you finish the school, and I sort of found myself, thought I'll go to uni. My dad was an engineer and he thought I should go to, I wanted to go to do physical education. That was the main thing I was interested in, and my family sort of pulled me out of it and told me I should have gone to engineering. I lasted a week in there. It obviously wasn't for me. But I ended up in a degree studying physiology and psychology, just a science degree because that's what I found interesting. And then I went from, not really been that interested all of sudden getting these A-pluses. I didn't think I was brainy. But it was just, you know, I was just used to go to lectures, and not really take notes, and just listen and ask questions, and it was really interesting. But because I wasn't that mature, there was never a point in my life early on where I was like, Grant Schofield is now capable of getting a decent job where someone's going to employ him, and he's going to make some difference to the world. That wasn't a thing, right? Lisa: Yeah. Grant: So I couldn't finish this one degree and go and get a job because I wasn't capable of doing any work. I didn't think I could at the time. But that's the reality in hindsight, right? So. Of course, this is the early 90s. And this sport of triathlon was coming on the scene where I live in New Zealand, there was these great personalities like Erin Baker, another woman, Erin Christie, another one, Rick Wells, and, just to a young person, and then I ended up, you know, going out training with quite large, and a lot of these people, and I just got into the sport. The thing is about endurance, especially longer, it's as you know, what, you need to be sort of mentally tough, the pain's a lot softer than something like rowing or, or, you know, measuring 3,000 meters running or, you know, 400-800 meter swimming, these are sports with a piano actually does fall hard on you. And so that sort of softer pain of the— Lisa: Softer, longer. Grant: Longer. Lisa: There's all the pains that come with it, yeah. Grant: But it's more of a, it's more of a thinking person sport, right, because you get to work through that. Whereas, you know, in a 400-meter is something that you don't get to work through anything. It's just falling on you, the cut score is coming in. And so I really love that stuff. And so I just did more and more of I just want to do nothing but that. The mindset of the endurance ethic that just wants to do more and more and more. Luckily, I sort of carried on with my studies and then started my academic career. And then I became a psychologist, I'm actually quite useless at psychology because, mainly because I want to give people the answer. And of course, you know, good psychological counseling is about asking open-ended questions, reflective listening, and waiting for the client to come up with a solution, which is absolutely hopeless. As my wife would tell you— Lisa: You're an action orientated guy, like no, there is the solution here. Grant: Yeah. This is why this is the problem for us. It's this sort that out. By then, by the early 2000s, when it really just dawned on us that our kids didn't look like we did when we were kids. Lisa: Yeah. Grant: You can look. I actually was reflecting on the other day, I looked at my photo of Twizel Primary School, Year One in 1974. And, yeah, by modern standards, people will be wondering if those kids are properly fed, why the teachers are so lean. And you compare that with a modern day Year One primary school class, or later, and it's a different world we lived in. So that was the early 2000s, that world had unfolded, right? So didn't, wasn't the same. Lisa: It's scary. Grant: And as fit as I used to be, they weren't the same shape they used to be and we wondered why. And so that was really the field that welcomed me, which was that topic of nutrition. Lisa: Wow. So that's where you got into, yeah. Grant: Yeah, yeah, just didn't mean to. And then, you know, all of a sudden, I guess my research career's followed my curiosity around the world. So when you're, when you've got young kids, you're interested in young kids. When you've got teenagers, youngsters, young teenagers, When I was racing, elite, high performance, triathlons, we're interested in that. And thankfully, being an academic, it allows you to, especially in my field, allows you the freedom to roam around those and understand those different things. So I've sort of had a, maybe it's a short concentration span, but effectively just a curiosity to keep rolling my research career and practice. Lisa: It's really good that you can do that with an academic career sort of go go like this and still stay— Grant: You can't go off into sort of, you know, rocket propulsion or something, but, you know, yeah, as long as I stick it to the main things, which are being sort of fitness, nutrition, sleep, well being, then those sort of four things combined, have really been my wheelhouse. But in different, the settings, and the context seems to often change. And then you just, you'll do some work and you'll discover what you think an answer is, or not an answer is, it's a dead end or it's actually got places to go, then you're sort of done with it, and you're on to the next sort of variation of something. So that's sort of been my life. So the latter stuff is really, we've done a lot of work on low-carb and keto diets, fasting, written quite a few books on that. Lisa: Yeah, What the Fat? and— Grant: And yeah, yeah, and so that's been really interesting for me, you know, for, for reversing things like diabetes at one end of the spectrum, sort of net, sort of metabolic dysregulation, through to the other end of a high performance. I'm an athlete, so I coach still, you know, being able to triple their ability to burn free fatty acids at a given intensity and really have a pretty much inexhaustible fuel supply. Before that, they would, you know, really run out of glycogen and struggle through the enjoyment and performance of an event. So— Lisa: Let's start with that one, just if I may interrupt you there, because it's, you know, something that's fascinated me. When I was, you know, active career, I'd never become fat-adapted as an athlete. Your take is that, should endurance athletes be always fat-adapted? Or is it a genetic thing some people are good at, and some people are less so? What is your take on it now, like, given the knowledge that you have and the experience? Grant: So I think that the normal human condition, if you wander up to a Paleolithic human before we started farming grains and wheat and stuff, that sort of hunter gatherers that they would have enjoyed this metabolic flexibility to use fat as a primary fuel source when are resting and moving around low intensities, and then as they got higher and higher intensity, then they would have supplemented that fat burning with extra energy produced from burning glucose in the body. But that doesn't exist. So commonly, and so we're just in the normal human state that lets you burn fat in some circumstances, and carbs and fat in other circumstance. But if you went down to the local Westfield shopping mall and went to the food hall, and you you bought all those people up to my lab and put them on our metabolic card and measured there, because you can measure both breath by breath gas analysis and understand whether they've been in primarily fat or carbohydrate or whatever mix of. So we do that sort of graded exercise tissue stop at risk, just breathing into the tube. The machine's analyzing fat and carb burning, and as you increase your intensity, like running speed or power on the bike, then you just see this greater change. Now, your average person off the street in the food hall doesn't burn fat, even at rest. So they're metabolically inflexible. Yep. And then the question is, can you train that? And can you train that even on high performance athletes? I think the answer is yes, and I'll give you a good example. There's a young fellow I trained, Matt Kurt and what I mean, saying this. I've trained him for a few years now. So he came from a CrossFit background. He was a fit young man. Yeah, he would be eating mostly carbs, actually. Lisa: Yeah, we were all told back in the day. Grant: Yeah, totally. So he wanted me to help him prepare for an Ironman triathlon. And so I started training him and say, on an April one year so over in New Zealand winter, didn't really mention diet, because we couldn't seem to get to that but we sort of got on the on the idea that he had to go bike riding, and what running would look like, and it was learning the sports. And by December, he did his first triathlon, which was a 70.3, sort of half Ironman, with a view to going through the Ironman in New Zealand three months later and beginning of March, and he did pretty well actually, like it came fourth overall in the amateurs, so he is talented young man, and he's a swimmer. He could hit a bike, he could run a bit. But I knew he was a cub and I was like, I need to put you in my lab and we need to measure your fuel burning on that. So in early December, we got them in there and his peak fat oxidation was about half a gram, a minute, at about 165 watts in the box. So it's not very good power, output is not going to be very fast. And he's only getting because a gram of fat has about nine calories, he's spending half of one of those a minute over 60 minutes. He's got about 400 to 500 calories an hour available from fat, and you know, he's going to be racing at 1200 calories an hour. Lisa: Yeah. Grant: So over several hours, yeah. He's simply is going to run into all sorts of trouble, because he's got this deficit of 800 calories an hour, he needs to find from glucose. He's got probably 2000 calories that he's got in his muscles and liver. He can consume another couple of 100 by eating gels and stuff, or bananas or something. So he's woefully short. And so it means he can just make a half, I mean, over four hours. We probably have eight or nine hours, he's going to grovel home. He's going to be a really bad mess. And that's what you see. It's always frustrated me. I got things like Ironman Triathlon, they sort of, 8-15 hour events, or 17 hour events for people. And I think the saddest thing for me is, first of all this, two thirds of the fittest still mimics the general population, which is overweight. Lisa: Yeah. Grant: And virtually all of them run out of glucose or glycogen and their body, sometimes during the bike or shortly into the run. And so the whole marathon experience for them is a very unpleasant affair. They don't like doing it, they finally make it, it's been a real drain on, and they've had so much support from their friends and family over that preparation period, and it was all avoidable. So with Matt, within a mile, we're like, what this is going to happen with you, Matt. So we're stuck on a strict keto diet for three weeks, his training over that period was fairly low intensity, we didn't really go for any intensity up until after the new year period. And then just sit them on to Iron Man training, and that includes his long run and his long bike which he did weekly, and I've been doing them fasted. Yeah, so with just water. People find that a little bit extreme but his intensity is really low. We'd go out and do you know, like a six hour bike in the end that with no food, and he'd be fine. Lisa: And that's the thing, you're adapted. Grant: You get adapted. And so going back into the lab just before Iron Man, and he'd improved his maximum fat oxidation from half a gram a minute at 165 watts or something, to 1.1 grams a minute at 260 watts. Lisa: Wow. Grant: So now he's able to supply 800 calories an hour from fat, and he can do it at 260 watts, which is actually a reasonably competitive pair out, but he's going to get along at you know, 39, 40 calories an hour. Lisa: Wow. Grant: And yeah, and so in his first, second ever triathlon, in his first Iron Man, he does, he finishes, I don't know, the top 10 and 9 hours 22. So good effort. Lisa: That's amazing. Grant: Yeah, we come back the next year, now with a bit more training on his belt, and he can he manages 8 hours 50. Wow. And this year, he comes back and he wins the entire age group race by half an hour, breaks the course record by seven minutes and does 8:27. And I got him back in the lab straight after that. And what we saw as further fed adaptation over that two-year period, so now he is able to burn 1.8 grams a minute of fat at 310 watts, and that's an astonishing power output. So 310 watts, yeah, you're doing 42 Ks an hour, on a decent course. And that's, he rode 4 hours 29 480 Ks, it's an astonishing time, especially for a guy who's working full time as a teacher. Lisa: That's insane. Grant: So that's what we mean by being metabolically flexible, and, and becoming a real fat-burning machine. Lisa: But what about the arguments about you know, I mean, keto diet is a very difficult diet for people to, if we're talking about the general population now, and it's quite a hard diet to stick to, long term. What about adherence to things? Do you have to be strictly keto? Do you have to be really low on your carbs in order to get the ketones and be in ketosis and to get this fat adaptation? Is there any middle ground? Can you— Grant: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a great question. I mean, the series of questions you got there, Lisa, are just crucial. And the answer is, initially getting into that. as I'm, for that three, it's very strict. And so that's three weeks. After that, it's very much cyclical. So we generate nutritional ketosis and fat burning by fasted long workouts. And on other cases during the week, we're adding carbohydrates quite a bit. So it's definitely not a strict ketogenic diet at all. And we'll have off periods where he's just eating whatever. In fact, I have trouble trying to get him off the ketone to be a bit more loose, frankly. But that's, that's an athlete, not a normal human, in that sense. This is why I introduced the idea of fasting and intermittent fasting and I'm quite keen on that. And for me, what the fast what I tried to sort of mimic what I felt was an easy, sustainable, cyclical way for me to eat that generated fat burning. Lisa: And pursued it with autophagy? We're all talking about intermittent fasting and I do it like an intermittent fasting, a short-ish intermittent fasting. Is that going to this, I'm not gonna get into ketosis doing an intermittent fasting. Grant: So I just, I would do this sort of pattern of Sunday, try and be reasonably good on the low carb, just eat whatever I wanted. But try and be okay with it. Monday, do some restricted eating windows. So you know, might be, a longest window. Someone who's experienced like me, I could just have one meal that day, and the Tuesday I just did the same thing. So you know, and when I hit a meal I made sure it was super filling, super nutritious, I was calling that super meals. So that's my, that's my Monday and Tuesday, my hard parts of the week, right I worked hard and I concentrated hard on my freshly generated nutritional ketosis. By Monday lunchtime, despite the weekend, Saturday being quite poor, I was back in full ketosis. I made a bit of an effort, I managed to sort of hang on to some stuff with no real particular restriction but trying to keep the carbs down for Wednesday, Thursday. By the end of Friday, everything had sort of gone pretty loose. And Saturday it was, could be, sometimes off the route is completely out of nutritional ketosis and plenty of carbs, even the odd bit of alcohol, which I'm not encouraging, by the way, but that just seems to happen sometimes. Lisa: Yeah. And we've got to live, too, Grant: Yeah, yeah. So I'd be completely out of ketosis and in no shape for that at all. But by Monday morning, I'll be back in again. So I just get this period. Lisa: So you can do that. It's been my question today is like, do I, if I go to keto, you know, go the keto diet. Do you have to do it as a religion? This is me. And then you get people like Dave Asprey and and if you read his book, Fast This Way, and that, he talks about cyclic keto, and how that's even better than just being straight keto, because keto itself can have some negative benefits. Dr Grant: Yeah, I completely agree. And so unless you're wanting to be on keto, for some sort of therapeutic resume, I said, you know, glioblastoma, brain cancer or brain injury like a TBI, I think so. Interesting thing, some other cancers, or you're in chemotherapy, then I don't see any reason to be in that state all the time. But the point is having a bit of bollock machinery to be able to be and easily get in and out. My hypothesis is the Paleolithic one, which is really that humans are metabolically flexible, it's the normal human condition and to see modern humans that have really lost their orchestration of the metabolism to, to burn fat as a primary fuel sources as a sort of denying your own humanity type situation without being too dramatic about it, really. Lisa: But yeah, if we, I was reading one of your blogs, and you hit another, Dr Lisa Te Morenga, I think it was, saying, oh, but you know, like, if we look at from an evolutionary perspective, the caveman because this is an argument that I've had with people too, oh, but the cavemen didn't live very long, so therefore, it's not a good diet. To say that that's, but that's not a bit that helped us survive till now. You know, like we— Grant: I think that's a complete straw man of an argument, by the way. Lisa: Yeah, I think so too. Grant: I mean, I think, you know, I mean, first of all, while the average lifespan, is fairly low for people, it's just for other reasons! Lisa: It's for other reasons. Grant: So if you didn't have those reasons, your actual survival was pretty good. And actually, the important thing to remember is that Paleolithic humans didn't have chronic disease. So they didn't have this, these, what is it a New Zealand at the moment, 12 years of disability in their life before they died, which, so subtract 12 off your lifespan, to get your health span, to health span, span with the same thing. And also question about that. Lisa: We don't have infant mortality, like they did. And we didn't have lions chasing us, and we've got all these other things that make us live longer. But now we have to take even more care of our metabolic state, in order that we don't have these long term. And I mean, I've been living with the consequences of mom's metabolic disorders, leading to an aneurysm, for the past five years, and trying to undo the damage. You know, what I'm talking about is like, in that decline that we see with so many people for over decades, sometimes, and it's just a horrific way to go out for starters. Grant: You know, I don't think anyone, if you ask them when they're in good health, about how they want the rest of their life to track, says they want to be in poor health with a low health span. I don't think that's a topic that people raise as being a good thing. Lisa: No. Grant: It's my experience. When I ask even people who aren't doing many healthy behaviors of what they want, then they'll say health, family, friends and happiness, whatever that means. But they, yeah, Lisa: yeah. And I think this is the discussion that we need to be having, so that we find out what the optimum diet is. People I know, I've struggled with my diet over the years. One of the reasons I started running was because I wanted to eat more, because I love food. And then, then I suddenly, at some point, I realized, this hypothesis of calories in calories out is absolute bullshit. This isn't working and that really came to you know, people who hear my podcasts and hear me say when I ran through New Zealand, and I just suddenly woke up. I was running 500 kilometers a week. Yeah, and I was getting fatter because I was in a complete state of chaos. You know, my hormones were up, my water retention, all of that sort of— Grant: High amount of inflammation, probably. Lisa: Huge amounts of inflammation. And I ended up flaccid, losing muscle mass and getting fatter and having a slower metabolic rate. I could have sat on the couch and eaten chips and gotten better, you know, in shape? Grant: Yeah. Lisa: So that's when a light bulb went for me, and then it also had other reasons like genetically I'm not really made for the long distance stuff, I'm more the high intensity, shorter, sharper, is more suited to me. So I was doing that wrong as well, because some people, it's better to be doing the long. But I think having these discussions where we really dig in, and you've done the research, you know, what, from an evolutionary perspective, what we need to be eating. The state of our food now is horrific. Then you, you add into all that the whole addictive nature of all the stuff and the additives, or preservatives, the MSGs for all of the sugars that are added to our phones, and people are up against it. Like, you know, you can't even— Grant: Yeah, I agree. Those two topics that might be worth going into those, I've got two— Lisa: Yes, please. Grant: —sort of bases, working in both those areas, the first you mentioned, like you go out, the state of our food supply. So what we've been doing recently is we've been going to primary schools around the place. And we've been taking photos of all the year sixes' lunchboxes. And whatever you think, particularly on what we call that social gradient, that sort of tipping of rich versus poor at the bottom end of that, whatever you think the food supply's like, I don't care what you think about how bad it is. It's worse than you think. Lisa: Yeah. Grant: I actually cried, I actually physically cried. Lisa: That's what our kids are getting to eat every day. Grant: Yeah, and how that's not a priority. Just remember that the biggest cost to our healthcare system for our kids is having to anesthetize them to extract teeth because they're rotten at age five, and we can't walk around too much if they're not anesthetized. So yeah, I mean, what society treats its most vulnerable like that? Just one little rant: in kids healthcare, we have to go and do fundraising and buy raffle tickets to pay for the hospitals for kids. And we don't do that with adults. That sort of fundraising for that is despicable. It's not a government that cares. Lisa: Not to mention the whole bloody ambulance service. Grant: Yeah, there's all of that, wouldn't I fund that? There's all of that stuff as well. So that's just a mess of how, frankly, Ad the second thing is I've got another student who's just really got into this, the addiction side of food. And as a former psychologist, she goes through and look at the, some, you know, use this Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM, DSM-5 is the latest version, which is a way of characterizing disorders. And you look at the substance misuse disorder, which is really around addictions. And you know, if you change the word alcohol or methamphetamine or tobacco for sugar, yeah, then, you know, the sorts of things you know, sometimes feel withdrawal sometimes. I eat more than I should change unprofessional behavior and makes things worse in my life. You go across all 11 criteria, and you go, Yeah, it's pretty plausible. That's a real thing. Yeah. And the thing is, with addictions, of course, is that people go because everyone is not addicted to it, doesn't mean it's not a thing. So there's this, there's a lot of alcohol drunk where people don't turn into alcoholics It doesn't mean there's not such a thing as alcoholics. And there's, you know, for many people, it becomes a substance they can't control using and I feel the same things about sugar in your ultra processed food in general really. Lisa: Yeah. And the sugar I mean, the I mean like people like you I know you've done a lot of work with a Pacific Island population and Maori and so on, we have a predisposition to you know, not being able to cope with the sugars and more cardiovascular disease and more metabolic disorders. So even more Prater the stuff because we've already and haven't had I don't know hundreds of years of of having it to a certain degree in I mean, I've struggled no sugar is definitely one of those things that is one of the hardest addictions I think, not that I've been addicted to anything else but it's a bloody hard addiction to to get rid of and stay on top of. Grant: Something like smoking or alcohol like the absence of is part of it is hard but just slightly easier because it's contained whereas sugar's so ubiquitous in the food supply, you can't stop it. It's very hard, you know, all of a sudden you put some chili sauce on your something and you're damn near 75% sugar, you know, like? Lisa: You don't even realize it unless you start baking them and making everything from scratch.- And then you know, not to mention all the MSGs and the additives, preservatives, emulsifiers that are you know, destroying our guts and causing us to want more. I mean, there's a real reason why you can't eat one chip. If you eat one chip, you've eaten the packet, Grant: Well, that's certainly my experience. But strangely, and I had an argument with a dietitian the other day about this, there's a total open quote and short of eating. And it's like her hypothesis was, well, the whole reason we I was like, Look, there's no point having salted chips in my house, because they'll last five minutes, I'll eat the whole lot. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, the way you should overcome that is just have dozens of packets on there and just eat yourself silly and then you'll get over it. That's just bullshit in my experience Lisa: Pretty much done that, and that didn't work. That doesn't work. I've heard that theory too. I think that's absolute rubbish, and not something that I'd recommend for starters, because you're gonna start on an either like, that's like, you know, a little bit good, then we must have just have some more. Yeah. Lisa: That's ridiculous. Really, they still think that. You know there's a whole movement? You're kidding? Okay. But how do we help people? Because people are unaware of the addictive nature of their food and we're so like, I don't have a big garden full of organic veggies. I never time, all the knowledge and I used to having my dad used to do my garden and then it was good. But now I don't. Most of us don't have access to good quality foods. What the hell do we do? We go into a supermarket and it's just so easy to pick up a pre-made sauce, you know, tomato sauce, or Bolognese sauce instead of, you know, buying a bloody lot of tomatoes and making it. But yeah, but we've fallen into this trap. And now we're addicted all of us. Because the big food industry wants you to eat more of its crap. Grant: Yeah, they've conspired both on research and practice. And then just in all practical ways. In fact, I wrote a paper with a couple of superstars actually a guy, Aseem Malhotra, who's a cardiologist, in London, and Rob Lustig, who's pretty famous, a pediatric endocrinologist from San Francisco about the the tricks that the food industry has pulled, which are pretty much the exact same ones as Big Tobacco have over the years, you know, creating bogus interest groups, false advocacy, sponsoring athletes, list goes on. Lisa: I'm a part of that machinery, unfortunately, you know, when I was a young athlete being sponsored by Coca Cola— Grant: I didn't, I was told, I was told not to come back to, I'm in New Zealand. I spoke there one time, a couple of years ago, because I had to guard the sponsors product, which was Nutrigrain, Kellogg's Nutrigrain, which is four and a half staff health rating food, that's, you know, a third sugar. It's just a disgrace. Yeah, that was not welcome again. Lisa: When you see famous sports teams, I won't name any, but they're nutritionists on the telly telling you to eat stuff that really is not what you want your kids eating. And you're like, ‘Wow, that's wrong on so many levels', you know? Grant: I'll tell you a story about that. I don't know if I should tell this story. Years ago, I gave this talk on a sort of update on physical activity and health for the first-time executives of Coca Cola over this Waipuna Lodge in Auckland. I'd finished my talk, I was just at the back. And the head and corners in and go on. The next guy that got was a corporate guy from the US about how they're going to discredit various nutrition people and active tactics. I went around, and I sort of sat there and listened to it. And I was like, ‘Oh', and then about halfway through, I was like, ‘Shit, I'll make sure I get out of here alive'. Yeah, but there was like an active discussion about, about the tactics to deal with scientists who were dissonant to the view, to the worldview, which I thought was a really interesting, Lisa: This is a reality. And this is what's happening not only in the food industry, it's also happening in the pharmaceutical industry. It's also happening in many industries that we in the public are not, and when you've got people like you that are brave enough to stand up and say stuff, you get attacked. I'm quite surprised that my podcast hasn't been taken off here yet. But anyway. Grant: Yeah, that's right. And yeah, it will heavily wind but people will be, there's forces in play there. You don't want to get too conspiratorial because it sometimes requires a degree of organization that doesn't, that we're capable of, but yeah, I think in the food industry case and pharmaceutical industry, the evidence has been there for a long time. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. And I think, my approach to it now is like, we are possible, light a candle toward the good information rather than fighting and banging your head against the, you know, because otherwise you can end up in a very bad place. But okay, so we know that there's all these addictive forces, if you like, at play. And so because you just look around town, you know, in the obesity and they are boys they're looking like girls and, you know, the hormone regulation is just obviously affected and fertility rates are going down. We're fighting a war here, and we've got kids that are already diabetic and before they're even teenagers, and this is a coming huge disaster for the healthcare system when you're in public health. Grant: Yeah, yeah. The present one that I've become much more interested in because it's, I think it's become more obvious today for a bunch of reasons. I'll tell you a few stories as mental health, particularly Youth Mental Health. I've been an academic for a few decades. And, you know, a decade ago or two decades ago, okay, students will get seconds, some would have some mild mental health problems, but it wasn't really a thing that you would see very much. Now at the moment, all the time I get students, students like it's dropping out of the degree now because of their mental health. They've got anxiety. And these are really smart, intelligent, switched-on people with, these are the top of the socioeconomic ladder, we don't know how much worse it is at the bottom. I didn't even get there in the first place. That youth suicide rate in New Zealand, it keeps getting talked about as the tip of an iceberg for a major problem. One of the women that I work with, mid-20s, beautiful, intelligent woman. Yeah, we're talking about SSRIs, antidepressants, because I've been on those I could have knocked me over I said, are, you know, is it a common thing for your friend group and that sort of thing? She goes, I pretty much everyone I know is on them. Yeah, yeah. And, and so we've got this— Lisa: It's a good sequence, isn't it? Grant: Because the brains are metabolic. We've got a metabolic crisis with obesity and diabetes, but guess what? The most important metabolic organ is your brain. Somehow, again, here we are, asleep at the wheel, we've got this, you've got this treatment gap. So even if we could treat them with anything effective, which is doubtful. From our current system, yeah, they can only treat half the half of the 910,000 people in the country of 5 million. Because 910,000 is the number of serious mental health problems. Wow. Half of them don't get any treatment whatsoever, because there is no treatment. You bring the mental health crisis line, which we've had to do. And they will say, are they killing themselves right now? And that's just like, no, that's like— Lisa: ‘Okay, we've got time.' Grant: Yeah, then okay, we're not doing it, I think. And we'll go to your doctor. If you go to your doctor, you know that there's a nine month wait to see a psychologist?. It's just unacceptable. Lisa: And what's the answer? The course, the easy answer for the doctor is to give them a SSRI. Grant: Which doesn't work very well. No. neuroplasticity, if they're a young person, causes them harm. Lisa: Closes down hormones. And does it different. Grant: Yeah, 100%. Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Grant: So to me, the unacknowledged metabolic crisis here we can see obesity. We can measure diabetes. Yeah, and those are problems. But you know, to me the most perverse one, especially having, you know, teenage kids myself and that sort of thing is this youth mental health thing. It's despicable. Like my dad, yeah, good for him. He had metastatic prostate cancer and was sorted with this keto diet, but the amount of access to expensive treatment, he was able to get in his 80s. Compared to a young woman in her early 20s, who has a serious mental health problem that's going to affect her, and even around for the rest of their lives, who can get none. It's perverse, who spends their money on health that way? Yeah, like, I want my dad to get his treatment and get better and everything, which he has, but, what sort of society prioritizes that over these young people? Lisa: Yeah, and what can we do? Like why, there is a lot of I mean, I talk research a lot, and I know that your research is also pointing in this direction, that there's a lot of health fundamentals that we can get right, that can actually help people without costing anything even, without having to be a pharmacological intervention. How about we try to teach people how to manage themselves? And I mean, I've had, I was on antidepressants for over 20 years, and I could not get off them, because they are addictive. It took me three years to get off them, and thank God I did. I, in my early 20s, had relationship crises, was put on them, just stayed on them because I didn't know any better. What are, what implications that's had for me, and then trying to get off them. And of course, your body starts to downregulate your own if you're not producing your own. I've got off them now, and I'm fine, and so on, and I'm helping other family members off them. But that was the first port of call. Now I understand the need for health fundamentals like sleep, hygiene, and movement, and exercise, and sunshine, and the right diet, because diet is a huge piece of the puzzle, because your gut and your brain are connected. And there's a lot of, like you say, a fix. When you have a bad diet, and you have bad nutrition, you're going to have more mental instability, if you want to put it that way, you're going to have more problems, than if you're on a good, really robust, solid, good diet. That's going to affect your mental health. And what are our kids, they're not giving any of that information, or any programs around it. Grant: Yeah, and you interfere with one aspect of metabolic homeostasis with an antidepressant, and you're surprised that it doesn't work very well, and there's unintended consequences. What we're trying to do is, and humans, I think, all want to be in the state, we're trying to return ourselves to a sort of metabolic homeostasis where things are balanced and well-regulated. For the most of the body, that's the primary target, there is a sugar in your blood and the insulin in your blood, because if those aren't right, then you're an inflammatory environment and pro-growth and no chance to, you know, being that autophagy of tightening things up. So that's the big metabolic picture. But in the brain, I've just started to stitch together a much more, I think coherent view of what's going on. Because the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain is important. I just think with the low fat revolution, we pick fat, not carbohydrates. We pick the wrong one of the three. Yeah, well, this is alright, we pick serotonin as the neurotransmitter to manage, we need to get it back to where it started more quickly. That's what reuptake inhibitors do. And actually, sorry? Lisa: You've written a paper recently on glutamate and its role in all this. Can you explain about it? Grant: I have, six months ago, I had heard of glutamate because I, trying to, from psychology, and frankly, I'd forgotten what it did. Until one of my smart students reminded me that glutamate is the most important and most prevalent excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. It's about 90% of your neurotransmitters, it runs in tandem with an inhibitory system called GABA. And so these two things operate together. The inhibition fine tunes the excitation. And not only that, the glutamate gets recycled onto glutamine and then back into GABA and they rely on one another to be in a sort of, you know, good, healthy relationship, right? And so what happens is, when there's over-excitation, which chronic stress does, then glutamate because it's excitatory neurotransmitters, just keeps getting pumped out. Pumped out, pumped out, and it hits its receptor in the other side of the synapse, between neurons. That receptor, it's called the NMDA receptor, it's downregulated. So it stops seeing the glutamate as much as it could be, which causes even more glutamate to be produced. And then this glutamate starts to seep out of that cleft and to just general space. And the trouble with it— Lisa: It's toxic. Grant: It's toxic, and this is called glutamate excitotoxicity. So this is not a theory, this is a thing. And it starts to kill brain cells, and the trouble with it, first of all it atrophies neurons, which is never good, and they're not there anymore when they die. But those dying neurons themselves spill out glutamate, into more glutamate into the space, and you get this downward spiral of— Lisa: Neurodegeneration. Grant: Neurodegeneration, exactly right. And so the most interesting thing in my mind about this, and this is why I'm so excited about it is because, and you'll see this. So the most obvious is a concussion or mild TBI, traumatic brain injury, is that what causes your initial brain cell death is just an insult, right? You bang your head, right? So you get that glutamate excitotoxicity. The initial effects of the concussion is mild, but the long-term effects of the concussion because of the glutamate excitotoxicity are severe. That's why concussions get worse and worse and worse for time after they've happened. Lisa: Okay, thanks that somebody's saying that! Because people go to the hospitals with a concussion and they go, no, there's, you've had a mild concussion, go home and rest. And that's it. It's like we there's so much we can do— Grant: 100% there's so much we can do. And I think we already do it when it gets really severe, right? So if you're in hospital with ischemia, lack of oxygen in the brain from a heart attack, or sometimes in some hospitals, that neonatal hypoxia, so newborns become deprived of oxygen. One way that they deal with that is they induce hypothermia, because cold exposure, especially in those areas, helps reduce glutamate. And they provide intravenous magnesium because magnesium antagonises as a receptor and allows glutamate to get back to its homeostatic levels more quick, and it's highly effective. And the animal studies are very, very convincing. And it's near a clinical practice for things like spinal cord injury. And then you start to think about other ways that the brain gets damaged. So Alzheimer's and dementia is an interesting one. So for other reasons, including high glucose, we start to lose brain cells. But as soon as you start to do a little bit excitotoxicity, then exacerbates the problem massively. A mild or severe stress, which results in post traumatic stress disorder, is another way of damaging the brain initially through chronic, elevated glutamate but it rolls onto itself. And this is solved, then it's not a problem. Lisa: This is why stress and trauma— Grant: And chronic stress, you're just stressed out, your fight or flight response is up more than it should. And it goes on a long time. The two to three minutes that it's designed to be up for is actually days, months, years, same thing. And so you've got these different pathways, getting brain damage. Lisa: Brain damage is happening as well. Grant: When you take, if you if you scan people with major depressive disorder, you autopsy people who've committed suicide, then you see severe atrophy and things like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, important areas. And it's caused by chromatic toxicity. But the reason why that's interesting is that there's a lot you can do about it. And so we mentioned cold water therapy, just getting in cold water, especially you can breathe slowly and deeply through your nose, which downregulates the nervous system, as medical therapy for depression, right? Yeah. So and potentially I think for TBI and concussion and Alzheimer's and that sort of thing, because it helps with that. But so is aerobic exercise for the same reason. So is a whole range of nutrient supplements, particularly magnesium, particularly you have to take them in the form of magnesium citrate or magnesium l-threonate. And the clinical trials of magnesium citrate and depression is a more effective medication than an antidepressant. And there is no real side effects. So magnesium, zinc, omega-3 fish oils, B complex vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D, all anti-inflammatory, antioxidant type. Lisa: And all stuff that I'm on every day, and my mum's on with her brain injury on, all the time. Grant: That's right, because and they are downregulating glutamate transmission and achieving a glutamate GABA balance in a better way, as does presence of ketones in your blood occasionally, as does any sort of diet that's anti-inflammatory, and any diet that's inflammatory, exacerbates the problem. So— Lisa: So for things like brain injuries, like someone like mom who was in a coma and they were putting a ba- basically a glucose strip into the, you know, into feeding tubes. That's just like causing more damage than if we'd had ketones present if we'd had— Grant: 100%, because you're, there's also a fuel cri- an accompanying fuel crisis on the brain where it can't— Lisa: Uptake the glucose. Grant: —uptake the glucose in the normal fashion, but you can use ketones. So you've got the glutamate part going on, and you've got the glucose fuel crisis. So you know— Lisa: And isn't the same with Alzheimer's, and they, it's a, when you get insulin resistance, you also get the glucose not being able to be uptaken in the brain, and therefore the brain starving for glucose. Prog Grant: Yeah. So ketogenic diet for that group is actually a pretty therapeutic diet, that would be the one situation that would be, you know, granted, for keto is hard. I mean, obviously, it's a hard population group to work with them on that, but that doesn't make it not therapeutic. That's another whole— Lisa: No, and that's what I put, you know, like with mum's brain injury, once I started to realize that from the research I was doing. I was doing I had her on as good as possible, keto diet for that first couple of years. Not so much now, because she's got autonomy so it's harder regulate. But she does do intermittent fasting, and she has got all the supplements, and she has got a very, low-carb diet, as much as I can get it to do it, when she's not sneaking things around my back. But this is just so crucial for all of these degenerative diseases, and I'm really excited about this glutamate thing, because it's only just come on my radar through your research, and I think that this is perhaps gonna go to the next level. Are you continuing the research on this? Grant: Yeah, and I'm really interested in, I haven't been that interested in micronutrients through my career. I sort of felt while you're eating whole foods, you know, that should be the template. And I still think that, but I increasingly started to think, especially my colleague, Julia Ruckledge, who's a professor of psychology at University of Canterbury, in her work with micronutrients. She uses fairly high doses, but how effective those have been in her clinical trials with various aspects of mental health. And just as I see also random other outcomes like they just happened to be doing a clinical trial when the Christchurch earthquake happened, and they're only halfway through it. So the randomization wasn't quite complete. They noticed at the end of the trial that the people in the micronutrient supplementation group, about 19% of those ended up with some sort of post traumatic stress from the Christchurch earthquake. Lisa: Yep. Grant: Those without, who are in the placebo group, 69% have post traumatic stress. And this is consistent with other research around, you know, the stress of natural disasters, natural disasters, and that sort of thing. And all sorts of things go wrong in the brain. And it's just, there's a mess of effects. If you could get this from a pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical company would be all over it. But, you know, inexpensive micronutrients. So, you're interested in those really. Lisa: So that improves your resilience. Basically, you've got the right vitamins and minerals and things in your body to do the work that's needed to be required. Have you ever heard about the research of ketamine and post traumatic stress? When that ketamine is able to stop the formation of the memories, the traumatic-ness if that's a word? Grant: Yeah, so, so yes, yeah. Lisa: Because it's part of that there'll be part of that glutamate thing, wouldn't it? Grant: Ketamine is, antagonizes the NDMA receptor, as the same mechanism magnesium roles a play, plays a role on. And so ketamine is a little bit more of a difficult substance to think about it because it's an analgesic and it's sort of that pre-anesthetic and acidic and it really spaces people out. But you're right across PTSD, single treatments have been shown to be highly effective. Single treatments with major depressive or otherwise intractable have shown to be temporarily effective. The most interesting one, for me, I was just talking to an ethicist the other day about this. He was talking about ketamine with chronic pain sufferers, and about half of the people they treat with ketamine with chronic pain, they have an instant and complete alleviation of the chronic pain. And they give them ketamine at a subclinical dose for five straight days. I don't know the ins and outs of that. Lisa: Because it stops the pathways from— Grant: I don't know what, I'm think
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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out Mark's experience with meditation and how this made him into an ultimate warrior. Discover how a positive internal dialogue can train your brain to be focused. Know about recapitulation and how it can help in dealing with traumas. Episode Highlights [05:34] Mark's Background Mark's experiences with his father forged his mental toughness and resilience. This laid the foundation for him to be an ultimate warrior. He grew up boating, hiking, and running trails through the mountains. Athletics was his escape, but he wasn't able to think about his future. When Mark left college, he was fortunate enough to get a job in a big accounting firm; this allowed him to go to a top business school. Despite school and work, Mark was determined to continue his athletic career. He then became interested in Seido karate. Meditation made him realise that he wasn't following his true path. [15:13] Becoming an Ultimate Warrior Mark came across a Navy recruitment centre, saw their poster, and applied to be a SEAL. Mark graduated with his entire boat crew. He was number 1 in his class. Mark credits this achievement to meditation training and the team building activities that compelled you to tame your ego. [19:59] The Importance of Meditation and Yoga Mark meditated and trained in yoga every day in the war zone. He felt stronger and more confident. Yoga is the oldest science of mental and personal development. Mark learned that training one's physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual aspects mean you can access more of yourself and your potential. Yoga, in a sense, is integration; it is coming back to who we are and being whole. Listen to the full episode to learn how Mark got into yoga and how this contributed to him becoming an ultimate warrior. [26:33] The Importance of Emotional Strength In SEAL training, most of those who quit were physically strong but lacked the emotional strength to handle extreme moments of crisis and doubt. The person subconsciously created the injury to quit. Mark tried to be flexible and didn't let anything bother him during SEAL training. Mark trains SEALs by teaching the Big Four: box breathing, positive internal dialogue, visualisation, and micro-goals. [35:19] Examining Your Internal Dialogue Meditation is a critical part of examining one's internal dialogue. How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and motivation. The term 'feeding the fear wolf' means to allow negative dialogue, imagery, and emotions to control and weaken you. Positive thoughts, or ‘feeding the courage wolf', creates a higher vibration, bringing in more energy and access to creativity. Controlling your breathing and adding a positive mantra can be very transformative; it helps you develop concentration and increase productivity. [41:33] Imagining Victory Our belief systems are made out of statements that may or may not be true. Pay attention to your thoughts and make them positive. Know that you are competent. Although you may not feel it yet, continue meditating to get rid of that negative side. When you understand your capabilities, you can project them into the future and have an image of your success. When positive thoughts overcome negative ones, you can see your true self more clearly, and powerful thoughts start to spread. [46:10] The Zen Process Meditation is challenging, especially for active people. We have to disconnect from various distractions and be still. You can't evolve if you are constantly active; the only way to go inward is to slow down and be quiet. The first step in meditation practice is box breathing. It releases stress and brings brain-body balance. In the second step, the box pattern turns into concentration practice. The mantra is also added to train concentration and attention. The third step allows you to put less energy into concentration and observe yourself from a witness perspective. [53:00] The Importance of Doing Emotional Work Doing emotional work is the foundation of meditation. Without this, you don't get the full benefits of meditation. Meditation requires patience. The process is different for everyone. [55:44] Going into the Witness Perspective In this part of the process, you empty your mind and allow any thought streams to come in. You experience a metacognitive split here. You see the thoughts that come up from a perspective that's separate from them. Through this, you realise you're not your thoughts and emotions. And so, you have the power to change your story. When you visualise from the witness perspective, you see what your spirit wants you to see. You realise your true purpose. If you do this every day, you attract the future that's right for you, and you feel connected to the world. Through this, you eventually gain enlightenment. [01:02:43] How Meditation Can Help Athletes Meditation supports total health. Through it, you'll become more healthy, strong, and motivated. Awakened athletes and warriors who serve the world can change it. Athletes can do so because they are emotionally balanced. [01:05:25] What Is Recapitulation? Recapitulation is where we use imagery to go back into our past, relive traumatic events, recontextualise them, and forgive. It is to see yourself forgiving your younger self and changing the image and energy associated with your traumas. Awareness and identification of traumatic events is the first step to the recapitulation. Recapitulation can be used to go back and overcome big traumas and to make sure you are not dragging past regrets. Recapitulation then becomes a daily practice of letting go of regrets and resentments. Listen to the full episode and hear some examples of this! [01:18:28] How to Be a Good Leader Show up as the best version of yourself. Be humble, authentic, trustworthy, courageous, and respectful. It takes time to develop those qualities and work on them with your team. Listen to the full episode to know how Mark does leadership training in his programs! Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #199: Episode with Dr Don Wood Connect with Mark: Website | Instagram The Unbeatable Mind Podcast with Mark Divine Bedros Keulian on Learning How to “Man Up” How to Deal with Trauma with Dr Don Wood Check out these books by Mark Divine! Staring Down the Wolf Unbeatable Mind 8 Weeks to SEALFIT The Way of the SEAL KOKORO Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda 2021 Unbeatable Challenge 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again.' ‘Human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole.' ‘How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology “feeding the courage wolf” versus “feeding the fear wolf.' ‘Understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, “What does victory look like for me?”' ‘I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose.' ‘Ultimately, we create our own reality. It's all basically, it's all experienced with [the] mind. So that's powerful.' ‘You can do anything, one at a time.' About Mark Mark Divine grew up in Upstate New York. He has a degree in economics from Colgate University and an MBA from NYU. He is a New York Times best-selling author, leadership expert, entrepreneur, motivational speaker. Mark is also a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Commander. He spent nine years on active duty and 11 as a Reserve. With 20 years in service, he served in over 45 countries. During his time in the military, Mark created a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL trainees. Because of his success, he decided to start SEALFIT. This fitness company aims to prepare civilians for the physical and emotional demands of a SEAL-like lifestyle. Mark knows the value of emotional strength in transforming lives. With this in mind, he published Unbeatable Mind in 2011, which includes an at-home study program. Mark also has several other entrepreneurial endeavours and books in his name. He's also the host of the Unbeatable Mind podcast. With all these ventures, Mark's ultimate aim is to create more resources to improve the lives of everyone he meets. If you want to know more about Mark and his work, check out his website and Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be motivated to be their real selves through meditation. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hey everyone, Lisa Tamati here. Fantastic to have you back at Pushing the Limits this week. Now I have a wonderful man who I've followed for a number of years. He's one of my heroes, I was a little bit of a fangirl in this interview I have to admit. But it was pretty crazy. I have Commander Mark Divine on the show. Mark is an ex-Navy SEAL. He was a Commander in the Navy Seal. He was there for 20 years, and he was a fantastic leader. He was deployed in over 45 countries around the world. He also trains, trains a lot of the SEALs who are going into BUD/S training. He was number one on his course when he went through BUD/S, and that's saying something. That's nine months of hell on earth, so if you get through that, you've got to be pretty cool, and to be number one in the end of the whole 190 that went on, that's pretty amazing. He's the author of a number of books: Staring Down the Wolf, Unbeatable Mind, and SEALFIT, and runs a number of multi-million dollar companies. As a leadership consultant, he trains, not only does he train the military, he helps people prepare for SEAL training. He also now runs through his innovative SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind training systems. Kokoro crucible is one of his programs. He shares the same secrets with entrepreneurs, executives, and teams through his book and through his book, and through his speaking, and through his award-winning podcast. He has his own, and I have the privilege of being on that one shortly. He runs world-renowned leadership and team events. Wonderful man to talk to, someone that I really, really look up to and respect. His discipline that he brings to everything that he does is quite amazing. So I hope you enjoy the show. Before we go, I just want to remind you to check out our epigenetics program, if you haven't already. Head over to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button, and find out about our Peak Epigenetics program. This is all about understanding your genetics, and how to optimise them for your best performance. So everything from food, to exercise, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day you should be training, what times of the day you should be eating, and how often. What type of diet is right for you, right down to the nitty gritty. You know, eat almonds, don't eat cashew nuts, right specific to your genetics, so to speak. It also looks at your whole mood and behavior, what makes you tick, why do you think the way you do, what areas you may have problems with, your predispositions. That's not to be all deterministic, and negative, that's all to be like this is what you're dealing with, and this is how we can hit things off at the pass. This is a really life-changing program, and we're really proud to bring it to you. We've been doing it for a number of years now. We've taken hundreds of people through this program, and we work with corporate teams. So if you're out there and you have a corporate team that might be interested in doing either this or our boost camp program, which is all about upgrading and learning all about how to manage stress, how to reduce the effects of stress, and be more resilient and bring a higher performance to your game, then please reach out to us. Go over to lisatamati.com. and check out all the programs that we have here. Just a reminder too, I have a new book out called Relentless: How a Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you would hear me harp on about my amazing mum and the journey that we've been on back from a massive aneurysm that left her at the age of 74 with hardly any higher function, and a prognosis that said she would never ever do anything again. And they were very, very wrong. So I want to share this book, I want to share the story, because it's a very empowering story. So if you haven't read the book Relentless, I really encourage you to go and do that. I'm really keen to get this out there because this will empower and change lives, and already has, so make sure you read Relentless. Right, over to the show with Commander Mark Divine. Hi everyone, Lisa Tamati here. I'm super, super excited. I'm jumping out of my skin, I can't sit still. I have one of my great heroes that I've followed for such a long time, so I'm a little bit, being a bit of a fangirl right now. But I'm sure I'll calm down in a minute or two. Commander Mark Divine is with us. He has such a huge history. You are known, really, as the warrior man, Unbeatable Mind, SEALFIT. You've done a heck of a lot in your life. Mark, it's just, I can't wait to share some of your insights, because what you do and what you've done is just absolutely amazing. So, welcome to Pushing the Limits. Can you give us a little bit of background, Mark, on where you come from and what you've done and how you've, just to give us a little bit of, because you, obviously you've been in the SEALs, you're a commander in the SEALs, you're a trained SEAL. So let's start there. Let you come to it. Mark Divine: Oh, my God, where to start? Lisa: Maybe childhood. Mark: I was born at a very young age in a very small town in upstate New York, a province of the United States. I'll try to keep this short because sometimes I have a few run-on sentences. Go like 40 minutes, right? We don't want that to happen. That's when we have a good time. So yeah, I was a pretty normal kid growing up, running around the woods of upstate New York, crazy family, lots of alcohol and anger. The belt would come out pretty much every other night. My brother and I would literally just provoke my father just to do it, because we stopped taking him seriously after a while. In that regard, I feel pretty fortunate that my young spirit was like, ‘You can't break me'. I realise now that we all choose our parents, let's just say, from a spiritual perspective, I certainly believe that. For certain experiences, and for a while I played the victim, woe is me. But now I look back and thank God, that really forged my mental toughness and resiliency. I had to unpack some crap from that, obviously, but it made me a Navy SEAL warrior, right? When I went through Navy SEAL training, you could not hurt me, because nothing was compared to my dad. Anyway, so that's a little aside. Upstate New York had a really— it's beautiful. I've been to your country in New Zealand. It's just absolutely gorgeous. I feel the same way about America in certain places, the much bigger. New York is one of those areas that, 6 million acres of unfettered, protected land in northern New York called the Adirondack Mountains, and that was my playground. And our summer home was on the west shore of a lake called Lake Placid where the Olympics were, you're probably familiar with that. Lisa: Yeah. Mark: There was no road access to my house. There was no TV, no internet. Still, there's finally internet after but no TV, and we would have to take a boat to get there. And so I grew up with boats and I grew up hiking in the Adirondacks and a lot of time alone in the wilderness, which is one of the reasons I became kind of an endurance athlete. I know you're an endurance lady. Because I was comfortable, being alone. I was comfortable running the trails in the mountains, and I used to have a friend, we would run up Whiteface Mountain, which is at the base or the foot of Lake Placid. Not a huge mountain, it's 4,000 feet, but you know it took a couple hours. If you're going to hike up there it takes a few hours. For us to run up there, took us 45 minutes. People used to think we were crazy. When we got to the top we would wrap our ankles and our knees and we would play tag on the way down. The trails are steep and just rocks and ruts and roots. It's amazing we didn't kill ourselves. So that was my like early childhood upbringing, nature being in the woods and in the water were my solace away from the family dynamics. That led me to be a competitive athlete in high school, 12 varsity letters and then into college, I was recruited for swimming and I became a competitive rower. And then I started triathlon. So, I was an athlete, but the athletics really was my escape and kind of my grounding rod, like it is for so many athletes, right? When I— then I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I didn't really spend a lot of time in my youth thinking about my future, I kind of accepted a lot of the stories for my family that I was going to go back and be part of the family business. That business was really the place that Divines go, you know, we don't go into the military, we don't go into academia, we don't do those things. So anyways, it's as your listeners are hearing this, they're probably like, ‘Yep, check.' Lisa: They may have done that. Mark: That's the norm, right? That's not, I wasn't off, but it's certainly not what I teach today, right? Because, right, I think if we're— if we don't follow our passion and find our calling in life, then we're going to have discomfort later on, and discomfort is going to lead to existential crisis. So I was very fortunate, incredibly fortunate that when I left college, I got a job with a big accounting firm, consulting accounting firm called Coopers and Lybrand, which became accountant, became— Lisa: You were an accountant. I mean, that makes me laugh, really. Mark: I was an accountant. Lisa: I was on the way to being an accountant too. So because of what my dad wanted, and I'm about as far from an accountant, as you can get, you know. Mark: I was too. Lisa: That's a good story. Mark: But I stuck with it long enough to become a certified public accountant, I had to pass the exam. Lisa: I didn't. Mark: I got my— I tell you what, I would rather go back to BUD/S Navy SEAL training than try that darn exam again. That told me something right there. But you know, it is a great opportunity. Because here I am, you know, I got a degree from a pretty good university called Colgate. But I didn't really have any skills. And so this job opportunity gave me and sent me to a top business school in the United States called NYU, New York University. So I got my MBA in finance, and I became a certified public accountant for four years. I got to work on a lot of different companies as a consultant and auditor. So I saw a lot. But, so that was kind of formative, in a sense, like, I learned a lot. What was probably more formative, or more substantial for me was, once I got into that suit and tie, and I was working eight hours a day, mind you, they allowed me to work only 8 or 10 hours a day. Most people in those scenarios work 15 to 20. But because they were sponsoring this small group of us to go to business school at night, they had to let us off, and then we would go to school full-time during the summer, and just come in on Fridays. It was a really cool program. So I was working 8 to 10 hours a day, going to school at night. And it's— I was an athlete, right? And I was like, ‘How am I going to, how am I going to stay as an athlete?' Right? Most people don't. Because you know, in the corporate world, and I was like, ‘I've got to, I've got to continue my athletic career.' And so I would get up really early in the morning and go for a six mile run. And then at lunchtime when all my peers would go have a beer or martini and lunch, I would go to the gym and do like this, what I now know is a high intensity functional workout, which back then nobody talked about. Because I had to go fast, and I was wanting to do a lot of different variety, and I had to be in and out of there in 45 minutes. And then after, they let me go at five o'clock in the afternoon, and my first class wasn't till 7:30. So I'm looking at that saying, ‘Look, I got two and a half hours. I could do some training here.' So one night, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But one night, I was walking down 23rd Street, I was living on 22nd in Manhattan, and I heard these screams coming out of this building. And I stopped and I looked up and I was standing under the flag of the World Seido Karate Headquarters. ‘Oh, interesting. Maybe it's a martial art.' And I had been intrigued with the martial arts. But in Upstate New York, that just wasn't much. There's nothing as a matter of fact, in my time, and so I didn't really get a chance to study anything. So I went in there and I was floored. I was stunned by what I saw. It was an incredible art. This was the headquarters of a worldwide art called seido, they had three or 400,000 students. And the Grand Master, the founder was on the center of the floor, this Japanese man, 10th degree black belt, looked like a frickin' tank. And he was, his name was Nakamura, and he became my mentor, my first real mentor. Yeah. Now what's interesting, he says it wasn't really the karate that changed me. It was the zen training. And he is one of the few masters who kept the old ways of training the mind and the body and the spirit, and understood that they all had to be in balance, and they all were part of the package of developing these corrupted, these trainees. I loved the zen part, and there was a zen class we had every Thursday night for an hour, we would sit on that little wooden zazen bench. And honestly, this studio is the headquarter, had well over a thousand students. There were ten of us in this class, most of them black belts, and I was a white belt, and I was like, ‘Where is everyone else?' I didn't get it. And then there wasn't a lot of understanding or talk about meditation back then. But boy, I did this thing to do meditation. I had all the usual kind of resistance to it, and my monkey mind going all over the place and wondering if it really worked. I trusted Nakamura and the way he acted and presented himself as a character, just who he was, was so different than any other human I've ever seen or experienced. And I was like, ‘There's got to be something to this, right?' So I stuck with it. And it literally changed almost every aspect of who I was and how I saw the world and what I perceived to be my calling and my purpose in life. And it was sitting on that bench that I realised that I was going down the wrong path with this MBA, CPA, working in the corporate world. Even if I went back to the family business, it just wasn't what I was meant to do. That was the first time in my life that I allowed myself to examine my core story that said, this is who I am, and to recognise it was built on a lie. Lisa: Yeah. And you weren't following your true path. Mark: I wasn't following my true path. But my true path wasn't exactly laid out for me, in those meditation sessions. It was more like the archetypal energy in the arc of my life was shown to me and that that art was to be a warrior, and then it would lead somewhere else that wasn't quite clear to me, but the warrior part was very strong. And it didn't— I didn't get messages while I was meditating, saying, ‘You're going to be a Navy SEAL.' What I got was ‘warrior' and, ‘You're going down the wrong path with this business stuff.' It was when I finally started to accept that, that I learned about the Navy SEALs, right. Remember, this is 1987, 88, there was no TV shows and movies, no famous names. Lisa: They weren't famous back then. Mark: Nobody knew them. In fact, the few people that did know them were like, crazy guys. So I— one day, I was walking home from work, and I came across a Navy recruiting station. I didn't even know it was that but I saw a poster in the window. I took a double take of this poster. I was like, well, the title of that poster was, ‘Be Someone Special'. And it had Navy SEALs doing really cool shit. Jumping out of airplanes, yeah, blocking out little mini submarines, sneaking through the water. It's just so cool for me. I just sat there kind of transfixed, looking at that, and I didn't say anything about the SEALs. They said, US Navy, and I was, ‘Huh, interesting.' So I went back and I talked to the recruiters so what, ‘Who are those people in that poster?' They said, ‘Oh, they're crazy Navy SEALs. You don't want to do that.' I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Tell me more.' So long story short. I started that whole CPA, MBA bullshit, 1985. In November of 1989, I got my black belt, I got my MBA, I got my CPA and I was on a bus. I was on a bus to Officer Candidate School. Lisa: That was the next mission. Mark: On to the next mission. I wandered away from, I walked away from probably what would today's dollars be $200,000 salary to get paid $500 a month? Lisa: Wow. That takes— Mark: For heading off as a candidate. Lisa: That takes courage. That alone takes courage. Mark: But I didn't question that. You know, I knew it. I knew this is the right path. And when I got to SEAL training, what we called BUD/S, basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Man, I felt like I was home, and there was no way that they were going to get me to quit. I mean, other people said this, but I said this very clearly: ‘You have to kill me to get me out of here.' And I don't think they can legally do that. Although they sure do try. Lisa: It can get pretty close. Mark: It can get pretty close, yeah. I sailed through SEAL training. We had 185 in my class, hardcore, awesome guys. And 19 of us graduated. I graduated number one in my class and my entire team, my boat crew that we trained together from day one, graduated with me. Lisa: Wow. Mark: So there's something about that meditation training, Nakamura and the skills, and the values on team building and taking my eyes off myself and putting them on others, the taming of the ego, it really allowed me to help lead my team to success, right? We made it about the team and not about me, and everyone else was about them. And they— the team's, the instructors are, their job is to select the next crop of teammates that they will go to war with. Lisa: Yeah. Mark: So what they're looking for is not who's the toughest guy, not who's the best athlete— Lisa: Not the coolest, yeah. Mark: Yeah, exactly, not the best looking whatever. It's, ‘Are you a great teammate? Are you gonna have my back?' So that's something that I guess I demonstrated. Lisa: Wow, that's a brilliant intro into your background. What fascinates me with you too is that you like— you know, because the SEALs are known for being hard asses. I mean, you know they are hard people, they have been through tough stuff, they go through tough stuff every single day that you're out there. But you've got this meditation side, you do a heck of a lot of yoga. You do, you talk about authenticity, and I know you don't like the word vulnerability, but you're quite, you're open about the stuff. That's quite the opposite of most, in the training that you get. I suppose this comes from Nakamura being your master, that he taught you that very early on, they're sort of the both sides of the coin. I get that question quite a lot, too. When they— when people read what I've done and achieved and so on, they're like, ‘Wow, you must be a super hard ass.' And then they meet you and realise that you're actually very vulnerable or cry a lot. I'm very full of mistakes and problems and stuff that I'm working on at all times. But the difference is, I think, that you embrace both sides. And that you are always in pursuit of excellence, and you're always improving, and you're always developing. And I found that a really interesting combination in someone who's so physically tough and mentally tough to have had both sides. Was that a hard thing in the beginning with the SEALs? Mark: I think you're right. I did learn that initially from Nakamura and so every day, you know, I was so committed. Every day I would stretch and I would do my breathing practices and my visualisation while I was going through SEAL training. Every day in the SEALs, I do some version of that. It was you know, it's difficult for a military operator to keep a daily dedicated practice going if you're up 24 hours a day, and you're in combat. Honestly, when I went to Iraq and combat, I meditated and trained yoga every single day. And it had a profound effect on me, right? In the war zone, all my teammates are just getting frayed at the edges, and I felt strong and confident, and I knew I was going to survive, because I did, I had that vision. I was going to be home with my child, you know, my wife and son. So it came first from Nakamura, and then I started into yoga. It's not my career, it's important people know, I did plus-20 years in the Navy SEAL, but about nine years active duty and 11 years reserve. So as reserve, so nine years after I joined, even while I was on active duty, I started to get into yoga. But when I got off active duty I had more time. I went full on in, and that was because— actually it is a blessing in disguise. I was living in San Diego and there was no seido karate out here. Otherwise I would have gotten back into seido karate. So first I got into something called goju karate, I got a black belt there. It was very similar to seido but it lacked the spirit and like the mental, the meditation, so I didn't really stick with that. And then I got into ninjutsu, thinking ninjutsu might be a little bit more spiritual. I really liked the teacher but he was a horrible business guy, so right on the cusp of getting my black belt, he shut his school down and ran out of money. And then I found yoga kind of about the same time as ninjitsu. But I didn't really understand it until I read Patanjali's yoga sutras and also Paramahansa Yogananda's autobiography yoga. And those just absolutely shattered my paradigm of what was possible and what yoga was, as the oldest science of mental and personal development. So I fully went into yoga and I ended up getting 700 hours of certifications and started my own yoga program and wrote a book about it eventually, but, and started teaching it to SEALs. And so all this I was still a SEAL officer. Because I didn't retire from the SEALs in 2011, but I was able to do all this and build a business that started to teach Navy SEALs everything I would have been learning. And that's called SEALFIT. That was the business that everything I've been learning and applying in my own life, right? And this was this integrated model of development. It started with Nakamura where it wasn't just about the physical. It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again. What that means is you'll become more, you have access to more of yourself. You have to put more potential. You can maintain peak performance, you can serve more profoundly, you can do more, you've got way more energy, way more enthusiasm, way more motivation, way more peace of mind, way more clarity. It's extraordinary. In a sense, it's like coming back to who we are. That's why I call it integration. In fact, the word ‘yoga' means union or integration, and so does is zen, believe it or not. Those practices and traditions are really all about becoming whole as a human again, as opposed to fragments and separate, separate from yourself and separated from others. So I stumbled upon this, and created my own path or my own model. And then when I had started to teach it to SEALs and special operators, and other military operators, a ton of people, even from New Zealand, some of your listeners might have been to my training. Then I started to recognise that, ‘Wow, this is necessary in our culture.' Because most Westerners have no connection to this, this way of living of, taking care of the internal while you are working in the external, the yin and the yang, the balance between being and doing, becoming whole again, so you can do your work from a whole perspective as opposed to a fragmented, separated self. Which leads to suboptimal results, at a minimum, in at least a flat out crisis or destruction at the maximum level. And that's, we're seeing that both in from the investment in violence, military build-up, conflict, as well as environmental degradation is because human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole. Lisa: Yep. This is really good. Because I think, we live our lives very much in the doing. We're busy all day, we're busy with a billion million things, we're running businesses, we're— we've got families and so on. And it's really hard to find that stillness. And I know that even as an athlete who, I think for years, I was just headed through the wall, you know, taking— Mark: Most people are, that's how they learn, until they hit the wall, right? Lisa: Yeah, no, I hit the wall a couple of dozen times before, because I was a bit thick. I didn't wake up, said, ‘Hang on, this stuff isn't working anymore.' And it works when you're 20. And it works when you're 25. And it works when you're 30. And but when you start hitting your 40s, and you're still smashing the crap out of your body, and you're not really not refilling the tank, and you're not re-examining what the hell are you doing, I think that's when the wheel started, when the wheel started to fall off for me. And I'm like, ‘Hang on a minute, this— why isn't my body doing like, it wasn't what it was supposed to do?' And when you've grown up, though, with that expectation of, you have to be tough, you have to be hard. And I grew up different to you. But I had a dad who was very, he was an awesome father, but he was a hard ass. And he expected you to be tough and mentally tough, physically tough. He didn't really tolerate a lot of weakness or sickness or anything like that. And he was an amazing dad, but he pushed really hard. And that sort of makes you think, well, you have to be hard all the time. And then when you break down, then it's you being weak. Instead of looking at the whole picture, and quieting the mind and doing these things like meditation was for me. Yeah, I know, I hear it's really important, but I can't sit still. I need it twice as much. Mark: Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. It'd be fun to talk about. But think about, when I reflect back, and my SEAL training and all these other guys were trying to be hard, and they had the same thinking, because America has a real soft side to it. But there's a lot of freakin' warriors in America. And we have that same kind of what your dad's talking about. Gotta be hard. Like, there's no room for weakness. It's got to be tough. You think about the metaphor, the guys who quit were just bad asses. Yeah, why did they quit? They quit because they didn't— they lacked the emotional strength to understand what was happening to them in their either most extreme moments of crisis or moments of just doubt, right? And then they're like, so they let uncertainty in, let doubt creep in and corrupt their decision making and then, one mistake leads to an injury we call, quinjury. And you've probably seen this in endurance athletes' is when all of a sudden the injury kind of crops up and then the person's out. And then really, reality is they created that injury to quit. Lisa: Yeah, because they wanted a way out. Mark: Because they wanted a way out. It's very subconscious. It's not prepared. It's not preparing properly. It's not recovering properly. It's not understanding that this is a long game and getting your ego out of the way. Lisa: It used to prop up for me every— before any big race, that in the week ahead of that race, I would get sick. And I would, I'm sure that that was my subconscious trying to stop me do it. Mark: Yeah, I've given you an out, right. And so— Lisa: You've got a cold, you've got the flu. Mark: Think about the metaphor between, if you got a tsunami coming, like, consider tsunami a metaphor for a crisis, or a big challenge, like BUD/S or a 50 mile or 100 mile race or something like that. There's a tsunami coming. Would you rather be a mighty oak facing that tsunami, or would you rather be like a reed? Lisa: A reed, definitely. Mark: Yeah, if so, when I went to SEAL training, I tried to be the reed, right? I tried to be really flexible. I didn't let anything bother me. You know, structures would come up and, during Hell Week for us, which week seven back then. But now it's more like week three or four, seven days non-stop training around the clock, no sleep. Everyone's heard about that. Like a day, Thursday, like the day before, we're over it most of it, we're down to 60, 35, maybe 45 or 50, actually, in our class from 185 already. And instructor evil comes over and he's like, ‘Mark, I don't like you, I'm gonna make you quit.' And in my mind, I was like, ‘Good luck.' And I even think I started— Lisa: That confidence! Mark: I don't know, it was just my spiritual strength saying, ‘No, you're not going to get me to quit, you can't.' And so I actually was challenging him in my mind, and it must come through on my face. And he goes, ‘I'm gonna wipe that smirk right out that effing face.' And he just made me start doing 8-count bodybuilders, which are like a burpee, basically. And I remember in my mind thinking, ‘Okay, all right. Let's do this.' Right? All I got to do is one 8-count bodybuilder at a time, until he gets tired. Lisa: Until he gets tired. Mark: Exactly! So that's what I did. I just did one. I just want, did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And when we got up to like— Lisa: You broke him. Mark: 800. Lisa: Holy heck. Mark: Which is nothing, right? I did 24 hours of burpees last, a couple of years ago, as part of our challenge. We did, check this out: we did 22 million burpees as a tribe to raise money for veterans. And part of that was to break a world record where our six-person team, you would love this, three men and three women, we did 36,000 burpees in 24 hours, so I did 7,500 or something like that. So 700 is nothing. Back then I didn't know if it was going to be 700 or 7,000 or 70,000. But he got bored, and he walked away at about 700, and I have to say, that worked. That's a good strategy. Lisa: What about the burning in the muscles and the exhaustion and the running out of glycogen— Mark: You can do anything, one at a time. Lisa: Wow. Mark: It's just like in a race, I'm sure you get to a point where all you have to do all you are saying to yourself is, ‘Just one more step.' Lisa: One more step. Yep, absolutely. Mark: Same thing. We call them micro goals. And so we teach— I started teaching these to SEALs, and the best guys already did this. But now we teach it, the SEALs are teaching what I call the Big Four. And they're teaching box breathing for controlling their stress, they're teaching positive internal dialogue, and mantras. And they're teaching visualisation, visualise every event and visualise what the end state looks like for you and then visualise the mission and whatnot. And then micro goals. Like go to BUD/S thinking about eight months of training, you go to BUD/S thinking about, ‘What do I got to do today to win this?' And then when today gets hard, you just collapse. ‘What do I need to do to win this evolution or event that I'm in?' And then when that gets harder, you know, it's like, ‘What do I got to do to get to the next five minutes?' Anytime you quit, or you have the thought, ‘Well, this sucks. I think I want to quit.' You just say, ‘Well, let me just push through to another— let me just push through another five minutes.' Or, ‘Let me just get to that berm up there,' if it's a run, or Log-Pt could go on forever. ‘Let me just finish this evolution, then I'll make a decision.' And so you just keep kicking the can down the road of the pain and the quit decision and the suffering and eventually the suffering goes away, because that's a temporary state. Lisa: And this is like that you just dropped so much golden inside of two minutes. Take a couple of those because these are things that I've took me 20 years to learn. Mark: Play it back in slow motion. Lisa: You know, like this. That's how that's how I break down. You know, every mess of the like, I remember and my listeners have heard me tell the story. But I ran 2,250 kilometers from New Zealand for charity. Mark: Wow. Good for you. Holy cow. Lisa: Yeah, no, it's like, but I've been so busy in the build-up doing— I've been at other races around the world, done Badwater in the States, just come back from that, just launched a book and then I'm standing at the start line. I've been so busy in the thing that I actually hadn't thought about actually running the— because I was just like, ‘Yeah, I got everything, sweet.' And then I'm starting at the start line and I just had a panic attack, like the first real big panic attack. And I'm not, because you're staring down the barrel of this— Mark: Like, holy shit, this is too high to climb. What the heck have I done? Lisa: What the frick was I thinking? And I went home, we had media, we had all my crew and everybody there and I just went away behind the one of the cars and got my mum, my mummy ‘cuz she's my safe place, went to my mummy and I just bawled my eyes out. And said, ‘Mum I can't do this, I don't know what the frick I was thinking. I can't, and there's no way out.' And mum's just like, ‘Hey,' as she hugged me, as mums do. And she said, ‘You don't need to do 2,250 today. All I want you to focus on is that little box up there,' you know, that was a couple of hundred meters up the road. ‘That's what you got to do right now. And then you're going to, you're going to get through to lunchtime, and then you're gonna have lunch. And then we're going to get through to this and that.' She just broke it down into pieces, and she took all of that load that I was just like, ‘Oh my God, this is huge,' and she broke it into one step at a time, basically. And that was some of the greatest learnings that I've taken away for every event that I've done when— and there have been times when I've broken and I've just crashed on the ground. I don't know how to get up and people have come along and they've got me up and walked me through the next few steps. Or the next— and that has gotten you over that hump, you know? And I just wait, you know, that's so much gold, right there, what you've just said. I think if we can do that in daily life so when we're faced with some big scary thing coming at us, how do I just get through this moment? And we're very— if you can get through these impulses, you know, like there's 30 seconds, through the 30 seconds almost, sometimes you can get to a place where you can cope again. And then you can sort of get back up. Mark: And this goes back to like the internal dialogue. Most people don't examine their internal dialogue. And this is where meditation is so critical. And you can also consider, like running or swimming or biking, endurance sports generally, are also very good for examining internal dialogue, because you're going to meet resistance. How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology ‘feeding the courage wolf' versus ‘feeding the fear wolf'. Feeding fear is allowing negative dialogue and negative imagery and negative emotions to kind of run the rule the roost of your psychology, and that weakens you. Negative thoughts demonstrably weaken you as a human being. Lisa: Yeah, because— Mark: They're gonna not just weaken your motivation but literally musculature-wise you get weaker, and that's been proven through kinesiology. So positive thoughts create a higher vibration, which bring more energy, more access to more creativity and motivation. And so you got to train positive thoughts. That's what I mean by feeding the courage wolf. And the more you feed the courage wolf by training positive mantras and positive thoughts, then the more you starve the fear wolf until he goes away, until he just doesn't have the food anymore. And those patterns dry up and blow away. So I created a bunch of positive mantras that I would say in the SEAL training, and they're still with me today. As soon as I start a hard workout, they kick back in. ‘Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. I can get out of me in Hollywood. I've got this easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey, got this. Easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey.' And then I'll synchronise that with my breathing. So, hardcore, run three steps and inhale 1, 2, 3, ‘I've got this. Easy day. Piece of cake.' Exhale 1, 2, 3. Right. Lisa: And the rhythm is good too, hey. Mark: Yeah, exactly. So I was synchronising those before, the big four. The first skill I said, box breathing, it's really breath control. Running, anything you're doing, always breathing through your nose as best as possible, and controlling the breathing and creating a nice rhythmic pattern with the breathing. It's going to be different depending upon what you're doing. If you're lifting weights, gonna be one thing, if you're running another, swimming another. Swimming creates its own little breathing patterns, because head in the water versus out of the water. But just starting there, controlling your breathing and adding a positive mantra, or a positive internal statement that's linked to the breath is transformative. Not only does it keep you in the game athletically or whatever, but when you do this during your regular day, day in and day out, you're training your mind to be really positive and to be very concentrated. So you're developing concentration power. So you're turning your mind from like a scattered floodlight, which is flickering on and off, the monkey mind, to a very, very concentrated laser beam that you can point that laser beam on anything, any task, any project, and it deeply improves your productivity, the ability to get things done, you know, significantly. Lisa: Wow. Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Mark: And then the imagery, right, the imagery. Well, let me backup. The other thing that that process of paying attention to the quality of your thoughts and changing them to positive thoughts, and increasing your concentration power, as you start to look at the dialogue too, in your head. What is actually going on? And you recognise that typically what's going on in your head is a series of statements that are also based upon belief systems, but it can be framed as questions. When people say, ‘I don't think I can do this,' what they're really saying is, ‘Am I worthy? Am I competent?' We can begin to recognise that our belief systems are based upon questions and statements that may or may not be true. And so you want to take a look at the ones that are questionable, especially if they have a negative quality, and say, ‘Is that true?' And you realise, ‘It's not true. I am worthy. I am competent.' Now, I may not feel that yet. But the more I tell myself that and the more I can see that in myself, and the more that I meditate and actually feel into my worthiness and my confidence, and the more I work to eradicate the emotional side or shadow that may have, be tied to related to that — for me, it was because of the childhood abuse, I kind of felt a little unworthiness and whatnot, even though I was capable as a SEAL, it's still kind of plagued me for a while, until I had to stare down that wolf of fear and be like, ‘Yeah, that's all bullshit. That's just a story that I'm holding on to and I was able to release all that energy and feel that worthiness now.' Then that leads to a whole nother set of questions, which are extraordinarily empowering, right. So when I— understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, ‘What does victory look like for me?' Right? ‘If I'm going to run this 2,000 meter, or 2,000 kilometer race, and I'm going to raise money for charity, what is that for? What's my ‘why'? And what does victory look like?' You get a clear sense of what victory looks like. And then you can even do that with the micro parts. So you chunked it down into 100 kilometer segments, let's just say. What does victory look like for that segment for the next five days? What does it look like for today? What does it look like— this is, in a sense, what your mom was doing, but she was doing it from the other way around. What does it look like for the next six hours? What does it look like for the next three hours? You get a clear picture because you're asking the right questions, and you're winning in your mind before you step foot into the battlefield. So asking really powerful questions like, what does victory look like? Who is on my team? Who's got my back? Why am I doing this? How is it related to my purpose in my life? These are the questions that we start asking, because now we've drowned out the negative incessant chatter, which is just holding us back and distracting us. We've created this space, and I use the metaphor still water pond. We've taken our mind and we've created it instead of this choppy, you know, bouncing all over the place, turbulent thought stream, largely negative, we've calmed down. And it's now this still water, and on this still water, you can look at it, you can really see a reflection clearly. So that's kind of a nice thing, you get to see your true self more clearly, but also, what you drop into that water in terms of the thought is going to ripple out and affect everything. So you end up dropping thought seeds that are really powerful, instead of chaotic and negative. Lisa: Because there's this whole, these automatic negative thoughts and if we think about how we evolved that was there for our survival. Because we needed to be aware of dangers and things in our environment, so we were always looking for the bad thing that was going to come at us. But in our world now, where we just, we have this constant chatter in our head. And it's, you know, I've certainly dealt with this for a long time, and I and I fought against the whole sitting still thing, and focusing inwards. Because it's very unpleasant, when you having— when you want to move, you just want to move. Give me a hard ass workout, any day, over meditation, you know, because it's just like this energy, this agitation, but that's why I need to do it. So that I can break through that piece of the puzzle. And then you can tap into strengths that you didn't know you had, and quietness, and then you start to really reflect and like, for me, it has only really been, even in the last few months where I've been— My dad passed away, and it was one hell of a battle for his life. And I, yeah, it was a real— I was fighting against the system. And it was a mess of battle. It's all good when you win, but it's also good when you don't win. And so this one, just been— I was a bit of an existential crisis after that, because I'd lost this battle for my dad, who I loved dearly. And it made me go inward. It made me start to really question some of the biggest things because you start realising that life's short, shorter than I think it's gonna be. You want to understand why, and then going inside and doing some deep work and doing some trauma work and doing all that sort of hard stuff has been great. There's always good that comes out of shit. You never ever want to go through things like that, but when you do, you can always turn them into something, a learning curve of some sort. And having that, I was listening to you with Bedros Keulian, who's also is another one that I— Mark: Yeah, he's an awesome guy. Lisa: Yeah, he's just a rock star. in you, when you were talking about how you went through the zen process where you were, for a start, you started meditating, but you're just learning to quiet the mind. And then after a few months, that became then mindfulness. Where you're starting to observe yourself from outside in splitting the mind or somehow you put this and you're actually observing yourself as this higher self, if you like. Can you explain that a little bit? And how does that— Mark: Yeah, so glad you brought that up. Because I wanted to talk about that. Because you're right. It's— meditation is hard, especially for active people, which everybody, everybody listening, everybody in the Western world is pretty much hyperactive. Yep, that's what we're taught; it's reality. Like, ‘Go, go, go. Do, do, do.' We get over-committed. Now we have, you know, constant distraction with our iPhones and social media, and it's just gonna get worse, worse, worse. Wait until we get plugged in with a neural link, you know, like, wow. So we got to push back against that. The only way to push back against that is to disconnect from all that and to sit still, or stand still, or take a walk. But don't do anything, right. Don't do it for a goal. Don't do it to check it off a box. Don't do it to be the best meditator you know. Lisa: Tick that box. Mark: It doesn't work, right? Lisa: That was what I was going to— Max: There's no goals here. Right? It's about becoming still, getting that clarity and this still water mind back, if you ever had it, but we had it when we were kids, of course, but in a different sense. So that you can evolve. You know, let me start there. I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose. And those two really kind of go hand-in-hand or hand-in-glove. You can't evolve if you're constantly doing. You actually will stay stuck. You'll keep getting your ass handed to you. You'll keep suffering. You'll keep feeling victimised. And you'll keep looking outward for the solutions. And you'll keep blaming other people, or society, or taxes, or the government, or God. Lisa: A lot of fingers are turned. Mark: The answers lie within, right? And so the only way to go inward is to slow down and just be quiet. Right? So it's imperative. Now, why do most people fail? A) Because everything I've just talked about, they haven't been taught this. And B) because they're body mind, their body brain is very, very agitated. It's amped up because you've been taking all this stress on throughout your life. So what I teach is that the first step in meditation practice isn't mindfulness. It isn't a mantra practice. It's just a box breathe, which is a pattern breathe, five-count in, five-count hold, and five-count out, five-count hold, or four, or three, if you have trouble with that. And just let that nostril breathing in that massaging that the vagus nerve, stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. And it's bleeding off stress and bringing your body brain back into my balance. Lisa: Yep. Mark: When your body brain is back into balance, your brain is going to experience that as a lower frequency rate. Lower frequency means fewer thoughts, right? If you're in gamma, it's like tick-tick, popcorn brain. But if you're in alpha, like listening to beautiful music, classical music, or you're maybe doing some journaling, your mind stops racing. It starts to get into— Lisa: A lovely alpha state of focus. Mark: Yeah, and so the box breathing practice trains your mind to get back into alpha, trains your body to de-stress, and you do this. It might take you months, usually about three months. I— my clients have this extraordinary calming that comes over them. And they're already changed. But this is, you know, just the preparatory work, right? This also, for those who are working on their physical structure in their health and their weight, this also has enormous benefits because you begin to feel a lot better. And you begin, you know, you're starting to breathe in that life force again. You're getting more oxygen with every breath, and you're retraining the breathing patterns so this becomes your more natural state. If you, let me just pause here, if you train for 20 minutes a day, have a five-count box breath, that's three breaths per minute, over time, and might take a year or more, you're gonna eventually settle into a natural breath pattern of six breaths per minute, which is now proven to the optimal. Lisa: Exactly. Mark: I've been doing this for years, I never knew that, it just settled out there to where six breaths per minute through the nose was standard for me, or a standard, and that's what will happen to you. Lisa: Yep. Mark: Yeah. But those are full breaths, full exhales, getting all the toxins out there. Lisa: Basically the exhale. Mark: It's enormously beneficial for your body, and everything starts to come back into balance: you start losing weight, you start eating better. Because you want to eat better, you start sleeping b
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Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover my relentless journey of helping my mother recover from aneurysm. Learn important lessons about the value of health and extending your loved ones' lifespan. Gain insights from how I maintained my composure and became the backbone of my family in these difficult times. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Relentless: How a mother and daughter defied the odds Listen to other Pushing the Limits Episodes: #71: Cushla Young- Seizing the Day in Paradise #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Episode Highlights [04:43] Cushla's Interview with Lisa's Mum, Isobel As an educator, Isobel shares that she felt terrible when the doctors told her about what she can't do after the aneurysm. Getting a driver's license boosted Isobel's confidence. Isobel advises people who are going through a rough time to hang in there and continue to fight. To maintain her health, Isobel is currently going to the gym, taking yoga, undergoing hyperbaric treatment and attending art classes. She feels amazing about herself. [14:04] How an Aneurysm Affected Isobel and the Family After the aneurysm, Isobel went from an active individual to someone who couldn't function. Lisa shares some medical mishaps on the day her mum was rushed to the hospital. These mishaps caused delays in Isobel's surgery. It took 18 hours for Isobel to be taken into surgery because she had to be airlifted to another hospital. The fear of death coming to her mum was a big wake up call for Lisa. [20:03] Lisa's Relentless Fight for Her Mum's Life In the initial phases, Lisa was in shock and was extremely terrified. After processing the situation, she was in a ‘mission mode'. Lisa's father came up to her, saying that they needed to plan the funeral despite Isobel still being alive. When people are in crisis, you need to take control and give them jobs, so they don't panic. Over the next few weeks, Lisa was relentless in organising her family and the logistics surrounding her mum's medical needs. [26:14] Sustaining Herself Throughout This Journey Lisa shares her experience crossing the Libyan desert with an abusive boyfriend. During that extreme situation, she learned to compartmentalise. She will fall apart, but not right now when there's something that needs to be done. Lisa and her family had to stay with Isobel in the hospital around the clock for she could go any moment. Lisa also had to learn a lot about aneurysms, medicine and rehabilitation. Amidst all this, Lisa's dad experienced heart problems, so he had to go home. [32:17] The Importance of Self-Care Lisa knows the value of exercise and having fresh air from time to time. She made sure to take at least half an hour to an hour for herself. When you're in stressful situations, you tend to put self-care aside. However, it's vital to have systems in place to manage the stress so that you're prepared to continue fighting. [35:02] Lisa's Family Lisa's brothers were very supportive throughout the whole process. Lisa's family trusted her and what she told them to do. Her father also stepped up to help. He was relentless in caring for and supporting his wife's recovery. [38:25] Coming Home from Wellington after the Surgery Lisa was happy that her mother was stable. But she is also worried during the flight because any dropping of pressure could cause Isobel's death. Lisa sneaked into the hospital to have a friend check her mother for sleep apnea. And the results confirmed her suspicions. She had to convince the medical staff to provide her mother with a C-pap machine. Her mother could breathe properly with the machine. [44:43] Moving Lisa's Ageing Mother Lisa shared how they came up against people who insisted on having her mother placed in a facility. A social worker was against them having a caregiver. Lisa shares that she had to fight for the resources she wanted for her mother. [46:08] Caring for Isobel at Home Lisa and her family were willing and able to care for Isobel in the comforts of their home. A social worker told her that they wouldn't be able to care for her mother adequately. But Lisa remained relentless in the face of all these judgements. She and her family wouldn't go down without a fight. [50:57] The Importance of Mindset Professionals show you statistics based on their knowledge and experience. Don't discount their expertise, but don't lose hope. How you approach things is critical. You have the power to control your health and well-being. Lisa brings her mum to the gym daily for this reason. Lisa wants Isobel surrounded by athletes pushing their limits. If you want to stay alive, you need to work hard to keep fit and healthy. [1:00:28] Living and Lasting Longer Living a relentless life means taking lots of small steps and letting them accumulate. By being relentless, you'll find more fulfilment and last longer. Lisa shares that she wants to push degeneration out for as long as possible. There's a lot of research now that helps you live longer and better. Don't feel guilty for investing in your health. If you want to learn more about how Lisa takes care of her body and her family, tune in to the full episode. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘She was really the rock of my world. And then that turned upside down very much overnight. And you go from being this adult kid to complete role reversal where you're now having to do everything for your mum.' ‘We need to set up systems and processes and understand our own bodies and how our bodies work so that we can manage the stress levels.' ‘What I want people to understand is you have to fight for the resources that you want for your loved one.' ‘I'm only ever going to listen to the ones that tell me I can do, not the ones that I tell me I can't do. They may be right. I'm not saying they're not right, but I'm gonna throw the book at this. I'm gonna do whatever it takes.' ‘They're (professionals) making educated guesses, based on the statistics of the past whatever and their experiences. And I get that. And we can't give people false hope. But we've also can't take away all hope.' ‘The older you get, the more effort you have to put into [working hard] if you want to stay alive... If you still want to be alive and enjoy life, then you have to fight for it.' ‘If you have some self-care and take those small steps, whatever that may look like for you at the time of your life, then you are living a life that is relentless.' About Cushla Cushla Young is a life-long friend of Lisa. They met in a running retreat they both participated in 7 to 8 years ago. She is also the co-author of Lisa's book, Relentless: How a mother and daughter defied the odds. Cushla is a teacher at the St. John Bosco School, New Plymouth. She is also a Trustee and Educational Coordinator at the Taranaki Gifted Community Trust. Having an interest in gifted education, Cushla provides intellectual and creative ways to support students with advanced and complex learning skills. The other things Cushla is passionate about are digital technology, literacy and pedagogy. Cushla currently lives in New Zealand with her family. If you want to reach out to Cushla, you can find her on Twitter. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can find comfort and hope in fighting for their loved ones' lives. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hey everyone. And before we get on the way with the show today, I just want to remind you to check out all our great programs that we have. We have our www.runninghotcoaching.com, where you can find out all about our online run training system, we get video analysis, your customised personalised plan made specifically for you, and ongoing support and help and education around everything running. So check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. We also have our flagship epigenetics program, which is all about optimising your genetics and making the best out of them and how to do that. Understanding what your genes are all about and how to get the right food, the right exercise, the right timings for everything. Understanding every aspect of your life, your place, your career, your social environment, all of these things, your predispositions and much more. So check that out. Go to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program right there. Also a reminder to check out the longevity and anti-ageing supplement that I am now importing into New Zealand and Australia in conjunction with Dr Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist who is behind this product. Now this is all about the sirtuin genes basically, which are all your longevity genes. Now NMN is a precursor to something called NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And this is an absolutely essential compound for every in every single molecule— every single cell, I should say, of your body. It's very important in regards to ATP production, and in regards to metabolic health, in regards to autophagy, in regards to sirtuin genes and upregulating those. Make sure you check out the episodes that I did with Dr. Elena Seranova and head on over to www.nmnbio.nz if you want to find more about the science of that, and why I am super excited about this product, this longevity and anti ageing product, NMN. Right. Now, today I have something very, very different. I've turned the tables on myself and I have a very dear friend interviewing me about our book that we wrote together. Cushla Young, she's a, got a master's in English and she is the person who helped me rescue my book when I had a hell of a mess, basically. So I hope you're gonna enjoy this interview. This is all about my mum's story. It's about mindset. It's about going up against all the odds, it's about going against the establishment. So it's a lot of things we cover in this interview. So you're also going to hear from my very special mummy. She's going to come to work and tell us a little bit before she heads off on her coffee date. So now over to the show with Cushla Young and Isobel. Well hi, everybody. Welcome to Pushing the Limits. Today I am doing something very unusual. And so hi everybody in YouTube land who's listening to this as well. I want to introduce my best friend, Cushla Young. Cushla, welcome to the show. Cushla Young: Thank you. Lisa: For starters. Now I'll give you guys a bit of background. Cushla and I have been friends for now, a decade or so. Cushla is the lady that helped me write this book. Without her it would not exist. It wouldn't have come out before Cushla came along. The book is Relentless: How A Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds. It's my latest book, and Cushla is the magic behind that book. What we're going to be doing today is talking about what the book is about, which is the story of bringing my mum back from a mess of aneurysm, major brain damage at the age of 74, when it was against all the odds, when the medical professionals were telling me the brain damage is so bad that she's never going to recover. Being an athlete I went, ‘No that's not happening, and we'll find a way.' This is going to be all about that story. Now I'm going to hand over the reins to Krishna to actually interview me, but I've actually got a very, very special guest sitting here next to me, who is the actual star of the show. And so Cushla is going to, she's going to take off for a coffee date. So I'll have to let her come to work first. So I'm going to pass you over to my very special mummy. There she is, Isobel. And she's gonna talk to Cushla for a second so I'll just pass over the headphones. Cushla: Hand over the reins. Lisa: You're on, Isobel. Isobel: Okay. Cushla: Hi Isobel, morning. Isobel: Good morning, Cushla. How are you? Cushla: Taking off for a coffee date soon, are you? Isobel: Yes. Cushla: So you are a guest of honor for a few minutes on this podcast. This is, I'm going to be a little bit different because I get to interview your daughter rather than her interview others today. Isobel: That's good. Cushla: So, but we'll start with you. So you have been on one heck of a journey over the last few years. Isobel: I sure have. Cushla: So how can we start with how you're feeling now? Isobel: I'm feeling good. Cushla: You're looking great. Isobel: I can go for a coffee and I can go walking on my own. And I can do almost anything. Cushla: When Isobel left my house after a lovely glass of wine the other day, you didn't have one, but Lisa did. You drove, didn't you? You drove her home? Isobel: I did. Yes. I can drive now. That's good. Especially if Lisa's having a wine. Cushla: You get to be a mum. Isobel: I do, I get, revert back to being mum. Yeah. Cushla: Yeah, and that must have given you a lot of independence that you have lost for quite a few years. Isobel: Yes. It's awesome. You don't realise how isolated people are. They haven't got— We all have a way of getting around here. It's isolating. Yeah. Cushla: And can you tell us a bit about what you have been getting up to? I understand you've been doing some art classes with your sister. How's that going? Isobel: Not as well as I would like to but it's, we're doing all right, you know? Cushla: Yeah. Isobel: I'd like the results to be a bit more spectacular. But— Cushla: It must be nice to be creative. Isobel: Oh it is. It's good, it does me good. Cushla: Now, do you have much of a memory of the hospital time? Isobel: No. Cushla: No. What's your first memory that you can recall? Isobel: Probably where we went to a meeting with all the big guns— Lisa: At the hospital. Isobel: At the hospital, and they wrote me off, really. Cushla: Did they? They underestimated you as well. Isobel: I can remember saying— Lisa: I was feeling good. I was feeling good. Isobel: I was, I was feeling fine before this. Now. I'm feeling terrible. I have been demoted, I've been, lost my independence. Just because they were talking like they were, they shouldn't have done that. Lisa: They took away all your confidence. And— Isobel: Yeah, they just. Cushla: And so your background is similar to mine. You're an educator. Isobel: Yeah. Cushla: Have been for decades and decades. You must understand how demotivating it is when somebody tells you what you can't do rather than what you can do. Isobel: Yeah, that's it exactly. Cushla: So when did it change for you after that meeting? What were some of the first things that happened that gave you a bit more confidence? Lisa: Driving? Isobel: Getting on a driver's license probably was a major breakthrough. Lisa took me down to the dam by the port and just— Lisa: It's been months. Isobel: Happier— Cushla: Round and round you. Isobel: You will, ‘now you drive.' I was totally gobsmacked. Cushla: But you did it. Isobel: I did it. Cushla: And I understand the doctor was utterly shocked— Isobel: He was. Cushla: —when you went in to get your medical for your license. Isobel: Totally blown away. Cushla: Yeah. Isobel: That was a blow away. Cushla: It had probably been a while since the doctor had responded that way. Isobel: Yeah, I think so. He was a nice doctor. So that was good. Cushla: So could you give some advice to someone who might be going through something pretty tough at the moment. What would you say to them? Isobel: Just hang in there and— Lisa: Fight. Isobel: Fight hard. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to grit your teeth and just carry on, really. Yeah. Cushla: You're one tough lady, aren't you? Isobel: I must be. Cushla: Definitely. Isobel: So that's what we did. Cushla: Can you describe some of the routines of things that you do at the moment that keep you in such good health? Isobel: I go to the gym most days. Lisa: Do weight training, cardio. Isobel: I do weights, I do cardio, I do walking on the treadmill, yoga. Cushla: And you still do your hyperbaric as well? Isobel: Yes, every day at the moment. Cushla: Everyday? Wonderful. Still eat the smoothies that Lisa makes you in the mornings? Isobel: They're pretty terrible. Cushla: But they're good for you, right? Isobel: But they are good for me. Broccoli is not exciting, and it's sickening. Cushla: What we've noticed is, about over even the last six months, is how fit and agile and glowing that you are. That's amazing. Isobel: It is amazing. It's amazing that you said that. I don't always feel it. Cushla: Right. Isobel: It's hard to know where you're at, so. Cushla: Yeah, I think sometimes what you see is yourself reflected in others' eyes, and that's a really good indication of how far you've come. Isobel: Yeah, and I have come a long way. Cushla: Really. Isobel: Yeah, a really long way. Lisa: A bloody long way. All right, now you can go get coffee. Isobel: I'll pass you back to Lisa— Lisa: —and get yourself a coffee date. Cushla: Enjoy! Isobel: I will. Lisa: Thanks, Mummy. Isobel: Okay. Lisa: She's an absolute legend. Thanks, you have a nice coffee. We're now actually going to get into her backstory. Because, I would have done it the other way around and had her at the end of the show. But she needed to get to a coffee date. So she's just rolling. Yeah, we're rolling with the punches. But Cushla, this— can you, I'm gonna pass the reins over to you fully. Because you know the story, you lived it with me, you helped me from the get-go pretty much. So over to you. Oh now I'm an interviewee. Cushla: Got you. We're flipping the tables, aren't we? Lisa: Yeah, we sure are. Cushla: To be interviewed for once, which is fabulous. So this has been a long journey for you and your mum and your family, and you're right. I was, I had known you for a few years before this happened. I think from my perspective, the thing that was so shocking about what originally, with the aneurysm, with your mum, was just how quick things changed overnight. I think we see Isobel now and— how old is mum? Lisa: She's 79. Cushla: 79. So we're going back quite a few years, and I used to often pop into the shop and see your mum, and just pop in and say hello. And she is now but she also was been a very intelligent, clear spoken woman that used to do acro-aerobics all the time, she was very fit and healthy, very independent, working still pretty much full-time. Lisa: Yeah, she was. Cushla: For somebody watching, to see overnight that she went from that, from a completely functioning full-time working adult, to just being, nothing was there. Overnight, the aneurysm took her from being completely functional to nothing. I think the shock in that first visit and I saw her quite a few weeks after the aneurysm, and you're back up to New Plymouth. You'd been in Wellington. The shock of seeing her lying there, she had aged a decade overnight. Lisa: Yeah. Cushla: It's hard. Hard to see. I think the shock of that must've ripped through your family quite viciously. You notice that change overnight. Lisa: It was huge. Yeah, to have growing up with mum being always the one supporting me. And the one that was there for me in all the phases of my crazy, upside down life that I've had, you know, with all my adventures supporting me with all lower— dramas and relationship breakups and divorces and business growing. Cushla: Rooting for you at most of your races. Lisa: Oh, yes. Yeah. She'd seen, been there, done that with me, I can tell you that she had a hard life with me. She had a good life, she had exciting times with me. She was really the rock of my world. And then that turned upside down very much overnight. And, you know, you go from being this adult kid to a complete role reversal, where you're now you know, having to do everything for your mum, you are advocating, you're fighting, you grow up really quickly, even as a fully-grown adult. Obviously, I still am very much, when you've got a parent, you're still like a kid in a way to them. That is that was a biggest shocker for me I think was to be, no, now you are the one that's caring for your mum, and you are going to have to pull out all the stops to help her and it's you know, no longer about you being the selfish egotistical athlete, and there's nothing wrong with it, if you're an athlete, you have to be if you want to reach, know, do the stuff that I did. But that was a shocker. And then not, like the— we had medical research mishaps from the very get-go when mum had this aneurysm that happened early in the morning. And an ambulance driver came into the house, you know, they got her into the ambulance up to the hospital, he knew already that she was having a neurological event. And he told the doctor so much, and he just ignored it. He ignored it. He said, ‘No, she's having a migraine, I think. So we'll just leave it for a few hours and observe her and give her some painkillers.' Well, you know, ‘Thanks very much for that.' The first six hours not knowing, and she was dying, basically. She was dying. And I knew she was in deep trouble. And I didn't know what to do. Because at that point in my life, I had no idea of anything like this. So I was never, you know, in a situation like this, I didn't know what was wrong with her. But I knew we were in trouble. And that was a very big wake up call. I actually got our mutual friend, Megan Stewart, who's a paramedic here and the head of the ambulance here. And she came up to the hospital at that time. She sort of rattled some bloody cages very quickly. And because she knew immediately what was happening, stroke or aneurysm or something neurological, migraines. She went and told this doctor what for. He then relented, and we got a CT scan. And that's when we saw the blood right throughout the brain. So that was a very big wake up call for me in a number of ways. Obviously, the shock of it happening to your mum, the fear of her dying, she's being very, very, very close to death at this point. And then realising that, you know, the medical system had not worked for us. And I'm not— you know, we're all human, and we all make mistakes and stuff. But that was a pretty big one. That was a pretty big one. Cushla: I think, in those situations, we want to trust the people that are— the medical professionals that are around us. For the most part in ED, they're an amazing group of people. But I think also there is a lot to be said for your mum. You knew what a migraine looked like, you should have before. And it's a matter of trusting yourself, isn't it, enough to then think, this isn't to your question what you're saying, and then fight as hard as you can for a different outcome. Because my understanding about aneurysm is there's a golden hour, or it's really important to be treated. Lisa: Exactly. Cushla: A short time. Lisa: Surgery, that's the golden hour, they talk about getting you into surgery within the hour. It took 18 hours. 18 hours, because not only do we have the medical mishap and we also had the fact that we had to get to our Main Hospital down in Wellington, neurological. Living in a regional area, unfortunately, that's just the way it is. But we had to wait another 12 hours for the air ambulance to actually get to us, and when you're over 65, you're sort of bumped down the hierarchy, especially if you— if they don't think you're a good, you got good odds. So, you know, we— there were, at that time we had a baby that needed help, and that was more urgent than mum. They have to make those calls. I understand. I don't like it; I understand it. It's your loved one and you don't really give up. Cushla: Not at the time because you're also going through the shock of what's happening and trying to process that. In that moment, can you describe, I suppose I want to focus a little bit on what was happening to you and your body. Because I think the thing about this really, this story is that it's not just about a mum surviving an aneurysm, but it's also about you and your family and how you've managed to pull yourself back together as well. So not just Isobel but yourself. I know that a lot of us, all of us will face a moment in our lives where we have to handle a bit of trauma. Lisa: Yep. Lisa: What was going on in your body and how did you cope so that you had the ability to fight for your mum? What are you doing in your mind? Lisa: So in the initial phases, Cushla, you know, you are in shock, you're out, you're terrified. But very, very quickly, oh, especially after the mishap, once I realised what had just happened and the ball's up that that was, and that it was likely going to cost your life. I just went into what I call mission mode. Like, ‘Okay, right, I am not going— I'm going to research the hell out of this. I'm going to learn everything I can. I'm going to be hypervigilant. I'm going to watch everything they do. I'm going to question everything they do. I'm going to get my family organised.' Because I had get them down to Wellington. My father was, of course, falling to pieces because it's the love of his life. He's been, you know, married to her for 55 years. He came up to me already in the ED and said, ‘We better start planning the funeral.' Because they were, you know, saying to us, she's like, unlikely to survive. And I'm like, ‘Dad, we're not even considering that. She's alive, she's still breathing, and we're gonna fight with everything we have. Here's a list of jobs to do: I want you to go ring so and so, organise this, get the boys down, my brothers down to Wellington, blah, blah, blah.' When people are in a crisis, you need to take control and give them jobs to do so that they, their, you know, their amygdala, that their permanent part of the brain doesn't go into complete full-blown panic, and which doesn't always work. And I'll relay a story a little bit later, where I did go into full blown panic. It's all very well and good to say this. But at that point in time, I was like, ‘Dad', I shook him, I grabbed him, I held him and I said, ‘No, you've got this and this job to do, we're going to do it, and follow me, dad. Follow me.' And that was basically how it was then for the next few years. Yeah. My brothers as well, they were very much, ‘What do we do?' I had no idea at the time, but I pretended like I did. Fake it till you make it. What we're doing this is how we're going to operate over the next few weeks. So it was being down on Wellington together, organising the family to be down there, all the logistics that go along with that, and your jobs and your, you know, partners and all the rest of it. And then a 24-hour watch over Mum, and being hypervigilant, explaining to the boys everything that I was learning medically, because I was like, studying forever, I was just going, going, heart out, trying to understand and get up to speed on something that I was completely not aware of prior to this, learning what an aneurysm does, what vasospasms are, what I've been looking for, what they— signs. We were only in the neurological unit, we weren't in the ICU, which, looking back when I arrived, what the hell. When she got down to Wellington, they get straight into surgery, they started draining her blood off the brain. She started to— start to have that pressure released. But then we had to decide the next, in the next couple of days, though it had stopped bleeding at that point, but it was about to go out in time again, it could go at any moment. How do we clamp it? What do we do? Would we cut into her brain and put a physical clamp over the area? And it was a mess of aneurysm. Like we're talking a 16 millimeter huge aneurysm. We went up through the femoral artery, and we weighed up the pros and cons and you make that call. She's got a 50% chance of dying this way, she's got a 30% chance of dying that way, pretty much. So we'll take the lesser evil, but she was going to have to have two operations and in that way you know. So that was gonna be really touch and go, really touch and go. I remember them wheeling her off for that operation. I think it was on day two, through the doors, and you just don't know if it's the last time you're going to see them alive, and the whole just trying to hold your shit together. Cushla: I know that you're very good at compartmentalising parts of the— of something when it happens. What I remember you talking about when we were writing the book, was how you were able to put the jobs that needed to be done in that box. The research you were doing in this box, your family in that box, and probably, and I know this because we had phone calls and I was in touch with you at the time, your emotions and your shock and your trauma in this box. It was a matter of kind of keeping you know, all those juggling balls in the air at one time. But also, and importantly allowing you to have that emotional spot as well. And I know that you were very good at compartmentalising and giving yourself time to do that, but not letting it overtake you, letting you drop all the other balls at the time when you were dealing with the emotional side of it. I think that's really important because I know— so when Lisa and I first met, I was a bit of a Lisa Tamati fangirl, before we became friends, and I got to know you really well. Lisa: And then realised, oh no. Cushla: Yeah. I mean, we just saw you as Wonder Woman. You know, there's tough, tough, you know, athlete. Then I got to know you, as a human being, of course, a woman, there's a vulnerable side to you. But what I think is really important at that time, an immediate trauma time, as you gave yourself time to release a bit of that stress and that trauma by leaning on your husband Haisley, by your phone calls to me. But also, like, I know that you went for some runs, went to get gym, threshed it out, you probably screamed at the ocean at one point. Do you know? That's also important, isn't it? It's not just— Lisa: If you want to sustain— we knew this was going to be a long, long, long battle. While we hoped it was going to be a long battle, a short option was not a good one. This is something that I've learned doing ultra marathons: is to— in particular in the Libyan desert crossing, where you have to read the book for the whole story. But I did an expedition across the Libyan desert with three other guys, one of them being this abusive boyfriend that I was with at the time. There was a very extreme situation that we were in, we needed two liters of water a day, etcetera. And I'm having this big domestic fight with the boyfriend right in the middle of the Libyan desert. Cushla: In the most extreme environment on the planet. Lisa: In the most extreme environment, walking 45 kilometers a day with 35-kilo backpacks and only two litres of water a day in a military bad zone, not a good time to breakup with a boyfriend of five years. And in that moment, when he left me and disappeared over the sand dunes, that was a turning point for me, and I fell apart initially. And I was like, ‘Oh, God,' started crying in the rails. I can't afford to lose any more tears here. I've got to pull my shit together, because I cannot let the energy dissipate that at the rate of I want to actually survive. It was getting down to that sort of level of you know, you're going to survive this or not. And so I learned in that moment, really a very hard lesson in compartmentalising things in your brain. So like, ‘I'm going to fall apart, but not right now. I'm going to put that off right now because I have to focus on this, and getting through the desert and surviving.' That's been actually a really good lesson. It's never a pleasant one to actually have to instigate where you have to actually compartmentalise. Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody. And we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Lisa: But in this in this situation where you're dealing with— you're having to study like really hard. And we have access now to the greatest minds on the world that come in, all those information about out there that you can study. So I was studying all the drugs that they had on, all the procedures they were doing, what is the normal plan, and what happens when you have an aneurysm, what are of the some of the dangers, or of the things that I should be looking out for, what are the signs in your body. You know, all of these types of things in the initial phase and then later on at it went into rehabilitation research and study. And so that was one aspect of it. And then we had a 24-hour clock system, much to the disgust of the people at the hospital because they didn't want us there 24 hours. They don't like that. There was no way I was leaving my mother when she could die at any minute alone. No way. So I had massive battles with the hospital, for them to be able to allow us in. And then having to fight for that. So you're fighting on all these fronts, you're already fighting with— your mum's in deep, deep trouble, and then you're fighting against these systems. And they may have some good reasons for those systems. But there was no way I was leaving my mother alone when she could die any second. A family member had to be with her at all times. And I was very, very strict on that. We had some big blow-ups at the hospital. We got through really in the end. And we tried to be as unobtrusive as possible when we did what we were. And we picked up things that they missed, because she was on a neurological ward, they only come around a couple of hours into obviously, patients. But going back to the whole compartmentalising things. I know how to manage my body really well, and how to pace myself really well from doing ultra marathons and stuff, and expeditions. And so I knew that we were going to be in the for the long haul, I knew sleep deprivation was going to be a problem, I knew that the family dynamics were going to be a problem, that there was going to be fighting because of the stress there was it we were under, and we were all living in one motel unit. And that mum was in deep crap, we had my father to look after who was just, you know. Cushla: And he was down with you in the initial stage. Lisa: He was here, he was; and he's very much, was a homebody. He didn't like to be out of his garden and sheep. So he was very, very stressed on that front, and of course his wife in such dire straits. He was, but he— so we managed to, had him to manage home because he started having heart problems. And so I had to eventually actually send my dad back home and actually lied to my dad that, ‘She's okay now, we've got her, Dad. She's all good.' Because I think that we're gonna lose him. I was making those sorts of decisions and just running the ship. Like you said, I know the importance of, for me, especially exercise and fresh air for my mental well-being, that if I was going to sustain it, I had to have at least half an hour to an hour every day out from this whole thing, where I just go and do a workout. Again, all the fear, the cortisol, the adrenaline that's running through my body flat stuck and try to manage it, and making sure that she was looked after, and that time. You know, you feel guilty and everything for leaving the hospital all. But you had to do that after a few days. You know, just a couple of days, I didn't, but after that. It was— it's setting all these things in place. And we need to do that in our daily lives. We need to set up systems and processes and understand our own bodies and how our bodies work so that we can manage the stress levels and we can manage the movement that we need, the sunshine, and needs for sleep and recovery and all those aspects. And of course, in a situation like that, sleep deprivation was a massive, and there's not much you can do about that, you have to function at that level for as long as you have to. Cushla: And I think a lot of people that are in stressful situations, whether or not it be something like what happened with your mum, or even at work or just in daily life, big stressful moments. A lot of people put the self-care to the side. And they just think, ‘Well, I'm not that— I don't have time for that,' or, ‘I shouldn't have time for that.' That's when the guilt that kicks in, and yet, it probably is one of the most important things to prioritise in terms of your day and compartmentalising your day through to handle stressful situations because it allows you to have the focus and the energy that you need and get back into the the stressful— Lisa: Into the fight you're in. Yeah, absolutely. You need to be able to have that energy put back in. It might only be 10 minutes out in the bloody— you know, like when we, here's another situation which we'll probably get onto later with my dad. In his situation, in the hospital for 16 days, fighting for his life. It was sometimes 10 minutes in the waiting room doing press ups. That was all I could get before I went back into the battle zone if you like. Cushla: Just to release that. Lisa: Just to manage the cortisol. Reach, I call it discharge and recharge, and then reset. Come back into the moment. But yeah, it was a heck of a lot of lessons to be learned and then leading in a crisis situation. My brothers were amazing. They were very supportive, and they were, followed everything that I asked them to do, basically. Because I'm the study-er of the family, I'm the one that is into research and science and studies. They trusted me to do that thing. And they were like, ‘Well, you tell us what to do, we'll do it.' And that's really great. Because you've got your roles. That is, in having somebody lead the charge, so to speak, even though you don't know what you're doing, where you're going, and there's certainly no rehabilitation over the next years, because this process took years, having that person that's got that responsibility, got that, ‘This is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it, I just need you guys to do this bit and the other thing.' And my whole entire family were willing to do that. They were— my dad was just, jumping ahead in time, my dad was just amazing, how he stepped up to the mark. When he had a wife that had done everything for him pretty much. Cushla: He was, back when she came back to New Plymouth, he was cooking, and— Lisa: He was doing all the things. Cushla: He was doing all the things, yeah. Lisa: It was a shocker for him, but he stepped up to the mark to the best of his ability. He was the most wonderful, caring husband. He didn't give a— he didn't care that she— when she came back home for the first time, and we actually got her out of the hospital after three months. Now, I'm jumping ahead in time. But he didn't care that she had no function, basically. She was in a vegetative state who had a heartbeat. She was alive, and we were fighting. That was all he needed to know. He had his wife at home, she was alive, she's stabilised, we were fighting together, and we were on a mission. Every day he had his jobs to do and the things to do. He was just relentless in his love for her, stepping up. Cushla: So going back to the moment where— so she's in Wellington, and you need to read the book to find out what went on in Wellington. The moment that she was transferred back to New Plymouth was a bittersweet moment, wasn't it? You were able to come home and be with Haisley and be back at home with the family and friends around that were helping. But you knew that the care that you would receive back in New Plymouth wasn't at the level that it would be in Wellington, basically just because Wellington is way more resourced. And fair enough, you can have a very small region. Taranaki here, you know, we're a little provincial spot in New Zealand. So we knew that we wouldn't get the care that you got in the big city. So talk us through how it was like to come home— Lisa: It was terrifying. I was happy for all those reasons, but at the same time, and I was happy that she's apparently stabilised. But she was in ICU for the good part of the two of the three weeks that she was in Wellington when she was in and out of coma. Once she'd gotten out of the coma, then they had to get the stent out of her heart, and she kept dropping. What happens when you take the stent out is that pressure can start rising in the brain again, and three times as they tried to take the stent out, the pressure went up. On the third time, they said, ‘Well, if it doesn't work, this time, I'm going to have to operate and put in a permanent one.' And the third time, it worked. But it only worked for the next 24 hours, and then they were like, ‘Right, she's not— her pressure's not going up. She's keeping consciousness, she's not falling back into the coma. She's good to go.' And I had researched, I knew that that was not the case, that she couldn't have— that pressure could go up over the next 70 days at any point, and if that pressure went up, it would happen very quickly, and she wouldn't— she could die. So I knew that even though they weren't telling me that, she could still die in the next 70 days. If that happened in Wellington and the pressure started to go up, they were— they might be able to recognise that, they might be to go in and do something. They wouldn't be able to in New Plymouth. I was hypervigilant on trying to understand how I could notice if something in her consciousness was going down, right. All I could do was to understand some of the symptomatic things that she did which might exhibit if her pressure is starting to go up, because you wouldn't be able to communicate it to me, you wouldn't be able to see it, you would slowly lose more and more of a brain till it was gone basically. So that was a huge fear bringing her home, and of course putting her in an airplane with a pressure change. Yeah, I didn't know what it would do. In fact, it was nothing, but there wasn't a problem, really. But you know it this time you just— Cushla: You don't know. Lisa: Yeah, so for the next 70 days, I'm like, hypervigilant. If I noticed something down on, I'll be like, ‘I think she's doing this and doing that.' Then they took her off the oxygen at the same time, and that was a big problem. They didn't see it as a problem that she was, ‘Her oxygen states are alright.' What they were forgetting was that she was sleeping 18, 20 hours a day. So when she was asleep, she wasn't breathing properly, and I believe she had sleep apnea. So I said to them, ‘I want a sleep apnea assessment.' They said, ‘No, she doesn't need that, why should she need that? Her oxygen stats are okay when she's awake, so why would she?' I knew about sleep apnea. So I got a friend of ours, he's actually a sleep apnea consultant, Jez Morris. I said, ‘Come into the hospital illegally, would you do that?' He said, ‘Yeah, I'll do that.' Well outside of rules actually, so not illegally, but you know. We sneaked into the hospital at nighttime, put on these machines onto her, did an assessment overnight, because it had to be an overnight thing. We got the results, and when it came back, severe sleep apnea. Now, this is absolutely key. Like her oxygen levels were down at 70% SPO2. she was Cheyne-Stokes breathing, which is not a good thing. Probably going to be on your way out in the next couple of months. Her oxygen was so low that she was knocking off any brain cells that she has, the infections that are in her body were just going apeshit. So bacteria was exploding, and they're already known. That was actually the one of the signs that I picked up because I had done a lot of racing at altitude, and I was seeing a lot of the signs in her that I had at altitude when I had altitude sickness and things like that. That was at first wind, because I had to convince the bloody staff that we needed to have the CPAP machine on here, and they weren't trained in CPAP machine, so they didn't want to do that. I'm telling what she needs, she's got this and you know, him being a sleep physiologist was able to convince them that okay, this is a good thing for her now. He said he'd been banging his head against the brick wall for decades, trying to get for stroke patients an assessment that is part of the process. Because very often, this happens that that part of the brain is damaged in the stroke or the aneurysm, and even in things like concussions, that you can have a change in your breathing situation. And that part of the brain that monitors that is not working properly. So it should be staying apart and perfect, and that's what I believe, and that's what he believes. So anyway, we got the CPAP machine. Initially started to have little bits of improvement, but we're already two months, three months, two and a half months or something into her time in the hospital and we're running out of time. But she's stable, nothing we can do with her, basically. She's pretty bad, and we've given paid lip service to some physio and some speech therapy and stuff, and now it's time to get you out of the system. Cushla: And I think at that point, I think they, if you saw Isobel at that moment in the hospital, you would see an old woman who was probably on her way out. You didn't see the vibrant person that we saw before the aneurysm, that was so independent, and so highly functioning. For the hospital, I think they just saw an older woman— Lisa: Another older woman. Cushla: —another older woman, and a family that wasn't willing to accept the fact that they had an ageing mother. So there's that little bit of not understanding who she was before, and how abrupt this change was. We knew that if we could just get her back, even if it was a little bit back, then you could take her home and start working on rehab. Can you talk about how quickly they just wanted to move her into a home? Lisa: Oh yeah. And this is what happens very often when you're over 65 is the answer is get them out of our budget into someone else's budget. That means putting them into a hospital-level care facility. If you've got anything, that's the normal route that you go, and they will try and convince you of that route, at least in our situation. I can't speak for everybody obviously. We came up against a brick wall of this, especially the social worker who shall remain nameless, who just was totally against us being able to have the caregiver that I wanted, the caregiver for in the morning for an hour, and one in the evening for an hour, which is part of, they do provide the service and so on. But it costs more money, and you stay in the budget. That's the key point. We were fighting over these resources. What I want people to understand is you have to fight for the resources that you want for your loved one. And we have limited resources, it's a fact of life. If you want to get some of those resources, and you think your loved one is worthwhile, worth it, because they've spent their entire lives paying taxes, being good citizens and have a right to have some of this, then you better be prepared for a fight because that's what you're in for. And we did have the fight. Cushla: And it was interesting that, because as a family, you were willing to bring her home and you're willing to do a lot of the care yourself. You didn't want to be taking up a resource in a care facility. You were prepared to do that yourselves, as a family, at home. So in a sense, there's a lot of money to be saved. Because I know how much you have given up and how much it costs the family to care for her at home. But that is what you wanted, and your family wanted was to just, to have her home. I remember in the book, you spoke about wanting Isobel to hear familiar sights, smells, sounds around her to aid her in her rehab. And that in having those, you felt that she was going to make more connections, neurological connections, because she was in her own home, with her own people around her, with her own sights and sounds and smells around her. Can you talk a little bit about how positive you felt that was? Lisa: Yeah, that's a huge piece of the puzzle. I had a friend's mum who actually worked in stroke rehabilitation. She really encouraged me to do that and said how important this was, and it just made total sense to me. I knew that when you're in the care of any facility, no matter how good they are, they can never provide the love and the attention that you can. Because they've got other people and you're just another patient and in— they provide a magnificent service and so on when this is absolutely necessary. But in this case, we had the willingness and the ability to do this. They said to me, the social worker said to me, ‘There is no way in hell you are going to cope with her. She's 24/7 around the clock care, two people at all times, there is no way you're going to cope with her.' I actually came and threw my books on his table one night, across the table at him. And I said, ‘Read these. This is who I am and my family are, and we are not giving up without a fight. We may go down fighting, but we're going to go down fighting, we're not going to go down and take the easy route out. It is not in our nature.' It's a fundamental difference between a family that's a fighting family and a family that isn't. It's very much influenced by the people in power in these situations, the medical professionals, the people that are associated with all of it. And you have no confidence to stand up against all these professionals, usually. They're the ones that have been to medical school, they're the ones that have been to whatever, social work. Whatever the case may be, and you have a tendency to think, ‘Well, they know better than me.' But one thing they don't know is you. And they don't know how strong you are. They don't know the resources that you have. They don't know your mentality. And they don't know, really, they're all guessing as to what will actually happen based on their experiences. But that's what becomes partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when they say to you that there is no hope. No, that's their opinion that there's no hope. I had time and time again, people telling me, ‘There is no hope, there is no hope, she's 74, her brain damage is so massive, it cannot be that she would ever.' I was like, ‘We'll see.' I'm only ever going to listen to the ones that tell me I can do, not the ones that I tell me I can't do. They may be right. I'm not saying they're not right, but I'm gonna throw the book at this. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. And it's all about attitude and effort and grinding it out then I'll take that one any day, I'll take that option. I'm a fighter. I'm a worker. And my family is too, and we're not going to go down without a fight. I've seen lots of— I saw lots of other families going through the same process, because this thing's happening every day in every hospital around the world, right? It is very much, ‘Well, statistically, this person's not a good bet. Therefore we'll just go through the standard of care, we'll be the— do the humane thing, we'll do all this— tick all the boxes or do it all right.' But the anomaly cases, the cases like mum's, why is nobody coming to say to me, why do I get— no, I'm out there telling everybody that story. That's why I've written the book is to empower other people in these types of situations, even different ones. But why is nobody asking me, ‘Well, what did you do?' Cushla: What did you do to get there? Lisa: They've been— I'll let you know, when they mum here today, talking and walking and going off for coffee and driving up to see her friends, you would have no idea that she ever had anything. Cushla: No. Lisa: She's just completely normal again. But I was told that was an impossibility. How many people are told, you have a terminal illness, you are going to die of this thing? When you plant this sort of stuff, they're making educated guesses based on the statistics of the past whatever and their experiences, and I get that. We can't give people false hope, but we've also can't take away all hope. Cushla: No. That's a really powerful message, I think. I was talking to a friend of mine who is battling with cancer at the moment. She has the most amazing mindset, her mindset. So she's— you know, she was told she had three months to live, that was, I think, six months ago. Her mindset— and she's just been through some chemo and the tumors have shrunk. Her mindset, basically, is that cancer is not welcome back. It's just not. I'm going off to live my life. If I die of it, well, okay, I die of it. But in the meantime, I'm living my life, and I'm— it's not welcome back. She is charging in life and sure, she has her rough days. I really love how you said, it's— there's a responsibility for them not to give false hope, but at the same time not to take away. similar situation with my father, he has myeloma, so cancer of the blood. I think at the time, the doctors said, ‘After this treatment, you have between five and fifteen.' He immediately said, ‘I'll take the 15, thanks.' Because it puts them at that, at the point that it would have taken them to 85, and he was quite happy with it, because at the time he was 69. I love that. And we're six years down now. And I think mindset is huge— Lisa: Oh, yeah. Cushla: —in the way that you approach things. Because, sure, we might, I might die by being run over by a bus today. But if you don't live life thinking that things are going to get better, that you have the power to do, to have control over your health and your well-being, the way that you deal with these traumas, if you don't have that mindset— Lisa: You're definitely not going to— Cushla: — you're definitely not, you're going to roll up in a corner. As my friend with cancer said when she went to hospital, she's like, ‘Oh, I'm surrounded by all these sick people.' Which I loved. Because she didn't see herself in that. Lisa: That's one of the reasons I take mum to the gym every day. Cushla: Exactly. Lisa: I don't take her, I didn't take her, we did go to the physio program at the hospital. Don't get me started on that. But it was dreadful, it was shocking. The story's in the book, if you want to read that one, that is a real battle. But they— I like her to be surrounded by athletes going for it. Because that rubs off on her. She's not a patient, she's an athlete. She's training for her Olympics. That is the attitude we take every single day. And I make no concessions that she is 79 years old, and, ‘Oh, isn't it time for her to relax?' No, it isn't time for her to relax. It's time for her to work harder. It's time to go harder and the older you get, the more effort you have to put into, if you want to stay alive. That is the key. When you stop wanting to be alive, then yes, sit on the couch and do nothing. Because it's what that will lead to. If you still want to be alive and enjoy life, then you have to fight for it. This goes whether you're bloody 10 years old, or 95 years old, or 105 years old. If you give into the easy way, if you go, ‘I don't feel like training today.' I don't feel like training most days. But most days I train. Because it keeps me healthy, fit, and I'm being prevented. That's what I'm all about now is being in the prevention space, and then helping people who are in dire need navigate the waters of into connecting people to the right doctors in the right studies and the right information and the right books and all of that sort of jazz. Cushla: When I was in the depths of my training for a marathon, I remember that exact conversation with a friend. She said, ‘I can't—' You kno at the end of the day, I go for a run. And she's like, ‘You've just worked a full day.' And I'm like, ‘Yeah, And I'm tired. But I'm going to go do it because you never regret it when you finish it.' At the end of that 10k, you've never thought, ‘I really shouldn't have gone for that run.' You don't. You come back thinking, ‘That was awesome.' Sure you're tired, but you were tired before you went out for the run. So you actually end up more energised. Lisa: You mean that will energise your cortisol in— Cushla: My muscles might be tired, but you're energised. Lisa: And you're getting stronger. Cushla: Yeah, I think that's a really good message, that you don't regret it once you get out. It's always just those first, first few five minutes, or I always say the first 4k of any round was always more difficult than the rest. Lisa: 20 minutes is all it is. Cushla: Yeah, it is. It's always shit. Lisa: So same for me. And if I warm up properly, then it's only shit. If I'm in a hurry, and I run out the door, and I don't, then it's gonna be more shit, warm up quickly. Cushla: The more experience you have with training, or with whatever it is that you're doing for self-care, understanding that the first little bit is always tough. And the more that you experience it, the more you know to expect it, then you know that you're going to get the buzz at the end and you start looking forward to that. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, I had that conversation with my brother yesterday, because I've been telling him, he's very funny. He does a lot. He's amazing, boaties, he does weight training. He's a surfer, and he surfs sometimes six hours a day, but he doesn't do cardio. And, you know, I monitor his blood, and his health and his everything. ‘You've got to do some cardio, we've got some issues here, we need some cardio please.' And he's like, ‘I hate cardio, I don't want to do cardio.' And then we'll do five minutes, and he's like, ‘I don't want any—' and I said, ‘It's about pushing through that barrier. It's the same as if you tell me, why aren't you going surfing anymore? And I'm like, “Oh, because it's so hard, and I don't want to get hit by the waves and get smashed around.' And he's like, ‘what are you talking about? It's awesome.”' As long as you go through that barrier. Pushed enough, long enough to get through that, and I'm having to go through that. It's always that initial adaptation phase, that time when you're not fitting, you're not good at the surfing or the running, or the whenever, when it's shit. Let's be honest. But if you hang in there long enough, if you stay with the tension long enough, th
Have you ever wondered what it must feel like to be a world record holder? It may seem like their experiences are so different from yours, but you'll be surprised with how alike they are to you. They may share the same hobbies or be in the same industry as you before they made their record. Or they may have faced the same struggles you're currently confronting. No matter where they come from, great people are still people, just like you. Today, ex-Special Forces soldier, security specialist, and record-breaking adventurer Dean Stott joins us. He shares his experiences, from his military background to his Pan-American Highway cycling adventure. His is an inspiring story of pushing the limits and redefining the meaning of ‘adventurer'. Just like everyone journeying through life, he has also faced challenges on the way to the finish line. After listening to the episode, you may gain the motivation to try something you've never done before. 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The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find inspiration as Dean shows us the meaning of adventurer. Realise your similarities in experiences with a world record holder. Gain insight into how long-distance cycling is both a physical and mental feat. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. Listen to other Pushing the Limits Episodes: #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #192: Mental Resilience and Endurance: A Journey Across the Ocean with Laura Penhaul Connect with Dean: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter Relentless by Dean Stott The Black Country Buddhas Podcast Episode #55: Dean Stott- Human Performance, World Records And The Unrelenting Pursuit Of Excellence! 13 Hours (2016) Heads Together UK Windy TV Episode Highlights [04:53] Dean's Background Dean's father was a tracksuit soldier or the football manager and coach in the army. Dean was an active child growing up. While he was never forced to go into the military, he ended up joining anyway. [09:00] The Fruits of Dean's Military Training Dean's time in the military helped him put on some muscle and gain height and weight. He didn't feel pressure to choose a department because he wasn't aware of how difficult each option would be. Dean ended up in the SBS (Special Boat Service) as he was more comfortable with water. He learned that rehearsing over and over helps you prepare for different scenarios. Dean's training also prepared him to expect things to never go according to plan. He was taught how to react and plan for the best outcomes. [16:57] Dean's Turning Point Unfortunately, Dean had an accident while on an aircraft jump during pre-deployment training. Luckily, he landed successfully. However, he tore numerous supporting muscles, particularly in his knee. He couldn't even run 100 meters due to these injuries. Dean left the military. After retiring, he experienced an identity crisis. Dean's wife, Alana, was also pregnant. So, he was under a large amount of mental pressure. Alana helped him during this challenging period. [22:35] Experience in the Security Industry With his training from the Special Forces, Dean went on to the security industry. He carried out projects for the British and Canadian embassies. Dean bought weapons and communication tools to sell to his clients. Additionally, he also made and sold evacuation plans to oil and gas companies. Ad-hoc security projects were a better option for Dean as he didn't want to join organisations. He helped in the aftermath of the Benghazi assassination of the then American ambassador. With his safe houses and contacts, he was able to transport people from Benghazi to Tripoli. Despite the numerous tribal and ideality differences between these two places, Dean helped people safely reach their destinations. He did this by communicating respectfully and humbly with the locals. [31:33] The Effect of Fear The media largely contributes to the world's perception of high-risk places. Dean is fully aware of the threats present in his job. But he learns to appreciate and look at another perspective. Despite terrorist threats and danger, these high-risk cities have hospitable people and lovely surroundings. [37:03] Looking for the Meaning of ‘Adventurer' Dean became fixated on working to gain money. Then, he realised he was losing physical and mental wellness. Before turning 40, Dean experienced a midlife crisis. He wanted to leave a legacy. And so he chose to break a world record on cycling. Dean chose to cycle from South Argentina to North Alaska via the Pan-American Highway, the longest road in the world. To beat the record of 117 days, Dean's goal needed to cover the distance in 110. So, he trained to cycle in different weather conditions and altitudes. Dean cycled for Heads Up, the mental health campaign of Prince Harry, Prince William, and Kate. He set a target of ₤1,000,000. [48:11] Preparation Phase As Dean was doing his research for cycling, he also spoke to previous record holders. He asked them questions that he learned from his experiences in Special Forces debriefings. Dean learned that the previous record holders experienced issues in South and Central America, the second half of the challenge. [49:27] Dean's Journey Across South and Central America Dean decided to start in the south first to get all the issues out of the way. His adventure began in Southern Argentina. He became physically and mentally stronger after four weeks on the road. Most of the time, Dean would also go beyond his daily-set kilometres and hours. He divided his milestones into countries, cities, and days. He also divided his days among four stages. With smaller and more manageable milestones, Dean didn't feel overwhelmed. He instead felt like he was training, nothing more. Dean looked forward to small rewards after each milestone. These motivated him to move and be better the next day. [55:47] Dean's Trip Across North America By this time, Dean learned that he was invited to Prince Harry's wedding. This meant he had to finish the challenge in 102 days. So, he cycled at night. Dean also saw a post of a recent world breaker, saying he'll break a record within 100 days. Dean's family was also at the end to greet him; this thought motivated him. So, Dean cycled for 22 hours every day, even at -18 degrees, to beat the record. [1:01:50] The Cycling World Record Dean's adventure lasted for 99 days. He spent ninety-four days cycling and five days on logistics. He averaged 147 miles a day with a speed of 16.8 miles per hour. Dean also lost 12 kilos. Most importantly, he raised $1.2 million, or ₤900,000, through corporate donors and sponsors. He was even able to attend the royal wedding. [1:03:19] Events Following Dean's Adventure Dean experienced two highs in a week and felt a depression phase after. Dean did a Q&A with Prince Harry shortly after returning to talk about the amount they raised. It's weird for your family to go on with their everyday lives while you're still riding the highs of your success. Dean feels lucky because his family is involved in his activities. So, they can be with him throughout his journey. Anyone can do a world record when they have the luxury to just focus on their craft and immediate goals. Mortgages, physical health, and family responsibilities may get in the way of those goals. [1:08:44] What Lies Ahead for Dean His next goal is to kayak from Rwanda to Egypt, which is a 4,280 mile-long feat. This time, he will raise awareness on issues such as human trafficking, modern slavery, and pollution. This new feat will also promote African people and their beautiful and natural environment. Kayaking is more skill-involved since he'll be encountering wild animals and overcoming water currents and waterfalls. Listen to the episodes about the specifics of Dan's preparations. [1:14:54] Final Thoughts and Advice Don't compare yourselves to other people, especially on social media. Anticipation is worse than participation. Start with small steps and progress from there. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘If someone disagrees, “I didn't think you're gonna do it”. The best way to prove them wrong is actually physically doing it.' ‘You can't control the uncontrollables, you know, as long as you have a plan. One thing I saw, really take from the military is that meticulous planning and detail that goes into it.' ‘What I really took from the military is that unrelenting pursuit of excellence, trying to be the best you can be.' ‘The world's very quick to tarnish certain societies with one brush because of what they've seen on TV.' ‘Before you get, sort yourself out, you know, we'll sit down, and we'll ask three questions: “What worked? What didn't work? And if you're going to do it again, what would you do differently?”' ‘And then it was just, look at the next two hours. Look at the next stage. I didn't look at the afternoon, didn't look at the next day. And before you've done it, you've done a day, you've done a week, you've done a world record.' ‘Don't worry about what other people are doing. Just focus on yourself. You know, I always say anticipation is worse than participation.' About Dean Dean Stott is a former member of the British Special Forces, where he travelled to dangerous places for 16 years. After an accident, he was forced to find other ways to use his time and skills. With his experiences in the Special Forces, Dean is now a world-leading security consultant and avid adventurer. Indeed, Dean redefines the meaning of adventurer in everything that he does. He has set the world record, cycling the entire 14,000 km Pan-American Highway in less than 100 days. Apart from these successes, Dean is also a motivational speaker who helps others overcome fear and adapt to change. His positive mindset and wide range of skills also enable him to work with brands and charities. He also incorporates advocacies into his adventures, with his most recent world record supporting mental health. Check out his website if you want to know more about Dean and his next adventure. You can also reach him through other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can understand the meaning of being an ‘adventurer' and go on their own adventures. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back everybody. Lisa Tamati here, your host. Fabulous to have you with me again for another crazy episode of Pushing the Limits. Before we get underway with today's guests who I know you're going to find very, very exciting and interesting, just a reminder, to check out our epigenetics program, our flagship program that we do. One of our main programs besides our online run training system, where we look at your genes and how to optimise your life, your nutrition, your food, your exercise, all aspects of your life, including your social, your career, what parts of your mind you use the most, your dominant hormones, all this information is now able to be accessed and we can identify the lifestyle changes and the interventions that we can make to optimise your life. So if you want to hit know a little bit more about that program, head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the work with us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program, go and check that out. I also like to remind you about my new supplement, NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide. A bloody long name I know, but it's about longevity and anti-ageing. There is a ton of science that has gone into the research into NMN and as a precursor for NAD, which is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. I've had a couple of podcast episodes with Dr. Elena Seranova. I'd love you to go and check those out. She is the founder of the company and I'm importing it now into New Zealand, Australia and down the center of the world. So if you want to check out that anti-ageing and longevity supplement, I spent months trying to get it so make sure if you're down in the world and you want top quality, independently certified, scientists-backed supplement that really does what it says on the label, then check it out. Go to www.nmnbio.nz, nmnbio.nz, and find out all about it. Right. Today's guest is oh he's a bit of a legend. Dean Stott is his name. He's a ex-Special Forces soldier, he was in the special boat service, British Army's where he came from originally. And he spent 16 years going into the most dangerous places on the planet and doing his job as a frogman. That's his nickname on his website. Even, as The Frogman. He is the author of a book called Relentless. Go figure, we've both got books called Relentless. I think we knew that we were going to get along. He's a motivational speaker. He's also a world record holder. Most recently he cycled the entire Pan-American highway. What are we talking- what is it, 14,000 miles or something ridiculous. And he did it in under 100 days. He's an absolute legend. And he had to get it done in time to get to Harry and Megan's winning. So he was desperate to get it done under 100 days. It's a really interesting story. This is a guy who's lived life on the edge in every which way you can possibly imagine. So I'm really looking forward to sharing his insights and his story with you now. Right, over to the show with Dean Stott. Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Your host Lisa Tamati here, sitting in New Zealand and ready for a fantastic interview today. I have a bit of a hard ask with me. I think it's a bit hard to describe this man, what he's done. I have Dean Stott with me. Dean, welcome to the show. It's fantastic to hear you. Yeah, you're sitting in Orange County? Dean Stott: I say, yeah moved to move to Orange County in California six months ago, actually in the middle of the pandemic. Just took advantage of the world pause, and just changed scenery. Lisa: Just change the scenery. Right, Dean we're gonna have a really interesting conversation because when I discovered you actually through another friend's podcast, My Home Vitality, shout out to Sean and everyone over there. And I realised that we had the same title of our books, was your one right? Dean: Yeah. Lisa: My one's been smaller. I thought, you, ‘This guy's probably right up my alley'. So you are known as the frogman, you've been in this Special Forces, Special Boat Services. You have also become an expeditionary athlete and adventurer and, in many years. But I want to go back a little bit, and it's starting to, were you always this determined and crazy and head through the wall type of person? And tell us a little bit about your background for starters. Dean: Yeah, so I don't know whether I was on reflection, you look back and think maybe I was slightly, you know, you touched when I was in the military, my father was in the military. And I grew up surrounded by that, in that environment, but was never forced upon me to continue any sort of tradition and things like that. My father was the army football manager and coach. So he was very sports-oriented, what we would call a tracksuit soldier. He very much that, you know, his career was based on his sport and abilities. So there was that competitive drive anyway, that I had from my father. My parents split up when I was a young age. And when I was about eight years old, I moved away with my mother for a couple of years. My father then got custody of me and my sisters, we went back to live with my dad, so I only had the single parent, and we just went everywhere with him. And it was all with the military and all these sporting events. I wasn't, you know, the children of today, with technology, you know, when we were younger, as you will know, we know you weren't allowed in the house unless it was absolutely raining. So we had some natural physical robustness. And by, I joined the military, I approached my father and told him my intentions of joining the military, when I was 17. And he, he told me, I'd last two minutes. I don't know whether that was reverse psychology for me to push harder and prove him wrong. And, but I was about 65 kilos, and five-foot-seven, so I wasn't, you know, the figure, the man that I am today. And, but when I did join the military, I then went through training and things. And I didn't have aspirations of being Special Forces or commandos or anything like that. And I didn't, I wasn't really aware about the structure of the military anyway, because it was just sport. That's all I've seen where my dad, I hadn't seen the bigger picture. So then when I pass basic training. It's only 10 weeks long, you know, you then get a little bit of confidence in your abilities. And then you started in a short period of time, by the age of 20, or 21 actually, I was a para-commando diver and a PTA, done every arduous force within the military. But I'd grown so quick over those two or three years, and I will be about 85 kilos, now. I'm five-foot-eleven. So I was getting confident in my own abilities. And I was also growing into the individual that I was today. And I mean, once you pass a certain threshold, or pass a course, you then sort of look at, ‘Well, what's next?' You know, I wasn't the best on the courses, but I just gave it my 100%. And then you sort of, your career then starts channelling in one direction, you then those before you or your peers, the mentors are all going Special Forces. And then it's like, the next question is, ‘Why not? Let's have a crack.' Lisa: Yeah, that it takes a special type of person to be able to, like, I grew up in a family with lots of stories, like my dad was only in the military for a short time, but he was a firefighter. And so, you know, my husband's a firefighter, my dad's a firefighter, my brother's a firefighter, we're a firefighter family. And when I was a girl, when I was a little girl, we couldn't, I couldn't grow up to be a firefighter. It wasn't, it wasn't you know, unfortunately. Thank God, you can now. And, you know, if my dad had had his way, I would have been a firefighter, I would have been an SAS soldier, I would have been like, because he was a hard ass And he wanted all of that for me. And, you know, unfortunately, society sort of stopped some of the things. So I ended up doing it in other ways that I could do it. But wasn't there a lot of pressure? Did you feel like you had to live, you know, your dad saying that to you? Was it sad and just a thing? Or did that really bite with you that, ‘Hey, I'm going to prove you wrong,' you know what I'm going for? Dean: Yeah, I think for me, it was. And we'll talk about other stories in my career, and it seems to be a common theme. I know, I fought. There's no point in arguing my father, you know, and or anyone, if someone disagrees, ‘I don't think you're gonna do it'. The best way to prove them wrong is actually basically doing it. Yeah. And then you don't even need to say anything. You just need to just leave that pause. And so I think for him, I don't know. I think it was a throwaway comment, you know, the fact I still talk about it now. And you know, a lot of people say to me, would you say that to your son? So of course, you know, I mean, I and, but for me it was that drive. Now, my father we talked about, you know, he really, he was sport oriented, actually when I joined Military I got sent to Germany to play football as well, because they knew I was Dave Stott's son. Lisa: Yeah. Dean: And see, after a year of being there, I said, ‘No, I don't want to follow the same footsteps as my father, I want to carve my own path.' And that's when I then went, commando, para and things. So I was going a different path from my father, he wasn't a para commando and things like that. So for me, it was like, this was new territory to me. I wasn't really put under pressure from him. I know a lot of guys who I served with, you know, from a young age, from young boys, all they ever wanted to be was a Royal Marine, or a para, they wanted to be SAS and things. I didn't, I wasn't, there was something that I didn't– Lisa: You weren't conditioned. Dean: Look, I wasn't even aware of it. That was why. So when I approached these courses, I didn't put myself under that self-induced pressure with some of these guys– guys and girls do. And I think that helped in a way. I sort of approached it in a, you know, it is what. It is not being naive, it's not what was involved walk in the park. But, you know, I was aware how difficult it was. But it wasn't the be-all or end-all. You know, some guys who did it, don't achieve the grades or, or the standards, and then they're broken. That's all their life. And I think it's actually too much pressure on themselves. So sort of going into these situations, you just need to be a bit open-minded. Lisa: And what was the training like to go into the Special Forces and to know what you do? What is it like to go through– because we see the stuff on the telly, and you know, everybody knows about how hard ass all that type of training is. And what do you need? What did you get out of it? What was the experience like for you to do those extreme sort of courses? Dean: Well for me, it's very much a grown-up course. You know, the way that then, you've got this stuff on TV, where you have the perception it's hard-ass and everyone's swearing and shouting here. And it is night and day from that, you know. I understand with TV, there's a fine line between authenticity and entertainment. Actually, if you film selections, it's actually quite boring. You know, these guys just get told where they got to go. And they just do it. So, and that's what I liked about the course is that the fact that you're– you all grow– you're all treated as grown-ups. There was no shouting, and they just told you what to do. They didn't need to shout, the selection was that hard in itself, that they didn't need to put that additional pressure on you. So I did what I can. And in fact, they gave you some sort of independence. To think on your own. I was fortunate to be an instructor on the commando course and also the senior dive instructor. So I've seen it from an instructor's perspective. And on those sort of courses, you do give the students some motivation and inspiration as well. But on this one, you don't get anything. Yes, you get the reverse when you go to the jungle, and they tell you about how you're not doing well. And you know, just give up now and save six months of your life and things out. But again, I got that reverse psychology as a young boy telling me I couldn't do it. So yeah. And for me, I didn't go– you're– I was from, I came from the army. So I, the normal traditional route was especially SAS. I went SBS. I was one of the first army guys to do that. And that was because I'd spent eight years with three commando brigades, Brigade Iraqi force and I was a senior dive instructor. So water, I was more comfortable in water. So the special boat service was that natural transition for me. So they say when you go on selection, be the gray man, you know, just don't don't stand out and bring attention to yourself and things. I'll be the gray man for about two minutes. Because they will react, they'll scream my name out. And that's why I was going this way and not the traditional, right? Lisa: Because you came from the wrong place. Dean: Yeah, although I didn't put myself under my own self-induced pressure. I had that sort of hovering above my head. But again, once you– if you're confident in your abilities, and there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance at that age. I was a 28 year old sergeant. And I spent seven years in Brigade Iraqi. I've seen those who've gone before me and I knew that I was just as good as then. And you sort of know that they're going to play these mind games and when they come, as long as you identify when they come in and just deflect it. Lisa: Yeah. Has it really helped you in everything that you've done since like, what are some of the key learnings that you take away from doing such arduous, tough, scary stuff? Dean: Um, I think, you know, you can't control the uncontrollables you know, as long as you have a plan. One thing I saw, really take from the military is that meticulous planning and detail that goes into it. And the fact that we rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse. You know, we do that over and over and over again. You know, I've been guest speaking alongside some, like, some of the England rugby players. They talk about the World Cup, now that how they repeat an exercise, until they get 1% better. You know, we'll rehearse, rehearse all these different scenarios. And, but ours is a bit of a different situation. You know, if we get it wrong or pause or hesitate, you know, we don't lose five points in a row, we lose lives. Guys, people will get killed. So yeah, so there's that which what I really took from the military is that unrelenting pursuit of excellence, trying to be the best you can be. But also, as well as the planning, and that we talked about that, we'll probably talk about it later when we talk about the bike ride, is the fact that not– nothing always goes to plan. Plan is the best plan in the world, you know, and things never go to plan. And don't worry about that. And that's what I liked about the Special Forces is there were a lot of, ‘Well, if you don't go as planned, you just react to the situation that's in front of you.' And a good friend of mine told me a quote, ‘You can't be experienced without experiences'. And that's what I got from the military. The military, a lot of these big corporates around will, would love to try and replicate the scenarios or, or conditions that these people have been in, but you just can't. And that's the great thing about the military. They put you in some high octane environments, in difficult positions, difficult environments, and having to make difficult decisions. But you learn from that, you know, my decision, when was the wrong decision? You know, when you have to make? Yeah, you just reflect back on what worked and what didn't work. Lisa: Wow. So you were in the military for, I think it was 16 years, was it, or something? Dean: Yes, yes. Yeah. Lisa: And so it was a big chunk of your life. And then and then what happened? Tell us about the accident. Dean: Yeah. So I joined, I joined a special forces in the height of the war on terror. So I was the pinnacle of my career, everything was going really well. I was doing what these children nowaday plays Call of Duty. That was my lifestyle, day in day out. And we're just about to get pre-deployment training to go back out to Afghanistan again, and we're out training in Oman. And I was doing what's called a HAHO jumps, it's a high altitude, high opening jump. So unlike freefall, where you're free aligned, you're actually still connected to the aircraft. You exit the aircraft at 15,000 feet. And you do that, because that's the limits of oxygen. Any higher and you need oxygen. You open the aircraft and the parachute will open– pull open straight away. And when you travel up to 50 kilometers, or 30 minutes in the air to the target area. So I've done– no– we've done hundreds of these jumps before, I think it's about the third or fourth jump in a day. And I just exit the aircraft as I normally did, no different from any time before. But this time, when I look, there was something wrong and my leg was actually caught in the line above my head. So I was trying to clear my leg in time before the parachute opened and potentially rip my leg off. But I couldn't clear it in time. The parachute opened, pulled my leg up over my head and the right. Thankfully made my foot released. And otherwise wouldn't be here having this conversation. But straight away I knew there was a problem. The pain was so severe that I was vomiting and because of how thin the air was, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. But no one else in the team knew there was a situation so I wasn't going to come over to net and tell them that I had a sore leg. So I managed to stay with the team, assess where the other parachutes were coming in against the wind. And my first challenge was to land it because if I didn't land it correctly, you know, on one leg, you know potentially, you could damage your good leg. So, but I did. It was a great, great landing, landed one-legged. And fortunately, the damage sustained on the exit show in my career. As I tore my ACL, my MCL, my lateral meniscus, my hamstring, my calf and my quadriceps, so all these supporting muscles– Lisa: Just got ripped. Dean: Yeah, just got ripped. But you know, in the ideal world you would go straight back to UK and you start physio, you just start working on it. But it was the same time as the Icelandic volcano which grounded all aircraft. I was there for about nearly five weeks just thrown in a hotel with painkillers. Lisa: Are you kidding. So that was it. Dean: Yeah, yeah, I sort of missed that, and then got back to UK. I remember I made it back to UK, got sent home for six weeks and leaves. We're now talking about 11, 12 week period from the injury. Then they lost my MRI scans. It was just a spiral of failure in the medical system there. And so yeah, so I left. But all I've ever known, it's 16 years. Military, even as a young child growing up. So I didn't have, I didn't look beyond the military. For me, I was a lifer. That was me. Lisa: Wow. So how did that, apart from the gun to the physical injury, but how did that affect you mentally? Like you suddenly– you're at the top of your game, you've been training for this forever, you're doing your job. And then all of a sudden, you're out of the game. And you're completely sidelined. What happened to you mentally from that side? Dean: My wife will tell you a different– Lisa: You didn't get divorce. So that's good. Dean: But the one of the things I scored an identity crisis. Well, it is whether you believe in the military, whether you're a professional sports person, or whether you're just someone who works in an organisation or a team, but I've been– I've gone from working in a tight-knit unit, having a role and having a purpose, knowing what I was doing for the next two years, to like, ‘Where do I now fit in society? What was my role and purpose?' But I got to where I got to, because of my physical robustness. That had now been taken away from me as well. I couldn't even run 100 meters without my leg being in pain. So I had that going on in the background. Also, to add to the pressure, my wife was eight months pregnant. So also wondering whether there is going to be any work there. How am I going to support my family? And thankfully, for me, my wife is very entrepreneurial. You know, you hear horror stories of men and women when they leave the military, about that transition can be quite turbulent. Mine was quite smooth. You know, the military, like your mother and father, you know, they clothe you, they feed you, they pay you on time. You don't even know what, who provides the water or what to eat. You've just got a job to do. But when we leave, we're not aware of who we need to speak to in the council's or the state. There. So my wife was a bank manager for three sons and their banks in Aberdeen. So the stuff that I would normally be worried about, she was, ‘Yeah, I've got all that.' And she sent my first security company on a Blackberry watching TV, you know, done the right paperwork. So when, so whatever I was going through a hard time having to talk personally, you know, thankfully, wasn't that bad, because my wife had sort of– Lisa: Yeah, she's awesome. Dean: But yeah, I just had, you know, talking to the security industry, the pressure of trying to, if there's any work. And I was very fortunate. Within 48 hours I was asked if I can go out to Libya, which I know you're familiar with, to help set up the different project restart the British Embassy during the Arab Spring. And so that's what I did. So wow, look at me, I had work straight away. And I was out in Benghazi, helping sell that project. Lisa: Can you tell us a little bit about that story? Because that sounds like a bit of a movie. Dean: You know– familiar I did– when I left, I wanted to find a niche within the security industry. I didn't want to go to Afghanistan and Iraq and do the hostile action, because I've sort of done that, you know, I've done that bit. And you know, I was very lucky to survive. So why would you take another risk? And I looked at the security industry, and actually, a lot of my friends from the special boat service. They were, they had their maritimes companies who are dealing with the Pirates of the east coast of Africa. So I didn't want to be competing with them either. My wife's from Aberdeen, so I moved back to Scotland with her. It's the only gas capital of Europe. So where is all this trouble? So I was looking into more in the corporate clothes protection sort of industry, that's where my head was focused. But when I got to Libya, I soon identified that Libyans didn't want another Libyan, another Afghan or Iraq once Gaddafi had fallen, they wanted to take control. But also these larger security companies, the big five, now sort of like dominate the industry. They were charging crisis management in evacuation plans, when actually we just scraped the surface, there was nothing in place. So I flew home, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Molly. And I said, ‘Look, I have a plan. Do you mind if I take our savings out of the bank?' And that's what I did. And I went back into Libya, there was a huge proliferation of weapons at this point. It's actually ammunition was difficult to get hold of, weapons are not a problem. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market, and I buried them between Tunis and Egypt and buried them with communications equipment money, and just designed my own evacuation plan, spent a month in the desert. These in design. And I mean, I sold them to a couple of the oil and gas companies on a retainer and just just sat on them. Then the security industry. You know, for me, I didn't want to work for an organisation and be on rotation and things like that. I took a gamble and it was very ad hoc. So each time I got a phone call was a different job. So you know, for example, we did London Olympics. And then next thing you're taking the UAE royal family superyacht from Barcelona to Maldives, and you're training the Kurdish Special Forces in Erbil. Lisa: Wow! Fascinating! Dean: It's very diverse. When you tell people in the security industry, I mean, they think you're a doorman from the local nightclub. Lisa: Surely not. Dean: I'd like to help people as well. And I'm for me, but what it what it was good for me was– is I was seeing– some of these countries that I've been to anyway with the military, but seeing all the cultures and seeing how things, not from a military perspective, because it was almost a little bit blinkered, there, you know. Lisa: Yes. Like you say, your head, your role. Dean: You know, it's understanding more the politics, the demographics and things like that. So I just come back from the London Olympics. I was in Benghazi. And in the evening, the American ambassador got killed. And they made it into a film called 13 Hours. Lisa: Yes, that's what I thought, it sounds very familiar, I'm sure. Dean: I know, I always say, ‘Right place, right time' or ‘Wrong place, wrong time'. And I was there in Benghazi. And I was asked by a German oil company if I could get some of their German engineers from Benghazi to Tripoli. So I had safe houses in the desert. And that's what I did over the three days. I took them back out. And then two years later, I was in Brazil, covering the World Cup. Lisa: You're just like… You just got them out through a hole and you do that like going to the supermarket. Dean: There's no real, no threat to them, no direct threat to them. the only issue I had with that one, you know, we could have– I had drivers from Benghazi, who took us out initially. The problem in Libya, you have 167 tribes. And this is where there's real issues. Because, I mean, you have, you know, those in the East in Benghazi, don't like those in the West in Tripoli. You know, the politics are in Tripoli, the oils are in the East. And so it's understanding that as well. And that's why, so we did it over three days, and the reason we did that is, I was actually, I had the drivers from Benghazi in the safe house. And now that will, ‘You know, Mr. Dean, we can go on because Tripoli is only, you know, it's not far, 300 kilometers'. But they didn't realise I had drivers coming in from Tripoli. Lisa: And you didn't want them to–. Dean: And I didn't want the drivers to compromise us when we go in. So I woke up that morning that we were setting off and the drivers that arrived from Tripoli, the drivers and Benghazi in there. They all had their guns out. Lisa: Oh, my God. Dean: I say I mean, I mean, they're worried they weren't gonna get paid. I said, ‘No, you're paid. I just can't take you to Tripoli.' And so it's just understanding that sort, rather than just driving as fast as you could to Tripoli and potentially running into issues along the way. And so yes, that was a success. And two years later, I was in Brazil covering the World Cup. And we now had the Tripoli war, which is a civil war between the militias and the government. And I think that's just ended now. And I got a phone call from the Canadian Embassy saying that they'd been stuck in Tripoli. And so they had 18 military within an area close protection team with them, but they weren't allowed to leave the city. So they'd never seen the coastal road out and didn't really have eyes on. So in the days leading up to that, the British Embassy got shot at every checkpoint between Tripoli and the Tunis border. So I went out with my fixer, and just spoke to the tribal elders in those regions at war and everywhere else. And it was actually just showing them courtesy and respect. Just let us know who we are, when we will come in, we were no threat. And again, it's that understanding the politics and the demographics, which was a success to that. And yeah, we got 18 military in four different maps safely back to back to Tunis. Lisa: Wow. Dean: But you know, I've never like they said in Hollywood, I never needed to dig up any of the weapons. They're still there. It's more of an intelligence-led security thing. But I came home from that trip and my normal procedure would be to wash my kit, repack my bag and everything else, and then get ready for the next phone call. Yeah, one of my shirts was covered in blood. But I've been doing first aid and RTA. And I said to my wife, ‘Can we get the blood out of the shirt?' And she said ‘Yes, but I'm more concerned why there's blood in there'. Totally what I just got yourself is like a throwaway comment. Yeah, you see, this was the second time in my life, I realised the pin dropped. There was something more mentally, I was just five years now from the military and I was trying to match the adrenaline rush that I had been, without coming to terms with the fact that I'd left and I didn't have that support network. If something had gone wrong, my friends were gonna come in and parachute for me. And so something had to change. And my daughter was young, and my wife now is, you know, she had a very successful property development business. And she said, ‘Look, this was actually all about communication'. She thought I wanted to go away. And I thought she needed me to go away. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Because you've been used to that sort of setup for so long. Dean: Yeah. And I've just been disconnected from society. I just thought that was the norm. You know, I was going to Somalia on my own. Yeah. Just doing– Lisa: Were you not like, like most people listen to this, I mean, it's such a foreign world for the average person who's never been exposed to any of this. And I've never been anything military. I've been in some tricky situations, and self-caused, gone into shit places which I wasn't really for or shouldn't have been in. But for most people, this is a terrifying thought to even go to some of these places, let alone to do the job that you do. Did you never have a fear of like, do you not have the normal fear responses that most people have? Dean: I think I do. I think the problem that we have in today's society is TV, is media. You know, it's very, you know, dramatised about these places. These places they go. I use Somalia as an example. I'll go there on my own and have a walk from the airport to the hotel, I won't– because that's where the business is. That's where I think things are happening. And then I've been, you know, yes, there's bad places and things go on. But it's no different from any city, you know. Yes, there's a bit of a terrorist threat and things. But I've been sent on a mission, south of Mogadishu, and in some of the most beautiful waters. I see parts of the country that people don't see. Now, I'm not naive to think there is no threat at all. You know, the success of a lot of my projects is having the right fixers and local influence. The world's very quick to tarnish certain societies with one brush because of what they've seen on TV. For me, they're the most hospitable people. You know, the Canadian Embassy, the KCA Deutag and a few others, they wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't for the locals. Lisa: The local people. Yeah. Dean: And I think that's where somebody's security companies or individuals who think they can just come in with weapons and guys like me, very arrogant, they think they're going to do, to get away with it. And, and it's just showing respect, and humility. And that's my approach to it. So I am obviously conscious there is there is a friend, you know, I have friends who– Lisa: And you can handle yourself there as well. Dean: –things that, but yeah, I think that as long as– Lisa: Yeah, I know what you'd be like when you go to some of these places, you have these preconceived ideas. And some of the places I've been to, like Niger. I went to Niger and you know, Niger, I don't even know how to say it properly, Niger. Never got that right. That was one place where I landed there. And we were doing a 333k race through there. And I didn't like go, ‘Holy shit, this place is pretty damn scary'. And you know, you're running across the desert on your own, and there was a lot of military, sort of oil problems. Chinese doing exploration in the desert against the wishes of the tribal people. So there was lots of military convoys coming through with all the arms and things. And you're a little girl running across the frickin' desert on your own. It's pretty, pretty hairy moments here where you think you can just disappear, you know. But generally speaking, most of the places that you go to where you think are gonna be terrifying, aren't that terrifying. And the people are pretty amazing, too. And you've got to be aware of yourself and, you know. Dean: Yeah. Having the responsibility, you know, those sort of places as well if they're running an event like that, and, you know, these countries want, you know, it's all about tourism and try and promote and put the country in a good light, you know, they'll do this. Yeah. Lisa: This one was a bit out there, though. Like this was a French Foreign Legion guy who was running it. He didn't give a shit about anything except making money, right? We went into it naively. These particular ones thinking it was gonna be like the marathon on Saturdays or something. You know what I mean? And it wasn't. It was like 17 runners, nothing was organised. It was like, we ran out of water, we ran out of food, we, you know, I ended up getting food poisoning on top of it all. So that was a really– that's when I realised that most of the races are really super well run, but then there are the cowboys out there. And, you know, we were in their very hands really, you know, and we were lucky to get out the other side on that one. But so how do you like, for your wife? What's it like having your husband off doing God knows what, and having to keep the, you know, the business going, and the life going, and that fear of you being away? Dean: Yeah. And I'm very fortunate. I've got a, my wife is part of the business anyway, the scoop is anyway, so she would always be doing intelligence bits anyway. So having her being part of that helps. Yeah. Well, rather, you just go in, and she's not knowing what's going on. Yeah. I mean, a part of that. And when we talk about the bike ride, you know, she was the campaign director that so– Lisa: Sounds amazing. Dean: –but gets involved in everything. Because then it's very easy to explain why you're doing something or why you're going away because, yeah, the full picture. But no, very, very fortunate to have an understanding– and she, you know, Alana's got a book coming out soon as she talks about why she fell in love with me, because I showed a world that she hadn't seen before. I mean, I was very, we had very similar mindsets, and like, achieve whatever goals you want. So for her to then say, ‘I couldn't do something,' or you know, would go against, you know, what she believes in, and why we got into it. So obviously, now I'm a bit older and we've got kids and obviously I need to be a bit you know, she needs a little bit more. Yeah. Lisa: She sounds like an amazing lady. I'll have to get her on. Dean: Yeah, yeah, she is. She's got a cracking story herself. Lisa: Yeah, she sounds like it. So I want to transition now into going into life after this chapter of your life, if you like, in becoming this professional adventurer. Because in what you're doing now, what you've got coming up, and the whole world record that you have. Tell us about that. Dean: Yeah, so we actually stem from coming back from that Canadian Embassy job. You know, something had to change. In chapter 16 in the book, it's called ‘Dead or Divorce', so that's the stage we're talking about. Obviously, it's been five years since my leaving the military. I've sort of neglected my own sort of physical and mental well-being. I've been so fixated on work and bringing in money, and I take like a TRX with me around, just throw it in the suitcase. And I haven't done any sort of cardiovascular stuff. My injured leg like now was two kilos lighter than my good leg, which is an awful wastage. So I just that's when for Alana said, “Come do property development.' And that's what I did. I hung up my security boots and just bought a pushbike of farmers, and just cycled to and from the office. There's only about eight miles there and eight miles back. You know, nothing big but straightaway being physically active again, you know, I felt like there was a big, big weight off my shoulders, and that's what I did. I cycled to and from the office. But you can imagine my story, you know, sat in these architects and planners meet. So it's about a month for my 40th birthday. So I was getting a midlife crisis around. What have I done with my life? I'm going to have a legacy and things. So I said, well, ‘I've always fancied doing a world record.' And Alana said, ‘Well, what in?' And I said, ‘Well, cycling is good, because it's not impacted– well, you need to consider my knee injury.' And something that wasn't the knee injury wasn't going to compromise it. So I said, ‘Well, what about cycling?' And you know, being in Scotland, I was thinking maybe Aberdeen to Glasgow or something. And my wife then found the world's longest road, which runs in southern Argentina to northern Alaska. So for the listeners, it's probably equivalent to say it's the equivalent of cycling from London to Sydney. Yeah, 30,000 miles. Lisa: And then another. Dean: Yeah. Because of the curvature of the earth. So having only cycled 20 miles, this is what I did: I applied for the world record in it. We had looked at Cairo to Cape Town. But I– majority of my security work was in Africa. So I'd be in those days anyway. So for me, I wanted to, as part of the challenge, I wanted to see places that I am– someplace that I hadn't been to before and also because of where you started, and when you're finishing, you're going through all different temperatures and climates and things like that. And so Guinness came back. And the world record when I apply for it was 125 days. Six weeks later when it came back, and said you were successful with the application. And we've been beaten by eight days, the new world record was 117 days. So that was my target. And my wife and I do a lot charity work. We have been doing since I met her really and, you know, do a lot of stuff with the military. You know, it's part of a special boat service, ambassador for Scotland. Legion, which is the oldest military charity in the UK. But I'm gonna name drop now massively. So Prince Harry and I are good friends, and we've known each other. Lisa: Is he though? Dean: Yeah. And as you've seen. And I've been friends about 14 years, met each other on a community training course. And, you know, he'd come to some of my events; I've been to some of his events. You know, I– in Mozambique, Tanzania had an intelligence fusion sale, which would identify smuggling routes for the ivory, you know, which I could then relay back to him. So he's doing a lot of stuff in the background. So I rang him up, and I said, ‘Look, I'm gonna cycle, the world's longest road, you know, what campaigns should we do it for?' And this is back in 2016. So him and his brother and Kate, were just about to launch a mental health campaign called Heads Together in 2017. And he said, would I do it for that campaign? And I said, ‘Yes, of course'. So I now have the challenge of the campaign. And in the end, I set a target of a million pounds. Lisa: Wow, that's a big-ass target! Dean: For me it had to be the enormity of the challenge to reflect how much you're trying to raise. You know, you couldn't– you know, you can't go– can't say I'm going to raise a million pounds and run the London Marathon because it just doesn't add up. The size of the challenge and the size of the ask here, you know, was balanced. And also to add to that I'd never cycled before as well, which is even more of a– Lisa: Mental. Dean: Yes, yeah. So I did a train for a year, you can imagine what it is like trying to get sponsorship at the beginning. Lisa: What the hell! Dean: I will perform, break a record, and we'll record and raise a million pounds in mental health and a lot of them thought had mental health problems themselves. Lisa: But you had a track record of what you've done? I mean, I would have taken you seriously, as far as the– Dean: A lot of people say to me, ‘How do you get sponsorship?' You know, I got– and it was just, it was the right messaging at the right time. You know, the Heads Together campaign is launched in the UK, and it's very much the topic of conversation. So a lot of these big corporates wanted to get behind. Lisa: Wonderful. Yep, yeah. Dean: So it was the right message at the right time. And, yeah, I got a great sponsor. And, you know, that was only about two months before setting off. You know, I funded it, funded 50,000 of my own money up until that. I had to believe in it Lisa: And put something on the line? Dean: Yep. Yeah. So. So that's what I did. Yeah, I mean, I set off on the first of February 2018, the– when I was doing all the early stages when I was doing the planning, and I'd never cycled with I just took a military set of orders, put it on there and just crossed out ammunition. And then as I started learning about saving, I then introduced that into the plan. But there's things that, you know, there are things that are out of my control, like natural disasters, coups, third party influence. So the world record was 117 days, but I was aiming for 110. And it wasn't– I was going to beat it by a week. Lisa: You're in that buffer. Dean: Yeah that buffer. The buffer, the fudge they call it. Encounter that is eating into the fudge and not your challenge. So that's why, where I set off aiming for 110 days. You know, I was very fortunate to, being in the military and worked in the desert, the Arctic, and the jungle, and things that I've never done on the bike. I had to then simulate those situations. So the Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest non popular desert in the world. It's 47 degrees. What I decided to do so, I went out to Dubai and did two weeks heat training in Dubai. The altitude in Ecuador, of cycling. You know, the biggest climbs in Tour de France ranges in 21, 23 kilometers, minus 67 kilometers and sea level to four and a half thousand meters. So I had to train altitude. So I know that on the day of the event, you know, you do 8 to 10 hours on the bike. Lisa: Altitude. Yeah. Dean: So, yeah, I did that. And there's a famous bike ride in the UK called Land's End to John O'Groats. Lisa: Yes, I know that one. Dean: Yeah, so I did that twice. I never mean to sound arrogant, but for me, it was a training ride and actually it's training ride because the challenge was 15 Land's End to John O'Groats back to back. So if I couldn't do one, how was I going to do 15? Lisa: Yes. It's funny how your perception changes, the bigger your current goal that you're going for, the other stuff becomes small, but what I've learned too is that it goes the other way as well. When you stop doing the big stuff, your horizon comes back in pretty quickly. And then you know, it can be gone the other way. Dean: You can never replicate what you're going to do with some of the ultra marathons, you won't go run the exact distance. Lisa: No, no, you're running near it. Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody. And we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Dean: Yeah, what I got from doing those Land's End to John O'Groats, you know, I did about nine days, is the fact that the first four or five days are always whether you're at your peak, or wherever you're below peak is always going to be hard and then by the end of the first week, your body then knows what you're asking of it. Lisa: I found that like too, when I did– because I ran through New Zealand, and I did you know, 2250ks in 42 days, which I was aiming for 33 days, but I had again, I didn't add in the fudge, did I? And I got slower and slower and more injuries and so on. So it took me a bit longer than I was planning. But at the two-week point was when I was at that absolute, like I don't know how to take the next step point, you know. And somehow I had to drop the kilometers a little bit, but then I was able to– my body actually got better from that point on. And I would never have believed if I hadn't lived through it. I thought I was like, absolutely, I don't know the how I'm going to take the next step to then actually the end of the 42 days being like, ‘I could carry on now'. You know, it was quite a phenomenal thing to go through. And I've heard other expeditions that athletes go through the same sort of thing that it bottoms out at the worst point. I've got a couple of mates who ran across the Sahara, and I mean, right, right across the Sahara, 7,000 kilometers. And they said the same thing that they you know, two weeks, and they were thought, you know, ‘We're about to die here. We're not gonna make it.' And then it's sort of you know, and you have the ups and downs. But if you can push through that mentally, that point you seem to come through it. Dean: Yeah, you do. I think, you know, for me, I set off from sort of going back slightly when I was doing my research, I, you know, was reading books and magazines learning about cycling. You know, it evolved so much since I was a young boy in a BMX, and I wasn't getting the information I really wanted. So I spoke to the previous record holders, and they're very open, which was great, really, they're very receptive. but they– you know, one of the things we do in the military, especially in the special forces is, it's like a hot debrief. So when, as soon as you've done a job or operation, you come. Before you get, sort yourself out, you know, we'll sit down, and we'll ask three questions: ‘What worked? What didn't work? And if you're going to do it again, what would you do differently?' So I just asked that question to the previous record holders, and all their issues were in South and Central America: bureaucracy, the borders, languages, first to the base. So they all started in North America, and it was the second half of the challenge which had the issues, right. So I turned on its head, start in the south and get those issues out the way early. So one thing I was quite proud of– just because everyone did it that way didn't mean it was the right way. Lisa: Yeah. Dean: But yeah, but I set off from Southern Argentina in the first week, you know, relentless winds, it was like 40 mile an hour, approximate speed. I've never known anything like it. But once that had– I had targets each day, you know what I had to hit each day and I was hitting those targets. I think by the end of the first week, I was 39 miles behind target, but my target is still a week ahead of the world record, right? Yeah, yeah. The weather sort of changed for the better and now the winds have abated. I got through Peru, I got tailwind all the way through Peru. That's 2500 kilometers of tailwind. We did you know, I crashed the bike in Chile, I got food poisoning in Peru, you know, coming out with issues and, you know, got to Ecuador, got the big climb-ins. But before they're gone on the challenge, I've never done more than 150 miles on the road, on the road. I've done 10 hours on a turbo trainer, but never done more than 150 miles. By the week four when I was in Peru, anything less than 150 miles wasn't enough for me. I was physically and mentally stronger as I went. I started at 90 kilos. I was too big. Lisa: Yeah, but I but you needed it. Dean: Yeah, but I knew from my time in the military that special forces selection six months long, you don't start day 1 100%. You carry that timber and weight, and then that will shed and you'll get fit. And that's what I did. And you know, when I finished I weighed 78 kilos. Almost 12 kilos. And you know you have to– it's almost like a polar expedition, you're losing weight from the start. So you just need to try and try and keep it on. But I got to Cartagena on day 48 on March 21. That took 10 days off the previous world record for South America. But that wasn't the world record. And a lot of people called me said, ‘Oh,' they said, ‘The pressure's off.' I said, ‘That's not world record. Call it Brucie bonus. That was a Brucie bonus or a marker to aim for rather than looking at the full challenge. As you know, you don't look at the– Right down into– Lisa: You get overwhelmed pretty quick. Dean: What do you do on the flight? So I
So many things seem to be beyond our control in this fast-paced world. As a result, we've developed anxieties and worries that we carry every day. With their weight, we may find it more challenging to achieve even the most minor goals. So, how do you get through these thoughts and feelings? How can you reach success and improve your well-being? Carly Taylor joins us today in this episode to teach us how to deal with things outside of our control. Through her discussion, you'll hopefully learn about how to recognise and optimise your thoughts and emotions for your greater good. Carly also shares about helpful tools she's discovered and practised, including Morita therapy and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). If you want to deal with the daily pressures of your life healthily, you'll learn helpful things from this episode. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how to manage your thoughts and feelings to live a fuller life. Gain some insights on how to recognise and manage seemingly uncontrollable situations. Discover what ‘being present' means to you. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. More Pushing the Limits Episodes: 183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Elena Seranova 189: Increasing Your Longevity with Elena Seranova Connect with Carly: Instagram | Carly Taylor Coaching Visit the Mind, Body, Brain and start optimising your psychological capital for productivity, resilience, and peak performance with the 8-week programme. Episode Highlights [04:32] Carly's Background Carly is a mindset coach who follows multiple Japanese ideologies. There are three Japanese ideologies she knows about: Morita, Kaizen, and Naikan. However, she only mainly practices the Psychology of Action of Morita Therapy. She also includes Stoicism and commitment therapy. Kaizen therapy is making changes incrementally yet continuously. It involves encouraging yourself to become better. On the other hand, Naikan therapy exercises the art of self-reflection. Both can improve your well-being. She had backgrounds in music and advertising. These supplied her with the skills to help other people. Her husband learned about a 10-day course. The next thing she knew, she was on the way to Vermont to attend it. [10:27] The Reason for Automatic and Anxiety-Inducing Thoughts Assess which things in your life are within your control. You cannot control automatic thoughts and emotions. They pop out when you encounter a situation. However, you can manage them and improve your well-being. You have to monitor and observe your thoughts. Assess whether or not they are helpful. Some negative automatic thoughts used to be beneficial for survival during ancient times, but not anymore. The amygdala is responsible for these emergency responses and automatic thoughts. The amygdala can also help when you need to make now-or-never decisions. To balance it out, the prefrontal cortex lets you analyse whether these automatic thoughts are logically sound. [18:50] How to Approach Things Out of Your Control Most people worry about what other people think about them. Back then, we had to empathise with other people's needs to thrive within a tribe or community. Nowadays, we have too many connections through social media. We get pressured because of the appearances our friends and acquaintances share online. Assess whether your thoughts and feelings are helpful. Redirect your energy and be productive to improve your well-being. Make room for your thoughts and feelings. Tools like breathing and exercise can help you improve your well-being. Listen to the episode to learn more helpful tools. [21:09] The Use of Comforts and Discomforts of Life Morita therapy uses two opposing thoughts: the desire to live fully and the desire to be secure and comfortable. Even successful events give you a level of discomfort and anxiety. We seek comfort all the time. Sometimes we may not even want to go through the emotional, physical, and financial challenges. But you can take the discomfort with you. You can coexist with it while still achieving great things. [24:39] Teaching Yourself to Improve Your Well-Being Suppressing your fears or intense emotions will get you stuck. Practice getting uncomfortable or harvesting discomfort. Start with minor and straightforward tasks so you can have more control. Do it incrementally so you can train yourself to become more resilient. Do this to improve your well-being. You'll learn how to improve your well-being in more complicated situations. Daily rituals are essential. It can be as simple as having a cold shower, much like Carly does. [28:02] Know Your Limits Pushing the limits can be a great thing. However, psychology and biology set a limit. You have to work within this limit. You may get burnout instead of crossing this line. You can't always go through hard times. It defeats the purpose of life, which needs to be a dynamic journey. You can still prevent adverse outcomes from happening by staying healthy. You can improve your well-being. [31:13] Reflection Exercises A simple yet powerful question is, ‘What would you do differently?' Spending more time with the family is usually the top 1 thing people want to do. Think about the regrets you may have when you are on your deathbed and act on them. Aligning with your most significant priorities will let you live a fuller life. Take every opportunity to be with someone before it's too late. [34:54] Helpful Routines Carly follows a waking-up-early challenge. She tries to avoid phones and computers and instead enjoys silence in her mornings. Carly also journals about minor things. She remembers the little things she appreciated from yesterday. You should be able to pay to enjoy good things more to improve your well-being, or at least in the same way as you linger on with painful thoughts. The simple silence helps. It can help instead redirect your attention from stressful thoughts and improve your well-being. You can calm down and find what you're in control of instead of what you can't. Then, you can achieve calmness and peace of mind. [44:33] Being Present Makes All the Difference A study found how people were happier when they were living in the moment. A wandering mind achieves the opposite of this. It matters to focus your full attention on what you are doing. Finish your inherent task at first, even if they're boring. Sometimes your brain will tell you you're not fit for the task at hand. But know that these thoughts are often your excuses preventing you from improving your well-being. Prioritise the most urgent and important tasks first before moving to the following systems and processes. Don't feel guilty about giving time to the people who matter in your lifetime. They are also important. [52:35] Final Thoughts Having a purpose-driven life instead of an emotionally-driven life can improve your well-being. Your purpose can be minor things in the moment, like cleaning the kitchen or learning new technology. [54:02] Carly and Paul's 8-Week Program Carly and Paul do weekly sessions every Tuesday and reflect on the significant aspects of their lives. They use an app where you can check on your daily rituals. 7 Powerful Quotes from the Episode 'I use the modalities of Japanese psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and I also throw in a bit of Stoicism as well. Because all three of those modalities are just so intertwined. And it's just what I find incredible is what's relevant today is what was relevant back 2000 years ago.' ‘I then looked at life coaching, and it kind of didn't really resonate with me, then by the time I kind of was, you know, trying to figure out what direction I was going to go that my background is completely different.' 'I mean, we're all individuals. And we're productive, you know, from when we are born right up to our experiences, right up until this present moment.' 'But what makes us unique is that we're able to observe our thoughts. And if we can create that space between us and our thoughts, we can look at that thought more in an analytical way rather than in an emotional way.' 'So that's sort of the acceptance part of what's in our control, what's not in our control, and the big one is those thoughts and emotions.' 'Well, I mean, what other people think is a huge one for the majority of my clients, it is the number one fear if you want to call it or or anxiety or worry is what others think of them.' 'But it's that sort of everyday anxiety that we feel. And it's this, sort of focus on the discomfort and wanting to get rid of it. And when that's intense, this is not easy.' About Carly Carly Taylor is a certified nutritionist, health trainer and personal coach. She is also a qualified Japanese Psychology therapist who applies Morita therapy and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). She shares her tools and learnings through her Mindset Coaching. As a guarantee to her clients, Carly also uses the tools she teaches in her coaching sessions. Through her coaching, she helps people change their mindset and break barriers that used to hold them back. As a result, her clients develop skills and achieve success despite their situations. With her passionate approach towards research, she continues to learn about new practices and tools to navigate life. Along with her husband, Paul, Carly also helps groups of people achieve peak performance through the Mind, Body, Brain Performance Institute. If you want to learn more about Carly and her coaching approach, you can visit her website or Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn new tools to improve their well-being. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host, Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back, everybody to Pushing the Limits. And this week, I have the lovely Carly Taylor to guest. Carly is the wife of Paul Taylor, who was also recently on this program, and who I absolutely loved. The amazing woman who is with Paul is Carly Taylor. Now Carly is an ACT therapist and a Morita psychology therapist. So what the heck is that all about, you might be thinking. Well, she's somebody that helps you if you have problems with anxiety, with depression, with overthinking, all of those things that many of us really deal with. So today's episode is all around giving you the tools to help with all those from the point of view of ACT therapy or Acceptance Commitment Therapy, as well as the Japanese psychology, Morita therapy. Now, Carly is also a qualified nutritionist, a certified personal trainer, and a certified health coach. She brings over 10 years' experience in the area of behavior change. So I'm really hopeful that you're going to enjoy this episode with Carly. She's a very lovely lady, and she has a lot to give you. So enjoy that. Before we head over to the show, make sure that you check out our epigenetics program. This is our flagship program that we use as a framework for all people that we're doing health coaching with, the people that we're doing running coaching with. And it's really helping you optimise your genes. So learning about what your genes are all about, who you are specifically, unique you, and then optimising you. So in all areas, we're looking at mood and behavior, we're looking at your dominant hormones. We look at the career path that may be right for you, we look at the way your brain thinks, at what time of the day you should be doing different activities. We're also, of course, looking at exercise and nutrition specific to your gene. So if you want to find out more about that program, head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the ‘Work With Us' button, and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program. Come and find out all about it, or drop me a line at support@lisatamati.com, and we'd love to help you with it. We do run webinars so we can send you some information on it. It takes a little bit to get your head around, but I tell you this is the future of personalised health. No longer is it a one size fits all approach. This is all specific to you. It's very scientific and very evidenced-based. So I hope you'll come and join us on that program. We've taken literally now hundreds and hundreds of people through this program, and it gives us fantastic results. We also have a course, our online run training system that's personalised, customised to your specific goals at runninghotcoaching.com. Find out all about the package and what's involved there. This is not, by no means, just for elite athletes. I don't want people to think that it's just for ultra-marathon runners or just for people that are doing crazy adventures. This is for you. If you're just getting off the couch, if you're doing your first K. It's also for you if you are doing your hundredth marathon, ultra-marathon or marathon. So find out all about that at runninghotcoaching.com. Right now, over to the show with the lovely Carly Taylor. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Pushing the Limits. It's fantastic to have you back with me again. Today, I have the lovely Carly Taylor with me. Welcome to the show, Carly, it's fantastic to have you. Carly Taylor: Oh, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Lisa: Super excited. Carly is the famous wife of Paul Taylor, who I've had recently on my podcast too, and who I really connected with. I think he's an absolute legend, your husband. What he's doing is absolutely—I think he's probably as crazy as me, if not worse. Carly: And he's passionate, I think. Lisa: And is passionate, and silly, and crazy. So I thought, ‘Who is this amazing woman that is with Paul Taylor? Because she'd have to be probably something special.' I started researching into what you do. And I thought, ‘Oh, I have to have you on the show as well.' So welcome, Carly. It's really exciting to have you. Today, we're going to talk about Morita therapy, and ACT therapy. I'll let you explain what all that is and give us a bit of your background. But can you just tell us who you are, where you're from, and all that sort of jazz? Carly: I do one-on-one coaching. I'm a mindset coach, but with a bit of a twist because I use the modalities of Japanese psychology, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and I also throw in a bit of Stoicism as well. Because all three of those modalities are just so intertwined. It's just—what I find incredible is what's relevant today is what was relevant back 2,000 years ago, and also in the Eastern, in the Japanese psychology as well. So with Morita—so the Japanese psychology there were three components to it. So it's Morita therapy, which is also known as the Psychology of Action. Which is kind of unusual because you kind of think of Eastern philosophy and what you think of meditation and contemplation and all that sort of stuff. But Morita therapy is very much about purpose and action. Then there's Naikan, which is the self-reflection exercise that you can do, and then Kaizen as well, which is that sort of incremental things that you can do to improve over time. But my main focus is Morita therapy. Lisa: So, how did you get into this? What was your background before you got into? How did you get into mindset coaching? What's your personal story? Carly: It's really evolved. I've always been someone who likes helping people. Over the years, I was kind of the go-to whenever friends had problems, and I looked at— Lisa: The shoulder to cry on. Carly: Yeah, exactly. I was always the shoulder. But, I started off looking into life coaching. I did when we're in Scotland, I did voluntary work with ChildLine Scotland. That was such a brilliant organisation, and they have really good training. So I kind of started my training with that, and counseling over the phone with young people. I really got a lot out of it. I then looked at life coaching and it kind of didn't really resonate with me. Then by the time I was trying to figure out what direction I was going to go - my background is completely different; my background is music and advertising - so I kind of did it and adapted then and tried to sort of play to my strengths, I guess. Had kids, and so, my focus was on the kids. Paul was building his business and doing a lot of traveling, doing a lot of extra educational stuff, just continually learning. And I was doing that, sort of in the background as well, but not with the intensity that he was doing because I was with the kids. And then he was listening to the Art of Manliness podcast. Greg Krech, who is a Morita therapy expert, was on and talking about the Psychology of Action. Paul was just like ‘Oh, my God, this guy is amazing and so aligned with the stuff that we're doing,' and looked into it a bit further. We worked out that he did this certification course over in the States. And Paul just said to me, ‘Right, it's your turn.' It's like, ‘This is all you. If you don't do it, I'll do it, then it's your turn.' So I was way out of my comfort zone. First time I left the kids, and that traveled over to Vermont, in the States. Did a 10-day residential component of the certification, and then came back, and then studied for a year and a half. That's how I got into it. It really, that 10 days at the ToDo Institute really completely changed my life. It was the first thing. Jumping to one of the components of Morita therapy is around attention and where your attention is. One of the first things Greg said in the course was, ‘Your life is not based on your life. Your life is based on what you pay attention to'. And I was just like, ‘Well, that's an—,' and it kind of just took it from there. And then when I got back, I started just slowly getting clients with the Japanese psychology, and then I discovered ACT, which is Acceptance Commitment Therapy, which was started by Steven Hayes in the 1980s. It is more of a modern approach, but same principles. It's Japanese psychology. So I combined both of them, and I just loved them, and I use the tools myself every day. Lisa: And you've turned it into the Carly therapy. Carly: Yes, Carly therapy. Lisa: Yeah. Because you do—you take, I do this too. Like bits of this, and a bit of that, and a bit of like your own recipe or what resonates with you. What you find is working and so— Carly: Yeah, and what I actually love about it is it's not just about, it was started by Shoma Morita who was the Japanese psychiatrist in 1920. He started it for patients with anxiety, a form of neurosis. It started as an in-patient program. He had quite a strict protocol that they went through. But what I love is that you can apply these principles into just your daily life. So it's not just about emotional well-being. it's about living fully every day using these principles. Lisa: So let's dive into it a little bit then. If someone comes to you with anxiety, depression, something like that, where would you start with them? So like we can—what I want to get to is how do we pull out some of the tools and some of the learnings that some people can take some value away from this conversation today? So where would you start? What's this type of thing that you're looking at? What sort of tools and processes do you go through? Carly: One of the first exercises that I will do with them is to look at their life and identify what's in their control, and not what is not within their control. It's a really interesting exercise, because it gets the thinking process going. Because that list of what's not in your control becomes very, very long. And the things that are within your control is actually quite short. So you look at the things that aren't in your control, the obvious ones, like the weather, COVID, a lot of political decisions, that sort of stuff. But you drill it down, and you can't control what other people think. You can't control what other people think of you. You can certainly influence it, but you can't control it - what they do, what they say, how they behave. And you cannot control what you think, or the thoughts that come into your head. Lisa: The automatic sort of thoughts that jump out of your head. Carly: Yeah, the automatic thoughts and the automatic emotion that comes up. Of course, once those thoughts pop up, you can reframe and do all that sort of stuff, or positive affirmations, all that, all those sorts of things. But as soon as that thought pops up into your head, that's beyond your control. We have between 70 and 80 thousand thoughts per day. Lisa: Yeah apparently. This is crazy! We're just thought machines! We are just churning these things out all the time. Dr. Daniel Amen, who I follow, he talks about ANTs, automatic negative thoughts. And where do you think there's this, you're saying that we're not in control of those, they're just coming through. Are they coming through from our programming or, subconsciously, or what? Carly: Yeah, I mean, we're all individuals. And we're productive from when we are born right up to our experiences, right up until this present moment. But it's also good to have an understanding of how the mind works because those automatic negative thoughts, if we didn't, as humans, have a negative bias, we wouldn't see the human race today. So, back in caveman days, you probably heard this before, it's like, we had to have anxiety. We had to have that negative skew because otherwise we were going to get eaten by a saber toothed tiger. But in our modern world, it's those negative thoughts. It's like, ‘What's our boss thinking of us? So why do we get that many likes on our Instagram posts?' It's not helpful. A lot of the stuff right now that's causing those negative thoughts. It's not helpful for us to live fully. So in Morita therapy, the first step is the acceptance. First of all, it's awareness of thoughts. And that's where it's good to use that metacognition of observing your thoughts and something. So I love that I'm constantly observing my thoughts and I'm like, ‘Oh, there it is again'. Lisa: Because I first heard that from Craig Harper, our mutual friend at the You Project. I've been using that a heck of a lot since I heard that. When you step outside your house, when you watch yourself, as if you were above, as if I was above looking down my spirit self or whatever you want to call it. Looking at my brain. Just tuning out this shit, basically. Bringing forth this. And then looking at it and go, ‘Hang on. Is it good? Is it serving me right now?' Carly: Exactly. And that's the question to ask. It's like, if you can create space, because then Craig would have talked about the different cells and we are not our thoughts, and we're not our anxiety. So there's a part of us, as humans, animals can't do this, but what makes us unique is that we're able to observe our thoughts. And if we can create that space between us and our thoughts, we can look at that thought more in an analytical way, rather than in an emotional way. It's not about whether that thought is right or wrong. It's whether it's helpful. Lisa: Yeah. And something right now. Carly: Yeah, exactly. That's sort of the acceptance part of what's in our control, what's not in our control. The big one is those thoughts and emotions. And then have been aware of creating that space and observing them, that's kind of the first step. Any act, we call that diffusion or unhooking. When we get hooked by our thoughts, it's almost like they're pushing us around, and then they start dictating what we do without necessarily taking us towards the person that we really want to be. So if we can observe them and unhook from them, then that gives us that space to choose our behavior, and choose it aligned with our values or our purpose and takes us towards the person that we want to be. Lisa: That's brilliant. So it's really getting the executive functioning part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex talking to our amygdala more or being more connected to them. This frontal area of the brain that only humans have really developed, and in some primates have to a certain degree. But because a lot of us go around being hijacked by our amygdala, all the time. So that's the reptilian part of the brain that's sort of a more primitive part of the brain, that is responding very, very quickly, quicker than the prefrontal cortex, to dangers in your environment, or negative things happening in the environment. Was it here as a survival mechanism? Talking about this the other day, and I said, how fast my amygdala switches on when something in my environment happens? Say, someone cuts me off in traffic. Those automatic thoughts that come out from the amygdala before I switched my logical adult brain on, ‘I'm going to punch that dude in the face'. Carly: Thank goodness, your prefrontal cortex switches in then and says, ‘Don't do that!' Lisa: But when I was younger, I was less able to do that. And I was very fiery, very angry. Now as I've gotten older and understand that sort of process, I can go, ‘Okay, come on, take a couple of deep exhales here, and we're going to calm ourselves down and get a grip of it'. But it's also a very protective thing. Sometimes I catch a glass that's falling off the table before I've even registered it with my prefrontal cortex. And that's also your reaction speed. Your amygdala is working at, I don't know what it is, thousands of a second faster than this. And so you're catching things. It can be a very positive thing, but it can also be - our jails and our justice system are full of people whose amygdala is more dominant and more able to control. And so they've done things in the spur of the moment without getting political on it, but it is something that we need to practice and work on. And it's something that you as a parent would know that the younger the child is, the less control that they have up there. So they just do whatever their emotional brain tells them to do - scream, yell, kick, whatever. As we get older, we learn to handle a bit more. But there's still this disconnect going on. Carly: Yeah, our brains aren't fully developed until the age of 25. But, you look at that, and there's decisions being made by young people that are going to affect them for the rest of their life, and that their brains aren't fully developed to be able to make those long-term decisions. So, it's really interesting. Lisa: So that's the awareness and stepping out and unhooking as you said, or diffusion, and looking at yourself. So that's the first thing that you can do. And looking at what is in your control and what is not in your control. So how do you approach the stuff that's not in your control, that makes you fearful, for example? Carly: What other people think is a huge one. To the majority of my clients, it is the number one fear, if you want to call it anxiety or worry. It is what others think of them. Even that is a very normal thing. So the next step is about acceptance. It's not acceptance in a passive way, but it's an acceptance of what is a natural part of the human experience. Wiring what people think is actually quite normal because back when we were in a tribal setting, we had to care what others thought. We had to know that we were adding value to the tribe, and the survival of the tribe. Otherwise, we'd get kicked out. So it's just that now, there's too many people. We have so many connections. Not only our physical connection with people, but also through social media. So it's almost like this connection overdrive that we have, and this worry about what others think, this worry about the posts that young people post on social media, their appearance, and all that sort of stuff. So I guess I approach that, first of all, with my clients that this is just a natural part of being human. That looking at that thought of if they're worried about what somebody is thinking of them. Looking at that is not right or wrong. But is it helpful? If it's not helpful, then do that by observing self. Defuse or unhook from it. Create that space, and then redirect attention into what needs to be done in that moment. Acceptance isn't about that passive, “I've got to put up with it.” It's not about tolerating anything, but it's about making room for it, and making room for those thoughts and those emotions that come up. And using tools like the breath and exercise that manage it. But I think the main thing is about discomfort tolerance levels, because we don't, and I know you would talk about comfort zones a lot. So Morita, he believed that in radiotherapy there were two sets of opposing forces. One was a desire to live fully, and the other one was this desire to be secure and comfortable. So they're opposing each other. But as you would know, any success, like all my achievements in my life has involved some level of discomfort. And sometimes we're willing to feel that discomfort. Even on your wedding day, you feel nervous and everything, but you still get married. But it's that everyday anxiety that we feel. It's this focus on the discomfort and wanting to get rid of it. And when that's intense, this is not easy. I don't want to lighten this because I know that these intense feelings can be quite debilitating to people. But using these tools, you make room for it, make space around it, and be able to do what's important to you, coexisting, bringing that discomfort with you, in the hope that it's going to turn down like the intensity. It's a bit like a radio playing in the background. If the radio is really loud, it's taking your attention, it's hard to focus. But using these tools of diffusing or unhooking, it's, slowly the radio just starts to turn down. And it might just be a little murmur in the background. Lisa: And hanging with that tension long enough, so stepping, being brave enough to take something on. Say a challenge - you're going to America to learn this thing a bit. You're leaving your kids behind, and your husband behind, you're off to this new place. And you're like, ‘What the hell am I doing?' All that sort of stuff. Me and my life going off to run like in the Himalayas, or the Sahara, and absolutely shitting myself. And it sounded good while he was signing up, and you'd had a glass of wine. And now, you're like, ‘What am I doing? I'm in this so deep, there's no way out now, so I have to go through'. So I know that tension very, very well. And I know that those are the times when the growth happens, isn't it? When you're pushing, but you are also risking failure, you are risking being, and this is the sort of dichotomy, or how it's contradictory. We, as human beings, seek comfort. We seek safe because that is our DNA programming. But because we live in such comfortable societies with comfortable couches and comfortable Netflix's to watch in houses that we live in and cars that we drive, we don't ever get out of that comfort zone if we don't want to. We can have our food delivered to our door and order our clothes online. And we can be very, very insular if that's the way that we decide to live, but we are never going to grow in that state. We are never going to challenge, we're never going to fulfill our potential. And so when you talk to people, they all want to change. They all want to be epic. They all want to do like, ‘I wish I could be like you and run ultra-marathons, or run a business, or whatever the case may be.' But nobody's wrong. But a lot of people just are not willing to put up with the pain, the discomfort, the fear, the financial investment, the time investment, the hard yards, in order to reap those rewards. So how do you teach yourself to be a little bit tougher? A little bit of, ‘I'm going to do this. I'm scared anyway. But I'm doing it.' How do you teach yourself that sort of toughness or resilience? Carly: Because if you try and avoid or suppress those strong, intense emotions, it's going to affect your life. You're not going to be able to live fully by staying in that comfort zone. And I love what I want to do. It just reminded me of the cold shower thing, I have my current shower this morning. So we're running this eight-week course with Jonah. We might talk about it later. But part of that is this ritual of the cold shower. Now I don't particularly like the cold. And I like being comfortable as well. It's like being anxious or nervous, it's not a nice feeling to have. But what you can do is practice getting uncomfortable. So deliberate practice. And I think Paul called it discomfort harvesting or harvesting discomfort. Lisa: That's what I should do, a PhD in the weekend. Carly: There you go, we've got your PhD. Cold shower is such a good tool to get out of your comfort zone. Because you have total control at the end of your nice warm shower, which is nice and comfortable. You have control whether you turn that to cold and spend a minimum of 30 seconds under that cold water, being uncomfortable. And if you can't do that, then the likelihood of when something goes wrong, and these intense emotions come up, then the likelihood of you being able to handle that could be low if you can't even handle having a cold shower. Cold showers, as you know, they have huge benefits on the immune system, and even emotional well-being. Everything that comes from me and my experience of them. It is about getting out of my comfort zone. Because I need to practice that as well. Lisa: We all do, all the time. This is the misconception, too, that you've done it. In my case, I had done one ultramarathon, therefore you're tough for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. This is something you need to use it or lose it. So that's why that daily ritual stuff is very important. Carly: Absolutely. And you were never exonerated, we'll count until the day we die, we'll keep doing this stuff. Because we're human. And that's the acceptance part of it, it's that life is hard. I loved Matthew McConaughey. That speech that he did for the students who are graduating. But one of the things he just said, ‘Life is hard'. There's nothing original in that, but it's just the way he said it. It's like you need to get used to it, you need to prepare for it. Because life as humans, we will not stay in this comfortable environment, something will happen, somebody will get sick, jobs will be lost. Just like COVID happened and businesses, it's like stuff happens to us. So what we can do, while things are going well, is put ourselves out of our comfort zone on just small things on a daily basis. And then when the shit hits the fan, we can really cope with it. Lisa Tamati: And this just summed up my entire books, really, in a mouthful, because it is about scaring the crap out of yourself, pushing the limits, and finding what you can do. Not all the time. We've spoken about this before about rest and recovery times and coming back so that you can recover from that big thing you just took on. You can't just go back to back to back, scary big, awesome, huge things all the time, because that leads to burnout and PTSD and goodness knows what else. So it is about everything that I study in biology and psychology and all the areas that I study, it seems to be this flow, life loves this even flow, right from our nutrition. So eating the same thing all the time, always being on keto is not good. It's about this up and down. With biology, you want to have a little bit of this, and then you want to pull back, you want a little bit of cold. And when it comes to hermetic stressors, doing things like saunas, like cold showers, like training and exercise. If you do too much, you're going to—if you look at those four phases of stress, where you've got the alert phase, and then the resistance phase, and then the recovery or exhaustion phase. If you're going overtraining, you're not going to get there. You're not going to get that response, that compensation. It's the same thing here. You want to be going flowing in and out of tough times, come back, recover, see how that went, then have another crack at something else in a different area of your life perhaps. And that this even flow of life is, if we just stay in the static, then we're actually going backwards. What really matters for me and the stuff that I do is when it comes to health. Because if you're not in this willingness to put up with things like cold showers and going training when you don't feel like it, and eating good food and trying to have these stable fundamental health habits and working on them, I'm not perfect and no one's perfect, but working on these things, you are going to pay the price with your life, your health. Yes, we're all going to die one day, but I hope that I will live a healthy long lifespan, a very long one. I want to have health for as long as I possibly can. And so by studying all this, by learning all this, you can actually, hopefully hinder the worst things happening. I mean, a lot of things, you can't prevent everything because like I said, some things are outside of our control. And we have to acknowledge that. But what can I do to up the odds, then I'm going to live long. Up the odds that I'm going to be healthy until the end. All of those types of things because the price, and I've seen this in my own life and in my own family, unfortunately, when they didn't acknowledge all those things along the way and then the big freight train came in, and then you're pushing the proverbial uphill. Carly: There's a reflection exercise that I do with my clients. And it's, imagine that you're 80, and you're reflecting back on your life, but it but it's your life today. So you don't go back in the past. It's like you're reflecting back on your life today. And one of the questions is, what would you do differently? And it's a really powerful question, because it gets you to look at your life in a more analytical way and go, ‘Well, actually things like I'd exercise more, or I'd drink less'. Spending more time with your family is a huge one, that's usually the number one thing I would spend more time with my kids or it's more time with my family. And once you've got that list, you can look at that, and then you have the power today to choose those things moving forward. So if you project yourself into the future, reflect back, you then are able to almost design your life how you want to live from this point onwards. Lisa: I've heard what people that are on their deathbed are thinking, what are the greatest regrets that they wish they had done. And it is things like that, it's not, I wish I'd worked more. I wish I'd earned more money. We need a certain amount of work. And we need a certain amount of money, all of these sorts of things. But what are your highest priorities, and then aligning your values and what you're doing to those priorities. And there really isn't a dynamic thing, it changes a little bit and your values and all the things change over time. But being in alignment with your greatest priorities now is something that we need to keep reevaluating, and are we on track for that? I'm talking to myself here, because I'm definitely a workaholic. And I want to, ‘Oh, that sounds like a great idea'. Write another book, do a PhD and whatever dreams and things that you've got. And then you're like, ‘Hmm, that's going to take me away from my family'. Early in my life, I wouldn't even have thought that I would have just been so excited about the thing. And now I've got to stop and think about those things. Because you realise now, I'm 52 and I'm running out of time to do the things that I want. And when you lose a loved one, like I recently lost my dad, that's a real rough. Because otherwise, when there's no major thing like that has happened to you yet, you're just bumbling along and everything's okay. When I talk to my family members and stuff about my father, it's like, ‘I wish I'd taken him fishing more. I wish he had more time. I wish I'd learned from him'. And we're all wishing we had done this together. So it is that wake-up call that is like, how do you want to be thinking in the next 20 years then? Carly: And that's kind of a silver lining thing as well, isn't it? Even though something as sad, and the loss of a loved one, that silver lining is that you can learn from that and go, ‘Well, I wish I'd done that.' And then is there an opportunity now to do that with somebody who's here and with you? Do you know, I was thinking, one of the things that I've started doing consistently now— with life, the modern world, the way it is, and its rush, rush, rush, rush. And we're getting out there almost, a lot of us are on autopilot. And I know I was. Even with it's like, ‘Right, I'll do my exercise. I'll go to my CrossFit class or my exercise class, and then I'm going to work. And I'm doing this'. It's like, go, go, go, go, go. For me inputs, like emails and text messages and social media, everything's kind of input. It's overwhelming. So what I started doing, and it's actually Craig Harper was on his podcast last year, and right at the end of it was before Christmas, I totally walked into this. He was like, ‘So what's something that you want to achieve in 2021?' And I said, ‘I want to get up earlier', because I thought I was funny, even though I was still getting up at 6:30. But I was just fine. I was just going straight into it. And so he sent me his 100-day challenge to get up at 5:30 each day. And what I did was I started this pre-input routine, I don't know, do you do this. So I get up, and there's no phone. Do not touch my phone. I don't have my phone in my room. It's uncharged in the kitchen. So don't go near it. Don't go near a computer. What I started doing is the first thing I do is, I journal. It's not a journal where I'm writing paragraphs of stuff. It's all dot points. But the first thing I do a metric. So I just say, the alarm went off at 5:30, got up at 5:45. Or maybe I did get up at 5:30. Or maybe I got up at 6:00, but I measure it. Over time, I've kind of been able to say: well, what influenced me whether I didn't get up or whether I did get up. Most of it is what I did the night before. The morning starts the night before. So you can see patterns there. But the big thing that I found is that it gives me silence. And I think silence is something that we're missing in today's world, because of all these inputs. If you can sit with silence, that's when you can really think about things, you can observe your thoughts. You can start being creative when ideas come up. So before any inputs or journal, I look at what my wins were yesterday, and really celebrate those. Have you heard BJ Fogg? Lisa: Yeah, Tiny Habits. Carly: Tiny Habits. So, he says to celebrate the small things, and you get that little dopamine hit. And dopamine is also the neurotransmitter of motivation. I will journal even micro moments that I've had with people outside in the community that I thought that was really, just like my barista. She makes me a great coffee, and she has a chat and tells me my hair looks nice. It's those sort of little things that I think we need to have more focus on, and to celebrate those sort of moments in our life, because otherwise, they just pass up. They're just fleeting, and we're onto the next thing. Lisa: And when we tend to just be looking at the big picture all the time, like the big goals - the program we are writing, or the book we're doing or the project at work, or whatever the case is. We don't celebrate those. I've started to, because I'm running three companies, I've got a disabled mom that I still look after 24/7, 7 days a week. It's full on. And a lot of the time, some days, I'm just like, ‘How the hell does any human brain do this?' I'm just like, ‘I've got a pretty good brain, but I am not keeping up.' When you drop the ball and you're like, ‘Oh.' Like I said to my husband, ‘I dropped the ball on this appointment the other day and I'm such an idiot,' and he said, ‘Stop, stop. You're not an idiot. You're telling yourself that.' And of course I am. Thanks for pointing that out to me. And yet you're doing the best you bloody will can and in this very difficult situation. Give yourself a break. And we're all doing that, we are all trying to keep up because things seem to get faster and more. And so taking moments out, like an appointment fell through this morning, ‘Oh, an opportunity.' Now I can either get into some work, which has plenty to do. Or my husband comes out and he looks at he's looking all down on the dumps and exhausted, and I'm like, ‘Let's go for a walk, darling. It's a beautiful day. Let's go and just walk for 20 minutes. Get some sunshine on our eyes, wake ourselves up, have a talk about the day before,' then come back and then ‘Wow, it's a different start to the day'. Because usually it's just back, back, back. And then you find yourself at 10 o'clock at night when you finally sit down for the first time. Turn the telly on or something to just zone out, to compensate for this whirlwind. Building into your day, those little micro times we say, ‘Oh it's a beautiful flower'. Being in the, ‘Oh, what beautiful sunshine,' and all this, ‘Someone's smiling at me.' ‘Hi, how you doing?' Just those little wee things that can help you get enough energy to get through to the next— Carly: And that's where attention comes in too, which is part of Morita therapy, is that we can pay attention internally to our problems and our thoughts or feelings or our pain. Or even with all that going on, we can still pay attention to a beautiful flower. It's about one of the most simple, and it sounds crazy, but using your senses can get you out of your head and into the present moment. And we were talking about, I think Paul may have mentioned this, I don't know. One of the exercises is looking for the color blue. So if you find you're ruminating in thoughts, or if you're driving in the car, I find that that's when I started, all the thoughts come up when I'm driving, because it's such an automatic thing that you do. So I really try and redirect my attention. There's a metaphor of a torch. So the beam of light is your attention. And you have control over where you shine that. It's so effective. So am I shining that torch in my internal world? Or can I redirect it with all this going on, redirect it to the outside world? And I'll just look for things for color blue. Look for tiny things for color blue look for, obviously, the sky hopefully will be blue. Look, they're different shades of blue. And what that does, it doesn't get rid of what's going on internally, but it just redirects your attention. Lisa: Distracts you from the internal looping that goes on in your brain, when you start to just, those thoughts just keep going around in circles. And there's actually no solution coming out of it. And this is the sort of thinking that goes on at two o'clock in the morning when you wake up. Cortisol has gone up and you've got some project that you're struggling with or something and it's just a loop, loop, loop, loop. And you've got to break that loop. Carly: That's the hardest time, because at two o'clock in the morning, you can't really look for the color blue. You can ask yourself a question, ‘Is this happening now? Oh, no, this is not it's a statement. This isn't happening now'. Because you're thinking about the future or you're thinking about the past. But it's not happening now. And what's happening now is that you need to sleep. Lisa: I focus on my breath doing breath work. And apart from that, it doesn't happen so much to me. Now that does on occasion. But do some breath work where you're concentrating on the exhale. And there's lots of different breaths - box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing. I like to do what you're doing this massively long exhale. And that really slows down the parasympathetic nervous system, and can actually help you fall back to sleep. And I find that very, very powerful. But it's just breaking that cycling in your head, when you find yourself with a specific problem, that you're just not getting the answers to, going round and round, that's when you need to go either meditate, breathe, go for a walk, go for a run, do something that actually changes your mood. You're allowing space, because a lot of the time people think, ‘I have to stay here and not solve this problem right now. Otherwise, it's going to get worse'. Actually, when you let go, and you let it have time and space, that's when the answers come to you. Carly: Yeah, that's right. And looking at what's within your control at that moment. It's not within your control that those ruminating thoughts keep coming up. But what is within your control is how you respond to them. So what you do in that moment, and a really good question to ask is, what needs to be done now? We're only at a series of moments. It's that we only have the present moment. And most of the time, the anxiety or the ruminating thoughts are not related to the present moment. They're about the future or the past. So getting back. Actually, that reminds me, there was a study done. I don't know if you've heard of it by Matt Killingsworth. He's done this study on the wandering mind, and how it relates to happiness. He created this app, and there were 35,000 people involved in this study. And what he did is throughout the day, people just getting on with their day and throughout the day, these questions that pop up like ‘What are you doing now?' I had that list of 50 things I might be doing. Like, I'm on the train, or I'm at work or whatever. And then it was, ‘What are you—are you thinking about what you're doing? Or are you thinking about something else?' So it was measuring their wandering mind, and then measuring their happiness levels. And it showed that even if you are stuck in traffic, which is a very frustrating thing, especially if you're running late, if your mind was wandering, you were less happy than if you were in the present moment, just observing your surroundings. You are even happier being in the present moment stuck in traffic than if you were in a pleasant moment but having a wandering mind, if that makes sense. So being in the present moment, and I think we need to practice it. It is a skill. Attention is a skill. And being aware that our attention is constantly being robbed, just like advertising, and social media. It's just constant attention. So if we can take control of our attention and get into the present moment, then that can have such a huge impact on our well-being. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. And this is one of the things that I love about a podcast like this. I am fully focused on you in this conversation. Nothing is pulling at me right now. Whereas when I'm working on the computer, and there's a hundred windows open, and I'm back and like, ‘I'm just going to jump on messenger so that I can do this task, send a message to so and so'. I get on to messenger, this is an example. And then, ‘Oh, there's another message coming. Oh, who was it from? Oh, I'll answer that'. And then you're off, and you're over here, and you're over there. And that original thing that you were actually meant to be doing in that moment is gone. And this is the difficulty. Even though I know that this happens, and I'm trying to control it. Shutting those windows down is not always an option, because you have to have the windows open, otherwise, re-find the bloody websites every time. But having the control to go, ‘No, I'll work on that later'. I'm working with a guy at the moment who I'm sure I'm driving insane on systems and processes, because this is a thing that my brain does not do well. And it's driving my business partner mental, because I am constantly like chasing shiny objects, super excited about science, running here and there, learning everything, wanting to do a hundred courses, not focusing on the things that need, the systems and the processes, and they're boring. And so this poor guy is trying to help me. Shout out to Mike Drone. Get my calendar sorted, get my scheduling sorted, get my inbox under control, get these basic systems. It was an interesting, the Calendly thing, that you have to have, all professional people have. I have, ‘I can't do it, I can't work it out. All I have is a fare overseas. And I don't get it.' And then there was this resistance to it because I didn't want to waste my time learning something that I'm not interested in, or the outside take care of that. I tried to get my assistant to take care of it, and tried to get my husband to take care of it, and nobody would take care of it. They kick me back on my lap. And then Mike said, ‘You have to do it'. And so I actually spent yesterday, a good two three hours setting it up. And I was so proud of myself. Stuff I hate, but I did it. Carly: Did you do this? Did you just focus on that task that you did anything else come in? Lisa: Yeah, I had things coming in. But I keep bringing my focus back and I actually managed it for the first time in history. On a thing that I'm not interested in. Because if it's a thing that I'm interested in, if it's science, man, I know, I kind of watch or listen to stuff and learn stuff and read stuff for Africa hours every day. That's what I love. That's my happy place. But when it comes to doing the admin, the text, the accounting, the learner, and learning that software, oh God. But it's not because I thought, ‘Oh, I've always thought, are you just too dumb for that. You just don't get it. Your brain doesn't work'. That was an excuse really. Because I can, I know I have a good brain that can cope with it. It's just that I never gave it the attention because I didn't want to be there. And it is still going to be a battle. Carly: It reminds me too, that this morning, the sort of pre-input routine that a lot of people do is deep work at that time. So if there's something really important that you need to work on. Like if you're writing a book or like whatever it is that you want to spend two hours on or however many hours on without any inputs. Do that first thing in the morning. And don't have your email open or don't have those. But if you can, turn off your notifications, but have that as your deep work and get that done. And then you get on with the day with all the other stuff that you need to do. There's a lot of... Lisa: [50:42 unintelligible] Carly: Yeah, exactly. And it's that Stephen Covey thing that, the important not urgent stuff, do that first. Lisa: That's really hard to do. In prioritising those lists, and having, and this is where the systems and processes coming in, as I'm finding out now, as I'm working on this, as this is urgent and important, you have to do that right away. And if it's just urgent, but not important that can wait, I've forgotten all the whole list of things that you sort of - but doing that in an automatic fashion, so that you actually know what then. If a free space comes into your life, like a cancellation or something, “Okay, what is the thing that I can grab out of my to-do list?” That should be filling that space. And I'm still working on that one, instead of getting dragged any which way, which I still tend to do, which is easier to do. And there's a billion things when you got your own company, and you're working, there is a billion hits you have to wear every day. And that becomes just, you can work 24/7 and still be behind. Carly: Yeah, it's crazy. And that's why, what you were saying before, when you had that opportunity, when you had that space because you missed an appointment. You had that supposed to choose where you were going to go, and you chose a walk with your husband, which is just such a good recovery thing today and a time to be present, and a time to spend time with somebody that you love and grasp those opportunities. Lisa: Yeah, and not feel guilty, which is what I do. I really should have picked that other project up. I really should have given my husband the time when he needed it, or my mum, or whatever the case may be. In that moment, and take those little opportunities that come up. Carly: Yeah, so important. Lisa: Carly, this has been such an interesting conversation, I feel like we could go for another couple of hours. And maybe I'll get you back on. Because we get into the rest of the ACT therapy and the different areas. But is there anything, as we start to wrap up now, anything else that you think that we haven't covered that we should that would really help people out there listening? Carly: I think the sort of the overarching thing with this approach is having a purpose-driven life rather than an emotional-driven life. And what I mean by purpose is that it's not the sort of big goal, what's my purpose of life, but the purpose of the moment. So even with worry, or anxiety, or ruminating thoughts, just looking at what is my purpose in this moment. It could be as simple as “I need to clean up the kitchen.” Because that's having your house in order, it's something as important to me. And so it's those sort of small things that we do every day, that kind of creates purpose in our lives. I think that's an important thing to— because it's so easy to have our emotions drive us and respond depending on how we're feeling. But if we can look at the purpose of the moment, then we can make those choices that are going to help us live more fully. Lisa: And not relying on motivation all the time, but taking action and doing the things that are on your highest priority. You and Paul have an eight-week program. So you're doing an eight-week program, which is all around. Will you tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing at the moment? Carly: So we're running an eight-week program. We've got about 93 on it, which, it's our first one. So we're really, really pleased. So we do a weekly zoom session, every Tuesday night for about an hour and a half. It's basically, we go through all the different domains of our lives and the different areas - nutrition, mindset is a big one, exercise. So each week, we have sort of a different topic. And then there's an app that goes with that. So there's like a ritual board, everybody has daily rituals that they can tick off. Culture is one of them. And they get points to that. So it's a bit of healthy competition going on. There's a leaderboard on who's doing what. We've had such good response from people. It's been amazing. So yeah, we're hoping to do another one soon after this one's finished. We're halfway through now. Lisa: Brilliant, brilliant. I think this is the sort of stuff I love and I eat for breakfast. Love the stuff. I think it's so important that we're working on this sort of thing. So where can people find you and reach out to you and to Paul and what you're doing? What's your website and your social media handles and so on? Carly: Yeah, so mine is carlytaylorcoaching.com.au and Instagram is Carly Taylor Coaching. And then mindbodybrain.com.au, which you'll find more about the Better You course, which is the behaviour change course. So that's the eight-week program. Lisa: Put all those notes in the show notes. Carly: And then Instagram is Mind Body Brain, which was right. Lisa: Look, Carly, you've been fantastic today. Thank you so much for your time and your input and your passion that you bring to the stuff. Carly: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to meet you. Lisa: It's just been epic. I've really, really enjoyed a conversation and I think a lot of people will have got a lot of practical tips to take away from this conversation as well. Carly: Yeah, they'll be looking for the color blue today. Lisa: Exactly. Outro: That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends. And head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
There's a stigma associated with unresolved trauma. Many people don't talk about their traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, we're only taught short-term solutions like coping with stress and managing our emotions. With these short-term solutions, the root cause remains unresolved. The trauma is still present and can affect our everyday lives. In this episode, Dr Don Wood joins us to talk about how unresolved trauma can directly affect our health. He aims to remove the stigma around unresolved trauma, and the first step towards healing is understanding the pain we've gone through. He also talks about the power of our minds from the different stories of his past patients. Tune in to this episode if you want to learn more about how unresolved trauma can affect your health and life. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how unresolved trauma can affect your life and compromise your health. Discover Dr Don's alternative ways of how he sees addiction. Understand the power of our minds and how it can do anything to protect us from feeling pain. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for $7 and $15 NZD per month, respectively. Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. More Pushing the Limits Episodes: 183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Elena Seranova 189: Increasing Your Longevity with Elena Seranova Connect with Dr Don Wood: Facebook Inspired Performance Institute – Learn more about Dr Don's books and the courses they're offering by going to their website. The Unbeatable Mind Podcast: How to Deal with Trauma with Dr Don Wood Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness by David and Austin Perlmutter Emotional Concussions: Understanding How Our Nervous System is Affected by Events and Experiences Throughout Our Life by Dr Donald Wood Episode Highlights [05:32] What Inspired Dr Don to Start His Career Dr Don founded the Inspire Performance Institute because of his wife and daughter. Dr Don shares that he had a quiet and idyllic childhood. He didn't experience any trauma. His wife had a rough childhood which contributed largely to the unresolved trauma and fear she lives with today. His daughter also inspired his research. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 14. [11:10] Dr Don Shares About His Childhood He remembers he used to get bad stomach pains when he was young. They would go to their family doctor for a checkup. His grandfather mentioned that he has stomach pains because of the stress at home. Later on, Dr Don realised that he felt the pressure in their home. The stress from this manifested as stomach pains. [15:00] Impact of Unresolved Trauma in Later Life Dr Don believes that unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. It compromises a person's immune system and neurotransmitters. A person gets sick and starts feeling bad because of serotonin neurotransmitters. They are affected by our guts' inflammation. Unfortunately, the only things taught to us are managing and coping with the stress. We do not get to the root cause of the problem. [18:10] Dr Don's Career Before Inspired Performance Institute Dr Don has been an entrepreneur all his life. Before he founded Inspired Performance Institute, he was in financial services. He realised that committing to Inspired Performance Institute meant studying again. To add credibility to his name, he went back to school and got his Ph.D. [20:31] What Causes Addiction Dr Don doesn't believe that addiction is caused by physical dependency. It's more about how the mind connected using drugs and survival. Because people feel bad, they find a way to stop the pain and feel better temporarily. Most of them find it in using drugs. The subconscious mind tries to find a way to feel better. The conscious mind builds a habit based on it. The interaction between these two memory systems is a factor in developing addictions. [25:39] Subconscious and Conscious Mind 95% of our mind works on the subconscious survival base. The remaining 5% is concerned with logic and reason. The 5% uses reason and logic to make brilliant things in life. However, when survival needs arise, the part dedicated to survival overrides the other. To learn more about Dr Don's analysis of the Time Slice Theory and how it's connected to how we respond to our day-to-day lives, listen to the full episode. [35:08] Effects of Brain Injuries on Brain Response People with repeated brain injuries might have problems with logical and survival thinking responses. Brain injury patients have lower blood flow in the frontal part when faced with survival situations based on brain scans. [36:03] Available Help for People Who Have Brain Injuries Dr Don's son had three head injuries since he was young. The third one affected his communication skills and emotions. He believes that his son has functional damage to his brain. Once they discovered that, they got him into hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He started getting his blood flow into the areas of his brain that process his experiences. [40:18] Probable Use of fMRI Dr Don shares that fMRI can be another procedure that can help people with brain injuries. fMRI can detect abnormalities in your brain that other methods may not pick up. [42:26] The Story of Dr Don's Daughter His daughter was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. It affected her career as an actress. His daughter's condition made him realise: inflammation responds to unresolved trauma. They managed to resolve her unresolved trauma that happened when she was six years old. Her mind understood that, and her negative response stopped. [46:01] Talking About Depression In cases of depression, the person's mind puts pressure on them to do something in the past. Depression then becomes the absence of emotion. It tries to numb you from the stress in your mind. When they get to the cause of what their mind needs and resolves it, their depression eases. [48:02] Story of Rebecca Gregory Rebecca was a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing. She came to seek help from Dr Don five years ago. She has PTSD. Dr Don helped her realise the connection between her response to daily life and the memory she has. To know more about the process on how Dr Don helped Rebecca tune in to the full episode. [51:43] Similarities of Dr Don's Approach to EMDR Dr Don shared that he also studied EMDr In his practice, he used some of the techniques in EMDr He enhanced them to become quicker and more comprehensive. Unlike EMDR, Dr Don's approach is faster and more straightforward. The patient can choose which way they would like to do it. [54:36] Dr Don on Talk Therapies He believes that talk therapy is good. You must deal with a current problem. They aim to resolve the old issues that aggravate the new experiences. [56:22] How Dr Don's Program Helped His Daughter Crohn's disease is incurable. However, since his daughter underwent their program, her Crohn's didn't flare-up. He believes his daughter's body has more energy to do maintenance and repair issues. It's possible because her unresolved trauma has been resolved. [56:22] How Stress Connects to Our Other Unresolved Traumas The daily stress that we encounter every day might pile up and affect us in the long run. They might also connect and add up to our trauma, making it harder for us to cope. We misinterpreted experiences when we were young that still affect us as we grow older. Dr Don shares stories of how unresolved childhood experiences may affect a person as they grow up. [01:08:15] People Have Different Filters Dr Don says that people have different atmospheric conditions they grew up in. These factors affect how they filter and deal with their everyday experiences. Our brain acts as the filter, and all of our experiences pass through that filter. The differences in how we operate upon those experiences are based on them. Dr Don proceeds to share different stories of his patients regarding the differences in people's minds. [01:15:06] Dr Don on Smoking Dr Don says that smokers are not addicted to nicotine. They need the sensation of feeling better. The mind of a smoker associates feeling better to smoking. This link causes addiction. You can break the habit by introducing a new, healthier factor. [01:19:17] A Better Approach Towards Addiction Many approaches to addiction make the person feel useless. They surrender to never getting better. Dr Don pushes a system that empowers people. He makes them realise they can overcome their addiction by understanding the cause. [01:24:42] How the Mind Reacts to Pain Dr Don shares that the mind is powerful enough. It will do anything for you to stop feeling pain. People who commit suicide act in desperation to stop the pain they're feeling. He shares the story of the German sniper. It can represent the power of the mind in reaction to pain. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else.' ‘So if I had been a little frustrated with something that worked that day, or is, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, “What do we know about men when they start to get angry?” And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system.' ‘And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to, you know, learn to live with this.' ‘And that's really what led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child.' ‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate? I believe it's the mind has made a connection between the heroin and survival.' ‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. “Do it, do it, do it.” And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions. And so now depression is the absence of emotion.' ‘I believe in a lot of cases, that's what they're doing, are trying to desensitise you to it. You know, talk about it enough, maybe it doesn't feel as dramatic. And talk therapy has its place so I'm not against it. I think where talk therapy is really good is when you're dealing with a current problem. Where I think the difference between what we do is we're able to get the talk therapy much more effective when you take out all the old stuff that keeps aggravating the new stuff.' About Dr Don Wood Dr Don Wood, Ph.D., developed the TIPP method after researching how atmospheric conditions affect our minds and impact our lives. In his search for answers for them, Dr Wood connected trauma and their health issues. He also recognised the daily stress they lived with. The only solutions provided came from medications. His experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach. The program has benefited individuals all over the world. The results have been impressive. Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Downs Syndrome to complete an Ironman competition. The Inspire Performance Institute was built on this simple phrase, ‘There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with your mind'. Some events and experiences have created some glitches and error messages for your mind during your lifetime, and all you need is a reboot. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can understand how unresolved trauma can affect our overall health and well-being. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Lisa Tamati: Welcome back, everybody to Pushing the Limits. Today I have Dr Don Wood, who is sitting in Florida. And Dr Don is a wonderful man. He is a trauma expert. He is someone who had a problem in his own family and sought about finding a solution. He is the developer of the TIPP method, T-I-P-P method. He spent years researching, and to understand how our minds affect our bodies. Dr Wood made the connection between trauma and health issues. In addition, he recognised the daily stress that people live with when they've been through trauma, and that the only solutions provided in the normal conventional world and medications. But his experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach, a real holistic solution that provides immediate and long lasting relief for people who have been through trauma of any sort, whether it's small or large. The TIPP program developed by Dr Wood has benefited individuals all over the world. And he really wanted to create a solution that removed the stigma of trauma. Too many people are afraid to ask for help because of that stigma. And that's why he named the program around increasing performance levels. The name of his institute is the Inspired Performance Institute. I really love this episode with Dr Don Wood, he is a lovely, amazing person with a way of helping people get rid of PTSD, get rid of trauma out of their lives. So that they can get on with being the best versions of themselves. And that's what we're all about here. He's worked with everyone, from soldiers coming back from wars to victims of the Boston Marathon bombing campaign, to highly successful executives and world-class athletes. He's been there, done that. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Dr Wood. Before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we have our new premium membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits. Now out there. It's a Patron page so you can be involved with the program, with the podcast. We've been doing this now for five and a half years; it is a labor of love. And we need your help to keep this great content coming to you, and so that we can get the best experts in the world and deliver this information direct to your ears. It's a passion that's been mine now for five and a half years and you can get involved with it, you get a whole lot of premium member benefits. And you get to support this cause which we're really, really grateful for. For all those who have joined us on the Patron program. Thank you very, very much. You know, pretty much for the price of a cup of coffee a month, you can get involved. So check that out at patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. And just reminding you too, we still have our Epigenetics Program going. And this, we have now taken hundreds and hundreds of people through this program. It's a game-changing program that really gives you insights into your genetics, and how to optimise your lifestyle to optimise your genes basically. So everything from your fitness, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day to do it. What, whether you're good at the long distance stuff or whether you be a bit more as a power base athlete, whether you need more agility, whether you need more work through the spine, all these are just information that's just so personalised to you. But it doesn't just look at your fitness, it looks at your food, the exact foods that are right for you. And it goes way beyond that as well as to what are the dominant neurotransmitters in your brain, how they affect your mood and behaviour, what your dominant hormones are, the implications of those, your predispositions for any disorders and the future so that we can hit all those off at the past. It's not deterministic, that is really giving you a heads up, ‘Hey, this could be a direction that you need to be concerned about in the future. And here's what you can do about it.' So come and check out our program. Go to lisatamati.com. And under the button ‘Work With Us', you will find our Peak Epigenetics program. Check that out today. And maybe you can come and join us on one of our live webinars or one of our pre-recorded webinars if you want to you can reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com, and I can send you more information about their Epigenetics Program. Right, now over to the show with Dr Don Wood. Hello, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have another amazing guest for you. I've found some pretty big superstars over the years, and this one is going to be very important to listen to. I have Dr Don Wood, welcome to the show, Dr Don. Dr Don Wood: Thank you, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. Lisa: This is gonna be a very interesting, and it's a long-anticipated interview for me, and Dr Don is sitting in Florida, and you've got a very nice temperature of the day, isn't it? Dr Don: Oh, absolutely gorgeous- low 80s, no humidity. I mean, you just like I said, you couldn't pick a better day, it's very fast. I would have tried to sit outside and do this. But I was afraid somebody would start up a lawn mower. Lisa: Podcast life. I've just got the cat wandering, and so he's probably start meowing in a moment. Now, Dr Don, you are an author, a speaker, a trauma expert, the founder of the Inspired Performance Institute. Can you give us a little bit of background of how did you get to where you are today, and what you do? Dr Don: Well it's sort of an interesting story. I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else. I talked about this, is that I led this very, very quiet, idyllic kind of childhood with no trauma. Never had anything ever really happen to me. You know, bumps along the way, but nothing kind of that would be considered trauma. And I lived in a home that was so loving and nurturing, that even if I got bumped a little bit during the day, you know, was I, when I was a kid, I'm coming home to this beautiful environment that would just regulate my nervous system again. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: So I believe that that was critical in terms of having my nervous system always feeling safe. And that really resulted in amazing health. I mean, I've been healthy all my life. And as an adult, when things would happen, I could automatically go back into that nervous system regulation, because I had trained it without even knowing it. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: that I was able to get back into that. Well. And so when I met my wife, I realised she was not living in that world. And amazingly enough, Lisa, I thought everybody lived like, because I had no idea that a lot of my friends were being traumatised at home. That I had no idea, because everybody's on their best behaviour. If I come over, everybody's behaving themselves and you don't see it. My friends, a lot of times wouldn't share it because of either shame or guilt. I mean, my wife, nobody knew what was going on in their home. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: And she had one best friend that knew, that was about it. And if you met her father, who was really the bad guy in this whole thing, everybody thought he was the greatest guy. Because outwardly, he came across as this generous, hard-working, loving kind of guy. Loved his family, but he just ran his home with terror. Lisa: Wow. Terrible. Dr Don: And so, oh, it was terrible. So when I met my wife, I realised, wow, this, because we got close very quickly, because I had the chance to play professional hockey in Sweden when I was 18. So we got married at 19. So very quickly, I was around her a lot, while we were sort of getting ready for that. So I got to see the family dynamic up close very quickly. And that's when I realised, boy, she's not living in that world, which is living in fear all the time. And that's why I sat down with her one day, and I just said, ‘Tell me what's going on here. Because I can sense this tension in here. I could sense that there was a lot of fear going on. What's going on?' And she started sharing it with me, but swore me to secrecy. Like I could never tell anybody because of all that shame and guilt, because nobody really outside the home would have been aware of it. Lisa: Or probably believed it. Dr Don: Or believed it. Right. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: And then it was again, that ‘What will people think about me? What do they think about my family?' That's really common, when you have people who have experienced trauma like that. And so, I sort of follow along and said, ‘Okay, this will be our secret,' but I thought to myself, ‘Well, this will be great now, because I'm going to get her out of that home'. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: And she's going to be living in my world. So everything will just calm down, and she'll be feeling that peace that I've experienced all my life. Lisa: Not quite so simple. Dr Don: I was like, Well, how is this not helping? Like, why now? She's living in the world that I grew up in because I was very much like my father. I wasn't gonna yell at her, scream at her, do anything that would have made her feel fearful. But she was still living in fear. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: And if, yeah, and if I said something like, ‘No, I don't like that.' She could tear up and start going, why are you mad at me? Yeah. And I would be like, ‘Oh my God, like where did you get I was mad at you for?' I just said. That made no sense to me at the time. Now I understand it perfectly. What I didn't realise at the time was that people who have been traumatised are highly sensitive to sound— Lisa: Hypervigilant and hyperaware of noise and people raising their voice. Dr Don: Any kind of noise. And what she also, as a child, she had learned to listen very carefully to the way her father spoke, so that she could then recognise any kind of the slightest little change in my vocal tone. So if I had been a little frustrated with something at work that day, or, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, ‘What do we know about men when they start to get angry?' And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system. Lisa: So then it's like they Google search, doing a Google search and going, ‘Hey, have I had this experience before?' Dr Don: Yeah. Lisa: And picking out, ‘Yeah, we've been here before. This is not good. This is dangerous. This is scary.' Dr Don: Yep. And that's actually what led me to the research that I did, mainly because of my daughter, though. So my wife lived with that, she developed Hashimoto's. So she had this thyroid issue with, because she was constantly in a fight or flight state. Lisa: Yeah, the cortisol. Dr Don: More flight than anything. Yeah, cortisol. And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to learn to live with this. And she's going to be on medication for the rest of her life. And we'll just continue to cut out pieces of her intestines until she has nothing left and she'd have a colostomy bag. That's just the way it is. Lisa: Oh. And she's 14 years old. Dr Don: She was 14. Yeah. She ended up having for resections done, she would go down to you know, 90, 85 pounds. She'd get so sick, the poor thing. No, because she just couldn't eat. Yeah. And she couldn't hold anything down. And they just told us to have no answers. My wife did unbelievable research, trying to come up with answers and really couldn't come up with anything except this management system that they've been given her. And so, I was adopted. So we didn't know my family history. Yeah. So our family doctor was my grandfather. And I didn't know this until I was 18. Lisa: Oh wow. Dr Don: I always knew I was adopted. But my mother shared the story with me when I was 18. That he came to my parents and said, I have a special child I want you to adopt, right. Now. I guess you just knew that my parents were just amazing people. And you know, at that time, you know, unwed mothers, that was considered a shame. Right? You didn't talk about that. So that was a quiet adoption. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: In fact, his wife didn't even know about it. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Could be my grandmother. And that's, it's interesting, the story, because I should share this too. Because what happened was, is I never understood why my birth certificate was dated two years after my birthday. And what happened was, is that my parents adopted me, like immediately upon birth. But my grandmother found out about it, his wife found out about and sued my parents to get me back. Lisa: Oh. Dr Don: And so they had to go into this legal battle for two years. Lisa: Oh, wow. Dr Don: Now I remember when I was really, really young, I used to get these really bad stomach pains. And I, and they took me, I remember going to doctors, I was really young. I remember going to doctors, but my grandfather was very holistic at the time for an MD. So you know, I was on cod liver oil, and you know, all these different things like, and so what he said to me, he says, No, he's just stressed out because of the stress in the home. You have to take the stress out of this home. He's feeling it.' Lisa: Yep. Dr Don: Right. So it's not that my parents were yelling, screaming. Lisa: He's ahead of his time. Dr Don: Oh, way ahead. But what he realised was that, because it was so hard financially for them, that had a major effect on their life. So I guess I was feeling it. And so they went out of their way to take all the stress out. Lisa: Wow. What lovely parents. Dr Don: Oh yeah. So it created this unbelievable, unusual home life. And so I never had any real tension in the home. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Well, that was, I guess, as my wife said, we were the perfect petri dishes for this because I was living what we want to be, and she was living in the opposite world of what a lot of people do live in. And so at least I knew what the model was, what we were going for. Lisa: And when we're exposed to trauma very early in life, it has a much bigger impact on your health and everything then when it happens later in life. Is that right? Dr Don: Absolutely. Because we've never learned how to balance our systems, so then it stays, you know, in dysregulation a lot more than it did. And that's really what sort of led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: So now my poor wife has also got a new, you know, trauma onto her. And so that's where it really came down to, is, you know, she said to me, ‘You could research this and find out what's going on, because I have no answers.' And that's when I started to research and I made the connection between trauma and these autoimmune issues, for example, that my wife had, and my daughter. And so what I discovered is that I believe that unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. The inflammation compromises the immune system and your neurotransmitters. So we start getting sick, and we start feeling bad because our neurotransmitter, serotonin is produced mostly in the gut. So the serotonin is affected by the inflammation, which was from my daughter, right? She's not going to feel good. Lisa: Nope. Dr Don: And then that just leads to a host of other problems. And it's, it's really, really sad that the only solution that we currently are using is to teach people to live and manage and cope with it. Lisa: I think, yeah, so we, we know, which is, which is good. You know, we're learning things, how to cope with anxieties, and breath work and all that sort of good stuff. But it's not getting to the root cause of the problem and being able to to deal with it. So when we're in a heightened state of stress and cortisol, and when we're taking energy away from our immune system, and blood literally away from the gut, and and from a neurotransmitter production, and all that sort of thing, so is that what's going on, and why it actually affects the body? Because this mind body connection, which we're really only in the last maybe decade, or 15 years or something, really starting to dig into, isn't it? Like there's and there's still a massive disconnect in the conventional medical world where this is the mind, and this is the body. And you know, from here, up and here, and it's separate. Dr Don: And so on and so forth? Yeah. Lisa: Yeah. And it we're one thing, you know. And so this has a massive effect on our health, and it can lead to all sorts of autoimmune diseases, or even cancers, and so on. So you were at this time, so you didn't have the Inspired Performance Institute at this stage? What were you doing professionally? And then, did you go back and do a PhD? And in...? Wow. Dr Don: I've always been an entrepreneur all my life. So I was in financial services, we did a number of different things. We, my son and I, still have an energy business, we do solar energy and stuff like that. Lisa: Oh wow. Dr Don: I decided if I was going to do this, I needed to go back and really study. So I went back and got by, went back to school, got my PhD. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And, you know, to truly, to try to add credibility, number one, to what I was doing. Because, you know, people are gonna say, ‘Well, who are you? Yeah, you know, why should we listen to you? You never had any trauma and you're supposed to be an expert? Like, how does that work?' You know, it's the same thing with addiction. You know, I help people with addiction. I've never had a drink in my life, never touched a drug in my life. Now that I say, but I know what addiction is. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: I don't believe addiction is a disease. I believe it's a code that gets built from pain. Lisa: Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit. And then we'll go back to your daughter's story. Because addiction, you know, it's something I know from a genetic perspective. I have a tendency towards, towards having addictive nature, personality traits. I chase dopamine a lot. I have a deficit of dopamine receptors. And so I'm constantly going after that reward. Now that's worked itself out in my life, and in running ridiculous kilometres and working ridiculous hours, and not always in negative things. Luckily, I've never had problems with drinking or drugs, but I know that if I had started down that road, I would have ended up probably doing it, you know, very well. Dr Don: You'd be a star as well. Lisa: I'd be a star in that as well. And luckily, I was sort of a little bit aware of that and my parents never drank and they, you know, made sure that we had a good relationship with things like that, and not a bad one. Have struggled with food, though. That's definitely one of the emotional sort of things. And I think a lot of people have some sort of bad relationship with food in some sort of way, shape, or form on the spectrum, so to speak. What is it that causes addiction? And is it a physical dependency? Or is there something more to it? Dr Don: Yeah, that's why I don't believe it's a physical dependency. Because here's the way I look at it is, people will say to me, ‘Well, if I stopped this heroin, the body's going to crave the heroin, and I'm going to go into withdrawal.' And my response to that is, ‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate?' I believe it's the mind, has made a connection between the heroin and survival. Because you have felt bad, right? Because of trauma, or whatever it is, whenever you took the heroin, you felt better. So I had a lady come in who had been on heroin. And she said to me, she's, ‘Well, I told my therapist, I'm coming to see you. And he told me, I had to let you know upfront and be honest and tell you I have self-destructive behaviour.' And I just smiled at her. And I said, ‘Really? What would make you think you're self destructive?' And she looked at me, because this is what she's been told for a year. Lisa: Brilliant. Dr Don: She says, ‘Well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin, don't you think that's self destructive?' And I said to her, I said, ‘No, I don't think it was self destructive. I think you're trying to feel better. And I bet you, when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better.' That nobody had ever said that to her before. And so I said, ‘Now, the substance you're using is destructive, but you're not destructive? What if I could show you another way to feel better, that didn't require you having to take a drug?' Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And I said, ‘You're designed to feel better. And I believe that the brain, what happened is, is it because you felt bad, you found a resource that temporarily stopped that pain.' And you see your subconscious mind is fully present in the moment. So when does it want pain to stop? Right now. And if that heroin stops the pain right now, then what happened was, is that system, you have two memory systems, you have explicit memory system that records all the information in real time. So it records all the data, and stores. No other animal does that. We're the only animal that stores explicit details about events and experiences. We also have an associative procedural memory that we learned through association and repetition over time. So, because the explicit memory kept creating the pain, because we kept thinking about it, and looping through this pain cycle, you started taking heroin, then you engage your second associative memory, which learns through repetition and builds, codes, habits, and behaviours. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Because you kept repeating it your mind built a code and connected up the pain being relieved by the substance. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Now, your subconscious mind is literal. So it doesn't understand negation. It only understands what's happening now. And so if your mind says that substance stops the pain, it doesn't look at the future and consequences of it. It only looks at what's happening. It's only our conscious mind that can think of consequences. Your subconscious mind, which is survival-based only understands. That's why people at 911 would jump out of the buildings. They weren't jumping to die, they would jumping to stop from dying. Yeah, if they didn't jump, they would have died right now. So even if they went another two seconds, they weren't dying now. Lisa: Right? So it's really in the right now, there's really no right now. It's really in the seconds. Dr Don: And the very, very milliseconds of what's happening now. And there's no such thing as consequences, it's basically survival. So now, if you keep repeating that cycle over and over using heroin, and then somebody comes along and says, ‘Lisa, you can't do that. That's bad for you. I'm going to take that away from you.' Your survival brain will fight to keep it because it thinks it'll die without it. Lisa: Yeah. Makes a glitch. Dr Don: It's an error message. Lisa: Have you heard of Dr Austin Perlmutter on the show last week, David Perlmutter's son and they're both written a book called Brain Wash. And there they talk about disconnection syndrome. So the disconnection between the prefrontal cortex in the amygdala and the amygdala can be more powerful when we have inflammation in the brain. For example, like inflammation through bad foods, or toxins, or mercury, or whatever the case may be. And that this can also have an effect on our ability to make good long-term decisions. It makes us live in the here and now. So I want that here and fixed now; I want that chocolate bar now. And I know my logical thinking brain is going, ‘But that's not good for you. And you shouldn't be doing that.' And you, you're trying to overcome it. But you're there's this disconnect between your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. And I've probably butchered that scenario a little bit. Dr Don: No, you got it. But 95% of your mind is working on that subconscious survival base. It's only about 5% that's logical. That logical part of your brain is brilliant, because it's been able to use reason and logic to figure stuff out. So it created the world we live in: automobiles, airplanes, right, computers, all of that was created by that 5%, part of the brain 5%. However, if there is a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic. 100% of the time. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: So you can't stop it. And it's what I talked about was that time slice theory. Did I mention that when we were going? Lisa: No. Dr Don: When I did my research, one of the things that I found was something called the time slice theory. And what that is, is that two scientists at the University of Zurich asked the question— is consciousness streaming? So this logical conscious part of our mind that prefrontal cortex, is that information that we're, as you and I are talking now, is that real, coming in real time? And what they discovered is, it's not. Lisa: Oh. Dr Don: The 95% subconscious part of your mind, it's streaming. While let's say your survival brain churns in everything in real time, processes that information, and then only sends pieces or time slices, because your conscious mind cannot handle that detail. Lisa: Oh, wow. So they're filtering it. Dr Don: Filtering it. And yeah, so as it takes it in, processes it, and then sends time slices or some of that information to your conscious mind. Right? But there's a 400 millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious seeing it, processing it, and sending it. And when I read that, that's when I came up with the idea that what's it doing in that 400 millionth of a second? It's doing a Google search, see? And so in that 400 millionth of a second, your survival brain has already calculated a response to this information before you're consciously aware of it. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And so the prefrontal cortex has got a filter on there to be able to stop an impulse, right? So it's the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex is sort of the gatekeeper to say, ‘Okay, let's not go into a rage and get into trouble. Let's try to stop that.' So we have that part of our brain. However, here's where the problem comes in— You're driving and traffic and somebody cuts you off. And so your first response is, you get angry, because this person is like, ‘Oh, I want to chase that guy down and give him a piece of my mind.' But that part of your brain can say, ‘Let's think about this. Hold on,' you know, even though it's 400 millionth of a second later, the first anger response, then it should be able to pull that back. Here's where the problem comes in. If getting cut off in traffic looked like you had been just disrespected. During that Google search, your now, your subconscious mind has filtered through every experience of being disrespected. And so much information comes in that it cannot stop the response. It overrides it, because now it feels threatened. And our prisons are full of people who had been so badly hurt, that that part of their brain can't do that. You and I can probably do that. Right? Lisa: Sometimes. Dr Don: Because we can say, sometimes? You know, you can run them down. You can leave the car. But that's where the problem comes in. Yeah, can't stop that, then that rage and all those things come in. And that affects your relationships could affect all kinds of things. And people would say, ‘Oh, you got an anger management problem. We're going to teach you to live with, you know, and manage that anger.' What I'm saying is ‘No, it's a glitch. We don't need all that data coming in.' Right, good response, a Google search is creating the problem. Lisa: Like there's so many questions while hearing what you just said that, and I've experienced in my own life where with my family, where the initial response is so quick, that someone's punched someone else before they've even thought about what the heck they are doing. In the, when you said that, disrespected like this is, you know, I think when I've gotten really really angry and overreacted to something, when I think about it logically later, and a couple of times were of, like, in my early adult years, I was in a very abusive relationship. Thereafter, when I would get into another relationship, and that person tried to stop me doing something, I would just go like, into an absolute fit of rage. Because I was fighting what had happened to me previously, and this poor person, who may have not even been too bad, got the full barrels of verbal assault. Because I just reacted to what had happened to me 10 years previously. And that's the sort of thing where I felt like I was being controlled, disrespected when he went in. So that Google search is happening in a millisecond. Dr Don: 400 millionths of a second. you couldn't have stopped, impossible for you to stop. And then people would say, ‘What's wrong with Lisa? She's just normally a great person, but where is that coming from?' Up until now, you may not have known that. But that's what it is. And it's impossible for you to have stopped. It was the same thing when my wife and I would say, ‘No, I don't like that.' And she would start to cry. I'd be saying, ‘Gosh, what am I doing to make this woman cry?' It wasn't what I said. It was what I said that activated her Google search, which then flooded into data about her father. She was responding to her father, not to me. We both didn't know that; we all thought that she was responding to what I just said. Lisa: Isn't this always just such complex— and if you start to dissect this, and start to think about the implications of all this, and our behaviour, and our communication and our relationships, so much pain and suffering is happening because we're not understanding, we're not, we're angry at people, we're disappointed with people, we're ashamed of things that we've done. And a lot of this is happening on a level that none of you know, none of us are actually aware of. I mean, I liken it to, like, I know that my reactions can sometimes be so quick. Like before, my, just in a positive sense, like effect glasses falling off the beach, I would have caught it with my bare hand before my brain has even registered it. I have always had a really fast reaction to things like that. That's a clear example of, like, that permanent brain that's in the here and now, has caught it before I've even realised that's happening. Dr Don: You know, and that's why I always say to people, ‘Did you choose to do that?' And they'll say, ‘Well, I guess I did.' I go, ‘No, you didn't.' Didn't just happen that happened before you could actually use the logical part of your brain. And because it was so much information, right? Even though the logical part of your brain would say, ‘Well, you know, don't lash out at this person. They didn't mean that.' It would already have happened. Yeah, I worked with a professional athlete. He was a baseball player playing in the major leagues. And I explained that concept to him. And then we were at a, one of his practice workouts, and his pitcher was throwing batting practice behind a screen. And so as he threw the ball, this guy, my client hit the ball right back at the screen, and the coach, like, hit the ground. Right? And I stopped right there. And I said, ‘Great example.' I said, Did your coach just choose to duck? Lisa: Or did he automatically do it? Dr Don: He had no, he had no time to use exactly. The logic. If you use the logical part of your brain, what would you have said? ‘This ball can hit me; there's a screen in front of me.' Lisa: Yeah, yeah. But you know— Dr Don: No way logic is going to prevail, when there's a threat like that coming at you. Yeah. Lisa: This is why it's important because we need to be able to react in that split second, if there really is a danger and there's a bullet flying in ahead or something like that or something, somebody is coming at us from, to do us harm, then we need to be able to react with split second timing. Dr Don: But you don't want that logic coming into it. Lisa: No, but we do want the logic coming in when it's an emotional response. Do you think like, when people have had repeated brain injuries, they are more likely to have problems with this, you know, the prefrontal cortex not functioning properly and even being slower to respond or not getting enough blood flow to that prefrontal cortex in order to make these good decisions? Dr Don: Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at SPECT scans or brain scans of people who have had those kinds of injuries, you'll see that that part of the brain, that frontal part of the brain, the blood flow will drop when they get into those situations. Lisa: Wow. And then they can't make a good decision. And here we are blaming them for being— Dr Don: Blaming them for being— Lisa: —and they end up in prisons, and they end up with hurt broken lives and terrible trauma. And, you know, it's not good if they react and hit somebody or kill somebody or whatever. But how can we fix this? And that one of my go-tos is the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And I've heard you talk about that on a podcast with Mark Divine in regards to your son. And that is one way we can actually help our brains if we've had had a traumatic brain injury or PTSD or anything like that, is that right? Dr Don: Yeah, my, like I said, my son had three head injuries, one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school. And the first one, we didn't see as big an effect. But he did have a problem. The second one, he ended up with retrograde amnesia. And then the third one, we just saw him go downhill and just really couldn't communicate very well, didn't have any energy, had a lot of anger issues and they just kept saying he's got major depression, you need to medicate them. And I was like, ‘No, I believe we've got traumatic brain injury.' But I could not get them to give me a script for a SPECT scan or an fMRI. It was impossible. And I wasn't looking for the structure, because they'd look at an MRI and they'd say, ‘We don't see any damage.' Well, it wasn't the physical damage we're looking for, it was a functional damage that we were looking for. Lisa: Yeah, the blood flow. Yeah. Dr Don: And once we discovered that that's what it was, we got him into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and he started getting the blood flow into the areas that he needed to process what he was experiencing. And so if you can, you can imagine how difficult that would be, somebody saying, well just go over there and do that. And you don't have the ability to process it. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: And so that frustration there is anger would be coming from just complete frustration. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: That he just couldn't do it's like, you know, you ran in somebody and you couldn't lift your right leg. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: Right. And somebody said, ‘Just start running.' ‘I'm trying.' Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Dr Don: It would be very, very frustrating. Lisa: Yeah, I mean, having worked with, you know, my mum with the brain injury for five and a half years, and I will tell you, man, that is so frustrating. And still, even though she's had well, you know, must be close to 280 or something hyperbaric sessions, and gone from being not much over a vegetative state to being now incredibly high functioning. But there are still some pieces missing that I cannot get to. Because obviously damage in the brain where parts of the brain cells are, have been killed off. And we, you know, I'm really having trouble with things like vestibular systems, so, or initiation of motivation, and things like that. And hyperbaric can do a heck of a lot, it can't fix areas of the brain that is actually dead. So I, you know, and we don't have SPECT scans over here, this is not available. We don't do them. Dr Don: Yeah. And they're hard to get here. I just don't understand them. Lisa: They're very frustrating, because they just are so powerful to understand. Because when you see you've got a problem in your head, that it's actual physical problem, then, you know, it takes away the blame the guilt, and you know, like, I was having this conversation with my brother, and I'm, you know, talking about Mum, and why isn't she doing this, that and the other end. And I said, ‘Because she's got brain damage, and we can't get her to do that thing.' ‘But she's normal now. She should be doing that now.' And I'm like, ‘She's much, much better. But in that part of the brain, I haven't been able to recover.' It is still a thing. That is the year. That is, I am, not that I'm giving up on it, but you know, there are just certain things that we haven't quite got the full thing back. Dr Don: The SPECT scan would show that. And you'd probably see it, or do they do fMRIs there? Lisa: I haven't checked out fMRI because yeah. Dr Don: Check out the fMRI. Lisa: I only heard you say that the other day, and I didn't, I knew about SPECT scans and I knew about. Dr Hearts and all the SPECT scans that he's done, and Dr Daniel Amen and the brilliant work on it all and I've searched the country for it. And New Zealand there's, they've got one that does research stuff down in New Zealand and I think but it's it's nobody can get access to it. And it's just, oh gosh, this is just such a tragedy because then we can actually see what's going on. Because people have been put on antidepressants. They've been put on, you know, antipsychotic drugs. Some things that are perhaps not necessary. We could have, we could have dealt with it with other other ways, like hyperbaric and like with, you know, good nutrients, and even like your program that you do that would perhaps be the first line of defense before we grab to those types of things. But— Dr Don: The fMRI would definitely probably help you. So it's, you know, a functional MRI. Yeah. So it's going to give you blood flow. I just had a young boy come in, nine years, nine years old, having real issues. And anyway, his mum's gone everywhere, tried everything. And I said, have you done an fMRI? She says, oh we've done the MRIs. But, and I said, ‘'No, you need an fMRI.' She'd never heard of it. No, I was telling her about it. Lisa: I hadn't even heard about it either. Dr Don: She didn't want to do SPECT scans, because SPECT scans are going to put something into your system, right? So she didn't want any kind of dyes, or any kind of those, you know, radioisotopes and stuff like that. So the fMRI is the other answer to try to get that. Lisa: Oh, okay. I'll see whether they've got that, they probably haven't got that either. I'd say, probably having Dark Ages with a lot of things. Dr Don: There's so many things like that, that would give you answers that they just don't do, which is surprising to me. Because when you think research, I mean, you find out how effective they are, why wouldn't they do it? You know, they just won't. Lisa: Oh, yeah, like one of those doctors who was on my podcast, and we're talking about intravenous vitamin C. And he said, I said, ‘Why is it taking so long when there's thousands of studies proving that it's really powerful when there's critical care conditions like sepsis, what I lost my father to?' And they said, ‘Yeah, because it's like turning a supertanker. There's just 20 years between what they know in the clinical studies to what's actually happening in the hospitals.' He says at least a 20-year lag. And this is just, when you live in New Zealand, probably a 30-year lag. We're just just behind the eight ball all the time, and all of these areas of what's actually currently happening. I wanted to go back to your story with your daughter. Because she's got Crohn's disease, 14 years old, diagnosed, having to hit all these restrictions, and that she's going to have to manage it for the rest of her life. And she will never be well. What actually happened? Because we didn't actually finish that story. Dr Don: Well, like I said, so she had, you know, suffered for many years with that, and she's an actress, so any kind of stress would just aggravate it. So she would constantly be getting sick, because, you know, the more stress she has, the more inflammation she's creating, and then she would just get sick and go back to the hospital. So it has really affected her career. So that's when my wife said, ‘You've got to come up with some answers.' And so I did the research. And I really believe that it was a trauma as a child that continued. Because this is when I made the connection between unresolved trauma and inflammation. Inflammation is the response to trauma, whether it's physical or emotional. And the purpose of the inflammation is to protect the integrity of the cell. So the cell gets into an enlarged space. So it sort of puffs out, gets enlarged and hardened to protect it from getting penetrated from any kind of foreign invader. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: So the idea behind it is, it's a temporary pause, because there's been an injury. So the idea is, we need to protect this area. So let's protect it and not let anything get into the cells while, until the danger has passed. So this temporary pause in the system, temporarily suspends the immune system, temporarily suspends the processing of the cell until the danger passes, and then the immune system can come in and clean up, right and take care of everything. The problem was, is that my daughter's trauma was never resolved. So those cells in her intestinal area stayed in an active cell danger response, in an inflamed response, because as far as it was concerned, she was continually being assaulted. Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Because it kept looping through the trauma. Yeah. So once we took her through this program, and we resolved it so that we were able to stop her mind from constantly trying to protect her from this threat as a six year old, because your subconscious doesn't have any relationship to time. So if you think about something that happened to you when you were six, that's happening now. So in her mind, she was being hurt now. And until we got that updated, so it's like a computer, I say your brain is a computer. Your body is the printer. Lisa: Oh, wow. That's a good analogy. Dr Don: And so if the brain has an error message, it's going to affect the printer. Lisa: Yes. Dr Don: So in her mind, that trauma kept on looping. As soon as we got that corrected, and her mind understood that there was no memory— the memory was still there, but the activation of our nervous system stopped, the inflammation went down. Lisa: See, that's it, like your body's calling for action. I've heard you say— Dr Don: That's when it processes the emotion. Lisa: Yeah. So when you think back to a traumatic event in your life, and you start crying and you're reacting as if you were right there in the in, which, you know, I can do in a split second with some of the trauma that you know, been through. That means that there is a high-definition in your brain, that those moments in time are just locked in there, and causing this, the stress response, still now. And that's why you're crying years later, for something that happened. And it's actually calling for action. It's telling you to do something. But of course, it's a memory you can't do something. Dr Don: So action required, you know I think that's the glitch, the error message that I talked about. So if you think about something that happened to you five years ago, and you start to feel fear, or cry, your heart starts pounding in your chest, your mind is saying ‘Run,' five years ago, because it's seen it in real time. Now, it's impossible to run five years ago, but your mind doesn't know that. So it's going to continue to try to get you to run. And so a lot of times when I talk to people who have depression, one of the things I asked, I'll ask them is, ‘What are you angry about?' And they'll go, ‘Well, no, I'm not angry, I'm depressed.' And I'll say, ‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. Do it, do it, do it. And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions.' Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And so now depression is the absence of emotion. Lisa: Right. Dr Don: And so what is done is to protect you, it's shut down the request. Lisa: Everything down. So you go sort of numb, numb and apathetic and just— Dr Don: Because you can't do what it's been asking you to do. And so it's been calling for that action for many, many years. You don't do it. And so it says, ‘Well, this isn't working. So let's just shut the system off for a while. We won't ask for the action anymore.' And so that's why the people are depressed. And as soon as you get to the cause of it, what has your mind been asking you to do and you resolve it, then your mind stops calling for the action. And then the depression will lift. Lisa: You had a great example of a lady that you worked with. Rebecca Gregory, was it from the Boston— can you tell us that story? Because that was a real clear example of this exact thing. Dr Don: Yeah. So Rebecca came to see me five years after the Boston Marathon. She was three feet from the first bomb that went off. And so her son was sitting at her feet. So when the bomb went off, luckily she shielded him, but she took the brunt of the blast. She lost her left leg. And five years later, she's having post-traumatic stress, right? And she says, ‘I have nightmares every night. I heard about your program. I heard that you can clear this in four hours.' She says, ‘Iy sounds too good to be true.' But she says, ‘I'm completely desperate. So I'll try anything.' And so she came in and sat down. And what I explained to her as she started to talk is, I said, ‘Rebecca, do you know why you're shaking and crying as you're talking to me right now?' And she says, ‘Well, because I'm talking about what happened to me.' And I said, ‘That's right. But your mind thinks a bomb is about to go off. And it's trying to get you to run.' And I said, ‘But there's no bomb going off. It's just information about a bomb that went off. But your mind doesn't know that.' And that, she'd never heard before. And so what we did is over the next four hours, we got her mind to reset that high-definition data that had been stored about the bombing into a regular alpha brainwave state, right, where it's very safe and peaceful. So she could recall it and she could talk about it without the emotion. Why? Because, now we're not going for happy, right? You know, it's still sad that it happened. But what we're trying to stop is that dysregulation of the fear, the call for the run. That stopped. And you can watch your testimonial on her on our site, and she just talked about, she goes, ‘I just couldn't believe that you could stop that.' Lisa: But in four hours. Dr Don: And then now she can go out and she spoke all over the country. You know, she was a very high-profile lady who did a lot of great work in trying to help people. But she was still suffering with post-traumatic stress. Yeah, trying to help people who were experiencing post-traumatic stress. Lisa: She knew what it was like. Dr Don: She was living it. Same thing. I tell the story, it's another dramatic one was a US Army sniper who had to shoot and kill a 12 year old boy. Lisa: Oh, gosh. Dr Don: And when
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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about the Breakthrough Experience and how it has changed thousands of lives. Discover how to prioritise and determine your top priorities. John shares his secret to retaining Information in the quickest way possible. Episode Highlights [05:00] About John Dr John is an educator, researcher and writer. He has spent over 48 years helping people maximise their potential. John wanted to know what allows people to do extraordinary things. That's why he distilled information from great minds throughout history. He made them into practical things that people today can use. John had speech and learning challenges as a kid. At a doctor’s recommendation, his parents took him out of school and put him into sports. After having a near-death experience at 17, Paul Bragg inspired John to overcome his learning problems. With the help of his mom, he eventually learned how to read. Listen to the full episode to learn more about John's inspiring story! [15:42] How Surfing Changed John’s Mindset Surfing has taught John that people are not going to excel without perseverance and commitment. John converted his determination for surfing into persistence in reading. [17:57] The Breakthrough Experience The Breakthrough Experience is a philosophy and program changing lives globally. This system teaches you how to prioritise and structures life by priority. It breaks through limitations and helps achieve life goals. John teaches people to use any experience, even challenges. These are catalysts for transformation and progress. John has helped people learn how to prioritise to get their breakthrough experience in different areas of life. These include businesses, careers, health, relationships, among others. Lisa relates the Breakthrough Experience philosophy to when her mom had a severe aneurysm. [24:14] John Shares a Miraculous Experience At 27 years old, John handled a family with a son in a three-year coma. The family went to different hospitals in Mexico and the United States. However, they found none to help their son. They then went to John, and he thought of a maneuver to help the child. However, the treatment also came with significant risk. Listen to the full episode to find out how John helped a child get out of a three-year coma. [33:34] Jesse Billauer’s Breakthrough Experience Jesse Billauer, a surfer, decided to go to the Breakthrough Experience after a surfing accident. At the time, he was depressed because he was physically unable to surf. After the Breakthrough Experience, he learned how to prioritise and what his top priority was. Jesse became determined not to let anything stop him from surfing. Jesse developed a way to surf as a quadriplegic person. He taught others how to do the same. [38:58] Herd Mentality in the Sciences New ideas are violently opposed and ridiculed. That's why people fear going against the norm. People who aim to survive follow the multitude. People who want to thrive create a new paradigm. Each person can excel at anything if they focus on that, not on others' opinions. [41:37] How to Prioritise John made a list of every single thing he does in a day over three months. He then placed multiple columns next to that list. The first column contains how much money each task produces per hour. The second column contains how much a job inspires him on a scale of 1-10. He also considered the cost and the time spent on each activity. After doing that, he prioritised the activities that made thousands of dollars. He also focused on ones that scored ten on the inspiration scale. John hired people for the low-priority tasks. This choice allowed him to be more productive in his top priorities. Within 18 months, his business increased tenfold. Listen to the full episode to learn how to prioritise and about investing in your top priority. [56:19] How John Stays Looking Young John is almost 67 years old. However, Lisa describes him as someone who looks like a teenager. John doesn't eat junk. He drinks a lot of water, has never had coffee in his life and hasn't had alcohol in over 48 years. Doing what you love every day also slows down the aging process. [58:03] Some Lessons from the Breakthrough Experience Nothing is missing in you. When you compare yourself to others, you'll try to live by their values or get them to live by yours. Both of these are futile. Sticking to your values and priorities is key to resilience and success. People are different from each other, but no one is better than the other. If you don't empower your own life, others will overpower you. Your mission is something that you're willing to get through any means necessary. [1:06:38] How to Get Your Amygdala Under Control The amygdala is associated with emotions and the "fight-or-flight" response. Because we have neuroplasticity, we can remodel our internal system. Perceiving challenges and feeling shame and guilt trigger an autoimmune reaction that attacks your body. Every time we choose to live by the highest priority, the amygdala calms down. The prefrontal cortex is reinforced. [1:12:03] The Mind-Body Connection Our psychological processes also affect our physiological processes. People are used to blaming external factors. They don't take accountability for the things they experience. John uses the example of when people get symptoms after eating unhealthy food. They don't face the fact that they brought it upon themselves. Our bodies do an excellent job of guiding us. That's why we should learn how to listen to them. [1:18:13] The Journey to Financial Independence There is nothing evil about having money. John believes that you can be a slave to money, or you can be a master of it. Nothing is stopping you from doing what you love to do. [1:21:28] How to Retain Information Teaching what you've learned is the key to retention. Teaching compels your mind to organise ideas and reinforce them. Teach the concepts as soon as you've discovered them. Don't wait until you're an expert on the subject. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for $7 and $15 NZD per month, respectively. Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. Related Pushing the Limits Episodes 135: How To Make Better Decisions Consistently 183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Elena Seranova 189: Increasing Your Longevity with Elena Seranova Connect with John: Website | Facebook | Linkedin | YouTube | Instagram The Demartini Show Demartini Value Determination Process The Breakthrough Experience program Join John's The Mind-Body Connection course Learn more about Jesse Billauer and his story. High Surf: The World's Most Inspiring Surfers by Tim Baker The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management by Alec Mackenzie and Pat Nickerson Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness by David and Austin Perlmutter The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing by Bronnie Ware 7 Powerful Quotes ‘I'm an educator, a researcher, a writer. I do a lot of interviews and filming for documentaries. I've been spending 48 years now on doing anything I can to help human beings maximise their potential.’ ‘I love studying and learning anything I can from those people that have done extraordinary things and then passing that on.” “I love anybody who's done something extraordinary on the planet in any field. I love devouring their journey.’ ‘No matter what the teacher was trying to do, I just couldn't read. And my teacher and my parents come to the school and said, ‘You know, your son's not able to read. He's not going to be able to write effectively’ because I wrote kind of backwards.’ ‘Well, I'm surfing the cosmic waves now. And in surfing big cosmic waves, radio waves that are big waves. Yes, that's the move from water waves into electromagnetic waves.’ ‘And so the Breakthrough Experience is about accessing that state. And breaking through the limitations that we make up in our mind and transforming whatever experiences you have into “on the way” not “in the way”.’ ‘She said that there was something that took over me, I can't describe it. It was like a very powerful feeling — like I had a power of a Mack truck. And me? I don't know how to describe it.’ About Dr John Dr John Demartini is an author, researcher, global educator and world-renowned human behaviour specialist. Making self-development programs and relationship solutions is part of his job. Among his most popular programs is the Breakthrough Experience. It is a personal development course that aims to help individuals achieve whatever goal they have. As a child, Dr John had learning challenges and could not read and write well until 18 years old. He has now distilled information from over 30,000 books across all academic disciplines and shares them online and on stage in over 100 countries. Interested in knowing more about Dr John and his work? You may visit his website or follow him on Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can achieve their life goals by learning how to prioritise. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have Dr John Demartini. He is a world renowned speaker, teacher, educator, researcher, medical doctor. He's written I don't know how many books, countless, countless books. He's an incredible, incredible man who teaches literally thousands and thousands of people every year in his breakthrough experience. The information that you're going to get in this podcast could change your life. So I've given you a fair warning. He's an amazing, incredible man that, and I've talked to a lot of incredible people but this one is really next level, he started out as a big wave surfer in Hawaii, way back in the day. Even knew Laird Hamilton and people like that. Had learning disabilities and could hardly read or write, and yet managed to overcome all these things to become one of the greatest scholars that there is. He's read over 30,000 books. He has distilled the knowledge from people right through the ages, through leaders and philosophers and stoics and scientists. He's an expert in so many different areas. He teaches people in business, he teaches people how to overcome massive challenges in their life. So I really hope that you enjoy this episode. It is going to get uncomfortable in places because we’ll talk about really being accountable, really understanding our own physiology, and just so much more. An absolutely amazing interview. So I hope you enjoy it. Before we head over to the show, just reminder, we have our patron membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits. If you want to join our VIP tribe, we would love you to come and do that. It's about the price of a cup of coffee a month or two. If you want to join on the premium level, we would love you to come and join us. Support the show. Help us get this work out there. We are passionate about what we do. We want to change lives, we want to improve your life, we want to improve the lives of others. And we need your help to do that to keep the show going. So please, head over to patron.lisatamati.com. Check out all the premium VIP member benefits here, and support the show. Be a part of this community, be a part of this tribe. Help support us and reach out to me or the team. If you have any questions around any of the topics or any of the guests that have come up. We would love to hear from you. Any feedback is always welcome. Please always give a rating and review to the show as well on iTunes or whatever platform that you listen to. That is really, really helpful as well. We do appreciate you doing that. And as a reminder, please also check out our epigenetics program. We have a system now that can personalise and optimise your entire life to your genetics. So check out our program, what it's all about. This is based on the work of hundreds of scientists, not our work. It has been developed over the last 20 years, from 15 different science disciplines all working in collaborating together on this one technology platform that will help you understand your genes and apply the information to your life. So check that out. Go to lisatamati.com and hit the Work With Us button and you'll see their Peak Epigenetics, check out that program. And while you're there, if you're a runner, check out our Running Hot Coaching program as well. Customised, personalised training plans made specifically for you, for your goals. You get a video analysis, you get a consultation with me and it's all in a very well-priced package. So check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. Now over to the show with Dr John Demartini. Well, Hi everyone and welcome to Pushing The Limits. Today, I am super excited for my guest. My guest is an absolute superstar. Welcome to the show. Firstly and foremostly, thank you very much for taking the time out today. Dr John, I'm just really excited to have you. Whereabouts are you sitting in the world? Dr John: I am in Houston, Texas. I'm in a hotel room in Houston, Texas, even though it shows that I've got a library. Lisa: Yeah,I love that background. That is a fantastic background. Really great. Well, greetings to Texas and I hope that everything is going well over there for you. Today, I wanted to talk about you, your work, the breakthrough experience. Some of the learnings and the exciting mission that you've been on for now. For 47 years, I believe. Something crazy like that. So Dr John, can you just give us a little bit of a background on you and your life and what you do on a day to day basis? Big question. Dr John: I'm an educator, a researcher, a writer. I do a lot of interviews and filming for documentaries. I've been spending 48 years now, over 48 years, on doing anything I can to help human beings maximise their potential, their awareness potential, and achieve whatever it is that they're inspired to achieve. So that could be raising a beautiful family to building a massive business to becoming fortunate or celebrity, doesn't matter. It's whatever it is that inspires them. I've been studying human behaviour and anything and everything I can get my hands on for the last 48 years to assist people in mastering a lot. That's what I love doing. I do it every day. I can't think of any else I'd rather be doing. So I just do it. Lisa: It's a bit of a role model for me, Dr John, because I think what you have achieved in this time, the way you've distilled information, I mean, you've studied, last time I looked on one of your podcasts, that was over 30,000 books, probably more now. And you've distilled the information from great masters throughout history into practical things that humans today can actually benefit from. Is that a good assessment of what you basically have done? Dr John: I'm writing right now a 1200 page textbook on philosophers and great minds through the ages. I summarise it. I love studying and learning anything I can from those people that have done extraordinary things, and then passing that on. So yes. Right now, I'm actually, I just finished, I’m just finishing up Albert Einstein, which is one of my heroes. I had a dream when I was young. When I saw that E = mc² drawn on that board, I wanted to find out where that board was. I went to Princeton, and met with Freeman Dyson, who took over his position at Princeton in 1955. Spent part of the day with him and we're talking on cosmology. I wrote my formula on that same board, exactly the same place, because that was a dream that I had since I was probably 18, 19. Lisa: Wow, and you got to fulfill it and actually love it. Dr John: Yeah. Took me a bit of time. So what? But yeah, I love anybody who's done something extraordinary on the planet in any field. I love devouring their journey and their thinking. That's every Nobel Prize winner I've gone through and every great philosopher and thinker and business leader and financially or spiritually, to try to find out and distill out what is the very essence that drives human beings? And what is it that allows them to do extraordinary things? So I wanted to do that with my life. Most of the people I get in front of want to feel like they want to make a massive difference. They want to make a difference in the world. They want to do something that’s deeply meaningful, inspiring. And so yeah, we're not 'put your head in the product glue and let the glue stick' and then pass it on. Lisa: Instead of having to reinvent the world, why not? So Dr John, can you give us a little bit of history though, because you're obviously an incredible scholar,have an incredible mind. But as a child, you struggled with learning and with reading and writing.Can you give us a little, how the heck did you go from being this kid that struggled with all of that to where you are today? One of the greatest minds out there. Dr John: Yeah, I definitely had some learning challenges. I had a speech challenge when I was a year and a half old to four, I had to wear buttons in my mouth and put strings in my mouth and practice using all kinds of muscles. Went to a speech pathologist. When I was in first grade. No matter what the teacher was trying to do, I just couldn't read. My teacher, and my parents would come to the school and said, 'You know, your son's not able to read. He's not going to be able to write effectively,' because I wrote kind of backwards. 'I don't think he's going to mountain and go very far in life, put him into sport.' Because I like to run. And I did sports there for a while. But then I went from baseball to surfing. I hitchhiked out to California and down Mexico and then made it over to Hawaii so I could ride big waves and I was doing big wave and stuff when I was a teenager. So I didn't have academics. I dropped out of school. I was a street kid from 13 to 18. But then right before 18 I nearly died. That's when I met Paul Bragg, who inspired me one night in a presentation. That night I got so inspired that I thought, 'Maybe I could overcome my learning problems by applying what this man just taught me. And maybe someday I could learn to read and write and speak properly.' That was such an inspiration, such a moment of inspiration that it changed the course of my life. I had to go back. And with the help of my mum, I went and got a dictionary out, started to read a dictionary and memorise 30 words a day until my vocabulary. I had to spell the word, pronounce the word, use it with a meaningful sentence, and develop a vocabulary. Eventually doing that 30 we would, we wouldn't go to bed. I didn't go to bed until I had 30 new words, really inculcated. My vocabulary grew. And I started to learn how to do the reading. It was not an easy project. But, man, once I got a hold of it, I never stopped. Lisa: And once you started to read, you didn’t stop. Dr John: I've never stopped. I've been a voluminous reader now. You know, 48 years. Lisa: That’s just incredible. Dr John: I can’t complain. Lisa: So was it a dyslexia or learning disability? I just asked because my mum was a teacher of children with dyslexia and things like that. Was there specific ways that you were able to overcome the disability so to speak? Dr John: Yeah, I just, sheer persistence and determination to want to read and learn. I remember, I took my first, I took a GED test, a general education high school equivalency test. And I guessed, literally guessed, I close my eyes. I said this little affirmation that Paul Bragg gave me that, 'I'm a genius, and I apply my wisdom.' And some miraculous thing made me pass that test. I didn't know how to read half the stuff that was on it. I just went with my intuition and guessed. And I tried to go to college, after taking that test and had the test. I failed. And I remember driving home crying because I had this idea that I was going to learn how to teach and become intelligent. Then when I got a 27, everybody else got 75 and above. I got a 27 and I thought, 'Well, there's no way it's going to work.' But then I sat there and I cried and my mum came home from shopping, and she saw me crying on the living room floor. She said, ‘Son, what happened? What's wrong?’ I said, ‘Mum, I failed the test. I guess I don't have what it takes.’ And I repeated what the first grade teacher said, 'I guess I'll never read or write or communicate effectively, or amount too much. I guess I'll go back to Hawaii and make surfboards and surf. Because I was pretty good at that.' And she said to me something that was a real mind bender. She put her hand on me and she said, ‘Son, whether you become a great teacher, philosopher and travel the world like your dream, whether return to Hawaii and ride giant waves like you've done, return to the streets and panhandle like you've done. I just want to let you know that your father and I are going to love you no matter what you do.’ Lisa: Wow, what a mum. Dr John: That was an amazing moment. When she said that, my hand went into a fist of determination. And I said to myself, ‘I'm gonna match this thing called reading and studying and learning. I'm gonna match this thing called teaching and philosophy. And I'm going to do whatever it takes, I'm going to travel whatever distance, I'm gonna pay whatever price, to give my source of love across this planet.’ I got up and I hugged her. And I said to myself, ‘I'm not gonna let any human being on the face of the earth stop me, not even myself.’ I got out of my room. And that's when I decided with her help to do the dictionary. That was an amazing turning point. Lisa: And I can feel it, the emotion and what a wonderful mum you had. I mean, what a perfect thing to say when someone's down. Dr John: It was the most. If she hadn't said that, I might’ve come back to surfing. I might be a surfer today. Lisa: Which would have been a good thing as well, probably because surfing is great. Dr John: It didn’t make money in those days. I'm in the mid 60s and 70s, early 70s. But,, now, the guys I served with, Laird Hamilton and- Lisa: Wow. He's a hero is amazing. Dr John: Both Ben Aipa, Gerry Lopez, and these guys, those are the guys I served with. And so those guys went on to be incredible. Lisa: I wasn't aware of that. Dr John: I lived at the same beach park in Haleiwa, where Ehukai Beach Park is, near Pipeline, between Rocky Point and Pipeline. Laird Hamilton was dropped off by his mother there and lived there on the beach. I lived up on where the park bench was. We lived right there and I saw him on the beach each morning. He was seven, I was 16. He was going on seven, I was almost 17. We live there at the same place and Bill Hamilton saw him out there and grabbed him and took him in and trained them on surfing and found his mum and then married the mum. That's how I became. I hung out with those characters. Lisa: Legends. You became a legend in this direction and they have become a legend in a different direction. Dr John: Well, there's a book out called The High Surf by Tim Baker. That’s from Australia. He wrote a book on people that rode big waves. And he said, 'I'd like to put you in there.' I said, 'Well, I didn't go on to be the superstar in that area like these other guys.' He said, 'But I want you in there because you became a legend. Lisa: Became a superstar. Dr John: Yeah Lisa: Do you think that there's, you know, I come from a surfing family. My brother's a big wave surfer in New Zealand. I've tried and failed miserably, stuck to running. I was better at it. But do you think there's a correlation between the mindset that you developed as a surfer? Because going in those big waves is scary. It's daunting. It's frightening. It's challenging. It's teaching you a lot. Is there a lot that you took from that for this journey that you've been on? Dr John: Yeah, I didn't surf anything more than 40-foot waves. So I think that was about as good as about as big as you get back in the 70s. At 70s is when I was- Lisa: Oh, just a mere 40, it’s okay. Dr John: Well, 40-foot waves was the biggest thing out in outer reef pipeline was the big thing. They hadn't had tow-in surfing yet. That was just, that wasn't begun yet. So there was that idea, we had to catch those waves. That was not easy because they're too big to catch. you got to have big long boards, and you got to really paddle to get into those waves, and it's usually too late. But I think some of those, I used to surf 11 hours a day sometimes. When you're really, really committed to doing something, that's... Einstein said perseverance is the key to making things happen and if you just stay with something. So, if you're not inspired to do something, enough to put in the hours and put in the effort, and you don't have somebody that you can bounce ideas off of, kind of mentoring you, you probably are not going to excel as much. But I did that. And then I just converted that over into breeding 18 to 20 hours a day, feeding once I learned to read, so I just and I still voluminously read I mean, I read every single day. Lisa: That is incredible. And so you've taken that big wave mindset a little bit over into something else. So obviously, everything you, do you do to the nth degree, we can probably agree on that one. Dr John: I'm surfing the cosmic waves now. And in surfing big cosmic waves, radio waves that are big waves. I move from water waves into electromagnetic waves. Lisa: Wow. Now, you run something called The Breakthrough Experience, which you've been doing now for 40 something years. This is a philosophy and a system and a program that really changes lives and has changed lives all over the planet. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've distilled from all this information that you have in your incredible mind? And what you teach in this course, and how this can actually help people? Today, right now listening to this? Dr John: Well, the breakthrough experiences, sort of my attempt to do with what that gentleman did to me when I was 17. I've done it 1121 times into that course. I keep records, and I'm a metric freak. Every human being lives by a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most important. Lisa: Podcast life. Dr John: Welcome to it. I thought that was off, but I didn't quite get it off. But whatever is highest on the person's values, priorities, whatever is truly deeply meaningful to them, the thing that is spontaneously inspiring for them to that they can't wait to get up the morning and do.If they identify that and structure their life by priority, delegating the lower priority things and getting on with doing that, they will build momentum, incremental momentum and start to excel and build what we could say is a legacy in the world. And so, the breakthrough experience is about accessing that state, and breaking through the limitations that we make up in our mind, transforming whatever experiences you have into 'on the way' not 'in the way.' So no matter what goes on in your life, you can use it to catalyse a transformation and movement towards what it is that you're committed to. And if you're not clear about it, we'll show you how to do it because many people subordinate to people around them. Cloud the clarity of what's really really inspiring from within them, and they let the herd instinct stop them from being heard. I think that The Breakthrough Experiences is my attempt to do whatever I can, with all the tools that I've been blessed to gather to assist people in creating a life that is extraordinary, inspiring and amazing for them. And if I don't do whatever it takes in the program, I don't know when it's going to be. I've seen six year olds in there write books afterwards. I've seen nine year olds go on to get a deal with Disney for $2.2 million dollars. I've seen people in business break through plateaus. I’ve people have major issues with relationships break, too. I don't know what's gonna be. I've seen celebrities go to new levels. I've seen people that have health issues that heal. I mean, every imaginable thing, I’ve breaking through. I've seen it in that course. And it's the same principles applied now into different areas of life. In any other area of our life, if we don't empower, the world's going to overpower something. And I'm showing I want to show people how to not let anything on the outside world interfere with what's inside. Lisa: And you talk about, it's on the way, the challenges that we have to look at the challenges that we have and ask how is this going to actually help me get wherever I am. And this is something that I've managed to do a couple of times in my life really well, other times not so good. But where I've taken a really massive challenge, I had my own listeners, I had a mum who had a massive aneurysm five years ago, and we were told she would never have any quality of life again, massive brain damage. We know that's not happening on my watch. I'm going to, there is somebody in something in the world that can help with her. And this became my mantra that I was going to get back or die trying. That was that total dedication that I brought to her because of love. When you love someone, you're able to mobilise for the last resources that you have. And that nearly bloody killed me as far as the whole effort that went on to it, and the cost and the emotional costs, and the physical and the health and all the rest of it. It took me three years to get it back to health, full health. She's now got a full driver's license back and a full independent life back and as my wonderful mum again. And that was coming from a state of being in a vegetative state, not much over a vegetative state at least. Hardly any higher function, no speech, no move, be able to move anything. Dr John: That’s a book there. That's a book or a movie. Lisa: It's the book. Dr John: That's a book and a movie for sure. Lisa: Exactly. And this is very powerful. Because I saw this and when you're in the darkness, everybody is telling you there is no hope, there is no chance. And these are medical professionals who have been to medical school, who have a hell of a lot more authority than you. You just go, ‘No, I am not accepting it because that alternative means death, basically, decline and death in being in an institution. And that is not what I'm going to answer. I'm going to find somebody who can help me’ and I did. I found hundreds of people, actually, and this is what tipped me into doing what I'm doing now, is finding world leading experts to give me the next piece of the puzzle for her and for the people now that are following me so that I can help empower people, not to be limited by the people who tell us we can't do something. It's because that means basically they don't have the answer. Not that there is no answer, is my understanding. And they were right. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I did it and my mum is alive and she's well, and that book. I really want to empower people with a story. I see that same like they're obviously your passion. What you went through with your learning problems when you were young and your mum standing beside you has actually propelled you into this lifelong journey that I find absolutely fascinating because that passion, and I can see that passion in you, is still very much alive 48 years later because you're doing what your priority is. Dr John: I'm definitely doing what I love doing. It's interesting that your story reminded me of something that happened to me when I was 27. If you don't mind, I'd like to share this. So I graduated from my professional school. I had a bit of a reputation there of being kind of the taking the cream of the crop clients, patients that were turned down everywhere else. I just tackled it, see what we can do with it. And I got a family from Mexico, with a son that fell three stories off an apartment complex onto the ground on his head. He went into a coma, been in a coma for three and a half years. And the mother, they assumed he was dead a few times, but there was still a breath. There were still something. It wasn't a strong breath. You couldn't see it but you could put a mirror in front of you and get a little bit of breath out there. So he wasn't dead. And he had decerebrate rigidity. So his whole body was so rigid that when I saw him, you could lift up his feet and his whole body would rock. It was so stiff. His hands are like this. A classical decerebrate rigidity. And he had gone to, throughout different hospitals in Mexico, where he was from, and nobody checked them. They came to America, they went to the Medical Center in Houston, which is the largest Medical Center America. And they got rejected. No one would accept it. There's nothing we can do. They went out to the professional school that I'd gone to. And they said, ‘We can't do anything.’ But we know this interesting character. West Houston, if there's anybody that would try something this guy might try, who knows? And they sent him to my office. I remember when they came in, they carried him wrapped up in a white sheet, and laid him on the armrest of the chairs on my office. I looked out there and I saw this Mexican man and woman and seven or eight other kids in a family. I'm in this. At first, I didn't know what this was, this thing wrapped up in this sheet. They came down my hallway and I saw him going down the hallway. And like, ‘What on earth is this?’ Then they unveiled him in my exam room. And there was this 58 pound tube in his nose, coma case that was so stiff. It was ridiculous. I mean, he had gauze on his chin and his hand was rubbing on it and to protect the chin from having an ulcer. It had an odor to him in the head. It was just nothing. Just stare. He just sat there. But the mother and father said, ‘No, he's still alive. Please help.’ So I didn't really have much to do an exam with. So I got him, we took him in and did a film of his spine and his skull from the history. We found his foramen magnum, his skull was jammed down on a spinal cord and his spinal cord is up in his foramen magnum. This opening in the bottom of the skull. And I thought that night, when I was developing those films, and I looked at that I thought, 'I wonder what happened if I lifted that skull? If I've got that off? It could? Could something happen?' And I was scared because you just don't do that. He could die just instantly. I sent them over to this health food store to get him some liquid vitamins and minerals and amino acids to try to get nutrients in him because they're feeding him beans and rice with liquid. It was just crazy. So the next day came in. We had four doctors on a preceptorship visiting my office, one doctor that was working for me, one assistant, the seven or eight kids plus him and the mother and father in this little room. It was packed. And I said to him that I saw that on the film something that might have make him, help. I don't know, I can't guarantee it. But if we, if I did a particular manoeuvre, it might open up the brain function. And the little woman held on to her husband and she said, 'If he dies, he dies. If he lives, we rejoice. But please help us. We have nowhere else to go.' Lisa: Yeah. Wow. Dr John: She said that there was something that took over me, I can't describe it. It was like a very powerful feeling, like I had a power of a Mack truck in me. I don't know how to describe it. And I had this manoeuvre that we could do this, what they call the Chrane Condyle Lift, that can actually lift the skull up the spine. And I said to myself, if I'm not willing to have him die in my hands, I can't raise the dead with my hands as a little quote that I learned from an ancient healing philosopher. And I thought, 'Okay, we're, I'm going to take the risk, and just see what happens.' Because, I mean, I don't know what to do. I'm just gonna do it. Because I mean, they've got no place to go and I only took a rip. As I lifted that skull with this powerful movement. He came out of his coma. He came right out of the coma. He screamed, and this whining noise you couldn't. It was not coherent. It was just this whining sound. The whole family went on their knees, they were Catholic. They just went to their knees and prayed. I was blown away. I saw the four doctors one of them ran down the hallway and vomited, couldn't handle it. The other just stared. And here's this boy squirming on the table. I walked out to let the family be with the child for a minute and just sat with one of my doctors. We sat there and just cried. Because we knew that the spinal cord expressed life in the body. But we didn't know what would happen if we took the spinal cord, it just scanned off. Theoretically, it could kill you. But there was some still life in the spinal cord. Anyway, this boy went on to gain 20 pounds up to 78 pounds. We took him off the tube, we got him to move, we had everybody in the family take a joint in his body and move his joints to remobilise him. Sometimes I think we probably tore some ligaments doing it. But we got mobility. And this boy came out of it. And I have a picture here with me of the boy actually graduating from high school. Lisa: You’re kidding me? Why is this not an? What is not? Why have I never heard the story? Dr John: I don’t get to share it too often. I didn't many years ago. I haven't practised in a long time. But all I know is that that was a moment that you just, it's probably like you had with your mum when you saw incremental progress. Lisa: Yeah. Just grind. Dr John: And I think that that's a metaphor. That's a metaphor. It doesn't matter where you've come from, doesn't matter what you're going through, doesn't matter what you've been through. What matters is you have something that you're striving for. And are you willing to do some incremental movement towards that? What else just said is, he's got a diagnosis. Diagnosis means through knowledge, supposedly, but it could also mean die to an agnosis. You don't know. Even the doctors don't know. But the reality is, he came out of the coma. And I had over the next few months, I had some amazing cases of a boy that was blind and couldn't walk, and all of a sudden see and walked again. I had a boy that was paralysed quadriplegic, was able to walk. I mean, I had some amazing stuff happen. When you're willing to do what other people aren't willing to do, you're willing to experience when other people don't get to experience. Lisa: Yep, it is just so powerful. And I'm just absolutely blown away from that story. Because, I mean, I know with my mum who was only in a coma for three weeks, and had stroke and so on, and in the specificity and the things that I've had to deal with. The whole vestibular system being completely offline, she has like a rag doll, having to read, programming her from being a baby, basically, to being an adult, within that three year period with a body that is now like 79 years old. And the doctors going like, your brain can't change that much. And in just going, I'm going to keep going. I'm only listening to people who tell me I can do something, I'm not listening to anybody who tells me I can't do something. And this is something that I've really integrated into my entire life like as an athlete, doing stupidly long ultramarathon distances. I was always told you can't do this, and you can't do that. It's impossible. And I was like, 'We'll see.' I'm going to throw everything in it. And that was my passion at the time have now retired from doing the stupid distances because I've got other missions on in life. But whatever it is, is always the big mission. And then everybody comes up against people who tell you, you can't do it. This is one of the biggest limiting things that I see. Dr John: That's what Einstein said, greatness is automatically pounded by mediocre minds. Lisa: Wow. Dr John: I had a boy, a boy attend my breakthrough experience, who had a surfing accident and became arms and legs not working, He could move his neck. He got a little bit of function slowly into the hand that was about it, just a tiny bit. And I remember a man wheeling him in and having them kind of strapped to a wheelchair. I knew the father and I knew his brother. There were doctors who were colleagues of mine. And they brought him, they flew him literally from Los Angeles over to Texas to come to the breakthrough experience. I remember him looking straight down really depressed, suicidal, because he was a surfer and he was on his way to being a great surfer. If he couldn't surf, he didn't want to live kind of. I remember getting on my knees and looking up at him at this chair, and I said, 'It all determines inside you what you decide. I don't know what the limit you have in your body. I don't know what you can repair. I don't know what you can do. I don't want to say you can't. But all I know is that if you're going to, you're going to have to put everything into it. You're gonna have to have no turning back kind of attitude. There's got to be a relentless pursuit of your master plan to serve.' His name is Jesse Billauer. He made a decision at the Breakthrough Experience that nothing was going to stop him from surfing again, nothing. He is really, in the room was absolutely applauding him. The before and after in that weekend was so astonishing that it was tear jerking. Well, about 17 years ago, 16 half years ago, I had the opportunity to get, I was living on the Gold Coast of Australia. I had many homes in New York and different places. But I had one in the Gold Coast of Australia in Aria, lived in the penthouse of Aria. And all of a sudden, I found in my entrance of my penthouse, which you only can get into with my key somebody from downstairs, put it in there like mail, a DVD video of a surfing movie, called Stepping Into Liquid. And when I pulled that up and put that in there, there was Jesse Billauer, surfing. He found a way of using his head muscles, and designing a special vehicle, a transport system, a surfboard. He had to have somebody take them out into the water and push him. But once he got on a wave his head movements were able to ride and he was riding like 12 foot waves, which is 20 foot face waves. He was doing that. And he was an inspiration. He became friends with Superman who had quadriplegia and they became friends and he created a foundation to do something but he taught people how to go surfing as a quadriplegic. So when the wise big enough to house take care of themselves, you've proven that in your book. What little I've done in my life compared to some of these kind of stories is just astonishing what I see sometimes people do. I mean, mind blowing stuff that people, that determination to overcome that are absolute inspirations. Inspiration is a byproduct of pursuing something that's deeply inspiring and deeply meaningful, through a challenge that people believe is not possible. That's inspiration. Lisa: That's how we grow as a human race. We have these amazing people that do incredible things. And these stories, I mean, these are stories that aren't even out there in the world, in a huge way. There are hundreds of these stories and thousands of these stories and miraculous stories. These are the things that we should be talking about. Because why are we not studying the outliers? Why are we not? When I look at my book, or my story, which I share publicly and not a single doctor that had anything to do with my mum ever asked me, 'Well, how did you do it?' Nobody is interested in why she has not taken the normal path as long gone. Nobody has asked me what did you do? People do. My audience want to know why. The people that follow me, etc. But nobody that was involved in that case. And I see that over and over again. Dr John: It's forcing him to face their own, you might say, belief systems about what they've been taught. There's an educated awareness by the herd and then there's an innate yearning by the master. The master transcends the herd, if you will. You can be a sheep or a shepherd. The shepherd is the one that goes out and does things that the sheep are not willing to do. But then once they do it, they'll rally around it. They are there watching you to be the hero instead of becoming the hero. Lisa: Wow. And why is it in the medical fraternity that there seems to be a very big herd mentality, like no one is scared to step outside of their norms, and they get slammed. I see this in academia and in science as well, where people who have brilliant ideas and hypotheses and studies and so on, they just get slammed because it's outside of the current paradigm. Dr John: William James, one of the founders of modern psychology, said 'To be great…' And Emerson followed in suit, 'To be greatest, to be misunderstood.’ William James basically said that the majority of people fear rejection from the multitudes because that was survival. People that are into survival follow the multitude. People that are in thrival create a new paradigm. At first they're going to be ridiculed. They're going to be violently opposed to Schopenhauer and Gandhi said, but eventually becomes self-evident. And you're either following a culture or building one. The people that do that build a new culture. They build a new culture of idea. Emerson said in his essays on circles, 'We rise up and we create a new circle of possibility. And then that becomes the new norm until somebody comes up and breaks through that concentric sphere with another circle.' It's like the four minute mile. I had a gentleman on my program the other day who is striving to be the fastest runner in the world. He's got bronze and silver medals, but he hadn't got the fastest running. And he's not stopping. He's working sometimes eight to 13 hours a day on this project. I believe that the way he's so determined to do it, and how he works on it, and he doesn't need a coach telling him what to do. He just does it. He's inspired to do it. He'll be the fastest runner, he won't stop till he's the fastest runner in the world. And that’s determination, that to be great at that one thing, find that one thing that you really target like a magnifying glass, on that you become the greatest at that thing. Mine was human development, human behaviour. I want to have the broadest and greatest width of information about that. That's my one thing. But each individual has something that they can excel in, if they just define it, and give themselves permission at it, and say, thank you but no thank you to the opinions. The opinions are the cheapest commodities on Earth that would circulate the most as a use value. There’s ton of those. But those opinions aren’t what matter. It's not you comparing yourself to other people, it's you comparing your daily actions to what's deeply meaningful to you, and the highest priority actions daily, that’s what it is. Lisa: How do you, this is a problem that I face, get to a certain level of success and achievement, and then you start getting lots of offers and opportunities and so on, and you start to lose the focus. You get distracted from the things that are happening in this day and age where the internet and everything that ends up like I get the shiny object syndrome. And say, 'Oh, this is an extremely interesting area of study, and I should go down that path. And then I go down that path, and then I go down that path.' It is adding to the whole picture of a general education. as someone who studied as much as you have, you've obviously encompassed all of these areas. But I think what I'm asking is, how do you find out what your highest priority is? And how do you get a team around you, so that you're not limited? I think there's a lot of business people that are listening to this, me included in this, who has struggling to get past a certain ceiling because the area of genius is one thing that they love and excelling at, and you'd like to spend all of your time doing that. But you're stuck in the groundhog day of admin and technology in the stuff that you hate. And not busting through because financially, you can't delegate to people. You also got to find people that are a good fit for you who can do the jobs, and then also have the finances to be able to break through to that near next level. Can you talk to that about? Dr John: Yes, absolutely. When I was 27 years old, I was just starting my practice. I was doing a little of everything, anything and everything, just to get the thing cranking. I had one assistant that I hired. But I realised I was doing way too many trivial things. And that'll burn you out after a while if you're doing stuff that's not really what your specialty is. I went to the bookstore and I got a book by Alec McKinsey called The Time Trap. I read this book. As I read it, I underlined it and extracted notes like I do. I decided to put together a little sheet for it. I'll share that because it was a goldmine. I made a list of every single thing that I do in a day, over a three month period, because each day I had sometimes different things to do. But I wrote down everything I might be doing in those three months in a day. I just wrote them all down. And I don't mean broad generalities like marketing or this type of thing or radiographs or whatever. I mean, the actual actions. The actual moment by moment actions I do in those categories. I made a list of those and it was a big list. And I looked at it. Then right next that list, every single thing I did from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, everything — home, personal, professional. I wanted to know what my day looked. I want to be an honest, objective view of what am I actually doing with my day. Because if I want to create my life the way I want, I've got to take a look at what I'm actually doing because if I'm not doing things that give me the results, no wonder I'm not getting there. I made that list, and right next to it, in column number two of six columns is how much does it produce per hour. Which is a measure of actually meeting somebody's need as a service and people willing to pay. How much is that produced per hour? And that was humbling because there are whole lot of stuff that I will do without pay. I was minoring in majors and majoring in minors. I was doing all kinds of stuff that was just cost, no return. I stopped and I looked at that, and that was humbling, and frustrating, and a bunch of stuff went through my mind. I mean, I just, but I had to be honest to myself, what does it actually produce? I extrapolate. If I spent two hours on it, what is it per hour? Cut it in half. If I spent 30 minutes, I’d double the number to get an idea what it is per hour. There's a lot of stuff that was not making anything and there was a few things that were making a lot. The third column I wrote down, how much meaning does it have? How much is it that makes me inspired to get up and do it? I can't wait to do what people can't wait to get. Those are the things I want to target. So I looked at it on a one to ten scale, how much meaning it was. I made a list on a one to ten scale of every one of those items, how inspired am I to do that? And there's a lot of stuff on there that was not inspiring, that I didn't want to do. I thought, 'Hell. I went to ten years of college for this?' I made this list and I put this one to ten thing. And then I prioritised the tens down to the ones. I prioritise productivity down from the ones that made thousands of dollars an hour to nothing an hour. I just prioritise them. And then I looked. There were some that were overlapped, where the thing that was most meaningful and inspiring match where it’s most productive. I prioritise that based on the two together. And that was really eye opening. Then I went to the next one because I realised that if I don't delegate, I'm trapped. Then I put what does it cost? Every cost. Not just salary, but training costs, no hiring costs, parking costs, insurance costs, everything. What is the cost of somebody excelling at doing what it is I'm doing at a greater job than me? What would it cost? On every one of those items? The best I could do? I had to just guess on something, but I definitely did the best I could. And then I prioritise that based on spread, how much it produced versus how much it cost. Then I put another column. How much time am I actually spending on average? The final column, I wrote down, what are my final priorities with all these variables? I did a very thorough prioritisation system there. I sliced those into ten layers. I put a job description, I put a job description on that bottom layer, and hired somebody to do that but bottom layer. It took me three people to get the right person because I had to learn about hiring. I didn't know how about, hiring. I finally got the first person there, and that was free. That allowed me to go up a notch. And then I hired the next layer. What I did is it allowed me to go and put more time into the thing to produce the most, which was actually sharing a message of what I was doing publicly, with speaking. Public speaking was my door opener. I just kept knocking out layers.In the next 18 months, my business tenfold in increase in income and business. I had 12 staff members and five doctors working for me in a 5000 square foot office from under 1000 square foot original office in 18 months. Because I said goodbye to anything that weighed me down. Anytime you do something that's lower on your values, and anytime something hone your value value yourself and the world values you when you value. It's waiting for you just to get authentic and live by the highest values, which is your ideological identity. The thing you really revolve around you. Mine was teaching, so I call myself a teacher, right? So whatever that highest value is, if you prioritise your day and fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, it doesn't fill up with low party distractions that don't, because it's now you're allowing yourself to be authentic. And it doesn't cost to properly delegate if you get the right people, and you go on and do what produces more per hour, it doesn't cost it makes sense. Lisa: That's the hard part, isn't it? As is growing. Dr John: You do your responsibilities. Go do the thing that knocks down the doors and goes and does the deals and then go and let them do all the crazy work. Like when I was 27, that's the last time I ever wrote a check or did payroll or looked at bills. I never looked at that again. Because that's a $20 an hour job and I could make way more speaking and doing my doctrine. So I thought, 'I'm not doing anything that's going to devalue me ever again in my life.' I've never gone back. 38 years, I've never gone back. Lisa: So systematise. This is a thing here, where I have a bit of a problem, a bit of a chaos, right? Dr John: I'm an ignoramus when it comes to anything other than research, write, travel, and teach. I'm useless. I'm not. I do jokes and say when I'm having I want to make love with my girlfriend. I tell her. I put my arms around I said, 'If I was to organise and have Hugh Jackman or Brad Pitt take care of lovemaking for you on my behalf and things like that, would you still love me?' One time if she said, 'No, I will still love you more.' I'm joking. That’s a joke. But the point is that if you're not delegating lower priority things, you're trapped. Lisa: And this is the dilemma, I think, of small businesses is giving that mix right and not taking on people before you can go to that next level. Dr John: But you go. You go to the next level by taking them on if it's done properly. Lisa: If it's done properly, because I've- Dr John: You want to make sure. That's why I have a value determination process on my website to determine the values of people I hire because if they're not inspired to do what I need to delegate, that's not the right person.You gotta have the right people on the bus, this column says. I have to be clear about what I can produce if I go and do these other things. And me speaking it, and doing the doctoring on the highest priority patients was way more productive financially than me doing those other things. So once I got on to that, I put somebody in place just to book speeches, and just to make sure that I was scheduled and filled my day with schedules with patients, it was a updated day and night. I've never gone back to that. I only research, write, travel, teach. That's it. Lisa: That's my dream. I'm gonna get there. Dr John: I don't do it. What's interesting is I became financially independent doing that because of that. I learned that if I don't value myself, and I don't pay myself, other people aren't going to pay me. If they're waiting for you to value you add when you value you, the world values you. You pay yourself first, other people pay you first. It's a reflection, economically, there. And that's what allowed me to do it. Because financial independence isn't for debauchery and for the fun life, in my opinion. It's for making sure that you get to do what you love because you love it not because you have to do it. Lisa: And having an impact on the world. But if you're stuck doing the admin and the technical, logical stuff, and the crap that goes along with the business. You're not impacting the world like you want to be impacting. Dr John: Weel, the individual that does the administration is impacting the world through the ripple effect by giving you the freedom to do it. Lisa: Exactly. Dr John: If that's what they love doing. That’s not what I love doing. But there are people that love administration, they love that stuff and love behind the scenes, I love doing that. Finding those people. That's the key. Lisa: Finding those people. I's given me a bit of encouragement because I've been in that sort of groundhog days I had to get through the ceiling and get to the next level of reach. Dr John: I finally realised that the cost of hiring somebody is insignificant compared to the freedom that it provides if you do your priority. Lisa: If you get your stuff right, and know what you… Dr John: Because the energy, your energy goes up the second you're doing what you love doing. And that draws business to you. Lisa: Absolutely. I mean, like doing what we're doing. Now, this is my happy place. Dr John: We’re both in our element. This is why we're probably going to slow down. The point is, when you're doing something you love to do, when you're on fire, with kind of an enthusiasm, people come around to watch you burn. They want to see you on fire. Lisa: I mean, they do, they do. And I've seen that in times in my life where I've been preparing for a big race or something, and I need sponsors. I just go out there. At the start, I didn't know how to do a sponsored proposal, I didn't know how to do any of that fancy stuff. I just went out there and told the story. And by sharing the story, people were like, 'I want to get on board with this. That's exciting.' People would come on in and and when you don't know, one of the things that I've found in life is the less you know, sometimes the more audacious you are. When you actually h
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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Understand the different phases of the stress model and how to manage stress optimally based on your body type. Learn the ways your body type responds to stress, fasting and immunity. Discover the key pillars of building a robust immune system. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for $7 and $15 NZD per month, respectively. Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. Pushing the Limits Episode 36: Epigenetics - The Future of Personalised Health, Fitness, and Understanding Your Uniqueness Pushing the Limits Episode 185: Personalised Health: Looking at Different Body Types and Genetics with Dr Cam McDonald Connect with Dr Cam: Website | Instagram | Linkedin | Email | Phone: 0411380566 Take the ph360 HealthType Test to discover your body type and get your Personalised Health Plan! Check out ph360's website to learn more about their services on personalising your health program. Episode Highlights [04:39] Understand How Stress Works Stress is anything that takes our body away from homeostasis. The stress cycle includes recovery so your body can learn from the experience. However, prolonged exposure to stress can cause lasting damage. Many things can be considered stress. Exercise, work, undersleeping, and relationships are examples. Resilience requires exposure to stress. Learning how to manage stress is essential to building strength. [09:17] The Alarm and Coping Phases The first two stages of the stress model are the alarm phase and the coping phase. The Alarm Phase is when we become neurally alert and anxious to pick up helpful information. The Coping Phase is when our body adjusts to cope with the situation. This stage can mean higher blood pressure and blood sugar levels to sustain our energy. During the Coping Phase, your body focuses on giving you fuel instead of fighting infections. Hence, immunity is usually lower during this phase. Listen to the full podcast for an in-depth explanation of the two initial stages of stress. [16:09] The Recovery Phase Helps Make Us Stronger The third phase of the stress model is the Recovery or Exhaustion Phase. This phase is a crucial part of stress. Our bodies need time to grow and learn from previous strains. Once in this phase, your body can now tackle all the viral infections. It can replenish your nervous system. This phase is why you feel tired after a long day's work. It's your body's way of telling you to relax and recover. [19:03] Resilience and How to Manage Stress Optimally Suppose you're always in the coping phase of higher blood pressure and blood sugar levels. This exposure can lead to the body shutting down completely. If you recover correctly, you can take on stress again. Resilience is about the ability to take the time to recover and learn lessons. It's not about how much you can take. Having a better mindset, awareness, and mindfulness can help improve your immune system. [21:16] Different Body Types Respond Differently People have different responses to stress. Naturally, the way we manage stress is also different. People are different on a physical, mental, and even behavioural level. How we develop in the womb determines which organ and hormone are dominant. For example, lean individuals tend to spend more time in phase one of stress. Their ability to handle stress is generally lower. Also, the temperature is essential for this body type. Staying warm is difficult, so cold areas can raise their stress levels. [30:05] How Guardians or Connectors Respond to Stress Guardians or Connectors tend to have more muscle mass prolactin levels. Their instinct is to protect other people. When these people are stressed, they conserve energy and store as much as possible. Guardians or Connectors usually get stressed from social disconnection. When they do morning high-intensity workouts, they can put on more weight. People who have a heavier build tend to put on weight when stressed. Hear Dr Cam's explanation on how to manage stress for this body type in the full episode! [37:28] How Activators Respond to Stress In contrast, Activators have naturally high adrenaline levels. They constantly look for uncertainty, variety, and competition. For this body type, being limited and trapped stresses them. Activators need to expel and use energy continually. Recovery is then crucial for this body type. They must keep looking for high adrenaline activities. [45:06] How Fasting Affects Your Body People should fast depending on the body type. For leaner individuals, it's ideal to have shorter fasting periods. Guardians can handle more extended fasting periods. Activators will need to reduce their activities if they want to fast. They can instead take on more calming exercises instead of high-intensity ones. [48:30] Building Blocks of Immunity There are three main pillars to building a robust immune system. These are sleep, environment, and movement. In general, all body types need 7 to 9 hours of sleep to recover. Next, personalise your environment according to your body type so you can heal better. All body types need movement and exercise. Learning how to manage stress optimally involves knowing when and how to exercise. Listen to the full episode to hear some ways activity can be different based on your body type. [57:16] Listen to Your Body to Learn How to Manage Stress Your body is always looking out for your best interests. Listen to your body and acknowledge when it's time to rest and recover. When you start taking care of your body, your immunity will naturally improve. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘And so if you prolong that, or put the wrong kind of stress on somebody, then it creates damage. But then the really cool thing about the stress cycle is that if you recover, then that your body learns.’ ‘What happens in your resistance phase? It essentially assumes that you are being chased by something very urgently. You need to get away from like a saber-toothed tiger essentially.’ ‘And one of the biggest problems just to expand this to one final timeline is that you do this for 10 years. Yeah. And your body says I need you to stop completely. And that's a heart attack.’ ‘So what's so fascinating about how we develop and how we grow as individuals from the womb, and we've discussed this on previous podcasts as well, is that we have certain stresses that will be more stressful for us than for other people.’ ‘And so what we know is the type of things that stress this person is cold. Firstly, if they're very, very cold, their body doesn't have the muscle or the fat tissue to stay warm. And that really drains their energy levels.’ ‘So this individual, they have more hormones like prolactin, and they are more likely to be insulin resistant. They have a slightly slower thyroid as well.’ ‘So those leaner, more delicate bodies will go within themselves, they'll try and be alone, so that they can create certainty, because certainty in their future creates safety for them and warmth as well.’ About Dr Cam Dr Cam McDonald has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills to promote accessible health. He's a dietitian and exercise physiologist. He has a long-standing personal passion for health, genetics, and environmental influences. His goal is to support all people to live up to their full physical potential. Cam has a firm focus on people becoming more aware of themselves. He wants them to know their natural strengths and optimal behaviours for the best health. He is an informed speaker who has a passion for fitness and the inspiration to do something about it. Want to know more about Dr Cam's work? Check out his website or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin. You can also reach him through email (drcam@yourgeneius.com) or phone (0411380566). Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn how to manage stress optimally. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have another super interview with Dr Cam McDonald, who you may recognise from previous episodes that we've done. Now, Cam McDonald is the ph360 CEO in Australia. And he's one of the world's leading experts in personalised health and the use of genetics and epigenetics. He really understands when it comes to individuals being able to understand the strengths of the unique biology, and how it gives them an exact pathway to better health in a way that makes it easy for them. He's a leader and educator, a scientist, motivator, and he is a crusader on a mission is what Dr Cam is. And he is a wonderful guy. Now today we are going to be talking about the stress response, what happens in the body when you are under stress. We're also going to be talking about how that pertains to your specific health type or your body type with your specific genetics, and how different people react in different ways to stressors, and how genetics actually makes a 50% contribution to this whole thing. We're also going to be looking at resilience and stress management and how to build a better, more resilient, stronger you. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr Cam McDonald. If after listening to this episode, you're keen to do the epigenetics program, which were steeped in and have been using for a number of years now with our athletes and with corporates and with individuals wanting high-performance people dealing with very difficult health journeys, then we'd love you to check out what we do here on over to lisatamati.com and push the button ‘Work With Us’ and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program here, you can either jump on a live webinar with us, we have one every couple of weeks, or just reach out to us or just sign up for the program, it will be life changing for you. It will help you optimise every aspect of your life: not only your your food, and your exercise, which everybody wants to know about and what's right for you, but also everything to do with your mood, behaviour, the brain function, what social environments you'll do well and what physical environments you do well, and we touch on some of these topics in today's episode. So head on over to lisatamati.com, under the ‘Work With Us’ button, you'll see that there. Before we head over to Dr Cam, just reminder that we have our premium membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits open now, we would love you to come and join our VIP tribe. We've been going now for five and a half years with this podcast and it is an absolute labour of love. And we really need your support to keep us on air, to help us spread the information from these world leading experts to you. So if you like what the whole podcast is about, if you can spare just a few dollars a month, that's really a cup of coffee or two a month, depending on what level you want to join us at. We would really appreciate that, and for your troubles, of course we have a lot of premium member benefits for you there over on that www.patron.lisatamati.com URL. So that's patron, P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. And lastly, before I head over to Dr Cam, please check out my new longevity and anti-ageing supplement. I've co-founded a company here that is doing NMN supplements with Dr Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist. And this is a, NMN is a very powerful compound that some vitamin D, vitamin B3 sorry, derivative that helps upregulate the sirtuin genes and improve longevity and autophagy and lots of great things in the shell. So if you want to know a little bit more about the science behind the NMN and why you should have it, then please check out our website at www.nmnbio.nz That's N-M-N bio.nz. Right, over to the show with Dr Cam McDonald. Hi, everybody and welcome to Pushing the Limits. Super excited to have you with me here again today. I have a repeat offender on the show Dr Cam McDonald, who's coming on for how many times is this? Number three, I think, Dr Cam? Dr Cam McDonald: I think yeah, it is number three. Yeah, we've done a combo, we've done a solo and now another solo. Lisa: Yeah. Today we're going to be talking about resilience, stress and immunity, and how to personalise your protocols and your lifestyle interventions for your particular genetic type to increase your resilience and immunity. So Dr Cam, where should we start with this big topic? It's a big, it's something that everyone's talking about at the moment as immunity and lowering stress levels.B ecause when we're stressed when we got lots of stress hormones running through us all the time, which I think you and I probably both do, to a certain degree with our jobs and our lifestyle and our genetics. How do we manage that on a day to day basis? And how do we personalise that and understand that in regards to our own sort of body make-up and health types? Dr Cam: That's a great opening question, Lisa, that is as broad as your life. So probably, I reckon the best way that we would start with this is, is just by defining these things like stress and resilience and even immunity. So I guess stress can be defined as anything that takes our body away from homeostasis. So we're calm, we're cool, we're collected, we're lying in bed. Waking up and putting your feet on the floor actually creates a stress on our vascular system. Our blood has to start moving harder, because it's now moving against gravity, that creates a little bit of a stress that's taken us away from that resting state. And so if you prolong that, or put the wrong kind of stress on somebody, then it creates damage. But then the really cool thing about the stress cycle is that if you recover, then that, your body learns. So it goes, alright, I've got damaged here. And I'm now going to learn about that, and in my recovery, I'm going to get stronger so that that same stress, when I get exposed to it again, doesn't affect me as much. And so I guess some examples of stress might be, exercise is a stress. We don't think about it that way, we think what's positive exercise is positive. Yeah, but exercise is actually a stress. It makes us feel, it actually puts a demand on our body. And you will know, running your ultramarathons, that your body is not in its best health at the 90 kilometre mark. It is at its best, they'll probably before the race starts, and then your body is exposed to a prolonged period of stress. But then you do that your body then rests and recovers and you get stronger so that you can get up and do it again. But then there's other stresses, you know, like our workload, and being underslept, and eating the wrong food, and being in relationships, that great stress. All of these things put a demand on our body and our mind. And this tells the body that there's some sort of emergency. And so in that emergency, we have to take action, we have to cope, which we can expand on. And then we have, then we get very tired and we get exhausted. And then that's when we need to recover. So for me, a stress is really anything that takes us away from that rested state. Lisa: Yep. Dr Cam: If it's short, and the right kind of thing, and then we recover, we get stronger. If it's prolonged, and there's no recovery, then it can help us deteriorate and lead to very poor health and lowers our immune system as well. And then when it comes to resilience, resilience is about being exposed to stress, but being able to handle it. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: And so, when, it's different to recovery in that you're getting stronger resilience, as in you are in the stress. And generally if you have, I like to think of resilience as having resilience juice. You've got a certain amount based on your capacity to tolerate stress. And so you know, the training that you've put in, the mindset that you have, gives you more juice so than in any given stress, you can tolerate a better and push forward. And I'd have to say that resilience, or stress is essential. And so we have to have stress to grow. Therefore, we must have resilience to be able to tolerate that stress so that we can continue growing. If we run out of resilience, we don't want to expose ourselves to stress ever. But this doesn't allow us to grow then. So this is where I see those two things into playing. And then the immune system is one of those things that you can have an underactive immune system that isn't mounting a good response. Or you can have an overactive immune system, which has actually been attacking your own body, autoimmune conditions. And so we're really looking when we're talking about immune health, we're talking about that sweet spot right in the middle where we're aggressively fighting things from the outside, but protecting our own tissues and organs at the same time. So I reckon that's a place to start. We can go from there. Lisa: Yeah, that's, he just done, he did that so well. So I think so stress, resilience and immunity are all interlinked. And we need a certain amount of stress. And we talk about hormetic stresses, and how good they are for our bodies because they cause a cascade of events. When I hop into the sauna, it's hot and I'm sweating, and that's causing a response in the body. I don't want to be in there for three hours, though, because that's going to kill me, probably. But a small, short, sharp shock can often be helpful in creating a hormetic stress. So what we're trying to do is avoid the chronic stressors, the sort of stuff, excuse me, that builds up over time and the stuff that's going to be negative for our mindset, and our ability to cope. So when we have our stress response, Dr Cam, what actually happens in the body? So—I don't know—someone cuts you off in traffic, or you get a nasty email from your boss or something like that, or you have a fight with your spouse or, what's actually going on on a physiological level? Dr Cam: Yeah, awesome. So there's a really beautiful model that talks about the stages of stress and design by Hans Selye. And this has stood the test of time, and it's definitely the way that we need to understand stress. So we have our—it's a four-stage model, with the first stage being homeostasis, when you just chill out, like you're sitting in the car, there's no real stress, you're just driving along. What happens when you get cut off, or the boss yells at you, or says', I want to see you in’... probably the boss saying, ‘I want to see you in my office in 10 minutes in an hour, even better’. And so what happens in that first stage of stress is you become neurally alert. Alarm stage, it's called. Essentially, all of your senses will become more alert to say, ‘What's going on here? And what kind of information do I need to pick up from the environment to make sure that I'm going to be okay'? So you go to alarm phase, it's like, ‘What's going on? what's happening’? And so that's where we get anxious, which is worrying about the future, it's like what could possibly be coming in our future. And so that alarm stage, and another way to think about it is you're standing on the start of a 800-metre race. So you've got that, that nervous energy, the gun hasn't gone off yet, all in your brain. Yeah. So that's alarm stage one. Alarms, sorry, and then we go into resistance stage two. Resistance stage is where we are now in the fight. We're now in the boss's office, defending ourselves. We are 500 metres through the race, where our body, it's now no longer a matter of ‘I've got to be alert to the environment', but rather, ‘I've now got to get in and fight. And I've got to cope'. And so this coping thing is something that we're doing all of the time. So, and in the, the great example, obviously, would be yourself in a long-distance run. Your body has to cope with all of the stress of continuing, when your body wants to stop. And genuinely it says, ‘I want to stop. This stress is not fun, I want to stop, please'. The same thing goes for your—you've had a bad night's sleep for five nights in a row. And now you've got a front up at work. And you have to cope with the tiredness. And so that coping is resistance stage two. What your body does to cope in stage one, our nervous system becomes aware in stage two, our blood pressure goes up, our blood sugar levels go up. Now, blood fats go up. Everything that's going to support energy release in the body, and making sure that we can maintain a very high level of energy, they are going to be the systems that go up. And so you know, because when you're 500 minutes to a ratio of blood pressure, if it drops, you won't have enough blood to pump around your body. So in order to cope, it has to keep your blood pressure up. If you're tired and underslept your body in order to cope with the workload, it needs to have a blood pressure that's going to allow you to stay awake, you need to have blood sugars that give you fuel, you need to have blood fats that give you fuel. And so in stress, your body breaks down muscle. Lisa: Can’t avoid. Dr Cam: And turns that into carbohydrates for your brain, and it breaks down fat tissue and turns it into fats for your body, your blood pressure goes up. And so now we have this. Essentially, if you have a 500-metre race, it would look, I haven't made the race, it would look like you have sort of diabetes and high blood pressure if you want to take a snapshot of that race. Lisa: And I'm done that in the middle of things. And it’s like, the individual training sessions and I took, I remember taking my blood sugar. I've been fasting for 18 hours, did an interval training session, took my blood sugar and it was at 9.5 and I had a heart attack. Like, what the hell! Dr Cam: Exactly. Hopefully you didn't have a heart attack. Lisa: No, I don’t. Dr Cam: But you know, looking like a profile, your profile would have. So this is what's so important is that exercise, that under sleep, it makes your body cope. And blood pressure isn't bad, blood pressure is keeping you awake. High blood sugars aren't bad. They are providing fuel for your brain. Blood fats are bad, high triglycerides aren't bad, they are keeping your body fuelled. And so we see these things as bad things but in fact, they are our coping mechanisms. Without them we wouldn't be able to get through the day. Lisa: Right, in the short term. Dr Cam: in the short term. And this is the problem is that you'll then persist with this. But before we get there, what happens in your resistance phase? It essentially assumes that you are being chased by something very urgently you need to get away from, like a sabre-toothed tiger, essentially. Yeah, and so on. Your immune system goes, ‘Well, I don't have the energy to tackle these bacteria, to mess with this virus. I just need to make sure that I can supply as much fuel down to my bones and my muscles as I can so that we can get out of here. And then I'll worry about my bacterial infections later’. And so while we're in this coping phase, your immune system gets suppressed, it goes down. And this is why, in some autoimmune conditions, they actually use very strong immune suppressants and reduce the immune system because the immune system, in stress, depresses. And so in coping phase, if it's really short happy days, because your body can tolerate that, that's what it's designed for. But then it's been 12 weeks of low sleep, lots of coffee, which increases your alarm stage, pushes your blood pressure up, you're working really hard so you’ve got that mental stress as well. And then, over a prolonged period of time, your body hasn't had a chance to recover. And so then you then go on holidays. Lisa: And what happens? Yeah, you get sick. Dr Cam: You get sick! And you think that this is your body being even more sick, we think I'm sick. So therefore my body is even worse than it was at work. But what's happened is that you've just delayed your immune system to turn on, even though your body was just as sick, probably more sick. What happens now in stage three is exhaustion phase or recovery phase. Lisa: Right. Dr Cam: And so your body, in order to gain growth, like get stronger from a workout, you know, you take a muscle to temporary fatigue when you're lifting weights. And what happens? Your muscle gets exhausted, can't lift another weight, it then rests for 48 hours, and it comes back stronger. So this exhaustion phase is actually really important. But what happens when you get sick, your body, your brain, it's like, as you turn off work, your brain finally dials down that internal stress, that reason to cope. And so now you don't have to cope anymore. And so all of your recovery mechanisms now increase. And one of the best ways for your body to recuperate as quickly as possible is to lie flat on your back for a week. So I'm gonna make you incredibly sick. I'm going to tackle all these bacterial, these viral infections. I'm going to recover your body; I'm going to try and replenish your nervous system. And I'm going to do that as quickly as possible. And so I'm going to drive a lot of symptoms that help our bodies slow down, so that you do take some rest. Because our body is speaking to us! Lisa: ‘I’m gonna knock the crap out of you!’ Dr Cam: Saying, ‘Hey, you've been going too fast for too long, you need to rest and recover. I'm going to make that happen now, I'm going to make it hard for you to get up'. Your body is actually on your side. And we see this even at a day to day level where if you get tired throughout the day, so you wake up in the morning, you've got some really important stuff on, you have some coffee that puts you even more alert and coping your system. You’re then pushing hard all day long. You're on your best behaviour at work. Yeah, you then get home and your brain switches off. Yep. And you're not yet sick. But your brain is so exhausted that it switches off, at least the prefrontal cortex does. Lisa: Yeah, and then you become a horrible person. Dr Cam: Your control, you become this person who hates their family, all of us don't understand why. Lisa: Irritable, shifting. Hey, guys last night– Dr Cam: Exactly. We all do, I think I've stepped out of a few of those myself. And so we have this short-term experience of stress, and then recovery, which is exercise. Short-term stress, recover, get stronger. Short term stress of day to day, you know, but it's probably a bit longer than what our body would like. We get stressed, we have to recover, we have to recover with rest. And if we don't get that rest, then it'll express itself through shortness, we won't have that tolerance that we had at work. Because we don't have that as much cope on, we're exhausted. Yes. Lisa: Wow, that's just really, that’s so pertinent to what I did last night. Got very shitty, had to go for a very long walk. And because I had a hard, stressful day, and this exactly what happened, you know. I had a bit of a meltdown, and then came home and got my shit together. But I know I should do, I know I should go for a walk. Dr Cam: Exactly, exactly. And one of the biggest problems just to expand this to one final timeline is that you do this for 10 years. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: And your body says I need you to stop completely. And that's a heart attack. You know, it's like you've been coping for long enough, your blood pressure has been high enough for long enough, your cholesterol has been high enough for long enough, so much that it has created damage because there's been no recovery. So now I'm going to stop you for six months. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: Because it's been so long since we stopped last time. And so the key part of this stress piece is you can expect any stress, but it's about the recovery that is most important. If you recover appropriately, you get stronger, and then you repeat that stress again. And this is where the resilience comes in is because if you see stress as a positive, even stress at work, and you have like a really tough day at work, you go, ‘Whoa! I've learned how my body responds in stress. I'm gonna learn, or I now know how to deal with that situation better’. That resilience mindset right there, that allows you to actually lean into those lessons, recover, and actually get a lesson for next time as well. But if you've got a mindset that this stress is killing me, then you don't fully recover, and your mind will actually create more stress on top the next time you experience the same thing as well. And so this is where that resilience base in that mindset is not just physical, is how much can you tolerate? How much can you cope physically before your body cops in? But also, how much—how you’re shaping your thoughts around this stressful experience as well. So and just having a better mindset and more presence and more awareness and more mindfulness, essentially, will actually improve your immune system, because you don't go into the same level of stress, because you've got a mindset that is able to… Yeah, exactly. Lisa: You can see things coming sort of thing and in trying to try to hit it off in the past sort of thing before that, because we you know, we all, I think for years and years, I hear people say, ‘Oh, stress, you know, stress is bad for you, or you're going to have a heart attack'. If you keep going at that rate, that type of talk that you hear, but you don't understand, really, the mechanisms that are at play in this game, and what's actually happening. And the situation with our lives at, presently, you know, what we've got, you know, COVID in the world, which has caused, as a society, a huge amount of stress, and uncertainty and all these sorts of things. So now is a particularly important time to work on these tools and to be able to, you know, build our resilience. And one of the things I wanted to mention there was that, if you're, as you know, hard charging type A personalities, got a lot of stress hormones anyway. You have, you know, when I was younger, this especially was like, just toughen up, just go harder and just deal with it. And if you're tired, work bloody harder instead of going the opposite. And that works for a certain amount of time, until it doesn't, and then you burn out. And, you know, so let's look at now, how different health types you know, because Dr Cam, as everyone knows, hopefully you listened to the podcast is the CEO of ph360. This is a genetic program that we look at the epigenetics and how your environment is affecting your life and your health. So let's look at how do, and why do, different people react differently to the same stressor? You know, why can somebody have something horrible happen to them, and get up the next day and carry on, and the other person's down for the count? You know, what were the realisation coming in? Dr Cam: Yeah so, what's so fascinating about how we develop and how we grow as individuals from the womb, and we've discussed this on previous podcasts as well, is that we have certain stressors that will be more stressful for us than for other people. For example, you look at a sumo wrestler, right? A sumo wrestler, if they get pushed by a 60-kilogramme, 15-year-old boy, they're gonna go, ‘Oh. That's not a stress at all. In fact, it tickles a little bit'. Versus then you look at him that 15 year old boy push an infant, that's very, very different to the experience of stress. And so obviously, that's a quite an extreme example, but I wanted to make the point or even if another 60 kilos, 15 year old person, they push them, it creates a different type of stress. So physically, we're different. Mentally, we are also different as well. And behaviourally, we genetics determine over 50% of our personality, or at least 50% of our personality. And so how we respond to different things is built into our biology as well, and into our genetics. And so what we see is that different people will actually appear in these phases of stress differently as well. And so a person like us, so we've got, we've got Crusaders on the census in the pH360 model. Essentially, the wedges are a quick background. So how we develop in the womb determines which organs and hormones are going to be dominant in our body. Those then contribute to how our body shape and size actually develop. Lisa: Yep. Dr Cam: So we have some individuals that develop from the layer of the embryo that is more predominant in the nervous system, so the nervous system gets more fuel, the musculoskeletal system and the digestive organs, they get less fuel. And so we end up with a body that has less muscle, less fat, less bone, generally a very fine delicate structure, and hormones that make them—and our nervous system that's very heightened, and hormones that make them very heightened as well, lots of noradrenaline, dopamine. And so when we look at a very lean, delicate individual. When we think about how they're going to tolerate stress, if they get left out in the jungle, we know that their ability to tolerate that stress is going to be lower because they have less reserves on their body. They have not as much time before they starve because they're fat tissue and muscle tissue just isn't as great as somebody with a much more substantial body. And so these things are being determined very early on in their life. And so when we talk about stress for this individual, their nervous system is the thing that protects them from stress, because they don't have big, strong muscles that are gonna help them fight. They don't have a big reserve. They have a very hot nervous system. And so they spend a lot of their time in stage one stress. When they go into stress, they immediately start thinking about the future, and where is my certainty in the future coming from. So they're much more prone to be anxious in a stress, because as soon as their environment gets disrupted, they, they start processing neurally to escape. They have to think their way out of trouble. And the things that stress them... Lisa: They can't fight their way out, so they have to use their brain. Dr Cam: They have to make a sweet recovery station up in a tree somewhere where they're safe from predators, and set some traps because they don't want to be in hand to hand combat, like they need, really need to be strategic about it. And so what we know is the types of things that stress this person is cold. Firstly, if they're very, very cold, their body doesn't have the muscle or the fat tissue to stay warm. And that really drains their energy levels. And so temperature is huge. So if you put this person in lots of air conditioning, it actually makes them stressed. This is why we have so many people in offices, stressed by sitting in air conditioning, or while wearing three or four scarves. Because temperature is so important to be controlled, but they can't control it, they actually need external heat to control their temperature. We also know that their nervous system is more heightened, because the way that they protect themselves is to be in stage one most of the time. So they need to essentially be on high alert. So any noise, people doing random things. And when I say random things, lots of people around them, people are a little bit unpredictable. So their brain is alert to unpredictableness or unpredictability I should say. And so we have cold, we have lots of noise, we have lots of people, people touching them, watch all of these things is going to overload their nervous system, which is the thing that they need to be safe. Yeah, and this creates an enormous amount of stress. As a result, this person is going to need to spend more time in the warm by themselves. And this is because that allows them to dial their senses down and come out of stage one. Because any noise, any cold is like an alert to their body saying this environment is not safe. And when it comes to how they can manage stress, their mind is very, very important. If they can calm their mind, and also have very, very clear dot points on what they're trying to achieve, and very clear outcomes and guidelines, that brings a whole lot of peace to their brain. Because if they're working with known rules, ‘I have my rules. And if I apply this rule, then my future is now certain. And I don't have to worry about the future anymore, because I'm following the rules'. And so everything for their body is very neural inside, how do I create certainty? How do I reduce the amount of mental alertness that I have? And you need to reduce the amount of mental stimulation. So this will often come along with long, slender bodies with less muscle tissue, less fat tissue. And in order for them to feel best, they need to have a very clear mind, a calm mind with a very calm environment. And so, you can see though, they would spend a lot of time in stage one constantly checking out the environment. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: And that itself can be very exhausting. And so if they're in an environment where they're constantly on like in a really crowded place, or in a nightclub or a festival where there's lots of people and lots of noise, it will, they'll be in cope, just trying to manage all of the nervous stimulation and they'll become exhausted quite quickly because their physical resilience is not as great. They get drained very easily because their nervous system gets tired very easily. Whereas it's very different for other people. Lisa: So let's for the slender, slight built, not much muscle person, let's go to the opposite end of the scale and look at someone like a Guardian or a Connector, who has a lot of muscle mass, a lot more predisposition to having more adipose tissue and so on. And they've developed in the womb with a lot of energy going into the digestive system. Dr Cam: Yes, that's right. Lisa: Yeah. Can you explain the opposite end of the wheel? So what are these people going to, when is it going to be stressful for them? And how do they cope with stressors? Dr Cam: Yeah, perfect. So this individual, they have more hormones like prolactin, and they are more likely to be insulin resistant. They have a slightly slower thyroid as well. We know subclinical hypothyroidism is very common for these individuals. These are bodies, which are much more like a sumo wrestler, they are bigger, stronger, the most amount of muscle, the most amount of fat tissue, they can accumulate it, they don't have to. They have the strongest bone structure. And essentially, all of these hormones set up, and these metabolic environment sets up for conservation of energy and to protect other people. Prolactin is actually a very protective hormone, it's I need to protect other people. And they respond very well to connection. And so when you've got a body, so the first body that we spoke about is actually quite selfish, I need to look after myself first. Lisa: Yep. Dr Cam: Versus this body, the way that it's built psychologically, and behaviourally, due to the hormones and it has in the genes that are playing out, they will be very protective and very nurturing of the people around them. Why are they able to do that? It’s because they have this capacity, they have prolactin and insulin and growth hormone, and IGF 1, all of these hormones actually help you become bigger. For any given circumstance, if this person has more fuel, they will put on more weight as a result of that same amount of fuel. They will conserve better, they will add mass better. And so when you've got this really strong body, very substantial body, you are able to protect others and not be at risk of draining your own energy levels, because you have so much more. And so what happens here is, when this person goes into stress, it's when other people look like they're in stress, the people that they care about them closely. If those people are in stress, their nurturing protective hormones fire up and go up, and they go into a worry state. And then they start worrying about everybody else. And so, but what's really interesting about this, evolutionarily, this body, when the community experienced stress, their body would go into conservation. Because if everybody was experiencing stress, it means the food supply was about to run short, or we're about to go to war, or about to move camp, and we're not certain about our food supply. So the way that I'm going to manage this is I'm going to gain as much weight as possible, so that when the famine does come, I'm going to be able to support everyone and not have to wait. So it becomes this incredible famine protection. And so what we see when this person goes into stress, they want the opposite. They conserve energy, they actually go into exhaustion phase, they rest and recover more, they eat more food, which puts them into rest and recovery. They do less exercise, because if they use energy when they're stressed, they think, oh but what is everybody else going to have. And so their body instead of going into hyper-alertness and hyperactivity, and use all of your energy to think this through, this body actually goes into laziness, into cravings of food. And often the stresses that are created, it's not the temperature, this person is very well-insulated. It's not the nervous system, because this body can really tolerate a lot of physical stress, stress and strain, and mental strain, for that matter. It is disconnection from the family. If they feel disconnected from the people that they’re close, if they see stress in their family, they will feel like the community is threatened. And that will create stress for them. If they're eating very high sugar foods in fact, it represents a stressful result all if my blood sugars are high, then I must be stressed and therefore I need to conserve more. And so the body is able, so that actually creates a stress as well. Doing very, very high intensity exercise in the morning can be a stress for them. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: Because this is when prolactin levels are highest when nurturing is going to be most well executed by this person. I guess you wake up in the morning and you nurture the people around you. If you're out there burning all of this very high intensity energy. It actually sends the stress levels, the cortisol levels higher, which is a coping hormone. Yeah, that's stage two. And then this person—they will actually experience a higher level of cortisol for the next few hours, which then makes them insulin resistant and helps them store weight. It's like, ‘I’m spending all my energy and running around in the morning, then there must be something wrong with my family because I'm not looking after them’. Lisa: And so he put on weight when they do high intensity. Dr Cam: And it's so fascinating. We'll notice we have people all the time who do 12 weeks of a boot camp first thing in the morning, exactly what they're told, and they don't lose weight, or they gain a little bit of weight. Lisa: Yep. Dr Cam: And so this person gets stressed from that social disconnection, first and foremost. And then they can actually live faster to quite well, they're very, very good at it. But when they do get stressed, instead of going into stage one, and more alertness, they don't have to be alert, because they've got resilience. They go into late stage two, they go on to cope. But they also crave, and they use less energy, and they conserve. And so without late stage two and stage three is where they enter into the stress cycle. It's, they don't go through this big worry of the future. They go more into reflecting on the past and feeling down, and their energy levels come down as well, which is the recovery state. And this is why they're able to gain and grow. Because in recovery, you grow and you gain. In stress you spend and you wither. But as these guys grow and gain in stress, and that's because they enter the stress stages at a different place. Lisa: And they so that's why for the slighter build person actually will lose weight when they're under stress and... Dr Cam: And bone. Osteoporosis is... Exactly, yes. Lisa: And the heavier person will actually put on weight when they're under stress, because the same stress hormones, but they come in in different stages, and for different reasons in that person's life. And so the person who's of a heavier build and a heavier bone structure, they are going to be craving more of those bad foods when they're in a stressed out site. So they'll be searching out for the, you know, the deep fried. Because from an evolutionary perspective, that's what's happening, isn't it? We’re driven to find those high caloric, high GI foods, which were very scarce back in the day, and unfortunately, they're not so scarce now. And so that becomes a real problem for this group of people. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: And then let's look at the third one. The mesomorphs. I’m sort of, I'm a little bit of mesomorph, a little bit ectomorph. But more muscular, high intensity people who do well under that. What's happening in their bodies? Dr Cam: Yeah, cool. So just to give a bit of a summary right now, essentially, what we've got is different bodies in stress will go towards their safe zone. So those leaner, more delicate bodies will go within themselves, they'll try and be alone, so that they can create certainty. Because certainty in their future creates safety for them, and warmth as well. Versus and so they will crave to provide warmth, they'll go for warm foods, and for high sugar foods that supply their nervous system. Versus the Guardian will go towards safety in, the heavier that I am, the safer my community is. Because I'll be able to protect them for longer. And so if I go for these low end, like if I don't do much exercise, and if I eat lots of food, the brain will actually motivate them to do exercise and eat lots of food. That then creates weight, weight creates stability, stability, creates safety for the community. And so when we go to the activator, the activator is that the pure, the body that's developed predominantly with their muscular skeletal system, their adrenal glands are very, and their sex organs are developed. And so they are higher in adrenaline. And it's very sensitive to testosterone. And this makes them, when they are thinking about their best form, it’s uncertainty, is high adrenaline, which makes them feel good also, a competition, and winning. Variety also creates uncertainty as well. So this body is searching for variety, uncertainty, competition, a bit of risk in order to feel normal, which is very different to the other bodies as well. And so with the things that create stress for them, is the feeling of being trapped. The feeling of being limited, because they like to break out, they like to be free, they like to be in charge. And they don't like to be told what to do. They don't like rules. So anytime that there's a rule in place, they'll be irritated by that look to break it out. And they have to, they have because I have this big adrenal outflow, they get all of this energy just generate very, very quickly and it must come out. And so the thing that creates stress for them is when that energy can't get out, so why don't have someone that I can express with. Or I can't move my body. Movement is actually the way that they can use a lot of this energy as well, because their musculoskeletal system is all tied into their dominant development. And so when we're talking about this body in stress, it actually kind of likes a bit of stress, because adrenaline is there. And winning is kind of stressful as well, the thing that's going to create problems for them is that if they can't step into this space, they can't step into competition, they can't step into a bit of risk, they are told exactly what to do. They also have more oxidative stress as well, when they do things. They do things at high intensity. And so the body that gets developed out of this is shorter, more muscular than typical. If you look at the top 10 crossfitters on the planet, particularly in the guys, that's a really good depiction of a shorter, muscular, fiery, short and... Exactly. That body is exactly what we're talking about right here. Love a bit of challenge, love a bit of competition, CrossFit is made for this environment, made for this body. And so what we need to do for this body is not stop it from experiencing stress, because it actually will move towards that in order to get its adrenaline, we actually need to make sure that it recovers appropriately. And so what happens for this body is like it'll be walking around in their day. And they'll say, ‘Oh, hey, we've got this new thing over here, do you want to do that'? They go, ‘Yes, I'm gonna do that'. And then they're at work, and they got all these new projects. ‘Oh, yes, I'll be part of that. Yes, I'll be part of that'. Because their adrenaline is– Lisa: It’s starting things. Dr Cam: …’I’m gonna do this, I love this!’ Exactly. So they go high intensity into action, because they've now got so many things stacked up, and they're happy to drop one thing and then move straight to the next. That means that they never get a break from their adrenaline. Lisa: Yeah. Dr Cam: And so when that happens, they get more oxidative stress, their joints start getting very sore, they get pent up and frustrated, and they can just become quite exhausted. And so they enter into stage two with their stress response. So they don't, they don't think about the stress, they don't think about worry, and what's going to happen in the future, they don't go through that alarm phase, they go straight into fight, like I'm going to cope with this, I'm going to get into a fight, I'm just going to take action. And so immediately, they go from doing nothing to doing everything very, very quickly, very high intensity change. And so when that happens, they need to expel their energy. And they, the way that they can expel their energy is by verbalising it and just talking it out. And they've got to have someone who doesn't argue back. And I'm at fault with this many times with my partner, she's an activator, and to express and I want to just sit there and listen like I should, but rather I fight back. But this, essentially, these bodies generally, they need to expel energy. It can be verbal, but the best is physical exertion. If they do really high intensity physical exercise, it will make them feel a whole lot better. But it only goes for 20 to 30 minutes, and then they have to stop. Then they have to stop completely and turn their adrenals off. And one way that you can do that is by lying on your back for 15 minutes, which actually turns off the outflow of ACTH, which is your adrenocorticotropic hormone. It's the one that comes from your brainstem. It says, ‘You should release adrenaline'. And so if you lie flat on your back, it allows this body to fully recover. So this body is going to naturally step into stress, it's actually a timebase, is to be in a bit of stress. But what they miss out on is recovery spending time with fun people, calm people. Spending time light, like just absolutely resting, stopping throughout the day, and just allowing their body to calm down. That's actually what this body needs. And so when we're talking about managing stress, the first thing we need to do for this body is not make sure that everyone's okay like and make sure their social circles, okay, it's not make sure you've got all the rules and the processes of time alone, while you have for the other couple of bodies. Now for this body, we need to make sure that they exert their energy and then eat regularly. So because what eating does is it puts them into a stage three of recovery. And so if they're eating six meals per day, they're putting themselves into many recovery sessions throughout the day because their body has to digest. And what happens to this body when they don't eat is they get very hangry. This is the hangriest body. And so we have this situation where they're acting frustrated or intolerant. And it's not because they're not a good person. It's because they haven’t eaten. And if they eat, then all of a sudden they feel so much better. And they deal with things in such a different way. The same thing goes after exercise. And so we have very, very different strategies. We've only spoken about three type generals, where there are six and then everybody's individual within that. But these give you the major, major types of variations that you see based on how we develop and how our genes work. Lisa: Just a quick question on that, and the activator, on the mesomorph ther. In regards to autophagy, because we—I think we briefly talked on this last week, but I did a whole session on autophagy with Dr Seranova. And, you know, intermittent fasting is a big thing. But how do we—how does an activator do it then? If they want to get the benefits of autophagy, but they can't go without food for long periods of time when they need six meals a day, which is the opposite of what you would advise for someone on the endomorph side of the wheel? Dr Cam: Yeah. Lisa: How are we getting—do autophagy going without causing the hangries? And without... Dr Cam: Yeah, great question. So the first thing and I guess you can apply this question to all of the groups, like the longest, leanest group are going to do the least well with lots of fasting because they've got a metabolism that just needs lots of fuel to stay up and about. And if you make them fast, for too long, they actually get very, very tired, which is a little bit destructive. The, but short fasts, no problem, you know, like a meal or a day. But generally, it's still providing some carbohydrates is going to be important throughout their day. But they can get away with it. But it's just going to be for a shorter period of time. The more substantial body can deal with fasting for extended periods of time. And so their body is actually set up to benefit significantly from fasting. Yeah, the third version that we've spoken about the high intensity, high oxidative stress type individual, if they are going to be engaging in using lower food intake or fasting to stimulate autophagy, then they want to be reducing their activity at the same time. And they want to be practising some really calming activities, because they need to make sure that they can dispel the energy or not dispel the energy through like a calm activity, as opposed to relying on the high intensity activity or not be stressed in the first place. So they need to get themselves into a very calm place, environment, with less competition with less things that they can say yes to, with things that allow them to essentially not use their adrenaline energy to jump into things. They need to kind of create a fairly blank environment so that they don't get stimulated by things so that they don't have this requirement for extra energy. So that's essentially we just need to consider the other components to it. Lisa: Yeah, that really sort of puts it into picture because you want the autophagy you want the cleaning out of the broken proteins and the stuff that you know, that makes us live longer when we do that on a regular basis. And you know, stopping in tour and upregulating your ANPK and all of that sort of stuff. But I was still a bit of a mystery in my head. But how do I do that when I'm an activator, activator Crusader, I'm on that cusp. So for you know, I get it that people on the Guardian side, they can go without. But for me, you know, that's always been. So if I'm going to do a fast, I need to make sure that I'm in a really non-stressed out situation and calm, which doesn't happen very often. Let's move now just briefly, we will wrap it up shortly. But immunity, we're in, in relation to all of this stress responses and so on. What's happening on a biochemistry level when, when we're under the stress in, right now with COVID. And all the other winter coming down here in the Southern Hemisphere, we don't want to get sick, we want to make sure our immune system’s on fire. What can we do to improve our immune system in regards to these different body types? Dr cam: Yeah, perfect. So, and the most important thing here is in order for our immune system to come on, then we have to get into stage three and homeostasis. That may—the stages that we need to be in in order to stimulate our immune system. And so what that means, we have to put ourselves into recovery. And so one of the most profound things that we can do straightaway where all of, most of our recovery happens from the day, our mental recovery and our physical recovery is sleep. We need to make sure that we get enough sleep. There are different things that create sleep for different people. But seven to nine hours is recommended for everybody. And it's very, very important that we get that sleep to stop it. So that's the first piece. The second piece then is every part of our environment is creating stress. And so we need to make sure that we understand what's happening in the environment and how that's going to affect different people so that we can recover from that stress appropriately. And so if we were to go to the three groups once again, and I'll just preface this by saying that every single person's journey to an improved immune system is actually fully personalised. And it needs to be tailored specifically to you. And this is something obviously—that we work with you on Lisa with ph360, we got personalised immune protocols that actually allow you to do that and get all of this stuff that I'm about to address in principle, but for you specifically. So we have—if we were talking about the donor, reverse, or from last time, we talked about the activator, and the activator connectors versus a bit of Crusader in there too, that top left of the circle. Essentially, we're going to be looking at what are the things that remind—bring safety to this body movement will support that. So if we do exercise, a high intensity exercise for this individual, and then we have full recovery, what we know from one bout of exercise, you can get increased immunosurveillance, that is your immune system is now more alert to the environment, rather than waiting for bacteria and virus and ready to pounce on them stronger. We also know that if you're exercising regularly for eight to 12 weeks, you will see less chance of getting an infection, less chance or lower amounts of severity and lower amounts of time sick. So just being physically fitter, has a profound effect on that. However, if you're a Guardian or a Diplomat, and you're doing high intensity exercise in the morning, it actually adds to your stress load. Yeah, so but if you do it in the afternoon, then that's going to really improve your immune function and your recovery throughout the night. So exercise is a stress, it is a particularly potent way of enhancing your immune system. And the same goes to sleep as well. Sleep, just one poor night's sleep can ruin 70% of your immune response. And so having enough sleep, really important. Making sure that you're moving in a way that's appropriate for your body at the right time, very important. And it's even more important for the activators. Because they're their body is so requiring the release of that pent up stress. Then when we start talking about, if we start talking about guardians, then just to talk about a couple of different sort of topics, the Guardians and the diplomats or even the Guardian, specifically here, they need a really connected social environment. And if they're experiencing a lot of stress socially,
As the powerhouse of the cell, mitochondria are associated with producing energy. However, studies regarding the function of mitochondria suggest that it does way more than powering the cell. In this episode, Dr Elizabeth Yurth discusses the function of the mitochondria in our overall health. For instance, it signals the nucleus to repair the damage done by oxidative stress. Furthermore, the role of mitochondria is also to facilitate improvement in metabolism. Dr Elizabeth also explains how increasing butyrate levels in your gut microbiome is beneficial. This stimulates your mitochondria to release PGC-1α and NPK. As a result, it will have a greater capacity to eliminate waste and harmful substances in the cell. Additionally, we discuss fat tissue, blood sugar levels and metabolism. If you want to know more about the function of mitochondria and how it informs your overall health, this episode is for you. Listening to this podcast will also help you understand your digestive health. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle? Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Understand that the function of mitochondria is not only to produce energy but also to enhance cell growth and healing. Learn about the effect of butyrate and antibiotics on the mitochondria, as well as the diet and activities to boost mitochondrial performance. Find out more about the function of the mitochondria in regulating stress, blood glucose and ageing. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limit Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. Listen to my other Pushing the Limits Episodes: #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #187: How to Slow Down Ageing and Promote Longevity with Dr Elizabeth Yurth #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Connect with Dr Elizabet Yurth: Instagram Boulder Longevity Institute — Learn more about research-based longevity medicine developed by Dr Elizabeth Yurth. Sign up at the Human Optimization Academy to access resources on taking control of your health! Mitozen’s Pro ByoMax™ – Probiotic / Butyrate Suppository Episode Highlights [06:33] What Is the Mitochondria? The mitochondria are bacteria classified as anaerobic organisms. Humans have a symbiotic relationship with the mitochondria. With their help, we can survive outside water and air. Mitochondria also have their own genome. You inherit them from your mother. The communication between the nucleus and the mitochondria is imperative to our health. [11:00] The Function of Mitochondria In theories of ageing, mitochondria produce free radicals damageing our DNA. The mitochondria release mitochondrial peptides when activated by oxidative stress. These mitochondrial peptides are messages sent to the nucleus to signal it to heal your body. When the mitochondria are stressed, it also activates the unfolded protein response (UPR). The UPR either gets rid of bad protein through autophagy or fixes them. Tune in for more details about how the mitochondria initiate growth and healing. [17:05] Damage in the Cells The body tries to get rid of dysfunctional proteins. You need to be careful of the amount of antioxidants you take. Taking too much may inhibit your body's response to bad proteins. You should take your body through a cycle. You go through an autophagy phase where you clear out the bad cells. Then, you go through the growth phase, where you induce more toxic stress. In doing so, you can initiate growth and healing. [19:32] Mitochondria Permeability Transition Pore (MPTP) This pore is a gate that opens and closes the mitochondria. As you grow old or when you are in worse health, it stays open longer. Then, it allows bad stuff to go in and out more often. Melatonin keeps the pores closed most of the time. Spermidine also induces mitochondrial biogenesis by restoring this pore structure. Antibiotics like minocycline may have some very significant benefits to your cell health. [23:14] The Effects of Butyrate on the Gut Microbiome Your microbiome is most affected by butyrate. To consume antibiotics and probiotics, you first have to keep butyrate in your microbiome. Higher levels of butyrate may also help the cell, specifically the mitochondria. It improves aerobic metabolism. High butyrate also regulates your PGC-1α gene to improve your aerobic endurance. Sick people usually replenish butyrate by doing rectal suppositories. To know more about the full effects of butyrate, listen to the full episode. [32:33] Relationship Between the Function of Mitochondria and Gut Microbiome Butyrate increased the PGC-1α and NPK in the mitochondrial level. As a result, your oxidative capacity is restored, and the mitochondria become healthier. After inducing autophagy and getting rid of the bad stuff, Dr Yurth restricts the food consumption of her patients. Then, she will use spermidine at a higher dose. At this stage, the mitochondrial peptides released will induce the nucleus to have a healthier genome. [36:57] The Effects of Melatonin Melatonin also affects the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP). Interleukin-1 beta (IL1β) causes damage to mitochondria. High dose melatonin blocks IL1β. Melatonin also creates a homeostatic reaction in the mitochondria. It’s therefore anti-cancer. High dose melatonin also restores your circadian rhythm. When you should take it depends on your genes. 20 mg is a high dose of melatonin. This dosage is for people with cancer. [42:18] The Importance of Mitochondrial Peptides Mitochondrial peptides like the SS-31 helps the endoplasmic reticulum to be healthy. Exercise helps induce mitochondrial peptides. MOTS-c as a drug is an alternative for people who can’t exercise. You can also produce MOTS-c when you exercise. MOTS-c helps with glucose metabolism, fat loss, turning white fat to brown fat, and overall metabolism. [44:44] Why Brown Adipose Tissue Is Metabolically Active When babies are born, they need something to keep them warm. Brown adipose tissue is functional for heat production and burns calories. White fatty tissues are more common as you get older. It only coats your organs and provides little benefits. Butyrate can convert white fat to brown fat, which can help you boost your metabolism. Fat is also metabolically active. Men who are fatter convert their testosterone into estrogen. Dr Yurth emphasises that a good diet and quality exercise is worthless without looking at hormones. Listen more to learn about how hormones affect your metabolism. [54:20] Regulating Blood Sugar As your blood glucose rises, you will feel temporary stress which is good for you. However, long-term high levels of glucose in your blood are damageing. Dr Yurth mentioned the benefits of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Go for a walk after a meal to regulate spikes in your sugar levels. Chromium and cinnamon help maintain blood glucose. However, the positive effects rely on genetics. A recent study revealed that eating protein before carbohydrates shows a lower blood glucose and insulin level. [1:00:36] Enzymes and Breaking Down Proteins Evidence shows that the dysfunction of the metabolic process starts in bile acids. In treating neuromuscular weakness or building muscle, you should focus on your digestive enzymes. Integrate mass proteases and lipases into your meals. Dr Yurth reiterates the importance of keeping your gut microbiome healthy through consuming butyrate. Good bacteria such as probiotics, which are anaerobes, will not survive the colon site. If you don’t have a healthy gut lining, your immune system will see probiotics as foreign materials. This can cause a histamine response. 7 Powerful Quotes from the Episode ‘I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction.’ ‘I’m just a big advocate with diet, and with exercise, with everything, everything's done cyclically. Because we want to go through phases all the time where we're getting rid of bad stuff and then regrowing.’ ‘We’re able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism.’ ’As you're learning, the gut is everything. And now we're learning it may even be imperative to the mitochondria.’ ‘I think what it's going to come down to when we look at this mitochondria, it's not going to be trying to figure out what is my perfect dose of antioxidants. It's gonna be figuring out how do I get that mitochondria with the pores, letting the good stuff in and letting the bad stuff out?’ ‘What it's really trying to get across is just, you know, sensible stuff, we just did a thing you know, about just taking a walk after dinner, right?’ ‘That little bit of stress, like I said, what you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.’ About Dr Elizabeth Yurth Elizabeth Yurth, MD, is the Medical Director and co-founder of the Boulder Longevity Institute. This institute was established in 2006. Dr Yurth is double board-certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Ageing/Regenerative Medicine. She also has a Stanford-affiliated Fellowship in Sports and Spine Medicine. Here, Dr Yurth specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine. Additionally, she also has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM) and Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M). Dr Yurth serves as a faculty member in SSRP (Seeds Scientific Research and Performance) with 25 mastermind physician fellows. Here, she allows herself to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging field of cellular medicine. An active athlete herself, Dr Yurth has worked with numerous sports teams at both the collegiate and professional levels. At present, she works as a consultant for high-level athletes from across the country. She aims to aid them in recovery and optimise performance. Dr Yurth resides in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and five children. To know more about Dr Yurth’s work, visit Boulder Longevity Institute and connect with her on Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about mitochondrial health and include butyrate in their diets. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati your host here at Pushing The Limits. Super excited that you're here with me again today. Thanks for tuning in. I do love and appreciate your loyalty. And I would love to hear from you. If you've got something to say about the podcast, you’ve got some comments and questions about some of the topics that we have raised, please do reach out to us. We love hearing from our listeners. And if you can give us a rating and review if you're enjoying the content, that really really helps the show. We've also got our Patron VIP premium membership now open. If you love our show, if you love what we do, what we stand for our values, our principles, the work that we put into this podcast, which we've been doing now for five and a half years, without any money or any—just for the love of it and for the passion of it. If you want to help support us and keep us going and want to get a whole lot of premium membership benefits, then head over to patron.lisatamati.com. I would love you to join our VIP tribe. That's patron.lisatamati.com. For the price of about a coffee a day or a little bit more, you can be involved. There's two tiers in there, with different levels of premium member benefits. And we would love you to join us there. So if you can please do. Now today's superstar is Dr Elizabeth Yurth. And if you follow the podcast, you might have remember that name because she was on just a few weeks ago. And she is now one of my favorite teachers. I have been learning from her at the Bone Longevity Institute of Human Optimization Academy. And she is a brilliant teacher, and a brilliant orthopaedic surgeon and longevity expert. And she offers the world's most advanced research-based health care. And it's all customised to you. And the information that we're going to share with you today—today's topic if you like, is all around mitochondrial health. Now we do deviate a little bit because as we do in these conversations, we go off on a few tangents. But it is really all about understanding what your mitochondria are, why you need to know about it, how to keep them healthy, because these little bacteria if you like, and these little powerhouses of our cells are absolutely crucial to health and longevity. And Dr Yurth says that the mitochondria, she thinks, are at the very basis of all diseases. So when these little guys go awry, that's when diseases come into play. And everything from cancer, chronic fatigue, to all of the diseases right across the spectrum can be affected by mitochondrial health. So we do a bit of a deep dive into that today. So I hope you enjoy this session with Dr Elizabeth Yurth. She's a lady who walks the talk. She's an incredibly amazing person, athlete, orthopaedic surgeon. She loves this. She breathes it the way she loves, as you know, in complete alignment with what she also teaches, so make sure you check out all her links in the show notes. Right. Now before we go over to the show. Just want to also let you know about our NMN, our supplements. They’re longevity and anti-ageing supplement. We are into longevity. We are into health span. We are into increasing our lifespan and healthspan. So if you want to get into having—to boosting your NAD levels in your body, we've recently done a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova on this topic, then head over to nmnbio.nz. And grab your NMN supplements over there to get your longevity regime underway. And in today's podcast, we talk a little bit about this. We talk also about spermidine, which we've also mentioned in other podcasts. There are some amazing compounds out there that are going to help us stay healthier and longer. And there's a lot of techniques and things that we can actually engage in. We don't have to be passive bystanders to our ageing, we can do things about it, we can slow it down, and even reverse it in some places. So I hope you enjoy this episode. So do check out my Longevity Supplement over at nmnbio.nz. And enjoy today's show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth. Lisa: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Super excited to have another wonderful guest that we've actually had on before and back by popular demand. That was a very, very popular episode. So I have Dr Elizabeth Yurth with me. Hi, Dr Yurth, how are you doing? Dr Elizabeth Yurth: Lisa, thank you for having me again. I love being with you. Lisa: Oh, it's just that, our last episode was just so full of information that I've had it on repeat going, for me, because there's so much in there and so many people have written and have been asking questions. So I want to get started by saying if after this interview, you want to talk to Dr Yurth and one of her team at the Border Longevity Institute, you can do that even when you're in New Zealand or Australia, you can do teleconsults. And yeah, so if you are facing some difficult health problem, and you really want some help, make sure you do that. And we'll have all the links in the show notes and so on. And before we get underway, there is a Bold Longevity of—what is it called, optimisation? Dr Yurth: Human Optimization Academy, right? Yeah, from the Border Longevity site, or just go to bliacademy.com and sign up. But you guys have definitely signed up for that we actually are trying to really put together tons—and all the information you guys need to try. And you'll have one place where you can go get all of these things that we talked about, and all the things that Lisa talks about, and really be able to learn about them. Because as we know, doctors don't really learn this stuff very well. So you guys have to do it yourself. And so we're trying to give you a place to do. It's coming from a very experienced... Lisa: Yeah, and if you want on the latest, so make sure bli.academy.com. And I'll put that in the show notes too guys, so you can find it. Now today's subject is mitochondria, one of Dr Yurth’s favorite subjects. Okay, for starters, what is a mitochondria? Dr Yurth: What's really so cool about mitochondria, right, is they're actually they were actually their own little bacteria. So they invaded us back when we were threatened to kind of moving from an anaerobic to an aerobic environment. So when we went from sort of anaerobic organisms to actually living in air, we couldn't do it. And so these little bacteria got into the cells, and they formed a symbiotic relationship, so that we could survive outside of water and air. And so they were responsible for us being able to move out of the ocean and into an air or an aerobic environment. Well, they're actually their own little organism. Right? I mean, that that is weird, right? That we have this essential part of our cell. Now our essential part of survival is actually its own organism. And it was a one celled organism, it gone to formed a symbiotic relationship, it allowed the bacteria to survive living inside ourselves. And if we allowed ourselves to survive, so amazing. And that's why they're so unique is that they actually contain a whole genome that is separate from your nuclear genome, right? So they have a mitochondrial genome that's completely different. And it's only inherited from your mother. So that mitochondrial genome is not inherited from your father at all. It's probably one of the reasons your mother's health at the time, because even though the mitochondria has its own genome, that genome is impacted by things you do. So if I have a baby, and I'm super unhealthy, I've altered that mitochondrial genome. And then I've transferred that mitochondrial genome only from me—the dad was great and doing everything right—to my children. So that's one of the... Lisa: So that’s the epigenetic…. Because I'm just about to go through IVF, as I said before, very interesting for me. So even though I'm going to have an egg donor... Dr Yurth: You wanna make sure she’s healthy, right? Lisa: Yeah, she's just—she is, and we've got her on everything. Her DNA is coming into the egg, but actually, my mitochondria will be a part of this baby, if we have one. Dr Yurth: So you will alter—so basically, she's, you're going to be, the baby will have her mitochondrial DNA. But because you will be growing this baby, you will be altering that mitochondrial DNA by epigenetic influences that you're doing, right. So now you're going to be changing some of that DNA structure, or the genome of that mitochondria by things you're doing. The mitochondria, so even though it's coming in, and again, you want her to come in with this great mitochondrial DNA in the first place. Right? So we want this good genome in the first place, which is why you do want her to be healthy and fit and all those things. And younger. But then you know all about the epigenetics, and so you're going to be potentially altering some of that, too. So that's one of the really amazing things. Now, what we used to think is, all the mitochondria did was do oxidative phosphorylation, and make energy, make ATP. And that's what they did. They were our energy powerhouse. That's all we ever learned, right? High school was like, ‘Oh, the powerhouse of the cell’. So we now know, they do a whole lot more than that. So they're not just responsible for aerobic metabolism, and making ATP. So they're not just energy production. And in fact, there's the communication back and forth between the nucleus of ourselves and these mitochondrial DNA that's imperative to health. Well, I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction. Lisa: Wow. So this is pretty– Dr Yurth: It's imperative and, and you're gonna start reading more about this, is that the key to fixing our health is going to be fixing the mitochondria. And we've already figured out like, you know, you I know you're big into NAD that, improving NAD and I know you have a product that does that. And that is— that's critical, right? To mitochondrial health. We know that's critical to mitochondrial health. But there's more to that story. And the big thing is that is that piece of communication, that mitochondria sends messages out to the nucleus, and the nucleus sends messages back to the mitochondria. Lisa: Okay, so what are these messages that they’re sending backwards and forwards? And why does this have to do with the function of the mitochondria itself? Dr Yurth: Well, there's, as the body goes through the oxidative phosphorylation pathway, that Krebs cycle, that cycle that makes energy, right. And we know that we create these free radicals. And that's been one of the big theories of ageing is this free radical theory of ageing, that mitochondria produce all these free radicals, as free radicals overwhelm the body, they damage cells, and we get damaged tore into our DNA? Hmm. Lisa: So we all thought that antioxidants would be the answer, recommended… Dr Yurth: Right. We just take a bunch of antioxidants into the mix, and you're going to be great, because now, all those free radicals, you're not going to have any damage. The problem is that we know that there's been this—the mitochondria has a very, has a way to handle this oxidative stress. So there's a few things that happen. Obviously, stress is really critical to the mitochondria’s health. So as it creates these free radicals, and and it's rust by things, it actually produces what are called mitochondrial peptides. So it has its own genome, right, that's now been activated by this stress. And it creates these—its own peptides that no other structure in your body can produce. So it's producing these little chains of amino acids. And there's quite a few being developed now or that or that we were learning about, but the sort of the three main ones that we kind of have a pretty good knowledge about right now are something called MOTS-c. There's another one called humanin, and another one called SS-31. And those are what—the SS-31s, and a group of them are called small humanin-like peptides or SHLPs. Those peptides, so once the mitochondria is stressed, it encodes this DNA to say, ‘Oh, you need to go out there and tell the nucleus to do some good stuff’. So these mitochondrial peptides now go outside of the mitochondria, and they tell the nucleus to to heal things and get stronger and do better. And then that sends messages back to the mitochondria. So that stress, that oxidative stress actually, it's just like, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Lisa: And actually it’s a fact on this. Dr Yurth: It’s really a fact that mitochondria health, that these medical peptides are imperative to health. In fact, humanin which were first developed actually was looking like a cure for Alzheimer's. And it may be really—well, it may be actually very, very baffling here, but very, very helpful in dementias and a lot of other diseases. We know that higher levels of humanin, people who live to be a hundred and above have much higher levels of humanin, so we know that these mitochondrial peptides, the higher they are, the healthier you are. No mitochondrial stress. If I just impound my body with antioxidants all the time, then I'm actually probably doing some damage. So cancer, right, so where—now again there, I can also overwhelm, right? There's also another response, the mitochondria have, it's called the UPR, unfolded protein response. So as the mitochondria are stressed, and these damaged proteins that are produced when we're under stress, right, we get damaged or proteins, that's where we're kind of linking that to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and some of the plaques that form... Lisa: The tau proteins and things. Dr Yurth: Yeah, yep. When the mitochondria is stressed, it actually sends messages out to the nucleus to activate what's called the UPR, the unfolded protein response. A little protein response actually takes these bad proteins and it strings them back out and makes them normal. Or it says, ‘These guys are so damaged. Let's just get rid of that mitochondria and initiate basically autophagy or mitophagy, eliminates the bad mitochondria that are too damaged. There's too many damaged proteins. We've overwhelmed the unfolded protein response’. Now it initiates this response to kill off the bad mitochondria. See, if I'm just now taking a ton of antioxidants. Maybe I've blocked this response to get rid of all these bad proteins. Right. And I'm actually inducing more of these bad, abnormal proteins that are going to cause damage. Lisa: I've talked on a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova about—who is a molecular biologist on autophagy. And I think we talked about it too last time. So that's getting rid of the damaged proteins in the cells or in the mitochondria itself, getting rid of it. And we talked about fasting last time and how critical fasting is for autophagy in getting rid of these bad proteins and clearing things out. So if we—so you're saying we can overwhelm this protein, and what do you call unfolding... Dr Yurth: Unfolded protein response, UPR. Lisa: Yeah, we can overwhelm it with too many antioxidants and actually stop it... Dr Yurth: Stop the UPR from being activated. So now we don't actually kill it, we don't actually—either fix the damaged protein or get rid of the cells that are too damaged. Lisa: Wow, okay. And so in this is this two-way communication between the mitochondria and the DNA, this is the nucleus of the cell. This is all within the—if we picture a big, nice fat round cell, and inside, you've got thousands of mitochondria per cell. And you've got the actual nucleus, which has that nice double helix, you see in the graph– Dr Yurth: Where all the DNA is. Lisa: –where the DNA, your code for life is– Dr Yurth: Right. Lisa: And these are talking backwards and forwards to each other to keep the health of the cell good. And then when we do autophagy, or mitophagy, we're getting rid of the damaged parts of the proteins that have been damaged through—is this through, so the damage that occurs in the cells is happening because of DNA breaks? And what are toxins and things like that, right? Dr Yurth: Exactly, these reactive oxygen species that you know, they're starting to damage the DNA too much inside the mitochondria and creating abnormal proteins. Right? So now we've created these dysfunctional proteins that are going to do damage, so the body tries to get rid of them. And it's not, I'm not gonna say there's no place for antioxidants, right? But what you have to be careful of, is sort of cycling through phases where you're off of your antioxidants, and maybe inducing more autophagy, right. So we now want a little more oxidative stress to induce this healing response to give the cell some stress, and then maybe going on antioxidants for a little while to make sure that we don't ever have too many. Lisa: Yeah, if you've gotten a lot of antioxidants, or sorry, or oxidative stress, because maybe you're exercising a heck of a lot or you've had an infection, or you've got something other high stress... Dr Yurth: You eat like crap, or you're fat or… Then you might need extra antioxidants. And just to support the baseline of your functional health. But even those people, right, need them off and on, they should not be constantly. They should do phases, right? They should cycle it. I'm just a big advocate with diet, with exercise with everything, everything's done so quickly. Because we want to go through phases all the time, where we're getting rid of bad stuff, and then regrowing and getting rid of bad stuff and regrowing. Right? It’s just like cleaning your house. You got to get rid of all the crap, but then you're gonna… Lisa: Bring the new groceries. Dr Yurth: Yeah, right. It's get cluttered again. And then you got to go clean it all out again, and things get cluttered again. Yeah, I mean, that's the world's clutter wouldn't happen, but it does, right. Even the most pristine non hoarder person, there's still clutter that happens, and you still have to do your spring clean outs. And that's—so I like to think about the body in the same way, you know, going into the spring clean outs where you go through a big autophagy phase where you're fasting, we're using hydro spermidine, where you're using things that will help to really clear out all the bad cells, all these damage, mitochondria that are producing too many reactive oxygen species, right? And then going through growth phases, where where I'm now maybe I'm inducing a little bit more toxic stress, I'm exercising harder, I'm lifting more weights, I'm running more, right, I'm inducing more oxidative stress. Maybe I'm eating more calories during that time. Now there's more oxidative stress cells a little bit stressed that actually initiate some growth and some healing. Right. And then I can do the same thing over and over again. But there's really interesting new research leads when you kind of look at ‘Okay, well, how does this all make sense’? So it's probably going to come down more to this. This is what's called the MPTP or mitochondrial permeability transition pore. And what they've now found is that that's probably where we need to focus is this little pore is letting stuff in back and forth through the mitochondria. So the right amount of things get through. So we know this little pore opens and closes. As we're in worse health, or older, it stays open longer, allowing more bad things to go In and out. So it's designed to open periodically, closed periodically. So for brief periods. So what a lot of focus now is on anti-ageing. And mitochondrial health is focusing a little bit on this mitochondrial transition pore. In fact, there's a really cool study just came out where they're actually taking out these mitochondria and actually changing the pore structure for treating cancer. So they can actually make the pores in these cancer cells more permeable, so they can get drugs with a little nanobot that's poking holes in the mitochondria. But on our home base, is what we really would rather do is keep these little mitochondrial transition pores closed most of the time, let them open periodically. So there's some interesting things that do that, melatonin does that? Oh, so higher dose melatonin seems to work primarily on this pore to actually regulate keeping it closed more often. So it’s spermidine, that's one way spermidine induces cellular or mitochondrial biogenesis is by restoring this pore structure. Lisa: And we're big into augmenting spermidine. I've just got my first shipment, I'm working on getting that down here guys. Dr Yurth: Spermidine is kind of amazing. Because it really is so good for mitophagy, getting rid of bad mitochondria, but also mitochondrial biogenesis probably because it does focus a little bit more on this pore. Making more mitochondria, right. Right, make more mitochondria, we need more mitochondria. The other thing interesting, I don't know how many of—how you or your listeners have looked at things like minocycline, right? Antibiotic, we always think antibiotics are bad, right? Yeah. Well, interestingly, minocycline and doxycycline. And minocycline is a little bit better, probably actually has a very nice anti-ageing effect, used periodically, to actually close off these pores, and let the cell kind of develop and grow more than mitochondria grow more. So minocycline has a really distinct effect on the mitochondrial transition pore as well, for this permeability pore. So there are a few simple things that you can use, and I like. Lisa: And it doesn't want your good microbes and stuff when you take them. Dr Yurth: You know, definitely antibiotics have the downside of changing the gut microbiome. And we know that there's downsides to that, which is why you're not going to stem minocycline all the time. But like anything, it appears to have some very significant benefits in our cell health. So by doing that, maybe twice a year, doing like a 10-day course of minocycline, you can actually restore cell health. Now, after that, do you have to really work on gut health? Probably depends on how bad your gut is. So if my gut is super healthy, it's probably gonna regenerate, divide, right? Otherwise, it would, I have a lot and I know you're really interested in some gut microbiome stuff. Because you're gonna be a really—you're gonna see a really big connection coming up here soon between the gut microbiome and mitochondria even. But we know the gut microbiome is most affected by butyrate. So using tributyrate, which is sort of pre-butyrate that can turn to be right in your intestine. So if I had somebody on an antibiotic, do I throw—I'm just gonna throw probiotics into the mix? Well, no, because the probiotics aren't gonna survive. So what you have to do is first throw butyrate into the mix. Remember what the good bacteria in our gut do that we eat fiber? The anaerobic bacteria. Turn that fiber into butyrate. Butyrate has all these far reaching effects. Number one, it's imperative for the colonocytes, the colon cells to be healthy, that's what they—that's what they use for energy is butyrate. So they're different from your other cells, they use butyrate for energy. So when they use butyrate, for energy, I have these nice healthy colonocytes, they create a nice anaerobic environment where my anaerobes can thrive. And they can make more butyrate. And you have this nice cycle. But butyrate has some really interesting effects. There was a great study for your distance runners using butyrate to increase performance. Because higher levels of gut butyrate also seemed to help the cell, the mitochondria, and actually produce you actually, were able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism by having higher levels of butyrate. Lisa: Was it like yeah, the athletes with keto. Yeah, because butyrate is like, isn't butter got butyrate in it? Or am I? Butyrate, butter. Dr Yurth: Oh, butter. So butter does have butyrate in it, yes. So you can even increase butyrate by eating a whole lot of butter. You'd be—so your medium chain triglycerides, the short chain fatty acids do have butyric acid in them. The problem with when you eat butyric acid, when you eat butyrate, it doesn't really reach this lower intestine very well. Okay, and so even though it has some benefits, probably some other places, you really have to get the gut bacteria. And so the only way to really get butyrate to the lower intestine is either to take a pre-butyrate form, which is I like tributyrin, one has research behind it, or to use it rectally. So that's the other thing you can do is use it rectally. Lisa: Okay, then that gets direct into the colon and then can get the right to the cells there. Dr Yurth: Yeah, and this actually has a genetic—do you remember your PGC alpha gene? So when you get hired to get butyrate, you actually upregulate PGC alpha. And that's one of the things that improves aerobic endurance in your long distance athletes. You can actually—they did a study with butyrate on improving endurance in sort of your distance runners, your higher level endurance athletes, and besides, it's significant improvements. Also in race horses. Same thing. So butyrate does affect mitochondria in other places, including skeletal muscle, and around that. So there is this big connection that we're just learning about between the gut microbiome and mitochondria. So if I'm going to put somebody into minocycline. I'm going to also make sure I have them on tributyrate so I'm keeping that nice anaerobic metabolism going. I'm making sure I'm getting butyrate to myself. Now I've repaired the mitochondria. I've given it another source to work better. And I'm going to have overall better endurance, better health, better aerobic metabolism. Better Vo2max. Lisa: Yeah, wow, that's just crazy. So butyrate—but if we just taking butyric acid or in through butter or that type of thing. Brother just arrived in the background. It’s all good. Podcast life. At least the cat’s not running from down as well. So butyric acid, when I take it in the form of say medium chain triglycerides or butter and stuff, it's not going to help my colonocytes and my colon, but I still get through to the mitochondria and help. Dr Yurth: Yeah. I mean, there's significant benefits to it, but you really want to replenish the butyrate in the lower intestine, where you really need that for overall health. You really have to either do it rectally, or take it as a pro butyrate or a pre-butyrate form or tributyrin– Lisa: Tributyrin. I'll put that in the links. Dr Yurth: You know what is interesting, my patients who have the worst, now are the sickest, like I take care tributyrate. I have no problems with it. I'm fine. I feel good and most people. But if you're sick or not well or have a bad gut and you take it, you'll feel pretty miserable. Because you actually can't turn it into butyrate very well and it actually causes a lot of GI distress. So some of those really sick people the only way to replenish butyrate first is to do a rectal suppository. So you can get rectal suppositories of butyrate right. You do like a high dose, like two grams of a rectal suppository, butyrate, replenish the butyrate then you throw like a spore probiotic or probiotic and now I've created this nice anaerobic environment I've replaced the good bacteria. Now actually they do fine as a maintenance with the tributyrate now that I've restored the gut health. For people who are not well, and I'll tell you, if any of you patients or your people, you talk to your clients, you talk to them use him take tributyrin, and they get they're like, ‘Oh, I'm nauseous, I can't take it’, or ‘Gives me diarrhea’, but it's because they have a bad gut and you've got to work, you know, right? Yeah. So tells you, right, that you need to replenish the butyrate. And again, the only way to do is rectally. Lisa: Can you buy that as a consumer without a doctor who's until…. Dr Yurth: But there is a company and I don't know that, here in the US that's called MitoZen. That does make a pro-butyrate, it's a suppository. It's a two-week course, you have a high dose butyrate and it's actually pretty cool as a spore biotic mixed in. So I use that product a lot. It's on the pricey side like all this stuff. But I really find like a two week course of it. People do pretty well. All you do is two weeks of it, and then you can get them into the oral much less expensive form. The rectal butyrate smells bad. One of my patients, like ‘All my dogs are following me everywhere’. Other people—when you're doing I don't think other people can smell it on you but you can kinda smell it when you do it. It’s kind of like urine. Some people don't like the smell of, I don't mind the smell of that, but some people say they don't like the smell of that either. Lisa: Okay, men and tributyrate, so if he’s not really sick, so if they’re really sick. So if you've got something like Crohn's disease, or IBS, or something– Dr Yurth: Those people you wanna do the rectal, and they do amazing. I will tell you, they do amazing. There's a big stage just coming out with Crohn's being a mitochondrial disorder, too. It's got mitochondrial disorder, but IBS, your SIBO patients, you put them on the rectal butyrate, two weeks so that they do absolutely amazing. Honestly, it's incredible how well they do in a lot of illnesses. I mean, it's been our go to for a whole lot of different disorders. And it's amazing how well it works. As you're learning the gut is everything. And now we're learning it may even be imperative to the mitochondria. Lisa: So how does it connect with mitochondria? So that piece here I've sort of like, haven't quite got in my head. How does—like you said, mitochondria are the basis of health, because they are the ones that are producing the energy for the cell, talking to the nucleus, they're causing this cascade of different events in the cell. They're actually producing ATP, which is our energy. So if you look at things like say, as you get older, your EGFR goes down, your function of your kidneys, in other words, starts to deteriorate. And this is, as an ultra endurance athlete, we smash the crap out of my kidneys with rhabdomyolysis a hundred times. I've had real battles getting my EGFR back up and managed it to quite a good degree, but it's still a problem. And as we get older, we sort of lose about 1% a year they say, of kidney function. So then it’s just another example of it's actually the mitochondria that in this case, and the kidney cells that are not able to do their energy production to do what the kidney cells should be doing. So how can we reverse that train and get our kidneys working in this case, or our brain or in another case, or heart cells? All of these areas are affected by the mitochondrial function. And how does that link connect to the gut situation? Dr Yurth: So it connects to the butyrate because what butyrate does, at the mitochondrial level, is increases PGC-1 alpha and AMPK. And so you're, you're inducing on a genetic basis, a better oxidative capacity, right? So you're restoring the oxidative capacity to the cell, the mitochondria healthier. And so it's really working—the butyrate and searching fatty acids are really working on a genetic level, probably primarily at PGC-1alpha, I think we'll probably find more and more because this is very new. But it looks like that PGC-1 alpha is where it's happening is a very distinct effect on mitochondria. And then the AMPK through the ACC pathway. So basically, I think, if you think about it, probably from your training and everything, think about it as an epigenetic influence changing genetic output, right. So that's probably where the short term fatty acids are working in terms of mitochondrial health, I think there's going to be more to that story. You're right, kidney disease brain to these, everything comes down to we have to have mitochondrial health. So exactly what you said, first, have a healthy gut, let's replace the butyrate. Because we know that that's important for those pathways, then, what we have to do is go through phases where we really induce mitophagy. That's where you're fasting and your spermidine comes in, right. So we've got to basically induce, get rid of all the bad mitochondria. So that's gonna induce mitophagy right. So get rid of all the bad stuff. And then we want to do more of a build up phase. So what I'll do is all patients go through different courses, 6-12 weeks of really kind of more real time food restrictions, and using spermidine at a higher dose, and I'll get them sort of clean slate right. Now I want to regrow and that's where I want to actually regrow in. So I'm gonna have them now, get a little bit less out of eat a little bit more a little less calorie deficit, I want to create a little bit of oxidative stress because now I'm going to induce those humanin-like peptides, those mitochondrial peptides, my MOTS-c, SS-31, the small humanin-like peptides, humanin itself. So we know that those are so imperative for ageing, and that when those peptides are released, they induce your nucleus to have a healthier genome. So now I'm going to have everything else be healthier, because it's going to send messages back to the mitochondria, mitochondria is going to be healthy, but then that's gonna get overwhelmed after a while. So then we go back into our, you know. So when you think of things that way, always that sort of breakdown-cleanup, breakdown-cleanup, kind of an easier way to live right? Don't get bored. Always live in this super restricted capacity. Lisa: Especially with calorie restriction and things. Dr Yurth: Yeah, like caloric restriction and right eating very low calories. Yeah. Lisa: It makes you miserable too. Dr Yurth: That’s right. And so when you can tell—when you tell people listen, I want you to do this for 12 weeks, and then we're gonna let you kind of, you know, have a little me, I'm not gonna tell them go eat cake, but we're gonna be able to, you know, do a little bit more and go through growth phases. And people feel better, and they look better and they have more muscle mass, if you're always in that AMPK state right, that break down, but not really break down state but that more longevity stat, more catabolic state more, yeah. Which is good for longevity, right? But when you look at those people, they always look so healthy. I'll look at someone's people. And you're like, I mean, sometimes they don't have much muscle mass, their hair is thinner. So we do want to go through these phases where we allow the body to kind of grow a little bit, right, especially if you want some muscle, we know that muscle is imperative to health. And thenI think we're sort of in the long term now they've got the mitochondria in this good homeostatic balance state where I've gotten it, but how do I keep that reactive oxygen species as low as possible? That's going to be where you look at them. That mitochondrial transitional pore, where, how do I keep that balance? And I think that's where maybe a lower dose spermidine every day, like one or two tablets every day of spermidine but I love melatonin for that purpose. Lisa: I wanted to come back to melatonin. So I understood like melatonin—I was a little bit hesitant to take melatonin because it can change or can fix your circadian rhythms and so on. But after listening to you a couple of times talking about melatonin, why is it not a problem then? Do we take it at nighttime? And what sort of dosages do we need to take? Dr Yurth: It’s interesting. I mean, we will dose—so for my osteoarthritis patients who have, for instance, high levels, most patients who have diffuse arthritis, or degenerative discs have very high levels of a cytokine called interleukin 1 beta. Interleukin 1 beta is very damaging in mitochondria, that's probably one of the reasons you get cell death and, and your chondrocytes all die off. So one of the things we know blocks interleukin 1 beta is higher dose melatonin. We also know that that's very anti-cancer, right? Probably for the same reason it's creating this balance, this homeostatic reaction in the mitochondria. So I actually like, in those patients, high dose melatonin, a high dose melatonin sounds interesting. Unlike the lower dose melatonin, it sometimes actually has more of a stimulating effect. But it actually does help restore your own circadian balance at a higher dose. I have a lot of people who take it in the morning, because if they take it at night, they actually are stimulated by it. If you take in the morning, they're sleepy at bedtime, and they sleep through the night. While I'm working with your own. Your super charismatic nucleus and tinea, we're kind of brain level, a kind of balance you back out. Lisa: So what sort of level is like, I'm at the moment, just me personally, anecdotally, I'm taking a five milligram dose of melatonin at night time to optimise my sleep. And is that a low dose? Is that or is that a high? Yeah, what is the high dose? Dr Yurth: So high dose is like 20 milligrams. We use the high doses in our people who have osteoarthritis primarily, cancer, we use high dose melatonin, especially your breast cancer patients will use high dose melatonin. So we'll use that, you know, as a trigger adjunct. Not always, you really have to kind of work with people, there's people who do great take in at night. One of my sons does great, it's 20 milligrams of melatonin at night. Sleeps through the night and wake up early in the morning. Me, I actually take it in the morning. If I take it at night, I'm wide awake all night. But if I take in the morning, I have a really nice, good sleep with good deep sleep on my Oura ring. I get a good hour and a half of deep sleep. So it seems very different in different people and how it's interacted. And I'm sure that has to do a lot with kind of genetic, what are your clock genes? So I think that that probably has a little bit of a genetic influence. And I do have people who just don't follow—can only tolerate very low dose. You know, but we're finding more and more reasons to be very cautious with oh, you don't really want to take more than three to five milligrams of melatonin. Yeah, really finding that the higher doses seem to have a very advantageous effect on... Lisa: Without putting your body clock out. You're super right. Dr Yurth: Actually, potentially really benefiting your body clock, your circadian rhythm, which is critically important. And right now, that's one of the sort of easy things we can do that we know is going to be working. And as I said, I think what—it's going to come down to when we look at this mitochondria, it's not going to be trying to figure out what is my perfect dose of antioxidants. It's gonna be figuring out how do I get that mitochondria with the pores, letting the good stuff in, letting the bad stuff out? Yeah, in the right sequence because we know that, for instance, cancer cells that port stays open all the time. There's this very imbalance in this other mitochondria are really getting all this stuff all the time. So we know that a huge factor to health is trying to restore this normal port. I think that we're—there's a drug that's coming out. I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but that will probably be actually really, if we can get it will be actually really interesting. It's actually coming out for the treatment of ALS. But that looks like it might be really helpful for that pore. Lisa: They’re shutting the mitochondrial pore. Dr Yurth: Yeah, I mean, if that will be something we can get. I don't know. But we'll find more things. Like I said, I think minocycline is a really nice thing to go to, like twice a year, I'll use a 10-day minocycline course, really benign. Lisa: Minocycline. How do you spell it? Dr Yurth: So, minocycline, M-I-N-O-C-Y-C-L-I-N-E. Cheap antibiotics. I mean, it's like a $10 antibiotic. Right. And that has, but it has really—and it's been looked at in the anti-ageing field for a while, but we kind of weren't so clear of its effect on the mitochondria. Well, now we actually have found it's actually working on this pore, to actually balance out and keep the pore closed more, which is what you really want. When we're young, the pore is not open as much as it does when we’re old, there's less bad stuff coming through the mitochondria. Lisa: So itis getting porous, isn't it? So basically, the membrane is getting porous. Dr Yurth: Exactly, that's probably where—like some of the mitochondria peptides like SS-31, which was the cardia lipid membrane, which helps them that endoplasmic reticulum inside the mitochondria to be healthy. So that's why peptides like that are so beneficial. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. And there's lots of, you know, we can't get these fancy peptides, unfortunately, that easily. The caveolae pan is an enzyme that is a very important enzyme for us. It's a stabilising enzyme, isn't it? So, we want more of this and this is what one of these peptides is right. And so hopefully, there's going to be more research around that and more drugs even coming out around that. Dr Yurth: Yeah, and remember that one of the ways we induce some of these mitochondrial peptides is exercise. Right? MOTS-c is a little bit of stress for our body, right and so it reduces the mitochondria to produce some of these mitochondrial peptides. MOTS-c which is kind of considered exercise in a bottle because you can actually give at least mice you can give them MOTS-c— basically this mitochondrial peptide and it acts just like exercise. Lisa: Exercise hermetic. Dr Yurth: Yeah. So it's very cool. Of course, it's very expensive and... But way cheaper to go exercise, but it's a nice thing to offer people who can't exercise for some reason. Like, you'll have an injury or elderly people who are just so sarcopenic and trying to get them to do anything until you build a little bit of muscle is almost impossible. So things like that are going to be really nice in that realm as peptides like MOTS-c. There's a whole company here that is actually just working on these mitochondrial peptides as drugs for treating things like this. Right now, we know that one of the best ways to produce MOTS-c is to exercise, stimulates your mitochondria to be a little stressed. Mitochondria produces more MOTS-c. MOTS-c helps with glucose metabolism, it helps with fat loss, it helps with turning white fat into brown fat helps. It helps with kind of overall aero metabolism. Lisa: Just briefly on that. What is white fat versus brown adipose tissue, you know, brown fat? And why is brown metabolically active? Dr Yurth: Yeah, so you know, white fats what—that fat we get as we get older and you know, it's really doing nothing beneficial. Brown fat is what little kids have, right? Brown fats—we look at babies or you look at little kids and they have that little chubbiness. Well, that's usually brown fat. Why? You know, maybe boys made fun because I'm always cold and so I'm way overdressed. My kids, but little kids don't get nearly as cool. We don't have to like them quite so bundled up as we do, because they're really covered with brown fat, which is metabolically active, that's what it was designed for. And when you're born you have this brown fat, you can stay warm. I mean, really, we were meant for survival, right? These babies who are born, they need something to keep them you know. Also there when you were caveman and you were just laying there in the cave, you survived. So brown fat is metabolically active, it's helping for warmth and heat production. It's actually burning calories. White fat is what we get as we get older and we just eat too much and we sit around too much. And all it does is coat our organs and do nothing beneficial. So brown fat actually you can convert white adipose to brown adipose, so you can turn it into metabolically active tissue. Then you're actually going to be able to burn more calories and you'll be way more metabolically active. You actually want brown fat. You can convert white fat to brown fat. You know, and that's probably does come down to—that's one of the things that when you looked at butyrate it was one of the places that butyrate actually worked was actually helping to convert more brown fat and white fat. So there was a big problem putting people on butyrate can really help with fat loss using butyrate and if you're overweight people who are all have metabolic their guts are horrible. Yeah, uterine those patients can really help with fat loss. Lisa: I just had Dr Austin Perlmutter on you know, probably… And he was talking about the white fat cells, the visceral fat cells having not a consciousness but they have an ulterior motive to keep themselves alive. So they seem that all these—make you hungrier, send out inflammatory compounds and so on to make sure that they stay alive. They end up killing the host in the end. But like a cancer cell, they although they have their own agenda independent of what was actually healthy for your body. So they don't want you to do fasting. They don't want you to do any of these things, because they're not going to get knocked off. Dr Yurth: Yeah, I mean, fat is metabolically active too. Remember it converts—fat cells have—they convert testosterone to estrogen. So men who are fatter will start converting all their testosterone into estrogen. So it's one of the places that that we have, you know, aromatase is inside fat cells. White men tend to have bigger breasts, and you know, is that fat cells actually are converting very mostly into this bad estrogen. So even your testosterone, you put them on testosterone, a lot of them just convert it to estrogen. Lisa: Wow. So that's independent of your innate genetic pathway for your hormones. Dr Yurth: Fat cells have aromatase. Fat cells have aromatase. Lisa: Oh, wow, that's—I didn't realise that. I mean, I thought your genetic pathway was your genetic pathway. And you'll be converting your testosterone to estrogen is more if you have that genetic predisposition. Dr Yurth: It's certainly genetic there. But yes, that fat guys have breasts, right? You look at breasts because they're very estrogenic. And so if you try and get—if you take some of your overweight males, and you put them on testosterone without using things to block estrogen or getting rid of fat first, then you just keep making more estrogen, making more fat. They’re making it worse, right? Lisa: So okay, so it's not just to do with your genetic pathway, but also to do with how much fat you have. And the more fat tissue the more estrogenised you’ll be. That's in the new—okay. So that's why. Because you see, a lot of young people nowadays are thinking over probably growing up with less quality food than what we grew up with in our generation, seem to be more estrogenised and have more of these issues, and the actual body shape, the phenotype, the way it secretes, is this more estrogenised than past generations? Dr Yurth: We're seeing a lot of twenty-year olds who come in, who have high estrogen levels, low testosterone levels. I think drugs have to do with that, too. I mean, here in Colorado, we have legal marijuana, which is unfortunately not very good for testosterone. Lisa: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that either. Marijuana is not good for testosterone. Dr Yurth: It's not good for testosterone levels at all. And then our food, right, bisphosphonates all these things that are so we're seeing this you know, these really young guys with testosterone levels that that you're a god awful. Lisa: And then estrogen levels higher than the... Dr Yurth: Estrogen levels that are high, right? Lisa: Yeah, I just did my estrogen levels and my—I know mine are low because I'm going through menopause and so on. And I was looking at my husband's and I was thinking, ‘Oh, it was about…’ Dr Yurth: You do start good to see that right. You start to see that these men—these older man look like woman, it switches. Yeah. You know, and they start taking on more female build, right? They get the bigger breasts and bigger bellies and they start getting this more female build to them. Lisa: I mean, I've had lots of things so that it's not it's you, going the other way and there's testosterone is good and bad. Yeah, that is what you see in older and older men is that tendency to go and eat. It's really really hard to get testosterone replacement therapy or hormone replacement therapy for men or—for woman a little bit easier. They've seen you know, the doctor seems... I am willing to give it to woman but well, this integrated medical fraternity for bioidentical hormone replacement? And, you know, it's so easy... Dr Yurth: It kind of kills me because I get this—we're putting together this course called what to fix for us to kind of help people. In this journey of getting healthy, what do I do? Because I'm overwhelmed. And as I was putting together, I was like, ‘Okay, well, you start with exercise’. And that's it. No, actually, you kind of have to start with hormones. Because if I take somebody who has no testosterone, and no hormones, they have no progesterone, so they can't sleep, they have no testosterone, this is both men and women. So you know that their joints hurt, because there's progesterone receptors on joints, they've no testosterone. So trying to get them to go into the gym, and is impossible. So for me to say, follow a good diet, do exercise without replacing hormones. It's really kind of not right, right. I mean, as I was putting together a talk, I said, you know, actually, the first thing I do is get these people hormone stabilised, because then I'm going to go to motivate another, their testosterone levels are good, they feel m
Challenges, obstacles and painful experiences — these are just some of things life throws our way when we least expect them. But no matter where you are in life right now, remember that you can push past the hard times. You can learn how to rise above life’s challenges. And if you feel lost, here’s a little secret: help others. Being of service to other people can help you find strength and a way out of your problems. In this episode, Robert Joseph Cappuccio, widely known as Bobby, joins us to share his inspiring story of defying hardships and helping others. It’s easier to succumb to self-sabotage and addiction. But you have the power to make your experiences an opportunity for change and hope. Bobby also shares the importance of helping others, especially as a business owner and leader. If you want to learn how to rise above trauma and be inspired to become a force of good to the world, then this episode is for you! 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover how to rise above adversities. Understand the importance of intention and knowing who you serve. Learn the difference between internal and external customers and why you need to start focusing on the former. Resources Gain exclusive access to premium podcast content and bonuses! Become a Pushing the Limits Patron now! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. Connect with Bobby: Website | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram The Self-Help Antidote podcast by Bobby Cappuccio PTA Global The You Project Podcast by Craig Harper The Psychology of Winning: Ten Qualities of a Total Winner by Denis Waitley Episode Highlights [05:49] Bobby’s Childhood Bobby was born with deformities. He was adopted by a man who had cancer. After Bobby’s adoptive father passed, his adoptive mother entered a relationship with a cruel man. Bobby experienced all kinds of abuse throughout his childhood on top of having Tourette’s syndrome. Doctors had to put him on Haldol, which damaged his brain. Yet, Bobby shares that these painful experiences helped him resonate with others and thrive in his industry. [12:48] How Bobby Got to Where He is Today Bobby initially wanted to become a police officer for special victims. He almost passed the written and psychological assessments, but there was an issue because of Tourette syndrome. At this time, he started working at a gym. Bobby worked hard. Eventually, he caught the eye of the gym owner, Mitchell. Mitchell became like a surrogate father and mentor to him. Listen to the full episode to hear how Mitchell shaped Bobby and put him on the path to success! [20:31] Complications from Abuse and Empathy Some adults tried to intercede for Bobby when he was being abused as a kid. However, he avoided their help because he was scared of being harmed further. You can't just leave an abuser — it's difficult, and even simply attempting can hurt you. We should understand that abuse can affect anyone. Confident and intelligent women may be particularly susceptible to abuse because they find themselves in a situation they didn’t expect. [28:58] How Abuse Isolates People Abusers progressively isolate people by creating enemies out of strong alliances. This can make someone lose their sense of self, making them more vulnerable and dependent on their abusers. Assigning fault or blame to those being abused will not help anyone. If anything, that stops people from coming forward. [30:34] Help Others to Help Yourself Bobby learned how to rise above his traumas and negative emotions. His mentor taught him to look beyond himself. It was only by helping others find a way out of their problems that Bobby found a way to help himself too. He started to focus on helping people who were going through something similar to what he went through. [33:32] Focus on the Intention While working as a trainer, Bobby focused less on the transactional side of training and more on the transformational. He wanted to help people find what they need at that moment and give them the support they need. By focusing on his intention, he was able to get high rates of retention. For Bobby, helping others means understanding their goals and wishes. [36:12] Bobby’s Promotion Bobby’s exemplary performance led him to a promotion that he didn’t want. He was scared of disappointing Mitchell. He did poorly in managing his team of trainers, which is when a consultant sat him down and gave him advice. Mitchell also had Bobby stand up and speak in team meetings. You need to know who you work for and who you serve. When your perspective is aligned with your work, you will bring that to every meeting and interaction. Are you taking care of the people you need to be responsible for? Hear how Bobby figured out his answer in the full episode! [43:14] Lessons on Leadership Companies often adopt a top-down mentality where bosses need to be followed. However, a company should not be like this. Companies are made up of people. Your business needs to care for your valuable customers, both internal and external. Treat your team members with the same level of tenacity, sincerity and intention as your external customers. You can accomplish a lot if you hire the right person, set clear expectations and understand each individual’s motivations. Through these, you can develop the team’s capacity and channel it towards a common vision. [51:19] On Recruiting the Right People David Barton hired Bobby to work as his head of training. Bobby asked David what two things Bobby should do to contribute the most to the company. David wanted Bobby to be a connoisseur of talent and to train them, train them and train them again. Bobby brought this mindset throughout his career, and it’s served him well. Don’t be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘When you know that there's somewhere you want to go, but you don't know exactly where that is. And you don't have complete confidence in your ability to get there. And what a good guy does is they help you go just as far as you can see.’ ‘We form and calibrate and shape our sense of identity in the context in which we navigate through the world off of one another. And when you're isolated with a distorted sense of reality, and you lose your sense of self, you become highly incapacitated to take action in this situation.’ ‘So I started focusing on things and a mission and people outside of myself. Who's going through something similar to what I have gone through, even if it's not precisely the same situation? How do I help them find their way out? And by helping them find their way out, I found my way up.’ ‘I never saved anyone; you can't change anyone but yourself. But the reason why he called me that is anytime someone would think about joining the gym...I approached it from a transformational perspective.’ ‘And your job is to create and keep your internal customer by serving them with at the very least with the same tenacity, sincerity and intention that you are serving your external customer. If you don't do that, you're going to be shit as a leader.’ ‘I think the only people who don't have impostor syndrome are imposters. Because if you're fraudulent, you wouldn't engage in the level of self-honesty, and humility, and conscientiousness, to go, “Am I fraudulent; is there something that I’m missing?”’ ‘Anything I've ever accomplished, it's totally through other people. It's because I hired people that were a lot smarter than me.’ About Robert Robert Joseph Cappuccio, or Bobby, is a behaviour change coach, author, consultant, speaker and fitness professional. He is a trainer of trainers and at the forefront of the life-altering and ever-evolving industry of coaching. For over two decades, he has been advocating and pushing the industry-wide and individual shift of perspective in development. Behaviour change is rooted in a holistic approach, not just goals to health and fitness. With his vision, he co-founded PTA Global. It has now become a leader in professional fitness development. No matter how successful Bobby seems, it didn't start this way. His childhood was filled with neglect, abuse and traumas that could lead anyone on the path to drinking and addiction. Bobby is no stranger to hardship and challenges, but he uses these experiences to connect and relate to others, using his past hardship as a way to help others. Bobby is also the former head of training and development at David Barton Gym, former director of professional development at the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), content curator for PTontheNet, development consultant for various companies including Hilton Hotels, Virgin Active, Equinox, David Lloyd Leisure and multiple businesses nationally and abroad. With his forward-thinking mindset and work ethic, Bobby champions practical programs that help both corporate and industry personnel, including individuals, get what they truly want. He advocates the process of change mixed in with the mantra of ‘you can be free to play’. Interested in Bobby’s work? You can check out his website and listen to his Self-Help Antidote Podcast! Reach out to Bobby on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends to offer them one way to rise above their trauma. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits, your host Lisa Tamati here, and today I have a fantastic guest all the way from America again, this man goes by the name of Bobby Cappuccio. And he is a world-famous fitness professional. He trains a lot of the trainers that are out there. But Bobby has an incredible story that I really want to share with you today. So, Bobby was born with a severe facial deformity. And he also had deformed legs, and he was given up for adoption. His mother couldn't care for him, and he ended up being adopted by another man. But he had a very, very abusive rough childhood. He also developed Tourette Syndrome at the age of nine. In all this adversity you'd think like ‘oh my gosh, what sort of a life is this guy going to live’? But Bobby has had an incredible life. He's a fitness professional, as I said, he's worked in many gyms. He was the founder and co-owner of PTA Global, which does a lot of the professional fitness development. And he has devised his own strategies and ways of educating people. And his programs are just second to none. When I told my business partner, Neil, that I just interviewed Bobby Cappuccio, he's like, ‘Oh, my God, he's a legend in the space.’ So yeah, he was really a bit jealous that I got to speak to him. So I hope you enjoy this interview. It's some rough topics in there. But there's also some really great gems of wisdom. And the funny thing is what Bobby is just absolutely hilarious as well. So I do hope you enjoy it. Before we head over to the show, though, just want to let you know that we've launched a premium membership for the podcast. This is a patron membership so that you can become a VIP member of our tribe, help support the podcast. This podcast has been going now for five and a half years. It's a labour of love, I can tell you. It takes up a huge amount of my time and resources in both getting these world-class gifts for you, and also in study and research so that I can talk really, and interview very well all these crazy, amazing doctors, scientists, elite athletes and performers. So if you want to support us in keeping the show going, and like what we do in the world, and you want to keep those valuable content being able to be put out into the world, we'd love your support. And for that, we're going to give you lots of member, premium member, benefits. So, check it out at patron.lisatamati.com. That’s patron.lisatamati.com. That’s P-A-T-R-O-N dot Lisa Tamati dot com. And I just also wanted to remind you about my new anti-ageing and longevity supplement, NMN. I’ve co-worked together with molecular biologist, Dr. Elena Seranova, to make sure that you get the best quality NMN there is now. I searched all over the world for this stuff, when I learned about it, and researched about it, and how it works and what it does in the body, and there is a huge amount of science on it. A lot of it's up on our website, if you want to do a deep dive into all things NMN and the NAD precursor, then check it out. It's all about longevity. It's all about slowing down the ageing process and even reversing the ageing process. So if that's something that interests you, and you want high performance, you want help with cardiovascular health, with neuro protection, with metabolic disorders, then this is something that you should look into as well. So check that out at nmnbio.nz, that’s nmnbio.nz, and go and check that out. The supplements have been so popular that I haven't been able to keep up with orders. So on some of the orders, there is a bit of a backorder. But bear with me while we will scale up production. But go over and check that out at nmnbio.nz. Right over to the show with Bobby Cappuccio. Lisa: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have another very, very special guest and I was recently on this gentleman's show and now we're doing a reverse interview. I have Robert Cappuccio with me. Robert, welcome to the show. Robert Cappuccio: Oh, thank you. When you say you had a very special guest, I thought you were bringing someone else on. Lisa: You are a really special guest. Robert: Had a lot of anticipation like who is this person? What a surprise! Lisa: Well, you're a bit of an interesting character. Let's say that, throw that. Robert: Just the microphone. Lisa: No, I'm really, really interested to hear your story and to share your story with my audience, and to give a bit more of a background on you. And share gems of wisdom from your learnings from your life, because you've done some pretty cool stuff. You've had some pretty hard times and I'd like to share those learnings with my audience today. So Robert, whereabouts are you sitting at the moment, whereabouts are you in the States? Robert: Okay, so at the moment, I'm in a place called Normal Heights, which is probably a misnomer. It's not normal at all. But it's a really cool, funky neighbourhood in San Diego. Lisa: San Diego, awesome. And how’s lockdown going over there, and all of that sort of carry on? Robert: Oh, it’s great. I mean, on St. Patty's day, I've got my skull from our own green. I've just had a few whiskies. So far, so good. Lisa: This is a very interesting interview. So can you give us a little bit of background? Because you've had a very interesting, shall we say, difficult upbringing and childhood. And I wanted to perhaps start there and then see where this conversation goes a little. Robert: Is there any place you want to start, in particular? How far back do you want to go? Do you want to start from the very beginning? Lisa: Please go right at the very beginning, because you're intro to your backstory is quite interesting from the beginning, really isn't that? Robert: Okay, so I was born, which is obvious, in Manhattan, and I moved to Brooklyn early. So I was born, rather deformed. I was born with a significant facial deformity. And my lower extremities, my legs, quite never— like, if you saw my legs now, they're great. I have a great pair of legs at this moment. I'm not going to show you that because that would be a little bit rude. But my legs were kind of deformed and contorted. I had to walk with braces for the first couple of years of my life. I was given up for adoption. I'm not exactly sure, I have the paperwork on why I was given up for adoption, but I'm not really certain about the authenticity of that story. And I wasn't adopted for a while. So as an infant, I was parentless and homeless and really not well-tended to. I'm not going to get into why I say that because it's pretty disgusting. And then I was adopted. And then my adoptive father, this is kind of interesting, he had cancer, and he knew during the adoption process that he was probably not going to make it. He wanted to make sure that I found a home because nobody wanted to adopt me. Because when they came in, I was physically deformed. It's like, ‘Oh, this baby’s, it's broken. Something's wrong. Do you have a better baby’? And when he saw that, he thought, ‘Right, I've got to give this kid a home.’ So he passed. He passed when I was two. I didn't know him for more than a few months. And I hardly have any memory of him at all. My mother who adopted me, to be fair, she's developmentally disabled, and so she was a single uom with not a lot of skills, not a lot of prospects, terrified. And she basically, I think she met a guy when I was five, who I don't know if there's a diagnosis for him. He was mentally disturbed. He was a psychopath. I don't know if clinically he’s a psychopath, but that's pretty much how it felt. Lisa: You were a child experiencing this. Yeah. Robert: Yeah, I'm not like, I'm never sure in what direction to go with stuff like this. Never sure what’s valid, what's relevant. I spent my childhood in stressed positions, being woken up in the middle of the night with a pillow over my face, having bones broken consistently, and a series of rape, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and just every sort of trauma. Like imagine when I was nine years old, I was diagnosed, on top of that, with Tourette Syndrome. So I was physically deformed, going through shit like that at home. And then on top of it, I started losing control of my bodily functions. I started exhibiting tics, I started exhibiting obsessive compulsive behaviour. At some point, it was uncontrollable, like lack of control of my impulses, of the things that I would say, vulgarity. At some point, the doctors just thought that perhaps I was Scottish. Lisa: And you’re funny as well. Robert: And they put me on Haldol, which damaged my brain. That and the fact that, it's estimated, I've had at least over a half a dozen major concussions within my childhood — Lisa: From the abuse. Robert: — half a dozen to a dozen massive concussions. Yeah. Lisa: Absolute horrific start into life. Robert: When I was 10, I started binge drinking. And I thought this will help, this is a solution. But you know what? It's not. It's a little bit weird when you start a story off like this, because in some sense, it's not me being delusional, or Pollyanna, because I tend to think that I'm a little bit of a realist, sometimes too much, sometimes to the point of walking a fine edge between being hopeful and being a cynic. But I have to say that a lot of things that I experienced when I was growing up, turned out to be quite beneficial. It’s shaped me in a way and it helped me engage in certain career paths and certain activities that I don't think I really would have sought out, had this stuff not happened. So it's not like me, delusionally trying to create like all silver lining about stuff, it was shit. I understand the severity of what I went through. But I also understand where that led me. And I understand the good fortune that I had of running into certain people that resonated with me, and I resonated with them, largely in part because of my history. I don't think I would have related to these people had I not come from where I came from. Lisa: So you’re talking like people along the way that were, ended up being mentors, or teachers or friends or helping you out and through these horrific situations? Is that what you're meaning, sort of thing that would actually helped you? Because I mean, given a background like that, if you were a complete disaster and drug addict, and whatever, nobody would blame you. You didn't have a good start in life, whatsoever. I mean, look at you now. Obviously you don't have any facial deformities, and you don't exhibit, right now, any of that stuff that actually you were and have been through. So how the hell did you get to where you are today? Because you're a very successful person, you have a very successful and a very strong influence in the world. What, how the heck do you go from being that kid, with brain problems and concussions and Tourette’s and abuse and rape and all of that, to being the person who comes across as one, number one, hilarious, very crazy and very cool? How the heck do you get from there to there? Lisa: Just listening to, I can tell that you're someone who's highly intelligent, perceptive and an amazing judge of humour. So thank you for that. I think a lot of it was quite accidental. So I had thought when I was younger, that I wanted to be a police officer, originally. And I wanted to be involved with special victims, even before that was a TV show. Brilliant show, by the way, one of my favourite shows on TV. But even before that was the TV show, I thought, if I'm going through what I went through, and it's very hard because I had Child Services in New York City, they were called ACS. They were at my house consistently. But the problem is, I believed at a young age that my stepfather was nearly invincible, like nobody could touch him. Lisa: You were powerless against him. Yeah. Robert: And when they came to the house and like, look, I had broken bones, my arm was in a sling. A lot of times, I broke my tibia. They won't take me to the hospital because they thought they would suspect stepdad of doing it. I couldn't even walk. And these people were sitting down, said, ‘Well just tell us what happened.’ And I somehow knew that, at a critical moment, my adopted mother would falter. She would not have my back. She would rescind on everything she says. Lisa: She was frightened too, no doubt. Robert: She was frightened. I don't think she had the emotional or intellectual capacity to deal with the situation. That's all I'll say on that. But I knew once they left, I just knew they couldn't do anything, unless I was all-in. And if anything went wrong, he would kill me. So I would have to just say that, ‘Well, I fell.’ And it’s like, there's no way a fork, like I would go into camp and I would have stab wounds in the shape of a fork. And people are like, ‘What happened?’ And I said, ‘I was walking, and I tripped, and I fell onto a fork that went through my thigh and hit my femur.’ It's like, okay, that's just not possible. But I kind of knew. And I kind of felt like nobody's coming to the rescue. And I thought, if I was a police officer, and I was worked with special victims, maybe I could be the person that I always wished would show up for me. But then, there were issues with that. So I think I got like, out of a possible 100 on the police test. I did fairly well. I think I got 103, there were master credit questions. And I thought, right, yeah, I'm going. And then I took the psychological and by some weird measure, I passed, that seems crazy to me now. It kind of seems problematic. I think they need to revisit that. But then when I took the medical, and with Tourette's, it was kind of like, ‘Ah, yeah.’ It was a sticking point. So I had to petition because otherwise I would be disqualified from the employment police department. And during that time, I started working in the gyms. And when I was working the gyms, I kind of thought, there's no way I'll ever be as intelligent as some of these other trainers here. I'm just going to make up with work ethic what I lack in intellect. I would run around and just tried to do everything I could. I would try to clean all the equipment, make sure that the gym was spotless. But again, kind of like not like having all my wits about me, I would be spraying down a machine with WD-40. And what I didn't account for is, the person who was on the machine next to me, I'd be spraying him in the face with WD-40 when he was exercising. Lisa: They still do that today, by the way. The other day in the gym and the girl next to me, she was blind, and she was just spraying it everywhere. I had to go and shift to the other end of the gym, is that right, cause I don't like that stuff. Robert: I mean, in my defence, the members were very well-lubricated. And so, people would go upstairs, and like there is this fucking trainer just sprayed me in the face. And the owner would say, ‘All right, let me see who this guy is. What do you talk? This doesn’t even make sense? Who hired this guy?’ We kind of had like the old bowl, the pin. And like you could walk up top and look down into the weight room, and there I was just running around. And there was something about someone running around and hustling on the gym floor that made him interested. He's like, ‘Get this kid up into my office. Let me talk to him.’ And that forged a friendship. I spoke to him yesterday, by the way. So we've been friends for like three decades. And the owner of the gym became kind of like a surrogate dad. And he did for me what most guides do and that is when you know that there's somewhere you want to go, but you don't know exactly where that is, and you don't have complete confidence in your ability to get there. And what a good guy does is they help you go just as far as you can see, because when you get there, you'll see further. And that's what Mitchell did for me. And he was different because I have a lot of adults. So I grew up with not only extreme violence in the home, but I grew up in Coney Island. I grew up living on the corner of Shit Street and Depressing. And there was a constant violence outside the home and in school and I got picked on. And I got bullied until I started fighting, and then I got into a lot of fights. And you just have these adults trying to talk to you and it's like, you don't fucking know me. You have no idea where I come from. You can't relate to me. When you were growing up, you had a home, you were being fed. You were kind of safe, don't even pretend to relate to me. And he was this guy, who, he was arrested over a dozen times by age 30, which was not why I chose him as a mentor. But he had gone through some serious shit. And when he came out on the other end of it, he wanted to be somebody other than his history would suggest he was going to be, and he tried harder at life than anybody I had ever met. So one, I could relate to him, I didn't think he was one of these adults who are just full of shit. I was impressed at how hard he tried to be the person he wanted to be. So there was this mutual respect and affinity, instantly. Lisa: Wow. And he had a massive influence. And we all need these great coaches, mentors, guides, surrogate dads, whatever the case may be, to come along, sometimes in our lives. And when they do, how wonderful and special that is, and someone that you could respect because like you say, I've had a wonderful childhood. In comparison to you, it was bloody Disneyland, and so I cannot relate to some of those things. And I have my own little wee dramas, but they were minor in comparison to what you experienced in the world. So how the heck can I really help you out if you're a young kid that I'm trying to influence. And not that you have to go through everything in order to be of help to anybody, but just having that understanding that your view, your worldview is a limited, privileged background. Compared to you, my background is privileged. Robert: Well, I don't think there's any ‘compared to you’. I think a lot of my reaction to adults around me who tried to intercede — one, if your intercession doesn't work, it's going to get me hurt, bad, or it's going to get me killed. There have been times where I was hung out of an 18-storey window by my ankles. Lisa: You have got to be kidding me. Robert: Like grabbing onto the brick on the side of the building. I can't even say terrified. I don't even know if that encapsulates that experience as a kid. But it's like you don't understand what you can walk away from once you feel good about interceding with this poor, unfortunate kid. I cannot walk away from the situation that you're going to create. So it was defensive mechanism, because pain is relative. I mean, like, you go through a divorce, and you lose this love and this promise, and somebody comes along, ‘Oh there are some people in the world who never had love, so you should feel grateful’. You should fuck off because that's disgusting. And that is totally void of context. I don't think somebody's pain needs to compare to another person's pain in order to be relevant. I think that was just my attitude back then because I was protecting my existence. I've really changed that perspective because, like, my existence isn't threatened day to day anymore. Lisa: Thank goodness. Robert: So I have a different take on that. And I understand that these adults were well meaning, because I also had adults around me, who could have probably done something, but did nothing. And I don't even blame them because my stepfather was a terrifying person. And the amount of work and energy, and the way the laws, the structure, and how threatening he was, I don't blame them. And me? I’ll probably go to prison. But I don't blame them for their inaction. Lisa: Yeah, and this is a problem. Just from my own experiences, like I said, this is not even in childhood, this is in young adulthood, being in an abusive relationship. The dynamic of the stuff that's going on there, you're frightened to leave. You know you are going to be in physical danger if you try and leave. So, I've been in that sort of a position but not as a child. But still in a position where people will think, ‘Well, why don't you just go?’ And I’m just like, ‘Have you ever tried to leave someone who's abusive? Because it's a very dangerous thing to do.’ And you sometimes you’re like, just, you can't, if there's children involved, even, then that's even worse. And there's complicated financial matters. And then there's, whatever the case may be or the circumstances that you're facing, it's not cut and dried. And as an adult, as a powerful woman now, I wouldn't let myself be in a position like that. But I wasn't that back then. And you weren't because well, you were a child. See, you're even more. Robert: I just want to comment on that a little bit. And this is not coming from clinical expertise. This is just coming from my own interpretation experience. I think, obviously, that when a child goes through this, you would think, ‘Okay, if this started at age five, what could you have done?’ But a lot of times we do look at, let's say, women who are in severe domestic violence situations, and we say, ‘Well, how could you have done that? How could you have let somebody do that to you’? And I think we need to really examine that perspective. Because powerful, confident, intelligent women might be especially susceptible. Lisa: Apparently, that’s the case. Robert: Because you have a track record, and you have evidence to support that you are capable, and you're intelligent, and you find yourself in a situation that you didn't anticipate. And I think it's easier to gaslight someone like that. Because it's like, ‘How could I have had a lapse — is it me?’ And it creeps up on you, little by little, where you doubt yourself a little bit more, a little bit more, and then you become more controlled and more controlled. And then your perspective on reality becomes more and more distorted. So I think we have to be very careful when an adult finds themselves, yes, in that position, saying, ‘Well, why didn't you just leave? How could you have let yourself very easily?’ It can happen to anyone, especially if you have a strong sense of confidence and you are intelligent, and because it becomes unfathomable to you, how you got into that situation. Lisa: Looking back on my situation, which is years and years ago now, and have no consequences to the gentleman that I was involved with, because I'm sure he's moved on and hopefully, not the same. But the fact that it shifted over many years, and the control shifted, and the more isolated you became. I was living in a foreign country, foreign language, unable to communicate with my family, etc., etc. back then. And you just got more and more isolated, and the behaviour’s become more and more, more radical ways as time goes on. It doesn't stop there. Everybody's always lovely at the beginning. And then, as the power starts to shift in the relationship — and I've listened to a psychologist, I’ve forgotten her name right now, but she was talking about, she works with these highly intelligent, educated women who are going through this and trying to get out of situations where they shouldn't be in. And she said, ‘This is some of the common traits. They're the types of people who want to fix things, they are the types of people who are strong and they will never give up.’ And that is actually to their detriment, in this case. And I'm a very tenacious type of person. So, if I fall in love with someone, which you do at the beginning, then you're like, ‘Well, I'm not giving up on this person. They might need some help, and some, whatever’. And when you're young, you think you can change people, and you can fix them. And it took me a number of years to work out and ‘Hang on a minute, I haven't fixed them, I’ve screwed myself over. And I've lost who I am in the process.’ And you have to rebuild yourself. And like you and like your case is really a quite exceptionally extreme. But like you, you've rebuilt yourself, and you've created this person who is exceptional, resilient, powerful, educated, influential — Robert: And dysfunctional. Lisa: And dysfunctional at the same time. Hey, me, too. Robert: And fucked up in 10 different ways. Lisa: Yeah. Hey, none of us have got it right. As our mutual friend, Craig Harper would say, ‘We're just differing degrees of fucked-up-ness’. Robert: That would be spot on. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And totally, some of the most high functioning people that I get to meet, I get to meet some pretty cool people. There's hardly any of them that don't have some area in their life where they've got that fucked-up-ness that's going on, and are working on it, because we're all works in progress. And that's okay. Robert: The thing you said that I really caught is you lost your sense of self, and the isolation. And that is what abusers do, is progressively they start to isolate, and create enemies out of strong alliances and allies. And when you lose your sense of self, and you're so isolated — because as much as we want to be strong and independent, we are highly interdependent, tribal people. We form and calibrate, we shape our sense of identity and the context in which we navigate through the world off of one another. And when you're isolated with a distance sense of reality and you lose your sense of self, you become highly incapacitated to take action in this situation. And you develop, I think what Martin Seligman, called learned helplessness. And I think assigning fault or blame or accusation either to yourself or doing that to somebody else, not only does that not help, it stops people from coming forward. Because it reinforces the mental state that makes them susceptible to perpetual abuse in the first place. Lisa: Yeah, it's so true. So how did you start to turn around? So you meet Mitchell, Mitchell was his name, and he started to be a bit of a guiding light for you and mentor you, and you're in the gym at this phase stage. So, what sort of happened from there on and? So what age were you at this point, like, your teenage years, like teenagers or? Robert: I met Mitchell when I was like 19 years old. And what he allowed me to do, and it wasn't strategies, he allowed me to focus outside of myself. Because every emotion, every strong emotion you're feeling, especially in a painful way, resides within you. So if you feel a sense of despair, or you feel disgust, or loneliness, or isolation, or any type of pain, and you would look around your room and go, ‘Well, where's that located? Where's my despair? I searched my whole desk, I can't find it’. It's not there. It's not in your outer world. It's your inner world. And what he gave me the ability to do is say, ‘Okay. I grew up physically deformed. And despite everything I was going through, my physical deformities were one of the most painful things’. But the irony, more painful than anything else because you could see me out in the shops and go, ‘Okay, this is a person who has been severely physically sexually abused, who's suffered emotional trauma’. You could see that as I walk through the aisles, because you say, ‘Okay, this is someone who doesn't look right. This is someone who —', and I can see the look of disgust on people's face when they saw me physically. And then there’s nowhere to hide, you couldn’t mask that. I started thinking, ‘Well, what about people who feel that about their physical appearance and they don't require surgery? What are they going through? And how do I focus more on them? How do I take a stand for that person? What's the areas of knowledge? What are the insights? What are the resources that I can give these people to be more resourceful in finding a sense of self and finding their own way forward?’ Lisa: Being okay with the way that they are, because it must be just— Robert: People are okay with the way they are, seeing an ideal version of themselves in the future. And engaging the behaviours that helps them eventually bridge that gap, where their future vision, at some point, becomes their current reality. So I started focusing on things and a mission and people outside of myself, who's going through something similar to what I have gone through, even if it's not precisely the same situation? How do I help them find their way out? And by helping them find their way out, I found my way up. Lisa: Wow, it's gold. And that's what you ended up doing then, and within the gym setting, or how did that sort of work out from there? Robert: Well, I became a trainer. And in the beginning, I was like an average trainer. But I became, what Mitchell called, like the person who saved people. I never saved anyone; you can't change anyone but yourself. But the reason why he called me that is, anytime someone would think about joining the gym, if they would sit down with someone, they approached it from, ‘Well, what can we do? Can we give you a couple of extra months? Can we give you a guest pass to invite some —‘. They approached it from a transactional perspective, where when I sat down with these people, I approached it from a transformational perspective. ‘What did you want most? What do you want most in your life in this moment? And what hasn't happened? What missed? What was the disconnect? Where have we failed? What did you need that was not fulfilled in your experience here and how do we give you those resources? How do we support you going forward?’ And it was also like, ‘Look, if you want to leave, we totally respect that. You've given us a chance to help you. And obviously, the fault was ours. I never blamed anyone. But if you had the chance to do it again, what would have made the difference? And give us that opportunity’. It’s like, ‘Oh, this person is like a retention master’. It's not that, my focus wasn't in retention, it was the intention rather, to relate to the individual in front of me. Lisa: I’m hearing about the actual person and their actual situation and their actual wishes and goals, rather than, how can I sweeten the deal so you don't leave? Robert: Precisely, and that had some unintended consequences, because it put me in a bad situation, because I got promoted against my will. And I didn’t want to get promoted. And I thought, ‘I'm just getting a reputation for being somewhat good in my current job. And now they're going to promote it to my level of incompetence. And now I'm going to disappoint Mitchell, he's going to find out this kid's actually an idiot, he's a fraud — ‘I was wrong.’ And the one person who believed in me, I'm going to lose his trust and his faith, and that's going to be damaging.’ So me being promoted into management led to a series of unpredictable events that shaped my entire career. Lisa: Okay, tell us about that. Tell us about it. So you were pushed out of your comfort zone, because you just got a grip on this thing, the crazy worker. Robert: So Mitchell had a consultant, and his name was Ray. His name still is Ray, coincidentally. And he said, ‘Yeah, I think you should promote Bobby, just a small promotion to head trainer. Not like fitness manager, just head trainer’. And when they approached me, it was almost like they told me like, I had to euthanise my pet. It was horrible. I was not excited about this. I was like, ‘Oh, thanks. But no, thanks. I love where I'm at.’ Lisa: Yep. ‘I didn’t want to grow.’ Robert: Well, they had a response to that. They said, ‘There’s two directions you can go in this company, you could go up, or you can go out’. And they fired me that day. Lisa: Wow! Because you wouldn’t go up? Robert: They’re like, ‘You've chosen out. And that's okay. That's your decision’. And I was devastated. Like that my identity is connected to that place. And on my way out the door, Mitchell's like, ‘Come into my office.’ And he’s sitting across from me, and he kind of looked like a very muscular, like an extremely muscular version of Burt Reynolds at the time, which was very intimidating, by the way. And he puts his feet up on the desk, and he's leaning back, and he's eating an apple. He says, ‘You know, I heard a rumour that you're recently unemployed. And so I would imagine, your schedules opened up quite a bit this week. You know, coincidentally, we're interviewing for a head trainer position. You might want to come in and apply because you've got nothing to lose’. What a complete and total cock. And I say that, with love, gratitude, gratitude, and love. So I showed up — Lisa: Knew what you needed. Robert: I remember, I showed up in a wrinkly button-down shirt, that is not properly ironed, which was brought to my attention. And I got the job. And I was the worst manager you've ever met in your life because first of all, my motivation was not to serve my team. My motivation was not to disappoint Mitchell. And that was the wrong place for your head to be in, if you have the audacity to step into a leadership position. Whether you tell yourself you were forced into it or not, fact of the matter is ‘No, I could have chosen unemployment, I would have done something else. I chose this. Your team is your major responsibility.’ And that that perspective has served me in my career, but it well, it's also been problematic. So I had people quitting because for me, I was in the gym at 5am. And I took two-hour breaks during the afternoon and then I was in the gym till 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. I expected you to do the same thing. So, I didn't understand the worldview and the needs and the aspirations and the limitations and the people on my team. So people started quitting. I started doing horribly within my position. And then Mitchell brought in another consultant, and he gave me some advice. I didn't take it as advice at the time, but it changed everything. And it changed rapidly. This guy's name is Jamie, I don’t remember his surname. But he sat me down and he said, ‘So I understand you have a little bit of trouble’. Yeah, no shit, man. Really perceptive. ‘So, just tell me, who do you work for?’ So, ‘I work for Mitchell’. He said, ‘No, no, but who do you really work for?’ I thought, ‘Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. The general manager of the gym. Brian, I work for Brian’. So nope, who do you really work for? I thought it must be the fitness manager, Will. So, ‘I work for Will’. He’s like, ‘But who do you work for?’ And now I'm starting to get really irritated. I'm like, yeah, this guy's a bit thick. I don't know how many ways I can explain, I've just pretty much named everybody. Who do you reckon I work for? He said, ‘No, you just named everyone who should be working for you?’ Lisa: Yeah, you got that one down. Robert: ‘Have a single person you work for? Who are your trainers?’ He said, ‘Here, let me help you out. Imagine for a second, all of your trainers got together, and they pooled their life savings. They scraped up every bit of resource that they could to open up a gym. Problem is, they're not very experienced. And if they don't get help, they're going to lose everything. They're going to go out of business. They go out and they hire you as a consultant. In that scenario, who do you think you'd work for?’ I was like, ‘Oh, I'm the one that's thick. I've worked for them’. Because in every interaction you have, it made such a dip because it sounds counterintuitive. But he said, ‘In every meeting and every interaction, whether it's a one-on-one meeting, team meeting, every time you approach someone on the floor to try to help them, or you think you're going to correct them, come from that perspective and deliver it through that lens’. And things started to change rapidly. That was one of two things that changed. The second thing that changed is Mitchell believed, because he would listen to self-help tapes, it inspired him. So he would have me listen to self-help tapes. And he believed that oration in front of a group public speaking was culturally galvanising. And in a massive team meeting where we had three facilities at the time, where he brought in a couple of hundred people for a quarterly meeting. He had me stand up and speak. Oh, man. I know you've done a lot of podcasting and you do a lot of public speaking in front of audiences. You know that experience where you get up to speak but your brain sits right back down? Lisa: Yeah. And you're like, as Craig was saying the other day, ‘It doesn't matter how many times you do it, you're still absolutely pecking yourself.’ Because you want to do a really good job and you go, ‘This is the day I'm going to screw it up. I'm going to screw it up, even though I've done it 10,000 times. And I’ve done a brilliant job. Then it’s coming off.’ Robert: If you’re not nervous in front of an audience, you've got no business being there. That is very disrespectful. I agree with that. I mean, this is coming from, in my opinion, one of the greatest speakers in the world. And I'm not just saying that because Craig's my mate, and he gives me oatmeal every time I come out to Melbourne. I'm saying that because he's just phenomenal and authentic in front of a room. But I had that experience and I'm standing up brainless in front of the room. And as I start to realize that I am choking. I'm getting so nervous. Now this is back in the 1990s, and I was wearing this boat neck muscle shirt that said Gold's Gym, and these pair of workout pants that were called T-Michaels, they were tapered at the ankles, but they ballooned out. You know the ones I’m talking about? And I had a lot of change in my pocket. And all you hear in the room, as my knees were shaking, you can hear the change rattling, which wasn't doing anything for my self-confidence. And just instantly I was like, ‘Right, you're either going to epically fail at your job right here. Or you are going to verbatim with intensity, recite word for word, like everything you remember from Dennis Waitley’s Psychology of Winning track for positive self-determination’. Sorry, Dennis, I did plagiarize a bit. And I said it with passion. Not because I'm passionate, because I knew if I didn't say it with fierce intensity, nothing but a squeak will come out of my mouth, Lisa: And the jingle in the pocket Robert: And the jingle in the pocket. And at the end of that, I got a standing ovation. And that’s not what moved me. Lisa: No? Robert: What moved me was weeks ago, I was clueless in my job. I got this advice from Jamie on, ‘You work for them. They are your responsibility. They are entrusted to you. Don’t treat people like they work for you.’ Now I had this, this situation happened. And my trainers avoided me a month ago when I got promoted. But now they were knocking on my office door, ‘Hey, can I talk to you? Would you help me’? And it just clicked. The key to pulling yourself out of pain and suffering and despair is to focus on lifting up others. Lisa: Being of service. Robert: That was it. I thought I could be good at something. And what I'm good at is not only, it's terrifying before you engage in it, but it's euphoric after, and it can help other people. I can generate value by developing and working through others. Lisa: This is like gold for management and team leaders and people that are in charge of teams and people is, and I see this around me and some of the corporations where get to work and consultants stuff is this was very much this top-down mentality. ‘I'm the boss. You’re doing what I say because I'm the boss’. And that doesn't work. It might work with 19-year-olds who have no idea in the world. Robert: It reeks of inexperience. You think you're the boss because you've had certain qualities, and that's why you got promoted — do what I say. You are a detriment to the company — and I know how many people are fucked off and calling bullshit. I don't care. I mean, not to toot my own horn. Like anything I've ever accomplished, I've learned I have accomplished through hiring the right people and having a team that's better than me. But I’ve been in so many management positions, from the very bottom to the very top of multiple organizations I've consulted all over the world, you are only as good as your team. And to borrow from the late great Peter Drucker, ‘The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. And your most valuable customer’s your internal customer, the team that you hire. Because unless you are speaking to every customer, unless you are engaging with every customer complaint, unless you are engaging in every act of customer service on your own —' which means your business is small, which is fine. But if it's a lot, you're not ‘— you could scale that, it is always your team. And your job is to create and keep your internal customer by serving them with, at the very least, with the same tenacity, sincerity and intention that you are serving your external customer. If you don't do that, you're going to be shit as a leader. And honestly, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about that. Because I have heard so many opinions from people who are absolute — they've got a ton of bravado, they beat their chest, but they are ineffective. And it's extraordinary what you can accomplish when you know how to be, number one, hire the right person. Number two set expectations clearly — clearly, specifically. Number three, understand what motivates each individual, as an individual person and as a team, and then develop that team's capacity individually and collectively to channel that capability towards the achievement of a common vision, of a common monthly target. Period. Lisa: Wow. So that's just, that’s one whole lot going on in one. Robert: That is leadership in a nutshell. Lisa: Yeah. And this is the tough stuff because it's easier said than done. I mean, I'm trying to scale our businesses and grow teams and stuff. And number one, hiring the right people is a very big minefield. And number two, I've started to realize in my world that there's not enough for me to go around. I can't be in 10 places and 10 seats at once. You're getting overwhelmed. You're trying to help the universe and you're one person, so you're trying to replicate yourself in the team that you have, and provide the structure. And then you also need those people where you're weak, like I'm weak at certain aspects. I'm weak at technology, I'm hopeless at systems. I know my weaknesses. I know my strengths, so. Robert: I resemble that comment. Lisa: Yeah, In trying to get those people where you, that are better than you. Not as good, but better than you. And never to be intimidated because someone is brilliant at something. They're the ones you want on your team, because they are going to help with your deficits. And we've all got deficits and blind spots and things that we're not good over we don't love doing. And then trying to develop those team members so that you're providing them and treating them respectfully, looking after them, educating them. And that takes a lot of time too, and it's really hard as a smallish business that's trying to scale to go from there wearing a thousand hats. And a lot of people out there listening will be in similar boats as ours, like, wearing a hundred hats and trying to do multitasking, getting completely overwhelmed, not quite sure how to scale to that next level, where you've got a great team doing a whole lot of cool stuff. And then realizing the impact that you can have as tenfold or a hundredfold. Robert: Absolutely. And I'm not really a good business person, per se, like I've owned a few businesses myself, I've worked within quite a few businesses. And I think what I'm good at, and this goes back to another person that I worked for shortly after Gold's Gym. So Gold's Gym was sold, that's a whole story you don't need to get into. This is an interesting guy. I was doing consulting, I was just going out and doing public speaking, I had independent clients. And I crossed paths with an individual named David Barton. This is someone you should get on your podcast. Talk about an interesting individual. And David Barton had the one of the most unique and sexy edgy brands in New York City. And that's when you had a lot of competition with other highly unique, sexy, edgy brands. And he was the first person — he coined the phrase, ‘Look better naked,’ it was actually him. That's the guy. It was on the cover of New York Magazine. I mean, he was constantly, like his club in Vogue, at Harper's Bazaar, he ended up hiring me as his head of training. And his company at that time in the 1990s, which is quite the opposite of the mentality, the highest position you could ever achieve in his company was trainer. It was all about the training, and it made a difference culturally, and it made a difference in terms of like we were probably producing more revenue per club and personal training at that point than almost anyone else in the world, with the exception of maybe Harpers in Melbourne. So this is how far me and Craig go back actually. Lisa: Wow. It’s that right. Robert: Yeah, because we had found out about each other just a few years after that. Lisa: Some of that Craig Harper. Robert: Craig Harper, yeah, when he had his gyms. So we were introduced by a guy named Richard Boyd, a mutual friend who's like, you got to meet this guy, because he's doing what you were doing. And it all started when I went into David Barton gym, and I just thought, this is a different world. This is another level. Am I in over my head? So again, it was that doubt, it was that uncertainty. Lisa: The imposter syndrome. Robert: But I did. Yeah, and I think we all have, and I think the only people who don't have imposter syndrome are imposters. Because if you're fraudulent, you wouldn't engage in the level of self-honesty, and humility and conscientiousness, to go ‘Am I fraudulent, is there something that I’m missing’? Only a con artist never considers whether or not they're fraudulent, it's ‘Does that keep you stuck? Or does that help you to get better and more authentic, more sincere?’ So I had the presence of mind to ask David a very important question. And I said, ‘David, if there was like two things, or three things that I can do in this company, exceedingly well, what two or three things would best serve the member, the company as a whole, and of course, my career here with you?’ And David leaned back and he did one of these dozens of things he gave me, literally. And he sat there for — it must have been like five seconds — it felt like an eternity and I'm thinking, ‘Oh my god, that that was the stupidest question I could possibly ask. He probably thinks I should have this whole, like sorted out. After all, he hired me, or am I going to get sacked today?’ And then I was like, ‘I can't get sacked. My house just got ransacked by the FBI’. That was a totally different story. He comes, he leans forward. And he says, ‘Two things. Two things you got to do. Number one,’ and a paraphrase, but it was something very similar to, ‘I want you to be a connoisseur of talent, like a sommelier is a connoisseur of wine. I want you to hire interesting, and great trainers. That's number one.’ And he just sat there again. And I'm like, I think it was a power move. Looking back, it was a power move. Lisa: Using the silence. Robert: What’s number two, David? And he said, ‘Train the shit out of them. And when you're done with that, here's number three, train them again. Number four, train them again. Number five, train them again.’ And that stuck with me. And a year later, I wound up leaving David Barton, and I come back to work with him periodically over the course of many years, and I personally loved the experience every time. We’re still good friends today. And I went to NASM, and I became a presenter, senior presenter, and eventually I became the director of professional development for the National Academy of Sports Medicine. And I brought that with me. And trust me, there was times when I was quite a weirdo, because I thought quite differently than then a team of educators and clinicians. But it helped, and it served me well, and served me throughout my life. So I am shit at so many aspects of business. But I am really good, and probably because I'm very committed to recruiting people with the same level of insight, precision, intuition and sophistication that a sommelier would approach a bottle of wine. Lisa: Oh, I need to talk to you about my business at some point. I need the right people because I keep getting the wrong one. Robert: That, I'm very confident I can help. When it comes to recruiting and selection and hiring and training and development, that is my world. Lisa: That’s your jam. Robert: And because anything I've ever accomplished, it's totally through other people. It's because I hired people that were a lot smarter than me. It's funny because that's another piece of advice I got way back in my Gold Gym days, where one of the consultants was in the room and said, ‘You'll be successful to the degree that you're able and willing to hire people that are more intelligent than you’. And Mitchell quipped, ‘That shouldn’t be too hard for you, Bob’. Okay, yeah. Thanks, Mitchell. Yeah. Lisa: Oh, yeah, nice, friend. You need those ones, don’t you? Hard case ones. Hey, Bobby, this has been a really interesting and I feel like we probably need a part two because we haven't even touched on everything because you've had an incredible career. And I just look at you and how you how far you've come and there must have been so much that you haven't even talked about, have been all the really deep stuff that you went through as a child — Robert: No, I've told you everything. There's nothing else. Lisa: But how the hell did you actually turn your mindset around and how did you fix yourself and get yourself to the point you know where you are today, but I think we've run out of time for today. So, where can people engage with what you do and where can people find you and all of that sort of good stuff? Robert: Okay, well, I just started my own podcast. It's decent. Lisa: Which is awesome because I've been on. Robert: So if you are looking for, like one of the most dynamic, interesting and inspiring podcasts you've ever encountered, go to The You Project by Craig Harper. If you still have time after that, and you're looking for some decent podcast material, go to The Self Help Antidote, that is my podcast. And I'm on Facebook. Social media is not really where I live. It's not where I want to live. It's not where I like to live, but I'm there. I'm on Facebook. I mean the rest of the older generation, yeah, piss off kids. And I'm on Instagram. I'm occasionally on LinkedIn, but not really. I will be on Clubhouse because I got to find the time Lisa: What the hel
Becoming a championship medalist — or an Olympic medalist — is an ambitious goal that many athletes dream of. But are we training the right way? In reality, training to be an Olympic runner is more than just stretching your physical limits; it's also about your recovery, mental strength, environment and so much more. In this episode, famed Olympic runner Rod Dixon joins us to talk about his journey in becoming an Olympic medalist and his victory at the NYC marathon. He shares why creating a strong foundation is crucial, no matter what you’re training for. If you want to learn from and be inspired by one of New Zealand’s greatest runners, then this episode is for you! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the necessary foundation an Olympic runner used to create a solid training base. Learn to believe in yourself and avoid being influenced by others. Understand how to build a strong mentality to handle self-doubt and hesitation. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limit Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for NZD 7 and NZD 15 per month, respectively. Check out the different benefits of each in the link. Rod’s KiDSMARATHON is a running and nutrition educational programme organised to help children in the United States and the world! Check out his website. Connect with Rob: LinkedIn Episode Highlights [05:01] How Rod Grew Up with Running Rod shares that his brother John was a significant part of his running career. John helped coach Rod while Rod was young. He fondly remembers his time growing up and always running from place to place. His father used to explore and travel around Australia by bike, while his mother played basketball and did gymnastics. [11:42] Early Years of Training Learn by doing. You can run the same race twice, but don’t expect a different result when you do everything the same. Run differently. Rod grew up loving cross country racing, especially the beach races through dunes. It was during this time that he was inspired to reach for the 1968 Olympics. His brother, John, immediately put him on a training regimen. Once you have a goal, you need to know how to reach it and what you’re prepared to do for it. Multiple amazing runners inspired Rod to keep going for his goal. Tune in to find out who! [19:13] Approach to the Foundations Get the timing right first, not the miles. The foundation is to start with running long and slow. Rod's brother, John, also helped keep a logbook of his training. This enabled them to narrow down what to improve and work on. Athletes don’t get better from training; improvement comes from rest and recovery. Learn to prioritise your health. This will bring more results than just pushing yourself too hard on your training all the time. Know that there’s a period for different types of training. There will be times when you’ll need to set your foundations and conditioning right first. [25:20] Rod’s Journey Towards Becoming an Olympic Runner Getting acclimated to an area is essential to planning an Olympic runner’s training regimen. With the help of John, Rod realised he was a strength runner. This knowledge became crucial in planning for his races. When you train with runners, it will be a race. Train with marathon runners, and it will be a long and slow run. Choose your training partners based on your needs. Rod’s training with runners helped him learn more than just racing. His nutrition improved, too. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s exciting account of his Olympic journey—from qualifications to his training! [36:47] Handling Self-Doubt Rod shares that he also had bouts of self-doubt. During these times, he would look for his brother John, his mother and his grandmother. Ground yourself and just run, not for training but to clear your head and be in the moment. In a lot of things, confidence matters more than ability. The more confident you are, the more it will bring out your ability. Don’t be influenced by bad habits. What matters is finishing the race. Finishing in itself is already a win. [42:02] Life as a Professional Athlete Training effectively resulted in Rod becoming an Olympic runner, medalist and breaking records. Rod shares that he works full-time in addition to taking on small jobs to balance the costs. Tune in to the episode to hear the ups and downs of being an Olympic runner and a professional athlete. [50:07] Transition from Short to Long Races After his experiences as an Olympic runner, Rod wanted to focus on cross country and longer races. Once you have your foundations, you will need to adjust your training for long races. It's not going to be much different from what you're already doing. Rod shares that he had to work towards the NYC marathon through conquering half marathons and many other experiences. Build on your experiences and learn to experiment. Rod discusses his training in the full episode! [1:04:47] Believe in Your Ability When preparing for a big race, you need to protect your mindset and remember that running is an individual sport — it's all about you. Don’t be influenced by others. Learn to pace yourself and run your own race. A race starts long before you set your foot on the track. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s recounting of the NYC marathon. [1:21:23] Build and Develop Your Mentality People will often hesitate when they face a hill. When you’re in this situation, just keep going. Sometimes, some things won’t happen the way you want them to. But certainly, your time will come. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘John would tell me. He said, ‘You know, you've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently.’ 'He said, 'You know, you set a goal, but I won't tell you how to do it. So, you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do. And I think, [it was] then [that] I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.' ‘You don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.’ ‘Just remember to learn by doing.’ ‘I just thought this [the race] is about me. It's not about anybody.’ ‘I learned all that in my road racing. That sometimes, you just can't run away from people, but you can find out their vulnerable moments. And when they would come into a hill, they would hesitate because they’d look up the hill. And that's when you try.’ 'My mother had said that sometimes, things won't happen the way you want them to. Sometimes, you know, you're watching this, but your time will come at another point or another time. And I realised then what she was saying when I had one that was my defining moment. It just took longer than average.' About Rod Rod Dixon is one of the most versatile runners from New Zealand. For 17 years, Rod continuously challenged himself with races. His awards include a bronze medal from the 1972 Olympic 1500m, two medals from the World Cross Country Championship and multiple 1500m championship titles from the United States, France, Great Britain and New Zealand. But most importantly, he is well-known for his victory at the 1983 New York City Marathon. Now, Rod is passionate about children's health and fitness due to the lack of physical exercise and nutrition among children. Through KiDSMARATHON, he helps thousands of children learn the value of taking care of their bodies and developing positive life-long habits. The foundation has since made a difference in many children’s lives. You can reach out to Rod on LinkedIn. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn from the example of an Olympic runner. Let them discover how to achieve more as runners or athletes through self-belief and a trained mentality. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Your host here, Lisa Tamati. Great to have you with me again. And before we head over to this week's exciting guest, just want to remind you, we have launched our premium membership for our patron programme for the podcast. So if you are loving the content, if you're enjoying it, if you're finding benefit in it and you want to help us keep getting this good content out to people, then we would love your support. And we would love to give you some amazing premium membership benefits as well. Head on over to patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com, and join our exclusive membership club, only a couple of dollars a month. It's really nothing major. But what it does is it helps us make this content possible. As you can imagine, five and a half years of doing this for love, we need a little bit of help to keep this going if we want to be able to get world-leading experts and continue to deliver such amazing content. So if you can join us, we'd be really, really appreciative of it. Head over to patron.lisatamati.com. And a reminder, too, if you are wanting help with your health, if you're wanting to up your performance. If you're a runner, and you're wanting to optimise your running, then please check out our programmes, we have our Running Hot Coaching Program, which is a package deal that we have. We make a personalised, customised programme for your next event. Whether it's a marathon or a 5k, it doesn't really matter, or a hundred-miler, we're up for that. And we're actually programming people for even much, much bigger distances than that. So if you want to come and join us over there, we'd love to see you at runninghotcoaching.com. That's personalised, customised running training programmes that will include everything, from your strength programme, your mobility work, your run sessions, your nutrition, your mindset, all of those sort of great aspects, you get a one-on-one session with me. You get video analysis of how are you running and how can we improve your actual form, plus your customised plan. And if you want ongoing support, then that's available as well. So, check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. We also have our epigenetics programme, which is all about testing your genes, understanding your genetics, and how to optimise those genetics. So, eliminating all the trial and error so that you can understand how do you live your best life with the genes that you've been given? What is the optimal environment for those genes? So right food, the right exercise, the right timings of the day, what your dominant hormones are, what social environments will energise you what physical environments, what temperatures, what climates, what places? All of these aspects are covered in this ground-breaking programme that we've been running now for the past few years. It's really a next level programme that we have. So check out our epigenetics programme. You can go to epigenetics.peakwellness.co.nz, that's epigenetics, dot peak wellness.co dot.nz or just hop on over to my website, if that's a little bit easier, at lisatamati.com, and hit the work with us button and you'll see all of our programmes there. Right over to the show now with an amazing guest who is one of my heroes, a hero from my childhood actually. Now I have Rod Dixon to guest. Rod Dixon, for those who don't know who he is, maybe you were born only in the past 20 years or so, and you really don't know. But if you're around when I was a kid, this guy was an absolute superstar. He is a four-times Olympian; he won a bronze medal at the 1972 Olympics. He's a runner, obviously, he won in the 1500 meters bronze medal. He's won multiple times championships and cross-country running, and who really one of his biggest successes was to win the New York City Marathon and absolute mammoth feats to do back in 1983. So hope you enjoy the insights that Rod Dixon is going to provide for you today. If you're a runner, you will love this one. But even if you just love interesting, amazing people then check out this interview with Rod Dixon. Lisa: Well, welcome everybody. Today. I have an absolute legend with me on the show. I have Rod Dixon, one of my heroes from way back in the day, Rod, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you on Pushing the Limits. Thanks for taking the time. Rod Dixon: Lisa, thank you. I mean, of course, I've known about you and read about you but this is our first time, and it's come about through the pandemic. So, some good things have come out of this. Lisa: There’s definitely some good things come out of it. And I've definitely known about you sort of pretty much my entire, since I was a little kid. So you’re one of my heroes back in the day, so I was like, ‘Oh, wow’. And the funny thing is, we got to meet through a friend in America who just happened to know you. And I was talking with them, and they're like, and I'm like, ‘Can you introduce me?’ Via America we've come, but to get you to Kiwi, so wonderful to have you on the show, Rod. Rod, you hardly need an introduction. I think people know sort of your amazing achievements as an athlete and runner are many, and we're going to get into them. I think one of the biggest, most incredible things was winning the 1983 New York City Marathon. And that iconic image of you with your hands in the air going, and that guy behind you not such good shape. That's one of the most famous images there is. But Rod, can you tell us a little bit about your story, where you came from, how did that you were such a good runner? Give us a bit of background on you. Rod: I think, Lisa, I started… I was born in Nelson, and living out at Stoke, which is just not far out. And my brother, John, three years older, he went to Stoke Primary School. And so, I was in a centre, I think. And my mother came out to check on me. And there’s a young Rod, and he sees, and he said in the centre, ‘I'll go and take my shower now’. And that was my chance to then put all the things that I've learned of how to climb over the gate. And I climbed over the gate, then off I went. My mother got the phone call from the Stoke school. ‘Where is your son, Rodney?’ He said, ‘Oh he’s at the back, hanging in the sand’, and she's, ‘No, well, he's down here at the Stokes school with his brother’. Because we used to walk John down to school and walk and go and meet him to walk him back. And so, I knew that way. And here is my chance, so I think, Lisa, I started when I was four years old, when I ran out. Lisa: When you are escaping? And your brother John. I mean, he was a very talented, amazing runner as well. And actually, he's got into it before you did. Tell us a little bit of his story, because he was definitely been a big part of your career as well. Tell us about John a little bit. Rod: Yeah, well, my mother's family were from Mishawaka. They're all farmers. And fortunately, they were tobacco farmers, hot guns, and sheep and cattle. And so, we would be over with the family a lot of the time. And of course, a big farm, and John would always say, ‘Let's go down and catch some eels’ or ‘Let's go chase the rabbits’. And so we're on, outside running around all over time. And I think, then we used to have running races. And John would say, ‘Well, you have 10 yards and say, for 20 yards, 50 yards, and see if you can beat me down to the swing bridge.’ And I would try, and of course he’d catch me. So, there was always this incredible activity between us. And my dad was a very good runner, too. And so, we would go down for our, from the north we’ll go down to the beach for swim. Pretty well, most nights we could walk and run down there. So we would all run down. And then we would run along the beach to the estuary, and run back again. And then my dad, of course, he would stride out and just make sure that we knew our packing order. Slowly but surely, you see John waited for his moment where he beat dad. And I think, dad turned around and came back to me and he said, ‘I won't run with John, I'll just run with you’. So, I knew what the story was that I had to do the same, but it took me another couple of years before I could beat my dad. So, running was very much an expression, very much part of us. We’d run to school, we’d run home. I would deliver the newspapers in the neighbourhood, most of the time I would run with dad. So, and then at 12 years old, I was able to join the running club, the Nelson Amateur Athletic Harriot and Cycling Club. There’s three or four hundred in the club, and it was just incredible because it was like another extension of the family. And so we would run on farms and golf courses and at the beach or at the local school, sometimes the golf cart would let us run on the golf club. So, there was this running club. So the love of running was very part of my life. Lisa: And you had a heck of a good genetics by the sound of it. You were just telling me a story, how your dad had actually cycled back in the 40s, was this around Australia, something like 30,000 miles or something? Incredible, like, wow, that's and on those bikes, on those days. And what an incredible—say he was obviously a very talented sports person. Rod: I think he was more of an adventurer. We’ve got these amazing pictures of him with his workers in those days, they have to wear knee high leather boots. He’s like Doctor Livingstone, explorer. And so he was exploring and traveling around Australia, just his diaries are incredible. What he did, where he went, and everything was on the bike, everything.. So, it was quite amazing, that endurance, I think you're right, Lisa... Lisa: You had it in there. Rod: ...there’s this incredible thing and genetically, and my mother, she played basketball, and she was very athletic herself and gymnast. So I think a lot of that all came together for us kids. Lisa: So you definitely had a good Kiwi kid upbringing and also some very, very good genetics, I mean, you don't get to the level that you have with my genetics that much. We're just comparing notes before and how we're opposite ends of the running scale, but both love running. It’s lovely. So Rod, I want to dive in now on to a little bit of, some of your major achievements that you had along the way and what your training philosophies were, the mentors that you had, did you follow somebody and started training? Who were you— so, take me forward a little bit in time now to when you're really getting into the serious stuff. What was your training, structure and stuff like back in the day? Rod: Well, it's very interesting, Lisa. This was after did, in fact, incredibly, he was working, and with Rothmans, and he would travel the country. And he would come to the running clubs to teach the coaches, to impart his principles and philosophy with the coaches. And my brother being three years older, I think he tended to connect with that more so, as younger kids. And but we were just pretty impressed, and Bill Bailey used to come in as a salesperson, and he would come and we'd all go out for lunch with Bill and he would tell stories. And we were fascinated by that, and encouraged by it, and inspired by it. So, I think what John did, as we started, John will get to Sydney in 1990. And he noticed that young Rodney was starting to — our three favourite words, Lisa, it’s learned by doing. So I would learn from this race and I would adopt something different. I would try. When I knew, I mean, John would tell me, he said, ‘You've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently’. And I would go out train with John and then he would say, ‘Okay, now you turn around and go back home because we're going on for another hour’. So he knew how to brother me, how to look after me or study. And so really, as I started to come through, John realised that maybe Rodney has got more talent and ability than I do. So, he started to put more effort into my training and that didn't really come to us about 18. So, he allowed those five, six years just for club running, doing the races, cross-country. I love cross country — and the more mud and the more fences and the more steep hills, the better I ran. And so that cross country running say I used to love running the beach races through the sand dunes. And I love trackless, fascinated with running on the grass tracks because of Peter Snell and yeah Murray Halberg. And also too fascinated with the books like The Kings Of Distance and of course, Jack Lovelock winning in 1936. One of the first things I wanted to do was to go down to Timaru Boys High School and hug the oak tree that was still growing there, 80 years old now, Lisa because they all got a little oak sapling for the end, and that is still growing at Timaru Boys High School, Lisa: Wow. That was so special. Rod: There's a lot of energy from all around me that inspired me. And I think that's what I decided then that I was going to take on the training, John asked me, and I said yes. And he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said, and I said, ‘Well, I just listened to the 1968 Olympics on my transistor radio’ — which I tell kids, ‘That was Wi-Fi, wireless’. And I said, I want to go to the Olympics one day. And he said, ‘Right, well, they know you've made the commitment’. Now, obviously, during the training, John would say, ‘Well, hold on, you took two days off there, what's going on? So, that’s okay’, he said, ‘You set a goal, but I told you how to do it. So you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do’. And I think then I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus. So I really, there was very, very few days that I didn't comply — not so much comply — but I was set. Hey, my goal, and my Everest is this, and this is what it's going to take. Lisa: And that would have been the 19, so 1972. Rod: No, 1968. Lisa: 1968. Okay. Rod: So now, I really put the focus on. Then we set the goal, what it would take, and really by 1970 and ‘70 or ‘71, I made the very, my very first Kewell Cross Country Tour. And I think we're finishing 10th in the world when I was just 20. We realised that that goal would be Olympics, that’s two years’ time, is not unreasonable. So, we started to think about the Olympics. And that became the goal on the bedroom wall. And I remember I put pictures of Peter Snell, Ron Clark and Jim Ryun and Kip Keino on my wall as my inspiration. Lisa: Your visualisation technique, is that called now, your vision board and all that. And no, this was really the heyday of athletics and New Zealand, really. I mean, you had some, or in the 70s, at least, some other big names in the sport, did that help you — I don't think it's ever been repeated really, the levels that we sort of reached in those years? Rod: No, no. know. It certainly is because there was Kevin Ross from Whanganui. He was 800, 1500. And then there's Dick Tyler, because he went on incredibly in 1974 at the Commonwealth Games, but Dick Quax, Tony Polhill, John Walker wasn't on the scene until about ‘73 right. So, but, here are these and I remember I went to Wanganui to run 1500. And just as a 21-year-old and I beat Tony Polhill who had won the British championships the year before. So we suddenly, I realised that — Lisa: You’re world class. Rod: First with these guys, I can — but of course, there were races where I would be right out the back door. And we would sit down with it now, was it tactics, or was it something we weren't doing in training, or was it something we overdid the train. And we just had to work that out. It was very, very feeling based. Lisa: And very early in the knowledge like, now we have everything as really — I mean, even when I started doing ultramarathons we didn't know anything. Like I didn't even know what a bloody electrolyte tablet was. Or that you had to go to the gym at all. I just ran, and I ran slow and I ran long. And back then I mean, you did have some—I mean absolutely as approach what’s your take on that now like looking back and the knowledge we have now that sort of high mileage training stalls. What's your take on that? Rod: Well, John realised, of course I am very much the hundred mile a week. John realised that and the terrain and I said, ‘I don't want to run on the right job. I just don't like that.’ He said, ‘Okay, so then, we’ll adapt that principle, because you like to run on the cross-country and mounds all around Nelson’. Yeah. And, and so we adapted, and I think I was best around the 80, 85 miles, with the conditioning. There would be some weeks, I would go to 100 because it was long and slow. And we would go out with the run to the other runners. And the talk test showed us how we were doing. At 17, I was allowed to run them, Abel Tasman National Park. And of course, the track was quite challenging in those days, it wasn’t a walkway like it is now. And so you couldn't run fast. And that was the principle behind bringing us all over there to run long and slow. And just to get the timing rather than the miles. Lisa: Keep it light then, the time is for us to use it. Rod: So, he used to go more with time. And then after, we’d come to Nelson and he would give John time. And John would, of course, I would have to write everything down in my diary. And John would have the diaries there. And he would sit with Arthur and I would go through them. And afterwards, we would give a big check, and say that ‘I liked it. I like this, I liked it. I like to see you doing this’. And because we're still the basic principles of the period with the base as the foundation training, as you go towards your competitive peak, you're starting to narrow it down and do shorter, faster, or anaerobic work and with base track. And John, we just sit straight away, you don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover. Lisa: Wow, wise. Rod: Recovered and rest and recovery. Lisa: Are you listening, athletes out there? You don't get better training alone. You need the rest and recovery, because that's still the hardest sell. That's still the hardest sell for athletes today, is to get them to prioritise the recovery, their sleep, their all of those sort of aspects over there. And like you already knew that back then. Rod: And I said once again, just remember to learn by doing. So, unless you're going to record what you've learned today, you're not going to be able to refer to that. Sometimes John would say, ‘Ooh, I noticed today that you didn't do this and this. Bring your diary over.’ And on those days, of course, it was a blackboard and chalk. And he would write the titles at the top. And then from our diary, he would put under, he would take out, and he'd put under any of those headings. And then we'd stand back and said, ‘Now look at this. There's three on this one, nine on this one, two on this one, six on this one.’ We want to try and bring the lows up and the highs down. Let's get more consistency because this is your conditioning period. We don't need to have these spikes. We don't need to have this roller coaster. I want to keep it as steady as we can because it's a 8, 10-week foundation period. So those are the ways that we used to be. And John just simply said, he would say, when you wake up in the morning, take your heart rate. Take your pulse for 15 seconds, and write it down. And then he would say ‘Look, the work we did yesterday, and the day before, yesterday, I noticed that there's a bit of a spike in your recovery on Tuesday and Wednesday. So instead of coming to the track tonight, just go out for a long slow run’. Lisa: Wow and this was before EPS and heart rate monitors, and God knows what we've got available to us now to track everything. So what an incredible person John must have been like, because he also gave up pretty much his potential, really to help you foster your potential because you obviously genetically had an extreme gift. That's a pretty big sacrifice really, isn’t? Rod: He was incredible. And I just saw him yesterday, actually. And he used to live in the Marlborough Sounds. And of course, now that moved back to Nelson and so it's wonderful. I mean, I would always go down there and see him, and I used to love—well, I wouldn't run around — but I was biking around, all around the Marlborough Sounds, Kenepuru Sound. and I do four- or five-hour bike rides in the head. He says to me, ‘What was your big thing?’ And I said, ‘Well, I saw three cars today, John, for three hours’, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, and two of those were in the driveway’. It was amazing. I just loved down there, but now he's back here we see each other and talk and we go through our bike rides, and we go for a little jiggle, jog, as we call it now. Lisa: And so he helped you hone and tailor all of this and give you that guidance so that you boost your really strong foundation. So what was it, your very first big thing that you did? Was it then, would you say that for the Olympics? Rod: I think qualifying — no, not qualifying — but making the New Zealand cross-country team, The World Cross Country Team at 1971. I think that was the defining moment of what we were doing was, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ And so, as I said, 1971, I finished 10th in the world. And then then John said, ‘Well, what are you actually thinking for the Olympics? Are you thinking the steeplechase or the 5000 meters?’ And I said, ‘No, the 1500.’ ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Oh, Jack Havelock, Peter Snell, John Davies’, and then, he said, ‘Good. You're committed, so let's do it’. Okay. Of course, once I have announced that, then, of course, I got all the — not criticism — but the suggestions from all the, ‘Well, I think Rod's a bit optimistic about the 1500. He hasn't even broken 1’50 for the 800 meters. He hasn't yet been broken 4 minutes for a mile. He wants to go to the Olympics. And I think he should be thinking, and John said, ‘Put the earmuffs on.’ Lisa: That is good advice. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Rod: Off we go. And then slowly, but surely, I was able to get a lot of races against Dick Quax and Tony Powell, and Kevin Ross, in that. And then I remember, in Wellington at Lower Hutt, I was able to break the four-minute mile, then I got very close in a race to the Olympic Qualifying time. And then of course, you look at qualifications. And a lot of those runners didn't want, they already realised that they hadn't got anywhere near it. So they didn't turn out for the trials. So John gave up any idea of him going to the Olympics. And he said, ‘I'm coming to Auckland to pace you. And this time, you will stay right behind me. And when I move over and say go, go’. And so because we've done a couple of these earlier in the season, and ‘I said that I can sprint later.’ And of course, I missed out at the time, but this was it. And so, he said, ‘Our goal is for you to win the trials and to break the qualification’. And he made it happen. He said, he ran in one second of every lap to get me to 300 meters to go. When he moved over, and he said ‘Go!’ I got the fight of my life and took off. Lisa: You wouldn't dare not, after that dedication order. And you qualified you got– Rod: I won the trials and qualified. And Tony Polhill had qualified in his and he had won the national championship. So he qualified when the nationals and now I've qualified and won the trials. So, they actually, they took us both incredible. He was an A-grade athlete, I was a B-grade athlete. You got everything paid for, be in your head to train. Lisa: Yes, I know that one. And so then you got to actually go to the Olympics. Now what was that experience like? Because a lot of people, not many people in the world actually get to go to an Olympics. What's it like? What's it like? Rod: So we went to Scandinavia, and to Europe to do some pre-training. And on those days, we used to say, ‘Well, no, you got to acclimatised’. I mean, nowadays you can kind of go and run within a few days. But in my day, it was three to four weeks, you wanted to have — Lisa: That's ideal to be honest. Rod: Yeah, if they were right. Lisa: Yeah. Get their time and like that whole jet lag shift and the changing of the time zones, and all of that sort of stuff takes a lot longer than people think to actually work out of the body. So yeah, okay, so now you're at the Olympics. Rod: So here we were, so and John gave me a written for a track that schedule every day, and this was a training, and he had bounced with knowing that I was going to be flying from London to Denmark. And then, we're going to go to Sweden, and then we're going to go to Dosenbach. And so he expected in all the traveling, all the changes, and really a lot of it was I was able to go out there pretty well stayed with that. Now again, I realised that that wasn't going to work. And but what he had taught me, I was able to make an adjustment and use my feeling-based instinct, saying, ‘What would John say to this?’ John would say this because those all that journey, we'd have together, I learned very, very much to communicate with him. Any doubts, we would talk, we would sit down, and we would go over things. So, he had trained me for this very moment, to make decisions for myself. Incredible. Lisa: Oh, he's amazing. Rod: Absolutely. Lisa: That’s incredible. I'm just sort of picturing someone doing all that, especially back then, when you didn't have all the professional team coaches running around you and massage therapists and whatever else that the guys have now, guys and girls. Rod: It was the two days he knew that I would respond, it would take me four to five races before I started to hit my plateau. I found early in those days that — see, I was a strength trainer to get my speed. I came across a lot of athletes who had speed to get their strength. And so, what I wrote, I found that when I would go against the speed to street, they would come out of the gate, first race and boom, hit their time. Lisa: Hit their peak. Rod: Whereas, I would take three, four or five races to get my flow going. And then I would start to do my thing. My rhythm was here, and then all of a sudden, then I would start to climb my Everest. I've been new. And so John said, ‘These are the races that the athletic, the Olympic committee have given us. I want you to run 3000 meters on this race, I want you to run 800 meters if you can on this race. If you can't run 800, see if you can get 1000. I don't want you running at 1500 just yet. And so, then he would get me under, over. Under, and then by the time that three ball races, now it's time for you to run a couple of 1500s and a mile if you can. Then, I want you to go back to running a 3000 meters, or I want you to go back out and training’. Lisa: Wow. Really specific. Like wow. Rod: He was very unbelievable. Also to that at that time, I had these three amazing marathon runners, Dave McKenzie, our Boston Marathon winner, Jeff Foster, who is the absolute legend of our running, and a guy called Terry Maness. And John said to me, ‘Don't train with quacks and all those other guys. Run, do your runs with the marathon runners’. You see, and they would take me out for a long slow run. Whereas if you went out with the others, you get all this group of runners, then they’d all be racing each other. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t race when you're training Rod: Your ego. With the pecking order, when you ran with the marathon runners, there was no pecking order. Lisa: It's all about pacing and — Rod: And of course, and I would eat with them too because I learned how to eat because they were better eaters than me. I would eat more carbohydrates and more organic foods because it was the long run. I learned to do that. It was interesting because Jack pointed out to me said, ‘Now you see those two guys that were at the track today. And they were doing, and you are quite overwhelmed because they are your competitors and they were doing this incredible workout’. And I said to them, I said, ‘Woop, that what I was up against’. And Jack said, ‘Put it behind you. I want you to come to the dining room with us tonight, and we'll try and see if we can sit with them or near them.’ And I’m sure enough, there they were over there and they were talking. And they were pushing their food all around their plate and they weren't eating much’. And Jack said, ‘Look at you, you've eaten everything, and you're going back for seconds and thirds. If they're not replacing their glycogen, they won’t be able to run very well in a couple of days because they're not eating right’. So that gave me the confidence. Oh, I'm eating better than them. So they may have trained better. And sure enough, you didn't see them at the track. And the coach had taken them off because they were obviously racing too hard, they were racing their and not recovering. Lisa: Recovering. Yeah, so don't be intimidated. Because it's very easy, isn't it, when you start to doubt your own methods and your own strategies, and you haven’t done it right, and so-and-so's got it better than me, and they're more talented. And this is — all that negative self-talk, and you found a couple of guys to go, ‘Hang on, you've got this part better than they've got.’ What a great sort of mentoring thing for them to have done, to put you in that sort of good headspace. On the headspace thing, how did you deal with the doubts? Did you ever have lots of self-doubts? I mean, I know I certainly I did, where you don't feel good enough. Like you're what am I doing here? The old imposter syndrome type thing? Did that ever rear its head in your world? Or were you able to focus and...? Rod: No, absolutely, Lisa. I mean, I would often, fortunately, I could go to John with any question. There is nothing, no stone left unturned. He was amazing. Because he sensed it too, by the way, that being that brother, playing and training. And he was very, very connected with me because he would train with me, and he would sense things. And he'd say to me, he said, ‘Oh, you’re a little bit down today, aren’t you?’ and he said, ‘What's happened?’ There are like bit of a bullying going on in school and this or that, or ‘That girl won't talk to me anymore, and I love her’ and that stuff. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. Rod: And so he was like Marian, my mother. She was very, very on to me, too. She would sit with me and talk with me. And her mother, my grandmother, amazing, amazing people. And I will say this, right now, when my mother was 95 years old, she asked me to come and sit with her on her birthday. And she held my hand. And she said, ‘You can call me Marian from now on’. And I said, ‘Wow, this is fantastic’. And that was my mother's gift to me because I've always called her mother. I never call her mum. No. Always ‘mother’. And that relationship with my mother was very, very powerful, and it came through in my running. And John would now and again have to kind of toughen me up a little bit — that was incredible balance. So I never had anything that I had, I took to bed with me, I never had anything that I would go out. Lisa: Get it all out. Rod: I would say, sometimes, if you're running through the Dan Mountain Retreat. And he said, ‘I know what you get yourself wound up’. He said, ‘Stop, take your shoes off, and hug a tree.’ Lisa: These guys is just so like, what astounds me is that your mom, your brother, these good mentors and coaches that you had were so advanced. And this is the stuff that we’re talking about now, like, I'm telling my athletes to take your shoes off and go and ground yourself every day. And go hug a tree and get out in the sunlight and get away from the screens and do all these basic sort of things. But back then there wasn't that, like, there wasn't all this knowledge that we have now, and they obviously innately just nurtured. It sounds like you had the perfect nurturing environment to become the best version of yourself. Rod: Yes, I think so, Lisa. I was very, very, — and wonderfully, even in the club, in our running club, get this, our chairman of our running club was Harold Nelson, 1948 Olympian. Our club captain was Carrie Williams, five times Australasian cross-country champion. And they took time to run with us kids. They didn't all go out and race. The club captain and Harold would come down and talk with us kids and we would run. And then, I remember Carrie Williams, when he took us for a run. And he said, ‘Right’. He said, ‘Now there's a barbed wire fence in, there's a gate’. And he said, ‘We've got the flag there and the flag there’. He said, ‘You got a choice of going over the barbed wire fence or over the gate’. He said, ‘Come on, you boys, off you go’. And of course, 9 out of 10 went over the gate. And a friend of mine, Roger Seidman and I, we went over the barbed wire. And then he said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because it was shorter.’ And they turned to the others, and he said, ‘I like his thinking’. And he said, ‘You've got to have, to jump over a barbed wire fence, you've got to have 100%, you got to have 90% confidence and 10% ability. Lisa: And a lot of commitment. That is a good analogy. Rod: Things like that, all started to, there's this big, big jigsaw puzzle. And all those pieces started to make sense. And I can start to build that picture. And when I started to see the picture coming, I understood what they were telling me. And once again, learn by doing — or another word, another thing that John had above my bed was a sign, ‘Don't be influenced by habits’. Lisa: Wow, that's a good piece of advice for life. I think I might stick that on my Instagram today, Rod Dixon says. Rod: And, of course, wonderfully, all these I've carried on with my programme that I did with the LA marathon, and bringing people from the couch to the finish line now. And when I was going through, we're putting through, I started off with five or six hundred. But I got up to over 2000 people. And basically, it's the matter that I used for my kids’ programme is, ‘Finishing is winning. Slow and steady. The tortoise won the race.’ Lisa: Well, that's definitely been my bloody life history, that's for sure. Finishing is winning and the tortoise wins the race. Yeah, if you go long enough, and everyone else has sort of stopped somewhere, and you're still going. That was my sort of philosophy, if I just keep running longer than everybody else, and whatever. Let's go now, because I'm aware of time and everything, and there's just so much to unpack here. I want to talk about the New York City Marathon because it was pretty, I mean, so you did the Olympics. Let's finish that story first, because you got bronze medal at the 1500 at the Olympics. Now, what was that like a massive, life-changing thing to get an Olympic medal? You did it four times, the first time? Rod: I mean, my goal, and I remember, I've still got a handwritten notes of John. And our goal was to get to the sideline at the first heat. And if you can qualify for the next thing, would we give you this, that, if you're there, this is what we've worked for. And of course, and I remember 1968 again, when I was listening to my transistor radio, to the 1500 meters with Keino and Ryun, Jim Ryun, the world record holder, Kip Keino, Commonwealth champion from Edinburgh in 1970. And here he was, this incredible race, and we were absolutely going in there, listening to it, and it was incredible. And to think they said that four years later, I'm on the start line, and beside me, is Kip Keino. Lisa: Yeah, it'd be, it’s pretty amazing. Rod: And then the next runner to come and stand beside me was Jim Ryun, the world record holder and here I am. And I'm thinking because I don't pick it out, when we got the heats, well you've got the world record holder, silver medallist, and you've got the Olympic gold medallist in my race, and only two go through to the next leap. So I'm going for it but I never, I wasn't overwhelmed by that because John has said to me, our goal is, and I wanted to please John by meeting our goal, at least get to the next round. Well, history has shown that Jim Ryun was tripped up and fell and I finished second behind Keino to go through to the next round. And then and then of course, I won my semi-final. So, I was in the final, and this was unbelievable, it’s no doubt is – Lisa: It’s like you’re pinching yourself, ‘Is this real?’ All that finals and the Olympics. And you ended up third on that race, on the podium, with a needle around your neck on your first attempt in a distance where the people sent you, ‘Yeah, not really suited to this tribe’. Rod: And what was amazing is that just after we know that we've got the middle and went back to the back, and after Lillian came in into the room to congratulated me and Bill Bailey. And they said, ‘You realise that you broke Peter Snell’s New Zealand record’. And I was almost like, ‘Oh my god, I didn't mean to do that’. Lisa: Apologising for breaking the record. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure that's just epic. And then you went on to more Olympic glory. Tell us from... Rod: So at that stage, we went back to… New Zealand team were invited to the Crystal Palace in London for what they called the International Athletes Meet. And it was a full house, 40,000 people, and I didn't want to run the 1500 — or they didn't actually have a 1500 — they had a 3000, or two mark, this right, we had a two-mark. And that's what I wanted to run, the two mark, and that was Steve Prefontaine, the American record holder, and he just finished fourth at the Olympics. And I went out and we had a great race — unbelievable race. I won it, setting a Commonwealth and New Zealand record. He set the American record. And that was just like, now, it was just beginning to think, wow, I can actually run further than 1500. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, you can. You certainly did. Rod: So we got invited to go back to Europe at ‘73. And so we have the called, the Pacific Conference Games in ‘73, in Toronto. So, I asked the Athletic people, ‘Can I use my ticket to Toronto, and then on to London?’ Because I had to buy—may they allow me to use that ticket. And then Dick Quax and Tony Polhill said they were going to do the same. And then we had this young guy call me, John Walker. And he said, ‘I hear you guys are going to England. And could I come with you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’, because he didn't go to the Olympics, but he ran some great races, we thought it was heavy. And he said, ‘Now do you get me the ticket?’ And I said, ‘No, you have to get the ticket’. And he said, ‘Oh, how do I do that?’ And I said, ‘If you, can't you afford it?’, and he said, ‘Not really’. I said, have you got a car? He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well, sell it’. And he said, ‘Really?’ So he did. And my reasoning is that, ‘John, if you run well enough, you'll get your tickets back again, which means you'll be able to buy your car back again.’ And that was John... Lisa: Put your ass on the line and forward you’re on, because this all amateur sport, back in the day. And it was hard going, like to be a world-class athlete while trying to make a living and how did you manage all of that, like, financially? How the heck did you do it? Rod: Well, before I left in ‘73, I worked full time, eight hours a day. I did a milk run at night. I worked in a menswear store on a Friday night. And then of course, fortunately, I was able to communicate with Pekka Vasala from Finland. And he said, ‘We can get you tickets. So the thing is, get as many tickets as you can, and then you can cash them in’. Right. But then, so you get the ticket, of course, there you wouldn't get the full face of the ticket because you were cashing it in. But if you got enough to get around. And you did get expenses, double AF and those rows you're able to get per diem, what they call per diem. Yep. But by the time you came back, you kind of hopefully, you equal, you weren't in debt. Lisa: Yeah. Rod: Well, then you go back and comment for the Sydney Olympics. Very good friend of mine allowed us to go do shooting and we would go out every weekend and then sell with venison. Yeah. And that was giving another $100 a weekend in, into the kitty. Lisa: Into the kid. And this is what you do, like to set, I mean, I must admit like when I represented New Zealand, so I did 24-hour racing and it's a ripe old age of 42. Finally qualifying after eight years of steps. And I qualified as a B athlete, I did 193.4 in 24 hours and I had to get to 200. I didn't make the 200, but hey, I qualified. And then we didn't even get a singlet, we, and the annoying thing in my case was that we qualified for the World Champs but they wouldn't let us go to the World Champs. And I've been trying for this for eight years before I could actually qualified. And I was desperate to go to the World Champs and then just on the day that the entries had to be in at the World Champs athletics, New Zealand athletic said, ‘Yes, you can actually go’ and I'm like, ‘Well, where am I going to pull $10,000 out of my back pocket on the day of closing?’ So I didn't get to go to the World Champs, which was really disappointing. So I only got to go to the Commonwealth Champs in England and got to represent my country, at least. Because that had been my dream for since I was a little wee girl, watching you guys do your thing. And my dad had always been, ‘You have to represent your country in something, so get your act together’. And I failed on everything. And I failed and I failed, and failed. And I was a gymnast, as a kid, it took me till I was 42 years old to actually do that and we had to buy our own singlet, we'd design our own singlets, we didn't even get that. And that was disappointing. And this is way later, obviously, this is only what 2010, 9, somewhere, I can't remember the exact date. And so, so fight, like you're in a sport that has no money. So to be able to like, still has, to become a professional at it, I managed to do that for a number of years, because I got really good at marketing. And doing whatever needed to be done — making documentaries, doing whatever, to get to the races. So like, even though I was like a generation behind you guys, really, it's still the same for a lot of sports. It's a hard, rough road and you having to work full time and do all this planning. But a good life lessons, in a way, when you have to work really hard to get there. And then you don't take it for granted. Now, I really want to talk about the New York City Marathon. Because there’s probably like, wow, how the heck did you have such a versatile career from running track and running these, short distances? It's super high speeds, to then be able to contemplate even doing a marathon distance. I mean, the opposite ends of the scale, really. How did that transition happen? Rod: Yeah, I think from ‘73, ‘74, I realised that John Walker's and then Filbert Bayi and some of these guys were coming through from the 800,000 meters. And so I knew, at that stage, it was probably a good idea for me to be thinking of the 5000 meters. So that was my goal in 75 was to run three or four 5000 meters, but still keep my hand in the 1500. Because that was the speed that was required for 5000. You realise that when I moved to 5000, I was definitely the fastest miler amongst them, and that gave me a lot of confidence, but it didn't give me that security to think that they can't do it too. So I kept running, the 800s, 1500s as much as I could, then up to 3000 meters, then up to five, then back to 3000, 1500 as much as I can. And that worked in ‘75. So then we knew that programme, I came back to John with that whole synopsis. And then we playing for ‘76 5000 meters at the Montreal Olympics. Pretty well, everything went well. I got viral pneumonia three weeks before the Olympics. Lisa: Oh my gosh. Didn’t realise that. Rod: Haven’t talked about this very much, it just took the edge off me. Lisa: It takes longer than three weeks to get over pneumonia Rod: And I was full of antibiotics, of course. It might have been four weeks but certainly I was coming right but not quite. Yeah. So the Olympics ‘76 was a disappointment. Yeah, finishing fourth. I think the listeners set behind the first. Lisa: Pretty bloody good for somebody who had pneumonia previously. Rod: Then I went back to Europe. And then from that point on, I didn't lose a race. And in fact, in ‘76, I won the British 1500 meters at Sebastian Coe and Mo Crafter, and Grand Cayman, and those guys. So, then I focused everything really on the next couple of years, I’m going to go back to cross-country. And I'm going to go back to the Olympics in 1980 in Moscow, this is going to be the goal. And as you know, Lisa, we, New Zealand joined the World Cup. And we were actually in Philadelphia, on our way to the Olympics, when Amelia Dyer came up to John Walker, and I said, ‘Isn’t it just disappointing, you're not going to the Olympics’. And I look at John and go... Lisa: What the heck are you talking about? Rod: No, and we don't? New Zealand joined the boycott. So at that stage, they said, ‘Look, we've still got Europe, we can still go on, we can still race’. And I said, ‘Well, I'm not going to Europe. I'm not going to go to Europe and run races against the people who are going to go to the Olympics. What? There's nothing in that for me’. And I said, ‘I heard there's a road race here in Philadelphia next weekend. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to go and run that road race. And then I'll probably go back to New Zealand’. Well, I went out and I finished third in that road race against Bill Rogers, the four-time Boston, four-time New York Marathon winner, Gary Spinelli, who was one of the top runners and I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this’. And so, I called John, and we started to talk about it. And he said, ‘Well, you really don't have to do much different to what you've been doing. You've already got your base, you already understand that your training pyramid’. He says, ‘You've got to go back and do those periodisation… Maybe you still got to do your track, your anaerobic work.’ And he said, ‘And then just stepping up to 10,000 meters is not really that difficult for you’. So, I started experimenting, and sure enough, that started to come. And in those days, of course, you could call every day and go through a separate jar. I had a fax machine, faxing through, and then slowly but surely, I started to get the confidence that I could run 15k. And then I would run a few 10 milers, and I was winning those. And then of course, then I would run a few races, which is also bit too much downhill for me, I'm not good on downhill. So I'll keep away from those steps to select. And then I started to select the races, which were ranked, very high-ranked, so A-grade races. And then I put in some B-grade races and some C. So, I bounced them all around so that I was not racing every weekend, and then I started to get a pattern going. And then of course, I was able to move up to, as I said, 10 mile. And I thought now I'm going to give this half marathon a go. So, I ran the half marathon, I got a good sense from that. And then, I think at the end of that first year, I came back rank number one, road racing. And so then I knew what to do for the next year. And then I worked with the Pepsi Cola company, and they used to have the Pepsi 10K races all around the country. And so I said, I’d like to run some of these for you, and do the PR media. And that took me away from the limelight races. And so, I would go and do media and talk to the runners and run with the runners and then race and win that. And I got funding for that, I got paid for that because I was under contract. And so I was the unable to pick out the key races for the rest of the set. And then slowly but surely, in 82, when I ran the Philadelphia half marathon and set the world record — that's when I knew, when I finished, I said, ‘If I turn around, could you do that again?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. I didn't tell anybody because that would be a little bit too — Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Praising yourself. Rod: So I just thought I'd make an honest assessment myself. And when I talked to John, he said, ‘How?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I couldn't’. And he said, ‘Well then, we’re going to look at that’. Lisa: We got some work to do. Rod: He said, ‘What we will do in 1982, you're going to come back and you're going to run the Pasta Marathon in Auckland, and that was going to be my trial. And Jack Foster was trying to be the first 50-year-old to break 2:20. So, I got alongside Jack and I said, ‘Now this is my first marathon. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘I see all these runners going out there and warming up and I don't want to run 29 miles... Lisa: For the marathon? I need to do some extra miles warmup. Rod: ‘Use the first mile as a warmup, just run with me’. I said, ‘That'll do me’. So, I went out and ran with Jack and then we time in, started down to Iraq, and we're going through Newmarket. And he said, ‘I think it's time for you to get up there with the leaders’. He said, ‘You're looking at people on the sidewalk. You're chatting away as if it's a Sunday run. You’re ready to go’. I said, ‘You're ready?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, go’. And so, alright, because this is Jack Foster. Lisa: Can't leave him. Rod: 1974 at 42 years old. Jack said, ‘You can climb Mount Everest,’ I would do it. Yeah. So, I got up with the leaders and join them and out to Mission Bay. And on my way back, and I was running with Kevin Ryun, he who is also one of our legends from runners. And Kevin, he said, ‘We're in a group of four or five’. And he said, he came out, he said, ‘Get your ass out of here’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You're running too easy. Make you break now.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Kevin’. Lisa: Yes, Sir, I’m off. Rod: So I ran one that and then that was when I talked with John, that was going to be the guidelines that maybe not another one this year, but certainly look at 83 as running a marathon at some point. Lisa: How did you work the pacing? Like going from such a shorter distances and then you’re going into these super long distances, where you're pacing and you're fuelling and all that sort of thing comes into it. Was it a big mind shift for you? Like not just sprint out of the gate, like you would in, say, 1500, the strategies are so very different for anything like this. Rod: Certainly, those memories of running with the marathon boys in 72. And I went back to Dave McKenzie and Jack Foster and talked to them about what it takes. And then, John, my brother, John was also too, very, very in tune with them, and he knew all the boys, and so we started to talk about how it would be. And he said, ‘So I want you to do, I want you to go back to doing those long Abel Tasman runs. I want you to do those long road aerobic runs, and just long and slow.’ And he said, ‘I don't want you going out there with your mates racing it. I want you to just lay that foundation again.’ And he said, ‘You’ve already done it’, he said, ‘It's just a natural progression for you’. So it was just amazing, because it just felt comfortable. And at that time, I was living in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I would be running out or out through the Amish country and the farms and roads, they're just horse and cats. Lisa: Awesome. Rod: I had this fabulous forest, Nolde Forest, which is a state park. And I could run on there for three hours and just cross, but I wouldn't run the same trails. I mean, you'd run clockwise or anti-clockwise, so. And then, but I kept — I still kept that track mentality and still did my training aerobically but I didn't do it on the track. Fortunately, the spar side, they had a road that was always closed off only for emergencies. And it was about a three-
Sleep is the time for our mind and bodies to reset, regenerate and repair damages that may have accumulated during the day. Undoubtedly, this is a part of our daily routine that is important and can impact our health. Sleep affects our emotional well-being and mental ability, as well as our physical health and energy levels. If you want to face the day with your best self, a good night’s rest is what you need. Thus, we need to learn how to optimise our sleep. Unfortunately, millions of people worldwide suffer from sleep problems, including snoring and sleep apnoea. These disturbances in your nightly rest prevent you from making the most out of your sleep. Furthermore, you most likely don’t have the tools or knowledge on how to optimise sleep. Frances Anderson is with us today to share her story on how she decided to create a solution for sleep problems after not being able to find one for her snoring. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out how changing your pillow can give you a better, deeper and restful sleep. Learn how sleeping disturbances like snoring and sleep apnoea can negatively impact your health and everyday performance. Discover what you and those around you can gain from knowing how to optimise sleep. Resources Connect with Frances: Email | Instagram Pushing the Limits Episode 150: Sleep Apnoea and its Implication with Jez Morris Pushing the Limits Episode 153: The Science of Light and Other Foundational Health Principles with David Liow Pushing the Limits Episode 180: Breathing as the Key to Better Healthy with James Nestor Pushing the Limits Episode 182: How to Breathe Better with Patrick McKeown Gain exclusive access to premium podcast content and bonuses! Become a Pushing the Limits Patron now! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. Lifespan by David Sinclair Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple Scientifically Proven Breathing Technique that Will Revolutionise Your Health and Fitness by Patrick McKeown Episode Highlights [04:58] The Story Behind Frances Anderson Frances has always been a snorer since she was younger. Her snoring worsened as she grew older and progressed to sleep apnoea. This condition impacted her health and emotional well-being. She tried looking into ways on how to optimise sleep, but none of them worked. Taking matters into her own hands, she developed the sleep positioner. [11:26] What Is the Patney Sleep Positioner? The Patney Sleep Positioner is a special pillow with a particular shape and design. Its latex properties contribute to its durable and hygienic characteristics. It supports your jaw, head and shoulders while sleeping. This pillow promotes good sleep posture and opens up the airways. It’s designed in a way that prevents your head from dropping down. [15:27] The Negative Impacts of Snoring and Sleep Apnoea The deep sleep phase is vital. This is why our sleep shouldn’t be interrupted during this phase. Disturbance of your sleep occurs when you wake up gasping for breath. These disturbances negatively impact your cognitive abilities and may cause neurodegeneration down the road. It can also affect your partner’s well-being as their sleep gets interrupted too. In turn, your relationship may get strained. Both you and those around you end up tired throughout the day. [20:35] More on the Patney Sleep Positioner The Patney Sleep Positioner has a 86% success rate. Patney has a 30-night money-back guarantee. The product has been tested in the WellSleep Centre at the University of Otago. The pillow helps people who snore or suffer from mild to medium sleep apnoea. [23:28] True or False: Big People Are Snorers This is a fallacy; Frances herself falls within the 58 kg size bracket. 25 to 30% of sales to women fall within the same size bracket. Men who buy the pillow include those who are 5.9- to 6-feet tall, weighing 80 to 100 kg. 42% of Patney Sleep Positioner sales are to women, 58% of sales are to men. After menopause, 60% of women snore. [27:38] Is the Patney Sleep Positioner Unique? While there are similar products, the Patney Sleep Positioner has been patented in multiple countries. Each pillow is individualised for the buyers. The pillow considers the user’s weight, height and shape to give them the best support for sleep. [29:35] What’s the Story Behind the Name ‘Patney’? Patney is a made-up name that stuck when Frances was brainstorming. Frances’ mother is named Pat. Her grandson called her Patney once, and it stuck. The brand name became a tribute to Frances’ mom who passed away from dementia. [31:03] What’s Your Approach to Life? Frances wanted a non-invasive solution to her problem. The goal was for it to be non-invasive, comfortable and effective in preventing episodes of snoring and other sleep problems.. [36:45] Will It Help People With Asthma? Patney has had customers with different medical conditions. However, they have not conducted studies on these yet. People with a cold or the flu report that the pillow can help open up airways. There is anecdotal evidence that it may help. [38:30] Why Do You Think Some Don’t Find the Pillow Successful? Sometimes, there are more complex health issues than just snoring. Some just can’t get used to using the pillow. Others might have more serious sleep apnoea. If this is the case, Frances advises that they go to a sleep clinic. Listen to the full episode for more information on the Patney Sleep Positioner and how to optimise sleep. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘So it's opening up their whole airway. Because when we’re snoring, you know, we have a normal pillow [and] we’re snoring, what's actually going on [is]—there we are tipping our chin forward onto the chest and blocking off these airways.’ ‘And so what often happens is people get woken up by their own lack of breathing, and they've been constantly pulled out getting into that deep sleep phase, which is just absolutely crucial if you want to avoid neurodegeneration.’ ‘If you're not sleeping well and getting good quality sleep, you're really going to age quicker. You're really going to damage your cognitive abilities, your memory. And you know, neurodegeneration is a likely chance of it happening further on down the road.’ ‘But it's also a relationship issue too. You know, you've got the clinical issues with habitual snoring and sleep apnoea. But you've got relationship issues, too, that there's more than one person involved with this.’ ‘But we knew we had a product that was going to solve a problem. And that problem was habitual snoring and mild to medium sleep apnoea.’ ‘Without good sleep—all of those things: you can be eating perfect, you can be exercising perfect. But if you’re sleep’s out, you're not going to get the optimum out of your body.’ ‘So it’s a wellness product, absolutely… While it was developed for snoring, you don’t have to be a snorer to use it.’ About Frances Frances Anderson, the founder and Managing Director of Patney, had suffered from snoring for most of her life. She has experienced the negative effects caused by interrupted sleep and consequent fatigue. Frances could see the detrimental impact snoring was having on her health and her relationships. But it wasn’t until Frances’s husband told her one morning that she had scared the life out of him during the night because she had stopped breathing; this comment meant she was heading for sleep apnoea. She had tried various anti-snoring products, including surgery, without success. So she decided to take things into her own hands. She set out to solve a problem that she and millions of other people experience. Fast forward to today, the Patney Sleep Positioner pillow is no longer a dream. With the product being non-invasive, comfortable, and individualised, it is proven to control snoring for thousands of customers. Connect with Frances and learn more about the Patney Sleep Positioner on her website. You can also send her an email at goodnight@patney.com or find her on Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to optimise sleep. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati, your host of Pushing the Limits. Welcome back again for another excellent episode. I hope you're going to enjoy this one. I have Frances Anderson, who is the founder of Patney pillows, to guest today. You may think, ‘What? Sounds really weird’. But this is a very important topic. This is all about sleep optimisation, how to stop snoring, looking at sleep apnea and helping improve your health through correct sleep. So, Frances is the founder of a company called Patney pillows that has sleep positioners. And this has all been clinically tested to help people with snoring, and this is an episode around sleep optimisation basically. So I do hope you enjoy this. If at the end of this interview, you're interested in trying out one of Frances's pillows, you can use the code ‘Lisa’ at checkout for a 5% discount on the actual product too. I don't usually do episodes where it's all based around a particular product. But this invention is pretty unique in the world. And it is helping people with their health and their sleep. So I'd really like you to listen to this and get some good information if you're dealing with anyone who has snoring, anyone who has sleep apnea, if you want to optimise your sleep, then this is the episode for you. I'd also like to refer you back to a couple of other episodes that I've done around these topics. One are with James Nestor, one with Patrick McKeown and one with James Morris: two on breathing, and one on sleep apnea. If you're interested in further finding out more about optimising your sleep. There's also one with Dave Liow, on the science of light and how that affects your sleep. So make sure you go and check out all those podcasts as well in the back catalogue. Before we head over to the show a reminder we have launched our premium membership group, our VIP group. If you want to come and join us at the pushing the limits podcast if you want to support us getting this great content out and we would love you to come and join our membership group, our patron group. It's only a few dollars a month. You know, really is a cup of coffee a month to be involved, and we have a lot of member benefits and we would love you to check it all out. You can go to patron, P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com for all the information on that. And another reminder to check out my latest and greatest longevity and anti-ageing supplement NMN, which stands for nicotinamide mononucleotide. Now this is a supplement that helps upregulate the sirtuin genes which are longevity genes in the body. Without going into all the science. If you want to check out the episodes that I've done on this with Dr. Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist, then check those out on the podcast as well. And if you want to find out about this longevity and anti-ageing supplement if you're like me and you're getting on in, but long in the tooth, and you want to make sure that you slow the ageing process down and that you optimise your your health and your vitality and your lifespan then head over to nmnbio.nz, nmnbio.nz. And I highly recommend going and reading the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher. That is why I got into this. So if you want to know and do a deep dive into the science behind NMN and upregulating the sirtuin genes in autophagy, and know all about the sort of stuff that's going to help you live a longer, healthier life, then please go and check out all those resources. Right, now over to the show with Frances Anderson. Lisa: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits today. And I have an amazing, lovely guest. And we've actually got a bit of a backstory. We already recorded this interview and then I went and lost it all on my computer somehow. Don't ask me how. So Frances Anderson, thank you very much for joining me again. Very embarrassing situation when you go and delete an entire interview. So I know you probably want to throttle me but, today we're going to be talking a little bit about your story and this amazing invention. I want to call it invention that you've made. Now Frances is the founder of the Patney pillow or sleep positioner. And this is going to be an episode all about optimising his sleep and why snoring is bad for you and all of that sort of good stuff. So welcome to the show, Frances again. So I think we'll start with a little bit of a backstory. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then why you got into this, making this invention? Frances Anderson: Well I'm the snorer, it's as simple as that. I had tried all sorts of things, including surgery, and that lasted about as long as it took the swelling to go down, so that wasn't effective. And I've tried most things and they just didn't solve the problem. And it got to the stage where I was beginning to get sleep apnea, so stopping breathing and my husband, one morning said to me, ‘You frightened the living daylights out of me last night, you stopped breathing. You got to do something about this.’ And so I sort of walked away and thought, ‘I don't know,’ What am I going to do, I’ve tried everything’. And so I set about trying to find a solution for my snoring. And that took a little bit of time. I have to say it's not a great thing to try and invent something to sleep on, at two o'clock in the morning you're busy trying to design this thing, how the hell do you stop snoring. So eventually I did and then I felt that I'd solved my problem and carried on working like everybody else in my normal job and then a couple of friends said, ‘Can I have one’? And at that stage I thought I was the only female that snored. Lisa: Let's dig into that little bit for a second. A lot of people have issues with snoring and for me that's sort of acceptable. Sort of it's like one of those things, I mean sort of, ‘Yeah, you snore, so who cares’? For women it's a little bit more embarrassing and like you thought you were the only woman who snored, and you're a tiny lady, very slim and, you said you struggled with snoring even in your young years, like in your teenage years. How did that make you feel? Frances: Well I first knew that I snored at 13 when I went to boarding school. And of course you're in dormitories, and got horribly ostracised, and found I found that incredibly embarrassing. But also incredibly stressful because I didn't know how to solve it. And you know it's fine for people to say, ‘Stop snoring’, but how? So I went to the boarding school years and but still the snoring was a problem, but as I got older it became kind of a more of a problem and but I inherited from my mother, so it's probably not quite right that I thought I was the only female that there was that snored. My mother did and she was a chronic snore and with the knowledge we have now, obviously she had sleep apnea or really bad sleep apnea. And my problem, she died of dementia, and they are now looking at links between dementia with—sorry, with chronic snoring or sleep apnea, you're starving your brain of oxygen. Because it can stop breathing as much as 100 times an hour. So sleep apnea is huge. Lisa: And we've done a—I've got a backstory with us too with my mom having sleep apnea after her stroke and I think she probably had it before it even, and doing a sleep assessment and realising that her SpO2 levels were down at around 70% at their worst time in the night, and that she was stopping breathing hundreds of times a night and actually knocking off her brain cells at a point we you know after the aneurysm which he didn't have a heck of a lot left. And so this work came on my radar then and getting a sleep apnea assessment and realising that she was in deep trouble and having to have a CPAP machine and this is a problem that, as you know, not really well understood people sort of think snoring is just annoying. It's not just annoying, it's disrupting the sleep of the partner, obviously, in the bed which has its own health consequences for that person as well, or the other people in the dormitory in your case. But it is also really damangeling your health and there is a huge correlation now between Alzheimer's and dementia and neurodegenerative diseases and sleep apnea. This is—hence doing this podcast because it is a very important health topic. Snoring is not just a pleasant thing and it's not just overweight old men that snore, Which is the common sort of perception. And we had a couple of experts on the show breathing experts, James Nestor and Patrick McKeown have both best-selling authors of breathing books, Breath and The Oxygen Advantage. And they talk about, you know, just how important the breathing is to the whole health and, you know, nasal breathing and in the talk of how important that piece of the puzzle is. And, you know, they go so far as to tape the mouth shut at night, which I do, actually, in order to help with the nasal breathing, which is optimising my breathing. I don't have sleep apnea, I don't snore. But that helps optimise if you like. So you managed though, without doing, having a CPAP machine, to get on top of your snoring. And I think a lot of people would be interested in this because having a CPAP machine is brilliant. And thank goodness for them as I don't think my mum would be here now. But they're also very intrusive. A lot of people just won't comply with them. You've got this big mask over your face. And it's a very important machine. And the invention that you've made, the sleep positioner that you've made, doesn't replace CPAP. CPAP has its place. We need those. But for certain people this can help. So you managed to—what is the sleep positioner? What is the special pillow that we're talking about? Frances: Yeah, well, it's interesting. It took me four years to actually bring it to fruition. While I solved my own snoring within a few months, I had only just made it out of retail materials. So to commercialise that I needed to have a molded product. And so that took even more time to be able to then move it into latex. And we chose latex because of the properties. Because it's antibacterial, antifungal, anti-dust mite, it's temperature neutral, and it’s got a long life to always make from the rubber from the rubber trees, it’s close to memory foam which is made from petroleum. Lisa: Yeah, I didn't know that. That's amazing. Frances: So we wanted a natural product. And when I got in touch with the manufacturer, I thought I could just show them the drawings, and they could whip me up a mold, and hey, we'd have our pillows. But no, I had to say instead about trying to cut latex and build it into a shape that could be molded. And I learned that I could only do that with a scalpel. And I saw—I had made about 60 of these and my trialists would have a gallery session and let me know, said there are wedges on all sorts of exotic and make it the right shape. So eventually then we went and got the bulk made. So the pillow is about—we call it a pillow because—sorry, we call it a sleep positioner. But in pillow is short for your life. So it looks nothing like your normal pillow. And some people get a bit of a surprise when they see it because it's a slightly different shape. But then your normal pillow doesn't solve snoring. So obviously has to be a particular shape and design. If I said to stand up straight, you find your chest comes up and out a little bit when you do that. And so there's a shoulder pad. And so the shoulder pad lifts your chest so that you can breathe right through your nasal cavity right down and into your lungs. So it's opening up your airways, like you do when you stand up straight. And then the main body of the pillow has a magic spotlight, if you like, called the sweet spot. And by positioning yourself here, in this shoulder pad, we can control the snoring. Lisa: So it's opening up their whole airway so—because when we’re snoring, you know we have a normal pillow and we’re snoring, what's actually going on there? Are we tipping our chin forward onto the chest and rocking off the airways? There's probably a number of reasons, people who are overweight or have a big circumference of the neck, bodybuilders and so on. They have a lot of pressure going on to the airway just from the size of their necks. So is there you know is this is this really just it's repositioning that whole airway so that it's opened up. That's the whole premise behind it. Frances: Yes, it is. It's about good sleep posture, and about opening up your airway and it's for both back and side sleepers, and sort of half tummy sleep on it. But it's not for pure tummy sleepers. And so the shape of the pillow supports the jaw when you sleep on your side, and on your back. And of course, keeping yourself in that nice position so that you can’t easily drop your feet down. The whole thing is to prevent the feet from dropping down and cutting off your airway. And getting—ike people who wake themselves up in the night. They sometimes hear themselves snore. Yeah, but they've actually stopped breathing, and they’re hearing themselves actually gasping for a breath.. Lisa: Wow. So they've actually been working out and saying, well, you know, on the podcast that I've done around sleep and breathing, when we, when we sleep, we need to get into this deep sleep phase, which as we get older, gets more and more difficult. We have not, you know, non-REM sleep and REM sleep. And we have different levels where we're in a deep, deep sleep where we're actually paralysed and unable to move, and their body does it in order to, we have all these dreams, otherwise we'd be living them out. But when we're in this really deep unconscious state, we're completely unaware of the position of our body and what we're actually doing and what's actually happening with our circulation and our breathing and, and so what often happens is people get woken up by their own lack of breathing, and they've been constantly pulled out of or getting into that deep sleep phase, which is just absolutely crucial. If you want to avoid neurodegeneration, you need that deep sleep. So when you're being pulled out, and you're in only getting into a shallow state of sleep, and then being pulled out again, as you have to gasp for air and wake yourself up, the body is waking yourself up, so you don't bloody suffocate, basically. And it does it very well, but it is stopping you getting that really restorative, important deep sleep happening, which is really going to have effects on things like your emotional state, your ability to deal with stressors, your ability to function properly, basically, during the day. And as time goes on, then it can affect your memory. And then it can affect, you know, the whole neurodegeneration side of things where you're not cleaning out the tau proteins that they talk about in relation to Alzheimer's. And we're doing this, there's something called glymphatic cleaning at night. And you know, I'm not an expert on sleep, I'm going to get Dr. Matthew Walker, I hope, on who can explain this way better than me. But there is this brainwashing effect that's going on when we're in certain levels of sleep, and it's the glymphatic system. And if we're not getting that really deep, you know, continuous sleep, we're not getting that. And so we're not cleaning out these damaged proteins, if you like, and they start to accumulate in the brain. And these can lead into neurodegenerative diseases. And I've probably butchered that from a science perspective. So, but you get the whole point. If you're not sleeping well and getting good quality sleep, you're really going to age quicker, you're really going to damage your cognitive abilities, your memory, and you know, neurodegeneration is you know, unlikely chance of it happening further on down the road as you experienced with your dear mum. So this was really crucial for you because you didn't want to go down that same path having seen your mum go down there. Frances: No, absolutely not. But it's also a relationship issue too. You got the clinical issues with habitual snoring and sleep apnea. But you've got relationship issues, too. There's more than one person involved with this. There’s generally two people involved with this. Lisa: The one is the sufferer. Frances: Oh it’s the sufferer. And so it's really important to try and resolve this for your partner's sake. Because while you're not sleeping well, and you will find that he'll be tired in the daytime, really tired sort of mid-afternoon, falling asleep at night,before bedtime, if you like. And it also, just that general well-being that fuzziness in the head and and such like. But your partner is also suffering from sleep deprivation. They're the ones that have been woken on a regular basis while you supposedly sleep through. And you know, there's that lock in the morning that says, ‘Here's your star rating from a’... Generally the partner that has to go to the spare room, because they're the one that's being disturbed. So they're having to go and get into a cold bed somewhere else in the house. And or, you know, people don't necessarily have a spare bedroom and they're sleeping on a couch to try and just actually get some sleep. So it is, it's a social problem within your own home. And, you know, it creates arguments. Lisa: It definitely does. Frances: It’s very disturbing and, and you've got two people feeling very tired during the day. So it is important to get both parties to get a good night's sleep. And so now and again, you may store a little, but just turn over and you know, reposition yourself on the pillow and you're satisfied again. And so we have an 86% success rate, which we're really proud of. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. Frances: And you know, we've sold thousands of these now. So we know our statistics are right, because we give a 30-night money back guarantee if somebody is not happy. So we know for a fact that we have the same 86% success rate. But also we didn't go into this blindly there and just you know, hit the back with a second session. We put it through the Otago University, the WellSleep Center, at Berlin Hospital in Wellington. And a wonderful lady, Dr Angela Campbell who was in charge of that study. And it came out really, really well there too. In fact, we wouldn't have commercialised it if we didn't put all these resources into it, if we didn't believe in our product. But we knew we had a product that was going to solve a problem, and that problem was habitual snoring and mild to medium sleep apnea. We don't advertise it as a product that's going to solve serious sleep apnea because those people do have a serious condition, Lisa: It can be a neurological thing. So in the case of mum, it's actually brain switching off in the wrong times in the night. Yeah, you know, so we can’t affect that. However, you know, like, even in a situation like with mum, I get up at four in the morning to check on her. And often she's taken the mask off, because she's had enough of it. And her argument to me is ‘Well, I'm not sleeping properly. You know, like, I'm not in the deep sleep at that hour. So it's okay.’ I’m like, ‘Mum, when you're asleep, have no idea what level of sleep you're in. And why would you think that in the early morning, you are not going to have sleep apnea, whereas at midnight, you are? This will be an extra backup system for me. Frances: We do, we get people that buy the pillow because they know that they whip off this CPAP machine during the night. And so some people sleep with the CPAP machine and the Patney when they whip that CPAP off, they still have some protection for the rest of the night, Lisa: Because neither—you know, like, even the CPAP machine isn't 100% coverage, you know, like it's blowing air down into your lungs, which you know, has its own certain amount of problems. You can't nasal breathe really when you've got a sleep apnea machine or at least mum can’t. And it dries your mouth out, and it does all these, it's not very nice having this you can't turn over very easily et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it is a little bit difficult having one of these. But in combination, and this is the perfect, you know, situation to be able to have it as a backup. If she does take it off in at least hopefully her chest is more open. Hopefully she'll breathe better, if not 100% perfect. Frances: I mean, we talked before about big people being the snorers. Yeah. That's a bit of a fallacy. I believed that too. But no, I'm 58 kgs. Yeah. So I'm not a big person. And probably 25% to 30% of the sales that I make to a woman in that size bracket. So our problem is narrow airways. Lisa: Yes. Frances: But then if I look at it, the male, my male customers, majority of them would be five foot nine up to six foot and be in that 80 to 100 kg bracket. So they're not huge. They're not huge men. And they’re not overweight. You know, the big fellas, I don't see that much of. Lisa: Really? Frances: Yeah. But also, you know, if you're looking at females in particular, 42% of my customers are female, and 58% male. So that's quite a big number of females.. And also, after menopause, about 60% of women snore. But yeah, something else to look forward to ladies here. Lisa: Yeah, we're in the middle of it. Thanks very much. It's awesome fun, this menopausal thing. So when your estrogen levels drop, and there's a big correlation between menopause and then worsening cardiovascular outcomes and so on. I wonder if part of that has to do with the sleep issues that come along with that, or whether it's because of the drop in the estrogen, which is particular for the heart. It's probably a combination of many things. But as your health starts to deteriorate because you're not getting good sleep, then you get things like, when you're not sleeping well, like shift workers for a start. For example, you know, I've been dealing with this issue with my husband as well, he's doing shift work, shift workers die earlier. But that's pretty much a given. They are more prone to diabetes and cardiovascular, metabolic disorders and cardiac neurodegenerative disorders. If they're doing shift work where they have to be awake at night, they tend to be more overweight, they have problems with their appetite regulation, their hormone situations, all of these things are affected by sleep. So okay, that's for shift workers. And we need our shift workers because they keep the country going when we need them to be. But they need extra help. And then they also—we need to realise that, okay, so that's what's happening if you have to stay up all night, and your Circadian rhythms are all out of whack. And the rest of us get to sleep normal sort of hours. But if we're not sleeping well, again, this is going to have all of those knock-on effects. And this is why I think this episode is really important. I don't usually do an episode with something on a particular product. But I think that this is a product that I've found that is actually going to help change people's lives. And therefore, it's really worth doing a whole episode on this because it's something that's easy to try out and see whether it works for you and see if it improves your thing, because it's the basis of all health is sleep. As a health coach, as a running coach, before I deal with what exercise I'm going to get you to do or what nutrition I'm going to get you to eat or what times a day and all that sort of thing. I have to look at your sleep first. Your sleep is the basis. Without good sleep, all of those things, you can be eating perfect, you can be excising perfect, but if your sleep’s out, you're not going to get the optimum out of your body. So I think this is actually at the base. This is the thing we need to sort out first is your sleep. And a part of that is making sure that you're not snoring. And so I think trying their Patney pillow is a really good thing to have a go ahead if you are dealing with this. And I haven't seen this type of product anywhere else in the world. I mean, I haven't searched the world. I'm sure there's somebody else maybe in the world has come up with something similar. But is this pretty unique? Frances: Yeah, it is. We have actually paid into it and several countries and the major countries, because it is quite unique. I suppose the other thing I should tell your listeners about or your viewers about is that it's actually individualised. As far as we know, we are one of only three commercialised individualised pillows in the world. And so the pillow is unique to the user. And so we have an algorithm and we're developing that further and further all the time to determine what weight and size, well the size doesn't change. But what weight the pillow is, in the depths of it. So we compression test them, we know exactly what height it is. And so we measure that to the customer. So we ask our customers some basic questions like, do they have a broad, very broad, average narrow shoulder. And if you cut them other questions like that, they don't need to measure themselves, all they have to do is compare themselves to their peers who are their height, roughly their height or weight. So we've been able to do that. And that is incredibly unique. So our biggest customers being two meters tall and 170 kgs, so a fairly big boy. But we can cater for bigger still. And for everybody underneath that they're smaller, slightly about 4 foot 6 and about 45 kgs. So from the teeny, tiniest little lady who did snore, and through to the biggest fellows so we can cope with any body shape. In particular, we get a lot of tradies, strummers, sportspeople in particular, who have built up a lot of muscle around the necks or shoulders. Lisa: Bodybuilders have issues with this. Frances: We can deal with that though. So it's quite a unique product. Lisa: Now I want to dive into a little bit the story of the name because this was a very cute story. It's called the Patney pillow. When I first talked to her I thought your name was Patney. You said it, but it's not quite right is it? Tell us about the story behind this. Frances: My surname is Anderson, so very Scottish surname. Patney is a made-up name. My mum's—because my mum was a major snorer, and I inherited it from her. We were trying to think of what we would call the pillow. And so one day, one of my grandson—not my grandson, my mum's grandsons—walked into the house. Her name was Patch and he called ‘How you going Patneyneckers’? And she grabbed hold on for calling her that. The Patney stuck. And the grandkids used to call her Patney, and so we thought well what better name for the company and the product. We’ll call it Patney. Lisa: What a lovely tribute to your mum. It's a cute name so the Patney pillow and it sort of sticks, rolls off the tongue quite nicely. And you know, this is the thing like you lost your mum to dementia. You were fearful that that was the track that you were going to be going on, and therefore you came up—and this is what I love the number eight wire mentality of you like, ‘Okay I've got a problem no one else can fix this for me I've had surgery I've tried every other thing there is around, I'm gonna fix it myself’. Are you very much like that, is that your approach to life? Frances: Well I get all the things yeah. It has to be non-invasive, that was the other thing that was really important to me. Because I had tried a lot of invasive products like surgery and found that that didn't work. And so for me, it was really important that it was non-invasive. It’s interesting we did a survey before we commercialised and asked people what was the most important thing about a product that could stop snoring and the partner said, ‘Stop snoring’, that was the most important thing, that they would stop snoring. We had a list, then it was ‘Comfort and such’ like. The snorers said ‘Well comfort is the most important thing’. For the partner, they didn't give a toss about comfort. They just wanted it away and if it's a torture chamber, I don't care you know. It's non-invasive, it's very comfortable and it has to be both for me that was for sure. Lisa: Yeah and you know I sent you a photo of my husband using his one and you know he's loving it. He stopped snoring and that's you know improved my sleep knowing and improved the marriage because I'm not hitting him in the middle of the night waking him up because he's snoring like a trooper. And I'm worried, like your husband like when he would be snoring in and he would stop breathing and that would terrify me because I'm like, you know ‘When are you going to take a breath, are you gonna take a breath?’ And then you're like this the whole night you know worried that they're not gonna breathe. So I think it's just fantastic. I don't have to worry about that now. Now he just does the occasional sort of *snoring noises* and then when he's turning over and that's about it and then he goes back and he's good. And he's very much like, because I, you can imagine in my household I'm the biohacking queen, right. I've got every gadget known to man. And I come home with all of these things for him to try and he's like, ‘Okay here we go again another thing that I'm going to have to add to my daily routine and regime of what Lisa is telling me I've got to do, you know whether it's from hyperbaric to ozone to you know shaking machines and all sorts of infrared light things that you stick up your nose’. And he's always like my guinea pig but he's taken to this like a duck to water. So I was stoked because I did think he might go, ‘Nah, not doing that’ because you know very much he does that on occasion and ‘I'm not doing it’ you know. I tried to get into the mouth taping thing, that was never in a bar of that. But this is at least something that he's actually adopted. So sorry poor husband he's not here... Frances: Yeah it reminds me of a story when I had trials when I was back in the prototype stage, and so I've given out these prototypes to the testers and I thought back about four days later to follow them to see how they were, how he was going. And he wasn't there but his wife was there and she said, ‘Oh’ she said ‘I had a terrible night's sleep the first part’. I said ‘What didn't work?’ She said, ‘No I've listened to him snore for 20 years and I thought he was dead’. So I was like, ‘What’s happened?’ ‘He's not doing it!’ Yeah, that upset you. Lisa: Because you can get actually quite used to that sound a little bit it becomes quite comforting in a weird strange way. It's a bit like that white noise apps that you have. You turn on the white noise to help you sleep sometimes, a little bit like that. But yeah, you slept pretty quite, quickly if they’re not snoring. So Frances, where to from here for your company? We're going to share the links and so on in the show notes. But can you tell everybody, where can they find out? Where can they reach you, there is a 30-day money back guarantee on this sleep positioner if people want to try it out, where can they find you? Frances: They can find me on www.patney.com. That's P-A-T-N-E-Y dot com. And there's a wealth of information on our website about how to use. There’s not a lot of testimonials, there's blogs. And there's the story there too. But obviously, we will be offering some special through Lisa as well, too. Lisa: Yes, we're gonna have a discount code. And we will organise that afterwards. And I'll put that in the show notes too, guys. So if you want to try this out, if you're dealing with snoring, if you're dealing with someone who is snoring, try it out, it's risk-free. Give it a go, it might change your life. Frances: I think the other important thing too, is you don't have to snore to use it. Lisa: This is the point. Frances: Absolutely not. And we get a lot of people who their partner has one. And they've come back to us for one for themselves simply because it just opens up your airways, gives you good sleep posture and breathe easily through the night. And so a lot of people buy it because for more about wellness, as opposed to just snoring. So it’s a wellness product. Absolutely. As well as, while it was developed for snoring, you don't have to be a snorer to use it. Lisa: A question, and this may be outside the remit of it, but would it help with people with asthma? Because when I was severe asthmatics, especially as a child, I used to sleep like half up, because it would take—would be less pressure on the lungs. Have you had any experience in that realm with asthma at all? Frances: We've had people with different medical ailments, if you like, like reflux and aspirin and things like that. But we haven't done a study on that to say, ultimately, we get a lot of anecdotal evidence of it. But also people where they've got a really big cold or flu, they find it helps open up their airways as well too, during those years. So I can't say you know, from a medical perspective, that it's going to help. But because it does put you in that very good sleep position, and it does maintain an open airway, it may well help with. Like I said, we have anecdotal evidence. Lisa: And I think, when you're trying out new things, especially when it's you know, something like a pillow, it takes a little bit of getting used to, isn't it? You'd need a couple of nights for sort of I know with Haisley, he—the first night he was like, ‘Not sure not sure’. And then after that, after a couple of nights he got used to it. And it's the same with mum’s CPAP machine. I've tried to change the mask that she wears so that it's less invasive, but she actually just wants to go back to the thing that she knows, you know, so it is very much a habit-forming thing. And once you push through that initial sort of pushback that you get when you try anything new that can help. So what do you think—I mean, I think an 86% success rate is huge. And the 14% would just be people who aren't willing to push through that little difficult phase or just don't, you know, aren’t willing to try it. I bet you get a lot of partners buying them and then the person won't even try it out. Frances: Yeah, the odd one. I mean, there's a myriad of reasons why, you know, that 14%. If I said it was 100% nobody would believe me. Yeah. Nothing, nothing is 100%. So we believe that you know, 86 is pretty good. Some people have quite complex health issues. And there's more going on than just just the snoring. Some people will, they just can't get used to it. And some of the perhaps the older folks, you know, find that a little bit. But majority of people, it's fine. And we can’t solve everybody's problems. Sometimes plain doesn't solve the snoring problems. And they get their money back, and so there's no loss. We've tried it and for some reason, it doesn't work. There's some people who I believe have got serious sleep apnea. And I advise them to go to a sleep clinic and actually get there what's causing their problem, their snoring to be actually diagnosed and and sorted. Lisa: Especially if it’s neurological—absolutely obstructive sleep apnea, and then there's neurological reasons for it like mum’s. Like where the brain’s been actually damaged, the brain stem’s damaged, and we can't fix it. And I've just had mum at the sleep clinic last week assessing her data because they record her data every weekend. Unfortunately, she hasn't improved everything else and your brain sort of come right but that aspect hasn't. So she can't ever get off that machine. We need it for life. And thank goodness we have access to that. So there is things, but she can still benefit from this pillow, especially when she takes it off in the middle of the night. So I think all of these aspects—I really encourage people to go and listen to the episodes with Patrick McKeown and James Nestor. To understand more the whole, ‘Why our jaws even have developed differently than our ancestors, the different reasons for that the foods, the breathing, the nasal breathing, all of those aspects are also very crucial, important pieces of this particular puzzle. And I also did a episode on sleep apnea with James Morris, who used to own all the eating clinics throughout New Zealand and was very instrumental with us and with mum’s situation. So those are—if you're interested in this topic, make sure you go and check out those episodes as well. And try out the Patney pillow just go and order one find out. See if it works for you. If it doesn't send it back. Frances: Well, you talk to us first. Lisa: Yeah, find out, ask Frances all about it. See if it's going to be for you. Try it out. And then yeah, see how it goes and give us some feedback. Frances: But the other thing is too, that if somebody does have a question, we’re only fire ways to telephone. And we've got lots of tips and tricks anyway. Because of course, we don't know what your bedroom environment is like, we don't know how old your mattress is, things like that. But we can overcome those problems as well. Lisa: Yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much, Frances, for being somebody who thinks outside the box. And, one number eight wire mentality. I've got a problem. I'm gonna fix it. Now I'm going to fix it for everybody else, because this is exactly how I am too, and that's how I've come to do when I do. Have a problem, fix that. Okay, now I can help other people with it. So thank you very much for your time. Frances: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. Lisa: Hi, again, it's me. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Frances. I actually got the code wrong. It's actually a 10% discount. If you want a 10% discount on the Patney pillow, then use the code ‘Lisa’ at checkout. I said 5% in the intro, but I got it wrong. It's actually 10%. So thank you very much Frances for the discount, and go over there and try it out now. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
Failure happens to everyone; we will experience it at some point in our lives. Despite our sacrifices and hard work, we may not achieve what we set out to do. It is, however, important to approach failure not as the end of a journey but as a crucial lesson. And it doesn’t matter how many times you fail—physical, emotional and mental resilience will take us one step forward towards our eventual success and victory. Laura Penhaul joins us in this episode to share the story of her expedition across the Pacific Ocean. She describes the preparations she undertook, from planning the expedition to gaining financial support. Laura also talks about the importance of breaking down the journey and being clear with team dynamics in the expedition’s success. If you want to know more about the makings of strength and mental resilience in a person, then this episode is for you. 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Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Gain valuable insights through Laura’s journey and expedition across the Pacific Ocean. Learn about mental resilience and adaptability in dealing with failure. Discover the importance of team dynamics in the success of Laura’s expedition. Resources Gain exclusive access to premium podcast content and bonuses! Become a Pushing the Limits Patron now! Support healthy ageing through the NAD+ boosting supplement, NMN! Visit NMN Bio for more information. Watch Losing Sight of Shore, a documentary about four brave women rowing across the Pacific Ocean, from America to Australia. The strength of adaptability: achieving the impossible, Laura Penhaul on TEDxTruro What it takes for a team to survive 9 months at sea, Laura Penhaul on TEDxClapham Endurance podcast with Mark Beaumont and Laura Penhaul Endurance: How to Cycle Further by Mark Beaumont Connect with Laura: Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn Episode Highlights [05:12] Laura’s Background Laura worked in elite sport for the Olympics and Paralympics for more than 14 years. As a physical therapist, she was able to see people through their journeys as athletes. In the face of adversity, Laura found two types of people: those who bounced back from it and those who gave up because of it. She was inspired by those who wanted to thrive and make the most out of life. She never experienced rowing before, but she was searching for a challenge. Ocean rowing was something she found ideal. The expedition gave her a lot of learnings. [12:58] Gaining Confidence Reach out to those who have done what you want to do or to those who have expertise. Laura had to break down the journey and prepare for it: planning the possibility of the route, gaining logistical and structural support, planning out the time frame and preparing the team. She expected to finish in a year but didn’t. It took four years of planning before they could carry out the expedition. She had to learn from her failures, figure out her blind spots and reach out to other people for help. [16:12] Gathering Financial Support and Sponsorships At first, Laura could not ask for money to support her journey. She reached out to people who worked in business and sponsorship. They helped her shape her deck, brand and business model. She also reached out to Mark Beaumont, an elite expedition athlete. She learned from his experience and failures. With Mark’s help, Laura could have a structure for the timeline, budget and sponsorship. [20:06] Physical, Emotional and Mental Resilience Optimise your own elite performance. Break down the journey and plan everything. Being prepared makes you feel confident when dealing with the unknown. Have the courage to step away from comfort and the norms. Push outside of your comfort bubble to reach your full potential. [25:40] Going Beyond Your Comfort Zone Laura considers herself a calculated risk-taker. She does not leap blindly and makes sure not to leave any stone unturned. It’s not a failure if you learn from it. Have the physical, emotional and mental resilience and robustness to bounce back and ask where and why you went wrong. [29:36] Dealing with Failure You can prepare everything and still fail. There are things you can’t control. Be adaptable and flexible in your performance. During difficult times, the strength of Laura’s team was able to support a struggling individual. Different perspectives help you see things you can and cannot control. It can prevent you from being ill or injured. [34:42] Team Dynamics Compared to individual sports, being in a team is difficult. Expeditions bring out the best and worst in people. You won’t know unless you are in the situation. Laura wanted her team to be cohesive and transparent. She always confronts an issue and steps forward to speak about it. A performance psychologist helped them understand the differences in each other's personalities, which helped make their journey a success. [44:05] Keeping Mindfulness in Moments of Struggle Leveraging each member’s strengths and differences can end up holding the team together rather than pulling it apart. When you are struggling, you may show a part of yourself that is cynical and selfish. Remember: we are all working on our character. In extreme circumstances, the bad side of ourselves could come out. Dealing with it is part of resilience and teamwork. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘There's people that can go through the same type of thing. And yet one person wakes up, being so thankful that they're alive’ they're now going to make the most of life. And then somebody else that wakes up and they're like, they wish they didn't wake up’. ‘How can I put myself in a situation which is completely unknown, that's kind of gonna make me want to give up? And I want to understand what it is we draw on when we can't give up [and] we've only got one option’. ‘It's all about perspective, isn't it? And it's all about the context that you're in. And this is the thing that I get really passionate about is, I want to optimise people's own elite performance’. ‘It is not a failure unless you don’t learn from it. And leaping sometimes is exactly what you need to do, and it's just not being scared to fall, like just knowing that, you know what, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's got you one step further. And one step closer to finding what the next thing might be’. ‘You kind of just got to crack on and then there's no going back, you can't row backwards, sort of, it's only about having the confidence to step into taking on the Pacific’. ‘You've got to understand that there are things you can't control. So you've done everything you can control. And now the rest is up to the gods, basically. And you're going to have to be able to be adaptable and flexible’. ‘The girls hated confrontation. They weren't used to giving and receiving feedback. That was always felt like a personal threat. I just had to put myself in the barrier first. I be like, “Right, cool, okay, if you're not going to give it and you're going to say everything's rosy when it's not, I’ll pull it out”’. About Laura Laura Penhaul is one of the world's most respected physiotherapists. She helps train many of the top athletes in Olympic sailing and the Paralympics. Laura is known for her nine-month, 9000-mile crossing of the Pacific in a rowboat. She managed a team of four women known as the Coxless Crew; she was the expedition's team leader and organiser. The expedition is featured in a documentary called Losing Sight of Shore. Connect with Laura through Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about stories of strength and mental resilience. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast! Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits once again. Today, I have another world-leading, actually world-record-holding, superwoman. Now, this lady is Laura Penhaul from England, and Laura is one of the world's most respected physiotherapists. She helps train many of the top athletes in Olympic sailing and in Paralympics with people with disabilities. She's done an awful lot in high-performance sport. But what Laura is really known for is that Laura did a 9,000-mile crossing of the Pacific in a rowboat, you heard that right. Right across the Pacific. Nine months it took and she was the team leader and organiser of this whole expedition. She got four women together to do this epic event. And there is a documentary out called Losing Sight of Shore. And today we discuss this mammoth expedition that Laura undertook. The funny thing is that Laura hadn't even been a rower before she took this on. But because she had worked so much with high-performance athletes, people pushing the limits of endurance, and people with disabilities doing crazy things. She wanted to understand what is it that makes some people so resilient and strong, and other ones want to give up when they're faced with a trauma. And she thought, 'I don't need to wait until something drastic happens in my life, and my health has taken off me or my mobility, or I have an accident or I have something to wake up. I can actually take on some mammoth task so that I can start to understand what it actually takes and what resilience and strength is all about'. And she felt like she didn't have the right to be leading and guiding other people if she didn't have that experience herself. So she set off on a mission, what she thought would take them a year to do for a status to organise this expedition across the Pacific. And they knew that taking it four years of preparation, we go into the, all the details of putting together such a high-performance team, it's a fantastic interview. She really is a superwoman. I'm in awe over here, I can't imagine being in a 29-foot boat for anything more than about two hours, I reckon, before I'd start going nuts, so she's pretty impressive, this lady. And before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we've launched now, our patron program for the podcast. So if you want to become a premium member of our podcast tribe, if you like, we'd love you to come and join us here on over to patron.lisatamati.com. And we'd love to see you over, the, it's all about keeping the show going. We've been doing it now for five and a half years each and every episode takes me a long time to put together to chase these world-leading experts, to do the research that I need to do, especially when it's dealing with scientific topics, and a test takes an awful amount of time. And to keep it going we need your help. And we wanted to give you lots of benefits too so people who do get in behind the podcast and help us provide this super valuable content to everybody get a whole lot of exclusive member benefits. So we'd love you to check it out. Go to patron.lisatamati.com for more information on that. And on that note before we just hit over to Laura, I just want to remind you about my new longevity and anti-ageing supplement NMN Nicotinamide Mononucleotide. You would have heard a couple of times in the podcast I had Dr Elena Seranova and we're going to have her on more often. She's a molecular biologist and tells us all about the ways that we can help with anti-ageing. And one of those things is by taking Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, which is a very, very powerful supplement. It's an NAD precursor that helps up-regulate the sirtuin genes, helps provide a bigger pool of NAD to every cell in the body and helps on a very, very deep level. The ageing working against the ageing process and who doesn't want to know about them if you want to find out all about it and all the science behind it, please go to nmnbio.nz. Right, now over to the show with Laura Penhaul. Lisa: Well, hi everyone, and welcome to Pushing the Limits. Today I'm super excited. I have an amazing, amazing guest for you. I really do find the most incredible people and this lady is a superwoman. So welcome to the show. It's really, really nice to have you Laura. Laura Penhaul is sitting in Cornwall in England. Laura, how's your day going? Well, you're not going. Laura Penhaul: Oh I was gonna say yeah no, it's been great. Do it. Yeah, it's now eight o'clock in the evening. So yeah, no, it's all good. It's been a beautiful sunny day. Lisa: Oh lovely, lovely. So Laura is an amazing person who does expeditions and as a physio, Laura, can you give us a little bit of background? I want you to tell your story in your words, give us a bit of a synopsis about what you do and what the critical things. I mean I've done a bit in the intro so, but I really want your words, if you like. Laura: Yeah, no props well, firstly, yes. Thanks, Lisa for having me on the show. It's been an honour because I think you're a superwoman more than me. Lisa: Hell no. Laura: But no I mean yeah, my background is I worked in elite sport, in Olympic and Paralympic sport for over 14 years. Sort of went to Vancouver, London, Rio, Tokyo cycles. And yeah during that kind of journey, and that was as lead physio in different sports, whether that was downhill skiing, whether it was with British Athletics Paralympic team. And more recently, I was with the British sailing team. And during that sort of journey as a physio like, the role that we have, as physios, physical therapists are very much kind of, you know, you're seeing somebody through a journey. And like when I worked with them and we've worked with patients in trauma, worked versus kind of, you know, in spinal cord injuries, and then straight to Paralympic sport, I've been surrounded by people that have been faced with significant adversity. And it's sort of, it's always along my journey of my career, have I been fascinated by understanding the person in front of me and kind of going, there's usually two types of people when they've been thrown a massive curveball, like an RTA or road traffic accident, or something horrendous, that is completely changed their life for the rest of their life. Those two, there's people that can go through the same type of thing. And yet one person wakes up, being so thankful that they're alive, they're now going to make the most of life. And then somebody else that wakes up and they're like, they wish they didn't wake up. And as a physio dealing with those two people, you've got to have a very different approach. And in the, kind of—to me, understanding that person that wants to give up and actually being able to change their mindset and facilitate, go shoulder to shoulder with them is really powerful. And then those people that do wake up and want to thrive, like they're the ones that have inspired me to do more stuff, because I'm like, why do we wait for adversity? Why do we wait for something to be a curveball before we then, like, start to go, ‘Oh, my God, I need to make the most of life like I’m fit. And I'm healthy. I need to make the most of life because clearly stuff could happen in an hour’s time. Lisa: At any time. Laura: Exactly. So that's kind of what then drove me to start to do more and more personally, and kind of a bit of exploratory expedition space. And then the real, so that led me to ride the Pacific Ocean, which is kind of you know what, we're talking about. Lisa: You said it again, you just rode the Pacific Ocean is, I just dropped it as a, to yeah, and then I rode the Pacific Ocean. So you were into sailing and into rowing and into all of that sport, as prior, this was your thing? Laura: No. Well, that's the thing, no wasn't in all honesty. I was, I'm kind of a jack of all trades like I love anybody, any athletes, anybody that I work with, I want to understand them. And I want to understand the sport, the environment that they're in. So when I was working with skiers, I went off and did a ski season. I learned to ski when I, and I'm somebody that, yeah, I love to do different sports and outdoors, the sort of outdoor environments. And if I was working with marathon runners, I was like, I can't fully treat them if I don't understand, if I haven't run a marathon like, to me, I need to experience what they've experienced, even in a small way to kind of get a glimpse of the environment. So I would run a marathon, same with triathletes, and, you know, not to the extent of your, sort of did a half Ironman, and then the point was the Paralympic cohort when I was working with them. I was like, this is an area that I can't untap you know, yeah. Lisa: Yeah. Laura: I can do it, but I can't understand what it is to be a Paralympian. Lisa: Yep. Laura: However, how can I put myself in a situation which is completely unknown, that's kind of gonna make me want to give up. And I want to understand what it is we draw on when we can't give up you know, we've only got one option. Lisa: Yep. Laura: So I kind of, that's what I was searching for, for a couple of years of searching for something that was going to be out of my comfort zone completely and was going to be a challenge on multiple levels. Lisa: Sure must have been. Laura: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I guess at the time, I was doing, sort of, triathlons. I was enjoying them. But anything that was cycling, running, swimming, I felt like this would be expected and I kind of would already be a bit familiar with it. So when I suddenly heard about ocean rowing, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is ideal'. I've always wanted to row but never did it. Then never got a chance to, so I'd never rode before. I've never lost sight of shore. Like, you know, I've never been out at sea properly, never sailed or any of that stuff. Well, a bar like going on a few trips. But yeah, not a sailor by anyway, shape or form. So it was, I was, and that just connected, you know, when something, an opportunity comes up and you're like, ‘This is exactly what I've been looking for'. And it was a proper light bulb moment. And the thing for me, it's the one time in my whole life that I've been so focused, like, ‘I have to make this happen'. Because I know, in my heart of hearts, I know what I'm going to get out of this is going to be huge. Lisa: Wow. Laura: And that basically is why starting point with it, it was kind of, I didn't know how to row, I went from being a marathon weight of like, something stupid, like 58 kilos up to, I had to go up to 72 kilos to grow on mass, you know, to be not skinny, because we lose a lot of weight out there. I had to put a team together, whereas, in my personal sport, I was doing quite individual sports. So, you know, I had to work out the team cohesion, the whole team dynamics, and recruitment. I had to figure out what the boat was, get it built, like then set up this as a business, you know, so. So yeah, so the whole journey it was, I mean, now on reflection, there's so many learnings from it. But I absolutely thrive from the self-awareness piece, how much I've learned about myself, and the different perspectives. And you know, approaching that row, my approach is very much like, this is all brand spanking new. So if I can approach it with a blank canvas, if I can have a real adaptive mindset, and if I surround, if I've now gone on the other side of the table, rather than surrounding athletes, if I surround myself with the relevant expertise, how far can I get? And how far can I really experience that athlete? Lisa: Yeah, sorry, just my brother's just come in the middle of the podcast it’s all right. There. Come on Mitch, get around the other side. Yeah, this is podcast life for you. Didn't tell your brother you’re recording. There was so much here that I wanted to unpack. Because there was like, you just skipped over a ton of stuff. Number one, you had no idea. So what gave you the confidence, what was the little voice inside you saying, ‘I can do this’, when you're in a completely unknown sport? Like what was it that made you think, ‘Oh, yeah, I can ride across the Pacific on a row across the Pacific, you know, for nine months, and that all worked out well'. You know, how did you even come up with a concept for something so audacious? Laura: Well, I mean, it's all about small pieces, isn't it, and kind of reaching out to those that have done stuff and those that you respect and have the expertise. So it was basically breaking it, breaking the journey down. First of all, one is that route even possible? So initially, somebody had asked me to be part of the Indian Ocean, and they were putting a team together and then I evolved it into the Pacific. And then somebody, I was like, well, actually, originally, it might have been the new ocean wave race, which just goes from San Fran to Hawaii. And I was like, well, that's not the Pacific. That's a third of it, like so if I'm going to say I'm going to row the Pacific. I want to row, can I row all of it? Yeah. So it was then reaching out to somebody from a logistical point of view and a support structure point of view saying, ‘Is this even feasible? And what would it look like?’ And when they said, 'Yes'. I was like, right, okay. So that's route can get involved, this is what it's going to look like. We're going to need to start, we're going to need to replenish, but it's doable. But it's going to take this time frame. And then it was kind of like right, in order for me to get prepped and the team to get prepped, what's the time frame that it's going to take to do that? Let's be realistic. And I wasn't realistic. I was naive, I thought it would only take us about a year to get to the start line. And hell no. It took four years to get to start, like four years. Lisa: Four years. That’s massive. Laura: Yeah, so it was. But interestingly, there's so many parallels, you know, like working in Olympic sport, everything's in four-year cycles for the Olympic cycle. And so there's so much that I learned through that process of, I thought I was only going to go in a year's time. That didn't happen. We didn't have the funding. I didn't got the team, the boat wasn't finished, you know, it was like, right, I need to go again. I need to reset. I need to sort of keep the ball rolling. But I need to learn from what failures have had here. And how do I overcome them? Lisa: Wow. Laura: The second year, I didn’t quite have to win I thought it was but it's all that sort of stuff. You go, yeah, you can give up why it's such a clear vision with it. And the question in my head was, ‘There's going to be an all-female team that is going to do this at some point. Like, why can't it be me? And I'm sure that will happen in my lifetime'. So what am I missing? What are the things that I can't see? That's in my blind spots. And that's where I started to reach out, to pull in different people to say, right, ‘This is the problem I've got, how can you help me’? How can you see and it was that reaching out for help with the right expertise that got us to the start line? It wasn't me. It was the collective bigger support team around us. Lisa: How did you even, like the resources and the money in the financial and the sponsorship, when you didn't have a—I mean, you had a backstory as a high-performance expert, and helping other people in training and so on. But, you know you didn't have, you weren't—there were no huge amount of resources behind you. How did you—I know what I had to go through to get to the races that I did. And that was probably a heck of a lot less than what you had to go through. How did you face that? And what did you learn on the business side of the journey, the marketing, all of that sort of stuff? Laura: Yeah, I mean– Lisa: Selling the idea to people. Laura: Yeah, the money. It kind of—it’s exactly that. I think it's showing the belief, like the absolute dogged determinedness, that this is going to happen, and you know, like, I put in my own swag to it. I paid for the boat built in the first place. So I'm like, I'm gonna do this, like, do you want to be part of it or not? But I want to do this regardless. Yeah. Lisa: So basically, how I did too. Laura: This is not my approach. But you know, I mean, I say that, but let's face it, I was useless at kind of asking for money, like, you know, it's great, you're doing it for charities. But to ask to support me, and like our journey. I was crap. You know, I'm a physio, I like to help people. I don't like asking for help. You know, at the time, I was very much in that poor sort of leadership style. And that's a big, that was a big learning point. But then reaching out to people that do work in business and do work in sponsorship. And they were the people that then helped me to shape sort of your sponsorship deck and how you need to brand it, what's your, you know, the colours, the language, all of that type of stuff. Lisa: Wow. Laura: And I loved it because I mean, I love learning. So suddenly, I was entering a snippet of a different world that I knew nothing about previously. Same with like the PR side of it, I had no idea but that was great fun, and, and the business model itself, like yeah became a business and I thought it was all about the physical and that was totally not it was 10% of like the project. And then yeah, so like you say, setting up a business no Scooby-Doo about and so simplicity was reaching out to people that had been successful had done it before. And the likes of, you know, Mark Beaumont, that we've talked about before like Mark. Mark is somebody that's an elite athlete, expedition athlete, he'd actually at the time rode the Atlantic, and unfortunately, they nearly died at sea. So I'd reached out to him to learn from his experiences from the actual failures, more, I don't want necessarily the successes, but, and he then was great at providing me with a bit more of the structure for you know, the timeline, the budget that this, that in the other room. Lisa: Wow. Laura: How you sort of need to get the sponsorship. And yeah, so I think to me, it's about as you know, if you hold, if this is a new space and you hold an ego thinking you're going to, then you're never gonna get anywhere. Lisa: You’re gonna get your ass kicked. Laura: Yeah, basically, just whereas for me, yeah, well, I don't mind. I don't mind saying I don't know something. I'm happy to ask why and how and who can help… Lisa: You can be very humble, we can tell that five minutes of talking to you, you know. Laura: Thank you very much. Lisa: And how did you get a team together? Because you get four ladies, you rode the Pacific and people were talking like nine months and a rowboat unsupported, like from California to Cairns, wasn’t it? It's great. Yeah. There's a documentary out on it. If people want to find out we'll work out with it with the link sir. And how they can get hold of it perhaps afterwards. Four ladies in a rowboat, rowing across the lake. I mean, to the average person who doesn't know anything about rowing? It sounds absolutely insane. And I, like, I said to my husband, I was interviewing this morning and I said I couldn't last 24 hours in a rowboat. I probably couldn't last four hours in a rowboat. How do you comprehend nine months like that for me? Is, I mean, I've never done anything on that scale, of that long. You know, like, the longest thing I ever did was run through New Zealand which was a sustained effort over 42 days. And that well nearly bloody killed me, you know. But that's not nine months, you know, little logistics and all that. Wow. Laura: Yeah, but you know what, I've been, flipping heck, you know. 40 odd days that you're running the lengths of New Zealand, like that is insane. So you could have... Lisa: That’s a hell lot easier than rowing. Laura: It’s not though! I mean, it's all about perspective, isn't it? And it's all about the context that you're in. And this is the thing that I get really passionate about is, I want to optimise people's own elite performance, like, not comparative to anybody else, like, what's your—so what you're really is your achievement of like, 42 days and everything else you've achieved is huge. Whereas somebody else's 42 days of running, will be running a marathon like that will be—it's about that gap analysis, like, where you'd got yourself to, to then be able to take on the 42-day sort of challenge. Like that was a big old leap, but you're already like, sort of—your experiences, and you'd prepped yourself for that. Lisa: Yes, years and years. Laura: Yeah, and where is somebody who's on a couch, but then is setting their sights of running a marathon. That's their 42 days, like, that's their elite performance for them. And the row for us? Yeah, it was a big old leap, but it was fundamentally, it was broken down. Like I think sometimes you must have found this with the run, you're talking about there and everything else. You've got to break it down, like you certainly in the preparation phase, you've got to plan every inch and every sort of crook of it within its life so that you don't leave any stone left unturned. You feel like you're best prepared, that gives you confidence, to then have capacity to deal with the unknown when you're faced with it. So to me, that sort of, I always wanted to leave, like, at least 30% of capacity in my headspace to make sure I can react to when I need to. Lisa: You can handle it. Laura: Exactly, and deal with the unknown. If I mean, if we'd gone on that row in that first year, Jesus Christ, like most of it was unknown, like that. I was so naive, it was ridiculous. But by the time you know, it's four years down the line, I felt so confident in actually we've trialed the boat, we've done 72 hours, we've done a couple of weeks. We've done team testing, we've done routines, we've done steep depot, we've done the training, we've done the site support, you know, all of those, every aspect of it. I feel like we took out and then it was a case of right, well, then we just need to do this on a day and day out. And then however long that's gonna last for it's just sticking to routines, which you know, the same in whatever you do. Lisa: The more you do the more it becomes normal. Laura: Exactly. And then it's kind of like, Well, actually, once you lose sight of shore, whether you're out there for five days, five weeks, five months, actually doesn't make much difference. Lisa: You’re in this shit anyway. Too far from home anyway, you've lost sight of shore! Laura: Yeah, you kind of just got to crack on and then, you know, there's no going back, you can't row backwards, sort of, it's only about, you know, having the confidence to step into taking on the Pacific. And for us, you know, yes, we rowed the Pacific literally, but to me, it was the essence of everybody's got their own Pacifics to cross like... Lisa: Yes. Laura: ...our film’s called Losing Sight of Shore because it's about having the courage to lose sight of shore, like, have that sort of courage to just step away from the comfort, step away from the knowns. And like, Oh, my God, you know, that's where life just opens up and expose. Lisa: Because you know, I had Paul Taylor, who's a neuroscientist, and ex-British Navy guy, and exercise physiologist on the show last week, and he's talking about the small bubble where you can live in or the big bubble. And the big bubble is where we all want to be, you know, where we’re reaching our potential and we are filling and where are all these amazing things that we could do. We know that that bubble was there. But we're all scared living in this little comfort zone. And how do you push outside because that outside is risk of failure, and in your case risk of dying. You know, there was so much that you put on the line physically, mentally, financially, emotionally, relationships, you know. You name it, you put it on the line for this one thing, and that is living in that big bubble and scaring the crap out of yourself and doing it anyway. Most people have this tendency to want to be comfortable in and I see this as a massive problem in our society today is that we are all cozy and comfortable and sitting on the couch watching Netflix and we are warm and we don't push ourselves for the gloom we don't push yourself. And this leads to disaster when it comes to resilience and being able to cope because you're been through this amazing adventure and expedition and you've risked everything, you must have an inner confidence that is just—and I know that you won't have it in all areas of life because this is certainly specific. And I know how that works because I'm really good and some things and really crap in others and I'm still working on my mindset in this area and that area or whatever, we're work in progress but you when you've lifted up your horizons to that big, nothing must daunt you in a way. Like he must be like, ‘Okay, whatever is coming at me, I can probably handle it'. Because you know, inside you have that resilience, which is so important. Laura: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. It's about context, isn't it? Like I—you know, I'm a risk-taker, but I'm a really calculated risk-taker, right. Lisa: Yeah. Laura: Exactly. So kind of the Pacific seems like it's ridiculous, and it's life threatening. I mean, I didn't leave any stone left unturned. I had military guys helping us to make sure we'd sort of not left stuff unturned. We went through survival practice. We, I mean, there was everything and the amount of sort of, you know, routines we had on the boat, leashes, and kind of safety equipment was next to none. Because I was like, the risk we've got is getting separated from the boat. So I'm risk-aware, really risk-aware. And, and kind of, and make sure that sort of don't leave any stone unturned so then I feel confident to go forwards. I wouldn't just leap into it like blindly. Lisa: Yep, you shouldn’t. Laura: Yeah exactly. Lisa: Because you will die. Laura: Yeah. But I mean, it's no different if you watch, I don't think like, you know, you watch Alex Honnold, climbing free solo, you know, the El Cap, sort of the climb, if anybody’s seen that film. I mean, it's phenomenal. And anybody would, you know, you watch it. You're like, ‘Oh, my God, that's insane. He’s free climbing that like, what if he just slipped’? What if this? What if that? But look at his meticulous approach to it. Lisa: Yeah, one hand wrong. Laura: Exactly. But then his meticulous approach, he hasn't just woken up that day one, right. So I'm going to climb up, you know, sort of freestyle at this thing. He's like, he's been off top-roping with it, he is kind of lead climbed it. He's, kind of, known every single holding place he's written it, he’s drawn it, he’s visualising it. And he's only done it when he feels completely ready, prepped. And that actually, there's no move in that that is going to be a risk. So, therefore, he's a calculated risk-taker. And it is extreme when you watch it, but the preparedness is totally there. Lisa: I couldn't do it. I didn't put the parachute on as I'm halfway down. You know, you do learn from that, you know. I remember going out into the race in Niger, which was 353Ks across one of the most dangerous landscapes in you know, places on Earth, countries on Earth. And we were meant to have food come from France, and it didn't arrive. And I wasn't prepared. I didn't have my own stash, I didn't, my husband at the time, my ex-husband there. He did, you know, like, and when you're doing things like that, and you end up with food poisoning, and you're, you know, vomiting and shitting your way across the Sahara. And you realise, you know, you could have avoided that. That’s sort of a big lesson and do your preparation better, you know. Don't be so cavalier with your, ‘I am going to go and, you know, run 100 miles, and I haven't even trained for a marathon yet'. No, no, you know, and I had to learn those things the hard way because I had a tendency just to dive in. And this is all exciting. And let's do it. Laura: But then you learned that didn’t you? Lisa: Yeah, but it's not a good way to learn in the middle of the Sahara. It’s better to learn previously. Laura: Yeah, that is sure. But yeah, I mean, you still but you learn and I think that's one of the biggest takeaways, of whenever we talk about failure and stuff. It is not a failure, if you, unless you don’t learn from it. And leaping sometimes is exactly what you need to do, and it's just not being scared to fall, like just knowing that, you know what, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's got you one step further. And one step closer to finding what the next thing might be. Lisa: Yeah. Laura: So yeah, just it's having that like you say, that the sort of the robustness, the resilience or whatever it is to bounce back to kind of jump back up to ask the questions. ‘Well, why didn't that work? And let's try it a different way', or learn from it and do something. Lisa: Yeah, like you said, You reached out to Mark and he'd had, you know, nearly died and had actually failed in that particular expedition, done lots of other crazy stuff, but you know, and that one and it is those things like you are risking failure and you have to understand it from the outset. That you can take care of all the things you can prepare. You can get everything and you're still risking because, if this was easy, everyone would be doing it. And you have to be okay with the—this is something I try and get my athletes to understand. When you're actually done the work, you've done the boulder, you've done the—all the hard stuff that you knew now standing at the start line, that's actually to have time to celebrate and go, you know, ‘I've done the hard work. Now it's up to whatever's going to come my way'. And like you say, being able to adapt and to have the flexibility to take whatever's coming at you, which isn't always easy, but you have to sort of give up those—I think the consequences of what if, what if, what if, because if you’re constantly asking yourself, for ‘What if I don't make that time?’ You know, say you're running a marathon, or I want to do it in under three and a half hours, or whatever the case may be, and then you're so like, ‘Oh, no’, and then it takes you three hours and thirty-two and you know, ‘I'm a failure’, you know, like, hang on a minute, no, hang on. That's not how it works. Laura: Yeah. Lisa: Yeah, you've got to understand that there are things you can't control. So you've done everything you can control. And now the rest is up to the gods, basically. And you're going to have to be able to be adaptable and flexible. And that was one of the things in your website, talking about adaptive, being adaptive in your performance. And I think that's a really good thing because we cannot control like… You can be having a bad day at the office and get up and you feel sick and your immune system’s down and you've got your period and you've, you know, whatever the case may be. And you weren't bargaining with that, you know, so you have to be able to work, ‘I need to still go because there's no way back. How do I deal with it’? You know? Laura: Yeah, and I think it's a really valid point. Because I mean, even in the row halfway through, and it's in the films, it's not kind of confidential stuff. One of the girls, like, she just completely changed her personality, right, because that was exactly the problem. She thought she could control the boat. She thought, you know, she was a rower. Out of all of us, she was somebody that actually had rowed since she was a kid and stuff. She thought ocean rowing was, you know. She didn't want to lose the passion. Unfortunately, yeah, it killed her passion. She didn't know then, she lost the sense of identity, all of that stuff. Lisa: Oh yeah, real tough. Laura: Yeah, awful. And, but because she was trying to control the boat, you know, like, the current, the wind was against us, like, those are things you cannot control. It’s a one ton boat, not one person is going to be able to control moving that in the direction you want it to go in. And so, but it was the collective of the team that enabled us to be able to rally around and understand, first of all, recognise the change in personality, it was a behaviour, it was yeah, there was something underlying. It was not her—well, it was, but there was something emotional that she couldn't verbalise straightaway. So hence, she just changed her personality type. Lisa: Wow. Laura: And then it was like the strength of the team to be able to rally together to support that. So kind of come at it from the right approach that she was able to share it, to then collectively go, we just need to see a different perspective on this stuff. And I think that's where, you know, a vast dynamic sort of team, you know, a diverse team sorry is what I meant, has got so much strength in it, because you know, what, when you see it through your own lens, there's only sort of one way. Whereas if you've got some diversity there, I just think it brings a different perspective. And suddenly, you're able to see, you can't control the uncontrollable, you know, you can only control the controllables. You can't control what's out of control. And those things are the weather that is, you know, yes will prevent being ill or injured. But that might well happen. That, you know, is what it is. And if the boat sort of fails, but you whatever, then those are only three things that are going to be out of our control. And if anything happened there, then I wouldn't be. I would have been upset, I would be upset, but I wouldn't be throwing my toys out the pram because it isn't something we could control. And if the row didn't happen, we didn't finish because one of those three things, that is what it is. Lisa: Yeah, it is what it is. And you've done your utmost. And I mean, I've failed on different expeditions and things that I’ve done, like really fallen on my face, you know, with, you know, documentary crews there have captured all on film as you just absolutely completely faceplant. And, you know, and it takes a long time to get up again, and it knocks the crap out of you. And, you know, but it's part of that, okay, well, this is the game wherein, you know, we’re pushing the limits, and sometimes, you know, you are human and you don't have the resources or one of the things that I find really, really I'd love to and I think this probably needs its own podcast is the whole team dynamic thing. I mean, it's one thing to be a solo athlete that does things, you know, but it's a—couple of times when I've had to be in a team situation. I find it really, really tough because you were reliant... I did one in the Himalayas, and we're trying to do the world's highest marathon ever done. And I was with a guy who was a mountaineer and used to altitude and very at home in that space. And I wasn't. And I don't—I've done a couple of things at altitude and sort of survive by the skin of my teeth. I'm an asthamtic and I don't really do well on the mountains. So take on, you know, the world's highest mountain. Good idea. And we'd be in shape. And I got sick. I got altitude sickness, and I couldn't even start my body. I couldn't even tie my shoelaces. But the worst thing was that he changed. The person that he was down here was not the person that he was up there, and, it ended up being quite nasty, and quite, detrimental. And he's not here to defend himself. So I'm not gonna say anything too much. But it wasn't a nice situation to be in — I did not trust that if I was in the shutout there, that we would work together as a team to get through it. I felt like, now, he wouldn't do that. And then so now I'm like, very, very always aware of if I'm teaming up with people like we've got at the moment, this weekend in my hometown, that Oxfam 100, it's 100-kilometre event where lots of just normal everyday people are doing 100Ks, which is like amazing, walking, and they're doing it in, you know, teams of four, and the staff are going to go through... And there'll be people that are, you know, expeditions bring out the worst and bring out the best in people. And you don't know until you're in the situation with them, which way are they going to go, and which way you're going to go. I mean, I can become, I've been a really horrible person on some of my, you know, with my crew on different occasions where I've just lost my shit because I'm in so much pain, sleep deprivation, motions are up the wazoo. And you just, you know, you're snappy, irritable, you know, just horrible. Afterwards, I’m heading to go and say, ‘I'm very sorry'. You know? So how did you deal with that over nine months like that on steroids? Like the dynamic—four women—everybody's having their highs and lows at different points in there. How did you cope with that? I mean, you're obviously, you've mentioned the one person and how you helped pull together, it takes incredible leadership to keep a team like that together for nine months, no matter how wonderful you all are. Laura: Yeah, that I mean, don't get me wrong, you still have arguments and stuff, but it was all in the preparation. And it was, we knew I mean, so it is a 29th version rowing boat, right. So it's kind of the size of Greg Rutherford's, it's got the world record for the long jump, right? So it is, kind of, his long jump is the size of our boat. So it's a really small space. And then when you're cramped into the cabin, there's two of you. And if it's stormy, then all four of you are either in that or two in each cabin. So it's a tight, confined space. So it was really clear from the outset that this team had to be, we had to be cohesive, we had to be really transparent. And something I was particularly pedantic about was, I never want to leave a permanent issue. Like if there's an issue, we need to confront it, we will have to step forward into it. We can't, I don't want any bitchiness like, there was, that was always been, sort of my approach to most things. Like, I can't stand the whole talking to other people, rather than talking to the individual that you've got an issue with. You just need to step into that as much as it might feel uncomfortable. And I guess, working in a performance context, we're scrutinised on a daily basis, you know. We're kind of everybody's asking you why what are you doing, you know, type stuff, you've got to justify, you feel like you're under a spotlight all the time. So you start to feel this kind of separation, you know, look kind of right. No, this is they're asking me that because of the person in front of us or the, you know, the end goal, that's what it's about. It's got nothing to do with me personally. We're just trying to optimise what we need to do. So when, my, I pulled this, the sort of the team came together, a lot of it, I was like, how do we stress test this, like, we have to stress test it because– Lisa: Hell yeah. Laura: –exactly. And that's where I, you know, I started working with Keith, the performance psychologist. I reached out to him so I was like, there's got to be more depth to this, you know, we need tools we need to I need to know what I'm going to draw on when I'm wanting to give up like, what's going to be my go-to’s, I'm going to, I need to know how I can respond and react to different personalities and stuff and how they're going to react to each other. So Keith was the absolute rock to the success of our journey, in all honesty. I worked with him for four years and I still worked with him. I still work with him, sorry, to this day. And Keith, sort o—he enabled us to sort of understand the differences in our personalities from the basics of just doing psychometrics and stuff, but pretty in-depth ones. And then analyzing that a little bit more and playing it out in different scenarios, and then really forcing us to kind of do the round table. Yeah, because—and the girls hated confrontation. They weren't used to giving and receiving feedback. That was always felt like a personal threat. Yeah. So I just had to put myself in the barrier first. So I be like, ‘Right, cool, okay, if you're not going to give it and you're going to say everything's rosy when it's not, I’ll pull it out'. ‘So this is what's not going so well. And this is not going so well. Right now give it back to me, hit me’, like because then as soon as I've given it they're happy to give it back to me because I think I'm being—yeah exactly. That's fine. And then I would show them that I was learning from it because I was. And there was— I— they would call me, I would have Laura number one, Laura number two, my personalities. And they—I didn't realise that until sort of, you know, going through the row and they're like, ‘Oh my god, it's Laura number two'. And Laura number two is somebody that when she starts getting, like, tired, hungry, all of that gubbins and, and sort of just a bit over it, I start getting really assertive. I'm very tunnel vision, and my empathy just goes. Whereas normal time, like I've got heaps of the empathy, until it gets to a point… Lisa: Yeah, yeah. So like me. Laura: And so they’d be like, all right, Laura number two. Because we then had a language that was a little bit disconnected to the personal and it made a bit of fun of it, then we sort of were able to sort of take a pause, hear it and stuff. But we had loads of loads of methodologies that we built, we'd worked on to try and get to that point. And that was sort of to the point with there, though, is that is not to say we didn't have any arguments, because we did like, I mean Nat and I, in particular, completely different personalities. She is like a, she's a beautiful character. She is Miss Mindful, she is in the moment, and she is just totally there. She's talking about the sky and the sea and the colours. Whereas I'm Miss Planner. Like I'm already in Cannes, I'm thinking about fear, I’m planning, and what do we need to do, what do we need to sort out? So, you know, when we did the team testing before, this was during selection of the team. I remember when I met Nat, I was like, ‘Oh, god, no, we are poles apart. There's just no way', you know because I was trying to see it through. I was only seeing it through my own lens of who I was getting a rapport with. But I brought her onto the team testing weekend, which was, I'd gone to some ex-military guys. And I said, ‘Look, we need to be tested. I need to see what we're like when we're cold, we’re hungry, really sore, in pain. You need to physically push us. You need to mentally push us'. Well. And so we did like a 72-hour sleep depot type thing, you know, in the Brackens in Wales, yeah. On reflection that was like, yeah, that was it was great fun and obviously hated it during. I remember, like during it, sort of Nat in particular, as a personality that stood miles out because when she came on to it, I was thinking oh she can come along. But she's, I don't think that I’m going to be selecting her. And then Nat was the one that, you know, she might not have been the fittest. But even when she was struggling, and she was in pain, she had a sense of humour. When I was starting to struggle, she made me laugh. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, there's not many people that can do that while I'm in that space'. Lisa: Yeah. Laura: And I'm like, this isn't just about me. But for the comfort of the team, like we need that. Because otherwise, I will make this too serious. I will. When it gets into it, it will be too boring and serious. I need a sense of humour in this. And she is, she's got it in abundance. And she kept us at the moment. Lisa: Wow, yep. Laura: As well. Like, I needed that mindfulness when we're out to sea because otherwise, I wouldn't have remembered half the things that went on and I wouldn't have recognised and seen it. Lisa: Isn't that amazing? So looking at the strengths and differences can actually end up being the thing that holds you together rather than pulls you apart. Laura: A hundred percent. Lisa: And I just think in this space I have to connect you with Paul Taylor, he will love you. He's a resilience expert that I was mentioning before and yeah, I think it when you have characters and I've started to do this just with for myself even now I have these different characters, you know, there's the good me and there's bad me and the good means like Wonder Woman, she can do anything and she's amazing. And he has all these character traits that you know I aspire to and want to have and that side of me and then the other side's a real bitch, you know, she's a horrible, cynical, selfish person and those are both of me. And I know when you put this on—Paul talks about doing like cartoon characters and putting speech bubbles on them and actually giving them life and because it puts you outside of these characters that are fighting in your head, and you're trying to be that good one you want to be, but when you're hungry and cold and freezing, and you haven't slept in three days, and you're struggling somewhere, and God knows where. And you just want to go home and cry and hide under the covers and get mummy to give you a chicken soup. Well, you—it puts it outside of you, and it helps you see what you're doing. And even in daily things like, you know, I've been rehabilitating my mum now for five years, seven days a week. And you know, beginning first three years, it was like eight hours a day. So it was just, it was full, full-on. And then even longer than that in the first year. And I catch myself sometimes being so short and irritable because I'm like trying to multitask and trying to run my businesses and she's waiting for me and you know, like, you just find yourself snapping at somebody when you just feel like, you know, that asshole is sure is present, you know, and you're just like listening to yourself going, ‘How the hell do I get a grip on this?’ We're all human. And we're all working on this. And, you know, I go to my mum and I put her in bed at night time and a cuddle. And tell her, I say, 'You know, I'm sorry for being a bitch today, Ma. I’m sorry for snapping at you'. And she's so lovely. She's like, 'Oh, that's all right'. Like, you know. But we have moments where we're just not nice, and when you're in these extreme circumstances fad, the ones that come out, and this is a part of the dynamic thing that I find really, really fascinating in that whole resilience and teamwork, and how do you bring it all together? So, you know, we're going to have to wrap up this one, because I've really enjoyed talking to you, Laura. But I really would like to have you on a couple of times, because I think there's much more to this actual story because we haven't even got to talking about well, what was it actually like to row? How did you, you know, do, what did you actually do on a daily basis? And how do you plan for such a thing? And how do you have such a big project and deal with it? And so I'm really glad that we've made this connection, and I'm very, very keen to have you on the show again, if you, because we've really just been part one, I think. Laura: Let's see… No, I’ll be honoured to come back on. There’s so much I think we connect with in, and we can talk about for sure, especially in that headspace how we can be… What we've both learned from the experiences that we faced and continue to learn, I think is always an exciting journey. Lisa: Yeah. Laura: Yeah, I'd be honoured to come back on it. It’s been great. Lisa: That would be fantastic because I think also the work that you've done with Paralympians and, you know, people that have worked with disabilities and trauma, we haven't even unpacked that either. Because I think that, you know, we can learn a heck of a lot from people that have gone through, you know, all these dramas and so on, me, I learn every day from Mum, like, her mindset is just like, incredibly strong, resilient. And so I'd like to unpack some of that stuff as well. So Laura, thank you very much for your time today. I think you're a rock star, where can people find you? And where can they get involved in what you're doing? And, you know, do whatever you got available? Because you've got some really good lessons to share with people. So tell us where we can find you. Laura: Yeah, I mean, on usual social media, sort of, the Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn, just @laurapenhaul. And that sort of, you know, P-E-N-H-A-U-L is my surname. So yeah, reach out to that we've also got our endurance book. So where we've sort of added science behind, kind of some of the endurance sort of focus is on GCN, which is a Global Cycling Network website, or our podcast is Endurance as well, which is where's Mark Beaumont, which I co-author on. Lisa: So I'm very keen to meet and hopefully get on the show as well. Yeah, hook me up there. Laura: Yeah, Keith will get you on that as well. I think you've got a lot to add and share their experiences for sure. Lisa: I'd love to. That would be an absolute honor. Laura, you're one hell of a strong woman. I can't wait to see where you go and in the future in what you know, what you take on. God forbid is probably going to be big, and thank you for sharing. I think you have such great knowledge to share with people and you have a duty to get that information out there because this is the sort of stuff that helps people. So thank you very much for your time today Laura. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
We deal with a lot of stress every day. From balancing our responsibilities to merely reading the news, stress is an inevitable part of life. But contrary to popular belief, stress isn’t always the enemy. A healthy amount of stress allows us to grow more resilient to tougher conditions. Too much stress, however, can lead to the downfall of our well-being. Especially during these exceedingly stressful times, we need to manage our stress levels and build resilience. In this episode, Paul Taylor joins us to share how we can better respond to stress and build resilience. He explains how too much stress can damage the body and the role of genetic predispositions in our health. Paul also gives us tips on training yourself to handle stress better. Finally, we talk about reframing negative self-talk and forming good habits. If you want to learn more about how to build resilience and handle stress better, then tune in to this episode. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle? Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa’s Anti-ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Train yourself to build resilience and handle stressful situations better. Discover ways to deal with negative thoughts. Learn Paul’s tips on creating good habits. Resources Pushing the Limits Episode 183 - Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova You can also watch Episode 183 on YouTube Watch my interview with Dr Seranova on The Interplay Between Autophagy and NAD Biology. Learn more about NMN supplements on NMN Bio. Stopping Automatic Negative Thoughts Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl Connect with Paul: Website | LinkedIn The MindBodyBrain Project with Paul Taylor The Better You Program by Paul Taylor Episode Highlights [05:13] About Paul’s PhD in Resilience Paul is studying psychophysiological resilience. Gratitude, empathy and mindfulness are necessary. But they are not sufficient factors in studying resilience. Paul is looking at the interaction between resilience, mental well-being and burnout in military guys. Paul is developing a new measure of resilience. It uses self-reports, cognitive batteries and biological measures. [07:57] What Stress Does to Your Brain Consistent exposure to stress changes the brain, both structurally and functionally. These changes make people less able to control their emotional responses. People suffering from anxiety, depression, PTSD or burnout were found to have significant maladaptive changes in their brains. [17:38] Daily Stressors That Damage Us Aside from life traumas, the smaller daily stressors can also be damaging for us. Paul believes that modern life is characterised by input overload that puts us in a constant state of stress. Our resilience and responsiveness to stress depend on factors such as genetics, social support and nutrition. Listen to the full episode to learn more about how nature and nurture inform how stress is processed in the brain. [22:40] Training Yourself to Build Resilience The Goldilocks Effect proposes that for optimal performance, stress levels must be just right. Specific training and repetition can help people arrive at an automated response regardless of their genetic predispositions. Learning arousal control strategies can make you act effectively under pressure. These strategies are also used routinely in training military, police or firefighters. Breathing is one easy arousal control strategy. Specifically, techniques like box breathing and resonant frequency breathing help manage stress. Listen to the full episode to learn more about breathing techniques and the autonomic nervous system. [29:49] Using Attention in Stress Response Our attention tends to be internally focused if we’re anxious, depressed or stressed. If you’re not in danger or no external threat, shifting your attention outward can help minimise your stress. You can shift your attention to your breathing or the things you can sense. Paul says that we all have an ‘inner gremlin’. It’s a character that is responsible for negative self-talk, anger, anxiety and depression. Instead of listening to it, you can shift your attention to the “inner sage” or the best version of yourself. This process of “self-distancing” has been found to reduce people’s emotional intensity. Listen to the full episode to find out how to create a character based on these figures. [35:58] Discharge, Recharge and Reframe When you’re feeling overwhelmingly anxious, first find a way to discharge your stress hormones. Paul finds that even 30 seconds of intense activity helps in discharging. Then you recharge by focusing on your breathing. Lastly, reframe your perception by thinking about what your best character would do. [40:44] Dealing with Automatic Negative Thoughts You are not your negative thoughts. You can choose not to listen to them. In Japanese psychology, our automatic negative thoughts are stories we tell ourselves. What matters is what story we pay attention to. The concept of Hebbian learning suggests that every time you’re repeating a thought, you’re strengthening it. Interrupt your maladaptive and unhelpful thought patterns and create new healthier ones. Watch your thoughts with curiosity and remember that you have a choice over the ones you can focus on. [48:10] The Importance of Getting Outside Your Comfort Zone The small circle-big-circle analogy is used to describe comfort zones. The small circle is your comfort zone and the big circle is where growth and adaptation happens. Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have stopped adapting to their environment. Paul thinks that learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable is key to growing stronger and building resilience. However, you can’t go outside your comfort zone and push yourself too hard all the time. You also have to allow yourself to recover physically and mentally. [53:05] On Recovery Seeking comfort is done during recovery. Recovery isn’t the same as relaxation. Recovery is doing stuff that energizes you. If you don’t take the time to recover, you’ll run the risk of burnout. Balancing recovery, proper nutrition, good sleep hygiene and high-intensity training drives stress adaptation. [1:01:52] How to Make Good Habits and Stick to Them As humans, we are more driven by immediate rewards. Temporal discounting is what happens when our brains ignore rewards that are far off in the future. Temporal discounting gets in the way of making good habits and achieving our goals. In making good habits, it is important to understand your values and connect your behaviours to those. Breaking big goals into smaller and more manageable goals makes it easier to follow through them. Engaging in enabling behaviour also helps in priming your brain to make your habits. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘And so this is what happens when people get burnout or anxiety, depression, PTSD, is that there are adaptive changes that turn maladaptive. And it's basically because the brain is being overwhelmed with stress, either way too much stress in the case of trauma, or just complaints, daily bombardment with stress, and not enough recovery’. ‘So that resonant frequency breathing or box breathing can be really really useful and to deal with stuff in and of the moment. Just, it's basically autonomic nervous system control through breathing’. ‘So if we take a step back, people who have anxiety or depression or just have a busy mind, you know, they've got a lot of negative self talk going on, they want to get rid of it, right? But these three approaches, and I say, look, getting rid of it, it's not really the objective. It's really about where you focus your attention’. ‘I like to talk about shifting your attention to the concept of your inner sage, which is what the Stoic philosophers talked about, you know, that's the optimal version of you. And that's either my best self, me at my best or some sort of other character that I'm consulted’. ‘If you're sitting listening to this, think of your biggest achievement in your life, something that you are most proud of. And I guarantee you, for almost every listener, it will involve stress and being out of your comfort zone. But we need to hang with the tension long enough for adaptation to happen’. ‘You only get bigger, faster, stronger, because you hang with the tension long enough for adaptation to happen right’? ‘And I find that there are a lot of high achievers who are at risk of burnout because they're just on, on, on. And not enough serotonin focused stuff, just contentment, relaxation, connection with others time in nature, all of that sort of stuff’. About Paul Paul Taylor is a former British Royal Navy Aircrew Officer. Paul is also a Neuroscientist, Exercise Physiologist and Nutritionist. He is currently completing a PhD in Applied Psychology. He is developing and testing resilience strategies with the Australian Defence Science Technology Group & The University of Tasmania. In 2010 Paul created and co-hosted the Channel ONE HD TV series Body and Brain Overhaul. And in 2010 and 2015, he was voted Australian Fitness Industry presenter of the year. Paul also has an extensive background in health and fitness. Additionally, he has experience in leadership, management and dealing in high-pressure situations. His former roles include Airborne Anti-submarine Warfare Officer and a Helicopter Search-And-Rescue Crew Member with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. He has also undergone rigorous Combat Survival and Resistance-to-Interrogation Training. In 2012, he practised what he preaches about resilience training and became a professional boxer. Want to know more about Paul’s work? Visit his website or follow him on Linkedin. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, so they can learn to build resilience. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. I’m your host, Lisa Tamati. Today I have the legend Paul Taylor. Now Paul is a former British Royal Navy air crew officer. He's also a neuroscientist and exercise physiologist and a nutritionist. And he's currently completing a PhD in Applied Psychology, where he's developing and testing resilience strategies with the Australian Defence Science Technology Group and the University of Tasmania. This guy is an overachiever. He's done a whole lot of stuff in his life. In 2010, Paul created and co-hosted the Channel One TV series Body & Brain Overhaul. And in 2015, he was voted Australian Fitness Industry presenter of the year. This guy has been there, done that, and you're going to really enjoy the conversation today—all around resilience. He has so much knowledge, and he is with us all today. So I hope you really enjoy this episode with Paul Taylor. Now before we head over and talk to Paul, I just want to remind you, if you're wanting to check out our epigenetics, what we do with our gene testing program that we have, where you look at your genes, understand your genes and how to optimise your genes, and how they are being influenced by the environment and how to optimise your environment, then please head over to my website, lisatamati.com. Hit the Work with Us button. Then you'll see peak epigenetics, peak epigenetics and click that button and find out all about it. Every second week, we have a live webinar where we actually take you through what it's all about, what's involved and how it all works. So if you want to find out about that, just reach out to me. You can reach me at any time and the support@lisatamati.com. If you've got questions around in the episodes, if you want to know a little bit more about any other guests, or you want to find out about anything that we do, please reach out to us there. I also want to let you know about the new anti-ageing and longevity supplement NMN that I'm importing. I had a couple of episodes with Dr. Elena Seranova, who's a molecular biologist who shares all the information about this incredible supplement and how it upregulates the sirtuin genes in the body and helps create more NAD. Lots of big words but very incredible. The information in those episodes is really incredible. And if you want to try out this longevity and anti-ageing supplement, have more energy, it helps with cardiovascular health, there's even some evidence now starting to looking into fertility. It works on a very deep level in the body and helps upregulate the sirtuin genes which are longevity genes, helps with DNA repair mitochondrial biogenesis, lots of really good stuff. You probably didn't catch all those words, but go and listen to those episodes. The product is called Nicotinamide Mononucleotide. It’s fully natural, there’s no downside to this. Very safe to take and will slow the ageing process. If you want to find out a little bit more head on over to nmnbio.nz, that's nmnbio.nz. Right, enough for today. I'm going to send you right now over to Paul Taylor who's sitting in south of Melbourne. Lisa: Well, hi everybody, Lisa Tamati here at Pushing The Limits. Super excited to have you. I'm just jumping out of my skin for excitement because today I have the legendary, Paul Taylor with me. Paul, how are you doing? Paul Taylor: Hi, I'm bloody awesome. How the devil are you? Lisa: Very excited to meet you. Paul is sitting in south of Melbourne, he tells me, in Wine Country. Is that right? Paul: That's correct. Like any self-respecting Irishman, I moved to where they make the wine. Lisa: An Irishman who lives in Australia, who is ex-British Royal Navy e-crew, neuroscientist, nutritionist, exercise physiologist—a bit of an overachiever, Paul. Crikey, could you do a little bit more, please? You're not doing enough. Paul: Well, I’m currently doing a PhD in Applied Psychology, just to sort of finish it—round it all out. And I need to keep myself out of mischief. Lisa: Crikey. I feel very intimidated right now. But I am very excited to have you on the show. Because I have come across you from our mutual friend Craig Harper, he is awesome. And I've been listening to your lectures and your work and your learnings, and just going, ‘Wow, this guy puts everything into such a lovely way - with stories and good analogies’. And so, I wanted to share you with my world, over here with my audience. So today, I wanted to do a bit of a deep dive. But before we get into it, so you are doing a PhD in resilience. So, can you elaborate a little bit on the PhD you’re doing? Paul: Yeah, so what I'm looking at is psychophysiological resilience, because I'm just bloody sick to the back teeth, hearing that resilience is all about gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. And that stuff, it's important. But as I say, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. And there is a large component of resilience that has to be earned. And that's the sort of stuff that I realized from my time in the armed forces.So, the positive side stuck is important. But there is a lot more to it. And I actually wanted to explore it and do the research on it. And I'm very lucky that one of my supervisors, Eugene, is the principal scientist at Defence Science Technology Group. So, they work a lot with the military. And I'm actually doing—I'm just finishing off my first study with the military. So, it's pretty cool for me, having left the British military 16 years ago. Now, I’m doing resilience interventions with the Australian military. Lisa: Wow, I mean, it just sounds absolutely amazing. What sort of things are you—because I agree, like, the gratitude and all that very, very important—but it is, you can't just decide. Like, positive thinking, ‘I'm going to be positive thinking’. It's like a little bit more complicated than that. We need to look at things at a deeper level. What is it that your PhD is actually researching? So, what is the study that you've just done, for example? Paul: Yeah, so the one that we're doing, we basically—it's a pilot study. So, what we call a proof of concept. So, taking a bunch of military guys, and they've gone through training, so I did a full day's workshop, 34 hours with the guys. And then they went on to my app, to be able to sort of track behaviours and log habits and interact with each other and put the tools to the test. And so they did—they've done a survey on mental well-being, another survey on resilience, and another survey on burnout. So I'm actually looking at the interaction between your resilience levels, your mental well-being and your burnout, or risk of burnout in the workplace. And what I'm hoping to do in further research is to develop further the model or the measurement criteria of resilience. Because at the minute, in the literature, it's just measured through a questionnaire, and it's pretty poor, really. Lisa: Wow, yeah. Very subjective. Paul: Yes, it just gets very subjective. And it's also influenced by—if you're doing a resilient survey, it's influenced by who is actually going to see that right. So, if you're doing it for your employer, a lot of people will actually think, ‘Oh, I better not answer this in a certain way, because there may be ramifications’. So there are limitations with any self-reported questionnaire. But more lately, there's been some biological measures of resilience that have come out of University of Newcastle, which I'm actually going to be working with that group. So, they've actually lived in something called an acoustic startle response, which is basically you'd be sitting with your headphones on, doing some sort of task. And every now and then there'd be this light noise going off in your headphones, and you'd be all wired up. And they'd look at your heart rate, your blood pressure, your galvanic skin response. And you see there's a spike from your autonomic nervous system, right? And what they have actually shown is that people who have higher levels of resilience on these self-reported questionnaires, they actually—they acclimatized or they adapt quite quickly to that noise, whereas those who have got lower resilience or who maybe have PTSD or anxiety or depression, they don't habituate to it. So, they're still getting that response, right. So, and this is about what is actually going on in the brain, and particularly an area called the amygdala, that I'm sure we'll get into. So, I'm looking at a sit back and develop a triangulated measure of resilience. We're taking that maybe acoustic startle and some of the self-reports stuff, and then performance on a cognitive battery when you're under pressure, right? So, trying to then get a triangulated measure or a new measure of resilience. That’s a very long winded—yeah, so we can measure it a bit more objectively. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, because you're working with, like, in Special Forces, I think, in the military. So these are guys that are under immense pressure situations. And looking at our military and vets and stuff, and a lot of them come back with PTSD, and all sorts of mental health issues. And these guys that are coming into this are tough characters, these are not—and then they're coming out with problems. And even not in military, but just in things like my husband's a firefighter. The stuff that they get to see every day. Like he's a really strong, resilient, resourceful human being, but I'm seeing the load, the PTSD sort of load that's coming up over years and years and years are starting to have some bigger ramifications. Do you see that people that are like super hardcore tough, amazing, but when they are going into these repeated situations and being because usually like exposure therapy is one of the things we do to lower our stress response. If you don't like spiders, and you have to hold a spider every five minutes, you're going to get used to holding a spider, and it no longer will cause a response. By the same token, are you seeing this going flip the other way? Where you're actually getting worse from exposure? Paul: Yeah, so there's a lot of academic research in this area, looking at not just PTSD, but also burnout. So, for me, there's that, there's a continuum of workplace burnout is linked in a way to post traumatic stress disorder, right? It's just that the exposure isn't as extreme. There's not that trauma, but it's the insidious, consistent exposure to stress that actually changes the brain. It changes the brain both structurally and functionally. So what I mean by that is what we're seeing in both PTSD and anxiety and depression, by the way, and workplace burnout, with the advent of brain scanners, they're able to take a bunch of people and follow them for a long period of time—six months, a year, two years. Ask them about their stress levels, and then look and see, does the brain change over time? And what they're actually seeing in that people who are suffering from burnout or anxiety or depression or PTSD, there are significant, as I said, structural and functional changes in the brain. So what I mean by that from a structural perspective, the amygdala, the part of the brain, one of its job is to sense and respond to stress, and it actually becomes bigger. And so there's increased cells, increased connections and hypertrophy, it's just like your muscles with hypertrophy. And I'll come back to that in a second why this is, right. But in concert with that, areas of their prefrontal cortex, that rational planning judgment part of the brain, and also, another area called the anterior cingulate cortex—they're actually shrinking. There’s damage to those neurons and there's less activity in those areas. And what this means functionally, is it means it's a less-connected brain. And it means it's a brain that is less able to control emotional responses. So basically, the amygdala is starting to hijack the brain. The neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, he's the first to show in his lab that with that repeated— if your amygdala becomes sufficiently activated, it can actually secrete chemicals to block your frontal lobes. Basically, it says, ‘Talk to the hand. I’m in control of this brain’. Right now we all know that as losing our shit, right? Things are hijacked. But when this is happening repeatedly, what's happening is that there are neuroplastic changes in the brain. Right? And we know that this even happens in unborn children, in fetuses, that if they're exposed to chronic stress in the third trimester, the amygdala will grow bigger and more sensitive. And if we think about it, it's an amazing adaptive response. Because it's basically, they're getting inputs through the placenta and stress hormones. If we're adults, we're getting input saying, ‘This is a dangerous word’. Right? Lisa: Got to be vigilant. Paul: Yeah, the brain is all about survival first, right? It's all about survival. So, and sometimes that adaptive response is maladaptive. Right? In that there are changes that no longer serve us, right? And so this is what happens with people get burnout, or anxiety, depression, PTSD, is that there are adaptive changes that turn maladaptive. And it's basically because the brain is being overwhelmed with stress, either way too much stress, in the case of trauma, or just bombardment. Daily bombardment with stress, and not enough recovery. And I know as a lead athlete, you know about the balance between stress and recovery and just dealing with what you’ve got. Lisa: Never got it right. Paul: And then you don’t, right? Lisa: Burnout was my best friend. Yeah, there's a huge—because I studied genetics, there’s a huge genetic component to this as well. Paul: There is, yeah. Lisa: When you're looking at how long your adrenal, your stress hormones, for example, stay in the body, your COMT gene, your—the RD2 gene, the RD2B gene. Once they actually get the adrenaline, is it going to stay here in the body very long? Or is it going to be out? And they call it like the warrior gene and the worrier. Paul: Worrier and warrior. When I say it, people go, ‘What’s the difference’? I go... Lisa: Warrior as in a Maori warrior, and the other one as in worrying, worrying yourself to death. And there’s a genetic predisposition. And then you couple that with environmental, being overwhelmed with either an event or a series of events, or like you say, the constant bombardment. Because there's a question in my head, like, you and I, there’s history, we've both been in some pretty freakin’ scary situations in life. And those are certain traumas that you've been through and you've carried. But then there is a daily shit that goes on. Like something that I'm dealing with currently is like, I don't know, but the level of anxiety sometimes is like as high just because I feel like a computer with a million windows open. And it's got inputs coming up. And there's so many—you're trying not to drop the ball, and you're wearing so many hats on so many levels. So that's a different type of anxiety. And it's—and that one that like the big, major ones that you've been through, they sort of self-explanatory that you've got problems with those. But these little ones can be quite damaging too, daily on the mind. Paul: Absolutely. And I like your analogy about having a million windows open. And that's really modern life, is it's just input overload for a lot of people. And it's, even we know that reading the news a lot, and the negativity particularly around COVID is just bad juju, right? Particularly if you are predisposed, or you have underlying anxiety. Then we've got kids, we got that juggle, we got kids and parents, right? And we got work stresses, we got money worries, we got relationship issues. These are all things that our ancestors didn't really have to deal with. Right? And our stress response system has evolved over the last 2 million years in our ancestors in response to certain challenges. Right, so three minutes of screaming terror on the African savanna when you're being chased by a lion—that's your fight or flight mechanism. And then longer term or really traumatic stress, but mostly longer term stress, like famine. And that's the HPA axis and cortisol. And as you rightly said, different people are different. There's genetic predispositions to which one is dominant, how quick the clearing is. But there's also that, as you rightly say, and a lot of people don't understand this, is that the interaction between nature and nurture. That just because you have a certain variant of a gene, it predisposes you—it doesn't mean you're going to develop that, there needs to be that event. And then we know that those events, when they happen early in life, tend to have a bigger impact. Right? Lisa: So children exposed to trauma are in much deeper in the shit than others Paul: Can be. Unless they have the presence of a caring, supportive adult, often, they can get through it and end up being more resilient. Or they've got a certain variant of a gene, that when they're exposed to stress as a kid, they end up more resilient as an adult. So, it's a really complicated thing. And the thing that I also talk about a lot of people don't, is it also depends on other environmental factors going on. Like what's your nutrition like? Like, what's your sleep like? What's your exercise like? All of those things are hugely, hugely important. It’s a really complicated story, as to whether someone and develop some psychopathology because of exposure to either trauma, or just that insidious day to day stress—what we call de-stress versus used stress, which I'm sure we'll get into. Lisa: Yeah, now that's absolutely exciting because I mean, I preach a lot about doing the fundamentals right. Getting a sleep—at the basis of everything is good quality sleep. And that's not easy. It's not always an easy simple thing. Paul: But check if you're under stress, right? Lisa: Yeah, yeah, because your brain won't bloody turn off. And studying the gamma and dopamine and adrenaline and norepinephrine and all these chemicals that are running out and they're actually controlling us to a large degree, or at least when we're unaware of their influence on the body. But there are things that we can actually do to actually help regulate our own physiology. So I mean, guys and girls in the armies, in the military, have to do this. Or even like I watch my husband and my brother—they’re firefighters—when they're under an emergency situation, three o'clock in the morning, called to a bloody accident, someone's trapped in a burning car type of situation. Like, my husband's just so cool and calm and collected in that moment, like he's completely present. And in daily life, he's quite a shy, introverted dude, right. But when the shit hits the fan, I've seen his like, he doesn't put on a cabbage head. When I looked at his genetics, he doesn't have that predisposition to having adrenaline much. He doesn't have much of an adrenal response. So he'll come up for a minute, and then he'll be back down very quickly, and he’ll be able to control it. And he also understands, I've taught him more about breathing and all that sort of jazz to help regulate your cortisol and all of that sort of stuff. But it is a predisposition. My predisposition, I have a hell of a lot of adrenaline, testosterone up the wazoo, dopamine. I tend to start really responding and taking action. But I have to actually turn on the prefrontal cortex. I have to really focus on that and not just fly around like a blue ass fly going just running into the burning building without thinking about what the hell I'm doing. So, two different responses—and both are very good responses in a way, if you can learn to manage them and control them and bring them on at the right time. Paul: Yeah, and look, that's where the training element comes into, right? And so, irrespective of what your underlying genetics are, through military training or police or firefighters, they are trained in these situations routinely. And the brain sort of habituates to it and you learn strategies to be effective under that pressure, what we call arousal control strategies, right. So, whether that is—an arousal control can be both ways can be—for people who are generally low, can be getting them up to the right level of arousal. And for people who are a bit too overactive, bringing their arousal down, so they're in that peak performance zone. Let's say the neuroscientist Amy Ornstein talked about Goldilocks and the Goldilocks effect of stress in the brain. That it can't be too little, because when you're bored or you're under arousal, your performance is just not going to be optimal. But also it can’t be too much. And everybody's got a level of arousal that is too much. Lisa: Wow. That's a cool analogy. I like that, Goldilocks. Paul: It's a wonderful analogy. And she's shown, looks at the neurotransmitters that are involved in that—and particularly looking at dopamine and noradrenaline, or norepinephrine, as some people call it, how they're really important in that regulation. But as I say, training, specific training and repetition, can really help people just to get into an automated response. And no matter what their genetic predisposition. Lisa: So if someone is prone to a lot of anxiety, and maybe depression, what are some of the practical—like, if we start talking a few practical strategies now for people dealing with different issues — and let's start with anxiety and maybe depression—what are some of the things that they can do when their amygdala hijacks you? How do you get a grip on yourself and actually change the physiology? Because you feel some big noise happens, or an earthquake happens, or something and you've got that adrenaline just poured out and you’ve got all this stress cortisol and all that, how do you bring yourself down quickly, get yourself under control? So you don't end up in a panic attack, for example? Paul: Yeah, so there's both short-term strategies and there's long term adaptive strategies, right? So, and I'll go into both of those things. First of all, it's important to understand what's going on, right? So this is about the autonomic nervous system. And there are—some of your listeners will be aware of this, but there's two branches of the autonomic nervous system. There's the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic. And the sympathetic is probably badly labelled because it's not very sympathetic, right? It's the one that increases stress, right? So, and if we think about the response that's going on—so in the brain, the amygdala senses a threat, it sets off a general alarm. And then, the hypothalamus is involved in this, the sympathetic branches is fired up. And for some people, it fires up more than others. But for everybody, when that's fired up, and the vagus nerve is really quite important in this, that's the nerve that connects the brain to the heart, the lungs and all the visceral organs, right? So and the blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up in order to pump blood to the muscles to give you the fight and runaway, right. And additionally, breathing gets faster and shallower. And then, we know your digestive system is affected and all the blood that is in your digestive system, digesting your food... Lisa: Your peristalsis. Paul: It’s shunted away. It’s shunted away to the working muscles, right, we know the immune system is temporarily switched off, the reproductive system’s temporarily switched off because there's no point in ovulating or creating sperm when you're being chased by a lion. It’s a waste of energy, right? If we think for a second about the long-term consequences when people are in a chronic state of overarousal, even if that's just low baseline overarousal. So, I have a suppressed reproductive system. This is why people who are chronically stressed, and they become infertile. Right? Boom. And this is why they develop digestive system issues like irritable bowel syndrome and stuff like that, which we know can change your microbiome. And then there's a two-way interaction, which we'll talk about later. And the immune system becomes suppressed. That's why people develop—they get sick, and they take longer to recover, whether it's from a wound, whether it's from training load, or whether it's from any type of illness or injury. And then heart damage can happen, right, and with that chronic stress. So that's over activation of the sympathetic branch, and particularly the vagus nerve, right? What we now know is it's only taken our scientists about 3,000 years to catch up with the knowledge of Yogi's, right? Yeah, exactly. Certain breathing patterns can affect your heart and your brain. And I used to think, all that breathing, I used to think it was fluffy bullshit. Until I get into the science—and Jesus, how wrong was I? Lisa: Me, too. I must admit, and now I'm doing it 100 times a day. Paul: Yeah, exactly. So, techniques like box breathing. I'm sure your listeners have probably heard you talk about it. Lisa: Repeatedly. Paul: Yeah, breathe in like the sides of a box. Breathe in for four or five seconds, hold for four or five, out for four or five, hold for four or five. And you can also do a modified box breathe, which is in for four, hold for four, out for six, hold for two. And I'll talk about that in a second. There's also something called resonant frequency breathing, which is also really, really beneficial and can actually enhance your what's called heart rate variability, which is a kind of a window into overall stress on the body. So, reso-frequency being—you need some equipment to measure it effectively. But generally, everybody listening is probably between four and a half, five breaths and seven breaths a minute. And it's been shown that if you get within one of that, then you could. So I teach people, just generally six breaths a minute, right? So that's 10-second breath cycle, but breathe in for four and out for six. Because the longer breath out—when you breathe in, you are up regulating your sympathetic nervous branch, right? When you breathe out, you're activating the parasympathetic nervous branch. So, the long breath out is really, really key, which is why I talk about the modified box breathing as well. So that resonant frequency breathing, or box breathing can be really, really useful to deal with stuff in and of the moment. Just—it's basically autonomic nervous system controlled through breathing, that’s it. Lisa: Control your physiology in seconds. Paul: And the other thing that goes in concert with that, and my wife uses a lot of this, she's qualified in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Japanese psychology. And we're both fans of stoic philosophy. And it is about attention, and all three of these great agree that attention is key. So if we take a step back, people who have anxiety or depression, or just have a beasty mind, they've got a lot of negative self-talk going on, they want to get rid of it, right? But these three approaches, and as they say, look, getting rid of it, it's not really the objective. It's really about where you focus your attention. So, if you think of your attention, like a light, and when you're in that stress response, your attention, and it is very internal focused, if you're anxious or depressed, or you're stressed about something that's on that particular thing. But it's an internal experience that you're having. So just shifting your attention outward. If you're not in danger, this is—you just have an anxiety, depression, whatever, just look for the colour blue. That's one thing. Just shine the light of your attention somewhere else. Lisa: Like a naughty kid who’s having a tantrum. Just distract them. Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And I call that part of the brain your inner gremlin, that’s responsible for anxiety, depression. And but also just negative self-talk and self-criticism, and anger — all of these things. And the key thing to understand is your gremlin’s like a chameleon, right? It can take many guises. But it's like, if you remember the movie Gremlins, when you feed Mogwai after midnight, it becomes energised and turns into the Gremlin. So, when you shine the light of your attention on the gremlin, it becomes energised. So this is where you just shift your attention either to where's the colour blue or what can I smell? Lisa: Or breathing. Paul: Or we like to—or your breathing—yeah, that's another great combination. And I like to talk about shifting your attention to the concept of your inner siege, which is what the Stoic philosophers talked about. That's the optimal version of you. And that's either my best self, me at my best, or some sort of other character that I'm consulting. Lisa: Ah, yes, I heard you talk about this on Craig’s show. And I was like, that analogy that you use, like there was one with your son, Oscar. And him talk, having Derek, I think it was... Paul: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, Derek. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lisa: So creating a character around these two polarizing figures. I’m always talking about the lion and the snake in my head. Or Wonder Woman in this chicken shit, who’s me. And we all have this positive, amazing self. And we have the self that's full of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and I can't do this, and angry, and negative, and cynical. And so it's creating a character. So tell that story a little bit. Paul: Yeah. So the character thing is really, really powerful. And so I get people to—you've got to bring this character to life, right? So there's a little exercise, which I'll share with you. And you can share with your listeners where, so I call them your inner Gremlin and your inner siege, right? Or you can say whatever you want. So, what do they say first thing in the morning, right? You write that down. Generally your inner Gremlin is the one that says, ‘Press snooze’ or ‘Not another bloody day’, right? But then you go, what do they say when they're faced with a challenge? And then you write down their character strengths and particularly, you focus on your inner siege, what are the character strengths that you have when you're at your best? And then I like to do a thing called plus ones. Like what are ones that you'd like to develop or have more of? And you write down. So, if it's calm under pressure or being more empathetic, I'm going to write down that my inner siege is calm under pressure, is more empathetic, right? And then drawing the characters is a brilliant thing because it brings it to life. And Oscar when he drew the characters, he drew Derek and he drew Flash, who has now actually being replaced with Richie. A little side story. I actually bought a book called The Real McCaw from Richie McCaw because I am a big fan of the All Blacks, and particularly Richie McCaw. And I bought his book, and I was wanting to read it, and it friggin’, it disappeared, and I couldn't find where it was. And one night, I went down to Oscar’s room. He was supposed to be asleep, and he's there reading. And he's reading that book. He'd nicked it from me, and he had a highlighter. He's 10 years old, and he's highlighting stuff what Richie McCaw said, right. So now, his inner siege is called Richie, right? But when he drew these original ones, he actually did a speech bubble for Derek and it said, ‘I will crush the good ones and I will be the king of Oscar’s head’. How cool is that? Lisa: And he’s 5 or something. Paul: No, he was seven at a time. Lisa: 7. Oh my god. But I mean, the hard cold, maybe 6, actually. But sometimes kids are so insightful. Because that's what happens, right, is that when that negative character takes a hold of the negative self-talk, it does crush the good self-talk, kind of becomes the king of your head. If you choose to let it, right? Paul: So my inner siege is called, Jeff. So when I'm struggling, or I need to get myself up, I just go ‘What would Jeff do right now’? Right? And so this is a process in psychology called self-distancing, where you're taking yourself out of the emotional state, and you consult a character or my best friend or whatever, and it actually shows it reduces the emotional intensity. And research shows that people make better choices. They're more courageous, and they make better choices, right. And so that's one, I think, really useful way to shine the light of your attention. So, the process that I use, depending on who's around, right, if someone's having a bit of an anxiety or just a bit of negative stuff, I like discharge, recharge, reframe. So think about it, it’s stress hormones, right? If somebody’s having an anxiety, get it out. You got to discharge those stress hormones. When you run away... Lisa: Go for a run. Paul: ...you come back to homeostasis, right. And I find, even 30 seconds of intense activity is enough. So, you discharge the stress hormones, then you recharge by your breathing, right. So you're doing that breathing and you're focusing on your breathing. And then, so your amygdala hijack is gone now. Use you're focusing on the breathing, and then you reframe and you go, ‘Okay, what would Jeff do right now’? Or ‘What would my character do right now’? Or, if I've written down all my character strengths, what action do I need to take right now to display those characteristics? Right? So the Japanese psychology, Morita Therapy, there's this beautiful term called, arugamama, right? It is what it is. And then they say, ‘What needs to be done’? And the stoics are very much like that — what do we need to do right now? So it's very action focused. Right? And so that is something that I think works for me well. Lisa: Yeah. Because it sort of removes yourself so that you're looking—it's like looking down on yourself. Because this brain of ours is like a thought factory, it just keeps going and talking and chattering and go, go, go, go. And yeah, emotions take over, amygdala often is in control of our prefrontal cortex. And if we can separate ourselves and sort of hover over ourselves—and I've been looking into stuff like what happens after death because I just recently lost my dad and all those questions. ‘How do I connect to my dad on the other side’? All of that sort of jazz that nobody can bloody answer, really. Paul: Yeah, if you get the answer, let me know. Lisa: Yeah, I’m working on it. I'm really trying to get it out. But a lot of talking about the connection to the other side and opening up those channels, and to me, it's like, okay. So just from a brain point of view, if I just separate myself out from my brain, like, if you believe that we are a spiritual being and so our brain, our body, we're just walking around in this earthly body, but we have a higher self, if you like. So, it’s this higher self looking at that brain going, ‘Oh she's running that stupid program again that she learned when she was seven. It's no longer relevant here, I need to change the recording, and I need to change up’. So it's just giving yourself a way of separating yourself from the actual emotions that your body is feeling, your physiology is feeling like now. And for me, a lot of it is, when I get anxious and stuff, I will just go and sprint for 50 metres. Like you say, it doesn't have to be long, it might be 2 minutes. It just comes back, reset myself. Sometimes if it's a really bad situation or whatever, I'll have a little cry that discharges more energy. And then I pick myself up and we'll get on with it, and we'll do a breathing, and we'll get back into gear. And just having those little tools in your toolbox can really help you manage the day-to-day crap that comes at us. And even in the big situations, the really traumatic ones, I've used those situations regularly—just remove myself for a minute from the situation, go and get my shit together. And then come back into the situation. And that can really help if you have the luxury of doing that. So, I think these are really, really important because people often think, well, they look at someone like you and all your achievements and all stuff that you've done—or even in all the races that I've done. ‘No, never. I could never do that’. And that's your automatic negative thoughts coming in, your angst, as Dr. Daniel Amen talks about, they just pop up. And you need to realize that that isn't you, that's just your brain doing its thing. And you can choose not to believe that brain when it tells you you're not good enough, or you're not sexy enough, or you're not pretty enough, you're not strong enough, whatever the case may be. You can go, ‘No, I'm not listening to that’. And I'm diverting, and what you're saying, is divert your attention. Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And those answers are automatic negative thoughts. In Morita Therapy, Japanese psychology, it's basically, it’s a story. It's a story that we tell ourselves, and there are a number of different stories. And it depends what story we pay attention to. And because when you pay attention to a particular story, when we think about what's happening in the brain, that self-concept, or that idea that ‘I'm not good enough’, is basically what we call a neural net in the brain, right? It's a bunch of neurons that are firing together for a concept or a thought or a particular line of thinking. And the Scottish neuroscientist Donald Hebb showed in the 1950s, it's called Hebbian Learning. And it's a well-accepted way of the brain works, nerve cells that fire together, wire together. Right? So every time you're repeating that thought, or paying attention to it, you're strengthening it. And he showed that eventually, after a certain amount of repetitions—and we don't know the magic number—but that circuit becomes what's called long-term potentiation. This means that this circuit is primed for firing. And it means that then even neutral information is more likely to fire off that circuit, right? And every time you're paying attention to it, you're strengthening it. So, the other approach is to go, ‘Thanks, Gremlin’, or ‘Thanks, brain. Thanks for that story that you're telling me. But it's not helpful right now’. Right. And that's where you focus on another story, or a particular affirmation that people might have. A different story, I've got this, whatever, it's another neural net. And every time you're focusing on it, and paying attention to it, you're strengthening it, right? So it's about interrupting the old and maladaptive, unhelpful thought patterns... Lisa: That we all have. Paul: ...and actually creating new ones. And every time you catch yourself—this is why the first part of all of this is about being the watcher. It's about being the watcher in your own brain. And for lots of people, this is a frigging revelation, that they can actually watch their thoughts, and do it with curiosity. And go, ‘Wow, there's an interesting negative thought. And that's an interesting negative’... Lisa: Great example! Paul: Yeah. And then be curious and go, ‘Well, what would a more positive thought actually be’? Right? So you can trick yourself into having these positive thoughts and every time you're doing it, you're laying down and strengthening those networks in the brain, right? So like anything, like you didn't become awesome at what you did by doing it once and then boom, that's it. It's about repetition, repetition, repetition. So, really the first step is being the watcher, and then just repeatedly intervening, and going, ‘Actually, I have a choice’, right? And what's called in Acceptance Commitment Therapy, the choice point. And Viktor Frankl talked about it, the Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. And I read his book as a 17-year-old, had a pretty profound effect on me. He said, in between stimulus and response, is the space where we have the ability to choose. And he talked about the last of human freedoms, is your ability to choose how you react to your circumstances, whether they be external circumstances or circumstances in your head, we all have that ability to choose how we're reacting, right. And choosing what we actually focus on. And it's this light of attention, that I think is really, really powerful. So when we wrap it all up in those characters, and then we're repeatedly doing it, and then people are waking up in the morning, and actually spending a few minutes saying, ‘Okay, who am I going to be today? What version of me is going to interact with the world’? And every time they observe negativity going, ‘Well, I say I've got a choice right now. What would Jeff do right now’? Right? Before they walk into their office, and just before you walk in the door, just think, ‘What do I need to do to express those characteristics of my best self’? And especially when you come home, particularly if you've had a shitty day, you just spend 10 or 15 seconds going, ‘Okay, there's a choice here and what version of me, do my partner, my little kids want to see walk into the room’? Right? And it's just that little mental rehearsal, as you'll have done hundreds of thousands of times as an athlete and every world class athlete does this mental rehearsal because that shit works. Get your game face on. Lisa: Get your game face. I have this analogy and I've told this story before on the podcast but when I was doing this race in the Himalayas and absolutely terrified, 222 K's of extreme altitude... Paul: Jesus Christ! Lisa: And I’m an asthmatic with a small set of lungs, who did mostly deserts for a particular reason. And I was absolutely packing myself, and I got my crew together like two days before and I said, ‘You have to protect me, my brain. You have to like tell me how amazing I am. Every time a negative thought comes up, I want you to sort of shout it down for me and protect me from everyone else’. And on the day of the actual event, they did that and they really helped me get my shit under control because I was really losing it. Like I was just terrified I'd had a concussion in the build-up, I'd had to rip some ligaments, so I hadn't had a good build up. And it was the scariest thing I've done at the time. And I've done some other scary crazier shit but that was pretty up there. And on race day, you wake up and you have that moment for a second where you go, ‘Oh shit. It’s that day’. That day you've been preparing for, for a year and a half, but it's that day and you've got to get up and face down 222Ks in the mountains in extreme temperature, extreme altitude, and no air and things. And I'm putting on my gear, and then that person changes. When I put on my running gear... Paul: That’s your thing. Right. Lisa: It’s my thing. That's my ritual. Paul: That’s your siege. Lisa: When I put on a number, there's a different person in front of you. And that person is a freaking warrior. Paul: Machine, yeah. Lisa: Yeah, in my head. I’m not, but I am in my head, in that moment, I am Wonder Woman. I'm Gal Gadot. I can do any freaking thing and I’m telling myself the story, I'm telling myself the story in order to create the chemicals in my body that I need just to get to the freaking start line and not run the other way because I'm terrified. And then, once you start and you're in the battle, you're in the battle. You're in it. There's no way out but through. And then you have to bring in all the guns. Over the period of the next 53 hours, I had to bring out all of the stock, sort of things, to get through every crisis that came. And these voices in your head are pretty freaking loud after 50 something hours out there. Paul: That they bloody well are, yeah. Lisa: Yeah, but when you go—because one of the other analogies that I wanted to bring up that you talked so well about in one of the interviews was the small circle and the big circle. And the small circle is your comfort zone. That's you, that's the life that you're living when you're in your comfy world and you're not pushing outside the zone. And you’re staying safe because you're too frightened to jump out into the big circle is what you can be, and your potential. But out there, in that big circle, it's freaking scary, it's hard work, it's terrifying, there’s risk of failure, there's all sorts of things. And everybody wants to be that big person that does these, lives this full life, that reaches their—none of us will reach our full potential, but we're reaching a heck of a lot of potential. And not living in the safe, little comfortable, ‘I'm scared’ world. And pushing yourself every single today to do shit that hurts, that’s hard, scares the crap out of you. And then coming back and recovering. Paul: It’s critical, right? And I called that big circle, our scientists will refer to that as the zone of productive disequilibrium, right? Lisa: Those are scientists’ words? Paul: Yeah, exactly. So you're out of balance, you're out of whack. But it is where adaptation happens. And this is the problem. So we are by our very nature, we are comfort seekers, right. And just because all of our history has been of discomfort, and so it's pretty natural that we're comfort seekers. The problem is that we have an ancient genome in a modern world. Our genome hasn't changed in 45,000 years, right. And for the vast majority of our human history, we had lots of discomfort, life was uncomfortable, and we became the dominant species on Earth, largely because we adapted better to environmental stressors and pressures than other species right. Now, what's happened in the last 100 years since the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the last 30 years, is that we have stopped adapting to our environment, and we've started changing it. And recently, we've changed our environment to such a level that we're no longer optimally matched to it genetically, right. So when we seek comfort, we get soft, we develop a soft underbelly. And this is what a lot of the positive psychology people do not talk about, is that getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And you can just do this, quite simply, if you're sitting listening to this, think of your biggest achievement in your life, something that you are most proud of. And I guarantee you, for almost every listener, it will involve stress and being out of your comfort zone. But we need to hang with the tension long enough for adaptation to happen. And lots of people spend most of their life in that little small circle, the comfort zone, and they dip their toe into the uncomfortable zone of productive disequilibrium. They go, ‘This is uncomfortable. I'm getting right out of here’. No good shit ever happened in your comfort zone. Right? Lisa: It’s a quote from Paul Taylor, ‘No good shit ever happens in your comfort zone’. You gotta put that one on the wall. Paul: It’s like past 2am. Right? That's the thing, no good shit happens there. So, it is about seeking discomfort. And one of my things, which you actually exemplify much better than me, but it’s that get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Right? Yeah, that's really key. And I think we have, as a generation, particularly in the West, we have got comfortable with being comfortable. And we are comfort seekers. Lisa: Getting cosy all the time. Paul: It's all, it's served up to us everywhere. And we're prompted to buy things and do things that make us comfortable. And it's natural to want to go there. But it's not self-serving. Lisa: But our biology isn't, our epi genome isn't suited. Paul: Absolutely not. Lisa: Getting out of that thermoneutral zone, for example, like cold showers, cold water, hot. All of these things that are outside the neutral zone are where the change happens, from a physiological point of view. If I hop into a sauna, I'm going to create heat-shock proteins, I’m gonna sweat. That's going to cause all this cascade of events in my body that will make me stronger. The next time when I go to the gym and I work out with weights, then I'm going to be sore and I'm going to be breaking down the tissues. What happens is a cascade of events that makes me stronger for next week. Paul: And here's the thing, right, that if somebody wants, if somebody goes one, if someone hasn’t been trained for ages and particularly, they’re bloke. And they go riding got to get back and then they go to a CrossFit class or F 45 hard core. And they go, ‘Jesus. That was ridiculous. I'm never doing that again’. But then you're not going to adapt, right? You only get bigger, faster, stronger, because you hang with the tension long enough for adaptation to happen right. Now, seeking comfort, we should do that when we're in recovery, right? But a lot of people, and we should really define the difference between recovery and relaxation. Right? Recovery isn't sitting with your feet up with a bottle of wine watching Netflix, right? Recovery is stuff that is actually energising you, right? It’s doing the breathing stuff, it’s doing the meditation, doing the tai chi, the qi gong, those sorts of things, yoga. Or for some people, it's drawing, it's reading a book, it's connecting with others, it's gardening, it's spending time in nature. These are all things that really help us with that balance between stress and recovery. And when, if we get that right, the stress becomes used stress. And if we are just exposed to that too much or don't get the recovery, right, it's de stress. And then we can go into burnout/overtraining syndrome, which then when you look at the physiology between overtrained athletes and burnt out executives and depressed people, it’s almost identical. Lisa: Yeah. And like, I've had to try to get my head around this because when you're an athlete—and I grew up in a household where being tough was cool. And physical toughness and mental toughness were what was valued and what was rewarded in my family. So therefore, I have this complete construct in my head that if you're not tough, and you're not hard ass all the time, then you're useless. And I had to deconstruct that a little bit because that lead me to burnout, that broke me, that lead to hell of a lot of pain in sickness and all sorts of things. Now, as I'm hopefully older and wiser, I know that my body also has a full on and it has to have a full off. And that recovery is really important. And that recovery can be cuddling the cat, it can be going to the beach with my husband and just staring at the waves for half an hour to recover. It doesn't have to be something epic, and it can be something like the sauna
From our physical appearance to our body's mechanical functions, our whole being is encoded into our genes and kept in each cell that makes us. These basic biological units have their system to keep everything functioning and our body alive and moving. They have housekeeping functions: cells perform autophagy to get rid of accumulated waste materials. Maximising the effects of these processes can help in increasing your longevity. When the autophagic processes fail, it can damage important parts of the cell such as the DNA and accelerate ageing. In this episode, Dr Elena Seranova explains the science behind autophagy and how it connects to NAD and sirtuin genes. She also shares her own experience and research on using this knowledge to live a longer, fuller life. Join us in this episode to learn more about autophagy and how this process is useful in increasing your longevity and giving you a boost in life. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program that is all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research, and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover how cells stay healthy. Find out Dr Elena's tips and advice in increasing your longevity by activating autophagy. Learn more about the science behind NMN supplements and their revitalising effect. Resources Read about Dave Asprey’s work around the keto diet. Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair Pushing the Limits Ep 170: The Search for the Perfect Protein with Dr David Minkoff Visit NMNBio if you want to learn more about NMN supplements in New Zealand. Episode Highlights [04:33] Getting to Know Dr Elena Seranova Dr Elena Seranova is an interdisciplinary scientist. She holds a degree in Psychology, MSc Translational Neuroscience, and a PhD focusing on autophagy and cell biology. With her expertise in her field, she co-founded a biotech startup and is now the the founder of NMN Bio in the United Kingdom. [06:06] What Is Autophagy? Autophagy is a catabolic pathway that degrades unwanted materials within the cell. The cell needs to avoid the build-up of unnecessary materials. There are different pathways for activation like mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) and PI3K (Phosphoinositide 3-kinase). Impairments at various stages of autophagy lead to its failure and cell death. Once autophagy fails, apoptosis, or programmed cell death, can activate. [11:25] NAD as Fuel for Sirtuin and PARP PARP and sirtuin are different classes of enzymes that use NAD for multiple vital processes, including DNA repair (both) and gene expression (sirtuin). Sirtuin 1 is one of the pathways that can initiate autophagy. initiates the autophagic process. When DNA is damaged, PARP activates and depletes NAD stores. The decrease in NAD levels inhibits sirtuin's ability to carry out its functions, including autophagy, accelerating a cell's death. [15:34] What Is NAD? Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide or NAD is a substrate for enzymes. It plays a vital role in different reactions within the cell. You can supplement NAD levels using boosters such as nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN). [18:44] mTOR-Independent Pathways Activation of autophagy using Sirtuin 1 is an mTOR-independent pathway. It is essential not to activate autophagy through mTOR pathways. mTOR is responsible for cell growth and translation. [25:04] How to Activate mTOR-Independent Autophagy Autophagy is dependent on nutrient starvation. Intermittent fasting can activate it. A generally healthy lifestyle includes supplement intake, proper sleep, and healthy foods. Avoid too much sunlight because it damages the skin and DNA. It activates PARP enzymes. Take a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil which contains oleic acid. This good fat has the same effects as resveratrol. Induce artificial stress through cryotherapy, saunas, and exercise to activate sirtuin 1. [33:22] Why Did Dr Elena Decide to Bring NMN to the Market? She came across NAD and NMN during her doctorate studies and saw their importance. Her own experiences showed better focus and energy levels after taking NMN supplements. There are not enough reliable suppliers that offer good regulation and quality control. She wanted to provide the best for herself and her family. NMN Bio has complete transparency on suppliers and quality regulation [38:28] Can Weight Loss Occur from Taking NMN? Lisa Tamati's experience in taking NMN shows fat loss but no muscle loss. Dr Elena's mice studies show evidence that NMN can improve insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism. [40:42] Do NMN Supplements Have Any Downsides? They found no side effects in studies with mice despite an increase in dosage. Current studies are still ongoing to determine the ideal dosage for humans. Most people take 500mg to 1g. Doubling this still shows good tolerance. Take supplements in the morning as NAD affects the circadian rhythm. [53:57] How Do Autophagy, NAD and Sirtuin Genes Fit Together? Autophagy recycles various damaged organelles. Sirtuin 1 genes activate autophagy and mitophagy. NAD functions as a substrate for sirtuin enzymes to work. NMN supplements can increase NAD levels. Listen to the episode for the full explanation of how these three work together. [58:43] Can NMN be Taken as an Infusion? This is not something that Dr Elena has studied in-depth and she is curious as well about how viable this procedure will be. There is a low concentration of energy in intravenous injections, but it's present. Oral administration is more reliable in giving boosts and it costs cheaper. [01:00:01] Do Antioxidants Help in Increasing Your Longevity? Studies have shown that antioxidants don't suppress ageing. Lifestyle intervention and autophagy activation are proven ways to slow ageing. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘Lysosome is another acidic organelle that contains acid hydrolases that are able to digest this cargo...and if it doesn't work, well, the cell is basically in trouble because you have all this garbage floating around, and there is nothing to remove them. So this is why autophagy is important. ‘When things are preserved across species, then that gives a scientist an indication that this is probably a very important biological function’. ‘I think that in order for your body to function properly, you really need to have a kind of a healthy routine in general’. ‘So I think that when it comes to being healthy, and activating your autophagy levels, and having a healthy lifestyle in general, you need to start with the basics first.’ ‘Another small tip that I can give is to actually avoid sunlight, which is something that people don't really consider. What happens when we're exposed to sunlight, when our skin is exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods of time, we start getting the DNA damage’. “The important part is not to just increase your age, it’s to increase your healthspan.” ‘And if you have if your mitochondria are not healthy, and they're dying, and you're not having enough mitochondria in your cells, then you are going to be sick.’ About Dr Elena Seranova Dr Elena Seranova is a scientist, serial entrepreneur and business mentor who has founded multiple innovative biotechnological businesses. She first studied at the University of Ioannina with a major in Psychology. She started a private practice before developing an interest in neuroscience. She continued her studies and earned her Master’s Degree in Translational Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield. She now also holds a Doctorate Degree in Stem Cell Biology and Autophagy from the University of Birmingham. Her expertise in these fields has led her to become the co-founder of a biotech start-up, SkyLab Bio. She has written a number of peer-reviewed articles and multiple research articles on autophagy throughout her career. Aside from these accomplishments, she started her own business, NMN Bio. Her own experiences with the use of supplements have inspired her to expand the market to supply the public with cutting-edge anti-ageing supplements. NMN Bio reaches New Zealand, UK, and Europe. Dr Elena found her passion for drug discovery and autophagy. She has endeavoured to share this with the public through her research and work as an entrepreneur. To learn more about Dr Elena and her work, visit her website. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, especially those interested in increasing their longevity, so that they can practice the activation of autophagy in their lifestyle. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week I have Dr. Elena Seranova, who has already been a guest on the show. And today, we're talking about autophagy and NAD, and the interplay between these two. Now that might sound extremely boring, but it isn't. It's all about longevity and anti-aging. So, we're going to be talking about the science between about NAD precursors and the sirtuin genes, and how to upregulate the sirtuin genes, and all about autophagy, which is really the recycling of old and damaged parts and proteins of a cell that need to be gotten rid of. So, it's a bit like having a good garbage disposal unit happening. And there are many ways to activate autophagy, which we go into in this episode. We talk about intermittent fasting, we talk about cold and hot and hormetic stressors like exercise and yes, of course fasting. But also, mTOR independent pathways to activate autophagy, it'll all be revealed in this interview. Now this does get a little bit technical in the first 20 minutes or so. But hang in there and listen to this a couple of times. Because if you want to slow down aging, if you want to slow down the generative decline of your body and you want to have a long and healthy lifestyle, then this stuff is really, really worth paying attention to and trying to understand. We talk about NMN, which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, which is a supplement that is now available, is a longevity compound to upregulate the sirtuin genes. And we're really lucky to check that out. You can go and find that supplement, which has been made and produced by Dr. Elena Seranova and her company, NMN Bio. So if you head hop over to nmnbio.nz, we're now importing this into the country. So, this is one way that you can really fight aging and degenerative decline that we all fear and don't want. And when you listen to this episode and really listen to it a couple of times, you'll understand some of the incredible anti-aging things that are coming down. This is not pseudoscience. Dr. Elena is one of the most amazing neuroscientists out there. So please listen to this episode, enjoy it, get a lot out of it and get the takeaway. So, if you don't understand some of the terminology, don't worry, keep going. And by the end, you'll start to pick up certain bits and pieces. And if you listen to it again, you'll be able to pick up a little bit more and a little bit more. And at the end of the day, it's about the takeaways, what can you do to slow aging down and all that information is in there. So, I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Elena. Before we go over to that we are all about health optimisation, high performance, athletic performance. So, if you need any help with any of those areas of your life, please reach out to us, Support at lisatamati.com. Go and check out our website, lisatamati.com. You'll find all our programs, our Epigenetics Programs, our online run training system that's customised and personalised totally to you, and check out what we do. We love helping you be the best version of yourself that you can be. Now over to the show with Dr. Elena Servanova. Lisa: Well, hi everyone. Lisa Tamati here and very excited to have you hopefully join us this morning. It's 7:30am in the morning here in New Zealand. And where Dr. Elena Seranova is, it's very late at night. How are you doing, Dr. Elena? Dr Elena Seranova: Good, good. How are you? Happy to be here again. Lisa: Yeah, very excited for today's topic. So, we're going to be doing a discussion around autophagy and NAD boosters and sirtuin genes. So it’s going to be a really interesting discussion that is really beneficial for you if you want to know how to live longer, live healthier, and optimise your body and your mind and your potential. So, Dr. Elena, can you just tell us briefly a little bit about yourself? Dr Elena: Sure. So, I started my journey as a psychologist. So I'm an interdisciplinary scientist. I majored in psychology at first and then I had my own private practise for five years which turned out to be a successful wellness centre. And I really got fascinated by neuroscience and the brain. And for this reason, at first I started studying the brain myself and then I found an amazing master's degree at the University of Sheffield in Translational Neuroscience, which basically combined the research and neurodegeneration with applications that could translate into therapeutics. So, this is what translational neuroscience means, is basically the combination and the outcome of the research—the hardcore biology research that can be utilised for therapeutic approaches and patients. I really enjoyed that. So that was quite cool, being in the lab and doing molecular biology experiments and so on. So, I kind of fell in love with the lab, and I decided to do a PhD as well. I continued my studies in autophagy and stem cell biology and it was quite challenging, but at the same time, I really enjoyed it. And I can definitely say that science is a big part of my life. Lisa: Definitely your thing. Okay, so autophagy and stem cells. So in relation to neurodegenerative diseases in that case? Okay, but what is autophagy? Because a lot of people will be listening to it and go, ‘What the heck is that big word, autophagy’? It's sort of big word in biohacking circles, but perhaps not in the general public. Can you explain what autophagy is exactly? Dr Elena: Yes, sure. So, autophagy is a catabolic pathway that degrades dysfunctional organelles in the cell or protein pro aggregates. So, any material that is basically unwanted in the cell, autophagy can degrade. It's like the stomach of the cell. Lisa: So, it’s like eating it? It's eating, sort of... Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly. And what happens when autophagy is activated, we actually have the formation of the so-called phagophore, which is a membrane structure that basically engulfs different organelles and materials that need to be degraded to form the so called autophagosome, which is a round organelle that basically has this cargo that needs to be digested. That eventually fuses with lysosome. And lysosome is another acidic organelle that contains acidic hydrolases that are able to digest this cargo. And this process is very essential for the cell, it’s very vital. It's evolutionary conserved in all species, from yeast to models. And if it doesn't work well, the cell is basically in trouble because you have all this garbage... Lisa: Floating around. Dr Elena: ...floating around and there is nothing to remove them. So, this is why autophagy is important. And we have different pathways that autophagy can be activated through as well. So, one of those pathways is mTOR, mechanistic target of rapamycin. And then we have other pathways that can activate this process such as AMPK, GSK3, and so on. Lisa: So is this like, sorry to interrupt, but like because I know that people out there might be like, ‘Wow, that's a lot of big words and a lot of information’. So, is it like that the cell has to do a housecleaning, and it's got stuff inside the cell that is not working optimally, and needs to be gotten rid of, or is it the whole cell? So, it's not apoptosis. So it's not where the host is disintegrating? Dr Elena: No. Yeah, it's actually a—it's a pre-apoptotic pathway. So, before apoptosis is activated, we have autophagy. And if autophagy fails in what it needs to do, then we have activation of some apoptotic pathways. So, it's one step before that. And if everything goes well, and autophagy is functional—and by the way, in different diseases, we might be having different autophagy impairments at different stages of autophagy. So, it's either the initial phagophore formation, for instance, that it's not working well, and it can’t engulf the cargo, or it's insulator stages of autophagy, such as the acidic hydrolysis and the lysosomes that are actually not that acidic. So their pH is not acidic enough to digest the cargo. So, we might be having different defects in the autophagy pathway in different diseases. Lisa: That leads to apoptosis. Am I right? Dr Elena: And yeah, if autophagy is not doing its work correctly, then eventually we will have apoptosis. And actually, this is what we're seeing in in vitro models of neurodegenerative diseases as well. So, for instance, if autophagy is not working well. And we have, let's say, dysfunctional organelles, such as mitochondria—dysfunctional mitochondria that are not working well. Let's say they are depolarised. And there is an excess production of reactive oxygen species going on. Now, if nothing can degrade these dysfunctional mitochondria, you'll keep on having this accumulation of reactive oxygen species, which eventually will lead to DNA damage and deactivation of PARPs. And it's basically a death spiral that will keep on leading the cell towards death. Lisa: Okay, so what is a PARP? You mentioned PARP there. And just for the listeners, too. So, apoptosis is basically cell death, programmed cell death. So, this is not—what's the other one necrotic or something? Dr Elena: Necrosis? Lisa: Yeah, necrosis, where the cell dies for—necrosis. But this is sort of a natural programmed cell death. But we only want that if we're actually renewing the cells and we are wanting new stuff. So, before that, the body tries to do this autophagy process, is that how it works? And then what so what is PARP? What is PARP, because that’s the word again... Dr Elena: PARPs are a class of enzymes, and in order for them to function, they need a molecule called NAD, so nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And they're actually competing for NAD in the cell. And whenever we have increased DNA damage, we would have the PARP activation as well. And this would lead to NAD depletion, which kind of brings me to my next point about what other enzymes consume NAD. And one of those enzymes are sirtuins, which are the so-called longevity genes that are basically responsible for multiple processes in the cell, including epigenetic regulation of gene expression. So, they do—because sirtuins are a class of enzymes that are also dependent on NAD, and they're all the deacetylase enzymes, meaning that they remove acetyl groups from the DNA. And as a result, they control which genes will be expressed in which tissues, which is very crucial for the cellular identity and for the proper function of different cells. So, sirtuins in a healthy cell, so sirtuin should be upregulated and they should be having this housekeeping gene—housekeeping function where they basically control what's going on with the DNA repair and also with the gene expression as well. And if we do have—when we do start having impaired autophagy, and let's say there is increased reactive oxygen species, because there are increased dysfunctional mitochondria in the cell, you will have in more activation of PARPs, and all of the NAD will start being drained from... And sirtuin will not have enough energy to function. So, those are actually quite an elegant interplay between autophagy and NAD and sirtuins. Lisa: Okay. Okay, can I just want to like put that back to you, so that we can slow down because we are going technical quite fast. And I think a lot of people might be like, ‘What the heck are they talking about’? So, the sirtuin genes, basically longevity genes, and then one of the jobs is DNA repair. And another of the jobs is to say which genes are actually being activated right now. And these sirtuin genes are also responsible, I think, for cell replication, is that correct? Dr Elena: The sirtuins are responsible for multiple functions, directly or indirectly. So, for instance, the sirtuin 3 gene is also responsible for mitochondrial biogenesis. And it's implicated in the amount of mitochondria that are being produced by the cell, which is related to cell replication eventually, because you do need to have enough ATP levels to replicate. Lisa: Right. Yeah. So, this has definitely to do with ATP production as well and mitochondrial health. So, these are doing all of these jobs, the sirtuin genes, they're very, very crucial genes in our genome. And these are preserved across every species, I believe? Every species on the planet? Dr Elena: Yeah. Also from yeast to humans, it's also—sirtuin genes are preserved very well. Lisa: And when things are preserved across species, then that gives a scientist an indication that this is probably a very important biological function and we need to have a look at this one because it's—from what I understand. Okay, so when you have activated PARP because you're not doing autophagy well and there's things going wrong, it's taking the NAD. So NAD is basically like a fuel source that both the sirtuin genes. And when PARP is activated, it's using to fuel its job. And so, this is competition for competing fuel sources. So, like if you imagine, you've only got one tank of fuel for your car, but you've got to go in two different directions and do two different jobs. You go, ‘How am I going to divide up my energy’? So, then it becomes important as to how much NAD we have in the body? So, what is NAD again? That says nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide? But what is that and how does it work? Dr Elena: Yeah, it does serve as a substrate for all of these enzymes, including sirtuins and PARPS and is basically a master regulator of metabolism. So, it's a very important molecule and it serves as—without NAD, the cell is not able to function properly just because this crucial molecule is implicated in so many different reactions. So, NAD is found in all living cells and organisms. This is also evolutionary conserved across species. And it exists in two forms, NADH and NAD+, which is the reduced and the oxidised form, respectively. And both of them are important. And both of them are implicated in multiple cellular reactions. Lisa: Is it going backwards and forwards in a cycle, NADH, NAD+, by donating electrons back and forth, sort of thing? Dr Elena: Yeah. Through electron transport chain in the mitochondria, yeah. So, this is why it's so important. And so, what we're seeing now in the latest advancements in longevity research is that we actually can supplement with different precursors of NAD, such as nicotinamide mononucleotide, for instance, NMN. And this is the supplement that my company... Lisa: See, you've now got that available on the market because this is such a crucial thing. Dr Elena: Exactly. And I think that it's really interesting to also say that when it comes to the interaction between autophagy and sirtuins, there is also another regulation of autophagy there. So sirtuin 1 is actually responsible for activating some transcription factors such as TFEB and FoxO3 that have to do with initiation of the autophagy process. So, for this reason, when we do have dropping levels of NAD, decreasing levels of NAD, and there is not enough NAD for sirtuins to do their job. And let's say again—let's talk about that previous example in neurodegeneration when you have increased reactive oxygen species, and you have increased the level of stress and oxidative stress and decreased activity of sirtuins. And not only the situation is already bad, but because sirtuin 1 doesn't have enough energy to function and to activate the TFEB and the FoxO3 transcription factors to initiate autophagy, now you have all of this dysfunctional mitochondria floating around and autophagy starts being impaired as well because we activated enough. So, it's a negative feedback loop which actually accelerates the scenario where the cell is going towards cell death, basically. Lisa: So that means like, if you don't have enough NAD, then your sirtuin 1 gene is not going to be able to initiate autophagy and clean up the cell and you're going to have dysfunctional mitochondria. Is that independent of the mTOR pathway? Or is that—am I getting confused? Dr Elena: So, okay. So, good question. So, what happens is there are some molecules that activates sirtuins. So, for instance, sirtuin 1 is activated by resveratrol, and this is something that has been demonstrated many years ago. So, when you have sirtuin 1 dependent activation of autophagy, you will be having it through an mTOR independent pathway. Lisa: So it's a fasting mimetic resveratrol. Dr Elena: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, because we now know that the mTOR activity is not affected by intake of resveratrol. And this is quite crucial because actually, even if we want to activate autophagy, we shouldn’t do it through the mTOR pathway, this is not the preferred way, because mTOR is also responsible for growth and translation in the cell. So, this is not—it's also quite a key player in the cell. So it's a serine threonine kinase, and you actually don't want it to be activated at all times because this may lead other conditions. So, what we're focusing on at the moment is to find molecules that can activate autophagy in an mTOR independent manner. Lisa: Okay, so. So if the mTOR—cause MTOR is usually what's for growth it’s anabolic, it's causing growth. So for example, a bodybuilder goes to the gym, they're in an anabolic state, they are in an mTOR growth state. And when you have autophagy, that's sort of the opposite. So, it's a catabolic state where it's starting to eat itself. So, it’s mTOR, most people like do fasting for that reason to activate autophagy? Dr Elena: Yeah, this is another good point there. So, when we're fasting, and there is actually conflicting evidence out there as to when autophagy is fully activated. Usually, people say that around 24 hours, you start having the autophagy activation. There are others that swear by the ketogenic diet, and say that if you don't consume any carbs, you will get autophagy activation anyway. However, from what other researchers have found is that, if you are in a ketogenic diet, and you do consume meat, it depends on what kind of meat you consume that will either activate autophagy or not. And it all has to do with levels of different amino acids in the cell because autophagy is quite sensitive to nutrients and to nutrient starvation to be activated. If you have an abundance of amino acids, again, it will not be activated. So, for instance, one amino acid that activates autophagy very well is leucine. And if you're eating certain meat that are rich in leucine, this is probably not good for your autophagic state. Something else to keep in mind, and I've heard, I think it was Dave Asprey saying that if you can manage to be on under 15 grams of protein per day, you will probably keep the autophagy going. Lisa: Because a lot of people on keto think I can eat a lot of protein, which is a mistake, really. It isn't about having—that's interesting, because I had Dr. David Minkoff on my podcast, Pushing the Limits a while ago, and he has a product called PerfectAmino, which is really a 99% usable form of amino acids and combination. And I was interested, ‘Well hang on, if I'm heading there, which is going a lot of good things in the body. But is that going to inhibit my mTOR, or autophagy’? Sorry, because I've got too much leucine in there? Dr Elena: This is a very good point for all of this process food as well. So, for instance, there are some ready meals you can get or some protein bars that claim to have all the low carb and everything. And then they slam a badge on their pack saying that it's vegan as well. But then, why is it vegan if it has all the amino acids because that's one of the selling points when you're actually on a vegan diet, or you have some days where you are on a vegan diet. You want to get yourself in a state of partial amino acid depletion to get this beneficial effect of enhanced autophagy. And on intercellular toxins and so on. Lisa: Right, so for certain periods of time, you want to do this, and it's a cycling thing, you don't want to be completely deficient of aminos for too long because then your body will start to break down. Dr Elena: This is what I do personally as well. So, during the week, so I am a fan of cattle/carnivore diet. So, this diet is quite comfortable for me and I enjoyed it quite a lot. But then during my week I try to have some days where I'm either vegetarian or vegan, just because I want to have those benefits. Lisa: Yeah. Up and down. And then this seems to be a theme in biology all the time is that it's not one thing. It's not staying on keto for ever and ever, amen. It's about doing cyclic keto or cyclic vegan and it’s cyclic. And our body loves this push and pull—when there’s recovery and there’s growth and then clean up phase, growth clean up. So autophagy can be activated through fasting. It can also be active through having resveratrol and upregulating the sirtuin 1 gene, how else can we activate autophagy? Dr Elena: So there are different ways, there are different things you can really implement in order to activate autophagy. And I think that it all has to do with how you build your lifestyle in general. So, I think that in order for your body to function properly, you really need to have a kind of a healthy routine in general. And an analogy that I can give you there is that there are people that would buy a couple of supplements, and then they would be so proud of it. And then they would say, ‘Oh, yeah, but I'm taking those supplements now, and I'm so healthy’. And then their biorhythms are all off. They sleep at 5am every day. And they're eating crappy foods or super processed foods. Lisa: Yeah, it’s not going to work. Dr Elena: It’s all good. So, I think that when it comes to being healthy and activating your autophagy levels and having a healthy lifestyle in general, you need to start with the basics first. So, the intermittent fasting is definitely the first step to take in order to become a bit healthier. And from the research that I'm reading, and from the things that I'm implementing, I definitely believe that both anecdotal and scientific evidence point towards the fact that intermittent fasting is actually the way to go. I mean, there are conflicting opinions out there and there are pros and cons in every diet, and so on. And I get that. But I personally believe that with intermittent fasting, if you try to narrow down the window where you're uptaking food, this is very, very good for you. So, this is step number one. But then again, so either you're trying to raise your NAD levels, or you're trying to activate your autophagy, because those pathways are quite intertwined. And what you eventually want to do is you want to have increased levels of sirtuin, and sirtuin 1 in particular, and sirtuin 3, of course, and so on. And for this reason, in order to preserve this pool of NAD that is available for the sirtuin 1 to activate itself and activate the autophagy pathway. Another small tip that I can give is to actually avoid sunlight, which is something that people don't really consider. But what happens when we're exposed to sunlight, when our skin is exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods of time, we start getting the DNA damage. And when you get the DNA damage, you have PARP activation, and then again, you NAD pool... Lisa: Wow. I never connected those dots. That's really interesting. So, because—I mean, we need sun. We need sun for vitamin D and for our mood and all that sort of stuff. So, you're not saying don't have any sun. Dr Elena: Yeah, sure. Lisa: But because the sun is causing DNA damage, it's going to cause more PARP activation, it’s going to have the sirtuin genes going to repair the DNA, that's going to use up the body's resources is what you're saying. Okay, wow, that makes sense. Makes sense. And then by the same token, like things like smoking that breaks DNA, like no tomorrow. This is why smoking ages you is because of all the DNA breaks. And this is why, when you're in the sun for hours every day, you get wrinkly skin and you get collagen lost and all the rest of the things that are happening. So, anything that's going to be causing DNA breaks is going to cause you to age quicker. Dr Elena: Exactly. Lisa: Using up the resources basically. Wow, okay. Dr Elena: So it's obviously—you don't have to become a vampire and dissipate walk in the sun when you want to go somewhere. But sunbathing for hours is definitely not something you want to do with—to get your body go through, basically. So that's another tip. And then something else, really, really simple that can be implemented on a daily basis in order to maintain your sirtuin levels, and as a result, your autophagy levels, and your NAD levels is also to take a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, which contains oleic acid. And it basically does the same job as resveratrol. And it's interesting—I think that there's been a recent research article out that shows that like oleic acid might even be more efficient than resveratrol, in terms of activating sirtuin 1, which I think it's really, really cool. Lisa: So yeah. Well, combine the two. I do. Dr Elena: Yeah, absolutely. You can do that. And then, you need to make sure that the extra virgin olive oil is actually of a very good quality because there is a bunch of... Lisa: There is a bunch of rubbish out there. So, make sure it's from an orchard that you know, it's cold pressed, it's all those extra virgin, it's all that sort of good stuff. And not—how do they do it with solvents and stuff? Or that it's come from multiple orchards and being cut with other oils. It's a really, really important point. And then oleic acid does so much good things in the body. But isn’t that fat, Elena? Like lots of people are like, in their minds are going, ‘But oil is fat. It’s the same with MCT oil. Isn’t that going to make you fat when you eat fat’? Just going to put that around. Dr Elena: There are good fats and there are bad fats. So, olive oil is good fat. MCT oil is a good fat. Avocado is a good fat. So, not all thoughts are made equal. So, this is definitely something important to keep in mind, especially with a good quality extra virgin olive oil. Lisa: Because each one of our cells is a membrane that has a phospholipid, isn't it? So we need that, actually, this building of ourselves into the integrity. Dr Elena: We have a phospholipid layer in the brain as well. And this is why we actually supplement with omega 3 fatty acids, because this is what it does. So, this is what omega 3 fatty acids do. They go into the phospholipid membrane, and then they basically... Lisa: Make the integrity of that membrane better. Dr Elena: Yeah, they contribute to the healthy phospholipid layer in the brain. Lisa: So that's why it's very important for neurodegeneration to have omega 3s going in and again, people get quality omega 3s. Not your cheap supermarket ones that are perhaps oxidised and have been sitting on the shelves for six months. So really important to get a reputable source here. And omega 3 is of course in fishes as well, and krill, and so on. Okay, so but is there a downside to fat? Because I studied epigenetics and a lot of people's profiles come back with don't have too many fats. And it's been one of those things in my head is like ‘Why would some people not come back with you shouldn't have too much fat’? I mean, there are things like gall bladders been removed. That's a pretty specific thing. But is there a genetic component? And probably not your wheelhouse, really, but is there a genetic component to your ability to process fat? Dr Elena: There is a genetic component, and I've actually seen this with a family that has a history of very problematic digestion of fat, and so on. Absolutely. But yeah, again, not all fats are made the same. And when you cut off the bad fats from your life, things change and everything changes really. Lisa: Yeah, it really is very satiating, too to have a little bit of fat and that can really help with cravings and blood sugar spikes—we're getting off topic. So you have a company, NMN Bio, which produces nicotinamide mononucleotide supplement. And you've got a whole range of other stuff coming as well. Why did you decide like, you need to get this out there on the market? Based on your research and your knowledge around this area, why is it important that people take NMN if they're serious about slowing aging? Dr Elena: So first of all, I came across the biology of NAD and NMN during my PhD studies and my research kind of led me into this field because I was studying autophagy neurodegeneration. And actually, I still cannot disclose my research. Lisa: Yeah, it’s not published yet. Dr Elena: My research paper from my PhD is not published yet, but hopefully soon, so we're about to submit it quite soon actually. So for this reason, I started studying the biology of NAD and I actually saw how important and how crucial NAD is to the cell and what happens when we have a lack of NAD and depletion of NAD pools in the cell. And I've been supplementing with different kinds of vitamins and supplements my whole life really. So, I was watching closely this space for a while, and I was taking different supplements myself for a while. And so, when I came across NMN and I realised that actually there is this strategy where we can supplement with a precursor in order to increase our energy levels, I found it really, really interesting. And I thought to give it a go myself and try it out and see the results. And then what shocked me was that the immediate effect of the supplement—so within a few days, you can already feel a difference in your energy levels and your focus. And this comes from the fact that sirtuins are responsible for so many molecular processes in the cell. And this is why you have this effect, including the mitochondrial biogenesis, which gives you basically increased ATP, consequently. Lisa: You get actually more mitochondria. So, like, if you got heart disease... Dr Elena: The production of more mitochondria, and then they produce more ATP as a result. And then you have this magic energy, yeah. This is why I thought to bring this product into the market. And the other reason was that there was not enough reliable suppliers on the market, which is crazy, because it's actually quite a popular supplement. It's been on the rise, the interest was rising for the past couple of years, but what we're seeing is there is a lot of white labelling companies that don't offer any certificates of analysis and so on. And also, you have even big companies not offering proper certificates of analysis, which was me like, it was… Yeah, I don't understand. You have a big company, and you have just the purity report from like, 18 months ago, and you don't have any other analysis, such as heavy metals, or pH or microorganisms. So, the consumer is actually not confident in buying from you. And I wanted to deliver the best quality for myself and my family. And then I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is not done, right’. And this is why I launched the company because I wanted a company that was completely transparent. And I even say it on the website, that if you're interested in finding out who our suppliers are, and so on, and have any questions about our supply chain, just feel free to reach out to me. And I would be happy to disclose all of those things. There are other companies that you can't find any registration number, or who the founder is, and so on. And it's quite confusing, really, because like you— you don't know who you deal with. Lisa: This is the same with the whole supplement industry. On the one hand, it's good that it's not regulated by the FDA, and whoever else, there are authorities around the world. Because like, then—they are turned into the pharmaceutical industry, which don't get me started. But on the other hand, there's not enough regulation around the quality control. And one of the things when I was searching for NMNs, searching the world for it, I had to go overseas and import it to friends in America and get it out of there. And this is why I like—was super excited to discover your work. And then, we've since now made it available down here. So, we're going to branch down here in New Zealand for New Zealand, Australia. And I wanted someone who I could trust, who has all the scientific knowledge behind it, there's all lab tests, etc. And that was really important for me for quality. Just on a side note. So I've been taking NMN now for—I think—so five, close to six months. I've had a massive weight loss and so as my mum. Why would that be? Like, I didn't take it for weight loss. I wasn't overweight, per se. But I had a couple of kilos that I was quite clear to get rid of. And what I've noticed—because I'm an athlete, that's my background—I haven't lost an ounce of muscle, which has been really awesome because most people are struggling to keep muscle mass, lose fat mass. My mum has lost 11 kilos. And she is of a genetic body type that really struggles with weight loss. She's conservation metabolism, from a genetic point of view, very, very hard for her to lose weight. So, I've never seen this in the history of her entire life, since I've been around. The weights just dropped off her. Is this some sort of upregulation in the metabolic pathways? Is it improving the insulin resistance? What's it doing there to cause such weight loss without muscle loss? Dr Elena: Well, in my study so far, there's definitely evidence that it does improve insulin sensitivity, and it also improves the lipid metabolism profile. So those two are very important. And unfortunately, we don't have those studies in humans yet. But more clinical studies are on the way, and hopefully we'll have very good results this year with the NMN besides the safety studies that we already have in humans. So in mice, what we're seeing is that there is basically a reverse of type two diabetes, which is really impressive. And if you want to correlate this data into humans somehow, I would say that, obviously, I'm not a medical doctor, and this is not a medical advice, but I would say that it does have to do something with the metabolism, and it basically improves the way your body metabolises everything. And... Lisa: Worth trying and there's no downside to NMN. There's no, it's a vitamin B derivative, well then you will say to me, ‘Well, can I just take B3 and be done’? and it's like, no, it doesn't work like that, which should be a lot cheaper. Dr Elena: That’s the other impressive thing about this compound is that it actually doesn't have, if any, side effects at all. So even in studies with mice, where the dosage that they use in mice is actually much higher than it is in the one that we usually have in humans. So, for instance, if someone would take 500 mg, or one gram of NMN per day in humans. And then in mice studies, they use something like 200 mg per kilogram of weight, which is much, much more, and it still doesn't have any side effects. Lisa: Does it mean that we need higher dosages? Like in the human, or has it only been tested to one gram and why has it not been tested higher, if that's the case? Dr Elena: No, I think that there are studies underway for this as well. So eventually, we will find what is the ideal dosage for humans. I think that from anecdotal evidence, people can already see results from 500 mg or one gram and so on. There are people that take more. So, some biohackers say that they take two grams or four grams, and is still very well tolerated. But yeah, so far, it does not produce any side effects in terms of… Lisa: Any downside. Dr Elena: Basically. And, for instance, for myself, my stomach is quite sensitive. So, when I'm on an empty stomach, I can't take vitamin C or caffeine and I get nauseous and so on. And this is not the case with an NMN. So, I can take it first. It is very well tolerated on an empty stomach, very mild. I really love it. There’s so many reasons to love it. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have my morning and night. So, I'm on a gram a day. And is there any reason not to take it at night? So I split the dose—reasoning, thinking, keeping the levels up? Dr Elena: I mean, I would probably take it all in the morning, I think. There's been a study out that it can affect the circadian rhythms as well. And interestingly, it actually affects NMN—sorry—NAD levels affects the circadian rhythm. But it's not the other way around. So, NAD actually dictates the circadian rhythm in the body. So, for this reason, I would suggest to take it in the morning because then your whole body synchronise, then you wake up and you tell to your body that look, it's the morning now, and we're going to have increased NAD level. Lisa: Increase. Ohh okay. So, okay, I got that wrong. I haven't noticed that I've had worse sleep or anything like that, or any rhythm has been out. But I would definitely swap to doing—my thinking process around that was keeping the tissue saturated over a 24-hour period, as opposed to all at once and then perhaps dropping, but I don't know. What is the half-life of it? Do you know? Is there any sort of evidence around that? Dr Elena: I actually, not sure. No, no. Lisa: There’s no evidence yet. And so yeah, there's a ton of studies still being done that are currently, like this year, like going to be coming out, which is going to be really exciting. So that we're going to get more evidence. I mean, there's this stuff that I've been reading around fertility in animal studies, and they're starting to do human studies, which I personally am very interested in, in reversing aging of the ovaries and even with... I mean, the mice study was incredible around fertility, where the mice were postmenopausal, they actually knocked off any existing eggs with chemotherapy. And then gave them NMN and the mice went on to have babies. And there was a whole study. Dr Elena: This is why I get so excited about NMN and this is why it's my first product because frankly speaking as a scientist, I've never seen results like that with a natural compound. Lisa: No? Dr Elena: Because there is a bunch of natural compounds out there, there is a bunch of other supplements. And what we're talking about spermidine the other day... Lisa: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Dr Elena: ...another autophagy activator. Quite an interesting supplement, yes. By the way, it's also an mTOR, independent autophagy activator, which is good. Lisa: Another very good reason to take that as well. And we were looking into that aren’t we, Elena about adding that? Dr Elena: Yeah, absolutely. We will look into this, but again, you don't see results, like the ones that you see with NMN in multiple studies from other compounds, it's really fascinating. Lisa: Wow, so yeah, so there are other products that are going to... And this is a super exciting thing, like were our grandparents or our parents even didn't get the chance, like, with aging was aging, and there was nothing that you really could do to influence how fast you aged. They weren't aware of it. And later on, it's become well, if you eat better and you exercise a little bit more and you stop smoking and, and stuff, you’ll age slower. But now we're taking exponential leaps in our knowledge. I mean, I fell into this realm when I was reading Dr David Sinclair's book, who is a very prominent scientist at Harvard Medical School, and made his book, Lifespan, which I totally recommend people reading. I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I can stay healthy now’, because I'm 52, ‘if I can stay like, really, in top shape for another 10 years, by then we're going to have stuff that will help me live really long’. And that really excites me. And not just live long, but live healthier. Dr Elena: That’s the important part. The important part is not to just increase your age, it’s to increase your health span. So, the time that you're spending being healthy. And what you're referring to is actually called the aging escape velocity, where basically we’ll have more advanced research coming in every year of our lives. And this will eventually expand our lifespan, which is amazing. And I also think that if we preserve ourselves well, we might as well see this in our lifetimes, which will be amazing. Lisa: Absolutely. And I want another few decades, please. Listening to Dave Asprey, who by far, got... Dr Elena: I want another like, few hundreds. Lisa: Yeah, well, I mean, I know it sounds ridiculous right now. But if you listen to Dave Asprey saying conservatively, and Dr. David Sinclair, too, like, conservatively, we could live to 150, 180, and beyond. Then once they crack the code, and they're actually able to turn the cells back to which they are working on right now. And which they can actually go in the petri dish, from what I understand like with skin cells and make them immortal. And they can't do it in humans because it's too risky, they could turn you into a tumour and stuff. But with the Yamanaka factors that were discovered a decade or so ago, they're actually able to turn the clock back to the point of you being a 20-year-old again. And this is like, ‘Wow, this is pretty exciting. Being able to regrow nerves, spinal injuries, people who have gone blind from macular degeneration’ — all of these things are coming down the line. This is very, very exciting. Dr Elena: There are several advancements in this field. So, as I said, my PhD is also in stem cell biology. So, I was working with human embryonic stem cells in the lab, and what they can do on a dish is just mind blowing. Because what I was able to do was to take human embryonic stem cells, and then dictate their fate, basically, with different growth factors, and then differentiate them into neural precursors at first. And then to push them further in order to become terminally differentiated neurons. And like four weeks later, you basically have a human brain in a dish and it's a primary human cells. And it's an amazing, physiological irrelevant human platform as well to study disease. And this is what I was doing during my PhD. So, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And every time I would do, I would go through this process, I would differentiate the human embryonic stem cells into neurons. It would be as exciting as the first time because of what it represents, because it does represent the progress that we've made so far. And I personally started human embryonic stem cells for the sake of drug discovery. So, I wasn't interested—my project was not focusing on different therapeutic applications. However, I know that there are many advancements in this field as well. So, we do have clinics in America, where you can have a total body rejuvenation, stem cells, and so on. And this technology is definitely advancing. And I've been actually thinking about the application of this for myself. So as you know, I recently had a dental injury. This is something to keep in mind for the future. So perhaps in the near future, I can just inject myself with a bit of a stem cells there... Lisa: And that’s already happening to a degree. I mean, I've got a doctor friend up north, who's doing stem cell replacement for joints, and so on, for degenerative joints. Because stem cells, basically, for people who don't understand why this is important. The stem cell is the original like cell, but before it decides, ‘Am I going to become a skin cell, or a neuron or a liver cell’, it differentiates. So, it's a pluripotent stem cell, it can become anything. And so, in the lab setting, you're going to be able to say, ‘Well I want your cell to become a liver cell’. Will we eventually be able to grow organs that can be used for transplantation? Is that sort of one of the end goals? Dr Elena: Absolutely. And it's already been done with some organs. So for instance, I've heard that there is a research group that basically 3D-printed a functional thyroid gland from stem cells. Lisa: Wow. 3D-printed. So, the printer gets these differentiated cells somehow, and then makes it into a functioning organ that they will eventually—they're going to be able to actually transplant this into people and save the whole organ donation, horrific troubles that we have currently. Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly and I think that we're not too far away from this from whole organs being recreated in the lab. We already are able to actually do a 3D culture in the lab and create the so called organoids. So for instance, from stem cells, you can do a brain organoid, where you have a liposphere and it basically consists of different kinds of cells that you see in the brain. So it would have neurons, it would have glial, it will have astrocytes, and then it would have this brain organoid and then you can study it. So, we're already getting there. We’re close, we’re much closer than we thought we were 20 years ago. And I think that we're not far away from having different kinds of organs being grown in the lab for transplants and so on. Lisa: Hopefully not our brains because it's the seed of who we are. Honestly reading Dr Sinclair's book, I was like, ‘Am I in a Star Trek movie or something’? because it is pretty, pretty amazing. But when you do this, you also ask that to understand the whole process and how the whole thing functions, and then you can actually really slow down neurodegeneration and optimise things. And so the NMN that we're talking about right now is the beginning of this really exciting road, which we're going to be staying abreast of. And hopefully adding to what we have available to the consumer right now for prices that are not moon money, that it's out of anybody's reach, but actually what you can do today so that you can preserve your health. So that in 10 years’ time, when the real crazy stuff starts coming on line, you'll be able to live longer and healthier lives. And that's the whole goal of it. So before we just wrap up, I just wanted to reiterate again, so how is autophagy—can you just put that—how is autophagy related to NAD and sirtuin genes? Can you just put that two pieces together again, just repeat that a little bit? Dr Elena: Sure. So basically, what happens is that you do need autophagy to recycle different damaged organelles in the cell when something goes wrong. So, and this is quite prominent in neurodegeneration because the reason we have—let's say, aggregate from proteins in neurons and dysfunctional mitochondria and so on is because neurons are terminally differentiated cells. This means that they don't divide anymore. So, they rely on autophagy in order to have their housekeeping function because they can't divide the junk away. Okay. So that's the reason why autophagy is important in terminally differentiated cells such as neurons. Lisa: So there's no hay flick limit for a neuron. There is just only one—when a neuron becomes a neuron, that's a neuron. Okay. Dr Elena: Yeah, yeah. And then that's it. And what happens with the activation of autophagy, one of the signals is—comes through sirtuin 1, which basically can activate the transcription factors that are related to autophagy activation, which is the TFEB transcription factor, EB and FOXO, which are basically influenced the activation of autophagy. And more specifically, the mitophagy as well. So, mitophagy is the arm of autophagy that is responsible for the mitochondrial clearance in the cell. Lisa: Yep, so mitochondria, just for people, are the powerhouses of the cell. This is where a lot of—so all of the energy is produced, if you like. And so, this is why mitophagy, as opposed to autophagy, so mitophagy is doing the same process, but within the mitochondria to keep your mitochondria healthy. And if your mitochondria are not healthy, and they're dying, and you're not having enough mitochondria in your cells, then you are going to be sick. And that could be heart disease, it could be neurodegeneration, that could be anything. So, keeping your mitochondria healthy is the basis of all bloody disease, blatantly. Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly. So then, if you have impaired autophagy in the cell, and then you also have some sort of DNA damage going on, such as the one from reactive oxygen species, for example. And then what you have is the activation of the PARP enzymes. And PARP enzymes heavily rely on NAD levels in the cell in order to function. And NAD is also a substrate for the sirtuin genes that are responsible for also regulating a bunch of very healthy, a bunch of processes in the healthy cell. And for this reason, if you do have increased activation of PARPS, you will eventually get this NAD drain out of the cell. And this will not be enough in order for the sirtuins to function properly. And this will also deplete your autophagy. So, both NAD levels and autophagy are important to the cell. And fortunately for us, we can actually replenish the levels of NAD by supplementing with an ad precursor such as an NMN. Lisa: Okay, and so NMN has been proven to be by most of our bio available, because there's also like nicotinamide riboside which is used in a number of supplement companies that I know have nicotinamide riboside, but not many, there are some now, but have nicotinamide mononucleotide. Nicotinamide riboside is also a great molecule, but it's two steps away from becoming NAD. As long as it’s available. Dr Elena: Yeah, so nicotinamide riboside needs to be phosphorylated and fast converted to nicotinamide mononucleotide first. And then this will enter the cell and then this will increase the levels of NAD in the cell. And for this reason—so first, this area of research was focusing on the NR molecule, the nicotinamide riboside. But then when they started studying NMN, they actually saw that there is increased bioavailability and there is increased levels of energy that come after supplementation with NMN. Lisa: Can you take—because NAD is a molecule, you cannot just take it as a capsule, and then it's all good to go. Can you take it as an infusion because I have heard of NAD infusions. I mean, it’s not available here. Dr Elena: Well, and I'm curious myself about this, and I haven't done it, I haven't tested it. And from what I've seen—so the concentration of NAD in those intravenous injections is quite low. And I think that the same way that we have many opportunistic companies in the supplement field, we also have many opportunistic clinics that offer this kind of treatments. So, again, this is not something that I have studied in depth, and I actually don't know how much will it help. But yeah, I mean, this is another way to boost NAD, I guess, and you can try it out. But with oral administration of NMN, we do have evidence that it can boost the levels of NAD in the tissue and in liver tissue and muscle tissue, and so on. And also, it's much easier to do and it's obviously much cheaper because those injections cost a lot. Lisa: Yes, yeah. Just one last question in relation to antioxidants, because I mean 10 years ago or so we used to think our reactive oxygen species ,oxidative stress happens through the electron transport chain. When we're metabolising, and so on, we get all these oxidative stresses and free radicals running around. And if we take antioxidants, we're going to be counterbalancing that. Does supplementing with antioxidants, like vitamin D, like glutathione, like vitamin C, and so on, alpha lipoic acid, is that going to contribute, too, to the slowing of aging, because it's going to down regulate the PARP enzymes? Dr Elena: People were very optimistic about antioxidants, something like 20 years ago. And everyone was talking about it and so on. But actually, the big studies that have been done, have shown that by taking antioxidants, you actually do not suppress aging. And there are some biomarkers that might have changed in those studies. But most of the biomarkers that they measure stay the same. Basically, saying that antioxidant is not the... Lisa: Not the holy grail. Dr Elena: ...that everyone was thinking about. Lisa: Was hoping, yeah. Not to say that antioxidants don't have their place because they definitely do. Especially if you have a lot of oxidative stress, and you need to, like with vitamin C, if you're infected, or—I've done a whole series on vitamin C. But then it's not the holy grail for stopping the aging process, but it probably does help with not having so much PARP activation. I don't know, as a non-scientific brain, I'm just connecting dots. Okay, so I think it's probably we've— so from a lifestyle intervention, apart from taking NMN and resveratrol, and oleic acid or olive oil, intermittent fasting, is there anything else that we can add to our anti-aging regime on a lifestyle intervention side? Dr Elena: Intermittent fasting, and then avoid exposure to sunlight, as we said. And sirtuin genes are being activated from any kind of stress. And what we can do is we can also induce some sort of an artificial stress, which could be done, let's say with cryotherapy. This is what cryotherapy does. When you're exposed to cold, you also have this stress signal that activates sirtuins, or the other way around, so you can try out a sauna. And this will also have the same effect. So, I think this is also something to keep in mind. Lisa: Breathing, breathing. So, sort of tumour breathing, or, like what one half does all of that sort of stuff. So, there’s hormetic stressors, there’s exercise obviously, that cause a cascade of changes and make you stronger. And yeah, it's sort of a balancing act. You don't want to be doing exercise for Africa or really freezing yourself to death, but you just want to have a little stress to cause a change in the body. So these hormetic stressors can be very, very helpful. Okay, well, I think we've covered a very, very, very complex topic and I hope we didn't lose everybody on the way. But at the end of the day, take NMN, take resveratrol, take olive oil, do your exercise, get in the sauna, if you have a chance to do cold therapy, do that as well. Get your exercise, get your antioxidants in there as well, to a certain degree and you're going to be able to live long enough but until other things come online, and you'll be able to improve everything. Dr Elena: Sounds good. Lisa: Brilliant. So Dr. Elena, thank you very much. Dr. Elena has been on the show, NMN Bio. So we have nmnbio.co.uk in UK and in Europe, and nmnbio.nz if you're down at this end of the world. We'd love to help you over the air. If you've got any other questions, please reach out to us. And thanks very much for being here today. It's been really exciting. Dr Elena: Thank you, Lisa, thank you so much for having me. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to
We're often told not to care too much about what other people think of us. However, understanding how others perceive us can play to our advantage. Sometimes we fail to see our own mistakes or flaws, and to overcome this, we need to develop self-awareness by looking at ourselves from a different perspective. Once we realise our flaws, we can do better and achieve high performance. Craig Harper joins us in this episode to discuss how self-awareness can lead to high performance. He also explains the importance of external awareness or the ability to understand how others perceive us. We also talk about events that changed our life perspectives and how to live aligned with our values. If you want to increase your self-awareness and achieve high performance, then this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program optimising fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance for your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover what external self-awareness is and how it can help you achieve high performance. Find out why motivation alone doesn't work. Learn how to live in alignment for a healthy and meaningful life. Resources The You Project Podcast with Craig Harper The You Project #360: Embracing the Suck with Lisa Tamati Check out Craig's books. Connect with Craig: Website | Instagram | Linkedin BrainPark Episode Highlights [03:44] About Craig Craig used to be the fattest kid in school until he decided to lose weight at 14 years old. Curious about fitness and nutrition, he started working in gyms. Craig eventually set up his first personal training centre in Australia. At 36 years old, Craig went to university to study Exercise Science. Realising the importance of understanding human behaviour, he's now taking a PhD in neuropsychology. [08:58] External Self-Awareness Being self-aware means understanding how other people perceive, process and experience you. You can make better connections when you know what it's like for people to be around you. Going into a situation assuming others have the same mindset can create problems. Acknowledging your lack of awareness is the first step in overcoming it. [15:20] On High Performance High performance answers the question of how you can do better. It applies to all aspects of life. For Craig, high performance means getting the most out of your potential, resources and time. Listen to the full episode to get a rundown of the principles you need to achieve high performance. [16:14] Recognising Your Programming Humans have the power to recognise and change how they see the world. Because we do the same things daily, we fall into living unconsciously. When our approach doesn't give us the results we want, it might be time to try something different. It may be not easy, but going out of our comfort zones makes us stronger. [28:43] Working Around Genetic Predispositions What you're born with doesn't change the fact that your choices have power. Focus on things you can control and own the situation at hand. Be careful that self-awareness doesn't become self-deprecation. From there, focus on how you can attain high performance. [33:42] Reflecting on Your Relationships Despite his nutrition expertise, Craig faces a constant battle to make good food choices. Reflect on your relationship with food. Is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? You can apply this to other aspects of your life as well. Doing this opens the door to self-management and self-awareness. [37:51] Where People Get Their Sense of Self We learn that self-esteem, self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. Craig's theory is that it's an inside-out process. The external and observable things don't matter as much as the things happening internally. Listen to the full episode to find out how two experiences in Craig's life put his life into perspective. [1:00:38] Motivation Alone Doesn't Work A lot of people rely on their current state of motivation to get things done. What's important is how willing you are to put in the work despite the inconvenience and discomfort. [1:02:25] Live in Alignment Ask yourself if you're willing to put in the work to achieve your goals. You can live in alignment with your values by following an operating system based on them. Listen to the full episode to know the questions you need to ask yourself to create this operating system. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with. And this is not self-loathing; this is me just going, "Okay, so how do I do better?" And this for me is the process of high performance’. ‘Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective’. ‘Real awareness and consciousness is to first be aware of your lack of awareness’. ‘The only person that can ever really get in my way is me, you know. But also, I'm the solution to me’. ‘So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. My theory is that it is the other way around—it is an inside out journey’. ‘Of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business... or whatever. That's not bad, but it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are’. ‘I don't care what you get done when you're motivated; I care what you get done when you're not motivated because everyone's a champion when they're in the zone’. About Craig Craig Harper is one of Australia's leading presenters, writers and educators in health, high performance, resilience, self-management, leadership, corporate change, communication, stress management, addiction and personal transformation. Craig has been an integral part of the Australian health and fitness industry since 1982. He has worked as an Exercise Scientist, Corporate Speaker, Consultant, University Lecturer, AFL Conditioning Coach, Radio Host, TV Presenter, Writer and successful Business Owner. In 1990, Craig established Harper's Personal Training, which evolved into one of the most successful businesses of its kind. Craig currently hosts a successful Podcast called 'The You Project'. He is also partnering with the Neuroscience Team at Monash University, where he's completing a neuropsychology PhD. There, he studies the spectrum of human thinking and behaviour. Craig speaks on various radio stations around Australia weekly. He also hosted his weekly show on Melbourne radio called 'the Science of Sport' for a decade. Craig currently fills an on-air role as a presenter on a lifestyle show called 'Get a Life', airing on Foxtel. As an Exercise Scientist, Craig has worked with many professional athletes and teams. While still working with groups and individuals regularly, Craig delivers more than one hundred corporate presentations annually. Want to know more about Craig and his work? Check out his website, or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin! Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so that they can develop their self-awareness and achieve high performance. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. This week I have Craig Harper to guest. Now, Craig is a very well-known media personality, exercise scientist, crazy fitness guru, owns some of the biggest personal training gyms in Australia, has a huge track record as a corporate speaker, motivational speaker, worked with Olympians, worked with all sorts of athletes across a number of different sports. And he's absolutely hilarious. I really enjoyed this interview, I was on Craig's show a couple of weeks ago, The You Project, you can go and check that one out as well. A great podcast. And today we sort of did a deep dive into everything around self-awareness and understanding your potential and realising your potential. And just it was a really interesting conversation with a very interesting man. He's doing a PhD in understanding the experience that people have when they meet you. So, understanding how people see you. So it's a really interesting conversation. So, I hope you enjoy that. Before we go over to the show, please give us a rating and review. We really appreciate any ratings and reviews that you give us. It's really hugely helpful for the show. It is a labour of love. We are about to if we haven't already, by the time this podcast goes live, developing a way that you guys can get involved as audience members of Pushing The Limits if you want to support the show. So stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, if you need help with your running or you need help with your health, then please reach out to us. You can reach us at lisatamati.com. You can check out our programmes on lisatamati.com. We have our epigenetics programme and our running programmes where we do customised run training systems, video analysis, working out a plan customised fully for you and you get a consult with me. We also do health optimisation, coaching. So if you are needing help with a really difficult health journey, then please reach out to us as well. Right, over to the show with Craig Harper. Lisa Tamati: Well, welcome back everybody to Pushing The Limits. Today I have an hilarious, amazing, crazy, awesome guest for you, Craig Harper. Who doesn't know Craig Harper? If you're in Australia, you definitely know who the heck Craig Harper is. If you're in New Zealand, you probably know who Craig Harper is. And if you don't, you're about to find out. Welcome to the show! Craig, how are you doing? Craig Harper: Now I feel like I've got to live up to some kind of bloody pressure, some expectation. Nobody knows me in New Zealand. Let's start, you do and your mum. That's about it. Lisa: Me and mum, you left quite an impression on my mum. Craig: And my family, and relatives, and a few randoms over here, know who I am. But thank you, Lisa, for having me on. I'm really glad to be here. Lisa: It's awesome. Now, this is gonna be a bit of a hilarious show because Craig is a bit of a character. I was on Craig's show in Australia, The You Project and it was one of the most fun podcast interviews I've had. I mean, I love getting into the science and deep with stuff, but it was really fun to just slip my hair down so to speak and rant and rave a little bit in here, but it’s fun, so today there'll be no doubt a bit of it. Craig, can you tell the ones who don't know about you? You're in Melbourne or just outside Melbourne in Hampton, Victoria in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit of your background, your crazy amazing career that you have had? Craig: Sure. So I'll start with, well, maybe I'll go a little bit before my career because what happened before was a bit of a catalyst. So I had a pretty good childhood, all that stuff. I won't bore the listeners. But one of the things that was part of my growing up was being a fat kid, the fattest kid in my school. So that became a bit of a catalyst for me to explore getting in shape and all that stuff. So when I was 14, I lost a whole lot of weight. I was 90 something kilos, I went down to about 60 and I started training. Lisa: Wow. Craig: I started running and I started doing bodyweight stuff I lost about—I literally lost a third of my body weight in 15 weeks. And it wasn't like I had a horrible childhood, it was fine. But I was called jumbo all through school. That was my name so the kids called me that, parents, teachers all that but believe it or not, it wasn't really hostile, or horrible, it was I don't know it's because I was this big, fat, pretty happy kid, right? But anyway, so, I got in shape, and that led me into a lot of curiosity, and exploration, and investigation in fitness and nutrition. And so I started working in gyms when I was 18 and had no idea what I was doing. The qualifications and the barriers to entry then were very low. So, I started working in gyms, Lisa, when I was 18, which was 1982. I'm 57 and I ended up in 1989, I think, I set up the first Personal Training Center in Australia. Lisa: Wow. Craig: So, lots of other things around that. But I owned PT studios for 25 years at the biggest centre in the southern hemisphere in Brighton a few kilometres from where I'm sitting now, which was 10,000 square feet. It was bigger than lots of commercial gyms. But it was just a PT centre. Worked with elite athletes, work with the AFL over here Australian Football League with St Kilda footy club, Melbourne Vixens in the national and the Trans-Tasman League, it was then Netball League, Melbourne Phoenix, Nissan motorsport, a bunch of Olympians, blokes in prison, corporates, people with disability, normal people, abnormal people. I put me in the abnormal category. Lisa: Yeah, definitely. Craig: And later on when—I didn't go to uni until I was 36 for the first time. Lisa: Wow. Craig: Did a degree in exercise science. It was hilarious because I'd already been working with elite people as a conditioning coach and a strength coach. And yeah, lots of stuff. I did radio over here for about 20 years. I started my podcast a few years ago, I did television for a few years, three years on national telly. I wrote for the Herald Sun, which is the main paper in Melbourne for a while. Lots of magazines, I've written a bunch of books. I've written seven, I've written nine books, I think seven or eight of them are published. I'm looking at the books on my table, I should probably know that number. Lisa: Can’t even remember, there's so many. Craig: And, like, but really the thing that I guess where we might go today, but for me was, I realised by the time I was about 19 or 20 working in gyms, I realised that how much I knew about bodies wasn't nearly as important as how much I understood human beings. And so while my understanding of anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and movement and energy systems, and progressive overload, and adaptation and recovery, and all of those things wasn't great, to be honest, like I was 20. Lisa: Yup. Craig: But it was all right. And it improved over time. But what really mattered was how well I understood human behaviour. Because as you and I know, we can give someone a programme and direction and education and encouragement and support and resources, and not knowledge and awareness. But that doesn't mean they're going to go and do the work. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to create the result. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to explore their talent or their potential. And so yeah, it's been from when I was 18... Lisa: So you've gone in it? Craig: Yeah, from when I was 18 till now, it's just been lots of different roles and lots of different places. And I guess the other main bit before I shut up was I realised when I was about 20, that I didn't like having a boss much. And not that... Lisa: We got that in common. Craig: In my back, my boss was a good dude. But I thought I don't want to be, like, I could do this for me. I don't need to do this for you. And so the last time I had a boss was 32 years ago. So I've been working for myself since I was 25. Lisa: Wow, that's freaking awesome. And what an amazing career and so many books, and I know that you're actually doing a PhD at the moment. So what's your PhD? And why did you choose this sort of a subject for your PhD? Craig: Yeah, so my PhD is in neuropsychology/neuroscience. So, I'm at Monash over here, we have a facility called Bryan Park, which is cool. There's lots of cool stuff there. That's where I'm based. And my research is in a thing called external self-awareness, which is understanding the ‘you’ experience for others. So in other words, it's your ability to be able to understand how other people perceive and process and experience ‘you'. Lisa: Wow, that is a fascinating subject. Craig: Which is, very little research on it. So I'm, I've created a scale, which is to measure this component of psychology or communication or awareness. And so I'm doing—I'm putting that through the grill at the moment, getting that validated. I’m doing two studies. The first study is being run kind of soon. But yeah, the whole research is around this thing of ‘What's it like being around me and do I know what it's like being around me'? Not from an insecurity point of view, but from an awareness point of view because when I understand, for example, the Craig experience for Lisa or for an audience or in front of all for the person I'm coaching, or the athlete I'm working with, or the drug addict, the person with addictive issues that I'm sitting with, then if I understand what it's like being around me, I can create greater and deeper connection. But one of the mistakes that a lot of leaders, and coaches, and managers, and people in positions of authority make is that they assume that people just understand what they're saying. Or they assume that people think like them. When in reality, the only person who thinks exactly like me in the world is me. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And the only person who thinks like Lisa Tamati exactly all the time, 24/7 is Lisa, right? Lisa: Yep. Craig: So when I go into a conversation, or a situation, or a process, or a negotiation, or an encounter with somebody, and I assume that they think like me or understand like me, or that my intention is their experience, which is rarely the case, I'm more likely to create problems and solutions. Lisa: Yeah. And you're not going to hit the nail on the head and actually get the results for where that person that you are wanting to get. Craig: Yeah, and that is... Lisa: This is a real powerful thing because you know what I mean, just maybe as you were talking there, I was like, ‘Well, how do people perceive me?', that's an interesting thought because you just sort of go through your daily interactions with people, and you think you're a compassionate, empathetic person who gets everything in, you’re sort of picking up on different cues and so on. But then to actually think how is that person experiencing me, and I like, as a coach, as I develop as a coach, I've had problems when I'm doing one on one, and that I'm overwhelming people sometimes because I'm so passionate and so full of information. And I've had to, and I'm still learning to fit that to the person that I'm talking to. And because, for me, it's like, I've got so much information, I want to fix you and help you. And I was like, ‘Woohoo', and the person was like, ‘Heh'. Craig: So you and I connect because we're kind of similar, right? And I love that, I love your craziness and your energy, and you're full-onness. But you and I, unless we are aware around some people, we will scare the fuck out of them. Lisa: Yup. Craig: So, that's why it's important that people like—all of us really not just you and I, but that we have an awareness of what is the leisure experience for this because like, let's say, for example, you've got five athletes, and you want to inspire them and get them in the zone, motivate them, and they're all in front of you. And so you give all of them in the same moment. And let's say they're five similar athletes in a similar, if not the same sport with a similar goal—doesn't matter—but the reality is they are five different human beings, right? They've got five different belief systems and backgrounds and sets of values and prejudices and like and emotional states, and so you're not talking to the same person. But when you deliver the same message to five different humans, and you expect the same connection? We're not thinking it through. Lisa: Yep. Craig: So and of course, you can't create optimal connection with everyone all the time. But this is just part of the, ‘What's it like? What's their experience of me like?' And again, it's not about ‘Oh, I'm insecure, and I want them to like me'. No, it's about, ‘I need to understand how they perceive and process me so that I can create connection'. And look, the other really interesting thing about psychology and the human experience, and metacognition, thinking about thinking more broadly, is that all of us think we're open-minded and objective, but none of us are. Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, even me who understands this and is doing a PhD in it and teaches it. Well, people go back and you objective and I go, ‘No, I wish I was in it. I'd like to say I am because it sounds fucking great, but I'm not'. And the reason that I'm not is because wherever I go, my ego, my issues, my beliefs, my values, my limitations, my biases, go with me. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And they are the window through which I view and process the world, right? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, our ego wants us to say, ‘Of course, I'm objective. Of course, I'm open-minded'. But the truth is, and with some things, we will be more objective and open-minded because we don't really have a pre-existing idea about it. But on a global or a broad level, our stuff goes with us everywhere, and the beginning of, without getting too deep or philosophical, but awareness—real awareness and consciousness—is to first be aware of your lack of awareness. Lisa: Love it. That is amazing. Yeah. Craig: You can't overcome the thing you won't acknowledge, or you can't get good at the thing you won't do. Right? And so I have to go, 'Firstly, I'm flawed. Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with.’ And this is not self-loathing, this is me just going, ‘Okay, so how do I do better?' And this for me, this is the process of performance, high performance, whether it's at sport, at life, at recovery, at relationships, at connection—doesn't matter—high performance is high performance. For me, high performance means getting the most out of you and your potential and your resources and your time. Lisa: Yup. Craig: And so the principles that work with becoming an elite athlete, most of those principles work with building a great business. Lisa: Yep, they grow further. Craig: Which is why physicians follow through, get uncomfortable, do the work, show up, don't give up, ask great questions, persevere, roll up your sleeves, pay attention to your results, improvise, adapt, overcome. Like, this is not new stuff. Lisa: Know that it rolls off your tongue pretty damn well because you've been in this space for a long time. And a lot of us like to go into that whole, our bias and yell at the future that we see the world through the lens, which we look through. We're not aware like, we love the programming. And this is what I had done a lot of work on for myself, the programming that I got as a kid, that I downloaded into my subconscious is running the ship, basically, and I can, as an educated, hopefully, wiser woman now, go ‘Hang on a minute, that little voice that just popped up in my head and told me, ‘I'm not good enough to do that', is not me talking. That's the programme. That's the programme I downloaded when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something. And it's a product of that conditioning.’ And I can actually go in, and then it's that to change that story. Because that, and I think a lot of us are just running on automatic, we're still playing. I'll give you an example. So when my mum was a kid, she was up on stage and doing a speech at school when she froze, right? And she got laughed off the stage. And kids can be nasty. And so forever in a day, she was like, ‘I will not ever speak in public again'. Because she'd had this experience as a what, a seven or eight-year-old. And she was telling me the story as a 40-something, 50-something year-old. 'No, I'm not ever getting up in a public space because', and I'm like, 'But that's just—you are not that seven or eight year old now. And you can have a choice to make that changes', and she couldn't make that change until she had the aneurysm. And then she forgot all those memories, some of those memories were gone, and that inhibition was gone. And now she'll get up and talk on stage in front of like 500 doctors. Craig: That's amazing. I love it. And what you just articulated beautifully. The core of a lot of what I do, which is recognising your programming and where does my stories, or my stories finish? And where do I start? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, you think about it, from everyone listening to this from when we could reason anything, or process any data around us or understand anything from when we—I don't know, two, three months, really probably earlier but until listening to this podcast right now, all of us have been trained, and taught, and told, and programmed, and conditioned. And then, now here we are. And it's being aware of that and me to everyone is like, ‘Well, my beliefs', like think about when did you choose your beliefs? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Pretty much never. They’re just there, and they’re there as a byproduct of your journey. Now that's okay, that's not bad or good. That's normal. Well, the next question is, are all of your beliefs, do they serve you? Well, the answer is no. Do any of them sabotage you? Well, a shitload! Okay, so let's put them under the microscope. So you know that word that I used before metacognition is, in a nutshell, thinking about thinking where and this is where we go, hang on. Let's just step out of the groundhog-dayness of our existence which you also spoke of, like, and let's go hang on. Because what we do, on a level we live consciously that is I've got to think about where I'm driving, and I've got to figure out what I'm giving the kids for dinner or what I'm getting, what time I'm training or, but really, on a real fundamental macro level. We live largely unconsciously... Lisa: Yeah. Craig: ...because we kind of do the same shit the same way... Lisa: Everyday. Craig: ...same conversations, even you and I know. Like, I've been training in the gym since I was 14, that's 43 years, I watch people go to the gym who always do the same fucking workout. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Same rep, the same set, same treadmill, same speed, same inclines, same boxing, same everything, same intensity, same workload, same machines. And then they say, why isn't my body changing? Well because it doesn't need to. Lisa: No. Given the status quo, you don’t. Craig: Because you're stimulating it the same way. Lisa: I was working in that for years. Craig: And we can expand that to life. Whereas we, kind of, I was talking to a lady yesterday about this, and she was telling me about a conversation she has with her son who's got some issues, who's 17. And I will be really honest, ‘How many times have you had a version of that conversation with him?’ She goes, ‘1,000'. Lisa: Wow. Craig: I go, ‘And how's that going?’ Now, that might be an exaggeration. But the bottom line is, but nonetheless, despite the fact that it didn't work the first 999 times, she's doing it again. Lisa: She’ll keep doing it. Craig: So it's about, and again, it's not about beating ourselves up, it's about gamble, whatever I'm doing, whether or not it's with this relationship, or this training programme, or this habit, or behaviour, or this business, whatever I'm doing isn't working. So let's have a new conversation or no conversation, or let's try a different protocol, or let's change the way I sleep. Lisa: Isn't that like the circuitry in the brain, when you do something for the first time that’s really hard. Because you're creating a new connection in the brain. And therefore, we go into these old routines and habits, even though we don't want to be doing them anymore, but the groove and the brain is so well-worn, that path is so—those synapses of connected or whatever they do in there, and that path is so well-worn, that it's the path of least resistance for our lazy brains, and our subconscious to do what it does all the time. So, when you're driving a car home, and you can have a conversation and be singing a song, and thinking about what you're cooking for dinner, and then you get to halfway into town, and you realise, ‘Hell, I can't even remember driving there', but you were doing it, and you were doing it safely. Because it was all on that subconscious, automated level. When you were first driving the car, it was a mission. And it was like, ‘Oh my god, I got to change the gears and steer and keep an eye on,' and it was all like overwhelmed, but then it got easier and easier and easier. And then with our rituals and habits that we develop, we make these well-worn grooves, don't we? And then we just follow the same old, same old even though it's not getting the results that we want. And when we try and step out of our comfort zone and start doing a new habit and developing a new way, there's a lot of resistance in the brain for the first few weeks, isn't there? Until you get that groove going. And then it gets easier and easier and easier once you've done it 100 times. Is that what you're sort of saying here? Craig: Yeah. I mean, that's perfect. I mean, you nailed it. Look, the thing is that everything that we do for the first time, for most of us, nearly everything, unless we've done something very similar before, but it's hard. Lisa: Very. Craig: So I always say everyone starts as a white belt. In the dojo, you start as a white belt. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: When as an ultramarathon, if I went, Lisa, which I wouldn't, but if I went, ‘I'm gonna run an ultramarathon'. Well, if I started training today, metaphorically, today, I'm a white belt. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a black belt at other stuff. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a green belt. I'm a yellow belt. Depends what I'm doing. Depends what—I'm not bad at talking to audiences that's... I should be pretty good at it. I've done it a million times. But take me to yoga, and I'll hide in the corner because I'm as flexible as a fucking ceramic tile. I’m a white belt. Right? I bet, put me in the gym lifting weights, I go okay, right? And so, again, this is all just about awareness, and development, and ownership. And, but the thing too, is that you're right, everything is very—we do create not only neural grooves, patterns, but also behavioural, and emotional, and cognitive grooves too, where we’re very comfortable in this space. And one of the challenges for us, it's like, it's a dichotomy. Because if everyone listening to this could somehow be involved and put up a show of hands, and we said, ‘All right, everyone. How many of you want to change something about your life or your outcomes or your situation or your body? Or your operating system or your current life experience?’ Nearly everyone's going to put up their hand. Lisa: Yes. Craig: For something, right? Something. Then if you said, all right, ‘Now, at the same time, be brutally honest with yourself, how many of you like being comfortable?’, everyone's gonna put up their hand. So the problem is, on the one hand, we say I want to be strong, and resilient, and amazing, and produce great results, and do great shit, and grow, and develop my potential and fucking kill it, and but I don't want to get uncomfortable. Well, good luck, princess, that isn't working. It doesn't work. Lisa: The world’s a bitch really, isn't it? I mean, like it is the way it works. You need resistance. Craig: How can you get strong without working against resistance? Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: Yes. Lisa: This is just the… in my boxing gym, there was a saying on the wall, ‘Strength comes from struggle', and it's just like, ‘Oh damn, that's so right'. Like it's not what we always want. And I wish sometimes that the world was made another way. But we constantly need to be pushing up against what hurts, what is uncomfortable, it's painful just from a biology point of view being in the thermonuclear range, being nice and comfortably warm and cozy is really bad for us. And for you in that all the time, we need to go into an ice bath or cold water or go surfing or something and get cold, we need to be hot, go into a sauna. And when you do these things outside of those comfort zones, we need to lift weights in order to build stronger muscles, we need to do fasting in order to have autophagy, we need—all of these things are those stuff that is outside of pleasant. And you better get used to that idea. It's not because I want to be, like, masochistic in my approach to life. But it's just the way that the world works. If you sit on your ass being comfortable eating chips all day watching Netflix, you're not going to get the results that you're looking for. Craig: That's right. And also there's this—because we only live in the moment. And because we are, and I'm generalising, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are not what I'm about to describe. But because many of us are very instant gratification based. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Right? It's like, the story is I'll eat this, I'll do this, I'll avoid that. But I'll start tomorrow, or I'll start Monday, or I'll start January 1. And that goes on for 15 years, right? Lisa: Yep. We’ve all done it. Craig: And now I've backed myself into an emotional, and a psychological, and physiological corner that's hard to get out of because now, I'm 49. And my body's kind of fucked. And I've got high blood pressure. And I've got all these issues because I've been avoiding, and denying, and delaying, and lying to myself for a long time. Again, this is not everyone, so please don't get offended. Lisa: And It's not a judgment. It's just the way it goes. Craig: No, because, I mean, this is what happens. Like, we live in this world where you can't say the truth. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And I'm not talking about being insensitive or moral judgments on people. But the thing is, it's like, when I talk about being fat, I talk about myself because then no one could get injured, insulted... Lisa: Insulted, yup. Craig: ...or offended, right. So when I was fat, I wasn't thick-set, or full-figured or voluptuous or stocky? I was fucking fat. Right? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And, but I was fat because of my choices and behaviours. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Now, there are lots of variables around that. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: But at some stage, we have to say, and again, there are people with genetics that make stuff difficult... Lisa: Absolutely. Craig: ...for medical conditions and all that we fully acknowledge that, but at some stage, we need to go, ‘Alright, well, I'm making decisions and doing things which are actually destroying me'. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: ‘They're actually hurting me'. And this is just about ownership and awareness and my, like, the biggest challenge in my life is me, the biggest problem in my life is me. Like, the only person that can ever really get in my way is me. But also, I'm the solution to me. Lisa: I think it's a willingness to work on it. And like, I've looked into addictions and things quite a lot too, because I know that I have an addictive personality trait. I have genetics that are predisposed to that, and I do everything obsessively. So whether that's running for like a billion kilometres, or whether that's running five companies, or whether that's whatever I'm doing, I'm doing like an extreme version of that because it's just, like, I have that type of personality and it is genetics. And I find that that's one of the study of genetics for me, it's so interesting, there's a lot of predisposition in there. However, that does not negate the fact that I can still make choices, and I can turn the ship around. And I need to be aware of those predispositions, just like mum's got some predispositions towards cardiovascular disease and putting on weight very easily. That's just a fact of life for her, and it's not pleasant. And compared to other genetic types, it's a bit of a disadvantage. However, it is a fact. And therefore, she can still make the right choices for her body. And this is why I like working in the genetic space is really, really powerful because then I can say, well, it's not my fault that my genes are like this, but they are what they are, and we can remove some of the judgment on ourselves because I think when we—if we're judging ourselves all the time, that's not helpful either, because that stuff we’re like, ‘Oh, well, I'm just useless. And then I'm never gonna do anything,’ rather than empowering and say, ‘Well, it is what it is, the genes that I've been given are these, the environment that I've exposed to is this, the advertising and all that sort of stuff that's coming at us with McDonald's on every street corner and all of that sort of stuff, I can't influence there. What I can influence is I can educate myself and I can start to make better choices from my particular body and start taking ownership of that process and not just going, well, it's not my fault that I'm bigger boned.’ You may be bigger-boned or bigger, have genetics that are all about conservation. Then you need to be doubly careful. And put in the education, and the time, and the work, and I think it's about taking ownership and not judging yourself by getting on with the job. Like I know, like, I know my own personal and—what did you say to me the first time I met you? Something that was real self-aware anyway, without self-deprecating, and it was self-aware? I can't remember what it was that you said, it is a man who knows his own weakness and is working on it. And I think that's really key. Like, I know what I'm shit at and... Craig: And that’s not self-loathing, that's self-awareness. And here's the thing, we're all about learning and growing. And I love my life, and I'm aware that I've got some skills and gifts. I'm also aware that I've got lots of flaws and shit I need to work on. And for some people, that's part of just the journey for other people, they are in a bit of a groundhog day. I always say if you're in a bit of a groundhog day, but you're happy then stay there. Because don't change because this is how I—don't be like me, for God's sake be like you. But if being like you, if your normal operating system equals anxiety, and sleeplessness and a bit of depression, and a bit of disconnection, and I'm not talking purely about mental health, I'm just talking about that state that we all get in, which is a bit like, ‘Fuck, I don't love my life, this wasn't where I thought I would be.’ Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Then maybe start to work consciously on and acknowledge, there's some things that you can't change, some you can, and literally what you were talking about a minute ago, which is literally, ‘Okay, so there's what I've got, which is I've got these genetics, I've got 24 hours in a day. I'm 57. I've got this, these are the things I have, then there's what I do with it all.’ So I'm an endomorph. I walk past a doughnut, my ass gets bigger. That's my body type, right? So I need to go, ‘Alright, well with these, or with this disposition, how do I manage optimally with 24 hours in a day without them using the least?’ Lisa: You’ve done a lot by the little sea, Craig. Craig: How do I manage my 24 hours optimally? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: How do I? It's like, I eat two meals a day. I don't recommend anyone else does that. Lisa: For even the most, it’s great. Craig: But for me, I don't… Lisa: For an endomorph, that’s great. Craig: I’m an 85-kilo dude with a bit of muscle. I don't need much food. Like, I would love to eat all the fucking food because I love food. What happens when I eat what I want versus what I need is I get fat. So I differentiate between: what does my body need to be lean, strong, functional, healthy versus what does Craig the fucking ex-fat kid want to inhale? Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Because, and the other thing too. And this is probably a bit irrelevant. Maybe relevant, though, for a lot of people. Like I would say, of the people that I've worked with closer over the years, which is thousands and thousands. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I would say most people, including me, have a relationship with food that’s somewhere on the scale between a little bit disordered and an eating disorder, right? Lisa: Yup. Craig: And a little bit not always... Lisa: I’ll cook my end up then. It’s always an issue. Craig: At the other end of the scale, I'm a fucking lunatic around food, right? Now, you're educated, I'm educated, but I tell people all the time. So if I was an addict, and by the way, I've never drank, never smoked, never done drugs. But if I have started drugs or alcohol, I would have probably... Lisa: Done it well. Craig: ...a drunk and used for Australia, right? I probably would have been a champion because I'm like you. I'm addictive. Now my addiction is food. So you know people think, ‘But you're educated. But you're this, you're that.’ It doesn't matter. Like, I need to manage myself. Lisa: Still won’t hit pie. Craig: Yeah, I need to manage myself around food. Lisa: Yeah, daily. Craig: Because if I open the cheesecake door, get out of the fucking way. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Right? Lisa: I hear you. Craig: If I open certain doors that derails me, so I need to know. And this is the same with everybody. And it's like, we all have a relationship with food. Okay. Is yours good or bad? healthy or unhealthy? Don't overthink it, just be real. We all have a relationship with our body. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with exercise, activity movement. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with money. We all have a relationship with our ego. It's like, this is opening the door on self-awareness and self-management law to a new level. Lisa: Yeah, love it. Yeah, and this is going to be a fascinating PhD. I really—I can't wait to find out more about it. And I think just having that self-awareness, like I will freely say like, I've struggled with my body image, and who I am, and am I acceptable, and I was always trying to be the skinny little modern girl when I was young, and gymnast, and as a kid, and so struggled immensely with body image issues. And people will look at me now and they go, ‘Oh, whatever, you're lean and you're fit obviously and you don't ever—you wouldn't understand.’ Oh, you have no idea how much I understand. And there's still a constant daily battle: even though I'm educated, even though I know exactly what I should be and shouldn't be doing, I don't always succeed against my —that in a sort of drive that sometimes when you get out of balance, and this is why for me like keeping myself, when I say imbalance, I mean like keeping my neurotransmitters under wraps like in a nice, ordered fashion because I have a tendency to dopamine and adrenaline being my dominant hormones, right? So I'm just like, go, go, go! Do your absolute blow, take a jump and risk, don't think about it, do go and then burn out, crash bang! And so I need to, I need to have constant movement, I need to do the meditation thing regularly. Like before this podcast, I took five minutes to get my brain back into this space because I wanted to do a good interview. And I wasn't going to do that in this stressed-out body, I'd been doing too much admin work for 10 hours. So, I know how to manage those things. And it's the management on an everyday basis that I think and having those tools in your toolkit so that you know how to pull it up, I can feel my adrenaline going, I can feel the anger rising, I better go for a sprint out to the letterbox and back. Whatever it takes. Does it resonate with you? Craig: Yeah, 100%. What's interesting is I've been around—I worked, one of the things I didn't mention, I worked at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for three years just as their kind of, what’s my title? Buddy health something, manager something, but I would only work there one day a week with them, but work with lots of addicts and alcoholics, and also athletes and all those things. But the thing is, especially with athletes, athletes tend to get their sense of self and their identity from their performances. Lisa: Yep. Craig: And not all, but a lot, and which is why I've known many athletes who got retired earlier than I thought. Lisa: Broke down. Craig: And well, they went into straightaway, most of them a depression or form of depression. And so this is a really interesting thing to just talk about briefly is—from a happiness and a wellness and a cognitive function, and a mental health, emotional health point of view, is to think about where you get your identity and sense of self from. Now, one of the challenges for us is, we live in a culture which is very much externally focused. Lisa: Totally. Craig: So who you are, Lisa, who you are is what you have, and what you own, and what you wear, and what you look like, and what people think of you, and your brand, and your performance, and your outcome. All things, your shit. And I grew up in that because I was an insecure, fucking fat kid who became an insecure, muscle-y bloke. And then I woke up one day, I was 30. And I was huge, and I had muscles on my eyelids and veins everywhere. And all I was was just a bigger, more insecure version of what I used to be. Because I was still a fuckwit just in a bigger body, right? Because I wasn't dealing with the issues. Because my problem wasn't my biceps or deltoids and being my problem is, I'm mentally and emotionally bankrupt, and perhaps spiritually depending on your belief system. And so, we get taught from an early age that who you are essentially is about all things external. So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. My theory is that it is the other way around. It is an inside-out journey. It is, it's differentiating between who I am and my stuff, and recognising that everything that I have and own, and earn, and do, and my profile, and my podcast, and my results, and my brand, and my house, and my biceps, and all those physical, external observable things don't matter nearly as much from a mental and emotional health point of view as what is happening internally. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, and I'll shut up after this. Lisa: No, that’s brilliant. Craig: But this is cool not because I'm sharing it, just this idea is cool, is that is the duality of the human experience. And what that means is that we live in two worlds. So where we do life is in this physical external place of situation, circumstance, environment, traffic lights, other humans, government, COVID, weather, runners, running, sport, all that external stuff, which is not bad. It's awesome, but that's where we do life. But where we do our living, where we do living is that inner space of feelings and ideas and creativity and passion and fear, and depression and anxiety and hope and joy, and overthinking and self doubt and self-loathing, and excitement and creativity. Lisa: Wow. Craig: It's trying to understand—because you and I know, at least a few people, maybe many who from the outside looking in their life is fucking amazing. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: It's the Hollywood life. Lisa: It’s so nearly like that. Craig: It's a life on the outside of shiny. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: But I've coached many of those people, trained them, worked with them, set with them. And not all, of course, some are great. But there are many people who from the outside looking in, you would go, they're really successful. That would be the label that we use in our culture. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Why are they successful? Oh, look at all of their stuff. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: All of that stuff. Those outcomes, that house and that equals that money, that equals success. But when you sit in, you talk to that person, you go, ‘Oh, this successful person doesn't sleep much, this person needs to medicate to sleep, and also for anxiety, and also for depression. And also they hate themselves, and also they feel disconnected, and also they're lonely.’ And, or if not all of that, some of that, if not all the time, some of the time, and you got all the outside and the inside don’t match. Lisa: Don’t unlatch. Yeah. Craig: And so it's going. And by the way, of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business and writing five books and being an awesome runner, or whatever, building an empire. That's not bad. But it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are. Lisa: Yeah, and spending time on the inside, and being okay with who you are. Because I often ask myself this question. What if it was all taken away from me again and I've lost—I went through my 30s, lost everything, hit start back from scratch. We've been there, done that. I've had to go through the wringer a couple of times. If everything was taken off me, my house, my achievements, my business, which could happen tomorrow, who am I? And would I be able to get back up again? And I reckon I would, because I've got tools to rebuild. And I know that resilience is the most important thing. Craig: Yeah. Lisa: The question I ask myself sometimes, so, is it whether, like, I lost my father this year, last year, sorry, six months ago, so that knocked the crap out of me... Craig: 100%. Lisa: ...out of my resilience because that was like, up until that point, it didn't matter. If I lost my job, my car, my career, and anything else, but my family were safe, and they were all alive, then that's all I needed. And then when the chief gets taken out, the cornerstone who'd been a rock, my mum was too, but that was a cornerstone, then it didn't, it was a bit of an existential bloody crisis for me because I was like, ‘And now, life is never going to be the same again.’ And that resilience, I really had to dig deep to stand back up again. And I think, so grief is one of those things. So I asked myself constantly, and one of the reasons I drive myself so hard is to protect my family, and to look after them, make sure I don't miss anything. And this one of the things I study so hard for. Just sharing a personal story there to sort of get people to understand, ‘If you lost everything, could you get back up? What would it take to break you?’ That nearly broke me, to be brutally honest. Craig: Well, I say to people who are in a bit of a—and thanks for sharing that, and sorry about your dad. God bless him. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Like, I say to people, ‘Okay, let's forget all the fucking KPIs and the deck and success mantras and all right, that's good.’ I can stand in front of people and motivate, and inspire, and make them laugh, and tell stories. And that's all good. But I go, ‘I've got three words for you one question three words. And the three words and the one question are, what really matters?’ Now, what really matters is not your fucking tally. It's not your bank balance. It's not your biceps. It's not your hair colour. It's not your fucking lippy, or it's in my case, it's not your abs or and none of those things of themselves are bad. But I've been really lucky that I've worked with people who are in a really bad way, people in prison who got themselves there, of course, but then probably more impact for me was people with really bad injuries. Lisa: That’s amazing. Craig: I work with a bloke at the moment, a mate of mine who got blown up in an accident. I trained him three days a week, and he was literally given zero chance of living like, or having any function similar to your mum. Lisa: Wow. Craig: And he started. He was in, like your mum, he was in a coma. I started, they said he'd be a quadriplegic. If he—firstly, they said he wouldn't live, and he lived in our luck out, mesmerised how that happened. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Got through the operations, he got blown up by gas bottles, which were in the back of his unit while he was driving. Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: That blew the car apart, that blew the roof off, they shattered windows for 800 meters in the houses. And he was given zero chance of living. And he was in a coma for a long time. And I'll go in and talk to him. And when he obviously was not awakened, all the stuff that you did, and I just say to him, that I don't know, like, that'd be gone. I don't know. Like, I don’t be guessing. I don't know, I might just get well enough to get out of here. And I'll start training him. I started training him in a wheelchair, with a broomstick. And so and the broomstick literally weighed, I don't know, maybe 100 grams. And so I would put the broomstick in his hands. And I would pull his hands away. So his arm’s away from his body. Lisa: Yep. Craig: And I'd say now try and pull that towards you. Lisa: Yep. Craig: And that's where we started. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: With a 100-gram broomstick. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Now it's three and a bit years later, I've trained him for three and a bit years. Lisa: Wow. Craig: He is now walking with sticks. He drives himself to the gym. His brain function is fucking amazing. Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: He’s still in constant pain. And he's got a lot of issues. But the bottom line is the dude who they went, you will never ever walk, you will never talk. Lisa: You’ll never survive. Craig: They'll never be any—you'll never have any function, right? Lisa: Yep. Craig: So my two big perspective givers. That's one and the other one is—so... Lisa: What a dude. Craig: What’s that? Lisa: What a legend. Craig: Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. So about 14 months ago, I was at the gym and I was training with my training partner, who's like me and he’s all buffed. He's in good shape. He’s fit. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, him and I are very similar. Anyway, one of the stupid things that he does is he takes I don't want to get in trouble. But he takes pre-workout, doesn't do drug. Don't do anything. I don't know. But anyway, he took a pre-workout. We're training and he's doing a set of chins. And he did 30 chins, Lisa, and he held his breath for the whole time because that's what he does. He thinks he gets more reps when he holds his breath. By the way, folks, not a great plan. Holds his breath for 30 reps. Lisa: He’s training his chemoreceptors. This for sure. Craig: Yeah, comes down, falls on his face on the floor. And I think he's having a seizure. Lisa: Oh. Craig: And it had an instant cardiac arrest. Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: So, not a heart attack, a cardiac arrest. So, his heart stopped. So it took me kind of 20 seconds to realise it was that, and not... And there was—I won't describe what was going on with him. Lisa: Yep. Craig: But as you can imagine, turning all kinds of colours... Lisa: Yep. Craig: ...stuff coming out of his mouth. It was messy, right? Lisa: Yep. Craig: So, he was dead for 17 minutes. Lisa: Oh, my God. Craig: I worked on him for 10 until the ambos got there or the paramedics and God bless him. fricking amazing. But what's interesting is in that, firstly, that 17 minutes could have been 17 days. That's how clearly I remember those minutes. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And I'm on the floor, kneeling down next to one of my best friends in the world. Lisa: Yep. Craig: And I'm doing compressions and breathing, and I'm trying to save his life. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And it's funny how in that moment, everything comes, without even trying, to everything comes screamingly into perspective about, ‘What is bullshit?’ Lisa: Yes. Craig: What matters? Lisa: Yes. Craig: What fucking doesn't matter? Lisa: Yes. Craig: What I waste energy and attention on. And literally those seven, eight minutes. I mean, I think I had pretty good awareness but they really changed me. Lisa: Yeah. I hear you. Craig: Nothing matters except the people I love. Lisa: Exactly. Craig: I'll figure the rest out. Lisa: Yep. It's an amazing story. Did he survive? Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's five-to-two here in Melbourne. Lisa: And he's waiting for you? Craig: We're training at five. Lisa: Brilliant. Say hi for me. Craig: He’s still an idiot. Lisa: He’s awesome, he's lucky he got you. Craig: He’s still an idiot, but at least he prays when he chins. Lisa: Yeah, but like just the experience I went through with my dad. And I haven't done a whole podcast on it, and I tend to, because the two weeks fighting for his life in the hospital and fighting up against a system that wouldn't let me do intravenous vitamin C in that case that I was trying to because he had sepsis, and fighting with every ounce of my body and every ounce of my will, and in knowing that, and for those—it was 15 days that we were there, and they all blend into one because there was hardly any sleep happening in that time, a couple hours here and there and I'd fall over. But they changed me forever, in the fact that because I'm a fixer, I like to fix things and people. And when we're in the fight, I’m the best person you want in your corner of the ring. If we're in a fight for your life, or not as an, like, I'm a paramedic, but if you want someone to fight for you, then I’m the biggest person to have in your corner. But when we lost that battle, man, I was broken. And to actually not to come out the other side and to have that win and to get him back and to save his life, especially knowing I had something that could have saved his life had I been able to give it to him from day one. And you said that about your friend who got blown up and you said, ‘Just get out of here, mate, no, take it from there.’ And that's what I was saying to my dad. And as he had, ‘You just get yourself—you just hang in there, dad, because I will do what I can do here, and I've got all my mates and my doctors and my scientists all lined up ready to go. As soon as I get you the hell out of this place, I will do whatever it takes to get you back.’ But I could not do anything in a critical care situation because I had no control over him, his body, what went into him. And it was a—he was on a ventilator and so on. And so that was out of my control, you know? And that's fricking devastating. Craig: Yeah. Lisa: To know that and to feel that. Craig: How did that change you? Like, how did that change you in terms of... Lisa: It's still an evolving process I think, Craig, and there's a burning desire in me to get that changed in our ICU for starters, to get recognition for intravenous vitamin C, which I've done like a five-part series on my podcast for status, but I'm working on other ideas and projects for that because we're talking thousands and thousands of doctors and scientists who have the proof that this helps with things like sepsis, like ADS, like pneumonia, and it's just being ignored. And it's, we’re just 20 years behind this is one of the reasons I do what I do, is because I know that the information, like going through that journey with my mum too, the information that latest in clinical studies, all of what the scientists are doing now and what's actually happening in clinical practice are just worlds apart. And with like a 20-year delay in from there to there, and the scientists are saying this, and the doctors at the cutting edge are saying this. And so things have to change. So that's changed me in a perspective because I've never been a political person. I don't want to really get—I love being in the positive world of change, and it's, do things. But I do feel myself going into this activism space in a little way because I need to get some changes happening and some systematic things and you know you're up against the big fight. Craig: Yeah. Lisa: This is a big base to take on. But I'll do what I can in my corner of the world, at least but it has changed. And all that matters to me now is my family and my friends, and then from a legacy perspective, is impacting the world massively with what I do know and the connections that I do have and bringing information like we've been hearing today and these very personal real stories to people's ears because it changes the way people have their own conversations and hence start to think. Craig: Well, I think also, and thanks for sharing that. That's it. Somebody's got to step up, and you're stepping up and quite often the things that we need to do to live our values are not the things we want to do. Lisa: No, scary. Craig: Like, Fuck this. Yeah, I'd rather watch Netflix too. But that's not what I'm about. So it's good that you recognise that and you step into that, but I think what's encouraging about this conversation for everyone is that neither of us, well, I was gonna say, particularly special, you're quite special with what you do. But even with what you do, as an elite athlete, really, you've just put in an inordinate amount of work. Like, you've done all of the things required to become elite and to become an exception, but in many other ways, like with me, you've got issues and bullshit and flaws. And that's why I think—I'm not saying this is a great podcast by any means that or this is great conversation because that's very fucking self-indulgent. But what I mean is, I think people connect with podcasts, conversations that are just that. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Where it's not like two people who are... Lisa: Scripted. Craig: ...just shooting off like experts. It's like, yeah, we're both figuring it out, too. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: And by the way, I'm a dickhead too. By the way, I don't know, I've got a lot of shit wrong. Don't worry about that. It's like, I'm just having my best guess. And I always say, even as a coach, I've never changed anyone. All I've done is influenced people, but I've never done the work for them. They've always done the work. So, everyone that I've coached that succeeded, it's because they did the work. Like I didn't run the race. I didn't lift the weight. I didn't play the sport. I didn't go to the Olympics. I didn't walk out onto the arena. I didn't do anything. I'm just the guy going, ‘Fuck, come on, you can do it.’ And like, here’s a plan and here’s—it's like, I'm just the theory guy. I don't put it into—the only life that I put it into practice in is my own. Lisa: Yeah. And that's powerful. And as a role model, too. I mean the shape that you're in and the stuff that you do, and you walk the talk, and those are the people that I want to listen to. And those are the people I want to learn from. Craig: Well, my dad, my dad used to say to me, a couple of it, my dad's like a cranky philosopher. But he used to say to me a couple of things. This is irrelevant. The first one but it's, ‘You can't go to university and get a personality', right. Which is funny because my dad's like, ‘And university, it's overrated'. I agree, dad. Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Second thing. Lisa: For most things. Craig: Second thing. He used to say, ‘I wouldn't trust accountants or financial planners who weren't rich'. Lisa: Or trainers who are overweight. Craig: It's like, I remember him saying to me, like a friend of his disrespect Toyota, but not a friend, but a dude he knew. He was a financial planner or an accountant. And he used to drive this old beaten up Corolla, and my dad's like, ‘Why would I listen to him?’ Like, look what he drives, like, if he knew anything about making money or maximising whatever. Lisa:
We all want good health and a long life. That's why we subscribe to health fads that offer promising benefits to our bodies. But, for this same reason, we tend to neglect foundational health principles. While these are easily accessible to us, there is still so much we can learn and get from them. By going back to the basics, we can take better care of our health, prevent diseases and boost longevity. Dr Elizabeth Yurth joins us in this episode to talk about the importance of cellular health in longevity. She gives an overview of the benefits of foundational health principles in the disease process. Dr Yurth delves deeper into fasting, autophagy and the specifics of spermidine. If you want to know more about slowing the ageing process and boosting longevity, this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are Three Reasons Why You Should Listen to the Full Episode: Find out the importance of hormone metabolisation and cell fixing in preventing and addressing diseases. Learn the importance of going back and forth between different health routines. Discover the benefits of spermidine in improving health. Resources Pushing the Limits Episode 181: Genetic Predisposition and Understanding Your Hormones Join the Human Optimization Academy for FREE at Boulder Longevity Institute! Bulletproof Radio Abundance 360 Low Protein Intake is Associated with a Major Reduction in IGF-1, Cancer, and Overall Mortality in the 65 and Younger but Not Older Population PubMed Seed Scientific Research and Performance Boulder Longevity Institute’s Facebook page Episode Highlights [01:54] Dr Yurth’s Practise and Boulder Longevity Institute Dr Yurth has been practising orthopaedic medicine for 30 years. Fifteen years into her career, she became frustrated with the band-aid solution process in orthopaedics. She started looking at the way to stop this downhill decline. She did a fellowship in functional and regenerative medicine and incorporated it into her practice. However, short consultation sessions for such proved to be inefficient, so they opened the Boulder Longevity Institute. They started the Human Optimization Academy to educate people about orthopaedic regenerative care. Every single disease comes down to the mitochondrial level that requires systemic treatment. [07:16] Foundational Health Principles There are a lot of cool fads on taking care of your health. However, we have to start with the basic principles. Metabolising the hormones is very important. A urine metabolite test determines the pathways where hormones are going. Simple lab studies, including CBC and CMP, can give an estimation of longevity comparable with telomere length testing and DNA methylation. Looking at albumin can predict longevity. Listen to the full episode to have an in-depth look at how albumin works! You have to train people to go back to understanding these foundational principles. [21:33] An Overview on Cellular Health Every organ system comes back to cellular dysfunction. When you have damaged mitochondria, the cells are in an altered state of energy. Senescent cells are cells that sit in the body without doing anything. Zombie cells become toxic to the cells around them. To heal any disease, we have to clean out the bad cells. They use fasting in the disease process because it causes autophagy. The biggest mistake people make is to try to have many antioxidants and NAD in the body. To clear out the bad stuff, Dr Yurth and her team use rapamycin and spermidine. Tune in to the full show to know more about these cell-restoring methods! [27:45] Fasting and Autophagy Mimetics There’s a lot of questions about fasting that even experts have no answer to. Autophagy is self-eating. You can have autophagy without being in ketosis. One of the benefits of fasting is oxidative stress. Taking resveratrol reduces this benefit because it has a potent antioxidant. You don’t want to be doing any protocol and patterns continuously. You have to go back and forth between different things. A balance between mTOR and NPK keeps things in a homeostatic state. [35:08] Muscle Building and Longevity Muscle building is not the key to good health and longevity. The genes that stayed in our body’s genetic evolution are those that will help us survive famines. While research has shown that low IGF people live long, they don’t have good energy. It's about repeatedly bringing IGF levels down and building it up. The cells need a push and pull for them to become healthier. [38:36] All About Spermidine Spermidine is present in every single living organism. It is prominent in our guts and in some food, with the richest source being wheat germ extract. The major research of spermidine is its benefit in cardiovascular diseases. Myeloperoxidase is an inflammatory cardiovascular marker, of which they have seen high levels in post-COVID patients. Research has also found that spermidine can lower Lp(a). Immune system support is another place where spermidine has been studied. Spermidine, along with the peptide thymosin alpha 1, can improve lymphocytes. The early studies in spermidines are on hair growth. It affects the body's overall regeneration process. [46:29] Using Spermidine Starting from a low level, it takes a while for spermidine to make you feel better. One of the things Dr Yurth did when she started spermidine was to monitor her heart rate variability (HRV) and her Oura ring. HRV is predictive of almost every disease state. Getting a higher dose of spermidine comes at a great cost. But it's putting your health at a priority. [50:35] Why You Should Trust the Research Fixing the cells at the very base level takes time. Dr Yurth is part of the Seed Scientific Research and Performance along with 25 mastermind doctors. Through this, they weed out what works and what doesn’t. If you want to learn more about how Dr Yurth applies her practise, listen to the full episode! There are a lot of inexpensive things you can do that are effective. If it doesn’t respond, that’s the time to pull up the bigger stakes. The Boulder Longevity Institute bridges the gap between research to save lives. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘It is not that you run too much; you wear your knees. It's that there is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out, and so you have to treat it systemically, or you're not going to make any progress’. ‘The cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us. But you still got to start at the basic stuff’. ‘There's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor’. ‘I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very basic things that are inherent to life’. ‘You're never going to train doctors; you've got to train people’. ‘There's not really anybody who has one disease that does not have something else wrong; it's just impacted lots of times in different ways’. ‘We want to go back and forth between different things. And we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you’. About Dr Elizabeth Dr Elizabeth Yurth is the co-founder of the Medical Director of the Boulder Longevity Institute. She is a faculty member and a mastermind physician fellow in Seeds Scientific Research and Performance (SSRP). She specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine and has double board-certification in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging/Regenerative Medicine. She has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) and Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM). Dr Yurth is also an active athlete and has worked with numerous sports teams at collegiate and professional levels. She does consultations with high-level athletes to optimise performance and aid recovery. If you wish to connect with Dr Yurth, you may visit her Instagram. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can include more amino acids in protein in their diet. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com. You’re listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati. Fantastic to have you guys back with me again. I hope you're ready and buckled down for another great interview. I really do get some amazing people and this lady is no exception. So today I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, who I originally heard on the Bulletproof Radio Podcast with Dave Asprey, who I love and follow. And she is a longevity expert. But Dr. Yurth is also a medical director of the Boulder Longevity Institute, which she founded in 2006. And she's double board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation and anti-ageing and regenerative medicine. So she's a specialist in sports, spine and regenerative medicine. She's an orthopaedic surgeon, and she's also heavily into the whole regenerative stuff. So from stem cells to different supplements to working with the latest and technologies that are available to help us slow down the ageing process and to help people regain function. So it was a really super exciting episode and I'm going to have Dr. Elizabeth on a couple of times. She's also a faculty member of the 25 mastermind physicians fellows at the Seeds Scientific Research & Performance group, which allows you to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging cellular medicine field. She's also been an athlete herself and works with numerous sports teams and both of the collegiate and professional levels. She's a wonderful person and I'm really excited to share this interview with her. Before we head over to talk to Dr. Yurth, I just want to let you know about my new anti-ageing supplement. Now this has been designed and developed by Dr. Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist who is also coming on the podcast very shortly. And this is an NMN. It has nicotinamide mononucleotide. I recently read the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, who's a Harvard Medical School researcher in longevity and anti-ageing. And he's been in this field for the last 30 years. And his book was an absolute mind blowing, real look into the future of what we're going to be able to do to stop ourselves ageing to slow the ageing process down. And very importantly, increase, not only our lifespan, but our health span so that we know we stay healthy for as long as possible and don't have this horrific decline into old age that most of us expect to have. So Dr. Sinclair in this book talks about what he takes and one of these things is an NAD precursor called nicotinamide mononucleotide. I searched all over the place for this. I couldn't get it in New Zealand when I was searching for it. And so I went and found Dr. Elena Seranova, who has developed this product and I'm now importing that into New Zealand. So if you want to find out all the science behind it, please head on head over to nmnbio.nz. That's N-M-N bio dot N - Z and all the information is on there. And you can always reach out to me lisa@lisatamati.com, if you've got questions around that. We've also updated our running coaching system. So the way that we are offering our online run training system is now on a complete new look. We are doing fully personalised, customised training plans for runners of all levels and abilities. So we will program you for your next goal doing a video analysis of the way you're running, improve your running form through drills and exercises. Build your plan out for you. You get a one-on-one consult time with me as well. And just really help you optimise your running performance and achieve those big goals that you've got. So head on over to runninghotcoaching.com to check that out. Right now over to the show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth in Boulder, Colorado. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today, I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth with me from Colorado—Boulder, Colorado, and she is a longevity and anti-ageing expert. She's an orthopaedic surgeon. She's a real overachiever. And I'm just super excited to have her on because I have been diving into Dr. Yurth’s world for the last couple of weeks since I heard about her on the Bulletproof radio show. So Dr. Yurth has kindly given up an hour of her time to come and share her great knowledge. I know we're only going to skim the surface, Dr. Yurth, but it would be fantastic if we can gain some amazing insights on how the heck do we slow down this ageing process. So, Dr. Yurth, welcome to the show. Dr. Elizabeth Yurth: Thank you so much, Lisa. I've been actually stalking you ever since you asked me to do this. And I've been fascinated with all the things you've been doing and teaching and I love it. I love that there's people like you out there who are now getting the masses involved in this and interested in this because doctors aren't doing it and so it has to be that educate the public. And people like you are paramount to that, so thank you. Lisa: Thank you very much. Yes, I think, yes, this is the beauty of podcasts and such things and will in the internet whenever we can go direct to the best minds on the planet, get the information direct to the consumer, cutting out all the middle people, so to speak, and really get this information out there. Because what I've found in my research in the last few years is that there is so much amazing, great science out there that has never seen the light of day and certainly not in local clinical practice being utilized. So Dr. Yurth, can you tell us a little bit about the Boulder Longevity centre before we get underway and what your work there is all about and your background? Dr. Elizabeth: Sure, I'd love to. So basically, I've been in the orthopaedic medicine world for 30 years. And about 15 years ago, I actually became very frustrated because I saw people coming in and they would get injured or just have arthritis, chronic pain and we would sort of patch them a little bit and nothing ever really got better, and then something else will get hurt. And it really was just this downhill process from square one. I mean, I tore my first anterior cruciate ligament in my knee at the age of 18 and subsequently, had torn two or three more times between the two knees, had four more surgeries and then it was just a downhill decline. And so, we started looking at is there a way to stop this, because you don't learn it in medical school, and you don't learn in orthopaedic medicine. And when I started looking into—and this was a very early time in the whole functional medicine space, it was really early, there wasn't a lot. And so I went back to American Academy of Anti-ageing Medicine, which is really the only thing available at that time, and did a fellowship in functional medicine and regenerative medicine and tried to incorporate that into my orthopaedic practice as much as I could. But it's difficult in 10 to 15 minute appointments to do that. So we realized that you can't really do good medicine in that model, and so we opened Boulder Longevity Institute about 15 years ago now. And I really sidelined did both practices, because what I found is that people are still looking for that insurance-based practice, and I try as much as I could to educate them there. And then some of them would transition over to here and over time for 15 years, Boulder Longevity Institute has really grown and developed, and subsequently is now my full-time practice. But we do a lot of orthopaedic regenerative care here, the targeting, taking care of people and getting them healthier in that realm. But much like you, our focus is very much now on education and we have a whole, what we call, Human Optimization Academy. We're trying to bring the just like you said, the research to the people. Peter Diamandis, who runs Abundance360—is very well known, you probably know him — he has a great quote where he says, ‘Researchers don't do medicine. And doctors don't do the research and learn the research and use on their patients’. And so, there's a lag of about 15 to 20 years since when something is available to us that will make us better and ever getting to us. Lisa: Exactly. I had the exact same conversation with another doctor, Dr. Berry Fowler and we were talking about intravenous vitamin C and I said, ‘Why is it taking so long and critical care to get this in?’ And he said ‘because it's like turning a supertanker’. He says, ‘It's just so slow’. And so people are not getting the benefit of the latest research. And for an orthopaedic surgeon to go down this anti-ageing functional medicine route is a very rare thing, or at least in my country, it would be a very rare thing. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, orthopaedics does not cross over this line at all. And ultimately, it's one of the reasons I had to leave my other practices because my partners were very much like, ‘Stop talking about medicine. That's not what we do here’. And you have to—even arthritis is a disease. It is not that you ran too much and wore out your knees. There is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out. And so you have to systemically treat it or you're not going to make any progress. Lisa: Oh man, people so need to hear that because it is an inflammatory process that's coming like out of the immune system. And I've heard you say a couple of times on some of your lectures, I listened to one on mitochondria. And mitochondria is sort of the basis of where a lot of other things are coming from, isn't it, and diseases are probably... Dr. Elizabeth: Everything. Honestly, I think what we're going to find is that every single diseases—every single disease is going to come down to mitochondrial level. In fact, I was just reading a new research article on autism and mitochondrial dysfunction, that they're actually linking this mitochondrial dysregulation in even autism. I don't think that we're going to find any disease that is not linked first to mitochondrial dysfunction, which is fascinating because mitochondria are fascinating. So it's really my passion is, is how do we repair mitochondria. But that you start looking at—you can pretty much do that. You guys go out there and Google mitochondria and any disease you can think of and you will find research to support it. So, in arthritis it is exactly the same, right, Lisa? You're right. It's damage to now the mitochondria and the chondrocytes. And that damage—you get these damage from chondrocytes, which then are actually spewing these reactive species that are damaging the next cell and the next cell. And simply sticking steroids in that joint is not going to help it. Lisa: Wow. So we want to talk a little bit today, like we talked about our foundational health—a few foundational health principles so that we can then get on to some of the cooler, more sexier stuff that I want to talk about, like things like spermidine and peptides and NAD precursors, perhaps, and all of these sort of really cool things. But what are you seeing in your practice—like you're seeing a lot of people who are becoming aware of their health, they're looking at everybody knows the basics about nutrition now, I think. Like, fried foods are not good for us, sugar is not good for us—the basics. But what are you seeing as missing in that foundational side of things? Dr. Elizabeth: So I think this is the biggest thing I've seen over the past—probably a year. And as I've done more podcasts, and I've listened to more podcasts, and now you have all the bio hacker groups and the peptide group, so everybody is doing all this cool thing. So now, like, ‘Oh, I got to go do my hyperbaric and I have to go take my growth hormone, peptides’. And they come in to me, and I was just telling you about a patient I saw who literally had a worksheet, spreadsheet of all the things he was doing. And I said, ‘Well, are you taking testosterone’? And he was 56 years old, I said, ‘Are you taking testosterone’? ‘No’. And I said, ‘Have you ever looked at your nutrient pound’? ‘Nope’. So, what I really want to encourage your listeners is the cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us, but you still got to start at the basic stuff. So, when we look at people we have to go through and we have to fix—so we look at all the hormones and you just did a great podcast looking at hormone metabolism, right? Because people are so scared of hormones and they’re terrified that these hormones are going to cause cancer. And we know that's not true. It's how you metabolize the hormones that's important, which has genetic and environmental. You just gave an incredible podcast with your guests the other day on that. Lisa: With Dr. Mansoor; he's wonderful. Dr. Elizabeth: Right. And your epigenetic background, that the key is how these hormones are processed. So when we look at hormones, we actually do a urine metabolite test. So we know exactly where those hormones are going, and are they going down bad pathways or good pathways? So you've got to repair all that, first, fix all the pathways, which you do, and you know your CYP genes and all that kind of stuff. How do you alter it? There's nutrients that you can use to do that. There's tons of things, exercise. So, fix all the hormones first. Men and women all need hormones. I think testosterone’s neglected in women all the time, right? They're on estrogen, progesterone, and I'm like, ‘You’re not on testosterone’? Like, ‘No’. And so even within the realm of our type of medicine, we are neglected in that realm. Right? Testosterone is huge for women. If you want muscle, you need testosterone. Lisa: I basically got good muscles. Dr. Elizabeth: Right, that’s right. So, you've got your testosterone on board, and it has to be not alternating into estrogen—all that has to be involved. So you've got to fix that. And then, there's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor. So, a complete blood count, a CBC, a CMP. Everybody has them, and everybody's doctor looks at and goes, ‘Yep, looks good. There's no reds in there, everything's perfect’. You can actually take that—and Dr. Levine, anti-ageing expert, did a whole algorithm that just taking some of these blood work give you very comparable estimation of longevity as doing telomere length or doing methylation. So, we have all these expensive tests to look at DNA methylation and telomere to look at age, and you could come up very close to the same number, simply by feeding some of these parameters, like your albumin level and your metabolic calculator that would... Lisa: Wow! Is that available publicly, that calculator? Dr. Elizabeth: I'm not sure how publicly available it is. We actually have access, and we utilize that in our patients to follow it. But it's great, because these other tests are expensive. And if I want to put you on a protocol and then see if I'm making headway, how do I follow that? So, I don't think people know that, for instance, what is one of the most valuable numbers on your CBC? It’s actually the size of your cells, the mean cell volume, and the rest of distribution? Lisa: Yes, I'm just studying cell distribution. Dr. Elizabeth: Isn’t that fascinating? Lisa: We are completely unaware. Dr. Elizabeth: And have any of your listeners have had the doctor ever mentioned what their MCV is? Or their RDW is? And those are very, very important. So is albumin. So albumin alone, which is not just dietary. There's a great study that you could predict who is going to get out of the hospital alive based on their albumin levels. And so simply looking at things like that. So if your albumin levels are low, maybe it's because you're not eating enough protein, but that doesn't—it tends to be something else wrong. Lisa: Liver not doing something. Dr. Elizabeth: Definitely. And sometimes that's the need for more beta carotene. Sometimes it's need for more copper. Copper has to help carry the albumin and copper deficiencies are super low. Nobody measures copper. So, you can look at a low albumin and try putting somebody on a little copper, it’s quite GHK copper as a peptide, I might get to the fancy stuff. Using copper as a peptide is an amazing peptide. It's very longevity promoting because copper is super vital to our health. And so sometimes just putting people on two milligrams of copper can markedly improve their health. Lisa: But isn’t there copper’s also a toxicity problem? Isn't that quite a lot of people have high copper levels? Dr. Elizabeth: Less than you think. So it's gotten a lot of market to that, right? It has to be that zinc copper balance has to be imbalanced. So that's one of the things. But actually, copper toxicity is pretty easy to tell. When people become copper—toxic on copper, you'll see the lunula, the fingernails start turning, a little discoloured, a little bluish in colour. So it is a little harder to get toxic in copper than people think. I use it a lot for wound healing in my patients. So, it really helps with wound healing. It's why it's in all skin, expensive skin creams, copper peptides are because it's so good for collagen function, it’s so good for wounds. So I think we may scare people a little bit from copper. But it actually has some value. And a lot of times, it's not so much that you have too much coppers, you don't have enough zinc and that balance is not there. It has to be balanced between zinc and copper. So those are simple things that you can actually look at and measure. And you can—I don't have to do it on everybody. So I see somebody who has a low albumin, I might say, ‘Hmm, we better look at your zinc and copper level’. So we take the CBC and CMP. And how about simply creatinine? If your creatinine is above point eight, that is not good for longevity. So, why is that? Well, maybe you're eating way too much protein, right? We will erase any high protein diets, super high protein, the kidneys can only process so much protein and your kidneys depend on your genetics, maybe less. So that's all things I think you have to go back when you talk about foundational health. I spend literally 30 minutes going through a CBC and a CMP with people. They’re so valuable, and those are $12 tests. Not these big, fancy, expensive tests, they don't cost $500 or $600. And by the end of that test, I can give them, this is what your biological age, your pheno age, this is where we really need to target and start with them some very basic, inexpensive things. Lisa: Crikey dex, that's amazing. I didn't know we can get to that. I mean, I've only been studying blood chemistry for a couple of months and like it's a big topic isn't it? Dr. Elizabeth: It has some really cool value to it that you can actually look at. Some ranges that—we have all gone from the normal range, right? All your listeners now know this the normal range, there's an optimal stage. Within that optimal range, right, there's one number above that you'll see you start to see a change in ageing. The curve on your projected longevity, you look at albumin levels, and you look at the curve on your projected longevity. If your albumin levels are less than 4.6, your projected longevity is five to 10 years less than somebody who's above 4.6. Lisa: Crikey. No one's ever told me any of these things and I’ve been studying blood chemistry and from functional doctors, like that's all news to me. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I think that that's the problem. I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very, very basic things that are inherent to life. And now start focusing, ‘Oh, let's look at hormones, right? Let's look at the gut microbiome’. All super important, but all going to be messed up, if the other stuffs messed up, right? Lisa: You’re basically not in the right place. Dr. Elizabeth: And so I—that's where I get a little frustrated. So now we're targeting back to that whole cellular health, it all comes back down to the cell, fix the cell. As the cell gets fixed, the mitochondria get fixed, everything else falls. So once you've refined that now, we can look at gut microbiomes, if the person is not doing well. We can look at things like micronutrient profiles, and I love micronutrient profiles because I don't know if how much vitamin D you need or how much vitamin B12 you need. Micronutrient profiles, particularly one that gives me intracellular and serum levels, as you know genetics plays a huge role in your micronutrients. Lisa: Yes, vitamin D, for example. I mean, I know I have bad vitamin D genetics, so I need to supplement with vitamin D. Right? Dr. Elizabeth: And B12, you've got the SUV people of B12. I’m one of those who need a lot of B12. It's all very genetically based. So, you can predict it from genetics. But then are you accomplishing your goal? I think you need some… Lisa: Measurements. And this is where the combination of what I'm—like the combination of doing your genes and finding out your innate pathways and what they do, and then seeing actually where you are, getting that snapshot of ‘Okay, we are actually in their hormones and stuff’. And it's quite complicated. And this is the problem is that you go to your local doctor, at least here where I live, and none of this is offered. And none of this is—and so you left as a lay person trying to work this stuff out yourself. And that's quite frustrating and quite difficult. Dr. Elizabeth: It's hard. And it gets caught up again, in the glitz and glamour. I'm going to be attracted to my podcast that's talking all about the coolest, newest thing, it's just our nature is to want the coolest, newest thing. And we just talked about that. We want that cool new thing, because that is on the forefront. And we use those cool new things to help fix the basics. But you still got to know where you are in that standing, and that's really now become, I think, one of my frustrations as I'm seeing more and more people walk in my door, who are doing everything they’re thinking of. And so we are trying to teach people this. We're trying to teach people how do you interpret your own blood work? How do you look at every one of those parameters and say, ‘What should my albumin be? Okay, it's too high, it's too low. What can I do to fix that’? Whereas, if my MCV is, mean cell volume. If your mean cell volume, and you look at your own. As we age, I look at my 19 year old son, he has a mean cell volume of 83. If I look at your average person who's in their 50s, and 60s, who's our age, it's going to be 97, 98. So the higher that number goes, the more your stem cells are wearing out, the more your bone marrow is wearing out, the more that whatever you're doing isn't working. So we can use those things, like you can use your infrared, you can do all those great things. Me, I infrared, I cryo, I do all that. But I will tell you some very basic stuff that sometimes has been the things that made changes in those numbers. I want people to know, that's them that, honestly, is why we decided you're never going to train doctors, you've got to train people. But we've also got to get people back to understanding that you've got to sort of learn these things and kind of a fashion of can learn this, learn this, learn this. When I understand everything about how hyperbaric oxygen improves my cell function, have I really learned how to just look at the cell at that molecular level from looking at basic labs? And that's what we're trying to teach people. Start there, and then we give them tools. Lisa: Fantastic. So people can join Dr Yurth, and get us some of this education. And I've started delving into it and I can't wait to see what else comes along because I mean, this sort of stuff, I'm like already going, ‘Oh my god, I didn't know that’. So I've learned something today already as well. And I'm very definitely guilty of going after the shiny object and love it. Dr. Elizabeth: It’s human nature. That’s human nature. Lisa: Yes. And so people can go to the Boulder Longevity website and I'll put the links in the show notes and there is a Human Optimization Academy, join up for that and it's actually free at the moment, isn't it, Dr. Yurth? Dr. Elizabeth: Right. Right now, it's free. And we'll start putting together—so right before COVID hit, we actually had an in-person course. We're actually going to teach how to look at your own CBC and CMP. And COVID hit, and it all sort of fell apart. But we'll be putting that back into sort of a virtual course with people so you can actually get your bloods run. We will walk you through. So, here's how to interpret every one of those little numbers you see on there because I will tell you, every one of those little numbers is important. Everybody just looks at it as a piece of paper, and there's no red marks highs or lows, they sort of discard it. And we'll show you how to look at that and give huge value. And just from those simple things, you can now say, ‘Maybe I better get a micronutrient panel’, or at least test a copper or zinc or a B12, or D based on some of those numbers that you see being off. And then take the tool, now fix the basics. ‘That's not working? Okay, now, maybe I need to add this, this, this’. Lisa: And then now we can get fancy. Well sign me up for that course because I need it. And I'm already up on some of it, but I wasn't that familiar with some of the things you've just said. So like, that's just like, well. Okay, so we're looking at foundational stuff. Now let's go and look at cellular health, per se, because it all comes down to the cell. The more I look into things, the more everything seems to be about mitochondria in the cell, and what they're doing. and when we're made up of what? 10 trillion cells or something ridiculous. So cellular health, can you give us a bit of a view—it's a big topic, isn't it? But where should we start? Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, well, I'm going to start with first kind of explaining what that means. So, functional medicines, we went from a disease-focused medicine, right? And then we all got very savvy—well, not the doctors—but the rest of the world who got very savvy said, ‘Oh, this isn't working. It's making somebody money, but it's not working to make anybody happy’. So we went to a functional medicine part. Let's look at organ systems and let's start. So then we went to the organ system, let's look at the adrenal glands and let's look at the liver in this and let's now fix the organ system that's dysfunctional. we got to fix the thyroid, we got to fix the endocrine organs and we have to do all that. And then now, and this is really super recent, we're realizing that every organ system comes back to a cellular dysfunction. And there's not really anybody who has one disease that is not have something else wrong. It's just impacted lots of times in different ways. So if I have osteoarthritis. So if you have osteoarthritis, your risk of dementia is about fivefold higher. So why is that? Right? Osteoarthritis... because I ran 800 miles a day. But that's not the case, I have patients who run 800 miles and they're fine. Lisa: Oh, I'm fine. Like, my joints are fine, and I haven't got any osteo. Dr. Elizabeth: And then you have people who are like, ‘Oh, yes, I just wore myself out because I ran too much’. No, not the case. So, there's something wrong. So now we have to go back and look at what is wrong in the cell. So if you think about what power, what is the cell all about? It is the mitochondria. Mitochondria, what gives the cell energy, right? And so as we start getting damaged to our mitochondria with time and life and environment and genetics, and we start getting damage at the mitochondrial level. So, now have these damaged mitochondria. And now we start getting these cells that are in this altered state of energy. And that's when you start getting that senescent cell—cells that are basically sitting there… Dr. Elizabeth: They’re zombie cells. Lisa: And there's zombie cells, right? And they're producing these reactive oxygen species. And that's why they're called zombie cells, it's because the things that are being spewed out, are now toxic to the cells around them and then toxic to those cells. And so, it truly is like a zombie takeover. So that's where we look at when we're going back to a cell level. First thing we have to do to try and heal any disease is clean out the bad cells. Clean up the zombie cells. That’s why fasting has been utilized for years in every disease process because we know that fasting causes autophagy, causes bad cells to go away, and now we can rebuild. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is that if I start throwing a lot of rebuilding things into my network, tons of NAD and I'm trying to always be in this state where I've got a lot of antioxidants going. I'm throwing a lot of NAD and well then, I'm actually contributing to that cell senescent state. I've got to get rid of that first. Clear out the bad stuff and do that periodically. And we use things like rapamycin, you can use it for fasting. And most recently what my go-to has been this spermidine for that talk. And I fell in love with spermidine a few years ago, actually and couldn't get it here in the US. That basically—it came onto my radar because there it worked at a very sort of primal level. Every single organism has spermidine. Anything that every organism has, is vital to life. And so we know that—and then all these studies that show that well, if you have higher level spermidine, you live longer, so. And it was only available in—I don't know if you guys could get it—but it was available in Europe. Lisa: I’ve just got my first order on its way. But I had to get it via Colorado, and I've actually being in contact with the guys in Austria. So, working on that one, I'm getting it down here. Dr. Elizabeth: We couldn't get it. And like six months or so ago, we finally could get it here in the US. And it works as an autophagy inducing agent. It basically tells the cells to get rid of the bad stuff, it helps to restore the good parts of the cell. And really, at a baseline level is probably the one supplement that I know of, and probably the only one I know of, that is going to be actually balancing cell health continuously. Lisa: So it's homeostasis as opposed to... Dr. Elizabeth: The homeostatic state. Right. Lisa: So like, just to backtrack a little bit there because we covered a heck of a lot of ground in a very short time there. So, fasting, I mean, we've heard, like fasting and intermittent fasting and longer fasts are very, very good for us and all that. While a lot of us don't want to do it because it's not very nice... I do intermittent fasting, but I must admit, I don't enjoy it. And I certainly—when it comes to doing longer fasts, I struggle. So I'm always like, fasting mimetics, how can I get some fasting mimetics going? Because like you say, if I'm going to put in the antioxidants, the precursors, which I do as well, which are very important piece of the puzzle, but just that is not enough. So, this is like we've looked at in the past, like resveratrol as being a possible fasting mimetic. And wouldn't it be great if spermidine turns out, and it looks like it is going to be another fasting mimetic that's actually even more powerful. So, I know you do a lot of fasting, you're very disciplined, unlike myself. Dr. Elizabeth: No extra weight, I still have extra weight so fasting’s easier for me. Lisa: But yes, it is a difficult thing to do. So intermittent fasting is probably for me is the easiest go-to because I can sort of coke for it. Dr. Elizabeth: Time-restricted eating. Really, yes, more doing a 16, 8, kind of thing as opposed to the longer fast. And there's a lot of questions, we don't really know, do you need to long fast? We actually don't know the answer to that. There's a lot of people who say, ‘Oh, you've got to be hit the 48 to 72 hours to really get the full autophagy phase’. There's not a lot of data that actually really says that. You may still be able to get the same benefits from doing time-restricted eating. So we don't know the answer to all these questions. Lisa: But so what we're targeting with fasting is autophagy. So, autophagy, just to define what autophagy is, is getting rid of the bad stuff, basically. The bad proteins that are damaged, the mitochondria, or mitophagy, in that case. And recycling the parts that we can reuse and getting rid of it. Does the body sort of lock at it when you're fasting, and you haven't got anything coming and going up, ‘I've got no fuel supply, I better start recycling the old stuff’. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. Yes, autophagy is self-eating. And so basically, the cell basically says, ‘Oh, I need to preserve. I'm going to take the good things from the cell, get rid of the bad stuff I don't need. It’s a waste of energy. Getting rid of cells that shouldn't be utilizing my energy’. So and then really by going into a ketotic state, and that's, not utilizing glucose has a huge benefit. Lisa: So ketosis and autophagy, are they hand in hand? Are they part of the same thing? Can you have autophagy without being in ketosis, or are they very much married together? Dr. Elizabeth: No, you can actually have autophagy without being in ketosis. And you can basically be in ketosis and not necessarily have autophagy. So that all kind of depends on the cell, the state the cells in. One of the problems with resveratrol as a fasting mimetic, you mentioned taking resveratrol continuously, is there's also very potent antioxidant. Remember, one of the benefits of fasting is oxidative stress. So, I want oxidative stress while I'm fasting. If I'm taking resveratrol, for instance, while I'm fasting, I'm actually not getting as much of the oxidative stress. So, it's working a little different level. That's why I like spermidine a little bit better as it doesn't have that same effect to sort of negate the oxidative stress. Lisa: And for how long for people to get their heads around? I know because I mean, I've been struggling with this one, like the antioxidants sort of paradox. Yes, sorry, you carry on. Dr. Elizabeth: I think the key to remember is you really don't want to be doing any protocol continuously. I was just talking to a guy and he said, ‘What do you do to look like you do’? because I have more muscle. And I said, ‘I don't do anything continuously’. There's nothing—workout, nothing continuously. My food, my eating is never continuously, my supplements are never continuously. And I think it's a problem as people get in these patterns where they are taking all these antioxidants continuously. I always am going through build-up, breakdown phases. So there's only a few supplements that I will continuously take. One is, I will take spermidine at a baseline level. But if I'm doing a sort of a fast autophagy phase, where I really want to do a big tie up off of everything, I want a very high dose spermidine, much higher dose than just until that time of day. Lisa: Because spermidine works at a level lower if you like, at the base level. So, when we're talking about antioxidants, what the job is in the cell is to basically scavenge and donate electrons to where you got oxidative stress, and reactive oxygen species and to get rid of it there. But we're actually going a step back and actually stopping the reactive oxygen species, or oxidative stress from happening in the first place. And this is why spermidine at that base level, seems to be one that you can take continuously. And it even builds up to some degree, perhaps in your body or upregulates some of the bacteria in the microbiome. And whereas, antioxidants, we want to sort of cycle in and out. It's like exercise, isn't it? Like when I go to the gym, I'm not going to have my vitamin C right next to when I go to the gym, because that's going to mitigate that cascade of effects that vitamin C has. Yes. So I'm doing things. I'm taking my vitamin C away from that. And so there's, none of this is good or bad, it's cycling. And I think the more I've looked into things, the body likes this push and pull. It likes a medic stress. It likes to be cold. It likes to be hot. It likes to be pleasant, but it likes to be fasted. It likes to have a good amount of food. It's this whole—because that's how we've evolved, isn't it? Dr. Elizabeth: That's the way life for it was, yes. Lisa: We didn't come from this neutral environment where the temperature is the same all the time. And we're sitting on comfy couches, and we're not exercising and we're not cold, or we're not hungry, and we're not hot, and we're not not anything, and we've got an abundance of everything. And therefore, if we look at our evolution, and how we've come about that sort of a push and pull seems to go right through nature. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, you're exactly right. Remember, there's that balance between mTOR and AMPK, right? We know that AMPK is breakdown. And we know that when we block mTOR, our lives are longer, but we also don't build as much muscle and we don't have as much energy. And what you do is go through phases, build up mTOR, build up AMPK, build up and do that balance, so that you keep things in a very homeostatic state. And you said exactly right, there's great benefits to being hot. You have all the, how great being cold is and doing our cold showers in our cryo and everything. But there's a study that came out recently, I think I quote it in some podcasts I was in recently, that showed that in hotter environments, bone density is much better. So why is it that? Lisa: Yes, I heard that. Dr. Elizabeth: There's some effects from the warmth on our body too. So you're exactly right. We want to go back and forth between different things and we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you who are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you. Your body needs to have this back-and-forth balance. And you're right, that is—whenever you give the quote of well, ‘That's how cavemen lived’. You're like, ‘Well, but cavemen died in 18 whatever’. So how our evolution occurred, right? It's still what, what got us to survive. And it really is how our world is designed, and it's how our cells are designed. So I think that the use of thinking about your body as ‘Okay, I'm going to go through a fast, autophagy phase, and then I'm going to build up and I’m going to build my muscles’. You can build muscle while you're in a fasted state, but it's not nearly as easy as it is when you're eating a lot of food. Lisa: Yes. And but we're wanting to keep everything in balance so that it doesn't get just mTOR because, if we're in a state of like, activated mTOR all the time, then we are growing, but we were possibly growing things like cancer cells and things like. Dr. Elizabeth: And we know that mTOR activation all the time is closer to death. Lisa: But isn’t it weird, like there's nothing simple about... Dr. Elizabeth: It actually, honestly, it makes very little sense to me, right? The things—the mTOR, everything's muscle building. Super high IGF all the time and it is muscle building. You would think it would be kind of pro longevity, right, and healthy, and yet, it's not. And the only way I can really—in my mind, reason that out is that if the zombie apocalypse hits, you're better designed to be able to survive without any food and without any—nothing just huddled away in your little house, right? And so maybe the evolution of our body that's for longevity, the genes have kind of stayed there are the ones that really make us survive through famine, right? And yet, that's probably not where we all want to be. We don't want to be huddled in the back of our houses not moving. And so yes, if you look at Valter Longo and his research on—really low IGF people live longer, they don't have cancer. Yes but they actually don't necessarily feel great. And they don't necessarily see low IGF people all the time, who are fatigued, who don't have good energy, who can't build muscle, who don't exercise. So I think that the thing here is build your IGF, bring it back down, build it up, bring it back down. So, I think that that's where we really need to look at things, as this kind of waxing and waning of everything we do. In our cellular medicine fellowship program, it's one of the things we're really, really focused on is that's what the cell needs, is a push and pull to it, to really help it become a healthier entity. And I think if we start doing that, we're going to start seeing that that's really where we're going to see that big focus to health and longevity occurrence. It's not going to be ‘Everybody eat this diet’. Lisa: No, no. And this is like, even as a coach of athletes and stuff. And I did this in my athletic career where I didn't know all this stuff. I ran long, because that's what I do, it was ultra-marathon running. And that's all I did. I didn't train at the gym. I didn't do—and I was not fit. And I was not healthy. I could run long because I've trained that specific thing, but I wasn't healthy. I was overweight. I was hormonally imbalanced. I ended up with hypothyroid. I couldn't have sat on the couch and ate chips all day and probably come out better than I did. Because I'd been doing one thing and one thing that was actually not suited to my genetics either, ideally. And so understanding all of this is not as simple as well, ‘I'll go and do the same old thing, same old and then we'll be good’. I want to sort of flip now and go a bit of a deep dive into spermidine because I think spermidine is the one thing that, this is going right down to the base level of before. Because we want anti-ageing. I mean. We compared ages before this podcast and I mean, I won't share your age, but I was shocked. You look amazing. And I'm like, ‘I want a piece of that’. What is it that you're doing? So spermidine is a part of your—that is one of the things you do take on a pretty much a daily basis. Can you dive into the research? There’s 10 years behind the spermidine and it's only just becoming available. Guys in New Zealand, it's not here yet. I'm working on it. Give me time, I'm getting, I'm working on it. Dr. Elizabeth: So, what we know is as we talked about spermidine is on every single living organism. So, we know it's critical to life, it's what's called a polyamine. It's what a three poly means is spermidine, spermine, and putrescine. And they all have some value. Putrescine is what's in rotting meat. You're probably not going to go eat rotting meat. But there's actually some value to putrescine in our bodies, too. Spermidine appears to have—spermidine is converted typically this into spermidine. Spermidine is innately in our gut. So, it's made by our gut bacteria but it's also in some foods. It's in some a lot of fermented foods, in wheat germ extracts. It's in some peas and mushrooms. It's in some algae. Probably the richest source of it is a specific type of wheat germ extract. It's apparently very difficult to extract, it's only a certain type of wheat germ that has it's difficult to extract a pure form of it. And so, there is companies that make it from algae as well. But you have to take—actually before we could get spermidine from spermidine life which is wheat germ extract, we actually bought an algae extract one. You really had to take 40 of these little green pills. I mean your hands are green, your teeth are green all the time. 40 of them, I mean, I did that because I wanted it but once we got spermidine. I get the question all the time about well, it's wheat germ extract. Interestingly, I've celiac patients on spermidine and even though it's not advised for celiac patients, it probably actually is perfectly safe because it's actually working on one of the pathways, that's what makes the gluten exactly unsafe those patients. So, it's probably even if you're—I'm very gluten sensitive, I don't do gluten. I have no problems in spermidine. So, it tends to be pretty well-tolerated in those people. Lisa: Yes, but I've got a brother who’s recently examined and she said, ‘Yes, I can’. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I have two celiac patients on who've done fine. And again, the bio says not to take it if you're celiac, but I think cautiously, there is some research that supports it actually may be useful in treating some of the celiac patients. So basically, the study is now—there's so many studies on it. In terms of preventing almost every disease in the book, and that's where you and I come back to that whole, is mitochondria the answer to everything? Because we've seen spermidine—you can Google spermidine. I do this. I mean, Google ‘spermidine and Alzheimer’, Google ‘spermidine and cancer’, there's not a disease that we don't have a study on where you can find some connection to higher or lower levels of spermidine being better. Some of the major research has been on cardiovascular and its benefits and cardiovascular disease. It's one of the things we've been using when we see high inflammatory cardiovascular markers in our patients. We measure what's called myeloperoxidase, which is an inflammatory cardiovascular marker. It's interesting, we've seen it very high in our lot of our post-COVID patients. So patients who have had COVID recovered, coming for labs, we're seeing very high levels of myeloperoxidase. So, we think that's probably from some of the vascular damage that COVID seems to create in some people with certain genetics. And that’s very hard to bring it back down, and spermidine has been one of the things that's been really helpful there for us. So, it's also any of your patients who have a high Lp little a. Yes, so by Lipoprotein little a, you'll know is basically genetic. Lisa: Yes. And there's not much you can do. Dr. Elizabeth: Nothing much you can do about it. You use high-dose niacin, but it's hard to take, the liver toxic. Spermidine actually has some research to support it in lowering Lp little a and we've seen that in our practice, it's one of the things we lower Lp little a. So the other place that's been really studied is an immune system support. So we've seen improvements in lymphocytes. So, one of the other labs that you want—when you're looking at that CBC is looking at your neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio. Lisa: Yes, I've just like I've got a problem with my brother at the moment, lymphocytes, neutrophils down. No, sorry, your neutrophils down, lymphocytes, high. Dr. Elizabeth: That's a little uncommon, that might indicate some kind of viral illness going on. Typically, what happens as we age is, we start to see the lymphocyte number go down and the neutrophil number go up. So that ratio, which should be around 1.3:1, 1:1, 1.3:1, starts climbing. If you look at the typical person our age is, 3:1. And so, it's hard to get—how do you get back lymphocyte function? You don't have thymus glands anymore. And so the two things that we've been able to utilize to really restore lymphocyte function in our patients who have ageing immune systems is spermidine. And then the other one is a peptide, thymosin alpha-1, which is a thymic peptide. What our thymus gland does is it takes those two lymphocytes, it tells them what to do and, and once—your best immune function is at puberty. After that, your thymus gland starts getting smaller. And by the time you're 60, you don't really have much thymus gland. And so your immune system starts going a little haywire, it doesn't know what to do. And so what we can do, because really crazy people are trying to transplant thymus glands, or eat sweetbreads, which doesn't work. They do it in France, maybe they taste good, but I don't think it replaces your thyroid function. But you can get thymic peptides. So, two of the things that the thymus gland really makes is thymosin alpha-1 and thymosin beta-4. And thymosin alpha-1 is a very immune modulating peptide, and it really helps to restore normal immune function. So, the combination of spermidine and thymosin alpha-1 and your people who have immune dysregulation, autoimmune diseases. You could start normalising the immune function. So instead of attacking self they start attacking viruses. Lisa: Wow. And autoimmune is just like, a huge, huge problem. I mean, it's just epidemic levels now. Dr. Elizabeth: It is epidemic. Lisa: Sorry, so this would help with that. Oh, my God. Okay. So that's another reason to take spermidine and the peptides. I mean, peptides are harder to get hold of like… Dr. Elizabeth: It’s still harder to get hold of. Your people who are in Europe, thymosin alpha-1 is actually a drug. It's called Zadaxin. We can't get it here as a drug. We've made us a peptide but it actually is a drug. They use it in their chemotherapy patients in Europe and Asia. And so oddly, it's available as approved drug. Probably pricey. Lisa: Most of these drugs are for some unknown reason. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes. Spermidine—someone's early studies and where it actually sort of panned out, as people went after it initially was actually hair growth. And again, if you think about, the tissues, we're talking about, like cardiac here, those are all fast-growing tissues. And that's where spermidine sort of had its nice effect and sort of that whole regeneration process. And so even in guys with thinning hair, spermidine has huge benefits. Just taking on like a milligram a day dose will start the thickening of hair. I noticed when I first started, my nails grew really fast means, I mean, super fast. And so even in those basic things, like hair growth, nail growth, spermidine has some really marked effects. Lisa: Fantastic. We’ve got to get it here. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, it is amazing. I mean, honestly, I feel a little—whenever I see my patients now and I see something wrong. I'm like, ‘Well, spermidine, oh’. Lisa: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is all to confirm because it's such a wide panacea, and it works at base level of the ageing and pathologies and things… Dr. Elizabeth: It’s too good to be true. Lisa: It's too good to be true, but actually now, it makes sense. And so, it’s fantastic if we find something that is a panacea for many, many things. And also, I've got my first shipment coming from the States, and I'm super excited. Dr. Elizabeth: One of the hard things in what we do, right, is it takes you awhile to feel better, and just starting from a low level, right. Or if you're like us, and you're at a high level, then making this little extra. And so, what I tell people to monitor, because one things I noticed was, when I started spermidine was a pretty—I don't sleep enough, I study too much. But I use my Oura ring, and I monitor my HRV. And so, I know a lot of your listeners have the Oura ring and HRV is very fluctuating. And so it's one of those things, it's very easy to see a change. So, if I do something like start taking spermidine, I can say no, and you can look at the trend on your Oura ring. And you can say, you can take—started spermidine here, and I had about a 15 point jump in my HRV, which I won't say what it is because it’s just from starting spermidine. So I know it's doing something at a very basic level because HRV is predictive of almost every disease state; so low HRV, you know you have a higher incidence of all Alzheimer, we know we have a higher incidence of cancer. So I know if I'm affecting my HRV, I'm positively affecting my health. So something really simple that you can do to say, okay, I started this here, and then look back in two weeks, go to your little trends thing and see ‘Wow, look, my trend is going this direction’. Lisa: Wow, I can't wait to see that because yes, I mean, I haven't been able to move the needle on my HRV really. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, me neither. And mine's not good. Lisa: Yes, and mine isn't great either. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, the downside of sometimes what we do is we're reading all the time and staying all the time and trying to do too much and… Lisa: Brain doesn’t turn off. Dr. Elizabeth: And that's not so good. Lisa: Adrenaline driven. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, so it is really, honestly one of the first things I did that really made a dramatic change. Lisa: Wow, I will let you know how I go. Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, let me know. Lisa: When mine comes, whether my HRV is now turning up. Dr. Elizabeth: I will say sometimes you need a higher dose which gets pricey. Lisa: And this is the problem with everything, it's the same with the deep precursors and all the stuff that's fantastic, it does cost. But you know what? I don't have money to burn but I would rather go without a fancy car, go without fancy clothes, go without cosmetics, go without all that to have supplements that work or to have biohacking technologies that work because that's my priority, it’s my health. Because what good does it do me if I have a fancy car, but I'm sick? Dr. Elizabeth: I know. And it is funny, I was giving this lecture and this woman came in, she asked how much this program we do cost? And she said, ‘Well maybe when I pay off my Lexus, I'll be able to do that’. And I'm like, ‘You’re really willing to spend a lot of money, a $1,000 on an iPhone and’... Lisa: Priorities. Dr. Elizabeth: …and car and we just still have to keep putting this focus on your priority, absolutely has to be this your health? And it’s so hard to convince people of that. Lisa: And I'm constantly shocked at people who expect to like, they take a supplement and they don't see anything change for three days and then they're like, ‘It didn't work’. And I'm like, ‘You've got to be kidding’. Like you know your hair is growing, right? But do you see it growing every day? No. But if you keep going—and with my listeners have heard me rabbit on about my story with my mum and bringing her back from a mess of aneurysm. The reason I have been successful with her is, is not any one particular thing. I mean, yes, hyperbaric, yes, all of these things were a big part of the puzzle. But it was the fact that I keep going when there was no signs of improvement. And I keep going every single day for five years, and I still go. And that is the key is that persistence. And that just keep doing it and prioritizing this, even when you see no results. And that's a really hard sell because people want to see, how long will it take for this to kick in? Dr. Elizabeth: I think it's one of the hardest things about our jobs is—listen, it is very hard. But this is stuff that I'm looking at a future that's 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road, I know these things—I know that they do, they've been proven. So to say they're not working for you is why in every study did they work and oddly, they don't work for you? It just doesn'
Athletes, especially long-distance runners, sustain a lot of injuries in their career. Their injuries mainly affect the lower extremities, like the calf or the foot. Wearing the appropriate gear and proper shoes, as well as using orthotics, can make a lot of difference. Dr Colin Dombroski joins us in this episode to explain the benefit of orthotics to foot health. He also talks about common running injuries and how wearing the correct shoes can prevent these. If you are a runner and want to know more about orthotics and the science behind shoes, then this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the benefits of orthotics and modern imaging techniques in foot health. Learn more about common running-specific injuries and ways to prevent them. Know about the brain-foot connection and the knock-on effect of footwear. Resources The Foot Strength Plan by Colin Dombroski The Plantar Fasciitis Plan by Colin Dombroski Born to Run by Christopher McDougall The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast SoleScience Connect with Colin: Website | Email | Facebook | Skype: solescience Episode Highlights [03:14] Colin’s Background Colin designs and manufactures custom foot orthotics. His researches revolve around general footwear, lower extremity therapy, and how these things interact to make people better. Colin works on 3D printing orthotics, which shows how the foot works or moves in real-time. He works with people to get them back on their feet and do what they want to do. [04:36] How Foot Imaging Works Colin uses a 3D motion analysis lab to study the workings of the lower extremities. Alternatively, he also partners with the WOBL lab to do biplanar fluoroscopy. This procedure maps out somebody’s foot in 3D space. It helps understand what is happening to the foot in real-time; it shows feet in a shoe under different circumstances. Colin looks into the best way to make an orthotic for someone. Imaging helps to see what is happening in the foot when a person is barefoot, in a shoe, or using orthotics. [09:56] Are Orthotics Generally Good? Orthotics are neither good nor bad; we cannot generalise. It may be suitable for someone with arthritis but may not be beneficial to someone with no problems. Orthotics are used as tools to help people with recovery and performance. Colin’s job is to tell people whether they need orthotics or not. When they have done their job, they’re removed. [12:57] Rehabilitation vs Orthotics In mild foot aches, over-the-counter devices can work well. Orthotics are not a first-line treatment for some conditions. Look at other things first before going down the route of orthotics. Foot strengthening is very beneficial. Do simple things that make feet work as feet. [16:55] Does Wearing Shoes Result in Weaker Feet? Not walking for a few blocks is just as harmful as having shoes that do not fit you. Poorly fitting shoes can be bad for you. Women wearing high-heeled shoes for a long time can have a lot of foot problems later on. Colin recommends we exercise moderation when wearing heels. [25:15] How to Prevent Running Injuries Injuries usually result in a mismatch between the style of a person’s foot and the kind of shoe they wear. Footwear should fit into your foot design so you don’t cram your toes. Some shoes may fit while you are buying them in a store, but they may end up not fitting at all or when you are already running long distances. If you don’t know how the sock liner, width, toe spring, and heel drop of the shoe interact, the potential for injury is more significant. Listen to the full episode to learn more about the running injuries that Colin has encountered and how to prevent them. [32:42] Running on Concrete vs Running on Natural Terrain The natural terrain is easy to run on compared to concrete. Mitigate the force of initial contact to avoid injuries. Listen to the full episode to learn more about what type of shoe you need for different surfaces. [34:29] On Transitioning Your Footwear If you want to go barefoot, do it gradually. Scientific literature has discussed the importance of transition shoes. If you’re going to drop your 10- to 12-millimetre heel drop shoe to 4, you need to have a 6- to 8-millimetre transition shoe. [37:22] How Often Should We Change Shoes? Do not let shoes sit on shelves for more than two years because the material stiffens. In general, alternating shoes are good after 6800 kilometres. However, this still depends on how quickly you wear out the outsole of your shoes. Having shoes with different heel heights for different types of running would be very beneficial. [42:59] The Brain-Foot Connection When you ignore stabilisers and prime mover muscles, you get a mismatch in balance and performance. It’s important at the lower leg holistically. Colin acknowledges that we get a different sensation if we’re barefoot versus when we have socks and shoes on. However, it’s a misnomer to say that putting on footwear reduces your proprioception or sensation. Your brain adjusts to the sensory input being thrown its way. [48:39] Achilles Injuries Achilles injuries result when people change the drop of their shoe or change their running style too quickly. There is a genetic predisposition for people with Achilles issues. Using things like heel lifts in footwear takes some load off the Achilles, allowing it to heal. Any ankle restriction can make you use your Achilles differently. Listen to the full episode to learn about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in looking at conditions. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘If someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best one particular way’. ‘I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet and they need to get that ability back’. ‘It's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, you know, but it's looking at it holistically’. ‘We get back to my point where [we do things in] moderation. There's a time to spend time in the sand, there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road’. ‘If you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change’. ‘You also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body because you have to be holistic in your approach’. ‘You know your limits better than somebody else. But I think that there's also a time when you do need to respect the knowledge that someone's gone and spent time attaining. About Dr Colin Dombroski Dr Colin Dombroski is a podiatrist and a foot specialist of 20 years; he is also an author and a researcher. He works in the world of shoes, orthotics, rehab, and range. He specialises in any feet issues, from plantar fasciitis to Achilles injuries. Connect with Colin through his website. You may also reach out to him through email or Facebook. Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know more about the proper shoes to use for running. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: You're listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati, your host. I have a fantastic gift again for you today. Gosh, I managed to come up with some amazing people. So I have the guest Dr Colin Dombroski, who is a podiatrist and expert on everything foot. He's known as the foot specialist. He is the author of two books, Healthy Strong Feet, and The Plantar Fasciitis Plan. He's a researcher, and also has a shoe—a specialist running shoe shop. He knows everything about the cutting edge of foot health. So this is a topic that's really important, obviously, for all the runners listening out there. Or if you're having any sort of issues with your feet, maybe you're dealing with plantar fasciitis, maybe you have to have orthotics, or you've got arthritis, or you've got bunions, or you've got problems with your Achilles or further up the kinetic chain, then this is the episode for you because we're going to be talking about the cutting edge of science. Dr Colin is really up on the latest thing. He has all the fancy gadgets in his lab that he does. And so it's a really, really interesting conversation that I have with Dr Colin. Now before we go over to the show. If you are also looking for—doing a running training plan that fits your life and without having to think about how to assemble the entire plan yourself, then please come and check out what we do at Running Hot Coaching. We have a brand new package that we now offer and there's a fully customised package to you, to your goals, to your injuries, your lifestyle, anything that's holding you back, and we can customise it to you. And you'll also get full video analysis done with this package and a one-on-one consult with me in a personalised plan for your next event. Whether that be a marathon, a half marathon, ultramarathon, 10K, it doesn't really matter that's up to you. And you get 12 months of access to Running Hot Coaching’s whole resource library and all the other plans that are available on me, so it’s a super, super deal. You also get access to our community of over 700 runners from around the world that we get to coach nowadays and hang out with them. And also we do live events on occasion and do regular educational webinars and so on. So everything running. If you want help with it, then we would love to help you get in—make the best out of your running. Okay, so check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. Right, over to the show now with Dr Colin Dombroski. Lisa Tamati: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pushing The Limits. It's your host, Lisa Tamati here. And today I have Colin Dombroski with me, all the way from Ontario in Canada. So welcome to the show, Colin. Fantastic to have you. Dr Colin Dombroski: Thanks so much for having me. Lisa: It's really, really exciting. So I am going to be talking to you today about feet. You are the foot guy. You are known as the foot guy. Colin, can you give us a bit of a brief background, why are you known as the foot guy? Dr Colin: Well, I mean, I'm a Canadian certified podiatrist first and foremost. So I'm trained in both the design and the manufacturer of custom foot orthotics, foot orthotics in general, footwear and lower extremity therapy care, and how those things interact to get people better. And so, we started that back in 2002. And since then, I've gone on to do PhD work in Health and Rehabilitation Science, and research and everything from the basic 3D printings of orthotics to how the foot’s actually moving in a shoe using things like a biplanar fluoroscopy and CT imaging to really understand what's actually going on, as opposed to just kind of guessing and thinking about it or looking at video without actually being able to see inside the shoe. And so we've seen tens of thousands of patients. We've worked with people over the last 20 years, really working to get them back up and on their feet and doing the things that they want to do to stay healthy. And for some people, it's as simple as walking around the block and for other people it's going to the Olympics in Tokyo. Lisa: Wow, fantastic. So you're deep into the science... Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: ...of the absolute cutting edge of what we can do now for foot issues and optimising foot health. So tell us a little bit about some of the fancy stuff that you can do, like, how that—you said there you can look into the inside a shoe or... Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: ...rather than just looking at video. How does that work? Dr Colin: I'll tell you on the research side, there's all kinds of fancy stuff that we were able to do. And so, right now I have an academic appointment through Western University in the School of Physical Therapy. So, I'm lucky enough to be able to do research in what I do specifically. So—and we can do that in a couple of different ways. One is that we actually have a full 3D motion analysis lab at our main business in London Ontario. So it's seven Vicon cameras, much like the way you would see motion analysis for video games or for the movies. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: Well, we use that to study how the lower extremity works in the human body. And so we can either put markers on the foot and cut windows into the shoe, so we can see how things move. That's one way to do it. The other way that we've done it is working with another lab called the wobble lab, and they have two movie x-rays, or what's called biplanar fluoroscopy. And then what we can do is have a CT of somebody's foot, we can take those bones out, we can map them in three-dimensional space. And at 17 times per second, we can move that bone model on top of the actual movie x-ray model to understand what's happening to the foot and the bones in real-time in a shoe, under different circumstances, whether that's no orthotic, orthotic, and we can compare that to their walking barefoot as well. Lisa: That is insane Colin. I have no idea. Dr Colin: Yes. it's a cool thing. And if you go on the website, if you go on—I think we have a fluoroscopy video up on stuff about feet. But if we don't, there's certainly one up on the research section of SoleScience, and you're able to actually watch, you can see what we're looking at through this thing. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: And it's really cool to know. And what's really interesting when we look at this stuff is that we wanted to know when we make somebody an orthotic. What's the best way to do that for someone? There's different ways that we can capture somebody's foot, whether we use a foam or a wax method or a plaster mould of somebody's foot, we wanted to know kind of based on a couple of different styles, which one might actually control the motion of their foot a bit better. And we were able to show that one was more effective than another—made a small amount with a very specific foot type. So, if you have a flatter foot, there are ways of making it that are more effective. But what was really interesting out of that was to look at what was actually happening with the foot when someone was just walking barefoot, when they were just walking in their shoe, or when we put an orthotic in there? Because you know if I can go on a bit of a tangent, there's lots of scary stuff on the internet these days about how, ‘Oh, you don't want to walk in shoes and orthotics because it makes you act like you're walking in a cast. And why would you want to do that'? Well, what's really interesting is that when we looked at someone's foot walking barefoot, and we compared that to the most supportive thing that we use, they still kept up to 96% of their original motion. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: So, think about that for a second, 96% or one motion. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: So, you're really at that point, if someone's keeping that much of their original range of motion, you really have to wonder, ‘What are we actually doing with these things?’ And I'm going to argue that it's more than just the shoe on someone's foot. It's more than just the device in that shoe, that there could be a lot more actually going on with these things than we fully understand even though we have the best research methods to be able to look at it. Lisa: That's amazing. I mean, I'm really, really interested because with orthotics, I've recently gone and got my mum an orthotic and you don't know my mum's story. But she had a massive aneurysm five years ago, has dropped foot on the right side, incredible rehabilitation journey, written a book on it. But we're not having such success with the orthotic yet. We are having success with a Dictus where it's helping lift her foot. And I've had in the past two experiences with orthotics when I've had different issues, like, I can't remember now what specifically, I think it was plantar fasciitis. And I've tried different things, admittedly a while ago, and things have obviously moved on. But I haven't had that much success. So I'm like, as a running coach, I should know more about the latest in science as far as orthotics go. And whether they're my initial reaction back then was, ‘Well, I don't think orthotics are really working for a lot of people’. That's been the feedback from other people as well. So obviously, the science has moved forward and it is offering new insights and you can actually see in real-time what our bones are doing. I mean, it's just absolutely mental, that's crazy and cool. So do you think—isn't it like walking around with a cast on your foot? We've got this whole barefoot craze that's been in the last few years and then we've got brands like Hoka One One coming out with really cushions. So, I think people are a little bit confused as to what they should be doing. Dr Colin: Yes, and rightfully so. Lisa: Our orthotic is good. Our orthotics in general is—can we generalise when it's very specific. Dr Colin: Nope. Not at all. We can’t generalise it all and that's the problem when it comes to this stuff is that people are trying to fit everybody into a box. And saying that either it's really good, or it's really bad. It’s either of those things? Like, to the end of the day, if you really need them, if you have rheumatoid arthritis, and you're unable to walk around the block, and I'm able to get you active again, they're really good for you. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. Dr Colin: Right? But if you have no risk factors, if you have no biomechanical abnormalities, if you have no foot deformities and no other issues, then what's the benefit of wearing them at the end of the day? And so to that end of things, a lot of the time, I feel as though we're missing the middle ground. We're missing the fact that people can use these things, either as a tool to help them with recovery and performance that we can then work to wean them off, if they so choose, or if they need to be, or we use them because there's a real thing where structure dictates function and injury. But again, why are we looking to see whether or not people are either yes or no, off or on? It's more of a continuum. And I kind of like to look at people and the fact that over on this end of the spectrum, here, you've got people who are so gifted biomechanically that they can do anything they want to do, despite doing it wrong. They can go couch to marathon in old worn-out shoes with poor sleep with bad nutrition, and they can do it and they don't get hurt. And you've got people on the other end of the spectrum that can do everything, right, and work with the best coaches and get the best equipment and eat and sleep and everything else. But they're plagued with injury, right? Most people are going to be somewhere in the middle, the question though, so, which side of the spectrum do you lie more towards? And that's where I feel my job comes in, is to figure out where that is, and then how to appropriately apply these things, whether or not you actually need them. And I build a business on telling people when they don't need them. Lisa: That's brilliant. Dr Colin: And when they don't need them anymore. So, it's actually quite shocking when someone comes into my office for their ninth orthotic, and I say, ‘Well, tell me about it'. And so they—we talk about stuff, and we come to the conclusion that they just don't need them anymore. And they're shocked, they think that these things are like a lifelong sentence. And they're not. For some people, they are the difference between being able to be active or not. And for other people, there's simply a tool, and we use that tool appropriately, and we remove it. Lisa: That is absolutely gold, Colin. And what a fantastic approach in, like, working with people with disabilities and stuff, I know there are definitely times when we do need them, and they're going to benefit and it is very much about the skill of the person who's fitting the orthotic and knows, obviously, what they're doing. And there’s a lot of advertising out there; rubbish sort of advertising that you see with different standard gum, pick it off the shelf type things, what's your opinion on those types of orthotics? Dr Colin: Well, I mean, if those—so, if something like that, like if an over the counter device works for you, for—let's say you have a mild case of metatarsalgia. Let's say you have a small ache in the front part of your foot when you're active, and you've done all the rest of the conservative therapy things. You're strong, you're flexible, everything else is ticked off, and you're still not doing well. Sometimes removing that little bit of mechanical stress can be enough that allows the tissues to heal and you can move on. Right? So in those cases, yes, they work quite well. But in some cases, if you have a foot type that doesn't match up with that shaped plastic that's pushing against your foot, it might not work so much. And kind of to your point where you were saying you had them for plantar fasciitis before, and they just didn't work for you, it could be a multitude of reasons why they didn't work for you. And we see that all the time. And if someone's not getting the right kind of results, it could be that they just need to be adjusted. But then some people don't believe that they need to be adjusted. They believe your foot functions best, one particular way. And they say, ‘Here, this is for you. This is the way it should be, get used to it'. Lisa: And then it's the whole side of: you should be doing strengthening exercises and rolling and stretching. What's your take on the whole on that side of it? So the rehabilitation side of it as opposed to the orthotic side of the equation? Dr Colin: Well, so my—the way that we teach about orthotics is that orthotics for some conditions are not a first line treatment unless you have significant risk factors. If you're diabetic, then yes, 100% we're making you orthotics. But for a lot of people especially let's take plantar fasciitis for instance. If you come to me and you've had plantar fasciitis only for a few weeks, there is a whole host of other therapies that you can try before you even need to think about that. Is removing the stress off the tissue, the strain off the tissue with the device and footwear appropriate? Heck yes, it is. But there are other things that you need to look at first before you even go down the route of orthotics which is actually why I wrote my first book. And it's to tell people the things that they can do at home to be able to get themselves better for four to six weeks before they have to see somebody like me to think about orthotics. Lisa: Okay, so what was the title of that book, Colin? Dr Colin: Oh, it's called The Plantar Fasciitis Plan. Lisa: The Plantar Fasciitis Plan and that is available on Amazon? Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: Okay, so in New Zealand, we might struggle with Amazon, but we don't have Amazon down here, believe it or not. Dr Colin: I have no idea. Lisa: We can access it, but some things can ship from over the air and some not so. But we'll put the links in the show notes for sure for those listening who are overseas and want to read that book. Okay, so you mentioned... Dr Colin: And to speak to your last question... Lisa: Absolutely. Dr Colin: ...which was, what do you think about the whole foot strengthening part of it? Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: I think it's very important, I think that a lot of people have lost the ability to connect with their brain and their feet, and they need to get that ability back, it's shocking how many people I see that can do something as simple as move their toes, or lift their arch, or do some of the simple things that they need to do to make feet work as feet. Right? And so, getting them back to that foot connection is only a positive thing. Like, the only good things are going to come out of that. Lisa: So, is this like, is this a problem of the modern human because we've walked around in shoes. Did humans, before shoes come along, did we all have great feet? Strong powerful feet because we were barefoot from the get go? So is this a problem of the modern human but like with—I've just done a couple of episodes on breathing and the way that we are chewing is affecting our structure of our mouth and therefore we're not having such good breathing and so on. Is that similar sort of case? Dr Colin: I really think that when you talk to a question about that, it's really hard to compare those two things because we're just not there right now. You know what I mean? So, yes, if we didn't wear clothes, and we didn't drive cars, and we didn't eat the way that we did, yes, things would be different than where they are. But like, we drive our cars to go five blocks down the street to get to Starbucks, we don't walk. So, that alone is just as deleterious as footwear that doesn't fit you properly. So when it comes to shoes, again, there's lots of scariness out there on the internet, talking about how these things, again, make you walk like your cast or is deforming your feet. And yes, I would agree that a poorly fit shoes that are way too tight cramming your toes, putting stress on nerves and tissues certainly can be a bad thing for you. But do I think that there's this gigantic conspiracy out there that's making the collective feet of the world less strong and everything else? No, I really don't, to that end. And again, as a recovery tool, they can be marvellous things if done correctly. Lisa: Yes, it's a really good approach. I mean, it reminds me of my dad's feet. My dad who recently passed, unfortunately. But my dad had the most amazing, strong, powerful feet, he grew up in the first 13 years of life and not wearing shoes. Came from a very humble background with eight children, and they only had one pair of gumboots in the family. So he grew up with these incredibly powerful feet. By the time he was in his 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, he could walk around barefoot all day, never have any sort of problems. The state of his heels weren't the best. But muscular feet, really strong powerful feet, because he didn't wear shoes until he was older and then still like to go barefoot whenever possible, actually connected to the earth, weed garden all day, and their feet at the most jungles. So I did see it in that. Quite the effects of having that real connection to Mother Earth if you like in developing those sort of strong muscles in our feet. And then on the other side of the equation. I see people with diabetics or close to being pre-diabetic problems with extremely tender feet and poor circulation in the feet and their feet are just not moving well and have always been in shoes. So it's like opposite ends of the scale via. So, where was I going with this? There's a real broad range of where people are at. Another thing that I think is to consider is women in high heeled shoes, what's your take on that sort of a problem? Like, were lifting your heels up and having a shortened calf. And that's sort of a problem. Dr Colin: Well, I mean, that for too long of a period of time just gives you a whole myriad of problems from metatarsalgia, and progressing bunion issues, and nerve problems, and chronically short Achilles because of that shortening specifically, yes. I mean, we see that all the time. I'm very much a fan of moderation when it comes to these things. And so for a lot of my patients, if they want to spend an evening, every now and again, where they're primarily sitting in a pair of heels, then I feel as though the trade-off for what they get out of that is okay, comparatively. Again, it's not putting everything into a box of good or bad, but it's looking at it holistically. Lisa: Brilliant. I think it's a really good approach. Dr Colin: Yes, if you're a retail worker, and you're spending 10 hours a day, on your feet, heels are definitely not the thing you want to be wearing. Lisa: Yes, you've got to sacrifice the elegance, ladies. Sometimes you help that little pushes. Dr Colin: A little bit sometimes. And you know where I end up seeing that a lot? It’s in lawyers. A lot of my patients who are lawyers. There is definitely a culture of dress code and professionalism that comes from wearing heels. And I see a lot of injured lawyers because of that, specifically. Lisa: Isn't that interesting? So yes, really take heed because I do think doing that on a daily basis, yes. The odd night out in a pair of heels to look elegant is fine, but not doing it every single day, were you really shortening, I mean, just, I'm always sort of relating things back to my life. But with mum having aneurysm, being bedridden pretty much for 18 months before we could get her standing. And I didn't understand at the beginning about drop foot, I missed the boat. And by the time I realised what drop foot was, that had happened very, very quickly, that her foot was now dropped until we're still working on that right through now, to be able to lift set front of the foot up and having to use a Dictus in her case, which lifts the front of the foot up. So it happens very—it happens quicker than what you think. Dr Colin: It can, certainly. Yes. Now the brace that your mum's using, do you mind if I asked you a quick question? Is she using an over-the-counter one or a custom one? Lisa: So it's an over-the-counter Dictus one as I didn't know there was such a thing as a customised Dictus. So it's just a leather strap that goes around with a rubber that goes over inside these two little hooks at the bottom of the shoes that pulls the shoe up. So is there something better, Colin? Dr Colin: Well, so, take a look for something called an Allard ToeOff AFO. And we use them a lot in clinics for patients with drop foot and they're actually designed to be to run marathons and events and they're quite robust. Lisa: Okay, I’ll take note of that. Dr Colin: And it might be a great training tool too. They're very light. You should wear them under a pair of pants. A lot of people like the fact that they don't see the direct brace. Lisa: Yes, yes. Yes, exactly. This one's quite ugly. So, is it Allard? Dr Colin: A-L-L-A-R-D. Lisa: Oh, brilliant. Dr Colin: So as in Allard ToeOff. Lisa: Allard ToeOff, I will check that out. See, this is a selfish reason why I get to talk to experts. Dr Colin: There we go. Lisa: Because you never know when it's gonna help somebody you know? It's fantastic. I'll check that one out. Yes, because that is a real problem. And there's so many—this is not a rare thing, drop foot. It's a very, very common thing with people with strokes and aneurysms and the like. Dr Colin: It is. Lisa: So, there's a lot of people dealing with it so going into the rehabilitation side of things. We have a shoe that has a rocker so she's able to toe-off slightly better in that rocker and keep her center of mass moving forward. Rather than sitting really back which she was doing. So yes, so I'm always looking for the next best thing for my mum from the show. So, appreciate that. Dr Colin: No problem. And since you're a runner and all that stuff, the Asics Metaride is my favourite carbon shoe rocker. We've got so many people who really require surgery, fusions, things like that because of osteoarthritic toes or ankles or mid feet that can get into a shoe like that. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: And for people who are that age, they're not nearly as flashy looking as some of the other carbon rockered shoes that are available. Lisa: Yes, but who cares as long as they function properly. Okay, Asics Metaride. Okay, we'll check those one out too. Now let's jump ship and change direction a little bit and go into running specific injuries. So we did touch briefly on playing to the shortest. But what are some of the common injuries that you see? And what are some of the ways that we can prevent? And how does it have a knock-on effect? Like what happens in your feet, knocks on the kinetic chain, doesn't it? Dr Colin: Of course. Yes. So what I take a look at, the one of the biggest things are going to be mismatches between the style of foot that somebody has and their mechanics and the kind of shoe they wind up getting into. And so there's nothing like being able to mismatch the way that your foot wants to move, and then a shoe that's going to either work completely and pushing it in the same direction. So for instance, if you're a supinator, where your foot rolls to the outside, and then you get into an anti-pronation shoe, which a lot of people are—there's actually been research to show that runners are poor judges of their own foot type. Lisa: Right. Dr Colin: And if they get into that kind of footwear that makes them into more of a supinator. I can't tell you how many lateral column foot pain problems we see and perennial overuse problems and things like that. So simply mismatching your footwear to what your foot is doing can be one of them. Lisa: Okay. Getting on and off the shelf is not, and diagnosing yourself is probably not a good idea if you're a serious runner who wants to do some serious racing. Dr Colin: Well, maybe it's a good idea to run your findings by someone else who can take an objective third-party look at you. And so some people think, ‘Oh, my foot is so flat, I need to get into this kind of footwear'. And that might not always be the case when it comes down to it. So the footwear component of it is so big. Making sure that it actually fits the way that your foot is designed. So if you have a particularly wide forefoot and a narrower rear foot, looking for things that actually match up with that, so that you're not cramming your toes into a pair of shoes. Lisa: As a run coach, if I can just pipe in there that has been one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen so many athletes buy. They go into a shoe shop that does foot analysis, and they proceed them on a treadmill and so on. So they may have the right type of shoe, but they're after buying the shoe in a cold state. So i.e., they've just walked into a shop, they haven't been on their feet all day, they haven't been running for 30K's, their feet are not swollen. And then they go and if they do marathons, or especially ultramarathons, their feet are swelling. And especially I've seen this in women where we tend to swell tissues in my opinion, not scientifically-backed or anything but my observation is that women's feet swell more than men. And the size of the shoe is then way too small, especially in the toe box. And this often leads to pain on the top of the foot and the cutting off of circulation there. And I've seen problems with the shins and so on. Have you—is it a thing? Have you seen this sort of a trend as well, where they're going into the shop, and it's fitting in the shop on the day that they buy it, but when they're long-distance runners, that becomes a problem, especially when they're running under heat? Dr Colin: 100%. Yes, I mean, fatigue is one of those things that wrecks everything. But at the end of the day, when you're not fatigued, and you're ready to take a pair of shoes, and you're trying it on, you don't know how the inside of your ankle is gonna rub against that shoe until you've spent 30, 40, 50k in it to really understand what's happening there. So the idea that something is going to ‘break in’, in quotation marks is something that I like to try to shy away from as much as I possibly can. The biggest issue that we see from most people is they just fit them incorrectly, right? They fit them too short. And so if things do swell, if there's movement or any of that stuff, you're going to get problems along with the feet, whether it's friction and blisters or black toenails, or what have you. The length of that, and then especially the curve of the toes, makes such a big difference. And so, a lot of footwear stores these days might not carry the full breadth of width available. And so for instance, New Balance comes in ladies from a 2A to a 2E and everything else in between. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: So it comes in a 2A, and a B, and a D and then a 2E. So when you have to carry four widths of shoes from a size 5 to a size 13... Lisa: That’s expensive. Dr Colin: ...including half sizes, that's expensive. And that's only for one colour. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: Right? So when you think about that, you understand why you might not be able to find the full breadth of width in a lot of these things. Because shoe stores will have a hard time selling through and if they can't, they can't make money and stay open. So, but if you're one of those people that are on either end of the spectrum, then you need to find a place that will cater towards those kinds of things and that understand the nuances and the differences within brands. So, I mean I've seen people go up a full size in between different models of shoes within the same brand of a company. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: So, for instance, the New Balance 880 and the New Balance 840 fit completely different. The sock liner is three times as thick, the width is more, the toe spring is different, the heel drop is different, all of that stuff. And if you don't know how each one of those things interact with someone, then the potential for injury is just greater. Lisa: Wow. And yes, I can definitely relate to that having had—I've had many different sponsorship agreements over my career. And some of the companies, a couple of them, I had to actually leave because I just could not wear their shoes and they were so different in other ones that I just absolutely loved and were able to stick with. And I've got a very wide foot. And so I have to be in a men’s shoe. But when I was doing desert races in extreme heat in Death Valley and the likes, I had shoes that were two sizes too big for me. Dr Colin: Wow. Lisa: So, that's what I worked out was the sweet spot. So at that point, I wouldn't get the blisters and I wouldn't get the black toenails, and I wouldn't get the foot just swelling so much that it's boosting out the sides of the shoes and putting pressure on top of the foot and causing—and I've had it all awful shin problems by having that circulation cut off at the top of the foot. I remember a race I did in Germany 338 kilometres in five days. So, we're doing 70 kilometres a day. And after day one, my shoes were just way too tight. And by then the damage was done. And an old-timer, who was in the race, said to me, ‘Hey, you need to cut your socks and open your shoes right up'. And that was a piece of advice that I carried with me being from the norm because, and I ended up doing that very often. So even something like a pair of socks that is too tight around the ankle can cause shin problems. I mean, I've experienced that firsthand, and on the top of the funnel as well. So it really makes a heck of a difference, isn't it? Dr Colin: Oh, it's so does and you know, when you're looking at the trail shoes and things like that, the choices become even more frustrating. Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, let’s talk trail because what trail—we weren't as humans, like, we didn't evolve to run on concrete and pads. So what's your take on how bad is it to be running on roads and concrete versus the natural terrain of a trail so to speak? Dr Colin: Well, I mean, certainly the natural trait of a trail is going to be easier for you to run on versus concrete and asphalts and those types of things. And when we looked at the literature, and some of the research said that it's—there's been a lot of fun running research that's come out in the last 15 years. But a lot of our initial contact strategies, so whether you stride on your heel, your midfoot or your forefoot, a lot of it has to do with mitigating the force of that initial contact. And so if you're running on an incredibly hard surface, you might adapt to changing your initial contact to be able to mitigate those loads of that initial load. Whereas when you have a softer, spongier service to do on, you have a bit more leeway to be able to stride in a different pattern. And so for people who are rehabbing from injuries, yes, getting into something that's a little bit spongier is certainly going to be more forgiving. Now, you can take that all the way to running on the beach, and that causing some problems as well just from the increased biomechanics that that causes too. So to get back to my point where moderation. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: There's a time to spend time in the sand, and there's a time to spend time in the trail, and there's time to get on the road. Lisa: And this trend it transition times, like when the barefoot craze hurt when my friend Chris McDougall’s book came out Born to Run and it sort of revolutionised everybody's thinking was like, ‘We gotta go barefoot because Barefoot Ted was doing it’. And we saw a lot of injuries come out of that. And no, no, no detriment on the book. It was a fantastic book. But people just went too fast, too far too fast. And we really need a transition time if we wanting to go barefoot. Would you agree with that? Dr Colin: Oh, it's not a matter of me agreeing with it, that that's just a matter of scientific fact. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: I mean, if you want to go from—which so I do agree with it. To that end, yes. There's nothing that's going to increase your risk of getting hurt more than taking off your footwear and going for a barefoot run. If you're used to wearing a maximalist style of shoe, taking it off going barefoot for 21K, you'll be lucky if you don't come back with a stress fracture. And certainly, my practice has been a mirror of that, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I see injured runners all day every day. That's what I do. So, I like to joke that the greatest predictor of running injuries is running. But to that end, if you want to make these changes, I think they're great for people. And I think that they're able to make these changes in a proper informed way. And so even looking to what some of the scientific literature says they talk about a transition shoe specifically, right? If you're going to go from a regular 10 or 12 mil heel drop shoe to 4, 0, having a 6 to 8 mil transition shoe wouldn't be a bad idea. There's one company that will remain nameless that when they changed all their heel heights from 12 mil to 8 mil, and no one really understood what that meant. I can't tell you the number of Achilles problems and things that came into the clinic two years after that. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: Because making even that 4-millimetre change in someone who puts in 60 to 80 kilometres a week, and they're used to loading their tissues in a particular way when you all of a sudden change that with up to three times your bodyweight up to 10,000 steps, that's a huge change for your body all of a sudden. Lisa: Wow, that is insane. Just from a very small change. And look we all—lots of people just swap different shoes ‘Oh try those ones, or this time, I'll buy those’. Dr Colin: Yes, exactly. Lisa: And so is it—and this is the other thing, brands keep changing. Dr Colin: Yes, every season. Lisa: ‘Ugh, damn. It's something new, it was perfect. And now it's gone again, I can't get it’. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: So by a couple of pieces, when you do get something that's right. Dr Colin: 100%. But even that, don't let them sit on the shelves for more than two years. Lisa: Oh, okay. Why is it? Do they degrade after that you sort of leave them? Dr Colin: Actually the materials get stiff, the longer you leave them there. And so, that pair that felt really cushy a couple years ago, they let them sit for a couple of years, they're going to be harder... Lisa: Oh, gosh. Dr Colin: ...when you take them out of the box. Lisa: Oh, okay. Dr Colin: So you can't just let them sit for years on the shelf. Lisa: And onto that note. How many kilometres? Like, how often should you be changing? I've always said between six and 800 kilometres max, what's your take on that? Is there a new science around that? Dr Colin: Science is interesting when it comes to that. I mean, there isn't a lot of actual hard science on that. The soft science of it is to look at the bottoms of your shoes and see. If you're a heavier person, at your initial contact, and I don't mean heavy, like actually just a larger BMI. But some people, my wife is a light woman but she sounds like she's going to come through the floor, two floors down when she walks. And so she'll wear out the outsole of a shoe much faster than somebody who strikes the ground a little bit lighter. And so if you look at the bottoms of your footwear and let's say you're only 400K into a pair of shoes, but there's an angle now where the lugs are totally sheared off one side, that shoe was now forcing you to walk that way. And it's not helping your biomechanics at all. And so yes, I think as it—as a general rule, 6 to 800 kilometres is okay. But if you're not, if you're training on consecutive days, and if you're training in one pair of shoes, you're going to break down the EVA material much faster because that material needs about 36 hours to rebound fully, before it's ready to go again. But if you're training 24 hours, you're going to break down your shoe much faster. Lisa: Wow, that's a good point. I knew that. And I'd forgotten that fact. Thanks for reminding me of that because yes, alternating shoes on different days is something that I used to say, and I’ve forgotten completely about that one. So, that's a really good point. So, having a couple of pairs of shoes on the go, is a really, really good idea. Dr Colin: Yes, 100%. And to that end too we were talking about, with transition shoes, and whatnot, having them even a different heel heights for different types of running would also be great. I mean, so while you're doing a fartlek training, or tempo run, or a long day might be different than what your ratio is, or the all day everyday shoe. And so that little bit of variability, I think, is a really positive thing. When you get locked into one movement pattern all the time, then your body comes to predict that. And if you can get that little bit of variability where you're lengthening some days, you're shortening some days, you're doing different things, and your body is used to that, then you're going to be more adaptive. But if you lock into that one pattern, it's going to be so much harder to change. Lisa: That seems to be the thing for everything in biology column. It seems to be a push and pull in a variety. You don't want to starve for too long, you don't want to eat too much for too long, you don't want to be too cold or in a thermoneutral zone for too long, you want—the body wants variety change. Not the same diet every day, not the same everything every day, and just by varying things up, we're giving our body a chance to get what it needs, and to have that variation—that push and pull that biology in all levels that I've been looking at seems to be cycling things. Cycling diet, cycling supplements, cycling shoes, cycling, changing in variety keeps the body guessing and keeps it changing, and keeps it so it doesn't go, ‘I've got this. And it's a piece of cake'. Actually, I thought it just popped in my head. What do you think of Kipchoge shoes? The sub-two-hour marathon, the Nike shoes. Dr Colin: Oh, yes. Yes, I mean, wow, there—this is a fun time to be alive for nerds like myself. So yes, I mean, there's some really cool stuff that Nike’s doing in some of their footwear. And they're—I mean, one of the leaders. But I mean, everyone now is coming out with a carbon plated shoe, and really aggressive rockers, and a lot of this stuff from a performance standpoint. And it'll be interesting to see how it's controlled and how it's covered. And to what lengths can we go to be able to increase the performance of humans? We developed things like oxygen deprivation to be able to increase your red blood cell counts, to be able to increase your performance. Changes in footwear like this are not that dissimilar from that. It's just a question of, how much can we use them? And how does it work with you? Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: Yes, and what's gonna be legal. Lisa: And at the moment, it is, isn't it? Like it's... Dr Colin: It is. Lisa: Yes. And I had a friend, who's a holistic movement coach, I had on the show, actually, a few weeks ago talking about feet as well, the health of feet. And he said, ‘I didn't want to like those Kipchoge shoes', but I— because he's very much into barefoot when possible and developing strength in the feet. He said, ‘But I put’... Dr Colin: Well, that certainly is the opposite. Lisa: He said, ‘I have to admit, I run a hell of a lot faster when I'm soaked’. Dr Colin: Sure. Yes. But that comes back to the point of moderation, right? Is that there's a time for that shoe, just like there's a time to be barefoot. And it's using it in the appropriate fashion. Lisa: Wow, that's brilliant. And okay, let's talk about the knock-on effect of how the feet which have and you know this 100 times better than me, there's just a ton of nerves, a ton of bones as most complex structure that we have, the proprioception, and the connection between the brain is just so important that we actually have that neurofeedback from our feet. So, what sort of a fix do—what sort of things can we expect to have happen on a good side from proprioception when we're doing lots of activity? And we're doing lots of different movement types and varieties of training? And how does it help our brain? The brain-foot connection, I think, is what I'm trying to ask you here. Dr Colin: Well, I mean, anything that's going to make you more aware of what your foot’s doing in space is, again, only going to be a positive both from a balance and a performance perspective. It's striking to me that I can see some people perform incredible feats of athleticism, but then can't balance on one foot to do a pistol squat. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: Do you know what I mean? Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: Because they just don't have control over their ankle. And so when people think of their feet, that's one thing. But I mean, the actual foot itself, though, those deep intrinsic layers of muscles are more stabilisers than they are prime movers, right? The prime movers are going to be higher up in the leg, and the tendons of those larger muscles in the leg support the ankle, right? They're the ones that are tibialis posterior, and the perennials and the things that actually wrap around the ankle. So it's a matter of looking at the lower leg holistically, not just the foot itself. Yes, those little foot muscles are important. But I think oftentimes, some of the higher stuff up is overlooked as well as the actual prime movers and the actual real good stabilizers that way because those things are going to fatigue out relatively fast, and then you're left with the larger muscles to be able to do some of those things. But when you're not paying attention to one of those two, then you're going to get a mismatch in balance and performance. And so it's a matter of being able to look at more. It's about being able to use your abductor hallucis appropriately, being able to use all of those intrinsics to raise up your arch a bit and reduce some strain in your plantar fascia. I would never go as far as saying you're going to change the structure of your foot by making your foot muscles strong, but certainly, you're going to get a better grip on the ground and you're going to be able to use your feet like feet and not just like a meat slab that hit the ground to be able to get to the next step. Lisa: Yes, is it a bit like if I was to go around with gloves all day, and I wouldn't have the dexterity that I would need to do typing and learn to play an instrument or anything like that. Is that what's happening with our shoes, when we’re in shoes all day, every day, we're just taking away that connection to the brain and the brain's ability to be able to make those subtle adjustments with those little tiny muscles doing their thing? Dr Colin: You can look at it two different ways, right? Because one might say that yes, if you're barefoot and you know you've got skin on the ground, you are going to get a different sensation than if you have sock and then something else between you and the ground. Right? There's just different feedback when it comes to it. But to say that putting footwear on reduces your proprioception, or your sensation completely, is a bit of a misnomer. Because if you have something that's, let's say, a little bit squishier, and your foot’s moving around a bit more, well, that's also a signal to your brain too in terms of where to fire muscles, and how to fire muscles and using those muscles on top of it. So, I think we can go in both directions. And again, there is a time when it's going to be appropriate. And there's a time when you want to be barefoot and getting that sensory input in just a different fashion to say—because, at the end of the day, I just don't think it's realistic in the society that we live in that we're not going to be out of it completely. Lisa: We don’t want to come from class, and you know... Dr Colin: And so yes. So it's a matter of figuring out how to do that, in a fashion that's most appropriate, given the circumstances that you find yourself in. Lisa: A bit of a left-field question and a bit of a non-scientific well, oh well, there's probably stuff coming out now. What's your take on having though the connection to Mother Earth and grounding? And that type of thing, and being in the dirt, so to speak, and having the actual contact with the earth? Is there anything to that side of things? Or is it just no scientific data really around that? Dr Colin: There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, at the end of the day, and from a data and a science standpoint, I'm the first one to tell you that I'm not 100% up on that. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: But I was listening to another podcast. It was Ben Greenfield recently. Lisa: Yes, I like him. Dr Colin: Who was talking about some of—yes, yes, yes, same—as some of the science around that specifically. And I believe that there might be some science that has come out, I just haven't read it to be able to be up on it to be 100% honest with you. Lisa: Yes. I mean, I've heard various things and even like getting your hands on the dirt and gardening and how much of a good effect that can have on your body and your mind and your mood and things like that. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And I mean, we are in science starting to actually see why is it important to go out and have early morning sunlight and circadian rhythms and all of these sorts of things... Dr Colin: True, true. Lisa: ...and connection to the ground and the effects of the medicine, and I don't think we're there yet with all the science. But my take is—on that is yes, go out and spend 10 minutes a day with your hands and the dirt and connect with the ground. And if nothing, the being in nature is definitely going to calm you down and make you feel better. Dr Colin: 100%. Lisa: Yes, so that's already, I think—okay, so just looking at some most common running injuries before we sort of wrap up the call. If we can look at like plantar fasciitis and perhaps Achilles and calf muscle injuries and perhaps knees. It's a picture you will cover in a few minutes, isn't it? If we want, the second podcast, Dr Colin. Dr Colin: Yes. We can do a podcast on each one of those actually. Lisa: Well, actually, I think I will be getting you on because your knowledge is next level. Dr Colin: Thank you. Lisa: So let's talk a little bit about say Achilles. Dr Colin: Sure. Lisa: It's one of—it's a very common problem. Dr Colin: It is. Yes, yes, it really, really is. And Achilles is a difficult one. Again, depending on where things are at and what we know, whether it's insertional, or midportion, there are definitely are two different protocols when it comes to it. So, from the physio side whether you do eccentric loading, which is raising up on two feet, lowering down on one or whether you're doing a different kind of strengthening programme that really is sort of the physio side of that end of it, where I tend to come in on that and where I tend to see a lot of Achilles injuries are people who wind up changing the drop of their shoe too quickly. And so they're used to running in something that's either too low or too high and then make it an abrupt sudden change, or they change their running style too quickly. So, it's very common to see people who go—who are heel strikers who want to try forefoot running for the first time and if they do it improperly when you load the ground with your heel, I mean, yes, we know that if you overstride braking forces and everything else are really bad for you and smashing your heel into the ground might not be ideal for everybody. But if you're running on your forefoot, you're striking, your initial contact is with your forefoot, then you touch your heel. Then you push off your forefoot again, right? So, one is heel midfoot toe, one is forefoot heel, forefoot. So, to that end, you're going through a much larger cycle of Achilles loading. And so for some people, especially who—if gene, you were talking about genetics earlier, we know that there is a genetic predisposition for some people, or Achilles issues specifically if you're one of those people, then that can certainly be a bad thing if you do it too quickly. And so to that end, we talked about the very first thing we do is deload the Achilles. So using things like heel shoe, heel lifts, and footwear, to be able to, for a short period of time, take some of that load off the Achilles, allow it to heal and then gradually reloaded it as they've been working with their physio to be able to gain back strength and mobility and everything else. The one thing that I like to look at everybody who comes to my clinic because I think it's so incredibly important, is their ability to move their ankle appropriately because their calf musculature is flexible enough. Lisa: Yes. Dr Colin: And I'll get into trouble there because some people say, ‘It's not coming from your calf, it's coming from your hip'. It can be coming from your hip certainly if you have things that are changing your pelvic tilt, and it's lengthening your hamstring, and it's doing that, and then you're getting the effect of change that comes with it, it's a matter of just looking at it to understand where that change is coming from. But any ankle restriction in your range of motion can make you use your Achilles in a different way, the simplest way for your body to compensate for that is to out-toe and pronate more, well, you're going to get a rotational stress on your Achilles, for some people that's just going to be too much combined with the kind of running programme that they're doing. And so one thing to think about for sure. Lisa: Wow, this is like, you're a foot specialist, but you also need to have a really good understanding of the whole anatomy of the body really, don't you? Because you have to be a holistic in your approach because, and then this is one of the issues that I have with the medical world in general, now speaking is that they’re so siloed. If you've got a lung problem, you go to the lung specialist, or the pulmonary, if you've got a heart and then the ear, nose and throat are separate, and yet it's to do with your lungs, like, we need to have a holistic ‘Look At It systems’ in the body or the—not even systems, but the entire body, so everybody has to have it. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And it's difficult because you have to have a specialised education in feet, you can't be an expert in feet and an expert in hips. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: But you do need a general education to be able to understand: what the roles of the other therapists or doctors or whatever it is in order to have a good understanding. And I think that holistic approach were possible, into sort of disciplinary communication, is really, really important. Would you agree with it? Dr Colin: Oh, that's the only way that I work is multi-disciplinary. And so if there's one specialist that thinks that they can fix everything, then that usually makes me want to run away screaming. And because there's just isn't enough flexibility in your thinking to understand that, maybe what you're doing won't be enough for somebody. And again, can't tell you the number of people that come in to say, ‘I've seen my ex-specialists who said, there's nothing else that can be done. We get them back running within six weeks'. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: You know what I mean? It's only because we were flexible enough in our thinking to be able to say, ‘Yes, we're gonna change this little thing over here. That might be the thing that's going to get you back to what you want to be doing'. So, it’s so... Lisa: I could go in a rant on that, really. I could go on a rant about the amount of times that people have been told, ‘You can never run again'. I was told I would never run when I broke my back when I was a young lady. And that were wrong, 70,000 kilometres later. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: If I'd lifted up to so-called experts who, with my mother who had a massive brain aneurysm five years ago and who said that initial, ‘You’ll never have any quality of life again’. She's got massive brain damage. They were wrong. I spent five years rehabilitating her, but they were wrong, and she's completely normal again. So, it's not just accepting—what I think is important to realise is the limitations of your knowledge and saying, ‘Hey, I don't know, I'm at the end of my abilities'. You might have to look somewhere else, or outside the square, or try something else to talk, to so and so. Dr Colin: Yes. Lisa: And that's fine. That's good if we get there but not blanket saying, ‘Well, you can never run again because you've got a knee injury.’ The amount of times, amount of runners who have come on doctors said I should never run again because I've got some slight knee problems, and I was like, ‘Really?’ Dr Colin: Yes, no, I agree. So, a case in point in my own life, I have congenital arthritis. That's so bad. I had my first hip reconstruction at 17. Lisa: Wow. Dr Colin: That left me with a four-centimetre leg length discrepancy. So I've got some real orthopaedic problems. And was racing mountain bikes at almost the pro-level in Canada in downhill at the time, and wanted to pursue that. And I was told, ‘Never ride a bike again', this kind of stuff. And I'll be doing a half Ironman in Muskoka in July... Lisa: Wow. I love it. Dr Colin: ...25 years later. Lisa: Exactly. Dr Colin: So, ye
Many popular diets and exercise crazes assume that they're going to work on everyone who tries them. However, every human being is unique. Health isn't one-size-fits-all. What works for one person may not work for you — it might even be detrimental! That's why we need to personalise our health programs to suit different body types. Dr Cam McDonald joins us in this episode to discuss the importance of understanding your biology to personalise your health program. He talks about the role of genetics and epigenetics in determining your bodies' specific tendencies towards stress and food. We also delve into the different body types and what diets and exercises are most suitable for each one. Tune into this episode if you want to learn more about personalising your health program based on your genetic make-up. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one-to-one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles my mum Isobel’s inspiring journey of defying the odds after an aneurysm left her with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn why personalisation is important in creating a health program for different body types. Discover the role of genetics and epigenetics in determining your body’s specific tendencies. Find out what kinds of food and activities are most suitable for different body types. Resources Take the ph360 HealthType Test to discover your body type and get your Personalised Health Plan! Check out ph360’s website to learn more about their services on personalising your health program. Connect with Dr Cam: Website | Instagram | Linkedin | Email | Phone: 0411380566 Episode Highlights [01:31] Why Personalisation Is Key Every individual is different, but we keep applying the same health approaches to everyone. Misalignment between the body and its environment causes diseases. Personalising your health helps you align yourself with your environment. [06:45] The Science of Chronobiology Chronobiology is how our biology interacts with time. Examples of chronobiological processes are our circadian rhythm, menstrual cycle, and ageing. Our bodies have a rhythm that follows along with sunlight. When people are active at night, it disrupts their system. This disruption creates hormonal irregularities, leading to diseases. Listen to the full episode to learn more about chronobiological processes and how they affect our health. [18:24] The Genetic and Epigenetic Component of Circadian Rhythms People have different chronotypes which are based on when their bodies can tolerate stress. Some people are ‘Activators’. Their bodies respond best to adrenal systems. In turn, they have energy that matches their strength throughout the day. ‘Diplomats’ have bodies that respond better to their digestive and nervous systems. These people are more at risk for fluid retention, tiredness, and weight gain. Muscle and fat production relies on the hormones stimulated by food and exercise. [27:50] About Food Timing ‘Crusaders’ have bodies that are neurally-driven and are not prone to obesity. Because Crusaders are more likely to lose muscle, they are recommended to eat several small meals per day. ‘Guardians’ have thick joints and big muscles. However, they also have the greatest capacity to store fat. Guardians are recommended to have two meals per day (breakfast and lunch) and a very light, if not non-existent, dinner. [38:41] Intermittent Fasting for Crusaders and Guardians Because Crusaders are always on the edge of their fuel supply, intermittent fasting will impact their stress levels more. Crusaders should only do one day of intermittent fasting per week. Guardians, however, can go for extended periods of fasting because their rhythms are slower. Being in a peaceful environment helps manage stress levels and makes intermittent fasting more tolerable. Intermittent fasting and autophagy do not necessarily work for all. [45:08] More About the Guardian Body Type Because Guardians have strong and resilient bodies, they’re more likely to survive if there were a lack of food supply. A Guardian’s body is that way because in nature, they protect their community. ‘Sensors’, another ectomorph body type like the Crusaders, prefer nutrient-dense foods like vegetables. Guardians, however, like high-calorie foods more because they provide a feeling of safety. [54:48] Dominant Hormones for Different Body Types The dominant hormone for Guardians is prolactin—a ‘caring’ hormone. Diplomats search for a balance in serotonin—a hormone that you get as a reward for pleasurable things. This makes them assess an activity carefully if it’s going to be rewarding. Activators search for adrenaline, so they always want excitement and action. Crusaders' dominant hormone is dopamine, which creates drive and focus. Listen to the full episode to learn more about the different body types (like ‘Connectors’ and ‘Sensors’) and their dominant hormones. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘We know that everyone's different, but then when we go to actually doing the thing, we apply the average, or we apply what we think is appropriate thinking that everybody else is the same. So we have this disconnect between knowledge and action.’ ‘The mind is also on a clock of its own. Essentially, if you're exercising at the wrong time, you set up the wrong kinds of hormones, then you can actually create complete stasis in your health.’ ‘There’s a full continuum of where people are. This is based on not just their wants to wake up. . . it’s actually as to when a body can tolerate stress, and how that stress should be placed on them.’ ‘Whether you put muscle or fat tissue on, it's actually not to do with your food or your exercise, it's got to do with the hormones that those foods and exercise stimulate.’ ‘It's not a one size fits all when you hear everybody talking about intermittent fasting or doing these things—autophagy, inhibiting mTOR, and all those sorts of things.’ 'The reason that their (Guardians') body is built the way it is is [because] when we go through famine as a community, their body goes into conservation. They essentially start growing, or they start slowing down their metabolism so that they can provide food for everybody else.' ‘If you put your body in the right environment, get the right foods, eat at the right times of the day, work and do your mental stuff, you'll get health and you'll get optimal performance and you'll get longevity.’ About Dr Cam McDonald Dr Cam McDonald has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills to promote health in an easy and obvious way for people in all areas of life. He’s a dietitian and exercise physiologist, with a long-standing personal passion for health, genetics and environmental influences. His goal is to support all people to live up to their full physical potential. Dr Cam has a firm focus on people becoming more aware of themselves, their natural strengths and their optimal behaviours for their best health. He is an informed speaker who has a passion for health and the inspiration to do something about it. Want to know more about Dr Cam’s work? Check out his website or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin. You can also reach him through email (cam.mcdonald1@gmail.com) or phone (0411380566). Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can find out the right way to eat, diet, and exercise for their body type. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of The Episode Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. Today I have another very special guest, also a repeat offender on the show: Dr Cam McDonald, who is the CEO of ph360 in Australia. He is a exercise physiologist, as well as a nutritionist. This guy's a bit of an overachiever, as are many of my guests, It might add. And Dr Cam has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills so as to promote health in a way that makes it easy and obvious for his clients. So Dr Cams blends his background as a dietitian and exercise physiologist with his long standing personal interest in health, and his passion for understanding the latest research in genetics, and environmental influence on health. Now, Dr Cam is one of my teachers, and he is a mind full of information on the way your genes and how your genes are expressing. So today we're going to be talking about all about genes, again, personalized health, how you can tailor things to your personal situation and your personal life. Before we go over to the show, I just want to remind you, if you want to check out our Epigenetics Program, please go to lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and then you'll see all of our programs. And one of those is our epigenetics health optimisation program, which is all based on your genetics. And so you can understand and learn how to optimise your potential, your health, your performance, your diet, your exercise regime, and so much more. So check that out, especially after listening to this podcast, you're gonna want to check that out. So make sure you go to lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and check out our epigenetics program. I'd also like you to check out our running program, if you are a runner out there and you haven't got a coach and you don't know where to go and you haven't got a structure. Maybe you're doing your first five K's, maybe you're just starting out, maybe doing 100 miler, I don't care, we take them all. We do customize, personalized plans, based on your needs, your lifestyle, your injuries, your goals, and make that specifically for you. We also do a full video analysis to help you improve your form. And you get a one on one consult with me. And then ongoing support with the team. So please check that out. Check out the package, runninghotcoaching.com. runninghotcoaching.com is the place to go to, there. And check out our running program. Right now over to the show with Dr Cam McDonald for a very exciting interview. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. I'm super excited to have you here with me again. Today, I have another superstar, Dr Cam McDonald, all the way from Australia. And he is one of our mentors and teachers here. He is the CEO of ph360.me. So people are listening out there, you've probably heard one or two episodes where we've talked about genetics and epigenetics and how to understand your genes. Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. And Dr Cam is an absolute expert on this. So welcome to the show, Dr Cam. Dr Cam McDonald: Thanks, Lisa. Lisa: Great to have you again. Dr Cam: It's great to be here. It's been a long time between chats, but there's been an awful lot of interaction between. It's always been great. Lisa: Yes, so you're our repeat offender on the show. But I think it was a good couple of years ago now. So I mean, meanwhile, we've dived deep into the world of epigenetics with you and learned from you and learned a ton of stuff. Way overdue that we had this conversation and started to share a little bit of your knowledge and the amazing things that we can now do with genetics and understanding how we run. So everything in regards to epigenetics and genetics is all about personalising everything to your specific set of genes. And this has really been a game-changer for us personally and professionally, for our athletes, for people that we're working with, in the corporate setting and everything because everything should be personalised now, shouldn't it? Should we start there? I think that's a good place. Why is personalisation key? Dr Cam: Yes, I mean there's a number of reasons why we definitely should be personalising. But the first is that we actually have the knowledge now, that's one thing. We have an understanding of how we can actually do this. I guess for our long history, and I guess for the history of the people that are alive, the people listening to this right now, we always know innately, ‘I'm different to that person’. But then, when we go to recommendations. And when we go to how we go about our life, whether it be the job that we're sitting in, it's like, ‘You have to do this job in this way’ or ‘You can't do that great. We'll get someone else to do this job this way’. Like you must do this job this way. You must, ‘Oh, you're going to get fit? Great? You go to this gym, and you do this boot camp. Everyone goes to this boot camp because that's what is going to be great for everyone because the latest science says this’. And when it comes to food, it's like ‘You should definitely do this because this is what the average of everyone should do’. And so we know that everyone's different. But then when we go to actually doing the thing, we apply the average or we apply what we think is appropriate thinking that everybody else is the same. So we have this disconnect between knowledge and action. And so why we need to? I guess what we know now is that the timing of your food, the timing of your exercise, the type of exercise or foods that you're consuming, the type of work that you're doing, the types of interactions that you're having, if you don't get that right, it creates disease. If you align your body with its environment, then your body goes into a healing and recovery state, and you get healthier. But if you misalign, and that can just be getting up at the wrong time, and we see this with shift workers all the time—the longer that they do shift work, the more likely they are to die prematurely. And this is when you get a misalignment with the body and the environment. But the really incredible thing is now, it's not just that we all should avoid shift work, it's rather that some people are going to be better suited to it than others. And when it comes to every other domain of life, there's going to be something that is great for one person. Like a big Gatorade is going to be the best thing ever for a runner during their race for it’s in the mean of best thing ever, and I'm not attached to Gatorade as a brand. But let's say that you have some sort of electrolyte fluid as a drink. And that's going to be fantastic for a marathon runner 30K's in versus a person who's been sitting on the couch for the last six years and has a significant waist circumference and diabetes. Lisa: Disaster. Dr Cam: That drink is diabolical. And so, when we start thinking about personalisation, we start thinking about, well, ‘What's going to help this person align and perform’? Because if you misalign, it creates disease. So that's another motivation. And then I guess, as I started, we now have the understanding of how people are different, what people need to do about it, and we've got some really wonderful results on if we apply that to these individuals, they're going to get a great result for themselves. It's now the time that we can act on this innate knowledge that we've always had but do it in a very intelligent way. Lisa: And do it in a very structured way. A great example of this is that the whole fitness industry was really run by people with a certain type of genetic combinations. And so we trained, and I belong in that group, and you belong in that particular group. We train people we like to train and how we see benefits. We see benefits from the way that we train—high-intensity workouts and getting up early and training. Well, that suits you and me, right, Dr Cam? Because we're very close on the epigenetics wheel, if you like, have similar genetic makeup. So that works for us. Whereas it doesn't work for someone on the other side, so who's more that of the endomorph type of body. So I've used this example before, but my husband, I used to make him get up at five or six in the morning and do a CrossFit workout when he's what they call a Diplomat. And now in that terms, which means he has a different set of genetics, basically, that is not suited to getting up at that time and doing that type of workout. Both are wrong for him. From a chronobiological perspective, he should be in bed because his testosterone, his hormones are doing their thing at that time in the morning. So that was a problem. Number two, I had him doing a type of exercise that was wrong for his body type. His ATP doesn't replace as quickly, and his cells are doing back-to-back sets just seem to map on a stress reaction. So his cortisol would be up, and then it would be up for the rest of the day. And what have I done to my poor husband? I've made him actually put on weight and not get further and feel like crap all day. So whereas for me, that same class, that same set of exercises, that same time of the day, perfect, and I'm good to go, and I'm really rearing to go. So that just gives you a little bit of an example. So today, let's look at chronobiology because this is all about at the timings of when to do what. So can you explain what the science of chronobiology is, Dr Cam, and how it applies in this situation? Dr Cam: Yes, absolutely. So chronobiology is how our biology interacts with time. And we know about this because we all get older—that's a chronobiological effect, is that we get older. But what's really interesting as well is that within because of the sun, and it's showing its face every day or so. It comes along at about 6 am and then leaves at about 6 pm whatever it might be. Because we've been living on this planet with this big stimulant from the sky, essentially our bodies have got adapted to things happening in a rhythm. And so, it's just like we wake up, and then we go to bed, we wake up and then, that's a daily rhythm. We have a menstrual cycle. We have ovulation. We go through the menstrual period, and that happens on a 30-day cycle. We then have our early life. We have our middle age, and we have our later life. That's another cycle. Even a yearly cycle as well, we have the circannual cycle. And so, we have seasons. So winter, it gets colder, and our body does different things. And so, essentially, now that we understand that we got these different patterns of time that are occurring, our body is constantly responding to cues from the outside. And so where this work first came about was they started looking at shift workers instead of wondering why all of these people were getting so much more cardiovascular disease, diabetes. And they found that if you're waking up at night, and you're getting lots of light, and you're getting food at night as well—all of those things, tell your body, ‘Hey, you should be awake’. And so it wakes the body up. But you've got this momentum of a cycle that's coming from generations of being exposed to the sun and sleeping at night, and all of our physiological systems are actually setting up for us to sleep at night and rest and recover and do a whole lot of things that definitely don't require doing heavy work or digesting food as much. And so we get this disruption. We get things happening and things being signalled to the body that shouldn't be signalled at that time, which creates irregularity in the hormones that flow through our body. Our cortisol, our melatonin, our testosterone levels, our adrenal levels—all of those things get shifted out of whack when we give ourselves an artificial time input. So we want to—essentially, the first and foremost, the first thing that we gauge what time it is is what amount of light we have. Lisa: How much light, yes. Dr Cam: Yes, and then when we get—when the sun comes up in the morning, it sets off this cascade of wakefulness. It takes us from dead asleep to awake in a very short period of time. There's a big hormonal shift that occurs to make that happen, and it maps into sunlight. And so, as we go through the day, we have this homeostatic drive of ‘The longer that I'm awake, the more I want to go to sleep’. That's a natural thing that we have. The more that you run, the more that you want to stop is another way of thinking about this one. So we have this—as the day goes on, you get more tired. And we then also have these rhythmical changes. Essentially, it's not the homeostatic drive for tiredness, but the circadian drive of tiredness, and you'll have peaks in your day, or maybe in the afternoon, you're firing. Other people are really, really tired that they wake back up at night. Some people are really energised in the morning. We have all of these different things that are happening throughout the day as well. So to simplify all of this, our body is designed to rouse with early morning light or rears with light. We then are meant to—essentially, our body is searching for the rhythm that suits our body. And what's really interesting, if you take light away from somebody—and I know I'm jumping all over the place, but I will bring this all together. So if you take light away from somebody. A great guy did an experiment on this way back in the day. He sat in a cave for a couple of months and with no changes in light at all, just exactly the same ambient light the whole time. And what happened was, his rhythm went to 24 and a half hours for a daily period. So what happens is, if we were to not have any sunlight input, we would run on a 24 and a half-hour cycle. And the was out of sync by a few days after a couple of months. Lisa: After a couple of months. Dr Cam: He actually—and he thought it was only a month that passed, it was two months that passed. His time really—oh no he thought it was three months that passed. It was only a couple months because time really slowed down. And so what we know is that inside our body, we have a rhythm. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: But that gets reset every day with the sunlight. And so, and it actually keeps us on track with the hormones that have been flowing as a result of that sunlight. So sunlight is one time giver. And if we disrupt that, it creates lots of disease in that shift work. Not only does your waist circumference get bigger the more shift work you do, all of the risks—cancer, diabetes, heart disease—increases the longer you do shift work. Lisa: Wow. Wow. Dr Cam: And what we see is if you disrupt a body for three days with bright light at night, they start looking like they get diabetes. Their insulin resistance changes. Lisa: Instantly? Dr Cam: Within a few days, you can start disrupting these cycles of hormones, which makes your body say, ‘Well, there's something wrong with this environment. Why am I awake at a time where I shouldn't be? Well, there must be something wrong. Therefore, I'm going to start conserving. I'm going to start going into a stressed state so that I can escape and protect myself’, and diabetes is just the ultimate protection—starvation protection that makes you gain weight very easily. And so, after a few days, four days, you can actually start seeing some changes in metabolism if you're out of sync with your sleep alone, then four days to correct it. So you can actually get back on track very quickly. Now, light isn't the only time giver, there is also heat that you have in your body. Food is also a time giver. Exercise is also a time giver. And so if you eat regularly at the same time each day, your body will start falling into a rhythm of ‘I expect food’, and this is what happens when you change your diet. Some people go from six meals a day to two. Let's say they're doing some fasting or something like that. They'll be really, really hungry at the times that they were eating when they're doing six meals a day for about a week. Then what happens is each cell in our body has its own timekeeper as well. The master clock is coming from the sunlight, and then each tissue in our body has its own timekeeper. And so our gut takes about a week to correct itself, and then it starts getting on track with the new routine, and so then, it starts setting up for the new routine. Therefore food, it gives time to the body, it actually gives the schedule. And along with that food intake comes insulin release, hormone release, all of those types of things. But then the really important thing we need to consider is if you don't stimulate the body at the right time to get the right hormonal outflow, you start going into disease. And so, if you're eating food at the wrong time, you're stimulating these hormones just as if you were not sleeping at the right time. If you're exercising at the wrong time. Let’s some bodies are really, really well adept at tolerating stress in the morning. If you exercise, that's a stress. Lisa: Yep. Dr Cam: You give your body that ‘Stress is coming now’. And if you do that regularly, your body's gonna say, ‘Okay, stress is coming now’. It prepares itself, and it deals with it quite well. But then if you take a night owl, and you give them that same stress in the morning, it gives them the time of stress in the morning, but their body is not set up for stress at that time of day. And so they start trying to compensate later through weight gains, like ‘I spent all of this energy at the time that I didn't want to. I wasn't set up for it, so I'm going to have to conserve my energy because something's wrong’. Lisa: That’s what I was doing to the husband. Dr Cam: Yes, absolutely. So what you see in a practical sense—and I'll just say one more thing as well, that the mind is also on a clock of its own. And essentially, if you're exercising at the wrong time, you set up the wrong kinds of hormones, and you can actually create complete status in your health. As in it doesn't get any better even though you're working really, really hard or can sometimes take you backwards. And we're seeing this with some diabetes now is really high-intensity exercise in the morning, in some studies is indicating worsened blood sugar levels at the end of the day because everybody goes into survival of ‘Oh, this environment is really stressful’. So where you position things in your day… Lisa: It’s crucial. Dr Cam: ...sets a rhythm. But if that rhythm doesn't align with what your body needs in order to be in its best health, then it creates disease. And that disease, obviously, tracks down pathways of compensation and stress, and you end up with a body that has been getting up eating five meals per day, has been doing the early morning exercise, just like your husband. Lisa: Yes. They’re getting nothing out of it. Dr Cam: And because they’re putting stress out in the morning, they're giving them too much insulin response throughout the day because their bodies just not designed to get five hits of it throughout the day. Some bodies are, some bodies are. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: After 12 weeks, they've gained a kilo and got a bad knee. And they're wondering, ‘What the hell is going on’? Lisa: And they've been a super disciplined person getting up. And I mean, just to give you a couple of examples of the set of my life because I like to put things into stories. Dr Cam: Yes, please. Lisa: So that people actually get the science. Six months ago I went through this terrible time with my dad, who was unfortunately dying and passed away in July. In the 16 days that we were in the hospital battling for his life, I was round the clock with him. Now my blood sugar levels went through the roof. So afterwards, I was showing like diabetic levels of blood sugars—fasting blood sugars because I was so out of whack and so stressed alongside of it. And it took me a good two to three months for me to get my body back into rhythm. So that was just 16 days of sleep deprivation, being up all night, hardly any food, in this case, was actually sharp throwing my blood sugar's up through the roof and the stress hormones that were coming out. So that's a really extreme example. And obviously, that was for a specific purpose. And I've seen this also with ultramarathons that I've done, that I've been going for days on end. You would think that a person who was exercising 24/7, around the clock, sort of thing for not seven, but let’s say two, three days, that they would lose massive amounts of weight, and so on. And I would actually put on weight when I did ultramarathon. So I typically lose it initially, and then I would have all this weight gain. And then I would have this response. And within a month, I would be usually heavier than when I started, which was really frustrating. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: So this stuff matters, and this stuff is really, really important. And I've done podcast episodes already on circadian rhythms in regards to light and why we need to block out blue light at night time because, again, that's giving us a signal to stay awake and stopping our melatonin production. And the example there with the cortisol, right? We want cortisol. We want these stress hormones at the right times of the day. So there is also a genetic component to this. And this is where, what we do at ph360, and what we find out in the programme that we run is looking at your specific genes in relation to circadian rhythms. Can you explain a little bit? So why is it for my husband that if he gets up at 5 am and does that, that's not good for him? Whereas for my body type, that's not so bad? Dr Cam: Yes, sure. So when we're talking about this, there is a genetic component, and I guess what we're going to be talking about today and what we've kind of alluded to is that there's also an epigenetic component. And so when we talk about chronotypes, and whether someone's an early bird, a night owl, or an intermediate type, or somewhere in between because there's a full continuum of where people are. This is based on not just their wants to wake up, not just that ‘I can wake up’, I'd prefer to sleep in’, or ‘I'd prefer to wake up early’. It's not necessarily that. It's actually as to when a body can tolerate stress and how that stress should be placed on them. And in our body, at all times, there is a system of stress and then recovery, and it's that balance that we're trying to fluctuate through with our rhythms throughout the day. That's actually what the rhythms protect is that stress-to-recovery balance. So waking and then sleeping and then eat and then rest or, move, eat, rest, all of those types of things. So, we have individuals that as they're developing in the womb, they get a heightened sensitivity to testosterone, they have a greater development of their adrenal system and their response to adrenaline, and that's due to embryological epigenetic factors. And to make that simple is that there's different tissues that are developing in the womb, obviously, that make up our body. Depending on the genes that you have and in the environment in the womb, you will give more dominance to certain tissues. And this particular person, they called the Activator in our ph360 circle. The Activators have, they develop the tissues more dominantly that are related to the muscle, the skeleton, the testosterone, and the reproductive glands, adrenal glands, kidneys. And so as they develop throughout their life, these hormones and these tissues have more dominance than the other tissues. And so, I'll give another example just to give a comparison in a second. So if you've got a body that's more sensitive to testosterone, it also has a slightly stronger adrenal system. And Lisa is a perfect example of that, and I'm not too far from that. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: And essentially, what this body does really well is that it responds to that adrenal system very powerfully. And first thing in the morning is when your adrenal system is the strongest. This is when you get the biggest glucocorticoid release that's your cortisol and your adrenalines. And essentially, it's to say, ‘Hey, you were dead asleep, and now you need to be awake’. And because they've got tissues that are also ready for that, they even take that energy. And if they use their adrenal system at that time, it matches their strength. This is what they've grown to be strong in. And so it matches their strength to be really great at this. And so, when they use it, it aligns with what their body is looking for. And then they ride that energy all the way through to the end of the day. And this is because we've put the right body into the right environment at the right time. However, a Diplomat, which is the opposite side of the circle, and what we see with embryological development is, on a circle, opposite sides, you'll see opposite effects. And so, instead of it being the adrenal system and the testosterone system that's really sensitive within the body, the other body, we actually see their digestive system and their neuro system being more developed and more sensitive. And so what's happening in digestion in the morning is that it's, essentially, it's regulating where all the fluid is going to go in the body. It's finishing off these really important digestive processes, clearing out the digestion, making sure that the gut is rested and ready for new meals. And it's doing that right up until 7am. And so this body is having to focus all of its energy on its digestive system because that's the really important system for this body. And if you then stress this body, what happens is it goes, ‘Well, I was trying to put water into the right place, I was trying to get my digestion on track, and I'm running all of a sudden’? Lisa: You’re just taking what. Yes. Dr Cam: ‘Like this does not match at all. I don't need adrenaline right now. This is bad news’. And so what happens is the body then goes into compensation. It says, ‘Oh, God. Well, I'm gonna have to make up for this later. I've spent all of this fluid of sweat. I've used all of this energy’. And so this body goes, ‘Well, I didn't get time to put my fluid away, so where is it? Okay, I'm going to retain fluid now’, because, and this is exactly what happened in that body. Lisa: You’ve put on weight. Dr Cam: You have enough cortisol at the wrong time. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: They make that retaining fluid. And this is exactly what's happening—they get the adrenal burst in the morning, but if they then run with that with some morning exercise, it becomes too much for their system. They can't then do those digestive processes. Their gut goes off, which influences their serotonin production, which makes them less happy. Lisa: Wow. Dr Cam: What's really interesting with this kind of crowd is that the things that we'll see is an individual wakes up, like I said before, we'll get up, and they'll do their exercise. And what they'll notice is they start getting this bit of weight around the middle. Lisa: Around the middle. Dr Cam: And they'll also start accumulating fluid. They'll get a halo effect from exercise of two to three hours because their stress levels actually stay a lot higher for a lot longer because they shouldn't be stressed at that time. So they get this, and stress hormones make you feel alive, and they make you feel awake. And so, for the first three hours of the day, you're going, ‘Yes, I'm an early bird. This is awesome’, and then come lunch, it crashes really, really hard. And you also become more diabetic in the afternoon, for lack of a better term, more insulin resistance. Lisa: Insulin resistance Dr Cam: Yes. And so, this individual has been working their guts out literally, and all they've got is more fluid retention, tightness in the afternoon, weight gain around the middle, which is the thing that they're doing exercise for. Lisa: They’re stuck. Dr Cam: And if they just shift that exercise later in the day when their body is ready for movement because this body likes to conserve energy in the morning, make sure everything is sorted in their body, and then they can move in the stress and all that sort of stuff in the afternoon. And if they do that, there's no cortisol rise to the same extent. They have much lower cortisol all day, which means they don't deposit fat around their stomach. Lisa: Because cortisol is a real effect on… Dr Cam: Huge one. And this particular body, absolutely, because it's the opposite of the Activator, the Diplomat is, they don't like their cortisol so high. They like things to be cruisy and peaceful and steady as opposed to high-intensity and… Exactly. And so, whenever you put this body into this thing at the wrong time, you end up with this adverse effect. And you start questioning yourself, it's like, ‘What the hell could I be doing better? I'm waking up, I'm getting my food in…’ Lisa: ‘I’m useless’. Dr Cam: ‘...I’m doing the things I’m supposed to do, and then I'm crashing in the afternoon’. And all of a sudden, now they're having three or four coffees, which is just another stimulant of cortisol. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: And then they worsen the effect. And so we see for this person, if they just sleep in, they actually start losing weight faster than if they exercise. And this is… Lisa: So counterintuitive. Dr Cam: So counterintuitive. But when you think that whether you put muscle or fat tissue on, it’s actually—not to do with your food or your exercise, it's got to do with the hormones that those foods and exercise stimulate. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: You don't grow muscle from protein alone. Because we'll see people in hospital who are malnourished, and we're feeding them lots of protein and they just burn then they lose weight. What we're trying to do is we need to modify the hormones. And if we get the right rhythm to our day—cortisol is acting, testosterone is acting at the right time, growth hormone is acting at the right time—if we were able to match our day with our hormone release that's relevant to us, then our body is able to—anytime that it gets some protein, is able to put it to work rather than burn it off in stress. Lisa: Wow. Dr Cam: And the same thing with exercise. If you do exercise stress at the right time, you stimulate the right growth hormones, which like in ultramarathon running, and I use this example all the time, it's just so appropriate right now. If you run for three days, are your muscles bigger by the end of the three days? Lisa: Hell, no Dr Cam: Exactly. They’re broken down. Exercise is a stress, and it just stimulates your body to say, ‘You need to be stronger here’. So this is where—whenever you're thinking about exercise and food, you've got to be thinking about ‘What hormones am I modulating here? And what hormones do I need right now’? And that's the information that we can have. Just two very simple examples that we provided before. Lisa: Yes, and this is why this information in the programme that we do is so powerful because it gives you that specific information along with a ton of other things about what time to do things and when, in optimising your whole daily rhythms. But it isn't just about exercises, it is also about the food timing. So let's look at a little bit into the food timings and then also the whole neurotransmitter side of things. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: Like when am I going to get the best out of my brain? All that type of stuff as well. So from a food perspective. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: So you and I are Crusader. I'm a Crusader-Activator on the cusp there, means four to six meals a day is ideal for us or regular food. My mum's a Guardian. Opposite end of the wheel, again. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: Two to three meals a day, ideal. That doesn't mean that you and I can't do intermittent fasting. That doesn't, by the way. We can still do that and get the benefits of autophagy and stuff, but it's a shorter fast from what I worked on. Dr Cam: That's exactly right. Lisa: Yes Dr Cam: Yes. And that's the perfect—I was actually going to use those two examples for that, Lisa. Spot on. So we've got Activators and Diplomats, which we’ve spoken about. Then, we got the Crusaders and the Guardians. So Crusaders are, essentially, Lisa’s a really good example, I’m a good example. Generally slight like a soccer player—taller, leaner, slender. And one of the features of their body is that they're very neurally-driven. So as opposed to adrenaline and testosterone, as opposed to digestive, the Crusaders are very neurally-driven. Everything is about mental focus, mental drive, and creation of hormones that allow you to keep driving forward. And you see these types of people in triathlons and marathons and anything that requires that long-term high-intensity focus. Now, with this body, not prone at all to obesity. You have to really, really really push with bad habits to get this body to a level of obesity versus the Guardian. Naturally, this is your strongest, thickest jointed, biggest muscled, and also, they have the greatest capacity to store fat. So anyone that you see at powerlifting or in shot put or in those power sports, like the world's strongest men. Oprah is a good example of a Guardian. This is a body that's just more substantial. And so what's really interesting about these two bodies is that—and I guess the most relevant one, we can start with the Guardian because it's kind of interesting. And then we'll come back to the Crusader, which is more—the most appropriate for general healthy guidelines than any other one. Lisa: So we run the show as far as… Dr Cam: We have the other types. Lisa: ...we have told everybody how to do it all wrong. Dr Cam: Well, and what's really interesting is that our bodies—because we're unlikely to be obese just with the way our body is made up. That's not good or bad. We die from other things, by the way. We may not die from diabetes.But we might get... Lisa: What can else haunt us? Dr Cam: Exactly. Yes. There’s Parkinson's or something not so pleasant like that. So essentially, when we're feeding a Guardian, they've got a body, they walk past a bakery, and they smell it, and they gain weight. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: They have this ability of just accumulating mass at all times. But they have these hormones in their body, and they're more sensitive to prolactin, and they produce more insulin. And these hormones are growth hormones. They make you grow. And so, they have an abundance of these things going on. They have a slightly slower thyroid, which means that they are able to conserve weight very easily. And what's really interesting, psychologically, they're being driven to care for people. So they have the most ability to conserve energy and the most ability to nurture. So you have these big, strong protective individuals. Now what's really interesting with the timing of food, they’re recommended to have two meals per day, breakfast and lunch and then a very, very light, if not, non-existent dinner. Now, the reason that we do that, particularly with Guardians who are feeling like they wanting to—because this is the body that's most prone to excess weight gain as well. They'll be healthy and obese, but they can also really extend out past that unhealthy obese as well. And so, what happens overnight is your prolactin and your growth hormones, even insulin release, all of these things are greatest overnight. And the reason for that is when we're sleeping, it’s the best time for our recovery. And so all of these hormones that are associated with growth are the response to the day of spending energy. ‘I spend all this energy. I burn. I then have to recover’. Now, what's really interesting about the Guardians is that they have like a supercharged ability to grow overnight. And both protein and carbohydrates stimulate growth in different ways, and it's modulated through—insulin is a really great growth factor. It's one of the hormones that are involved. Essentially, if Guardians have a really big protein-carbohydrate meal at night, they get all of these growth factors at a time that they're about to have their biggest growth of the day. Lisa: Growth anyway. Yes. Dr Cam: And this is a body that all they do is grow really well. They actually have a different rhythm that's not as catabolic, or doesn't break down as easily. In fact, it's quite anabolic by nature, it grows very easily. When they get stressed, they grow. And so what we want to do is to help this person rather than top up their blood sugar levels, rather than give them protein to feel full, it's actually—these individuals don't get that hungry that often if they're eating the right types of foods. Essentially, what we see is if we can remove the proteins, carbohydrates, and even the fats at night and have a very light dinner and on sort of that time-restricted feeding, I say, is the way that you can think about it, but it's an early window for the day. What we do is we drop those growth hormones and the growth factors, I should say. We allow their digestive system to do a whole lot more recovery overnight. They'll wake up the next day feeling so much lighter. But we also haven't triggered off their key growth factors, which they already have plenty of anyway.And so all of a sudden, now, instead of growing excess overnight, they're able to start just recovering other systems and processes in their body. And particularly when you're getting the breakfast and getting the lunch, you're creating stability in their system, then you're just taking away their growth stimulus at night, and they can start losing weight. And what's really fascinating about this, the studies that have shown this is if you can take people with diabetes, you give them six meals per day of 1400 calories, or you give them two meals per day of 1400 calories—breakfast and lunch. And what you see is a one-kilo weight loss for the six meals per day and a five-kilo weight loss for the two meals a day. Lisa: Massive on the same amount of calories. Dr Cam: Exactly the same macros, exactly the same calories, it's just that we're changing when it's coming into the body. Lisa: So these people shouldn't be doing a morning intermittent fast. They should be doing a stop at six o'clock eating type thing. Dr Cam: Even five. Lisa: Even five. Dr Cam: But really, it's about two meals. And if those two meals can be earlier, that's going to be better. And with lunch, is a time when we really tolerate foods very well. There’s a lot of systems that are really supporting us. That's actually a time when the meal can be most substantial as well. And so, this is what's really important if we're thinking about, let's say, reversing diabetes, for example. If we give someone six meals per day, it almost prevents us from doing that. Lisa: Wow, so you just can't fix it as you’re just getting it a spot. Dr Cam: And it is why there are so many issues with so many, the dietary protocols out there because so many of that predicated on three meals and two snacks for this body. However, for the Crusaders… Lisa: For us. Dr Cam: ...which is the opposite function, they are much more likely to lose weight than gain weight. Obviously, in your exception, it's different when you're running ultramarathons. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: But we're more likely to wither and lose muscle, as opposed to the Guardian that's more likely to accumulate and gain. And so what food has to do for a Crusader is provide energy so that they don't break down. Because food is that important for recovery, and we will... Lisa: And we’re catabolic by nature. Dr Cam: Exactly. Food is designed to provide growth to a body that would otherwise be breaking down. And so when we see the need for regular three meals and two snacks throughout the day, and dinner can actually be relatively substantial because overnight, you want this body to take advantage of the recovery. Because if they don't get enough growth, then their immune system doesn't come on, and they start getting sick, and they start breaking down. Whereas the strength of the immune system in The Guardian is so much greater because that's the time that they really ramp up their growth. So we have this newly-driven body that we're not trying to protect it from diabetes and insulin problems because they don't often have them, particularly insulin resistance, and they have a faster thyroid function so their metabolism is burning hotter. They have all of this mental energy that is burning as well, and that requires more carbohydrates. So essentially, we provide regular meals with carbohydrates to this body, and their brain starts operating really, really well, that decreases their stress. And it's the decrease in stress that allows muscle growth, that allows our waist to reduce. And so, by having more regular food, we actually end up with better body composition for this person. But if we have more regular food for the Guardian, we actually end up with worse. Lisa: You need to know. Dr Cam: Whereas if you put two meals per day into the Crusader, now, all of a sudden—because they've run out of fuel because their metabolism turns it over really quickly, they have to dip into their stress hormones to stay energised. So they have to use more cortisol and adrenaline. And what do those hormones do? They break muscle down, and they put fat around your waist. And so we have this environment for a Crusader, if they're having two meals, they're having to stress and push to stay awake. And now all of a sudden—oh, and to stay alert and on. And now, we're going to have the effects of what those hormones do, which is in that body, they’re with the muscle, and they gain body, and they gain fat around their waist. Lisa: Wow. So they can—that’s the exact opposite. So Crusaders can be overweight, but that's usually they hold it in the middle of the body around the waist, which is the most dangerous fat—that visceral fat. And with the Guardian—so this is why like some people when they get stressed lose weight, and some people when they get stressed put on weight. And this was always like, ‘Huh? How does that work? Because I thought cortisol always put on fat’. And it does for the Crusader as well, but it puts it on around the middle, and that's because the cortisol has gone up, and you haven't had enough food. Okay, what about—this is just because I'm off on a tangent again—but autophagy? We all hear about inhibiting mTOR, which is one of the growth pathways. And I'm always like, ‘Okay, I'm an activated Crusader’. I'm on the cusp there. So do I do intermittent fasting or not? I feel like if I'm looking for autophagy and wanting to knock off senescent cells and all of that sort of thing, how do I do that without triggering my body to go into a stress situation? Dr Cam: Great question. And so, this is what it comes down to then, we spoke about the rhythms at the start of the day—like the daily rhythm, the monthly rhythm, the yearly rhythms. Essentially, when we're looking at the rhythms of the different bodies, a Crusader has quite a quick turnover rhythm. So whereas the Guardian has a much longer slower turnover rhythm. And so, what I mean by that is if a Crusader does a day or two of intermittent fasting, their metabolism goes, ‘Whoa’, like really hits them because they're always on the edge of their fuel supply. And so the fast hits them a lot faster, but they're their nervous system, which is the thing that's driving stress In their body, that will be impacted quite significantly if they go without food for a period of time. It'll start driving muscle loss and demineralisation to keep the body alert. And so, for a Crusader, it might be the one day per week that you do that thing just to give yourself a bit of a top up. For example—or to give yourself that effect of autophagy. Whereas for a Guardian, they have this ability to accumulate, and their rhythms are much slower. They can actually go for extended periods of time in that intermittent fasting. It's actually quite beneficial for them because they are more likely to build up toxins, and they're more likely to conserve over time. That state of a semi-fasted life is actually appropriate for them because their body, generally, their rhythms are slower and steadier, and they aren't affected by a lack of caloric intake or a lower caloric intake as much. Lisa: So for us to do extended fasts as Crusader types, are we putting ourselves at risk then? If so, how do we get rid of that? Because autophagy, just for those listening who don't know what the hell autophagy is, it’s basically recycling when a body goes up, there's not enough food supply around, there's not enough nutrients because their body is sensing the nutrients that's available in our blood, and this can be low protein or low caloric intake. And then it starts to recycle old parts of cells or knock off cells that are damaged and not doing the job properly. And this is a process that we want to have, but as Crusaders, we don't want to tip ourselves into the stressed out state, where we’re actually too catabolic. So, because there's lots of things going around about fasting and the benefits of fasting. And, again, it is appropriate for one type more than another type or at certain periods of time. So how would you optimise it for a Crusader versus a Guardian? Dr Cam: Yes. Okay, that's good call. So essentially—probably, the thing to state here is that it's not just food that creates this level of stress or rest and recovery. If you were—let's say, for example, that you're up in some sort of retreat, where they're doing meditations a lot of the day, where you're walking in nature, where it's just very, very gentle surrounds, and there's virtually no stress on your nervous system, and you're able to completely dial out, this is as a Crusader, then you're going to be able to tolerate a much lower food intake for a longer period of time because there's less requirement that's being placed on. You have food. But if you're in the middle of a busy week and you start fasting, your brains will go in ‘Well, I still want to get stuff done.’ And so your brain is going, ‘Let's do this’. And so in order to do that, you have to create stress hormone responses to keep your brain alive and to break muscle down, turn it into glucose that you can use in your brain for fuel. Lisa: Oh, we don’t want that. Dr Cam: So it definitely depends on the environment that you're in as to how long you could do this. But generally, what we say is, if a Crusader is going to be doing some sort of intermittent fasting or something like that, just doing a day per week, and on a day where you can control the amount of stuff that is going on so you're not too narrowly stressed, it's really, really good way of going. Making sure you're meditating, deep breathing throughout the day, doing some gentle exercise, some stretching, just to really calm your nervous system. You're not having to do really big meetings and really stressful thinking sessions because you want to dial down the thing that's taking all of your energy. And for a Crusader, it's their brain. Lisa: Yes. Dr Cam: And so if that's being used lots, then the body will commit its reserves to looking after the brain. So you have to turn that off in order to do a fast without affecting yourself too much. Lisa: Wow. Dr Cam: Because if prolonged, you'll start continually breaking down muscle tissue to fuel your brain, and that's not good. And you release a whole lot of calcium from your bones to provide energy in your mitochondria. Lisa: Wow. Dr Cam: In your little, your muscle tissue within your muscle fibres as well. You need calcium to make muscles contract and do their thing. And if you're stressed and not consuming, you'll release more of that, which is not a good thing either. Lisa: ...osteoporosis. Dr Cam: So this is where you will essentially know...Yes, osteoporosis is a big risk for Crusaders. So you will essentially know that if you're doing a semi-fast and you're starting to have the feeling, if you're a Crusader out there, you're having to push to have your energy. When you're using your energy and flow, it should be just this flow of energy that feels good to use when you're doing mental tasks and things like that. If you've fasted for too long, it'll now be this push. It's like, ‘I have to get myself up to do this work’. And that requires... Lisa: You repel. Dr Cam: Yes, yes. So if you're starting to get less motivated, and you're getting to the end of a job, and you're just exhausted, I would say you're fasted too long because your body overextending itself. The thing about Crusaders is their bodies are quite sensitive. You'll be able to pick up on those cues a couple of days in just to see what's going on. Lisa: That’s really important for people to understand. That again, it's not a one-size-fits-all when you hear everybody talking about intermittent fasting or doing these things on autophagy and inhibiting mTOR and all those sort of things. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach once again. It really needs to be...and just talking about the Guardians to like what we've been saying, sounds all negative. They tend to hold—and I know like my mum complains bitterly when I give her this tiny little meal at nighttime that's full of veggies, and she doesn't get a big steak like I'm eating. And that’s a pain for her at times. However, her body—to see the advantages of being a Guardian. Like back in the caveman days, she would have survived—I would have been long gone if there was a lack of food supply. She would have carried on and survived. Her immune system is incredibly strong. She's very resilient. She was in a wheelchair for 18 months, and she still had massively strong muscles. She's not catabolic in that, but she has a struggle with her weight. And now we've seem to have cracked the code on it. Because we're doing the meals at the right times most of the time and doing it appropriate for her body, we've had this huge weight loss over a very long period of time. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: And that's the way to do it. That's what you want. You want to sort of do that in a controlled manner. And so there are good—and she's never going to get osteoporosis. Her bones aren't going to break. Mine? Quite likely. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: There's likely to have Alzheimer's even given whose particular situation. So those are some of the benefits just for those listening out there who resonate with that body type. Not to think it's all negative. And we've got an ‘Oh, gosh’, and we have an ‘Oh, good’ some things. Dr Cam: And to add to that, survival wise, we would have these individuals who are much stronger than everybody else who has a focus on looking after everybody else. The reason that their body is built the way it is is when we go through famine as a community, their body goes into conservation, they start growing, or essentially, they start growing, or they start slowing down their metabolism so that they can provide food for everybody else. There's this internal ‘I must provide’. And so, their body actually assist with that, and it slows down its metabolism, enables it to gain more or at least stop the weight loss. And this is why, for this body, you can actually extend the fast because they have this incredible resilience. What's interesting about this body is that when you, any kind of stress—mental stress and things like that—if they experience stress, they'll say, ‘Ah, my community mustn't be safe. If I'm stressed, I'm the most resilient and I'm the strongest. So everybody else must be almost dying. So I'm going to start slowing my metabolism down straight away’. And as a result, they're going to take advantage of those hormones that help you grow, like the insulin resistance, the lower thyroid function. They're going to take advantage of those to be stronger for the community. Lisa: Wow. Dr Cam: And this is a really important piece for any of your Kiwi listeners, particularly Modi and Modi populations. Lisa: Yes. They’re dominant Guardian. Dr Cam: They stick out and generally have got this incredible capacity for protection. They're very family-oriented, it's all about protection of the family. And that thing comes from the same thing that makes them big and strong. It also makes them much more tolerant of prolonged fast because their body is designed to be a faster. What's really interesting is their body was meant to accumulate during great times. And then when the fast came along, they just ate. And as they fast, they get healthier. Like their blood sugar start normalising, whereas the Crusader or the Sensor, that the leanest of the bodies, when they fast, they start breaking down and heading towards disease because they just lack that ability to grow and that ability to accumulate. So the mTOR pathways, which is all about growth, they're actually very protective for Crusaders and senses. And so we don't want to spend too long without them versus a Guardian, Connectors. Some Connectors and Diplomats, they have probably an excess of growth. And so, for them, that pathway is going to be more relevant to modulate or at least you'll be able to influence it for longer with greater effect. Lisa: And this is why we see in the Polynesian community more diabetes, more cardiovascular disease, more—and then they also have a tendency to like those particular types of foods even more. So when you see with Sensors—it’s another one that we haven't gotten to, but that’s a real ectomorph body—and Crusaders have a tendency to actually want more vegetables and things, and they can actually do with more cooked, slow-cooked meats, and things like that. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: But they have a tendency to like those sort of heavier, fattier, more sugar-rich foods when that's actually the worst thing for them. And that's why we're seeing, unfortunately, so much diabetes, so many metabolic disorders, and so on. Dr Cam: Yes, well, those foods provide a lot of safety. By having so many calories, it's like, well, ‘If I've got enough weight on, my family is now protected’. And so there's this biological drive to eat foods that are very caloric so that you can have more mass because more mass equals more protection for my family. But if you just go and lift really, really heavy weights, your body feels heavier, your body gets the sense that it's more stable and stronger, and that can actually replace. It's a really interesting one that requirement. Lisa: Ah, is that right? Dr Cam: That requirement to feel it. Yes. So there's a feeling of groundedness you get from those very heavy weights, and we also know that it actually creates a bit more growth hormone, a bit more recovery overnight, but it will direct it with the right nutrients and the right exercise to muscle growth rather than fat. Lisa: So that's why the Diplomat and the Guardian body types, these stronger, heavier body types are really good at heavy weight lifting. And even though—because I have this argument with some of the clients that we have—women who are Guardians or Diplomats, ‘I don't want to do heavy weights. I don't want to put on more muscle mass’. But that it's—again, that’s counterintuitive. So they ended up doing lots of cardio-based stuff, which has its benefits as well, but it doesn't have the quickest response as, say, heavyweight sessions will do. Dr Cam: Yes. Lisa: Is that right. Dr Cam: That's exactly right. Yeah. And there's a number of things that need to go on, but essentially, this bo
Starting a business can be incredibly tricky. Statistics say about 80% or more of enterprises end up failing. If you’re a business owner or a founder, you know how there are so many factors to consider. Overcoming obstacles every step of the way is far from an easy feat. Moreover, starting a business requires a ton of research, but research alone won't guarantee success. So what's the secret? In this episode, Daryl Urbanski joins us to share the secret to building businesses and scaling them. You’ll learn about how his background taught him to be one of the leading business experts of this generation. He also discusses how to overcome obstacles and take your business to the next level. If you want to learn how to be a successful entrepreneur, tune in to this episode! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Hear Daryl’s insights on raising children and lessons gained from martial arts. Learn the secret to overcoming obstacles and building successful businesses. Find out what you need to become an entrepreneur. Resources NMN Bio by Elena Seranova Lifespan by David Sinclair The Dream of Life by Alan Watts Learn more about Daryl’s group coaching and pay-for-performance model! The Best Business Podcast with Daryl Urbanski Episode Highlights [7:02] How Daryl Started Out Daryl was orphaned as a kid, and his stepdad was an entrepreneur. His father showed Daryl that an entrepreneur was someone who is of service and respected by their community. He wanted to be like that too, so he shovelled driveways and did a newspaper route for money at a young age. Since Daryl was an orphan, he felt the need to be self-sufficient and self-directed. At 17, he joined a company that was one of the early pioneers of early marketing, got interested in growing businesses, and the rest is history. [10:45] Katimavik Daryl was part of Katimavik, a Canadian social program in which ten children aged 17-21 live, travel and work across Canada. Katimavik was a turning point in Daryl's life. Daryl initially lived in a dangerous city. Katimavik was his way out. It was a source of many experiences for Daryl. [21:52] Youth Development In raising his daughter, Daryl has a thing called neglect under supervision, where he tries to carefully neglect her in some ways to let her develop, grow and overcome obstacles. He won’t stop her from falling, but he’ll try his best to catch her. Growing up in a city is more about surviving in social dynamics than the social and environmental dynamics you find when you grow up on a farm. Children would benefit from more physical activity in their lives. They'd develop differently, and would not feel the need to lash out violently. Children need a better sense of responsibility and consequences — power and skill are earned. [27:17] Lessons from Martial Arts Martial arts teaches progression: your skills will develop over time, through with observation and training. You learn about people and how your emotions impact decision-making. Martial arts isn’t just about training but also about recovery and rest. The best way to get out of a bad situation is to prevent it from happening. When he first learned martial arts, he thought it was about doing things to people. In reality, it’s about self-control and boundaries. Martial arts also taught Daryl about overcoming obstacles and testing himself. [39:04] The Secret to Building Businesses There are many great places to start, and one of the hardest ones is getting something new going. Always start with a market. Find a problem you’re willing to solve for people. The purpose of a business is to locate a prospect and turn that into a customer who returns. Figure out what problem you want to solve, then design it and do it in a scalable way. The critical success factors for businesses are self-efficacy, strategic planning, marketing, strategy, market intelligence, money management, business operating systems, business intelligence and government and economic factors. [46:05] The Next Level Ask yourself where the customers are and where they want to go. Can you take them there? Fix what makes your customers unhappy, find out how to get busy and aim for consistency. What helps your team grow is documentation and training. Create systems. How do you communicate your vision and keep the team productive? [50:23] Getting Out of the Startup Gate The hardest part is dealing with the imposter syndrome and self-doubt. It’s all about managing stress and avoiding burnout. Many people sacrifice their health to make money but end up spending all their money trying to get their health back. It is better to collect money first and then develop a product. [56:39] Daryl’s Current Core Focus Now, Daryl is focused on group coaching. For people who want more dedicated attention, he has a virtual VP of Marketing service. He also has a pay for performance model, where people only have to pay if they make a profit. [1:00:05] On Keywords and Google Trends Keywords can tell you how many people are thinking about this particular thing. Keywords are a powerful tool from a market intelligence standpoint. From keywords, you learn what people are looking for, where they are and more. Make your marketing about your customer. [1:04:03] What You Need to Be an Entrepreneur Be transparent. People need to trust you for them to give you their money. You’re going to need all eight success factors, but most importantly, answer the question: ‘What problem are you solving’? 7 Powerful Quotes from this Episode ‘Life is full of challenges and hurdles, and through overcoming those we develop our character’. ‘Pain often…makes you stronger and makes you more able to withstand—that’s what exercise is all about. You hurt yourself, you get stronger’. ‘It’s not just training, but it’s also how to recover and rest…Silence is part of music just as much as music is’. ‘Prevention is so much better than cure…the best solution is, don't let them do it to you in the first place. Know it, recognise the signs and protect yourself before it happens’. ‘It’s not even about being the best, the smartest, the brightest. It’s about making the least mistakes’. ‘You don’t know what you’re capable of until you do it’. ‘Evolution is about growth and challenge and overcoming obstacles’. About Daryl Daryl Urbanski, Founder, President of BestBusinessCoach.ca & Host of The Best Business Podcast is best known for his ability to create seven-figure, automated income streams from scratch. First as Senior Marketing Director for Praxis LLC, now Neurogym, he generated over USD 1.6 Million in under 6 months with a single marketing strategy. This became almost USD 7.5 Million in just under 3 years. After repeating this success with multiple clients, he set on a mission to help create 200 NEW multi-millionaire business owners. How? They’ll do better when they know better. Daryl has quickly climbed the entrepreneurial ladder, gaining respect from thousands of business owners worldwide. From author to speaker, marketer to coach, Daryl's multifaceted business approach sets him apart as one of the leading business experts of his generation. Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, so they overcome the obstacles in their lives or start their own successful businesses. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast! Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: You're listening to Pushing The Limits with your host, Lisa Tamati. Thank you once again for joining me. Today I have another exciting podcast with a man named Daryl Urbanski. Now, Daryl is a very well known business coach. So today, quite something different for you. This is all about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Daryl is also a martial artist. So, he uses a lot of analogies from his sporting as we do in this podcast, from a sporting life and how that helps him in his career and also helping others build businesses. Now, he's helped over 1,000 businesses in his career in 50 different industries, and this guy knows how to grow and scale and overcome problems. So, he's a real expert in this area, and I really enjoyed our conversation. Before we head over to Daryl in Vietnam, just wanted to remind you, if you're into finding out all about your genes, and what they have to say about you and how you can influence your genes to live your optimal lifestyle and be your best self, then make sure you check out what we do in our Epigenetics Program. So, this is all about understanding your genes and how they are expressing at the moment how the environment is influencing them, and then optimising everything, from your food to your exercise right through to your mindset, your social, your career, all aspects of life are covered in this really revolutionary programme. Now, this programme is not something that we've put together; this has been put together by literally hundreds of scientists from 15 different science disciplines, all working together for over 20 years to bring this really next level cutting edge information about your genes and how you can find out how to optimise them. No longer do you need trial and error; you can work out what the best diet is, when the best time to eat is, exactly the right foods to eat right down to the level of, 'eat bok choy, don't eat spinach', that type of thing. And as—but it's so much more than just a food and exercise. It also looks at your health and anything that may be troubling you and future and how to deal with it. So, it's a really comprehensive programme, and I'd love you to check it out. You can visit us at lisatamati.com, hit the Work with Us button and you'll see our Epigenetics Program. We've also got our online run coaching as normal, customised, personalised, run training system, where we make a plan specific to you and to your needs and your goals. And you get a session with me—a one on one session with me and a full video analysis of your running so that we can help you improve your style, your form, your efficiency, plus a full-on plan that includes all your strength training, your mobility workouts, and great community, of course. So make sure you check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. And the last thing before we go over to the show, I have just started a new venture with Dr Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist from the UK, originally from Russia, and she is a expert in autophagy in stem cells, and she has made a supplement called NMN. Now, you may have heard of this nicotinamide mononucleotide. It's a big fancy word, I know. But you will be hearing more about this. It's been on the Joe Rogan show; it's been on Dr Rhonda Patrick show, some big names now talking all about this amazing longevity compound, anti-aging compound. Now, this is based on the work of Dr David Sinclair, who wrote the book, Lifespan: Why We Age and or How We Age and Why We Don't Need To. He is a Harvard Medical School researcher who has been studying longevity and anti-aging and is at the really the world's forefront of all the technologies to do with turning the clock back and who doesn't want to do that? So I've teamed up with Dr Elena to import nicotinamide mononucleotide, our supplement from NMN bio into New Zealand and Australia. So if you are keen to get your hands on some because this was not available prior in New Zealand, I wanted a reputable company, a place that I could really know that the supplements that I'm getting is quality, that it's been lab-tested, that it was a scientist behind it, a lab behind it, and this is a real deal. Now, I've been on this now for four months and so as my mom and my husband, and I've noticed massive changes in my life. Certainly, weight loss has been one of those things, that stubborn last couple of kilos that I've been fighting have gone without any muscle loss which has been really very interesting. It improves also cardiovascular health, your memory cognition, the speed of your thinking; all the things that start to decline as you age. And the reason this is happening is because we have declining levels of NAD, another big word, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And this NMN is a precursor for NAD. So, lots of big words, lots of science. f you want to find more about that, you can head over to lisatamati.com, under the Shop button, you will find out all about our anti-aging supplement NMN, and we're about to launch a new website which will be nmnbio.nz, but that's not quite up there yet, but it probably is by the time this podcast comes out. So, check that one out to nmnbio.nz, bio, just B-I-O. If you want to stop—well, not completely stop aging, but if you want to slow the clock down and get the best information that's out there then make sure you read Dr David Sinclair's book, Lifespan it's an absolute game-changer. You'll be absolutely amazed at some of the stuff that's happening and what they consider my mononucleotide can already do. So check that out. Okay, without further ado over to the show with Daryl Urbanski. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today I have the lovely Daryl Urbanski with me who is sitting in Danang in Vietnam. And Daryl, this is gonna be a little bit of a different episode because usually I've got some health science-y thing or some are elite athlete doing—well, not to say that Daryl was not an elite athlete because he is into martial arts. But Daryl’s specialty and what he's come to share with you guys today is, he is a business expert and a marketing expert, and also a mindset expert, I would like to say. So Daryl, welcome to the show. Fantastic to have you. Daryl Urbanski: Yes, it's an honour and pleasure to be here. We've had some good conversations, like minds, two birds of a feather. Just an honour and a pleasure to be here. Lisa: Yes. Thank you so much, Daryl, for coming on today. So, Daryl and I cross pass by his lovely lady who organises half my life as far as the business side of things goes. So it's been a fantastic liaison. And—but Daryl was actually here on his own accord. And he's—so Daryl, I want you to give us a bit of a brief background, where have you come from, how did you end up in Vietnam? And what do you do for a living? Daryl: Right, so I'm Canadian. So I'm from Canada, travelled all over the world, and I don't know if it's too short. So that's where I come from, I ended up in Vietnam. That's a long story. So I guess I'm Canadian. I'm in Vietnam. I help businesses or websites get customers and keep them to make more money. And that's really kind of it in a nutshell. It's been a long journey. When I was a kid I was an orphan and my adopted family, actually my step adopted dad's the one that really raised me and his brother, my uncle. We would visit him every time we went to Toronto, and he was a bit of an entrepreneur. He also did some property management in that and every time we went to visit I almost felt like he was kind of like the Godfather. What I meant was people were always coming by with like, a gift basket or to thank him for something. So the impression that was put in my mind was like to be an entrepreneur is to be of service to the community, and to get people's respect and adoration for the good that you're bringing. And that was really like—I know, there's all sorts of different like your salesmen, and everyone's got different images. But that was when I was a young kid, I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be valued by my community, too’. So that really laid an impression on me at a young age. Again, I didn't have the lemonade stand, I didn't mow lawn, but I did shovel driveways. We have so much snow in Canada in the wintertime. We would shovel driveways for money. I did have a newspaper route. And just at a young age, I just kind of felt, maybe because I was an orphan, but I felt the need to be self-sufficient and self-directed. Yes... Lisa: How to be your own ship, really. Daryl: Yes, sort of. Yes, I just—I also had issues like I did air cadets when I was a kid. There's some other kids, they were using their authority outside of cadets to try to, like, lord over people and stuff. And right away, I kind of learned at a young age, you kind of have to be careful—you can manage up, let's just put it that way. It's not just managing down, but you can manage up, and you can choose who's above you too, it's a two-way street. So I really laid an impression on the young age. And then when I was 17, I added a co-op in university with the company called marketme.ca and they were just one of the early pioneers of online marketing. Got me into the whole business growth avenue and that... Lisa: The rest is history. Yes, now that's fabulous. So you from like, in my young years, like I was an entrepreneur from the get-go. I never fit in in anybody's corporate square box. Tried—I tried, I failed. Did you have that feeling like you were just outside of like, you just wanted to be in charge? Because you've been in business, basically, since you were 17 years old. And you've learned a heck of a lot on this massive business journey that you've been on. And you've helped—I know that you've helped over 1,000 businesses in 50 plus industries. And you've really grown into this role of helping businesses scale up and grow and develop your own systems around this. But did you have an idea when you were that 17-year old that this was where you were going, and this is the direction? Or has it sort of meandered throughout time? Daryl: No, I was—because I think I had a lot of, they say, like everything, I'm not maybe everything that I am and not knowing my biological roots, and that as a kid left me really to kind of be given the path of self-discovery, you could say from a young age. A lot of confusion, maybe anger in my younger years as well. But what really made the difference, at least in the earliest days, was that when I was 17, I ended up at Canadian government programme called Katimavik, which means ‘meeting places’. Inuit, which a lot of people call them Eskimos. But now we say the people of the North, the natives of the North they’re Inuit, which means snow people. Eskimo means meat-eater or flesh-eater. So they don't like being called Eskimos, you call them Inuit, but Katimavik is an Inuit word, and it means ‘meeting place’. And it's a government programme that's been on and off over the last 40-50 years in Canada. And really what the—when I did it with the terms of the programme where it's a social programme sponsored by the government, 17 to 21-year-old youth, and then what they do is they put a group of 10 kids together, and the group of 10 kids is supposed to represent Canada. So, what that means is that they grab some from the east coast, the west coast from up north they try to make it, so it's representative. Like we had half guys have girls. French, we have three French speakers, right? Then the English speakers. We had an Inuit guy Kenny, who when he came, he actually didn't even speak English. We always knew when the phone was for Kenny because we didn't—it all be like, '[mumbles] Kenny this is for you, I don't know what's happening, either it's a bad connection, or this is someone who talks in their language'. And that programme, what we did—when I did it was we spent three months in British Columbia, three months in Alberta, and three months in Quebec and in every province, there was a house. In that house, there is a project manager, project leader... Lisa: Wow. Daryl: ...basically he was someone that would go to the house, and they were there, the whole duration of the programme. And this isn't a pitch for the programme, but I feel like it was—my life was really before and after. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: Because life skills I got from this... Lisa: That's cool. Daryl: ...so every place would have a project leader, and they would organise full-time work for all ten kids. And you were like a volunteer full-time worker, and in exchange, the government and I think this businesses may be paid a reduced hourly wage, I don't really know the details of it. But you worked for free, and in exchange, the government paid your grocery bills, they paid your rent and your travel expenses, and you got 20 bucks a week for like toothpaste and whatever else you wanted. And that was—it was a fantastic programme. I learned so much when I was in Alberta and British Columbia. I worked at a native band office, which is in Canada, we have a lot of native land, and that's land, like, we were the original immigrants. We took over the landmass, and then we gave the natives, ‘This is your land’, and so it's like a country within a country, and a band office is like their government office. Lisa: Right. Daryl: So, I actually worked at an Indian band office, Similkameen Valley band office and Iwe helped build sweat lodges. We did all sorts of stuff. I work there newsletter, helped communicate with the community. In Alberta, I was a seventh-grade teacher's assistant at a middle school, and a social worker assistant and I worked with a librarian as well. And then in Quebec, I was actually a mayor's assistant for three small town, 150 people. But you had a full-time job in each place, and then after work when you came home, the 10 of you were basically instantly signed up for any community events that were going on. I remember in the small town of Karamea we built something like 20 out of the 25 of their Christmas floats for their Christmas parade. We did soup kitchens, music festivals, like, you name it, and there's just like, instantly—if there was something out of the community like the project leader would know about it and just drag us, and we just show up be like, 'Hey', and it was like ten pairs of hands. Like just we were coming just to make things happen. So every three months, you had a full-time job, evenings and weekends, except for Sunday. You basically anything in the community, you were instantly signed up as a volunteer, and every two and for two weeks, every three month period, you would build it, you would stay with a local family for two weeks to like, see how they live. And that was really insightful because I didn't know any other family or how the family operated. But then I got to see inside the workings, like, I remember this one family, I stayed with the three, the parents, the father was in finance, and he was always, like, his suit and his hair's so proper. He was very strict and very like this. And his kids on the other side, they had like mohawks, spike collars and black nails and eyes. And it was so funny because I felt like it was a yin yang. I felt like the kids were the exact opposite in the extreme of the parents, and just watching the dynamics of people. And also every week, a boy and a girl would stay home from their full-time jobs, and they would be the mum and dad in the house because we had a budget like for groceries and they would have to cook and clean. So that nine months experience when I was 17, I came out of that with more life experience than a lot of people and… Lisa: What an incredible programme and how lucky... Daryl: Yes. Lisa: ...for you, like, because so many kids go off the rails, as they say at that point yet, and they get lost and to have the sort of a structure of development and experience must have been a real game-changer for you. Daryl: Yeah, I mean, we moved around a bit when I was a kid, but we ended up settling in a city called Kingston, Ontario, which also happened to be the penitentiary capital of Canada. And so it was a unique community because you've got Queen's University, which is one of the top three universities of Canada. You've got the second-largest military base. It's almost one of the largest government employment cities. So you've got these high-income earners in the public sector, and then you've also got this great university. Some of the largest businesses out of Canada, actually, even in Kingston, like we've got one of the largest real estate investment trusts. There's a company that makes the shafts for all the pro golf clubs outside of Kingston. It's kind of weird, you got these unique massive spikes of success. But then because of the penitentiaries, a lot of families move to Kingston to be closer to the family. So then you have these areas where there's like when you get out of jail, you just settle in the town that you're in, and so it's weird, and I actually didn't think I was gonna see my 21st birthday. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: I was in high school, and I didn't—I had a friend that was found in a lake rolled in a carpet... Lisa: Oh, gosh. Daryl: ...and things like that. And I didn't think I was really gonna make it. Lisa: So, really dangerous areas to be growing up as a youth. Daryl: But then, I always say when you live in a city, you don't live in that city, you live in your bubble in that city. So my bubble was mixed. It was a mixed bag. I was in the middle—I grew up in a nice suburb, but through school and all that, I got involved with lots of different things. But in this group one day, they spoke at my high school, and they're talking about, 'Yo, we're getting to travel Canada for free'. Like, I was like, 'Hey, that sounds great. I need to get out of here. I don't see a future. I don't see a future', and I signed up and that was what I did. And then after that because of being involved and so I almost got kicked out. Now, after the first two months, I was on my last warning, you get three warnings, and you get sent home. And every time you make them, you have to write a commitment to improve. And I was like, I just thought I think that project leader didn't like me, but I was like, on it by a hair. And it was so funny because I remember when I made the first three months, we moved to the second location, I was like, 'Wow even if I get kicked out now. Now I've learned everything that I could learn from this programme'. Three months, Alberta and I met all sorts of new people and new experiences. And I was like, 'Wow, I made it to six months. Now that I'm going to Quebec, now I've learned everything, I mean, so good'. And then the next three months, and then I finished it like, 'Wow, I made it to the end. Now I've learned... Lisa: You're an expert. Daryl: ...programme, right. But now here it is years and years later, and I met because they were like family, the other ten kids, right? And I still catch up with them every now and then, like I learned through, 'Why? You got a kid? You got three kids'? Lisa: In other words, we all say we're no’s all the time. And then we're actually just at the beginning of our next journey. And it's all stepping stones to the next part of learning and stuff. But what a fantastic I wish we had a programme like that here because I mean, it must cost a lot to run and be really difficult to organise. But man, they could change lives, say for kids who are just lost and don't quite know what's the next step and how many of them are be. Daryl: It's a fantastic programme. It's actually I don't think it's running in Canada anymore. Again, because of the cost that it gets government funding, it gets taken away. The Trudeau lineage is the one that started—they tend to be behind it. There was a big scandal in Canada 'we something charity' and it sounds like that they were going to give a billion dollars in one organisation that does something like that. But of course, it got into, like, where's money going and people arguing and is that a good use and I think nothing happened at it. But it's a shame because... Lisa: It changes your life. Daryl: Well, I think right now there's a ton of people, especially the younger kids who need a sense of responsibility. I think in some ways, I don't want to go on a big rant. But I think life is full of challenges and hurdles. And it's like, through overcoming those we develop our character. And some people, they just have such a cushy like... Lisa: Yes. Daryl: .Things have become so politically correct. We've softened all the hard edges. I remember seeing in Toronto, they replaced a bunch of the kids playgrounds, because kids were falling and getting hurt. Lisa: Yes, yes. Daryl: Like, yes, but that's, like, you climb a tree, you fall, like, you don't... Lisa: There's no consequence to anything anymore. And there's no, like, yes. Daryl: It's like participation awards versus achievement awards. Like, we really, in some ways, become a society of participation awards versus achievement awards. And that's... Lisa: I totally get it. I totally agree. Because I mean, I'm showing my age, but I grew up in the early 70s and stuff, and it was a rough ride. I'm lucky to be alive. Daryl: Not everyone. Not everyone made it in adulthood. Yes. Lisa: And, but you know what, I wouldn't change that for the world because I don't want to be wrapped up in cotton wool and bounce around like a bunch of marshmallows for the want of a better expression. I want to be able to climb trees and cycle. I had to laugh yesterday. We live in a little village that, sort of, no police around here. And you've got all sorts in, and it's a lovely village, it's a sort of a beachy resort-y place. But you get the kids, they got no helmets on, and the other ones are on scooters, and there's three of them hanging off it and other people with their youths, and the kids are on the back, which is all illegal, right? Daryl: Right. Lisa: And I'm not saying it is good, but I do have to smile because it reminds me of my childhood because that's where... Daryl: A little bit recklessness, a little bit of foolishness. We don't want it, but the world has real limits. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: And especially as a parent, like I have a daughter now and it's like, I call it careful neglect. I try to carefully neglect her in some ways to force her to develop and grow. Lisa: Beautiful. Daryl: It's like neglect under supervision, that's probably the best way to do it. Because if I always do it for her, and then I'm not there like they say kids who grew up with a single parent tend to be more independent than kids that have two parents, although kids with two parents tend to do better overall. I want a blend of that. The kids with single parents, they are more independent because that's expected of them. There's not all—you can't... Lisa: backup. Daryl: It's not all the swaddling. Lisa: Yes, no, I totally agree. And like, not even just for kids, but like dealing with my mum with her disability, I had to—and people would criticise me heavily, but I used—I make her do the hard stuff. Like, if she's struggling to get out of a chair at night and she's tired I don't get up to help her and not because I'm an asshole but because I need her to learn which muscle it is to push and people would, like when we're out in public that'd be standing there watching me watch her struggling and I'd get abuse sometimes. Like, ‘why aren't you helping’? Daryl: Yes, yes. Lisa: That's all I'm doing. I have to do it all the time with her because I'm teaching her new difficult tasks all the time. I'm having to put her through some painful regimes and training. And because I've been an athlete all my life, I understand that pain often, when in training, in difficult training sessions and stuff make you stronger, and make you more able to withstand. I mean, that's what exercise is all about: you hurt yourself, you get stronger, you hurt yourself, you get stronger. And with mum's training, it's very often like that. So okay, she's not a kid, but it's the same principle. I have to let her go. Or winching out when she got her driver's license, and I would let her drive my car and go around town. I mean, I'm still panicking half the time, a nice—and for the start, I would shadow her, like from behind. She didn't know that I was following her way right through the town where she went so that she had that backup. But she didn't know she had that backup. Daryl: As I actually had been saying that to Kathy, but my daughter, I'm like, I won't stop her from falling, but I'll do my best to always catch her. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: I'm not gonna try to stop because sometimes you're like, 'Your daughter and you try to pad the room'. And I'm like, 'I gave her a pair of scissors'. This is when she was really young, gave her scissors, 'Don't, she'll cut herself', and I'm like, 'Yes, and it'll be a valuable lesson'. 'You're right'. And I'm right here, and it'll be a vet ship. She'll learn a valuable lesson; I don't know if she doesn't, I feel like that's partially where we have things like all these school shootings and that. These kids aren't growing up on farms. They've never been kicked by a horse or a goat, or they've never hit themselves in the foot with an axe. So they playing these video games of extreme violence and sexual violence in the movies and they feel these emotions, like really common as a teenager. They have access to such powerful tools. I'm Canadian, but in the States, they sell guns at Walmart and so you've got a kid that's angry, he's got no real sense of the reality of the world around him in terms of like, what happens if you fall out of a tree and break your ankle, that's so distant because they grew up in a city and it's just, it's more just surviving and social dynamics versus a social and environmental dynamic. Lisa: I totally agree. Daryl: And I go to school, and they lash out with guns, I really feel that if those kids grew up with more hard labour in their lives, more physical—even if they just had more physical training conditioning. You play hockey, you get hit too hard, like something like that, it would have less school shootings because they still feel the same emotions, but one, they'd have different outlets, and they would also kind of respect it better. It's like my jujitsu. You mentioned I do jujitsu. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: I feel like it's very—when you guys are new, you get a lot of these strong guys, and they try to tough on everybody. And they just, it's useless. And they get beaten up by the more skilled ones. So then when they develop skill, they're kind of like a 'Hey, like, I know what it's like to be the one getting beaten up'. Lisa: Yes. Which is the correct method. Daryl: Like, the power, the skill is earned. So, you treat it with better respect. Lisa: Humility is always a good thing. And I think learning.. I've taken up skimboarding with you, and I don't bounce very well at 52. But it's really important that I do something that I'm really useless at.and I'm having to learn a new skill. And I sometimes ski myself because if I don't get the stage, that's when you start losing those skills. And I don't want to lose any of my abilities, and I've still got good reactions and stuff like that, so I want to keep them. So I constantly want to push myself outside that boundary. So let's dive in a little bit to your martial arts, and then we'll get onto your business side of things because what you've done the years is just incredible. What sort of lessons have you learned—I mean, that was one—but what sort of lessons have you learned from doing Jiu Jitsu in the discipline that's required for this very tough sport? Daryl: Yes, that's great. So yes, I did jujitsu for about six, seven, maybe eight years. I haven't trained, probably in a couple years now. I've been doing more kind of CrossFit and my own physical training, but I think the lessons are through any—you learn about progression over time. You learn things like the fundamentals are fundamental. You kind of learn the basics, but then you get bored with those, and you want to learn the fancy, advanced stuff, but then it's hard to apply it and get it to work. And then through just time and observation and training with the greatest you understand it really is about the fundamentals. Virtue is doing the common uncommonly well. The fundamentals that we learned are the stuff that's actually working against the highest level black belts. The basics that you learn, you see that happen at the highest level World Championships in the biggest competitions, and the really great to the ones that can do the basics and just walk through everyone with them. Like, 'How are they able to do that so well'? Everybody knows what's happening. Everyone knows what to expect, but they can't stop it from happening anyhow. Another lesson was it's a game of inches in the beginning because jujitsu is kind of like a submission wrestling, submission grappling.It's not so much punch and kick.It's more about pull, roll, and just and using things like gravity. So there's things about drilling how practise makes perfect. You learned the rule, like 10,000 hours that it's if I've been training for 200 hours, and you've been training 10 hours, generally speaking, I have a major advantage. If I've been training 2000 hours, you've been training 100 hours, typically speaking, I'm gonna just mop the floor with you because I've—there's nuance detail and you can almost endlessly drill into the fundamentals. And then there's just the progress. You've talked about learning new skills. Last year, I learned how to handstand walk. I can now handstand walk about 20 feet, I'm gonna be 38 in a couple of months. Lisa: Wow, I can't do that. Daryl: Yes. Lisa: I'm jealous. Daryl: It’s specifically for the skill development, for the neurological developments, to like to balance in a totally different way and physical development. So I mean, you just see you learn about people, you learn about how your emotions impact your decision making in certain respects. You learn about how it's not just training, but it's also how to recover and rest. And we talked about this I think before I interviewed you for my podcast, like, silence is part of music just as much as music is, the difference is it's intentional. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: Silences, intention. So it's about doing things with intent. Taking a concept like I want to learn and get good at this and breaking into pieces. And I was talking about this to my friend yesterday. Actually, I forget how it came up. But he's talking about something, and work, and the situation, and how to avoid, and I remember I was training and I was fortunate to do some training with Rickson Gracie in my early parts of my training career, legendary fighter guy. And I remember I kept getting caught in these triangle chokes. Triangle choke is a type of choke. And I kept getting caught in these triangle chokes. I remember asking, like, 'How do I get out of it'? He says, 'Well, don't let them put you into it'. I'm like, 'Yes, I know. But I already got into it. Now what do I do'? he's like, 'Don't let them put you into it'. And I just wanted—I wanted the cure, and I was like, 'Yes, but I want it' and there are, there's some things you can do. But the real answer is... Lisa: Prevention Daryl: ...prevention is so much better than cure. Like, well it's good... Lisa: Great principle. Daryl: You're in it, like, you gotta panic, you got two or three options, you got to panic, you're gonna spend a lot of energy, you're gonna flail and struggle, it's gonna be close. We can talk about how to do it. But really, the best solution is, don't let them do it to you in the first place. Note and recognise the signs and protect yourself before it happens. Lisa: That is a great law for the whole of the health paradigm that I live under. Daryl: Yes. How do I deal with heart problems? Lisa: Prevention, prevention. Daryl: Prevention. Yes, exactly. And you know proactivity. Lisa: Yes, occasionally,you will still get caught out and you will still and then you want to know those tricks. But in the first line, let's learn prevention and then we'll look at how do we get out of this mess? Daryl: And another really—which kind of ties in and then we can if you want to move on, move on. But this one, I think is also really, really, really important. When I first learned martial arts, I always thought it was about doing things to other people, I'm going to do this too, or I'm going to use your leverage against you. I'm gonna do this to the world. What I've really realised is two things. One, it's not even necessarily about doing things. It's about two things it's about not doing things externally, it's about self-control. It's about boundaries. So we just talked about 'Don't let him put you into it'. That means that I have to have boundaries around things. Will I let him grab me here? Well I’ll not allow that. Well, I let him grab me there. And I'll be like, 'Okay, whatever. And I'm going to try to do some'. So again, when people start and forgive me, I don't want to go on a huge long rant on this. But when you start, I'm going to do this to you, going to do that to you and I'm trying to do this... Lisa: You got to be kidding. Daryl: ...and so I don't even care what you're doing to me. When you get—later, it's like what do I accept? What are my boundaries? Lisa: Wow. Daryl: What situations do I let myself enter into? And that was—and then the other thing is that a lot of times it's not about what you do. It's not even about winning. It's about who makes the fewest mistakes. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: It's really—it's not even about being the best, the smartest, the brightest. It's about making the least mistakes. Lisa: Wow... Daryl: In this situation, how many doors do I open for my opponent? Lisa: I totally... Daryl: These things are great, right? Lisa: Yes, yes, yes. Daryl: There’s just me posing on the world and more about controlling myself. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: And am I allowing myself to be manipulated this way? Am I allowing myself to be grabbed here? Am I allowing his energy to mess with my mindset? Lisa: Wow, that is gold. Daryl: In a tournament, I've seen them lose the match before it even begins. Get you two guys step up, and the rest get in there, and they like their eyeballing on each other. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: You see one guy like and he's just kind of coward. Like he lost before we even get started. So... Lisa: I haven’t seen that in ultramarathons are—another sporting analogy, but I've seen when people start bargaining with themselves and you do during an ultra. You start saying, 'Well, if I just get to there, I'll be happy with my results’. Or if you start to negotiate with yourself as how far you can get. And when I'm when I see people going, 'Well, I've at least done more than I've ever done before and therefore it's a success'. And when I start to hear talk like that, I know we're in the battle, like we are in the battle. And if they don't change the mindset, they're not going to because they're no longer in that, 'I'm gonna do this, come hell or high water there in the' Well, it's okay to fail and it is okay to fail. But in the battle, you don't want to be in that mindset. You want to be in that mindset, like, 'I'm going for this and I'm giving it everything I have.’ When you start to negotiate with yourself where ‘It would be okay if I got to that point, and therefore this is the longest I've ever run and therefore that's still a success'. When you start doing that type of bargaining with yourself, you're in deep shit basically because you've got to tune your psychology around too because otherwise, you're going to give yourself a way out. I remember when I was running in the 220k race in the Himalayas that extreme altitude and I had a point where I just completely broke after going up the second path, and it was about—I'd been out there for 40 plus hours in a massive snowstorm. I had hypothermia. I had altitude sickness, asthma. I was just completely good enough reasons to be pulling out. And one of my guys came back to me, and I said, 'I think it's only two kilometres to the top of the mountain because you're calculating in your head'. And he came back and said, 'No, it's six kilometres to go'. And that just completely broke my mentality because six kilometres, I was going out 3k an hour, it was two hours of hell, and I couldn't, and it broke me. And I just fell into a heap and started bawling my eyes out, and everybody was giving me permission to give up. They were like, huddling around, 'You're amazing. We're so proud of you and you did everything you could', and then there was one guy. And he came over, and he shocked me, and he wasn't smiling, and he wasn't patting me on the back, and he was like, ‘Get the F up now’. Daryl: You're so close. Lisa: ‘You're so close, you're not failing, and I'm not letting you fail and get your ass up off the ground. And I'm going to stay here with you. And I'm going to walk you up top of that mountain’. And that was key because it got me over that psychological break—I broke, but he picked me up, and he got me back on my feet. And I followed his instructions. I just did what he told me to do, put one foot in front of the other, and he got me over that hump, literally. And it's this type of stuff that you learn through sports; it's just so valuable. Daryl: It's just overcoming obstacles and just testing yourself. You don't know what you're capable of until you do it. You can spend all day reading a book about tennis, but until you're out there actually playing it. And there's learning you have to learn, you can learn through reading through lecture through conversation, personal experiences, and through other people's experiences and that's... Lisa: That's what this is about. Daryl: Yes, I mean Alan Watts has this great video called The Dream of Life. Imagine if every night you went to sleep, you could dream, however many years of life that you wished and because it's your dream, you can make them as wonderful as you want it. And so for the first—let's say you're dreaming 100 years of life every night. And maybe you do this for a couple of years, every night for a few years, you're dreaming 100 years of life. And all these lives that you're living, they're all the most filled with all the pleasures and all the wonderful things that you could possibly want. And what do you think would happen? And over time, you would kind of get bored, and you would want some risk and some adversity. And then eventually, you would want to be able to dream and go to sleep, and not know the outcome. ‘I want to go to sleep. I want to have this adventure, but I don't want to know the outcome’. And that's kind of like that's almost like life. And if you could dream a lifetime every night in your—in a life of eighty years, you could possibly dream the life you're living right now. And that's the whole thing of evolution. Evolution is about growth and challenge and overcoming obstacles and... Lisa: Yes, obstacles like phone calls coming in the middle of your podcast. Daryl: But, we got—everyone’s with me. Lisa: I think people listening to my podcasts are quite used to interruption. You just cannot stop the world from functioning half the time like somebody's phone is somewhere. Daryl: Murphy's Law, you just gotta keep on recording. If you wait for perfection, it's never gonna happen. Lisa: Exactly. You could panic now and start editing for Africa or another way, you could just get it out there and apologise for what happened, which we'll do. So, Daryl, I want to move now because I think there was absolutely brilliant and really insightful. I want to move into the business side of things. And you've had a really successful business. You've taken lots of businesses to the million-dollar in a plus businesses from scratch, you've done that over and over again. You've helped people scale up and develop these systems and mine the data and work out all this complicated world of online, which is I'd struggle with daily so I want to know from you, how the heck do you do this? And what are some of your greatest secrets from building businesses over a long period of time now? Daryl: That's a great question. There's a lot of different places to start; I think one of the hardest places and where I've had the most failure myself is getting something new going because well, one, it's just not my superpower. But if you've got someone that's got a proven concept, and that's really how in the beginning, I should look it up. But I got my seven-step rollout system. It's like you always start with a market first. So that means you always have to start with a need and or want so because you can't—the idea of selling ice to Eskimos. It's not about doing mental gymnastics and pushing something on someone that they don't want. That might happen in the world. There might be people that invest a lot of time, energy and resources in that but I have no interest. It's really tough to be like I'm gonna generate this demand. It's not there. The demand already exists. People already want to feel beautiful, people already want to be entertained, people already want to travel and to explore the world. So these needs and wants and that already exists. The idea is that you want to stand in front of it. The demand and want is already there and it's constantly evolving. And every time someone a business comes out, and you create a new product or service to fix a problem there'll be a new problem. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: Because now, like before the internet, the issue was how are we going to have these conversations like we can? You’re New Zealand, I'm in Vietnam, how will we do this? Well, now Zoom is created. These companies created tool, and they created tool. And now here's Zoom, but then what's the next issue? And then what's the next problem? So problems are markets, not demographics. Lisa: Oh, wow. Daryl: Not demographics, the problem is a market. This is the problem that we solve for people. Once you've got that a lot of it—for me, it's like different ways that you can go, but the purpose of business is to locate a prospect, turn that prospect into a customer and then make a customer your friend. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: It's really a big part of it. It's tough to have a business survive. There are businesses that survive off one-time sales, but the vast majority of businesses need recurring business, recurring freight, ongoing relationships. And a lot of businesses aren't thinking about how to do that. And so, your business is a service to the world. And so the first thing you have to figure out on a small scale, ‘What problem do I solve’? And when you solve a problem, you kind of need to create, I call it a black box. This black box maybe is a mystery to the outside world; we can use a dentist's office people come in crying and in pain on one side, they go through the black box, which is a series of checklists, checklists for this, checklist for that, checklist for next thing, okay, check that we did this, this, this, this is this, boom, they leave smiling and happy on the other side. So that's the black box. That's the problem-solving box. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: The problem-solving box, all the company is one group of people solving a problem for another group of people via a product or service. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: Before that problem is, and you've got it, now you need to design it. Here's some people solve problems really well, but they don't do it in a way that's scalable. So the rule of 10,000. Now I know how to solve the problem. Now I know THE kind of the type of people having that problem. How do I solve 10,000 of these problems for people, think, if I had to bake a pie if I'm trying to bake one pie versus bake 10,000 pies... Lisa: It's going to be more efficient. Daryl: there's a different mindset that you got like, I need a bigger kitchen, I got to do that. You've got like planning in batches, and food storage, it changes the nature of things. And then you got to kind of go out and find those people and that's like a marketing function. So there's—actually, I can share this. So last year, I actually spent like $40,000 hiring all these research teams to help get down to what are the critical success factors for small and medium-sized businesses? Lisa: Wow. Daryl: We came up with eight, there's actually nine, but the ninth one is government and economic factors. And it's not realistic that a person is going to influence. Lisa: No. Daryl: Not one person. Lisa: Yes. Daryl: No, it's not realistic. So the ones that we can influence is things like self-efficacy, which means your ability to be effective with your time, your energy, just yourself and through others. So it's like leadership is part of that, right? Your time management is part of that like mindset might be part of that. But self-efficacy, strategic planning, marketing strategy, market intelligence. So these are different market intelligence is understanding the needs, wants desires, problems of the people of the marketplace, and the competitors, the available options. So it's market intelligence is like, what's going on out there? And then marketing strategy is how am I going to get my message across. Then you have sales skills and strategies, sales strategy. And then you have money management. You have business operating systems, which is—it could be technology, it could be simple checklists, it could be meeting rhythms, it could be a hiring process, that's the operating systems. And then you've got business intelligence, and business intelligence is like the awareness of different things. So for example, like you are working with my partner, Kathy. She's helping you with your podcasts, you're getting greater awareness on how many downloads are we getting and how many people are sharing the downloads and how many people are listening and then coming my way—that's all business intelligence stuff. Daryl: It's the idea of not just doing activities, but to actually measure… Right. But it needs to be aware. It’s like wearing a heart rate monitor, right? Like how's my—that's an intelligence system. How's my heart rate doing? How's my heart rate variability? Lisa: Yes. I do all of that. Daryl: What's my sleep pattern? Lisa: Yes. Daryl: Am I waking up twenty nights? That's like business intelligence. Those eight factors really are the critical make or break focus points for business. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: And anything that you would do for a business should back into one of those. So, team building activity. Well, that's kind of self-efficacy, maybe operating systems, it depends. You're going to do a podcast, well, that's a marketing strategy, right? And then the strategic planning is the plan strategically of how you're going to pull the strings together. And like, we know how you plan you develop, how you plan to meet people, is there a thought process and from all this stuff? Lisa: And the hard thing is for the young entrepreneurial. I know we have a lot of people who, in business, starting businesses, or in developed businesses and wanting to scale further. You’re wearing so many hats at the beginning, like you're in charge of all of those departments if you like, and that is the very hard thing at the beginning. Once you get a team around you like we're at a stage now where we have small teams that are helping us with different aspects of what we do, and we're trying to outsource the stuff we're not good at. It's not our specialty, because we don't want to waste... But at the beginning, you have to do it all. And so you're just constantly wearing these multitasking hats and not being very efficient. Daryl: Right. Lisa: How do people get to that next rung on the ladder? And this is something that where we've been backwards and forwards going on for a long time. How do you get to the next stage? And how do you make an effective team? And how do you outsource certain things, but not the other things? And it's getting to that next level, isn't it? Daryl: Yes. Lisa: And at the beginning, you just forbought everything. Daryl: If you've been doing a lot of activity, and you're not really sure what's working, a simple way to think about this is forget Uber and Grab and these other... Lisa: Yes, this huge... Daryl: Originally, if you were a cab driver, you would have a car, and your idea first figure out where are the people who need to be driven places and then pay money to do it. Maybe it's taking kids to school, maybe it's picking people up at the train station, or the bus station or the airport, maybe it's doctor's office appointments, right? Like every week for whatever. But first, if you were the taxi driver, first, you'd have to figure out, how do I keep my schedule full every day? How do I keep myself busy every day? And so first, it's where are the customers? And where do they want to go? Right? Where are the customers and where they want to go? Can I take them there? You get paid in size over the relationship, and the problem you solve. What that means is if I want to get across town, but I have all day to do it, I can walk, right? But if I'm in a hurry, if my child is sick, and they're bleeding, and I got to get in the hospital in half the time, that's a bigger problem. I'll pay whatever, right? I can rent a car, I could bike, right? If I don't want to rent a car, I could pay more to have someone, you get what I'm saying? Lisa: Yes. Daryl: I could pay someone to drive me. So there's a scale of problems. So first, like, where are the customers? What do they need? Where do they want to go? And then how do you get yourself busy? Now that you're busy what's going to happen is now you have to do is you have to train someone and had it on quality control. How do I deliver this consistently? What is my doing? Because when you do something for someone, why—what's making people really happy? What's making them not happy? Right? How do I make sure I have a consistent good experience for people? Good. Now, how do I help more people? And then if you're the cab driver, you might have to take a pay cut? Because at some point, you might have to bring someone in and have them drive the car for half the day. Lisa: So you can focus on the business. Yes, yes. Daryl: You can focus on getting another car and getting that. And so there's this weird period where it's like, 'Hey, I'm busy full time, but I can't be any busier'. So I can charge more money, or I'm going to hire someone, give them some of the work. Lisa: Yes. Big portion of the money. Daryl: Right. They're gonna take a pint of the money. And now I'm going to get the second part going. And that's actually how Kathy got started. So Kathy is working with you. And one of the beginning she had some clients online, and I was like, 'What do you like doing the most? What's the one thing that you think you can do a lot of? And she really enjoys the writing component', and so we got her really busy. And then she hired someone, and then right? And then she was busy, and they're busy, she hired another person. And she had another person on now she had like a team of six, she's got some, like 26 people now. But in the beginning, she had like four or five, six, 'Hey, now you need a manager'. 'Okay, well, now I need a manager', okay, and that's your manager for the team and the next problem and building that out. And that's a really natural way to grow. And part of what helps you do that is documentation and training, an edge explained, demonstrate, guide, and power. First, explain how you do it. Let me demonstrate it for you. So you can see it done. And then let me guide you in doing it with you. And then I'm going to empower you to do it on your own, make some mistakes and learn from them, and just repeat that process. Lisa: Wow. Daryl: So it's an edge thing. And that's creating documentations and systems. But then you've got to actually keep—now you're getting into a different level. How do you communicate a vision? How do you keep a team productive? How do you monitor progress? How do you—because we're talking about self-efficacy, right? If you hire someone that could be brilliant, but if they don't get the work done, and now you're getting into people skills, and how do I communicate? And how do I help them tap into their own internal motivation? So they're not just showing up, clicking on the paycheck, and just clocking out, going home just on their phone all day. So these are different tiers of problems that people fall into. So I don't know if I read a whole of... Lisa: No, these are perfect, Daryl, and it does highlights here. There's always the next level. Daryl: Crazy amounts of entrepreneurship. Lisa: No, but, like getting out of the startup gates is the hardest part and you dealing also with self-doubt and imposter syndrome often, and can I do this? And people telling you you can’t. Your family members or friends going, 'What the hell are you doing? And you've tucked in your regular job for this'? And you know, that 80% or more of businesses fail. I can't remember what the statistics were, but they're pretty horrific. And you're wearing all these hats. And what you then see is a lot of people starting to burn out. And that's really like part of what we do is all about managing stress and not burning out and how’s the basics of health because you need to do all that in order to be successful because there's no use having millions of dollars in the bank, but you are dead because that isn't going to help anybody. Daryl: I've seen that. I've seen people sacrifice—I see people make money and keep their health at the same time. But I've also seen a lot of people sacrifice their health to make money and then end up spending all that money trying to get their health back. Lisa: To get their health back. And I must admit like I've—not for the—just for the business but saying in rehabilitating mum cost me my health. I ended up nose diving because you're working 18 hour-days sometimes and you just go and helpful either trying to make the mortgage payments at the same time by the hyperbaric chambers, or the whatever she needs and trying to rehabilitate, and running all these juggling balls that we all have in various combinations. And you can't work yourself into the absolute—into the grave if you're not careful. And that's why health and resilience and stress reduction and stuff is what we do. Daryl: Yes, it's always best to have people—one of the biggest—and I've done this before, I've done this a couple of times, unfortunately. Better to collect money first and then develop a product. What I mean is like in my hometown, they're opening up a gym, and they were building, they bought this building, they were kind of doing rentals on the inside, and they set up a trailer outside. And they were actively marketing and were signing up people for the gym that was not yet finished being built... Lisa: Brilliant Daryl: ...so they're not yet open. And what happened was at some point, they just closed down the whole operation and left. And what it was is they had a pre-launch goal for themselves. ‘We need to generate this many new members in order to breakeven, or we stop’. And that's a really good thing, and you don't, it's like if you just get pre-orders, Elon Musk did this with, I thin
Aging is a gradual process of cell deterioration, but while it is a natural process, there are ways to hack its biological mechanisms. Certain supplements paired with sirtuin enzymes can lead to better well-being and suppress the effects of aging. In this episode, Dr Elena Seranova talks about the role of sirtuins in maintaining cell health. She also discusses how several supplements, including NMN and resveratrol, work to enhance the beneficial action of sirtuin. Listen to this episode to learn how to promote longevity and overall health. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out how sirtuins play essential roles in promoting longevity. Learn how NAD influences sirtuin activity and how several compounds can increase NAD levels in the body. Discover the best methods for taking resveratrol supplements. Resources Dr Elena's study on stem cell models of neurodegeneration for studying autophagy Study on NAD supplementation by Dr Elena's collaborator Research paper on the benefits of trehalose by Lisa's supervisor Episode Highlights [03:24] Elena's Background Originally a psychologist, Elena ventured into neuroscience through her work on a neurofeedback device for patients with psychological and neurological diseases. She eventually pursued a master's degree in translational neuroscience and joined a biotech startup. She continued her studies through a PhD focusing on the molecular pathways of autophagy. [09:41] Sirtuins and Gene Expression Sirtuins are enzymes arising from various genes found across multiple species. They play crucial roles in evolution. Sirtuins assist in epigenetic regulation, where different cells have different active genes. Events such as taking a sauna or engaging in exercise change the environment of your cells. Evoking changes in gene expression helps you adapt to these conditions. [19:09] Longevity Impacts of Sirtuins Sirtuin 1 is heavily involved in repairing DNA damage, while sirtuin 3 contributes towards mitochondrial health. The enzymes coming from both sirtuin genes require the molecule NAD for proper function. With insufficient NAD, sirtuin enzymes might be unable to fix DNA and mitochondrial damage sufficiently. [25:59] NAD Boosters NR and NMN are two promising energy booster supplements that might boost NAD+ levels. NMN shows higher bioavailability and more positive effects on aging mice. Elena herself experienced improved energy levels when she started taking NMN supplements during her PhD years. [37:05] Resveratrol and Sirtuins Resveratrol activates sirtuins, allowing them to function. It works well with NMN — resveratrol handles activation, while NMN provides energy. To increase the bioavailability of resveratrol, consume the supplement with dairy products or food items with oil. [40:01] Apigenin, Sirtuins and NADases Several enzymes compete with sirtuins for NAD. These NADases mean that sirtuins cannot function without a large NAD supply. Apigenin, which is present in parsley, blocks a certain NADase and leads to increased NAD levels. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘We'll be having different sets of genes being activated, and this will be in response to different external stimuli, environmental stimuli, amino acids, even availability of nutrients’. ‘What sirtuins do is they upregulate many physiological processes in order to deal with potential danger’. ‘[Sirtuins] do need a molecule called NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and without this molecule, they cannot perform its functions. And what's happening when we age is unfortunately we do have reduced levels of this molecule as we age’. ‘From anecdotal evidence from myself and people that I know that have supplemented themselves with both, everyone just pretty much mentioned to me that they do like NMN much more than NR and they can see the effect and this is the reason why I ended up supplementing with NMN myself’. ‘So within three, four days, I actually felt a different “different”. I felt different energy levels, I felt an increase in my energy levels and I felt an increase in my focus’. ‘Basically what activates the sirtuins is the resveratrol molecule, but in order for them to function properly, you do need the NMN because this is what they consume in order to function, and so this is why it's such a good synergy’. ‘Besides sirtuins, there are different other enzymes called NADases that also consume NAD and if they do that consistently there is not enough NAD for sirtuins to do their job’. About Dr Elena Dr Elena Seranova started her ventures into medicine through psychology. She established her private practice as a wellness centre, where she encountered neurofeedback therapy and decided to pursue neuroscience studies. She took up her MSc in Translational Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield, followed by a PhD in Stem Cell Biology & Autophagy at the University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on the molecular pathways involved in autophagy. Dr Elena is also a serial entrepreneur. Aside from her wellness centre, she also co-founded a biotech startup before her PhD studies. She is the founder of NMN Bio, a company focused on NMN and other anti-aging supplements. To learn more about Dr Elena and her work, reach out through her website. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can include more amino acids in protein in their diet. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of The Podcast! Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hello everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Super excited to have you again with me. Today I have Dr Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist to guest on the show. And really exciting. We’re going to be having Dr Elena on regularly to talk different aspects of longevity and anti-aging. And today we're talking about longevity. We're talking about sirtuin genes. You might be thinking, ‘What the hell are sirtuin genes’? but you're about to find out. And why it's important and what you can do to upregulate and support these genes, these anti-aging genes or longevity genes. So before we get over to the show, just want to remind you. If you are wanting help with any sort of health journey that you're on, if you want some one on one coaching and please reach out to me at lisa@lisatamati.com. If you're looking for help with gene testing, epigenetics, anything of that nature as we've spoken about before on this podcast, you can also reach out to me there, or check out the programme via our website, at lisatamati.com. Everything in health now is about personalizing everything to your genetics. So that's the nutrition, your timings of the day when you eat when you exercise, what parts of your brain you use the most, what your dominant hormones, your personality traits, because of your genetics, all of these aspects are covered in our epigenetics programme. So I'd love you to go and get that. And for all you runners out there, come and join us at Running Hot Coaching, that's our online run training system. We'd love to coach you. We have personalized customized training plans specifically made for you for your specific goal, along with side video analysis, and you also get a one on one session with me. So go and check that all out at runninghotcoaching.com. That's all for data today. I am really stoked to have you back. I hope that 2021 is going well for you, that you've had a good break over the last few weeks. And if you're in the southern hemisphere, you're enjoying our beautiful summer. So without further ado, Dr Elena Seranova over in Dubai. Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. I'm super excited. I'm jumping out of my skin. I have an amazing lady with me, Dr Elena Seranova. Hello Dr Elena, how are you doing? Dr Elena Seranova: Hello, hello, it's really nice to be here today. Thank you for the invitation! Lisa: It is super exciting. So Dr Elena is sitting in Dubai, and we're going to be having a really in depth conversation today. And it will get a little bit scientific but hang in there with us people because this is all about longevity and anti-aging and who isn't into that? So Dr Elena is a molecular biologist. And she's going to be sharing today some really critical information about the sirtuin genes. you’d be going, ‘What the heck is a sirtuin genes and what do they do? And why do I need to know about them?’ But these are really important things. But before we get into that, the nitty gritty of the science, Dr Elena, can you give us a little bit of background on you and where you've come from? And what you've done in a nutshell, so to speak? Dr Elena: Absolutely, yes, so I'm actually an interdisciplinary scientist. So I started my studies in the field of psychology. And then I opened my private practice. So that was my first business that grew into a wellness centre and was in operation for five years. I had two branches. That was back in my home country in Greece. And I ended up working with a neurofeedback device that was basically retraining the nervous system of different patients with psychological and neurological diseases. And this is how I got interested in neuroscience. And I started studying it myself. I took a couple of those online courses. And I realized that this is such an amazing field. And in order to understand the symptoms that I see my patients, I actually need to understand the proper science behind it. And when I started digging deeper, I realized that it's actually the genetic component that is the crucial part that produces all the symptoms. So then I found this amazing master's degree in neuroscience and genetics, and specifically in translational neuroscience in the UK. And back in the days, in 2015, the Greek crisis was bad. So I couldn't grow my business as much as I'd like. So I decided to move to the UK to do this master's degree. And after this, I ended up, co-founded a biotech start-up that also had to do with the biochemical assays that were aimed at elucidating gene to gene regulatory networks. And with that, I also realized that I'm even more fascinated by the science, and I really want to stay in biotech. And my co-founders were making fun of me because I was the only person in the office not having a PhD. Yes, that was a traumatic experience. And at the same time, they were surprised when I said that I'm leaving the start-up to do my PhD. Lisa: They shouldn’t have said so. Dr Elena: Yes, exactly. So yes, this is how I continued my studies. And my research was focused on the molecular pathway of autophagy. And I was using human physiological cellular platforms of neurodegeneration, utilizing human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells to model neurodegeneration, which was very, very interesting. And I actually have a review in the Journal of molecular biology that got out a few months ago, in April 2020, on the modelling of neurodegenerative diseases and studying autophagy in those models in human pluripotent stem cells. For anyone interested, you can go check it out. It has an open access. Lisa: We’ll put the link in. Well done. Congratulations, that’s pretty amazing. And that brings me to a point I'll have to have a separate conversation with you about neurodegeneration and what we can do for the elderly. I've got a vested interest in that one. So we'll definitely put that on our calendar because Dr Elena is going to be coming on the show actually quite regularly in the next few months. So we're going to be doing a bit of a series because I think the information that Dr Elena has is just going to be crucial for you guys out there listening. So really, really excited. But today's subject is all around sirtuin genes. Now these are—I'm going to try and explain it because I've been deep in this research too. So what tipped me down to this path and longevity and anti-aging, obviously, I've been in that space for a while. I listened to Dr David Sinclair on a podcast and subsequently read his book Lifespan, which I recommend everybody go out and buy. It's called Lifespan: How We Age—And Why We Don't Need To. And Dr David Sinclair is a very, very prominent scientist at Harvard Medical School. And he has his own lab and he’s been studying anti-aging and longevity for decades now. And he was actually the one of the scientists who discovered resveratrol, which we're going to get into today and what resveratrol does, and it's very pertinent to the conversation. But it is also in this book, really giving me an eye opener into what's coming down the pipeline as far as longevity and being able to turn the clock, actually literally back to when you—so, our cells become young. It sounds almost science fiction-y, some of the stuff that he's talking about that is just around the corner. It is like absolutely amazing stuff that we are going to be able to live longer, healthier lives. And for me, it is about health span, as well as like I obviously want to live long, but most importantly, I want to live healthy till the end. And I think that's probably the priority for everybody. Rather than having the typical degenerative, long, slow, drawn out process. So anything that I can do to help my friends, my followers, my family live healthier lifespans, I'm into that research. So Doctor Sinclair is an expert on sirtuin genes, this is an area that he studied. And Dr Elena knows all about this. So Dr Elena, can you just tell us, for starters, where do we start on this big subject of longevity genes? And what they do in the body? That might be a good place to start. Dr Elena: Yes, sure. So sirtuins are enzymes, basically. And it's a group of genes that is quite well conserved across multiple organisms, which means that they play a very important role in evolution and in our biology. And what they basically do is they control the epigenetic regulation in ourselves. And this means that when—in different tissues, there are different genes being activated at a different time. So we'll be having different sets of genes being activated, and this will be in response to different external stimuli, environmental stimuli, amino acids, even availability of nutrients, things like that. And what they really do is they control that all of the important regulatory pathways in the cell are functioning as needed, and they are quite responsive to external stimuli. So for instance, you mentioned resveratrol, which is a molecule that is found in grapes and in other berries and different plant sources. So, resveratrol is actually found when the plants are stressed. So when there is some sort of either fungal infection in the plants, or there is no water and so on, resveratrol is the molecule that is being secreted. And what's happening is that sirtuins can sense this molecule, and as a result they do get upregulated. And the reason for this — I guess this evolved from a revolutionary stand point of view is that, so you would have let's say, some small animals running around and consuming different plants, things like that. So the small animals cannot really distinguish consciously between danger, different dangers or lack of foods and things like that. So this process had to somehow be automated. So for this reason, again, resveratrol is like a signal that says to the little animal that there is some sort of danger in the environment. And then what's sirtuins do is they upregulate many physiological processes in order to deal with potential danger. And there are different stimuli like that in our environment, and we can actually artificially activate sirtuins. So for example, with the use of sauna. We do have this heat shock response, where there is a stress signal from the environment, and then again sirtuins get activated because there is some sort of stressor coming into the body. Another one is exercise. So what happens? And actually not any kind of exercise. But let's say if you're just going for a walk for 20 minutes, you won’t get sirtuin activation. But if you're going for a run, and you start being out of breath, so that your body goes into slight hypoxia. And this is the signal that activates the sirtuin. So for all of the healthy living enthusiasts, don’t just go for a run. Absolutely. Lisa: So just to recap on that, so this sirtuin genes which code for this enzyme. This enzyme is really important, and we'll get into a little bit more than nuts and bolts of this enzyme, but it does some very important activations on the genome, which is what we want. Dr Elena: It basically regulates which genes will be switched on and which genes will be switched off. So it allows for a very tight control, for a very tight regulation of the functionality of different genes in the cell. Lisa: Right. And then so sauna, which produces heat shock proteins, I've just bought a sauna recently for that reason. Yes, yes. Well, I heard about heat shock proteins, what sauna can do, how beneficial it is for so many things. I didn't make the connection to that and sirtuin genes. So that's really something I've learned today. I did know about the exercise, and this is why like high intensity interval training, in moderation people — not like go and do this every day, please, but in moderation. It has a longevity benefit, has an improved actual VO2 max and endurance. And all of these great cardiovascular benefits is partly in relation to the sirtuin genes. And just going back to the resveratrol, this is a xenohormesis, isn't it? So a stressor that the body goes, ‘Oh, where our environment—is there's something wrong in our environment. So we need to hunker down and get ready for battle’, rather than going forth and multiplying and everything's easy and happy. So we want to push and pull in regards to all of these things like exercise, like sauna, like resveratrol, you want times of actually pushing things and in times of recovery, so it's not just going in one direction, is it? It is like balance. Dr Elena: Definitely. Definitely. And then yes. And then another trigger for the sirtuins phase, caloric restriction. And this again comes from what we just described about the animal being hungry, potentially in the near future. So the sirtuins get activated. So it’s the same when you're on a calorie restriction and you're doing intermittent fasting, you will get this reaction again. And this is tied up to autophagy as well, which has been activated. So you actually need to be fasted for several hours for autophagy to be activated. And research suggests it could be around 18 to 20 hours or more in humans. So I'm personally trying to do this on a daily basis. I'm having a very narrow window where I consume food probably three, four hours a day. I mean, it's not possible, always, especially when you're traveling around like I do at the moment. It might be challenging because I also want to eat high quality food. So I don’t want to be eating junk at the airport. Lisa: Pretty hard, isn’t it? Dr Elena: Yes. I mean, sometimes this actually pushes me to fasting even longer. Lisa: Great discipline. I can't—I struggle to go over the 16 hour. And I think partly with autophagy—so autophagy, people, this is when the body basically, there is a pathway called mTOR, which we're going to probably do another episode on. And this is a growth regulation pathway where we are actually—if we are activating there's a lot of amino acids, a lot of proteins in the body and a lot of nutrients in the body sort of goes into growth mode. So like bodybuilders want this growth mode for example. And when you go hypocaloric for a while and you restrict the calorie intake, then the body goes into a state of autophagy, which is where it's basically eating and recycling it's old cells that actually need to be gotten rid of. And these cells are called senescent cells. So these cells are alive, and they're putting out inflammatory chemicals or cytokines, and then not actually replicating, and that causes problems in the body. And as we get older, we eat more senescent cells. So you don't want to be in a state of starving all the time. That's not what we're saying here. This is why it's intermittent fasting. And you don't have to do this every day, people. I know, I don't. I'm not as disciplined as Elena. But doing this on, I think something like five days may be normal and a couple of days, where it's sort of a longer fasting period. And just giving your body that change. If you go hypocaloric for weeks on end, you're going to down regulate your metabolism. So that's not where we want to go. And then you're going to have nutrient deficiencies and so on from that point of view. What we're trying to get is this seesaw, the body seems to—like in all of the studies that I've done, it seems to like the seesaw, like cycling. It likes going up and down, up and down. And that actually helps it keep its ideal balance, putting it very bluntly and simply. So autophagy is something that we want. So fasting, mimicking sauna, exercise, all of these things are going to upregulate the sirtuin genes and these sirtuin genes. Now can you tell us—there are seven sirtuin genes in the human genome, can you just go briefly over what one up to seven does? Dr Elena: Yes, I mean, there are quite a few functions that those genes have. So I don't think we'll have time to go through all of them. The important ones for our subject today for sports and longevity, and so on, is sirtuin 1 for sure, which is a very important protein that can be found both in the nucleus and the cytoplasm. And actually, its expression is different in different kinds of tissues and it also depends on its necessity and its function. And it's actually what we’ve seen is that sirtuin 1 is one of the first genes that would go onto the side of a double stranded DNA break to recover it. So it is heavily involved with DNA repair, very important gene. And then sirtuin 3 would be the other very important for longevity, which has to do with mitochondrial health and mitochondrial function. So those two, they both are enzymes that in order to function, they do need a molecule called NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And without this molecule, they cannot perform its functions. And what's happening, when we age is unfortunately we do have a reduced levels of this molecule as we age, of NAD. And it just keeps on decreasing and decreasing, basically leading into death but a literal death spiral, where you don't have this beneficial effect of the sirtuin genes repairing your genome, repairing your DNA. And the epigenetic regulation becomes basically loose. So this is what is directing the loss of cellular identity as well. So this is one of the hallmarks of aging, where the cells are losing their identity. And then everything that is happening in the cell, all of the functions, they’re being so tightly regulated. So this is what's happening there. And then NAD, it's worth mentioning that it exists in two forms and both forms are important. So NAD+, which is the oxidized form and NADH, which is the reduced form. So the reduced form, it's actually something that not many people talk about in the aging space and the supplement space, so they barely know NADH and NAD+. And NADH is actually important for the maintenance of mitochondrial membrane potential. So if you don't have enough NADH, your mitochondrial membrane potential will not be preserved as needed. And this would also lead to decreased mitochondrial function. And decreased mitochondrial function means that you will have a less ATP production and less energy as a result. And the reason why this is so important for neurodegeneration, as you mentioned previously, because actually, the central nervous system is perhaps the first one that is being affected as we age. So it's very important. And the reason for this is that the postmitotic neurons that we have in the brain, they are heavily relying on massive ATP production in order to function. Lisa: So let's stop there, Elena because your brain is so big. We might have lost a few people on the way there, we might have to backtrack a little bit. So NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide plus or NADH. So is this a little bit like oxidized, like vitamin C oxidizes and then reduces, oxidizes and reduces. And electrons can be donated backwards and forwards. Is that the same thing, sort of pathways? Dr Elena: Yes, yes. Yes. That’s right. So NADH gains two electrons. Lisa: And that is recycled through? Dr Elena: Yes, this is happening through electron transport chain in the mitochondria. And we need both of those molecules in order to maintain proper cellular function. And so this would bring us to our next subject, which is what we can do in order to fix this decline of NAD. Lisa: Before we go there, let’s just hang on a tiny bit on this NAD, because — so NAD, I know Dr David Sinclair said, arguably the most important molecule. So people, note this name, NAD, NAD+, or NADH. This is the most important molecule in our body next to ATP, and ATP is our energy production. So without energy we’re dead in 30 seconds, and without NAD, we're dead in 30 seconds as well. So either or we're both pretty much up the creek if we don't have either. As we age, the NAD levels go down. And one of the things that regulates the NAD, or needs NAD sorry, is the sirtuin genes to do their job of DNA repair, is one of their jobs. There are many jobs that it does. And if the NAD is being used by the sirtuin genes to repair DNA, then it's not doing its other jobs. And as we get older, like we have something like 2 trillion DNA breaks, it can be wrong, per minute or something ridiculous. Dr Sinclair said, every minute in our body — so, these enzymes are running around trillions of times in our body doing the DNA repair. And also we need to replicate ourselves and do all of this sort of work. So if the sirtuin enzymes are busy doing one thing, they're not doing another thing. So we want to have more of these enzymes available for all of these jobs. And especially as we get older, and we need more support. So that's just a bit of how that sort of explained what the NAD is. Now, we should go on to the next part of the equation. So like there was an NAD salvage pathway, the body needs grams of it every day and we don't necessarily just get it by our food. But there is NAD boosters. What can we do to increase our NAD levels in the body? Dr Elena: Yes, so yes, this is exactly where energy booster supplements come in. And there are various supplements out there. and recent evidence points towards two particular molecules that are being researched. One is an NR, nicotinamide riboside and then the second one is NMN, which is nicotinamide mononucleotide. So now the NR molecule, in order to boost the NAD levels it needs to be converted into NMN first. And for this reason, scientists are focusing predominantly on NM. And I would say now there is increased interest in the NMN molecule at the moment because it looks like it has increased bioavailability, is being absorbed better. And in tests in mice, it does have a better effect on NR in terms of boosting NAD, but also in terms of the—in terms of improving the phenotype of aging mice with different studies that we've seen that have come out in the past couple of years, from gene expression to energy metabolism, lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity. A bunch of other markers being improved in my supplemented with NMN. And I have to be honest with you I haven't looked in depth into the research for NR, however the evidence from NMN studies so far is quite overwhelming for me. Lisa: Exactly, wonderful with all the research, too. Dr Elena: Yes. I mean we would need to have more comparisons but from anecdotal evidence from myself and people that I know that have supplemented themselves with both, everyone just pretty much mentions to me that they do like NMN much more than NR, and they can see the effect. And this is the reason why I ended up supplementing with NMN myself. So basically, I started studying NAD biology in block during my PhD. And unfortunately, my research paper is not published yet, so I won't be able to share that out. Perhaps next year hopefully I'll be able to share my data with you. There is a paper from our collaborators lab though that is on bio archive already. And it's from Viktor Korolchuk in Newcastle. And they showed there how basically functional autophagy can maintain NADH pools, which is quite an interesting paper. And it does intertwine a bit with my work. But unfortunately, I can't share right now. Lisa: Yes, you have to keep zip right now until it's published. So we can link to the bio archive, the one you mentioned there, at least, do some research and also I’ll also link to Dr David Sinclair's work, in his book, obviously. Because it does put it in in a way that people can understand, which is really, really important. Okay, so NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide is one of the in NAD boosters, and we need the in NAD to... Dr Elena: Yes. And it's the only direct precursor of NAD. So this is the beauty of it. So from NMN, it converts straight away to NAD. So this is why it has such an enhanced bioavailability. This is why it has those effects because NAD is quite a large molecule by itself. So it's actually hard to—if you supplement orally with NAD. The absorption of the—it will not be high, because of how big the molecule is. So this is why it's called dinucleotide because it has two nucleotides that would need to penetrate the cell. But NMN is a mono nucleotide. And this is why it absorbs better Lisa: It's actually made there—it's put together in the cell. So the nicotinamide mononucleotide enters through the membrane into the cell, from what I'm understanding, and then it becomes a dinucleotide. So it's a phosphorus molecule, I think or something that's added to the NMN. And then it's an NAD. Dr Elena: So yes, so basically it's NMN is a phosphorylated NR molecule basically. Lisa: Okay, phosphorylated NR molecule, okay, and then when it goes to NAD... Dr Elena: And that’s the reason why NMN is actually a bit more expensive than other supplements. Because in comparison to other supplements that are just, let's say, plant extracts or something like this, there is quite a lot of biology implicated in the production of NMN. So there are several steps it would need to go through. And it's quite complex and laborious to produce. And this is why it's a bit higher in terms of price. But from my personal experience again, so I started supplementing with NMN over a year ago, while I was still doing my PhD. And at that point—when I found NMN, I already had a burnout. So, which is something that a lot of PhD students experience and my project was quite, quite challenging. And human embryonic stem cells require quite a lot of cell culture in order to just survive, let alone to expand them and do experiments on them. So yes, at some point during my PhD, I literally was doing 18 hours, from 6am till midnight. With eight or ten hours of cell culture during that day, let alone the experiments I had to do. So yes, quite challenging. However, it was a priceless experience. I learned a lot. And I think that it was definitely worth it. So yes, back in the day, so while I was experiencing this burnout, I found out about NMN. And I thought to give it a go. And it was basically amazing the fact because I've been supplementing with different supplements for the past 15 years or so. And I'm a biohacker myself. Lisa: Yes, yes. Like me. Dr Elena: I transfer with different supplements and stuff. And this was the supplement that I felt the effect of within a few days of taking it and I've never experienced that before with any other supplements. So within three, four days, I actually felt different. I felt the different energy levels. I felt an increase in my energy levels and I felt an increase in my focus. And I remember my partner calling me at some point in the evening at 8 or 9pm, something like that. And we were talking on the phone and he just said ‘Oh, so you're not tired yet’. And I’m like, ‘No, I'm not tired. I actually feel great’. Lisa: ‘This stuff's working’. Dr Elena: Absolutely. Yes. And this is how my current business was born. And this is how NMN Bio was born. And I was so excited to actually have a product in the market that is pure, potent and I know that it is what it is. And because I have been struggling to find a good supplier of NMN for quite some time. Lisa: Tell me about it. Dr Elena: Yes, because of its price, I think that there are quite a lot of opportunistic companies out there that just white label the NMN powder, and they don't even have a certificate of analysis and you don't even know what's in there and things like that. And they just totally diluted with niacin or something else. Lisa: Exactly. Yes, this is a danger and this is why having a significant analysis and having it scientifically backed in every batch tested and stuff is really important. I've been on—prior to meeting Dr Elena—I've been on in NMN for maybe five, six months now. And I've had my mom and my brother on it and my husband on it. But I had to go through, jump through all of these loops to get it out of America. Get it sent to someone there. Get it shipped over here and it's not been available down the scene of the world. And finding a reputable source is absolutely key with this molecule. I remember David Sinclair saying, when you do get your NMN do keep it in a cool, dry place. So don't stick it in a hot place under the sun somewhere. Ideally, probably in the fridge if you can, to give it an extended shelf life and for it to do its job properly. So you've founded a company NMN Bio, at the UK, and I'm really excited to be working with Dr Elena and I'm going to be importing it down to Australasia. Dr Elena: I'm super excited about this too. Lisa: Yes, me too. Like it's just super exciting for me. Because I'm spending a fortune a month, giving this to my family anyway. And I could never test what I was doing. And now I have a place where I can trust that it's coming from a good source. So nicotinamide mononucleotide is the one aspect but that's not the end of it all. Is it though? That's not—so resveratrol we mentioned before. This work in combination—and on that point, it should be trans-resveratrol that you take, if you're taking resveratrol with it. Dr Elena: Yes, absolutely. Lisa: And we don't have this yet in the cater of products. But this is in the pipeline, isn't it, Dr Elena? Dr Elena: Absolutely. Yes, this is coming in 2021. Super excited about it. Hopefully we'll have it on the market in the next few months. Lisa: In the next months. And but resveratrol, trans-resveratrol you want to be taking that in combination with nicotinamide mononucleotide. So an analogy that Dr Sinclair said was resveratrol is like the accelerator pedal and nicotinamide is the fuel. I think that’s the way around. Dr Elena: Yes, absolutely. That's correct, because basically what activates the sirtuin is the resveratrol molecule. But in order for them to function properly, you do need the NMN because this is what they consume in order to function. And so this is why it's such a good synergy. And as you said, trans-resveratrol is absorbed much more. And also in order to increase the bioavailability of resveratrol, it's good to take it with some sort of full fat dairy. So for instance, a yogurt. David Sinclair says that he does take it in the morning with a full fat yogurt. Lisa: With some fat, yes.. Dr Elena: In fats, or you could you could do some cheese, probably. I do yogurt as well. Lisa: Does it have to be dairy? I've been taking it with oil, is that okay? Dr Elena: Yes, this could work as well. So yes, absolutely. There are a few people doing olive oil for this type. Lisa: So it just needs a fat in order for it to be bioavailable, because it’s a dry powder. And so the oil in the fat helps. Because it's a very insoluble molecule. Dr Elena: And then what I do for my personal anti-aging cocktail... Lisa: Which is obviously working, because Dr Elena is actually 110 years old. Dr Elena: No, just 32. Lisa: She’s just 32 but looks like—honestly, I thought, seriously 32? I would have thought you were 22. So something's working. The good diet. It can't be that overworked because you've been definitely overworking for the past few years. And this is obviously helping. And I'm 52. So I'm old enough to be your mom. And I'm definitely super excited about anything that's coming down the pathway that's going to slow down the degeneration. Because over the years, and after smashing the crap out of my body, I've definitely got some repair work to do. And my mom is 79 years old, she's in the corner over there, taking her NMN as we speak, and her resveratrol, along with their hemp seed oil and all the other supplements and a big green smoothie of broccoli juice. So she's like going, ‘ugh’, it'd be quite funny for you to see her face right now. Dr Elena: You should also add apigenin to her cocktails. So, this is another molecule which is very interesting. And perhaps in a later podcast, we can also talk about a couple of different things that have to do with raising your NAD levels in different ways. So, basically, what happens, besides sirtuins, there are different other enzymes called NADases that also consume NAD. And if they do that, consistently, there is not enough NAD for sirtuins to do their job. So such enzymes are called parks, which are activated when there are some stress signals in the body. So, for instance, one such signals when let's say your mitochondria are going bad and there is some sort of stress related to mitochondrial function, you will get a secretion of cytochrome c from mitochondria. And then as a result, you will get some sort of activation of the park enzymes and they also consume NAD. Another NADase is CD38. So, this is an enzyme that is activated when there is increased inflammation in the body. So, as we age, CD38 levels increase. And what has been demonstrated very beautifully in a recent study in mice was that CD38 actually controls the functions of sirtuin 3 in an NAD dependent manner. Because they did quite an elegant experiment, where they did have CD38 knockout mice, and the wild type mice or regular mice. And in the CD38 knockout mice the levels of sirtuin are two and a half times higher. And then when they put a saturating amount of NAD in the wild type mice, what happened is basically the function of sirtuin is also increased. And it was similar with the function of surgeries in CD38 knockout mice. So this means that if CD38 is absent, then sirtuin3 in this instance is upregulated and is working much more. But when CD38 is present, it consumes all of NAD and then there is not enough NAD for sirtuins. Lisa: And this is so this is why we need a bigger pool of NAD, basically for all of these problems as we age. Dr Elena: So this is one point and then the second point I was going to do there is that apigenin, so the supplement that I mentioned to you, which is actually present in parsley and predominantly in dried parsley. So you can actually get it for cheap. Lisa: Yes. Dr Elena: Have a teaspoon of dried parsley every day. So apigenin is a molecule that actually blocks CD38. So this means that it can also increase the levels of your NAD and make it available for your sirtuins. Lisa: Wow. I'm off to get some parsley. I just ripped my parsley plants out of the garden. Bugger. I will get seeds, so I'll have to plant some more. And you do need to dry it in order for it to intensify. Dr Elena: If you dry it, it will have even apigenin. So, the bioavailability increases somehow, I'm not entirely sure of the mechanism. But yes, dried parsley. Lisa: Yes. Sorry. There's a noise in the background with my mum washing out a broccoli. Dr Elena: No worries. Lisa: Yes, yes, yes, this is my podcast life. Real. So activated immune cells. So like I've had an infection for the last couple of weeks. So I've been under a hell of a lot of stress in the last year, like really—losing my father and so on, a hell of a lot of stress. And the day before Christmas, I stopped working and I started to relax and my immune system then went, ‘Okay, cortisol levels are now going down. We're going to make you sick. We’re going to do some repair work’. Dr Elena: That’s how it’s usually done. Lisa: Yes, yes. That's what happens when you relax. So my whole Christmas period was spent with a head cold and a chest cold. Now, when my immune system is activated like that, I'm going to need a lot more NAD because of this in NADases. You call them, NADases? And the CD38 would have been one of those things that was probably more active when I was sick. Would that be right? Okay, so we need to increase that in order to help our immune system. So does this—random thought—does this help with other autoimmune diseases as well? Like, does it help deep down regulate some of the inflammatory pathways? Dr Elena: I don't know, this is not my area of expertise. Wouldn’t be able to comment on top of my head on this. Lisa: Yes, just me connecting the dots going—that would make sense but okay. So all right, so we've covered quite a lot of ground today. And I think we'll probably wrap it up there, Dr Elena. And we'll go on to mTOR and autophagy and other things in subsequent podcasts, and so on. So we're going to put all the links. If you guys want to get some NMN, and in a few months, we will have resveratrol as well. I'm going to put the links in the show notes to the new website. And we're going to be importing it down to here to New Zealand and Australasia. And I'm really excited about that. Because there is one other company that has it here and it's not got any certificate of analysis, there's no sort of thing. So you want to make sure that you know where you're getting this information from all your supplements from, and you want to know who's behind it. So I'm really, really excited about working with your Dr Elena. I think this is brilliant. I know we've got a whole lot of products that are in the pipeline that are going to be coming down in the next year or so. Other things—so we will be covering those in future episodes. Things like, I don't know epistane... Dr Elena: We should definitely talk about senescent cells and what we can do in order to combat them. And then of course, the subject of my PhD, which was around autophagy. So, this is definitely a very nice subject for discussion, because as you mentioned, mTOR is not something that you want to mess with on a regular basis. And actually, the good news are that there is the mTOR- dependent activation of autophagy and mTOR independent activation of autophagy. So my PhD supervisor was the one that discovered during his PhD probably 20 years ago, 15 years ago, the mTOR- independent regulation of autophagy and different molecules that value also can work and activate autophagy in an mTOR-independent manner. So one such molecule is already on the market as a natural sweetener. It's called trehalose. Lisa: Trehalose. Dr Elena: If you want to supplement your... Lisa: How do you spell that? Dr Elena: Trehalose. T-R-E-H-A-L-O-S-E. This is what I use for my coffee. Lisa: Oh, trehalose. So that will help you increase your autophagy? Dr Elena: Trehalose has been shown to activate autophagy in an mTOR-independent manner. Yes. Lisa: Wow. So I don't need to starve myself in order to activate... Dr Elena: I mean, there is not that much data in humans yet on this particular molecule, to be honest. I actually don't know what is the dose that you would need to have this effect, but I still prefer it over sugar. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. And anything that supports that pathway anyway and getting rid of these senescent cells. So senescent cells just for those wondering what the hell we're talking about. Senescent cells are basically cells that are still alive, but they're no longer replicating. They're not doing the job properly. And they're sending out inflammatory signals into the body. So they attract cytokines that cause inflammatory responses. And so what we want to do is we want to knock these cells off them to have their autophagy, meaning their cell death. And when we recycle the parts of the cells for the new job, and that's what we want to happen. As we get older, we get more and more senescent cells and there's actually literally ways our body down and stops and increases inflammation and causes a lot of the effects of aging, if you like. So that's definitely a subject for next time. But Dr Elena, you've been fabulous today. Thank you so much for the work you do, for the patient you bring to the project. I'm super excited about our collaboration and helping lots of people stay younger for longer. I think that will be. Dr Elena: Absolutely, that’s the goal. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. Have a wonderful evening because it’s around midnight in Dubai. So thank you very much for staying up late for me over in Dubai. It's probably too much. Dr Elena: My pleasure. Lisa: And we'll see you again soon. Thanks Dr Elena. Dr Elena: Okay, thank you. Bye bye. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends. And head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
Work In Your Strengths Zone To Make Work Enjoyable How often you work in your strengths zone has a lot to do with living your best life. Here at Lead Through Strengths, we believe that choosing easy doesn't equate to choosing lazy. It means choosing efficiency and getting more of what works for you and what you enjoy focusing on. This may sound too good to be true. But what if the gap between you and your own strengths zone is actually shorter than you think? In this episode, Lisa Cummings and co-host TyAnn Osborn will walk you through some of the ways to get there. Read on and listen as they share stories and lessons that shaped their "work in your strengths zone" concept. Another spirited, inspiring and important discussion that you wouldn't want to miss. Here’s a full transcript of their conversation: Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and you know, I'm always telling you — it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with my other host here in the room, TyAnn Osborn. TyAnn: Hi. Lisa: So today's episode is all about using your strengths to make things easier, to make life easier. It's about doing more work in your strengths zone. There's actually a very high return on effort from using your strengths to get things done. However, many of us do things the hard way. TyAnn: So true. Why do we do that? Lisa: Maybe we don't know we are. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: I know that I've done it in my career or out of habit... TyAnn: Me too. Lisa: … where as a younger performer, and I wanted to prove myself, I would work the longest hours, I would, you know, you have the stuff to learn so you have to go through the learning curve part. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: But then you get in the habit of doing everything through brute force. And there comes some time when it doesn't matter if you work 72 hours a day. That isn't the thing that is going to get you to the next level. If you work in your strengths zone, you're way more likely to crush your performance goals. You have to figure out how to not do it through your hours... TyAnn: Right. Absolutely. I think you have to really keep an eye on: What's the end goal here? What problem am I trying to solve? Am I trying to solve for “I need to work a lot of hours," or am I trying to solve for actually getting an end product done? But you know, this kind of reminds me of when we were in school and we were learning math, because I don't know if your math teacher was like this, but mine was where anytime you learned a new concept, you would learn it the hard way where you had to do it all by hand and write it all out. And then the next day when you came in, the teacher would say, “Okay, and here's the formula." Or, “Here's the shortcut.” And then invariably, you're like, “Why didn't you teach me that the first time?” And then there was always some answer about, “Well, you might be out without a calculator one day and…” — which no one's ever out without a calculator now. So anyway, but it's just one of those “We can get to the same place, and you can get there the hard way or you can get there the easy way.” And it's interesting that as adults or are in our corporate world, we tend to think that the easy way, that there's something wrong with it. And it's funny how many times someone will kind of fight me on this concept, or say like — “That's cheating. I have to do everything the hard way." Or, you know, "Go uphill both ways, little brother on my back, in the snow with no shoes, or else it doesn't count.” Like, where do we get that message? Lisa: It does make people feel awkward. There was a time when I was talking about strengths, making you feel like work is easier, that you could enjoy it, that you could be energized by it, that it makes you feel excellent with less effort. All of the E's you get when you work in your strengths zone. TyAnn: Right. Ease, enjoyment and effort. Lisa: Yes. And they're like, “So, making work easy?” It was this kind of cheating response, like, “So, where the goal is to make everything easy?” As if it's a shortcut that brings low quality. TyAnn: Isn't that funny that it can only be work if it feels like it's awful or hard, or like I have to trudge off to the salt mine every day and... No, that that's not how it's supposed to be. And frankly, if it feels that way, I would say maybe we ought to take a pause and look at what's going on because it doesn't have to be that way. But this is a concept you and I talk about all the time. And I use this almost daily in my conversations with clients and other people and even kids. It doesn't have to be that hard. And you're making it too hard. And so here's where I think having like a spirit guide or a trusted person you can talk to can really help because when you're the one making it hard, it's almost impossible to see that you're the one making it so hard. Lisa: Yes. TyAnn: It can be really hard to get yourself out of that. Lisa: Yes. TyAnn: Yeah. Because it makes sense to you at the time. Lisa: You even did it to me as an accidental coaching one time. I remember I was like, “But I need to do more of this because I want this on my resume. I need this credibility.” And then you said, “It's already on your resume. And it will still be on your resume if you don't do it anymore.” And I had this moment where I was like, “Oh right, it's draining me. There are other ways to build this career…” TyAnn: Right. Easy Doesn’t Mean Lazy Lisa: And I don't have to continue that one. Somehow, I got convinced. And I also think with people like Gary Vaynerchuk, and there's a lot of messaging about hustle, and I'm not saying that hard work isn't good. And I'm not saying that there isn't a time in your career or when you're new to something like in startup mode for something, a lot of times, it is a glut of effort at the beginning. So I don't poo poo the idea of hustle because I don't want that to mean, “Well, then I believe in lazy." But I think that's part of the problem. It is easy doesn't equal lazy. But for some reason, we tell ourselves it does. What seems to be missing is the idea that finding work in your strengths zone can really step your game up. TyAnn: Yeah, I think that's baggage associated with that. Or yeah, that if it's not a struggle, it doesn't count, or something like that. I think that's kind of an American thing, too. I don't know where that comes from. But I would just say, let's revisit that. I don't think that is the way it has to be. Lisa: Mm hmm. TyAnn: I don't think you have to work 28 hours a day. Lisa: How do you know when you're making it hard? So let's say I hire you as a coach, and I'm like, I'm totally overwhelmed. I'm working late into the night, I'm not seeing my family. It's just too much. And you're going to be assuming that I'm probably making something tougher than it needs to be. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: How do we even uncover what it is? TyAnn: I would say, the first thing you've done well is you've brought somebody else to help. So, spirit guide! Again, you don't have to hire somebody. But do ask for help, because being overwhelmed, and then just trying to muscle through — here's what I know to be true: More of what's not working is going to get you more of what's not working. Lisa: Oooooh. Tough truth. TyAnn: And I put that on a t-shirt. And so, and that's often what our natural response is — when something's not going well, like, “I'm just going to double down." Well, guess what? That's going to get you twice as much of what's not working. So good on you that you could recognize “I need help.” But after we don't know where we need help, so here's what I have people do. Just where's the crunchy? Where's the frustrating part? So here's a true story. I was working with an executive at a high-tech computer manufacturing place that we both worked at one time. And she was very frazzled, very frustrated, and you could just see it. She exuded this kind of hot mess energy, you know what I mean? Have you ever met somebody like that, just sort of, it was sort of repellent, honestly. It was sort of like, “I don't want that to get on me.” And you can imagine how that made her team feel and how that made her clients feel. And so I was asking her, like, “What is going on?” And the first thing she said to me was so funny. She said, “I can't get to work early enough.” And I thought, “Oh, maybe we're just looking at ’I work all the time.' Something like that." “So tell me more about that.” Which by the way is one of my favorite questions. “Tell me more about that.” Because never assume you know what they're going to say. I have to tell myself this all the time. "Tell me more about that." And she said, “Whenever I get to work in the morning, people are waiting for me in the parking lot. So they pounce on me when I drive in. I can't even get in the building and set my bag down before people are all over me and everyone is wanting a piece of me like there's nothing... I can't even get in the door and I've given myself away.” And then I, “Oh my gosh, wow." Whoa, I can write a whole book about that. There's so much there. And so we talked about that. And then I just asked her, “What would make your life better?” And she said, “I would just like to walk in the door and put my bag down and get a cup of coffee and have a few minutes to look at my calendar, plan my day, and then start.” And I said, “Okay, why don't we do that?” And so it was a little bit like that kind of doing it the hard way. Her solution was, “I'll just get to work earlier." And so literally, she had backed her work up to where she was showing up at 6 am. But then people kept showing up at 6 am. So whatever time she got there, that's what time they got there. Like, you're gonna start having a cut, you know, in the parking lot. This is crazy. "Why don't you just set a boundary and tell people what you need? And all you need is an hour or 30 minutes or whatever. So that's not unreasonable. Just tell people.” And she couldn't see it. But, so it was so easy for me and so “Aha” for her. So again, she was doing things the hard way. And like I was, “Just make it easy. Let's just set a real easy boundary.” Totally changed her life. Lisa: Hmm. It's amazing one thing — this might be one of your magic powers, because you did it for me, you did it for her... There are a lot of these conversations where you just need another person to help you see how simple it can be to shift into work in your strengths zone. TyAnn: You've done that back to me too. So I appreciate that. You’ll Never Know What’s Possible Until You Try To Work In Your Strengths Zone Lisa: You also have this other great, favorite question. So besides, “Tell me more about that,” one that I think that you've asked very well on this theory of seeing where you've made a barrier between getting to the life that you want and the one that you're in, where you're just like, “I'm making it all too hard and can't do it all," your question of: “What would you do if you were brave?” Now it gets, you have to get in reflection mode to really answer the question. TyAnn: Yeah, don't you love that question? Lisa: Yes. Because even for her situation, this isn't like... A lot of times when we're talking about this brave question, it's more like the “I'm self-actualizing and I'm trying to come up with ‘what would I do with my life if I were brave?’” TyAnn: Right. Lisa: That's deep and it takes a lot of reflection, and there are probably five great answers to it. But what about her scenario, if you just said, “What would your solution be if you were brave?” TyAnn: Yeah. And what's fascinating is, you know, we've talked before about fear, and I think she was afraid to set a boundary, because it was so easy when I asked what would make your life better. She's like, “I just want to put my purse down. I would like to have a cup of coffee. I would like to look at my calendar.” Okay, well, that all seemed super easy. None of that is crazy at all. She wasn't asking for a personal driver and, you know, a corner office or anything crazy. She was just asking basically for boundaries. And okay. Well, what was holding her back from doing that? Fear. Fear that if she told somebody no, what would happen? She would be seen as a bad leader. She would be seen as a manager who didn't really care, that a good manager gives everything to their team. And you know, whatever, all these things, all the “shoulds” she should be doing. And so I love that question. I wish I could take credit for it. I'm sure I heard it somewhere, though. But the “What would you do if you were brave?” because often again, your body knows the right answer, but your brain won't let won't let you go there because of fear that holds us back. So what would you do if you were brave? You're like, "You know what, I wouldn't even do this project.” “Okay, well, why not?” “Because it doesn't matter. This isn't really what we should be doing anyway. This thing is a waste of time. Our customers don't even want this. What would I really do? I would explore this other thing.” “Okay, well, how come we don't do that then?” “Ah, well, because we tried that once and it got shot down.” Or, “Well, you know, we're so far down the path now that we've expended all this time and energy. So I can't. I can't say no." Or whatever it is. And so we don't even let ourselves go there. That's a great question. Lisa: Yeah, it is. And you may not always use the answer, like, that's another really great practical example: "I would scrap the whole project." Well, we go back to this concept of where your personal preferences and your business priorities are that it may or may not align. But if you don't ask yourself the question, you can't discover the action that you could take to explore it. And even if the business decides, “no, that project is going to continue," what if by expressing it and thinking through it in a way that is mature and well-thought-through. Who knows, maybe you end up having a conversation with your leader about that project and they go, “You know, but Jane's been dying to work on a project like that. So if you want to just get reassigned, if this thing's dragging you down, I'd love to get you over on this one.” TyAnn: Right. Lisa: That's a possible outcome. TyAnn: There's always possibilities, right? And I think sometimes we're afraid. Again, fear underlies all this stuff. We're afraid of what the answer might be. By the way, the answer might be, “You know, we just got, we just got to finish.” Which by the way, is always going to be the answer if you never ask. Lisa: Oh, this is like the ultimate sales question. If you don't ask, the answer is no. TyAnn: Right. How Can It Make Things Easier For You? For The Team? For The Business? Lisa: So, you can always ask. Now, there are high-risk requests and high-risk things to put out there. But I think if you've thought through a process like this, like: What am I making too hard? Think about business terms. If I'm going to justify something in business terms, what would resonate with my leaders? What if work in my strengths zone actually translates into more revenue or more productivity (which it likely does). Well, being efficient. Getting a high return on our energy or effort or spend. TyAnn: Yeah, absolutely. Lisa: So if you can find a way to express that, you're more likely to get this new path. TyAnn: Is this something that can help us scale? Is this something that really drives internal productivity? Could we decrease noise in the system? Could we increase market penetration? Could we increase customer retention? And there's all kinds of things out there that could be helpful to you. And again, the answer is always going to be “no” if you don't ask or if you don't think about it. But I think this is actually a really fun, creative question too that I've seen some teams use as, you know, in a team meeting, not every time but maybe once a month. Ask as a team: What would we do if we were brave as a group? And see what comes up. And you know, usually, there's a big silence at first because it's always hard to be the first one to be like, “I think we should ditch that project,” Or you know what. But once you kind of get the ball rolling, it's fascinating. And it's a really cool creative thinking activity. Lisa: Yeah, it really is. And you could take that thinking activity and layer in strengths very literally as well, where you could say: How would you apply one of your strengths if you were brave this week? TyAnn: I love that. Be brave and work in your strengths zone. Lisa: That's like, real practical. TyAnn: I love that. That would be great. Lisa: And then I might say, “Oh, well, I would reach out to that colleague in Latin America, who is on a team and does a similar role. And I've been wanting to get to know him but I just haven't taken the initiative and felt a little awkward... Okay, I'll just… I'll do that and make that thing happen.” TyAnn: You know, it's interesting, and I'll bring up the Relator theme. And that one's a fairly common one, we see that a lot in team Top 5s. It's one of Gallup’s Top 5 for their overall database, and that is a particular theme that tends to get shoved aside because it's not an urgent theme, right? You’re usually not graded on your performance review for how your Relator skills are today. But that one tends to show up high in terms of personal needs, in terms of satisfaction for you. So that could be one of those things that — “You know what, it's not my job description to reach out to the guy Latin America, but that would actually kind of really be satisfying for me, and that would really help me build that relationship. And yeah, it's gonna take a little time and frankly, might feel a little bit awkward at first, but that's what I would do if I were brave.” Lisa: Yeah. And what a great way to circle back to this concept of, “Okay, you're making things too hard.” So I can imagine a scenario where that Latin America team you've been trying to pass your work off and say, “Hey look, we've localized it.” And they're like, “No, you're not localizing anything. You've made some poor translations into Spanish, and it's awful.” And they think you're terrible to work with. And the team is resisting everything you hand off to them. And meanwhile, you have this nice little talent theme, Relator, sitting there waiting in the wings for you to say, “Okay, what would make my life easier? Where am I making it too hard? Where I’m making it too hard is I'm trying to shove the way everyone else has already done it, and I'm not stopping to say, 'I have tools in my tool bag right here.'” TyAnn: Right. Lisa: My Top 5. TyAnn: Right. TyAnn: You’re trying to lead with execution as opposed to a relationship theme when that's your jam. So lean into that. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And you can even, you know, blame it on us, blame it on the podcast. You can say, “Hey, I was listening to Ty and Lisa, and they said, you can kind of lean into one of your themes so I'm going to try that even though it feels a little weird.” You can use that. And that's a really good intro. And you can be like, “Okay, it didn't work so well.” Lisa: You're probably going to be at least back to where you were before. It rarely goes bad where you should at least ask or try. Just use it. TyAnn: You should give it a try. Again, first thing that can happen is you're back to where you were. Lisa: Yeah. When Work And Life Gets Hard, Lean Into Your Strengths TyAnn: And again, you know, you get better at things you practice. And so just, I would keep trying, but I would just say if something feels hard in life, or crunchy, or you really just feel like, “Man, why is this so hard?” And you hear that oftentimes on teams. I say that, like, “This shouldn't be this hard. Why is it this hard to get a decision made? Why is it this hard to get this thing approved?” That's a really good time to kind of stop and think, “Yeah, what is going on here?” And there is another way to come at this thing, where we can lean into our ease, enjoyment and you know, effort on, and have it just better spent. So that's a really good verbal clue to pick up on. Lisa: It is. Every time I talk to Ty, I think of song lyrics. So now I'm thinking of this Cake song, I think it's Short Skirt/Long Jacket, where they say “she uses a machete to cut through red tape.” And I'm thinking about your talent themes as your machete. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: And now you've got some red tape. You've got like, “I can't get it. Why is it taking so long to get this approved? Why is there all of this bureaucracy?” Yeah. TyAnn: There you go. Lisa: Start getting your strengths out. Start looking for ways to work in your strengths zone. TyAnn: When you talk about it, your easy button all the time, you have one lying around here somewhere, I mean, that's it. That's your way forward. And so if life feels hard, if projects feel hard, if communication fails, or whatever it is, go back to your strengths and like, “Okay, there's got to be a better way to do this. It doesn't have to be so hard.” There's no medal for hard. There's no giant report card in the sky, that it's going to be like, “Gosh, Lisa did everything the hard way. Well done.” That’s not how life works. Because if you spend all of your energy on things that don't matter, getting things done the hard way, you're not going to have energy for the stuff that does matter. And we're never going to get the best of you out in the world because all of your goodness has been sucked up on junk. Lisa: Hmm. TyAnn: Makes sense? Lisa: I mean, it's the end. TyAnn: That's it. Lisa: If you want the best of you, bring yourself the things that bring you ease, energy, and enjoyment. Remember to ask yourself that question: What would you do if you were brave? And we'll leave you for now. If you feel like you're getting sucked into the junk — I don't know, I just totally botched your saying right there — but that this is the way to rethink it. Ask those curious questions, and ask yourself, “Why not me and why not now?” And give them a try. Alright, with that, we'll see you next time. Bye for now. TyAnn: Bye. These Additional Resources Should Inspire You To Work In Your Strengths Zone We hope you enjoyed this episode with Lisa and TyAnn. Indeed, life can be draining when you don’t work in your strengths zone or not doing the things that you love. In the episode Can Working In Your Weakness Zone Lead To Burnout?, Lisa uses a plant that turned yellow as a metaphor for the poor attention to strengths. This important episode will especially help managers to detect the telltale signs of burnout in a team, and to discern their root causes, in order to address them ASAP. That comes with a caveat though, because life is not perfect, and in reality, work comes with some tasks we love and some tasks that live in the draining weakness zone. In the Strengths Are Not An Excuse To Avoid Weakness Zone At Work episode, Lisa points out that you can’t use your strengths as a reason to have bad performance or low accountability — by neglecting something you don’t like doing. There are results that still need to be achieved, but your talents can help you get them in a strengths-focused way.
Take The Path of Least Resistance To Save Time At Work One of the best things that happen when you are aligned with your natural talents is that work ceases to feel like "work." This is that sweet spot where you accomplish your tasks feel like you're in a state of flow. This is when things on your to-do list energize you, rather than drain you. Since the work is easier and the results are more excellent, you save time and precious energy at work. It's totally different on the flip side when you work out of your weaknesses. You feel this inner resistance, which can lead to self-doubt and early exhaustion. As your energy dips, you feel like you have nothing to give. Which is not the truth, because you have it in you all along. Here at Lead Through Strengths, we want you to drive towards what you want to have more of, such as work that gives a sense of meaning, while managing all other tasks at hand. The more you use your strengths, the more you're able to offer your best to the world. But how exactly do you get more of what you want when your plate is already full of soul-sucking tasks, and for which you think there are no takers either? Certainly, you don’t have to get stuck in this situation for long. So, listen up as Lisa Cummings and TyAnn Osborn put together and share great insights that will help you build a career centered on strengths that you love. Here's their conversation. Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings and you know, I'm always telling you, it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with my other host here in the room TyAnn Osborn. Today, the topic is, you know, stuff that happens at work, that is, a little weird or awkward "things that make you go, hmm." And that thing…. it's a ridiculous call back to Arsenio Hall. It was way back. No really, it's those things that make you go hmmmm because you can't figure out how to quit making work feel so hard. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: What if that thing is, “Hey, Ty, why is my manager keep giving me all the tasks that I hate? Hmm.” TyAnn: I think it's because they hate you. Lisa: (eyes widen) Hmmm. TyAnn: No, they don't hate you. That's what we're going to talk about today. Lisa: But this is a real thing. TyAnn: This does happen. This happens all the time. Lisa: I actually have an uncle who said from his corporate experience (shout out to Alan) he said that if you are doing a task that you can't stand, but you're the one who does it the best in the office, he's like, “Well, the next time they need to get that thing done, who are they going to come to to get the thing done? You, the one who did it the best.” TyAnn: Right. Doing A Great Job? Best If It’s On Tasks That You Love Lisa: So I do think this can happen because people get known for things that they don't even like, but they haven't worked on their career brand. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: They haven't talked to their manager about what they do like or hope for more of in their development. And I think that is one of the reasons you can be really good at something that you don't like. You're masterful because you keep getting it assigned to you. TyAnn: Absolutely. This happens all the time. This has happened to you and me. This happens to our corporate clients all the time and in a very innocuous way. There's no diabolical plot behind this. And especially when you're more junior in your career, where you might not feel like you can say, “I don't really want to do this, or, I don't really like this.” And so, here's what happens: Oftentimes, when you're smart, you can do a lot of things, and do it in a very proficient way. And actually, your product can be pretty good. And then guess what, because you did a pretty good job at that, next time, they have that horrible spreadsheet that needs to be done — “You did a pretty good job so you're gonna get known as the horrible spreadsheet fixer.” Lisa: And you don't want to be the one... I mean, if you're a hard worker... TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: ...yet you don't want to be the whiner, complainer... TyAnn: Right. Lisa: The purpose of this episode isn't to say, we're going to empower you to go tell your leaders all of the things that you just don't like. TyAnn: Yeah, don't don't do that. That’s not the takeaway from this section at all. That's a career-limiting move by the way. Lisa: High-risk conversation. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: It would be less risky to figure out a way to describe the stuff you do want more of that you would like to grow into. TyAnn: Yeah. So Lisa's got a great term that she uses about career crafting. She calls it "job shaping." So we're going to talk to you about how to lean your job more toward the things that you do like, and how maybe to get away from some of these legacy things, that kind of seems stuck to your shoe that you can't quite shake. Lisa: Oooh, that's a good way to say it. TyAnn: Or how to, how to avoid that thing you don't like. So, we'll give you some tips both ways. So how to lean more toward the stuff you want, and how to get out of this position of some stuff that you don't like. Lisa: Yeah. And I mean, I think the simplest concept for the gum on your shoe, (that's a good one), is like, it starts to fade away from assignments if you continue to get known for the things that you *do* enjoy. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: I call this concept, “don't expect your managers to be mind readers." Because it's easy to think, “They should know that that's a horrible thing, the horrible spreadsheet task, like they should know, I hate that. Why do the give the junk tasks to me? Yes, I might save time because it can turn into a mundane brainless task, but that's now how I want to save time at work.” TyAnn: How would they know? And what do you... Lisa: You call it something else, don't you? What do you call it? TyAnn: I call it "the psychic method doesn't work." Even though we might try to prove this over and over? Yeah, so and here's the deal, too. We see the world through our own eyes, because that's the lenses we were given, right. And we tend to think, "everything I hate, everyone else hates." Or the opposite: "everything I like everyone else likes." But that's not how the world works. And certainly in the strengths world we find there's all kinds of different things. So just because you like something or dislike something, somebody else has a completely different set of likes and dislikes. So if you secretly hate that thing you're working on, and you don't ever say anything, guess what? How would anybody know that? Especially if you keep doing a really good job at it. And the other factor is that if you're working in your weakness zone, it's not going to be as intuitive. It's going to take you longer. The way to save time at work is to spend more of your time in your strengths zone. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And you never say anything. And then they're like, “Hey, Lisa, good job on that spreadsheet.” You're like, “Okay, thanks.” Lisa: Hey thanks. Hey, I'm a hard worker. And I keep getting more of this stuff that I don't like. It feels soul-sucking and time consuming. TyAnn: And think about this. What if you have a lot of Achiever and Responsibility in your top themes? Lisa: I had it. I had a client, example, recently where she led through Responsibility. And she was on a big global project, all people in all time zones, and she thought it was really important to get people synched-up that someone would capture the initial conversation. This is basically a note taking thing. TyAnn: Ahh Lisa: So she asked, “Who would like to volunteer?” TyAnn: Okay, usually the answer is going to be, “no one.” Lisa: That is pretty much what happened. Podcasts don't go well with me demonstrating the long cricket-silence she got in the meeting. But that's what happened. She asked, and all she heard was crickets. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: *no answer, *no answer. TyAnn: She probably felt like she had to do it. Lisa: She did. She leads through Responsibility. She can't let a ball drop. She was like, “I'll take it.” So she takes it. And she said she found herself time after time after time taking it and she was new to the company and new to the role and six months in, she said — “Do you know my career brand here is I'm the team secretary?” Oh, and she feels like it was that one decision that led to the next one, to the next one, to the next one. And now that's how they see her. So now work feels slow and clunky. She drudges through it. She's dying to save time at work because she's bogged down in tasks she hates. TyAnn: And now for her branding exercise, she has to undo all of that, which is a, you know, a much more difficult spin. Lisa: Our career-memories are long. TyAnn: Yeah. So that's going to be a whole ball of work just to undo just to get her back to neutral. Because then we have to replace all that with something else. Lisa: Mm hmm. Yeah. TyAnn: I mean, it can be done but that's just a harder way to go. Lisa: I think that's actually a good one for the example of what you were talking about. Like there's the how, how do you unwind from what you don't like and then build into what you do like? Now if you imagine this person walking around declaring: “By the way, I don't like note-taking.” “By the way, I’m not a secretary.” “By the way, that's not really what I want. I'm, I'm so much more.” "By the way, I'm actually trying to save time at work and be efficient here!" That would not go well. That would be awkward, whiny and bizarre. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: But if instead, she starts really knocking it out on these other three things that are a big deal (the ones that are in her strengths-zone), then over time, it doesn't take that much time. She gets known for other (good) things and the draining things fade away into a distant memory. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: And that is a path that is much more doable. And I like to give clients a script that is like a starting place for a career conversation with their manager. For example: “I just listened to this podcast episode and it got me thinking about what I would love the most to grow into next in my role. And so it made me think...I'd love to have more projects that require a person to create momentum on the team. I'd love it if you'd consider me next time a big change management effort comes up. (To TyAnn), give me another talent theme that she has besides Responsibility. TyAnn: Okay, let's say she also has, um, Communication. Lisa: Okay, so she also leads through Communication. And the team's doing a project where they need to roll it out to a bunch of end-users who aren't really going to love it. And it's going to take some real change management effort. TyAnn: What clients don't always love what you have to roll out? Sometimes there's change management? Lisa: And imagine how many people wouldn't like that? You know, I have to go out and convince a bunch of other people to do a thing, like most people go, “I don't want to do the dog and pony show. I just want to make the great thing.” And then if you build it, they will come, right? No, you need people who lead through Communication, who can spark momentum and get other people excited about it, and communicate the benefits of it and get out there and spread the message and recruit other messengers. This kind of stuff that would be really fun to her would be loathsome to other people. TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: So if she comes around now and says, “I just listened to this podcast. It got me thinking about things I'd like to grow into. I know we have this problem right ahead of us. If you see a part of that project, where I could contribute my Communication talent theme to to be the spark of momentum, I would love to help with that. So I just want to put it out there. If you see this opportunity, I hope you'll think of me.” TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: Any manager would love to hear that. TyAnn: They're probably, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much because I was cringing inside thinking how are we going to get all the engineers on board, or whatever it is. And hey, now that you've been working, you know, Pan Global, you've been, you know, all these people in all these different regions. You know, we can really tap into that.” So what she didn't do was go around and whine about it. So I would say from personal experience, not the best approach. So she didn't put on her t-shirt, “Here's all the things I hate about my job.” Again, not the best approach. And she didn't go to her manager with an ultimatum, “If you don't give me this I'm gonna fight.” You know, be, “I'm gonna quit” or whatever. That's not also good. What she did do is offer up something that she would like to be known for, she would like to lean into. And even in this case, she might not be saying “I have all this experience in this area.’ It sounded like she was saying, “I would like to get experienced in this.” And now she's getting assigned work she loves. Those lovable tasks feel like they save time at work because they do - they're easier. They're your space to get in flow. Lisa: Yeah. Sharing Your ‘Trash And Treasure’ List To The Team Could Fast-Track A Career You Love TyAnn: So that means I'm going to be great at it. First, right out of the box, I might need to partner up with someone to try to offload some of the trash-tasks. But it's a great way for her to lean into something as opposed to just leading with, here's what I hate about my job, which would be great. Here's what's funny: because here's this task now that she loathes, but there is someone else out there, I promise you, who would love the opportunity to do the thing that she hates. This is what's so hard for us. Remember, everything that we hate, we think everyone else hates too. But there's someone else out there who maybe you know, funny enough, maybe they also have Communication, but theirs show up in a written form. Maybe they are not the extroverted person out there, in terms of extroverted catalytic change. Maybe they are, you know, they are more introverted. They like the details, they want to keep everybody abreast through this great written form. It could be all kinds of things. But there's somebody else out there who would love this. And so a great, you know, really well-functioning team is able to talk about these things. You've got this great trash-to-treasure team activity, where again, it takes a little bit of vulnerability, but we can say, here are the top three things I love, or I'm looking forward to. Here are the things that I'm kind of ready to pass on to somebody else. Lisa: I mean, look at that, like we, we love talking with each other. And we don't get to the actionable takeaway this fast usually. This is, this is great. That thing that you just described, where if you share it as a team…. Here's an example the other day. A guy goes, (I introduced trash and treasure sort of things, like, what are some things that you really enjoy?), and he said, “I really like escalation calls." TyAnn: Which is funny, because a lot of other people are like, “Oh, my God, I would hate that.” Lisa: They thought he added in the wrong column. And then and you know, you just get a lot of that. “Why? Why?” TyAnn: Why? Lisa: “What are you talking about?” Like, “surely he wrote that on the wrong side.” And he's like — “I, I am a deep subject-matter expert. I love when there's a big challenge. It's gotten.... I don't love that customer services are flustered, but he's like, “I love that it's been too big and hairy for anyone to figure out, and I can come in and I know when they talk to me, it is over. Their frustration is done.” He said, “It's so satisfying to know that there is no escalation after me. It is always solved.” TyAnn: Wow. Lisa: And that thing just made him feel so alive. And instantly, in that moment, people are like, “Can I give you mine? Can I give you mine? Can I give you mine?” And he is like, “In fact, yes. If other things can get off my plate, yes, I would love it if my day were filled with that.” Imagine. He feels more productive doing escalation calls. He didn't study a time management book. He didn't even have to apply the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. He saved time at work because he loved it and that is a responsibility that lights him on fire. TyAnn: That's brilliant. Lisa: Now, it's not always that clean and easy. I mean, you can't just be like, “Yes, let me give you my worst tasks ever.” For many on the team, that's their worst well ever. But it works. There are moments. TyAnn: I love that like that. I love that. Or if we could find, usually there's somebody on the team who maybe highly Analytical or they have whatever skill, like the Excel skills, or the Microsoft Project skills. They love, you know, a good Gantt chart or whatever. Usually, there's somebody who, that’s their jam. And someone else wants to poke their eye out if that's what they have to do. So wouldn't it be great if you could just shift a little bit so that, you know, “Hey, maybe I can't just unload this task? Maybe I'm still responsible for it but hey, Lisa, can I go to lunch with you? And you could just give this thing a once over and you know, make sure I'm on the right path?” You know, and you're probably like, “That's awesome. Yes!” And I'll say I’ll buy your lunch. And you're like, “You don't even have to do that, I'm excited to help.” Lisa: Mmmm. TyAnn: I'm like, “Why would you be excited to help about this loathsome project?” But so you know, those kinds of things are easy ways you can ease into it, even if it's not possible for me to be like here at least. So you take it up. Lisa: And I think you're bringing up a nuance that's important is that you don't just want your manager, the person you report to, to be the only one who knows what you want to grow into. Now, your teammates know new things about, you and you know things about them. Maybe then you share with the leader like, “Oh, wow, he was so helpful to me in this way.” And now he's getting known for the thing that he likes. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: And he's getting more of it. And it really does have this virtuous.. TyAnn: ...virtuous cycle — my favorite thing about Significance, right. Uhhmm, share with each other, what is the thing you love best about your job because, in the words of my friend, Lisa, notice what works to get more of what works. And so if I don't know what works for you, I can't ever help you get more of that. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And I can't ever point out because if I keep pointing out your spreadsheet looks really good, and you're like, “Oh my god, I hate that thing. I am going to go to my grave and have that spreadsheet etched on my tombstone.” And you never want to say, “Ah, I'd really like to do this other thing.” So again, coming back to the idea that your manager doesn’t automatically know what you want, and the psychic method doesn't work, and it doesn't work for your teammates, either. This is where I think being vulnerable, having that psychological safety, and I think also having that concept of, “just because I don't say, just because I don't love something doesn't mean I'm saying, “I hate this. I'm not going to do it.” Or, “I'm going to do it poorly.” Because again, I don't get to run my unicorn work. I don't only get to do the things I want to do all day long. I'm going to approach my work and always do everything with as much integrity as I can. But there are some things I would like to do more of, and probably have more of an act to do. Attract Opportunities By Striking A Conversation About Your ‘How’ Skills Lisa: Yay. Good luck on that, Ty. And don't make your take away, the refusal of the job... TyAnn: Don't do that. Lisa: ...or the excuse to get out of work or... TyAnn: Don't do that. But as you know, as we tell children, you got to use your words. So you've got to put it out there. Whether you call it the secret, or the universe, or using your words, you've got to put out there what you're hoping to do more of. Lisa: Oh, and you have to first decide what you want more of. If you're going to save time at work by doing work that puts you in flow, you have to reflect enough to know what responsibilities put you in the flow state. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Strengths, reading the book StrengthsFinder, doing the CliftonStrengths assessment, these are all helpful things if you've never even thought of, “Oh, it's not just that I would like more of this skill, TyAnn: Right. Lisa: … but also, how I interact with people. Or like, in the Communication example, that was more of a ‘how’, not a ‘what’ skill thing” and... TyAnn: Right. Lisa: ...like, “Oh, I like to build momentum. Aha, I can ask my manager for things that require momentum building, that's not something that they've probably ever thought of using, as an assignment criteria.” And now they have a whole new realm of things to offer you instead of like that one specific job that you were hoping to move into next. TyAnn: I think that's actually a really good point because if you just look at, you know, let me find the magic job title, well, I'll just tell you, that's going to be a long hard search. Because that often doesn't exist. But these “how” skills exist in a lot of places that you might not even realize, right? But that's where you can, the more you put out there what you want, the more other people will start to help you and say — “You know, there's actually the thing you didn't even know, but they could use you on that project team.” Like I didn't even know that was a thing. And then, you know. But again, if you just sit there at your cube, or now you know, at your home office, hoping that the magical assignment comes your way and bluebirds into your, to your window, you're going to be sitting there a long time. So you can, you can have a little bit more control in your life when you do the right thing(?) Lisa: Yeah. So if we bring this all together, I would say one action is, you want to have a conversation with the person that you report to. TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: And and try to find a way to express, “Here's this thing I would love to grow into. And I would love it, if you would think of me next time you're considering assignments that relate to x, and if you use those “how” skills. TyAnn: Absolutely. And by the way, it's perfectly legitimate feedback for your manager to say, “Okay, I hear you saying that, but you know what, you don't have any of those skills today.” That might happen. And then you can have a conversation about, “Okay, how might I be positioned to get those skills? What would a path look like for that?” Lisa : Yeah. TyAnn: That is completely legitimate. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: Or for you to look up in the organization somewhere, and then just go talk to someone and say, “how did you get here?” How, and, you know, that's what, I kind of interview internal people all the time. Have, you know, and just have kind of an informational one-on-one. By the way, people love to talk about themselves, little tip, and people will meet with you all day long, for 30 minutes, just to tell you their story. And so that's where real growth happens. So I love that. So talk to your manager. Again, second method doesn't work there. So that's the first tip, communication. Lisa: I'd say, volunteering the talent out. So let's say for example, you lead through Learner and Input. And now your company is implementing Microsoft Teams, but no one knows how to use it, and they're resisting it. And you're like, “we're gonna have to get down with this program, because it's going to be the way of the world. Microsoft is embedded in everything we do, we need to figure it out.” And so you decide, “I'm going to turn on my Learner and Input. I'm going to find all the cool features and things that could make life easier for teammates and then I'm going to share it with teammates. So then you get an opportunity to get known for what you want more of because you've decided, “I'm going to do it anyway. I can tell it we'll have to figure it out. I'm going to turn on my Learner and Input which would be fun for me because those are in my top five. And then I'm going to use those, volunteer them out beyond myself to help the team." By virtue of volunteering it out, you can see where using the talent makes you feel more productive and efficient. It's an experimenting process. It is a process, yet the compounding effect can save you a lot of time at work over the course of months or years. In fact, the job itself can be totally different as a byproduct of these experiments. If the team does StrengthsFinder as a team thing, then they know the words Learner and Input and you're able to say, “Okay, you know, Learner and Input. I nerded out on this. So I thought you might find this helpful, here are all the things that I've picked up.” And you give them the tip sheet. TyAnn: I love that. I mean, that's so cool. You've made yourself the super user. You've... and it's not just about you, you've created, you know, you've positioned yourself in a way of service to other people. So by the way, anytime you're helpful to other people, they tend to want to come back to you to get more help, which is great, because you've, you know, you're killing kind of two birds with one stone, this is great. They're gonna be like, - “Oh, that you did such a great job that last time we had this thing. Now we've got to have this. You know, we're gonna put this in Slack. Nobody here knows anything about it. Can you help us with that?” And yeah, you would be the person. So I love that. It's volunteering your talent, not again, sitting at your desk quietly with your head down, waiting for someone to come tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, Lisa, I know you're a high Learner Input. So I was thinking maybe here's an opportunity, you could, you could do.” That, that's rarely going to happen. It's rarely going to happen. So you have to really keep your eye on the landscape and think, “How could I apply my top themes to what's going on here?” So... Lisa: Those are big. TyAnn: I know. Lisa: Okay. I have a third one, which would be, listen for what people kvetch and complain about. TyAnn: Hmm. Lisa: Not to join it? TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Again, more career limiting. TyAnn: Yeah, don't do that. Lisa: But if you listen, you can hear like when Ty was explaining the spreadsheet with doing the VLOOKUPs. She was good at them but when she remembers this role that she had where she had to spend all day in the spreadsheet doing Vlookups, her nose crinkles up when she says “Vlookup” like there's an uhm! TyAnn: Yeah, there's a physical response when you don't like something. You're basically or even your body might hunch down a little bit. Lisa: Yeah. So watch for that because let's say I were the teammate, I lead through Analytical and Deliberative and I love slicing and dicing data and living in Excel put me in Excel all day long as my favorite job, when I see her react that way, if I'm listening to other people's responses, both tuning in... TyAnn: Yeah, Lisa: ...even just to watch, but I'm watching, “Oh, saw your reaction in the Vlookup there.” TyAnn: ‘Saw the nose crinkle. Lisa: “Not your BFF, huh?” She's like, “NO!” And then I go, “Ah, I start to get ideas. I could, I could take that on for you. And maybe you could swap something out with me. Or maybe I could give you a shortcut template or something like that, where I'm just volunteering it out.” She's thinking, yeah Vlookups are slow and cumbersome and awful. Meanwhile you're thinking that Vlookups are such a great way to save time at work and get really efficient. But beyond watch for things you could swap with others. And when you see others kvetching and complaining, you're often able to see — “Oh, that thing that I like, not everybody likes that.” “Oh, that thing that I'm good at, not everyone else is good at it.” TyAnn: Right. I think that's huge. And just thinking about that person with a spreadsheet, you know, maybe there's a meeting they have to go to every week where they have to report out on that spreadsheet. And that meeting causes them no end of angst. They get the pit in the tummy feeling, they get the flop sweat, they go in and even though they know it front and back, they can't communicate that to save their lives. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And it's miserable for everybody. And you're like, “I could talk to those people cold.” Lisa: That is perfect. TyAnn: You're like, “How about I, you do the back end, I'll do the front end and together we are the Ty and Lisa show? Only if it was the two of us. There really wouldn't be a back end, we would only be to the front. Lisa: We’re going, “To the back. To the back. To the front. To the front.” It would be stuck — a skipping record. “To the front. To the front. To the front” TyAnn: We need to have a team. We would need Deena a lot with this, to help, to help round us out. Um, yeah. So again, the psychic method doesn't work. So you got to have that, those conversations, and I think that will really serve me well. Lisa: Yeah. So let us know, how did your conversation go? How did you bring it up? TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: And when you were thinking of the talents that you're trying to lead into, how did you phrase it with your manager. This is a scripting thing that I find a lot of people get stuck on. And that's why I like to give that thing where it's like, - “Hey, I've been thinking about what I want to grow into next.” Or even using this podcast because at least it's less awkward to say, “Hey, I was listening to this podcast. I was trying to learn more about being awesome at work," you know, in something that makes you sound like you're continuing to grow. TyAnn: Right? Lisa: “I've been putting a lot of thought into this and it gave me this idea.” And then you can offer it out. TyAnn: And then let us know and we'll talk about it. Let us know if you tried it and it doesn't work either. We'll come up with something else for you. There's more than one way here. Lisa: We can have the failure recapture. “Okay, here's a scripting idea that doesn't work. Don't try this because this goes back into that high-risk category that sits right along what... TyAnn: Lisa and I laugh about this because we have tried a whole bunch of things that haven't worked before. So we, you know, we can, we're right there with you on that. We can help prevent you from having those same experiences. Lisa: Yes. And although my stint in HR was very, very short, yours was much more significant. And the time that we got to spend with leaders saying, “All right, fire me.” Like, “We’re doing the roleplay. It's going to be an awkward conversation. I am now the person.” And then getting them to go through…. Scripting things out is tough. And there are so many hard conversations in the workplace. So even these when you're, you're trying to talk about yourself without sounding braggadocious. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: That's tough too. TyAnn: Right? Lisa: And it's not even awkward, and you're not telling someone they're about to… TyAnn: Right. Lisa: ...lose their job or be on a performance improvement plan. It's just simply like, “how do I describe something that I might be good at without sounding like an arrogant jerk? TyAnn: Like a braggy jerk. So it's fine. We, again, it feels a little uncomfortable, because we don't have these conversations all the time. So that's where you're just, you know, you can get a little index card and just literally write this out. And then kind of practice in a mirror saying this. You can practice with a friend. You can call a spirit guide to help you out. And the more you do it, the easier it will become. And again, we're not trying at all for you to say, “here's the list of things I'm not going to do.” This is just how can you lean your career, how can you steer it a little bit more toward the things that bring you energy, and a little bit less towards the soul sucker parts of the job. Lisa: Yeah. And if you do decide that you want to do this as a team exercise, where you're talking about it and you want a facilitator, Ty would be a great one for this. She can come into your organization and walk you through that trash and treasure exercise. She's great at helping you figure out what fills you up - even a personal branding exercise for each person on the team. We have one where you walk away with three words that describe how you would love to be known and describe how you want to show up in the organization so that you can actually take the time to reflect because it's hard to carve the time out, and then your teammates can know how you want to be known, and your manager. TyAnn: That's a cool exercise too, by the way. People feel really good about that. Lisa: Yeah. And it feels so good to hear them about each other. TyAnn: Yeah. Very affirming. Lisa: And it takes away that... TyAnn: Very affirming. I love that one. Lisa: Yeah because you're not being awkward or arrogant when some facilitators ask you to do the exercise. TyAnn: Yeah, absolutely. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: So give us a ring. Let us know what works for you and if you need help on this process. Lisa: All right. With that, we will see you next time. Bye for now. More Relevant Resources To Support Your Strengths-Focused Career Growth The previous discussion on strengths as easy buttons for better performance truly supports today’s episode. You turn on your "easy buttons" when you go for tasks or projects that you find enjoyable and energizing. This leads to a better and well-recognized performance at work. But going more for these tasks that you love also means ensuring you don’t end up sounding braggy. Not all people around you might respond well to it. Here’s Lead Through Strengths Facilitator Strother Gaines sharing tips on how to not sound arrogant when building a career around your strengths, so you can review your script before you talk to others about yourself. If you’re a team manager, you can help and guide your team members realize their full potential in whatever roles they express to lean more into by assessing their top strengths, along with their trash and treasure list. Revisit Lisa’s interview with Adam Seaman to pick up more tips.
No one is exempted from exposure to environmental pollutants. While this may sound worrying, there are steps, backed with scientific and empirical evidence, to rid our bodies of these harmful pollutants. However, there is still a lot of misinformation about detoxification that we need to uncover. In this episode, Dr Bryan Walsh discusses the common perception about detoxification and explains the actual science behind it. He talks about the different phases of detoxification and its complexity. Dr Walsh also tackles the importance of excretion as a widely ignored aspect of detoxification in diets and weight loss programs. Detoxification may seem challenging to start, but it begins with getting to know your body and blood chemistry. If you want to know more about the science behind detoxification, then this episode is for you! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about the phases of detoxification. What is the assessment criteria for detoxification? What is the importance of context in detoxification? Resources Try out a Metabolic Detoxification Questionnaire here. Alternatively, you can look for other questionnaires by searching for ‘metabolic detoxification questionnaire’. Detoxify or Die by Sherry A. Rogers Fasting Mimicking Diet Program by Dr Valter Longo Metabolic Fitness Curious to start your detoxification? Try out the Walsh Detox Program! Episode Highlights [04:47] How Dr Walsh Started Studying Detoxification Dr Walsh was interested in health and fitness from a young age. He eventually ventured into massage therapy and became a fitness professional. He took a postgraduate degree to become a naturopathic physician. After his education, he felt that he had to study more to serve his patients better. His goal is to connect conventional Western medicine and alternative medicine. [09:56] Views on ‘Toxin’ and Detoxification Dr Walsh cites some ridiculous notions surrounding detoxification. In the 80s, it used to be rehabilitation for addiction to alcohol and drugs until everybody started hopping on the ‘detox bandwagon’. Xenobiotic or commonly known as ‘toxins’ is something foreign to the body that can cause damage in excess. When water leaves the body in any form, water-soluble toxins leave as well. Meanwhile, the body still needs to turn fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble toxins to get rid of it. Our bodies are naturally built to detoxify pollutants through biotransformation. Listen to the full episode for an in-depth discussion on toxins! [16:11] Categories of Pollutants First is heavy metals. This category includes aluminium, arsenic and mercury, among others. Second is persistent organic pollutants, which include phenol, dioxins and pesticides. The last category is volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) that are usually inhaled. In essence, pollutants are everywhere. [17:41] Everyone Is Exposed While everyone is exposed to pollutants, the levels may vary due to location and lifestyle. For instance, Dr Walsh believes that athletes may be less toxic due to sweating during exercise. Listen to the full episode to know the body’s pathways for getting rid of environmental pollutants. [23:04] The Difficulty in Assessment Criteria There are a lot of variables and testing methods to consider in assessing toxin exposure. The fat biopsy is regarded as the gold standard test. However, because different body areas store different amounts of fat, there’s no consistency in the body. Taking these tests can guide you to make different lifestyle changes. However, keep in mind that they cannot determine your body’s toxicity level quantitatively by an absolute number. Listen to the full episode to learn more about the complexity of detox questionnaires. [30:00] Nature of Pollutants Toxin gets stored in a cell or area with low concentration. This is called the concentration gradient. If there’s more toxin in the blood and less in the cell, it will get stored in the cell. When fasting, you go into a catabolic state. Studies have shown that xenobiotics in the blood increase in this state. All detoxes are cellular detox. [33:43] The Phases of Detoxification Phase 0 starts with the fat-soluble toxin entering the cell. Phase 1 is the reaction with the addition of a hydroxyl group. Phase 2 concerns conjugation reaction of adding methylation, sulphation and the like. Finally, phase 3 is when excretion happens. Tune in to the full episode for Dr Walsh’s analogies and a detailed explanation of each phase! [42:06] The Three Pillars of Detoxification The keys of detoxification are mobilisation, biotransformation and excretion. Mobilisation is getting pollutants out of storage. Biotransformation encompasses phases 1 to 3. Excretion should take the toxin out of your body. [47:34] Effects of Dieting Dr Walsh recommends doing a weight loss program in conjunction with a detoxification program. During periods of weight loss or catabolism, xenobiotic levels increase. The problem with rapid weight loss and yo-yo dieting is the redistribution of toxins in the body without excretion. [53:22] Nutrients and Detoxification Being nutrient sufficient is enough to support phase 1. Phase 2 is driven by amino acids. Phase 3 can be blocked by three inhibitors: milk thistle, curcumin and green tea. However, note that the effects of these three inhibitors are based on its dosage and the context. One protocol will not work for everyone; you have to look at the totality. Listen to the full episode for more details about nutrients and botanicals! [1:05:00] The Nature of Symptoms For Dr Walsh, thyroid dysfunction may be secondary to another issue. Once symptoms show, you should consider if it is a protective reaction. [1:11:32] Advice for Detoxification Dr Walsh shares details about his detox course, including a practitioner-based programme and The Walsh Detox for the general public. Your blood chemistry is essential in determining your detoxification programme. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘I’ll be the first to tell you that science will never prove some of the things in life that are the most important things — relationships and love and how we try to study how the brain works — and I don’t think we have any idea’. ‘This is part of my problem with the industry is we can’t even decide on what a toxin is. . . So what I would suggest, the one that people are most talking about, that’s why I think environmental pollutant or environmental toxins make more sense because usually what people are talking about are things that are outside of us that get inside of us and cause damage of some kind’. ‘They will test their blood, their urine and their sweat for a specific xenobiotic or environmental pollutant. And they will find in many cases, it’s not in the blood, it’s not in the urine, but it is in the sweat’. ‘Everybody’s toxic. Everybody needs to detoxify. . . It’s not necessarily exposure; it’s we all have some degree of storage. The question is, when somebody is not feeling optimal, is it because of that or not? And so you can’t run around screaming everybody’s toxic because I don’t know that they are’. ‘And so it’s [toxins are] concentration gradient-based, which also means so that’s how it gets stored. If there’s more in the blood and less in the cell, then it will tend to go into the cell. And that’s when it gets stored’. ‘There’s some ridiculous stories out there that will say, ‘The body won’t release toxins if it’s not healthy enough, and it doesn’t think it can deal with them’. That’s not true’. ‘I’m against protocols; because one protocol will be brilliant for one and harmful for another same protocol’. About Dr Walsh Dr Bryan Walsh has been studying human physiology and nutrition for over 25 years and has been educating others in health for 20 of those years. When he isn’t teaching, he spends his time poring over the latest research and synthesising his findings into practical information for health practitioners to use with their clients. He has given lectures to members of the health care industry around the world and consistently receives positive feedback in his seminars and courses. His online educational platform, Metabolic Fitness, helps health professionals to stop guessing and start knowing what to do with their patients. Dr Walsh is best known for challenging traditional dogma in health and nutrition concepts, such as questioning current models of adrenal fatigue, glucose regulation, detoxification, mitochondrial dysfunction and more. As such, he has been sought out to consult with multiple companies, academic institutions and wellness organisations. Dr Walsh is also a board-certified Naturopathic Doctor and has been seeing patients throughout the U.S. for over a decade. Outside of his professional endeavors, you can find him spending time and having incredible amounts of fun with his wife, Dr Julie Walsh, and five children. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about the science behind detoxification. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast! Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. And today I have just a super superstar for you, Dr. Brian Walsh, who's sitting in Maryland in the USA. Dr. Walsh is someone that I've followed for a long time and learned from. He is one of the great teachers in biochemistry and physiology. And today we are discussing detoxing very relevant to this time of the year. And this is all really next level information. Because it's all about detoxing, like what are the actual physiological steps of a detox process? And what is the latest and current research. This is not something you read in a two page magazine article detox type of thing. But this is the real deal with someone who really, really knows his stuff. Now, Dr. Brian Walsh has been studying human physiology and nutrition for many, many years. And he spends his time sort of poring over the latest research and synthesizing all of that information for the layperson to be able to understand. And he also lectures at Western States University in biochemistry. And as a healthcare professional, he's a doctor of naturopathic medicine. And he has an online educational platform called metabolicfitnesspro.com, where he helps other health professionals like myself, and many, many others, as well as lay people with his programmes and courses. And we're going to be discussing today, as I said, detoxing, how to do it properly, when not to do it, what to be aware of if you are doing it. And he's you know—Dr. Walsh is someone who's really known for challenging traditional dogma in health. And he actually goes and does all the research, does deep deep dives into all of the clinical studies into PubMed, and then brings us the latest and information. So he's really someone that you want to have on your radar, someone that you want to know, if you want the latest and greatest in information. I hope you're enjoying your Christmas time, by the time this episode comes out, Christmas will have been passed. And we're into the new year. And hopefully the world is on a new trajectory and that 2021 is going to be a hell of a lot better. And what better way to start the year than with a discussion around detoxing and getting your body in good shape for the year ahead. So without further ado, I'll be heading over to Dr. Brian Walsh. And just a reminder too. If you want help with any health issues, if you are dealing with anything, please reach out to us lisa@lisatamati.com. You can reach me on email. If you're wanting information about our online run training programmes at Running Hot Coaching, want personalized run training, please do reach out to us as well. We just launched a new package that will be coming out in the next few weeks. So keep an eye out for that where we're going to be offering video analysis, as well as fully customized programmes and a session with me—all included in there in a package price. It's really really a no brainer. So if you want to find out about that, please reach out to us at lisa@lisatamati.com. Of course our epigenetics programme is still open, if anyone wants to know and understand the genes—understanding everything to do with your genes, eliminating the trial and error for your body, understanding what foods to eat exactly, which areas you're predisposed to have problems with, how your brain functions, what your dominant hormones are all of this sort of great information. Please also reach out to us and we can put you in the right direction. We've done a few webinars already on our epigenetics programme. And in the coming weeks, we're also going to be having Dr. Ken McDonald on from PH-316, who's going to be going a little bit more deeper into this. So I hope you enjoy the session though for now with Dr. Brian Walsh. And we'll head over to him right now. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to the Pushing The Limits. This week, I am super excited. I'm jumping out of my skin. I have a man who I really, really admire. I love his work. He's got an incredible brain. Just absolutely mind-mind conversation we were going to have today. I have Dr. Bryan Walsh with me. Welcome to the show, Dr. Walsh. Dr. Bryan Walsh: Thank you so much for being here. Lisa: It's a really, really an honour to have you on. Dr. Walsh, you’re still in Maryland, in the States? Can you give us a bit of a background just on who you are and sort of a quick synopsis and your background as a physician, etc.? Dr. Bryan: Well, yes, I guess I should say it all started out, I was very much into health and fitness, even at a young age, quite honestly. I became a fitness professional—that’s how I started. And then I did a lot of orthopaedic work, so that led me to massage therapy. So I did massage and I was a fitness professional. And the problem is my clients would ask me health advice. And here in the States—I'm a law-abiding citizen—I could have talked to them about nutrition and supplements, but I wasn't allowed to with those things that I did. So then I looked—and there's something in the States, it's a naturopathic physician, naturopathic doctor. I know you guys have naturopathic there. They're a little bit different. It's a four year postgraduate degree. So you go to four years of university, and the traditional four years. And then you have your doctorate. That sounded really good to me because I was already into alternative health. I was devouring books, on health, on herbs, on homeopathy, everything in the health. And that was the umbrella for all these things that I was interested. And I thought, wow, that's great, perfect. So I went through four years of that. Spent way too much money. But it's also where I met my wife. So that is money rally well spent. Yes. Although we both went to school there. So we doubled our debt, essentially, by marrying each other. But what we quickly realized is that it didn't really prepare us to do what we wanted to do. And it didn't take long. I was sitting in front of patients, and I honestly—I didn't think I know what I was doing. I didn't feel qualified. I spent all that money over the four years of school with great classes, but it sounded like all these great topics but... And so that started me—and this is all to tell you this story— where I realized I had to teach myself everything, that I had to reteach myself physiology. I know we're going to talk about detox today. But how I stumbled upon that what I'll call is the truth about detox. And so where I am today is I believe in old medicine, I believe in the body heals itself. But Western science and Western medicine is incredible. I mean, we owe much of what we know about the human body, in terms of mechanisms and pathways and how herbs even work in the first place, to Western science. So what I tried to do is bridge the best of both, is to take the alternative nutritional functional health world, which is great for some things but horrible in others, and combine that with conventional Western medicine, which is great in some things, but horrible in others, and I try to connect the two. So I hope that gives you much of... Lisa: That’s brilliant. Dr. Bryan: I love science. Lisa: And I love the way you sort of combine the traditional or the alternative with the allopathic sort of model because they do both have good things, and they do both have problems. Dr. Bryan: Absolutely. And I can tell you, I love science. But I'll be the first to tell you that science will never prove some of the things in life—of the most important things, in relationships, in love, in health. We try to study how the brain works and I don't think we have any idea. We try to—we're doing genetic testing now, I don’t think… We talked about the microbiome, I don't think we know much of anything when it comes to these things. So, science is fascinating. It's so fun. It can occupy you for hours upon hours upon hours of reading and the rabbit hole of PubMed, but I don't think it will ever offer some of the answers. So that's kind of where I live is that we live in this expansive universe full of all sorts of possibilities. But here on Earth, science really helps us a lot understand certain things, but it doesn't contain all the answers. Lisa: It's a very humble approach. And I think a really good place to start because we know a lot, we don't know a lot more. But we have to sort of work with what we've got and the best knowledge. And this is something that I've really enjoyed out of like, I think I've devoured everything I could find on the internet of yours. And I must say sometimes, I'm like my brain is spinning, trying to keep up and it's fantastic. And I was talking to a colleague who's also really into you and he's got a master's in physiology and he said, ‘Well, I struggled, too, so don't feel bad’. But you do have a way of putting things into analogies that I have just found absolutely fascinating. And today we're going to go into detoxing. And there is an analogy in this story that I've heard you speak of a couple of times that really went, ‘Aha, I get it now’. So definitely want to delve into that analogy. But so just to start with, with detoxing. Let's look at what detoxing in the public realm—if you like—in the popular—the magazines. People talk about detoxing a lot. And I think that we don't understand what detoxing is. So let's start there. What is a proper detox? Dr. Bryan: So what you just described, that's the problem. It's a mess. I was just in the checkout line at the grocery store, two days ago. I even took a picture of my phone to send my wife and it was like, ‘A faster way to do a liver detox’, and it was some medical doctor. I thought, ‘I'm not even going to open that magazine. It's going to be garbage’. You’re right. People say, ‘drink a little bit of lemon juice in the morning, and that's a great way to detoxify the body’. And then I was in the airport one day, and I saw these foot pads that you put on your feet to help pull toxins out of your feet. And then there's the foot pads, and there's colonics. And there's all these different things, and that's why conventional medicine doesn't believe any of this because you have these people saying, ‘Well, when you skin brush, then you're detoxifying yourself’, maybe, maybe not. But no wonder they think that we're a bunch of quacks because if you stand back and look at all that nonsense, it does look like quackery. In the 80s, detox, the only detox there—unless you were like a hippie—in the 80s, was like a celebrity going through some kind of rehab for some kind of addiction, alcohol or drug addiction, then they would go through some kind of rehabilitation, so that was a detox. That was the only detox there was. And then all of a sudden everybody started getting on this detox bandwagon. And the thought is that we are bombarded with—we’re basically these toxic waste cesspools of disgusting that’s inside of our bodies, and the only way to get rid of it is to do these to detoxify. Now, there's some truth to that, some truth. But our body is designed to—a better way to say detoxification is biotransformation, first of all. So there are two different types of we'll call—I don't even like the word toxins, quite honestly. You can call them xenobiotics, starting with it with an ‘x’. Xenobiotic means it's something foreign to the body. You can also call them environmental pollutants, environmental toxins, whatever you’re going to call it. Some people say synthetic, but that's not true because Mercury is toxic to the body in high amounts. So, for lack of better terms, we can call them toxins, xenobiotics or whatever. But they're things that are foreign to the body that in excess can cause damage. There's essentially, for simplicity sake, two forms, there's water soluble, and there's fat soluble. Water soluble, by and large, I don't think we have to deal with too much, because our body is really good at getting rid of it. Our body is so much water already, we don't have to do anything to it. If we have access to something that's toxic, and it's water soluble, our body's pretty good at getting rid of it. And when you look at the ways of getting rid of something, it's anywhere that water goes. So sweating, obviously, urinating, it's quite a bit of quite a water. In faeces, there's a small amount of water that gets expelled there. And even technically—and people have measured this but in tears or saliva, you can get rid of toxins too. So anything where water is leaving the body, then water soluble toxins are leaving as well. And I personally believe that those aren't much of a concern to us because our body... It's kind of like if you take a whole bunch of B vitamins. Technically, those can be toxic in high amounts but they're water soluble in your urine turns glow in the dark yellow if you take too much of that because your body is getting rid of it. Same with vitamin C or any of the water-soluble vitamins. Interestingly—and I hadn't thought of this as a way of describing this, but the vitamins that they say to be careful with are the fat-soluble ones like vitamin A, D, and K because they can accumulate and then those are the toxic ‘vitamins’ if you look at conventional medicine. So fat soluble toxins, those ones are more of concern because they can get stored and the body has to work a little bit harder in order to get rid of them. In other words, you have to take something that's fat soluble, turn it into something that's water soluble, and then the body can get rid of it and all those pathways that we talked about. So the body has built in detoxification or bio transformation processes—everybody says it's the liver but it's not. The enzymes and steps necessary for this are found in a number of tissues and in quite a bit. So, things that have exposure to the outside world, the skin has this disability, the liver does, the kidneys do, the lungs incidentally do, the testes in a guy does when we consider the location as exposure to the outside world more so than some of the internal organs. And we can go into the details of this but basically this fat-soluble toxin that can cause damage to the body gets metabolized or bio transformed, turned into a water-soluble toxin, if you will, a compound. And then is easily excretable in—again sweat, tears, saliva, urine, or a little bit in faeces. So yes, that's kind of a nutshell version of it, I think. Lisa: Okay, so. So let's look quickly at what are toxins and what sort of a fix they have in the body? So we're talking things like your heavy metals, your Mercury's that you mentioned, your pesticides, your preservatives in your food, there's chemicals that were exposed to. Dr. Bryan: So that's honestly—this is part of my problem with the industry is we can't even decide on what a toxin is because the toxin if you think about it, a toxin is something that could cause damage to the body. Right? So then you could say a reactive oxygen species or oxidative stress is a toxin, technically. Hormones, if you have too much of a hormone, can that cause damage to the body? It absolutely can. So, then all of a sudden is a hormone a toxin. And so that's where we start to run into problems, is that we just throw out these terms like toxins. Well, what is that something that? Something that damages the body? Well, a hammer, if you hit me on the head is going to damage my body. Is that a toxin? Let's say, oh, it's internally. All right, well, so how about lipid polysaccharides from a gram-negative bacteria? That's an infection. Is that a toxin? Yes, it is. So that's our—aflatoxin, you have mould in your house. And so, it ends up being this really broad term that people have a hard time describing. Now, so what I would suggest. The one that people are most talking about, that's why I think environmental pollutant, or environmental toxins, make more sense because usually what people are talking about are things that are outside of us that get inside of us and cause damage of some kind. And there's three, let's just say major categories of that there's actually more. One would be things off the periodic table. So that's the heavy metals, by and large, so aluminium, arsenic, mercury, all those types. Even copper, copper is toxic. Iron is toxic. Then there's—loosely the category that you can call persistent organic pollutants. And that's all the ones that get all the press, like this phenol and phthalates and dioxins and all those different things, pesticides. And then there's the ones that you could call them volatile organic chemicals, or VOCs, those ones are usually inhaled. So, you paint, you’re repainting your house, or your apartment and the smell that you get, or cosmetics or toiletries, cleaning products. If you buy a brand new piece of furniture and that off gassing, carpets. So those are the— mean, there's more, but those are the three major categories that I consider so... But then you consider where those come from, in the food that we eat, in the water that we drink, in the air that we breathe, it literally is everywhere. Lisa: Yes. So we are toxic. Dr. Bryan: Well, yes. We are. And I long time ago would say that we're all toxic, and everybody needs to detoxify. And I've tempered that a little bit because like for example, there's one published paper that suggests—well, okay, I should take a step back—everybody is exposed, everybody is exposed, period, end of story. To prove otherwise, I would need to see that proof. Now, it's going to be different considerably, however, based on your location, where you live. In New Zealand versus America. Here in America, I'm in Maryland, but that's going to be a lot different. I'm near farmland. So, we might have exposure to pesticides, but not so much some of the other things that might have been more of an urban area. In New Zealand there’s other different things. So also that depends on one's lifestyle. So me and my family largely eat organic food as much as possible. We use—I don't say green cleaning products, but we use better cleaning products than just the standard things. And so we probably have less exposure than somebody following a standard diet using standard toiletries, cosmetics, yes, and all those different things too. So, we all have exposure. Yes, that's it. I think I believe that's irrefutable. Is it stored in all of us? And I'm going to go ahead and say yes, but to different degrees. For example, you said you're a professional athlete. You have sweat a lot more than the majority of people. There's also some really interesting evidence showing that exercise actually upregulates certain detoxification or bio transformation enzymes. So you might actually be more adapted to that. Lisa: Another good reason to do it. Dr. Bryan: Absolutely. You know what? It’s so funny, like, you know you're supposed to, but then you just see more and more reasons. And it does, it absolutely has been shown in papers, to upregulate certain detoxification enzymes. In addition to the fact that you're sweating more so than somebody who's sedentary. So, I haven't seen any literature on this, but I believe that most athletes are probably less toxic than the general public. Lisa: The sweat is also a preferred pathway for some of the toxins to leave the body. Dr. Bryan: If used badly, yes. The skin has been called the third kidney before, which is kind of a cute thing to call it. I mean, is it or is it not? I mean, it's not like you're urinating out of your skin. So that should be gross. Next time you sweat, think of that. No, but it's a major excretory organ. And I will add this, there's some really interesting, really interesting scientific papers — small, unfortunately, not a lot of money in this industry to test this stuff. But they will take a group of people, and they will test their blood, their urine, and their sweat for a specific xenobiotic or environmental pollutant. And they will find in many cases, it's not in the blood, it's not in the urine, but it is in the sweat. Lisa: Exactly. Yes. The preferred pathway, yes. Dr. Bryan: That's an indication that a) it's being stored and b)... Yes, whether it's a preferred pathway or not, what that means to me is that it's probably stored in the tissues. Because you think about the blood, the blood is circulatory and it's bringing things around. The kidneys are filtering the blood. So, if it's not in the blood, that makes sense, it's not in the urine. What that means is it's stored. It's if it's not coming out in the urine, that means it's not in the blood, that means it's stored in tissues. And so, it isn’t going out. So whether it's preferred by the body or not, I don't know. But that just means that it's right there, right close to the tissues. Lisa: Yes, In coming out. Dr. Bryan: Right close to the periphery, and it's coming out via the interstitial fluid and stuff surrounding itself. But here's another thing to consider, too, when you talked about the demographic of the population that listens to this is, while most athletes probably have less—I mean, when it gets a broad state, you can't say yes, might have less because of exercising, because of firing. But are they exposed to something more than might somebody else be? So for example, if they're drinking out of plastic bottles that have been warmed up sitting in the sun all day, like might they have more excess pollutants... Lisa: More BPA... Dr. Bryan: ….these people are outside exercising in polluted area. Lisa: Exhaust fumes. Dr. Bryan: Exhaust fumes. I mean, you think about your respiratory rate when you're exercising, your respiratory rate is quite a bit higher than somebody who's sedentary. So then all of a sudden all those... Lisa: And oxidative stress Dr. Bryan: Yes, absolutely. So there's a lot of factors to consider for sure. Lisa: Yes. So we've looked at—these are the broad categories of toxins. And yes, we're probably all toxic, and we need to be doing or thinking about doing a detox—I don't want to say protocol—but to thinking about it constantly detoxing. And you touched on the couple of studies here where they measure the sweat, they measure the urine, and so on, and they got different measurements for different things. That's one of the problems, isn’t it? The assessment criteria. Because obviously, if we're doing a detox, we want to be able to assess, are we actually getting—and when you dived into the literature of assessments in defining out which is the best—how do I see if I'm toxic? What did you find in the literature around all the assessments? Dr. Bryan: So in the functional medicine world, there's no shortage of—well just tests in general and really attractive, good looking tests that when you look at them, you want to run them. Like, ‘Well, I would like to run this on myself. forget my patients or clients I want to run these tests’. The scientific validity on a lot of these tests is not there at all, despite what people might say or think. Yes, so I'm not opposed to testing for toxins. But there's so many variables to consider, and the practitioners that are running them, I don't think are considering these. So I think a lot of people are using them—they're wasting their money on them because they're not considering all these variables. So, for example, the first question to ask is, ‘what tissue do you test’? Do you test the blood? Do you test the urine? There are hair tests. Technically, in the literature, they test fingernails for toxin exposure. There's so many different ways of testing–fat biopsy, you want to take a needle into your fats, take some of it out and test that. And actually—I'll say since I said that—fat biopsies are considered to be the gold standard for internal toxic burden, and that would make sense if that's where they're stored. But the problem is, according to research—and this is done on humans, mind you—that different fat depots in the body store differing amounts of things. So, you might inject it into your, your, your butt fat, and find a whole bunch of one thing, and then you do it to your abdominal fat, and you come up with a higher amount of something else. So, if that's the gold standard, and you can't even have any consistency in the human body, then that's not going to be accurate, either. And if that's the gold standard, then that's not accurate, then none of them are going to be accurate. So, the short version is there are some—I guess I'll say, like validated as much as you can questionnaire—subjective questionnaires that one can take and get an idea of how toxic they may or may not be. Now, it's not quantitative. It's quantitative in the sense that you get a numerical value for the score. But it's not quantitative, in terms of like, This is how toxic I am. I am 80% toxic out of 100’. It's just a subjective questionnaire. But if somebody were to take a questionnaire like this, and scores high... Lisa: We've got a problem Dr. Bryan: ...and then does a few detox rounds or whatever, for a few months, six months, nine months, whatever it is, and then does it again and their scores are lower, that's good enough to suggest that they're doing better. And what's interesting about some of these questionnaires, is they not only asks things like, ‘do you live around industry? Do you have exposure to petrol or to gas’? But your symptoms as well. And so it takes all of these considerations, like, ‘Yes, I live and work around a lot of chemicals, but I don't have symptoms’ versus somebody that has a whole bunch of symptoms that are associated with toxic exposure, but they don't live around them. So, it does—they really are comprehensive. Lisa: I’d like to get a couple of the links to those if we could possibly see. Dr. Bryan: And listen, it's free. That's the very nice thing. You don't have to spend 300 US dollars on some blood tests that may or not be accurate. And what people are really interested in is, ‘how toxic are you’? Well, if my surroundings and my symptoms suggest that I am, based on these questionnaires, that's good enough for me. And as opposed to test, if you do it six months later, and it's approved, then I think you're probably doing a little bit better. Lisa: It's a little bit like your cell blueprint, which I found brilliant, by the way, and if anyone wants to check out that we can put the links. That questionnaire that you've developed there gives the practitioner the direction to go and we don't have a specific, ‘This isn’t definitely but hey, you might want to check your thyroid. Hey, you might want to go and check if you've got a parasitic infection, or whatever the case may be’. And I find that a brilliant system really. Dr. Bryan: But isn't that what a practitioner wants to do? I mean, the patients come in, and they want to know, ‘Well, where should I head first’? And detox questionnaire—and again, so everybody is exposed period, everybody's exposed. Everybody has some degree of storage. Now, I don't know how much. They might be really toxic. They might be cut. Who knows? But everybody has some degree of storage. The question is, then, is, ‘Are your symptoms—because of xenobiotic exposure—are in storage or not’? And that's where these questionnaires come in handy. If you take a questionnaire like that, and I mean, because there's people out there, believe me, there's plenty of them. Everybody's toxic, everybody needs to detoxify. There's an old book called Detoxify or Die. I mean, if that's not scary enough. It’s a good book, but I mean, it's not necessary. So we all have exposure, it's we all have some degree of storage. The question is, when somebody is not feeling optimal, Is it because of that or not? And so you can't run around screaming ‘everybody's toxic’ because I don't know that they are. But if you score high on one of those questionnaires, then that's the direction you'd want to look into. And if you score low, I mean, listen, people will still argue it, ‘Well. We're still all toxic’. I wouldn't go down that road. It wouldn't be the first thing that I’ll thought about. Lisa: It’s not your first protocol Dr. Bryan: Oh, no. The questionnaires... Absolutely. Lisa: Yes, I think that's what I do as a practitioner too, as epigenetics practitioner, and a health coach, is go for the low hanging fruit first. Because we can go in 100 directions and I can confuse the hell out of my clients and they can be like, ‘what the hell am I doing’? But if you are going for the ones late tackle, best piece of the puzzle, and then work your way up the food chain is so to speak—and actually find out which ones are the most important. Dr. Walsh, I mean—we're going to put the links in the show notes—you've developed your own detox system if you like, which I'm really keen to share with everybody and for them to check out. But let's go in now to the actual four phases of detox: zero, one, two, and three, and you have four, isn't it? In most people—or some people are at least aware of phase one and two detox within the cell. And when I first heard you talk about this, I was like, ‘Wow, okay, there’s a zero and there’s a three’. Okay, can you explain in a nutshell, what the body does when it gets a toxin? It's in the blood for some reason, it's gotten there. What actually happens next in these detox phases? Dr. Bryan: All right, well just to make it really comprehensive. I'll tell you, when you said when it gets into the blood, what happens? So when it gets in the blood, it can be detoxified, biotransformed, and excreted. But the best way to describe this is, so if it's in the bloodstream, wish I have something to sort of model this with but so like, so the bloodstream, and then you have you have a cell next to the bloodstream. Now there's—in physiology, there's what's called a concentration gradient. And these membranes… And so let's say we have the bloodstream in a tube—I really wish I had some kind of props here. I’m looking around. I have—my son has a Santa hat, razor blade, I don't know, I don't have much around here. Anyhow, so you have the bloodstream and here you have a cell. Now, if there's more in the blood of this, whatever it is, and less in the cell, it will tend to go into the cell. And it's usually fat cells, because it's fat soluble, it will tend to go into adipocytes or fat cells. And so it's concentration gradient based, which also means—so that's how it gets stored. If there's more in the blood and less in the cell, then it will tend to go into the cell. And that's when it gets stored. There's a really, really cool paper that discusses how adipocytes used to be considered to be just an energy repository, but then turned out to be an organ because they excrete over a hundred different things. But one of the additional roles they suggest is that it is this. It is to store toxins or xenobiotics, or things that could otherwise damage the body—they're fat soluble, which would make sense. Now, if that's a concentration grid. Now let's say we're in a fasted state, and we haven't eaten anything and or exposure. If there's less in the blood, and more in the fat cell, then it will leak out. And it's based on a concentration grade, it's based on homeostasis. There’s some ridiculous stories out there that will say, ‘the body won't release toxins if it's not healthy enough, and it doesn't think it can deal with them’. That's not true. What I've seen is that it leaks out from a homeostasis for a concentration gradient if there's less than the blood and more in the cell. So we are constantly leaking this stuff into our blood, if it's stored. Now this gets amplified. And I talked about this in the course, during lipolysis. So in a fasted state, in a catabolic state—not even not even losing fat, but just in a catabolic state which we go through at night. So if you stop eating at 8pm and you're sleeping, you're in a catabolic state, for example. If you're in a state of fasting, or lipolysis, then that's going to speed up mobilization. So now—and all the studies I've ever seen on mammals or humans show this. In a hypocaloric state, or fasted state levels of xenobiotics go up in your blood. And I'll say it again because that's huge. In a fasted state or a hypocaloric state, like dieting, then if there's stored xenobiotics, it will dump into the bloodstream, and those levels go up. And they always show that every single time because that's a state of lipolysis as a catabolic state. So then now we're back in the blood. So whether it's at an immediate exposure, or it was just released, the rest of the story remains the same. So then what happens? And I should just say too, I mean, I get frustrated with pieces of the industry. There's some people that will say, ‘Well, it's not a detox if it's not a cellular detox. If you don't detox yourself, then you're not’... This happens at the cellular level, as all detoxes is a cellular detox. So what I'm about to describe next is the cell. So let's say we have that xenobiotic it's floating around in the blood, we either just had exposure, or it came out of a fat cell. So in one of the cells, like the liver, the kidneys, the skin that we said has the ability to do this, there are four phases of detox. So if you picture just a cube, all I have is a mug, but I have a cube. Then there needs to be a door coming in and a door coming out, that's going to be two of the phases. And then once it's inside, there's two other things that are going to happen to this. So here's our cell, we have a fat soluble compound—I'm looking around for some—we have a fat soluble. Lisa: It’s like your room, isn’t it? Dr. Bryan: Well, that's the way that's why I've said it before. So yes, I mean, you could just use it as that. So in the room that you're in, or even a car quite honestly would work. So if you're in a room, you’re the cell, that's the cell, let's just say it's a liver cell. So when the door opens, that's phase zero detoxification. That's an actual phase. It was recently discovered in the early 2000s. Most people haven't heard of it but it's legitimate, things can block this. So if that happens, then that's a problem, clearly. So phase zero is when the door opens and the fat soluble compound comes into your room, into where you were. Lisa: Into the cell. Dr. Bryan: Into the cell, right. And once it's there, it has to go through two phases of detox. And you said I use analogies—quite honestly, I kind of make them up on the fly. Lisa: That’s awesome. Dr. Bryan: Well, I mean, I don't even know what I said. But I think in the past, what I've said... Lisa: It was an angry dude—a person—we make the person a toxin who’s just entered the room. Dr. Bryan: Oh yes. All right. I make him up on the fly until now. So all right, yes, yes, I can go with that one. So you have the room, the room’s a cell, a person is on the outside of your room, they come in, that's phase zero. And that's all it is in the cell is just a little protein tube. So the person comes in, they're fat soluble person. And they're angry. So what did we say? Lisa: You stick a sticky note on the head. Dr. Bryan: Is that what I said? Lisa: Yes. Dr. Bryan: Let’s make them more mad. That's right. Okay. See, listen, I'm telling you make it up right then and there. All right, you're right. You're right. You're right. So the person comes in, and they will damage your room. But to incite them and make them even more angry. Yes, that’s right. You put a little sticky note, like what was your little yellow sticky notes, and you put them on the forehead, that makes them really mad. Even more mad than they were in the first place. And now you can calm them down. But if you don't, they're going to start flipping over your desk, and just totally, totally worse than they were in the first place. They were angry when they came in. But now they're even angrier. But you can hand them a $100 bill. And they're going to say, ‘All right, I was angry but now I'm not anymore. I'm good. You just handed me something. So I'll go ahead and quietly leave the room now’. And then when they walk out another door of the room, then that would be phase three. So to put that—and thanks for reminding me of my analogy. But biochemically speaking, so you have a fat soluble compound, like a phthalate or a dioxin, or whatever it might be. So it literally has to get in the cell in the first place. Now, researchers used to think it was a fat-soluble membrane, fat soluble compound, and would just go right in. And that's not the case. It needs a channel in order to bring it in. That's phase zero, literally it is phase zero. And why is it phase zero? It was because they discovered this after they already knew about phase one and phase two, but they didn't have any numbers before then and they didn't even know it existed. So in the early 2000s, they said, ‘Well, we'll name it phase zero’. So that's the entry of a fat-soluble toxin, let's just say into hepatocyte, liver cell. Phase one: reactions. There's a few different kinds. They’re like oxidation reduction type of thing, hydrolysis. Basically, what happens is that when in the sticky note what it had on it, it had an OH, hydroxyl group. So you put a hydroxyl group on this person, or you exposed a hydroxyl group that was already present but wasn't fully exposed. Now the problem is after we put that sticky note on their forehead, and they got even more angry is that toxin beforehand could cause damage to the body. It could cause oxidative stress or DNA damage or endocrine disruption or citric acid cycle, mitochondria, whatever was unique to that particular toxin. But now that it has OH exposed or added on to it via phase one, it is water soluble, first of all. It's water soluble, which is cool. Now your body can get rid of it. However, it's considered to be an intermediate metabolite, and is considered to be more damaging than the original xenobiotic. Now, it's not true of every single time. And that's the thing, there are too many of these compounds to make blanket statements. People will say it's more toxic. No, it's not. It may be more damaging—I'm not going to say more toxic. It may cause more damage now that it's water soluble with this hydroxyl group exposed. But then phase two, when you handle this angry—now really angry person, a $100 bill US dollars. I wouldn't let you guys—you hand them a $100 bill or a bunch of money, they're not angry anymore. They're still water-soluble, they were but now phase two is considered a conjugation reaction and conjugation is adding something to it. And so people that are familiar with phase two are familiar with things like methylation or sulphation, or glucuronidation, or amino acid conjugation, any of those things but what gets handed is this: so sulfation, you hand them a sulphur group, methylation, it hands them a methyl group, amino acid conjugation, it's usually glycine, glycine will go, glutathione conjugations glutathione, so acetylation and acetyl groups. So the xenobiotic gets handed to it, what's unique to that particular one, if that makes sense. You can make it really easy to talk about hormones like sex hormones, go through the same pathway—the testosterone, the estrogen. They go through the same pathway. Lisa: They do, and neurotransmitters as well. Dr. Bryan: Yes, cytokines, immunoglobulin, antibodies Lisa: And dopamine and all of that? Dr. Bryan: Yes, by and large, by and large, yes. So then it gets phased two. It gets something handed to. Let's say, it gets a sulphur group and went through sulfation. Now, it's no longer damaging to the body. Now it's relatively benign. It was damaging as its original compound. It came in through phase zero, it was made potentially more damaging by exposing or adding on a hydroxyl group, depending on what the compound was, and depending on the biochemical pathway went through, but then when it gets conjugated, it's still water soluble, but now it's not damaging. And can there—if phase three, that second door is open, can go out of the door. Now remember, so all that does—and this is a really important part—there's a lot of misunderstandings of what phase three is. Phase three is merely a tube, leaving that cell, which means that, this thing now, in terms of physiology goes into the interstitial fluid surrounding cells. Lisa: And it’s water-soluble at this point. Dr. Bryan: It’s water-soluble in the interstitial fluid, and can be excreted in sweat. It can go through the lymphatic system, which is going to pick up some of the junk of the interstitial fluid but that just dumps itself in the bloodstream anyways, which that means it'll probably end up in the kidneys and get excreted out in urine. But a lot of this can end up going in—since it happens in the liver, the liver will get rid of its these... Lisa: ...products Dr. Bryan: ...through bile because the route from the liver to the intestines is via bile. Lisa: Why is this not phase four, then? Like phase three should be the thing leaving the cell. Dr. Bryan: It is, that's phase three. Lisa: Phase four should be like actually the excretion method. Dr. Bryan: You can call it phase—or at some point, you're going to have too many phases. You’ll be like, the 10 phases of detox. It will just confuse everybody. But after it leaves the cell, the most critical piece is excretion. And I mean, we're not talking about this part yet but I'll just say, the three pieces, there's four phases to detox. But the three things that must happen for somebody to actually detoxify, and I say must with a capital MUST, is one is they have to be mobilized. You have to get them out of the storage in first place. Two is you have to go through biotransformation, which is the phase zero, one, two, and three. The third part is they have to be excluded. If they're not excreted—and this is a really important part—if it's not excreted, it can go into another cell. That conjugation reaction that can get undone, there are enzymes that will undo that conjugation. So you handed this sulphur... Lisa: You’re backing in the shot again basically. Dr. Bryan: Well, and then it becomes this damaging thing again, and can get stored in another tissue if it doesn't get excreted, which, incidentally, is why I have a major problem with most fasting programmes. Honestly, most weight loss programmes in sedentary people. I mean, if you take a fitness competitor... Lisa: An athlete’s all right, they're going to sweat it out. Dr. Bryan: They'll probably be okay. But if you take somebody who has just been storing their whole life, they've never really exercised, they get to be 45 years old. They wear a certain weight during their wedding. Now, they're 45, they don't feel sexy anymore. Maybe it's a good time to do a real weight loss programme, the chances of them flooding their system with these things is tremendous. And if there is not an active role in, especially that's the mobilization, that's the first part. But to properly detoxify these, and more importantly, excrete these things, then it's just going to go somewhere else. And I will say there's some evidence. It's weak evidence, unfortunately, there's not a lot of research on this, but midlife weight loss might be associated with an increased risk of things like dementia and certain chronic diseases. Lisa: I want to sit on this topic a little bit and dive into, because I had some questions when I started to understand this whole process, it really rang some alarm bells for me. For people who do like yo-yo dieting, they're losing weight, they're gaining it, they're losing weight, they're gaining it. They're actually doing a lot of damage than somebody who's just lost it. Another thing is if you're losing it slowly over time as compared to just dumping it all because you've done a juice fast that someone told you was a fantastic detox. And then you've dumped all this into the system. And this can have impacts years later, like we just mentioned, like dementia, Parkinson's disease, all of these things. Because I was listening to one of your biochemistry or blood chemistry lectures, I can't remember which one, something to do with cardiovascular system. And you were talking about the triglyceride molecule, or whatever you call it. And how—if the legs are broken off—it’s free fatty acids get into the system and then this can clog up the system, cause insulin resistance, be a contributing factor to diabetes, all of these things. And I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, when I'm losing weight, which I think is a good thing for my body, I'm actually also doing some damaging things because I'm releasing these toxins or these free fatty acids or, or things that are actually causing trouble’. So when we have a detox programme that's in the latest magazine, and even some of the scientific like Dr. Valter Longo’s Fasting Mimicking Diets, which is a great—lot of research gone into it, but it's looking at the mobilization, the autophagy, the mitophagy, all of these good pieces of the puzzle, but it hasn't actually considered the excretion. It does look at the micronutrients required for phase one and two, which is fantastic. So you've got three pillars here that you're talking about. First is mobilization, of the fats or the toxins into the bloodstream from stored places, like your fat cells. Then we've got phase one and two, where it's processed, the detox—actual detox situation. And for that, we need a whole lot of micronutrients, which I want to touch on briefly like using your selenium and your B vitamins and goodness knows what. If you don't have those—your sulphur groups. If you don't have those, you're going to have trouble. And then we need to look at how do we get this stuff out. So what can we do to support the body to do binders or I don't know what the sweating protocols or saunas or whatever? I had one question that for me personally, I've got a mum that had a massive aneurysm four years ago, and my listeners know about my story. I've just written a book about her journey back for massive brain damage. Now she's lost 30 something kilos over this last four and a half years, when I have been rehabilitating her. She does not sweat. And she's 79 years old, she's never really sweated. She doesn't do that very well, naturally. And she also now at 79, can't exercise intensively enough to sweat. I can't put her in a sauna because here temperature regulation has gone with her brain function. I have to be really, really careful, then if I make you lose any more weight, don't I? With brain damage... Dr. Bryan: Well, it’s a hard thing to say for sure. I mean, first of all, with all that weight loss already—I don't want to say the damages—you have no idea. Lisa: Yes, so hopefully it was not a big dump. Dr. Bryan: Yes, so there are some interesting human studies, looking at slow versus more rapid weight loss and how much xenobiotic levels go up, and how it affects thyroid hormone, and the basal metabolic rate and all these different things to which is their recommendation is to do slower detox, but like I said, I would recommend how about, I mean start a weight loss, I would support doing detoxification pathways while you're doing the weight loss programme so that you can get rid of these things better, and it doesn't cause damage. Yes, so in terms of yo-yo dieting, again everybody's a little different. I can't say this happens to everyone. It depends on your diet, your lifestyle, where you live, and how much you've accumulated. I mean, some people don't have a whole lot, I would suspect. But yes, so there in fact, there is at least one study that comes to mind using mice and yo-yo dieting. And what basically it showed with them is that during periods of weight loss or catabolism, that their xenobiotic levels would go up. And then when they stopped in the hypocaloric state, they went back into a more of a hyper caloric state, that the xenobiotics that weren't excreted went somewhere else. And when I mean somewhere else, like a different tissue, so it absolutely can go from one tissue. Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I wanted to tell you this. Anecdotally, I just talked to a guy—I don't know about a month ago—who used to work at a water fast detox clinic in Thailand. And he worked there for a really long time. And he's said that their people would fly to Thailand to go to this water fast detox clinic that had no business to do so. They were not healthy, it's more of a novelty. Like, ‘hey, let's go to Thailand and go to the water fast place for two weeks and do a detox, then we'll go back and live our life normally like we did before, eating a bunch of garbage’. And he said, they had no business doing it, but they would come back once or twice a year. And the same people he said would get worse, that I mean, and horrible, like liver problems or teeth were falling out, and just wrecking them. And it was fascinating to hear that story. He didn't know why. Lisa: Yes, and I can guess why. Dr. Bryan: Well, that's what I mean is to actually have real world experience, possibly. There's no proof of this, but to see these people that would do a one week, two weeks supervised water fast and then come live their life and then come back, and their health was worse. And I think if I had to bet I would say that's probably why. And consider, it's just a water fast. So what were they not doing, is they weren't exceeding, they weren't sweating. They didn't take any binders. They weren't doing anything. All they were doing is just water. And so, to me, they were flooding their system in a very—almost completely fasted state except for water, which is essentially fasting. Flooding their system, potentially with xenobiotics, not excreting them all and then reabsorbing them, putting them in different tissues. Lisa: Re-depositing them in your brain or something. So you could shift the mercury molecule, for example, from your fat cell where it was pretty safe. Put it into your blood and then it get redeposited in your brain and cause real strife. Dr. Bryan: And he hasn't contacted me yet. I think he will probably be angry. But Dr. Longo you mentioned, I mean, the guy's brilliant. He's brilliant, he’s great. Lisa: Oh, yes, no doubt. Dr. Bryan: And it's super, super cool what he's doing, that's a huge concern that I have, though: is that you take an average person and you put them on what's essentially like, what 300 to 500 calorie diet for a period of time, and if you don't support the biochemical—so that's mobilization for sure. If you don't support the second part, which is detoxification pathways, and then the third pick is excretion, then you're potentially making them worse longer. And again, who cares about autophagy and mitophagy if you're just redistributing these xenobiotics somewhere? And it’s a huge concern. It's a legitimate one. And I’m not saying what he's done is bad, I just think it's a piece that is missing. Lisa: A discussion needs to be had around this. Dr. Bryan: Yes, well, and that's true of... So, take the Gwyneth Paltrow juice test. It's the same thing. You're not binding or excreting anything. You're hypocaloric, yes. Are you improving detoxification? Well, not if you have things like celery and carrots because those might actually inhibit as it turns out. So you're not detoxing. So you're mobilizing, not detoxifying and not excreting—that's bad news, I think, long term. Lisa: Well, let's look—talk about a couple other things that are in the phase one and two, in phase three, actually, more specifically. Some of the compounds that we consider great compounds for a lot of things, like you mentioned celery and carrots. I mean, that's what people juice with. I mean, I know I just had a celery juice for breakfast. I'm not into detox, but celery in itself is not a bad thing. But it can be a mild phase three. I believe inhibitor is in curcumin, milk thistle, some of these things that we consider detox herbs, if you like, and especially in supplement doses versus food doses can actually have the opposite of fate. Can you go into just a little bit of that, what nutrients support phase one and two and three, and which one's actually inhibited? And why is it counter-intuitive? Dr. Bryan: Well, the counter intuitiveness of it has to do with the dose, turns out. So well, and again, I mean, as humans, good lord, we've been wrong far more times than we've been right. I mean, as a husband, I can tell you, that's true. And father, it's like a daily basis. But so what we did with milk thistle was we say, milk thistle is good for liver liver detox is there for milk thistle is good for detox. And that's not true. And that's fine. I mean, that logical progression of thought makes sense, but it's not how it pans out. So it's dose related. So, phase one. There's a lot of talk about phase one out there. Phase one are very basic, rudimentary biochemical processes. Oxidation reduction hydrolysis, if those suck in a person, detox is not your problem. They get highlighted a lot—phase one pathways. But in the end, people will say technically you need some B vitamins for this, but you need B vitamins to run most of the basic biochemical processes in the first place. So, honestly, phase one is not a phase I worry about too much in people. As long as they're nutrient sufficient, which basically means taking a good quality multi, they're probably—and I say big probably—they're probably fine with phase one. There are things incidentally, like some of those vegetables that you mentioned. So this is where it gets crazy. In high doses, things like celery or apples or carrots can inhibit phase one a little
Have you ever done something without knowing why you connect to it so much? That was how it happened for Tiffanee Cook. Coming into the world of boxing and fitness, a world full of people who have stories and reasons behind their drive, she felt like she was the only one who didn’t have a ‘story’. Tiffanee soon discovered, however, that finding yourself, developing self-awareness and confronting your past can all happen in the boxing ring. In this episode, Tiffanee joins me to share her journey from the corporate world to the fitness industry. She recounts how a traumatic past allowed her to connect with boxing and being in the ring. Tiffanee also talks about how her experiences changed her outlook and helped her learn how to set boundaries. If you struggle with developing self-awareness and finding yourself, this episode is perfect for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition, and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce,’ go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Gain valuable insights from Tiffanee’s journey into boxing and fitness. Discover how finding yourself and developing self-awareness despite the odds is possible. How can you let go of your conditioned responses? Resources Connect with Tiffanee: Facebook | Instagram Tiffanee & Co. Fitness: Website | Facebook Roll with the Punches Podcast Roll with the Punches on Instagram Episode Highlights [04:45] How It All Started Tiffanee is from Tasmania, but she moved to Melbourne when she was around 20 years old. She’s been in Melbourne for almost 17 years now and has worked in the corporate world for the majority of those years. She watched a talk on resilience by former British Royal Navy Aircrew Officer, Paul Taylor. Paul showed her around his gym, where she saw a poster about a 12-week corporate boxing challenge. Tiffanee was riddled with anxiety the day before the fight. Despite the odds, she won. [09:14] Finding Her Way in the Fitness and Boxing World Tiffanee ended up buying a Certificate of Fitness from Personal Training Academy at the fundraising event during the first fight. As she was finishing her fitness training qualification, a friend trained with her. The next thing she knew, other friends also started training with her. While initially not interested, Tiffanee felt like she needed to give it a go and grow in that career path. Looking back, Tiffanee can see her transformation from a disengaged employee to an engaged employee, to a coach, to a business owner. She launched an online coaching program three years ago. While it fell away quickly, she loved how people opened up to her and shared their stories. [15:16] Confronting Your Emotions and Finding Yourself The boxing ring is the one place where Tiffanee trusts who she is. She developed more self-awareness. In the boxing ring, you react before your conscious mind catches up. When she was younger, Tiffanee was a victim of sexual abuse. Confronting her doubts and fear in the boxing ring also gave her the opportunity to look back and think about how her childhood experience changed her. [25:42] The Connection Between Her Past and Boxing Through the boxing ring, Tiffanee saw her inability to connect with her emotions at the moment. She copes by compartmentalising, only accommodating what is happening. She resonated with how there was support on the outside but none that could step in the boxing ring to help her. In the ring, she can come out on top and handle what’s happening. It took a lot of reflecting and writing to see how past experience allowed her to connect with boxing. Listen to the full podcast as Tiffanee shares more about taking a break, training and learning more about herself and her emotions. [34:26] Changes in Tiffanee’s Outlook Her story allows Tiffanee to meet and connect with people in the boxing ring. We all yearn for a resolution on some level, especially if we are not happy in all areas of our lives. Boxing has an opinion-based judging system. As a boxer, you are essentially putting your self-worth and identity in the hands of other people. We all want to win. But at the end of the day and in the years and months to come, you’re just the same you. What you do is not who you are. [43:33] Helping and Finding a Connection with Paramedics Tiffanee met a paramedic in one of Craig Harper’s camps. When COVID hit, they started an online fitness program to help other paramedics who are single and need to go in isolation. The project eventually evolved into her podcast. She found herself connecting with the paramedics. To be a great paramedic, you have to learn to suppress your emotions, and she knew how that felt and its repercussions. First responders experience a lot of horrific situations and are working under a lot of stress. This can take a toll on them physically, mentally and emotionally. [51:21] Epigenetics and Your Physical and Mental Health There is no divide between mental and physical health. Epigenetics allows you to look at the various aspects of your health to get the best out of your body — from improving your performance to finding ways to prevent health problems. For Tiffanee, one of her conditioned responses to signs of conflict is to be accommodating. Now, she has learned to set boundaries. Having boundaries is vital to avoid burning yourself out and depleting your resources. 7 Powerful Quotes ‘The one thing I did love about online coaching was people would just open and bare their soul in a way that you don’t get when they walk in person in the boxing environment’. ‘The boxing ring is the only place where I feel that even for myself I am unmasked. It’s the one place where I can trust who I am’. ‘I resonated with standing inside a boxing ring with somebody standing in front of me that was there as an opponent to inflict pain. I resonated, that there was all of this support on the outside but none that could step inside and help me’. ‘It crossed my mind, “If I touch this area of myself, I'm changing who I am as a boxer”. So how much does it mean to be this boxer? How much of my identity revolves around that’? ‘If things have changed, but that in itself was beautiful. I went back to boxing not for boxing’s sake also, and I box not for boxing’s sake, for the sport, but for getting a handle on who I am’. ‘So it’s like what do we fight for? You’re putting your body on the line. And this one fight, this one result, this means the world to you. But guess what? … At the end of the day, in two month’s time, you’re just the same you’. ‘What you do is not who you are’. About Tiffanee ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face’. Tiffanee Cook has learned this as a businesswoman, performance coach and boxer. The comfort, predictability and safety provided by the corporate world, to the lessons and let-downs in and out of the boxing ring. Coming to the realisation that to have one’s hand raised in triumph, adversity, discomfort and combat must be navigated. In the face of the messiness of life, do we fight or do we flee? Tiffanee speaks openly of her own personal experiences (good and bad) and how those experiences have enabled her to develop self-awareness, resilience, courage, independence and the skill to maximise passion, possibilities, and potential. She talks about getting knocked down (literally and metaphorically) and what it is that makes some of us get back up and some stay down. Working in business, sport, high performance and personal development, Tiffanee explores a range of ideas, tools, skills, resources, philosophies and strategies to empower individuals, teams and organisations to improve everything from productivity, efficiency, culture and communication to physical, mental, emotional and social health. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so that they can learn as much as you did about self-perception and finding yourself despite the odds. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of the Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits with your host Lisa Tamati. And this week, I have an exciting interview with a young lady Tiffanee Cook, all the way from Melbourne in Australia. And I came across Tiffanee because she's a fellow epigenetics coach, and we bonded and enjoyed over that topic. And I was just really fascinated with her story. She's an incredible athlete. She's a personal trainer in Australia, has her own podcast, called Roll With The Punches for obvious reasons. She's into her boxing and really incredible. I love watching her on Instagram and doing her thing. She's extremely fit, extremely strong minded and a really intuitive young lady. It was just a fascinating conversation over what it takes to be in the ring. And how it transformed her life from being a non-athlete, at the age of 29, going into the corporate boxing scene for the first time and then completely that revolutionising her life. And how going into boxing actually opened up a lot of old wounds from her childhood. She had been through some traumatic events in her childhood, which she shares about, which was very nice of her to share, and some reflections on that and some learnings from that. So a really interesting interview ahead for you. Before we head over to the show, though, if you can give us a rating and review, if you enjoyed this content, please do share it with your friends and your family. I do really appreciate you doing that. Slowly, one by one we're trying to build a community of people who love good content, who find value and good content, who want to listen to experts in different areas. And I have some fascinating interviews coming up in the very near future with some really heavy hitters, some big names, and some really extraordinary experts in the field. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Just a reminder, too, as we head over into the crazy, silly season. I hope you've all survived okay this year 2020. Come out the other end of it. Let's hope that 2021 brings something a little bit better. It's been the toughest year of my life for sure. And I know many, many others have had horrific challenges to face both personally with businesses, with loved ones, with health issues, and fear. There's a lot of fear around in this last 12 months. So I hope you've survived that, okay. If you are wanting some help with any issues, whether you're dealing with health problems, if you have come to the end of your tether with the sort of standard medical and if you want to get some alternative—looking at some alternative approaches to things and you want some help navigating a health journey, health optimisation, whether you want gene testing epigenetics, whether you just want some help in reaching a huge goal, some mindset support and some mental toughness training, then please reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com. You can send me your emails on there. And we can have a conversation and see whether working with us would be something that would be of benefit to you. We also have our standard—other programs that we're running. Our epigenetics coaching programs, which looks at your genes and how to optimise every aspect of your life according to your genes and how they are expressing right now. I know Tiffanee's right into that as well. So it is next level information to help you be the best that you can be. We also have our online run training system, Running Hot Coaching. We'd love you to come and join our family. We've got over 700 athletes now from all over the world, that we train for various events, whether you're starting from absolute beginning, don't know where to start, want to make sure you do it in a proper structured manner, then come and see us. Or even if you've run hundred hundred miles and you still just want to optimise and reach the next level of performance, Neil and I and our team would love to help you with that. So please reach out to us at that. lisa@lisatamati.com or head on over to lisatamati.com, or our running website which is runninghotcoaching.com. Right. Without further ado, over to Tiffanee Cook. Lisa Tamati: Well, welcome back, everybody. I'm so glad to have you with me. I have Tiffanee Cook with me, and I'm super excited for this conversation. Wow, what an amazing young lady. Tiffanee, welcome to the show. Tiffanee Cook: Hey, Lisa. Thank you. Lisa: It's just so exciting. We connected through our mutual love of ph360 in epigenetics. Tiffanee is also an epigenetics coach and fan. And we have a few mutual friends. So we connected through that. And then I sort of delved into Tiffanee's website and what she was doing and a podcast and thought, ‘Wow, what a What an amazing young lady’. So I wanted to get her on the show. So, Tiffanee, can you give us a little bit of a background in who you are, and what you do, and all about what you're up to now, that's what we really want to get into the weeds on. Tiffanee: Yes, awesome. Oh, thanks for the intro. So I'm from Tassie. I'm a young Tassie lass Tasmania, that's this, we sit down at the very bottom of Australia floating around. I grew up there, and I screwed it over to Melbourne when I was almost around 20 years old, mainly because I just felt like I was twiddling my thumbs in Tassie. It just wasn't enough air to keep me occupied. I’ve been in Melbourne for the last 17 years. And I've worked in corporate for the majority of that. At 29 years old, I was at a talk for resilience. Actually, I went and watched a talk on resilience by a former Navy Seal. Actually, he's been on my podcast, Paul Taylor and that was fascinating. And after the talk, we went downstairs to have a look at—he had this gym called Acumotum, and it was all based on human movement. It was quite a forward thinking gym, and associated with PTA global to be honest. And we went downstairs to the boxing gym. And there's this big poster on the wall with dudes in suits and boxing gloves on and it said, Executive Fight Club. And I looked at that, and I was like, ‘Oh, there's something that gets attention. I’m in’. So on the spur of the moment, I decided to enter corporate boxing challenge, which was kind of crazy, because I certainly was not someone that knew how to throw punches all too well. And so that experience took me in the ring for a 12-week challenge. And then we were to fight on stage, on cameras, on Foxtail, in front of a thousand people and you know all the bells and whistles that you can hear in a professional boxing fight. Needless to say it was an enormous experience—enormous experience. And it brought with it a huge amount of growth. So I can remember my fast forward to the day before and I did not sleep until 6am in the morning. I got to sleep. I had to wake up at 7:30 to go to the airport to pick my mom up, who's coming to watch the fight. So I remember texting my trainer, ‘6am, going home soon. Still no sleep, this is not good’. And he was, ‘Yes’. And then I was just socially useless for the day. Mom went out for lunch and then I was just riddled with anxiety. It hit me all in the last hours, riddled with anxiety. ‘What the hell am I doing’? We get to the fight night and I'm sitting there and I'm watching my best friend. She was the first fight of the night and I watched her. And she won and of course that was amazing. And I was like ‘Yes right we're on the winning team’. Then they handed me the microphone. I remember this second bout of panic hitting me because I thought well, ‘I don't want to win because I can't. What am I going to do’? Now I’m about to get in the ring to win a fight that I don't want to win because I don’t want to speak to people. But long story short I did and I won that fight and you could not get the microphone out of my hand. After saying before the fight I will never ever ever ever do something like this again because whatever's on the other side could not be worth what I've been through the last 24 hours—that dissipated. And the feeling on the other side of that, the feeling having done it anyway was 10 times stronger. It was amazing. Lisa: So cool. Tiffanee: Yes so continued on. Fought with amateurs, had a great experience, ended up over the next couple years becoming a boxing coach, getting into health and fitness, and the evolution just keeps rolling on. I won't talk about it, it’s two or four o'clock here and we'll have to wrap it up. Lisa: Oh and you've got a couple of titles and some image titles and you've—Victoria titles I think. And yes you came right into the boxing from then on and then dived into this world of fitness and coaching and more or less. So have you left the corporate job? Tiffanee: I have left the corporate job. It was funny when I was doing the qualifications for fitness because in that first fight, we held a fundraiser that went to the Australian Save the Children trick. So held a fundraiser and Personal Training Academy donated a certificate of fitness to be auctioned off. And on the day, no one bid for it. So I purchased it for $500 which was super cheap. Yes, super cheap. So I ended up doing my qualifications. And as I was finishing them, it took me forever, because I never planned to use them. It was out of interest. And as I was finishing, it was a couple years later I finally realised, ‘I should finish this course’. One of my good friends and a friend that I network with sort of said, ‘Oh when did you finish that course’? And I said, ‘Sunday’. ‘Thank God, because—all right. Well, as of next week, I'm training with you, you just tell me how much and how often’, and I was like... Lisa: Oh my gosh, you're gonna be a trainer. Tiffanee: Yes. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay’. And then a couple of friends did that. And then next minute, within six months, I was like, ‘Something has to give. I have to start saying no’. But I just looked around and went, ‘There's people that choose this career path that want to be where I am, and grow this quickly’, and I just feel like, ‘I have to give this a go’. I have to feel like I have the right to not throw in the job and give this career path for yes, I've never looked back. Lisa: Wow, that's amazing. And, you know, when I go to your website and what you do, and the videos of you doing boxing, it's like you are a machine. Girl you are a machine. Your one tough nut. And so who wouldn't want to be trained by you? You mean? Yes, I was looking at you doing your boxing exercises that when you jump and go into the band there. Wow, that's really cool. You know I might finally want to get better at boxing. Tiffanee: Oh, yes. It's an amazing sport. Lisa: Yes it is, I mean, I only dabbled in it when I was looking. I nearly did a corporate fight. And then I didn't end up doing it in the end. But the training was great. It was a great thing. So from the fitness side of it, absolutely love it, absolutely get it. It's really, really awesome. And to say, a kick ass girl like you just doing what you're doing. It's like, ‘Wow, that's so cool’. It's like, ‘Oh’. And diving into the hole, this is now my new passion where I need to be hitting. Obviously, the universe is sort of telling, ‘Here. Go here’. And having the net, the courage to jump out of your corporate job was at a big scary moment. Tiffanee: Yes, look at what it was huge. It was huge on a couple of levels. So there's level number one, where I looked back over a couple of years of doing the corporate fights. And what I saw, when I glanced back was this girl who went from a disengaged employee that just did this job in this industry that she did. And if you ask me now why I did it, I loved it. I always loved my job. And everyone always thought that I was always really passionate and happy at my job, because that's the sort of—whatever I do, I'm pretty into it. But why I was working at the print industry, just because I fell into it out of school. And so that was my thing. But I looked back and saw this disengaged employee that had over the last couple of years, turned into an engaged employee that turned into a coach and a business owner and an entrepreneur for lack of a better word. I went, ‘Wow’. That wasn't deliberate that happened hand in hand with this stuff that happened in the boxing ring. And I always call the boxing ring walk my metaphor for life. So my passion when it came to coaching people was understanding. The cool thing was, it gets you super ripped to get you super fit. So people will come to that. They want your energy, and they want your enthusiasm. They want your empowerment and they want your abs. No, that's all this side repercussions. I was like, ‘What I love is that I know that you as a person are changing when I teach you this stuff in the boxing ring, I know what's happening. And you don't even have to know what’s happening’. Lisa: You’ll look back... Tiffanee: Yes. But one day, you'll look back and realize your whole life has changed. Lisa: Very insightful. very insightful. It's really weird, because it isn't about the abs. I mean, like, right. Tiffanee: Yes, it was funny. I did online coaching—I launched online coaching nearly three years ago, super successful. I launched it. And within the first two months, I'd sold $10,000. And I was like, ‘Wow, I don't have a huge following to be selling it like this’. Lisa: That's cool. Tiffanee: But it fell away really quickly, because I found so many people coming to me. I guess I wasn't equipped with my messaging and getting it out there and how to cope with things. But yes, people came to me wanting carbs and counting macros and counting whatever they ate. ‘Wait, we're not counting calories. We're not counting this. That's not my jam. I don't care. Like, yes, you have abs, yes right at the end of this. We're not doing it by measuring stuff and counting things’. So, a passion for that side of things really dissipated. But one thing I did love about the online coaching was, people would just open up and bare their soul in a way that you don't get when they walk in-person in a boxing environment. You get right to the crux of why am I here. People sitting in front of you saying—you know that they're beautiful, they're not overweight, they're super fit looking, they're gorgeous, and they're saying, ‘Well, I'm fat and when sometimes I don't go out for lunch with my friends, because I'm having a fat day’. I’d be like ‘Wow. I've seen you in the boxing gym for three years. You're so fit and gorgeous. And you’re still sitting there telling me this story’. That's getting stories out of people. Lisa: And you know, you write them in the online training space. I mean, we have an online run training system and stuff. It’s been through hundred iterations. And it's super powerful in one way, because you can connect with people all over the world, and you can help people... But having their—it's a real struggle to create that energy that you have when you're live in a room with somebody. And so there's this problem between you're only one person and you want to reach a lot of people. You want to help have a massive impact. And then you're struggling with the systems that are available today and the way—and then you're having to learn a whole new language and technology and my God, what. All these marble black things that you have to know what you're doing in the space. And we sort of persevere because we've frickin stubborn. Neil and I, my business partner and I, had huge learning curves. And by no means have we got it all sussed by any stretch of the imagination. And now we do both. We do the combination of things. And because you need to have one-on-one because you have a high touch and you also hone your skills when you're working one-on-one with people. And when you're in the online space, then you can reach a broader audience. It's more affordable for people. So you want a bit of both. Because when it’s high touch, it costs more, it's just the way it is. And so having that combination of things is really powerful, too. I wanted to dive down a little bit into—we got talking before we started the recording—a little bit about some challenges that you had as a young person, and how that sort of came out in the ring. Are you happy to share a little about that Tiffanee? Tiffanee: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I spoke to this—just recently shared it for the first time on my podcast. Roll With The Punches. Lisa: Roll With The Punches, by the way people. Tiffanee: Roll With The Punches. Lisa: Roll With The Punches is a podcast. Tiffanee: Yes, so I guess I found myself at 29, I was inside the boxing ring and I had some really strong traits. And I had a really strong idea around who I was as a person and my identity. And like I mentioned to you before I had all these strengths. And at points inside that boxing ring—the boxing ring is the only place where I feel that even for myself I am unmasked. It's the one place where I can trust who I am. Because we build this identity. And I think sometimes that that identity is so strong that even we… Lisa: Big believer, aren’t you? Tiffanee: Yes. I can be the master of having stories and reasons that I believe. So what I see in the boxing ring and it’s this developing a self-awareness, is this raw honesty of how you react before your conscious mind can catch up. So if you're scared, you react before you can pretend anything. You see, if you're aggressive, if you're scared, if you have self-love, if you see all of these things. And it's quite confronting. I found that within two years of the sport, and I'm now questioning—I'd start to go for walks around town and I would have these memories, I would start thinking of memories of when I was a child. And when I was a child for quite a quite a few years, I was at the hands of sexual abuse from a person, a neighbor, a family friend. And it was something that I'd pushed down and I'd never ever spoken of for so long that I guess it really felt like it never even happened. Lisa: You thought you’re over it. Tiffanee: Yes. So here I am strolling along and all of a sudden, that would pop in my head. And I think about running into this person, I'd start to get angry, bad. And I start to think that ‘Why is this coming up. This is weird’. I start to Google it. ‘What are the repercussions of an adult who has experienced childhood sexual abuse’? I had a best friend at the time, who was a clinical psychologist, and we were on a walk and I was like, ‘Oh, so what…’ I explained the question to her, and I remember her answer was like, ‘Ah, no, I haven't dealt with anything’. And I was like, ‘All right’. And then a couple weeks later, we’re there speaking about so and so. And I was like ‘Nah just speaking about myself’? All these frames feel differently. But yes, basically, I questioned why am I in this boxing ring? Something is drawing me in on a level, because I'm not someone who keeps coming back. I find the next shiny object pretty quickly. I said to you before, when I was at school I was not—I was smoking when I was 14 like smoking cigarettes. I wasn't turning up to do fitness and things. But when it came to sprinting, I'd come first in that 100, 200, 400 meters and anything jumping and I loved it because I was good at it. The boxing, I never felt I was good at it. It was a skill I didn't have that I had to work hard for. I'd work hard and consistently and self doubt and fear and all of those hard-to-cope-with, confronting emotions and I was doing it. So, I started writing why, what's going on here. And these emotional breakdowns were coming up. And it really just started peeling back that hard shell and making me look at how that experience as a child had changed me. And it really gave me the opportunity to face that. Lisa: Wow, that's amazing. Because you were digging so deep in some really confronting stuff in the ring. It's sort of opening up your personal—because like you say, you can't run anywhere when you're in the ring, or your boxing, or in your training, and you're pushing your limits and you're feeling fear, and you're feeling anxiety, and you're outside of your comfort zone pretty much the whole freaking time. And that makes you start to think, ‘Well, who the hell am I and what am I doing? And where have I come from? And what am I’? I mean, for me, and I use ultramarathoning as my metaphor for everything, for obvious reasons. So as you in the boxing ring. I was running. When I started doing ultra marathon, I was running from the pain. And the pain that I felt physically was a metaphor for the pain that I was in internally. For me that's the masochistic side of really pushing my body to the absolute limit in the early days, was about listening in the pain that I was experiencing in my soul, in my heart, in my mind, and the talks of incessant negativity that was in my mind. I found when I pushed my body and was in pain, and suffering, and pushing to the limits, and achieving things as well, that changed the conversations that I was having with myself, and it opened up avenues for me to let that pain out and to start to work through it and start to heal from it. And then of course, you're surrounded by amazing, incredible people in the sport. And you're doing incredible things. And then people are starting to say, ‘Hey, that's pretty amazing what you're doing’. And slowly over time, you start to build—rebuild, what's broken inside, and people don't see this on the outside. They don't see the broken heart that's on the inside. When I was young, I had no self esteem, no confidence. I'd never been doing this sort of stuff. Like for God's sake. I was like a timid, very broken person. I hadn't experienced sexual abuse, like you, thank God, in my childhood, but I had been in abusive relationships. And been through that experience, and had some other stuff in my youth, again, through sport, and being pushed too hard, too early in my sport, and things.So I was dealing with a whole lot of crap. In other words, and this was my outlet. And as time went on, running, rebuilt, who I was and what I thought I could achieve. And when I started to open those doors, just like you've been through in the last few years, it's like, ‘Holy shoot. I can do a heck of a lot of things that I didn't think I could possibly do. And if I can do that, maybe I can do this’. And your horizon starts to open up as to who and what you are and what you're capable of. And in that time, your things are changing as to how you're dealing with stuff because that's the other great thing with sport and training and discipline and perseverance is you start to develop a toolbox of ways of thinking, of skills, of ways of managing your emotions, and you learn all these tricks. And then when you dive into the whole world of epigenetics and you start to understand your own genes, that's the next level stuff. You start to realize, ‘Hey, I’m on this chemical bomb and I've got to move and I've got to do my breathing and calm myself down. And I know when to turn myself on. When to push and when to pull back’. And you know, come 52. So I'm starting to slowly work stuff out, not touch wood. I can still have breakdowns quite regularly. Don't get me wrong. But you know what I mean? And you start to feel as if like, ‘Ah, this is sort of making sense’. And then you know, as you get older, life’s even more shitty. So you've got stuff to look forward Tiffanee: Yes. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. Lisa: But you know, you've got some—at least some coping mechanisms or some ways of dealing with it. So what started to come out? So how did the sexual abuse as a child? I mean, a lot of people have been through this. And it's so cool that you're willing to share it because it is about how is it affecting you today as an adult, what happened to you back then. Because it's this stuff, that programs your subconscious, and you don't even know it? Tiffanee: Oh, big time, big time. I'm taking it back into the boxing ring. What I saw in there, and it was a real strength in the boxing ring. So what I saw in there was this inability to connect with emotions in the moment. So I was a very technical boxer. I was inside. And I wasn't—definitely wasn't talented. In fact, in that first fight, I think everyone with myself and everyone around me was like, ‘Oh shit, look at this chick. How are we gonna fix this in 12 weeks’? We only sparred once or twice before the fight. And the time that we jumped in and sparred, the trainer came over and he said, ‘Is that the first time you've sparred’? Then he goes, ‘Wow, you did really well’. So you can't tell what you're gonna be like in any situation. So I did really well. But what made me do really well was this inability to connect and feel and deal with emotion. So I had built this coping mechanism that I guess it was: accommodate what's happening. Accommodate what's happening. Emotions will come back in three days later. Lisa: Yes, yes. That’s called compartmentalising. And there can be a real strength, compartmentalising, being able to not be emotional in the moment. Tiffanee: Yes. And in most of my early fights, I'll walk back to meet the enemy like, ‘What happened’? Really, my awareness in there was, I was just on full fight or flight. Go. I couldn't feel the punch. It’s winning and losing felt was ours. My defenses weren't great. But I was strong. And I was resilient. And I would just walk in and I would go. I knew I was there for a job and I'd do it. Over there, what I found really interesting—so I guess let me talk about what connected with me there, was that idea of: I resonated with standing inside a boxing ring with somebody that was standing in front of me that was there as an opponent to inflict pain. I resonated, that there was all of this support on the outside, but none that could step inside and help me. I resonated with the fact though in this ring, they could see, I got a chance to show them that this is happening to me. And I'm going to come out on top and I can handle this. Lisa: Wow. Tiffanee: It was all this stuff. It took a lot of looking at that and writing it out and seeing how it felt to say and think like that, to know whether it connected. Lisa: Very intuitive. Tiffanee: Yes. So, in 2015, I left work and became a coach. So I stopped competing for a little bit just to adjust and get in three years passed before I hopped back in the boxing ring. And when I did and that was only last year in 2019 or 2018. Sorry. I jumped back in the ring, and simultaneously as I opened two gyms. But mind you, so I don't know who whatsoever. Does it all at once. On that person, whoever it is. So I jump back and walk through. And my biggest curiosity—I don't say fear, I say curiosity—was in that time, I've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of therapy. I'd sought out help. I knew what I needed to resolve in relationships—and we can touch on that later. You wish but I knew that my biggest strength is inability to connect with emotions had now been tampered with a lot and that I'd worked on that. And I thought—to be honest in working on it, it crossed my mind. ‘If I touch this area of myself, I'm changing who I am as a boxer. So how much does it mean to be this boxer’? Yes. Oh, yeah. ‘How much of my identity revolves around that because of it. Because I don't play in this space’... Lisa: You may not be the boxer that you were prior when you were emotionlessly be. Tiffanee: Exactly. Lisa: Yes. Can resonate with one. Tiffanee: Yes. So I went back and I went to training and I remember I had a hard trainer. I've had a few trainers over time. He was my first amateur trainer, really loved his style of training. But you know, I think million dollar baby. He was brutal. He was… Yes, he did not come without the work. So I went down and trained with him. And at this gym down in Dandenong. A lot of—mostly male boxers there. Quite an intimidating space, really. I hadn't sparred or done anything for a couple of years. Aside from the—I had to throw the gloves on, hit the bag occasionally. And I remember jumping in the ring with one of his fighters, and he was a southpaw. He is a heavy hitter, he has a—without even trying he lands these punches that are like a freight train. Hitting like a really strong lad. And I hopped in the ring. And I wore an [31:08 unintelligible] that I thought broke my nose. So I've never had a broken nose. Lisa: Pretty pretty nose. Tiffanee: I know I always thought I've got quite a—for the listeners, I've got quite a sharp pointy straight nose that you just wouldn't think that a boxer could hate this nose. Basically the amount of punches are away. Anyway, he lives in Africa. And I thought, ‘For sure that’s broken nose in it’, quite a lot. I felt anxious. And it was the first time three minutes felt like three years in there. And I remember being hyper aware that my heart was—I felt naked. ‘I knew that you can all see my emotion. I'm feeling it. And I don't want to be here’. And I feel like for the first time I don't even want to finish this round. I felt so exposed. And yes and it told me you know, all I needed to know was ‘Yep, things have changed’, but that in itself was beautiful. I went back to boxing not for boxing sake. Also I boxed not for boxing sake for the sport but for getting a handle on who I am. And saying that—it's like my… Like I said it’s like... Lisa: Like your measuring stick? Tiffanee: Yes, yes, absolutely. Lisa: So, are you competing now. Or are just back from the competitive side so that you can focus on all this sort of stuff? Tiffanee: COVID certainly—well, by the end of last year, I'd burned myself out again because I was the head of all the gyms and all the training. I was doing way too much. Now that I know my about my health side, I understand what has always pushed me to the break point, into that zone. Lisa: Yes. People, so sorry. We're talking about the language. So we are very similar health type. So we tend to—just for the listeners, we have a lot of adrenaline so we go, go, go until we go bang, and then we’d crash. And recognizing that pattern and because we're both very similar—similar place in the wheel, and is a really important thing so that we don't burn out so that we learn to back off before we have the crash. It’s not great Tiffanee: Yes, as an activator. So I would get up at 4:30 and I would do a five hour shift holding pads in my gyms. Then I'd drive down for an hour and I'd gonna do a two—usually a two hour boxing session but we're talking three minute rounds and probably sometimes up to an hour straight of sparring. So it was two hours of high intensity brutal work yet five nights a week. So I look at that and I'm like, ‘Okay, well activators aren’t built for to last in. It's no wonder’. But before knowing about epigenetics, I was just like, ‘I don't know why I'm burning out’. Lisa: Pretty obvious now. Tiffanee: I mean, it should have been obvious anyway. Lisa: It’s also not born for running for days on end either. As I found that quite later to piece through. Tiffanee: The Crusader coming through. Lisa: The Crusaders a little bit more. But... Tiffanee: Yes, it's kind of nice to be on the cusp of both. Lisa: You get to have the best of both. Tiffanee: Yes. Lisa: You mucked up both ways. But did you see—did it change? Doing this emotional work, and she—and I've never seen this before. But, I often get asked, ‘Why are you not doing ultra marathons now’? And one of the reasons was obvious. My mom got sick and my whole life focus changed. And then you know, life's come at me with a full throttle and I haven't been able to do that. I can't dedicate 20 hours a week to my sport anymore. It's just impossible. But on the other side of that equation is that I've now spent so long studying the body and human physiology and epigenetics and all the rest of the stuff that I actually don't want to do that to myself anymore because I want longevity and I want health and I am 52. And I did it for 25 years and my body isn't the same. And I've taken some health hits from it. I also have been in a place in my life where I feel like in the early, long part of my career, I felt like I had to prove something to somebody. And I was doing it to be something, prove something that I was tough, that I was strong, that I was able, because I've always been told, ‘You’re useless and weak, and you can't do this’. So that was my reaction to try to prove that I now no longer have that desire, and therefore the hunger is gone. If that makes sense. So I no longer have that absolute desire to go through whatever it takes to the finish line, and you need it in that sport. if that's what you—if you want to reach the top. And that played with my identity for a long time. ‘Then who am I if I'm not that tough, you know ultramarathon running girl’? And now I'm like, ‘No, actually I've got bigger, different’, or should I say, ‘different things to do on this earth. And that was a great time. I've taken these great experiences that I can now share. And it's okay to be doing—being a badass in other ways’. And that's okay. And I think a lot of athletes have this real difficult time when they shift from their active career into something else and feeling like you are nobody now. And that is not true. You now have a huge amount of things. You're not starting from scratch, you're starting from a place of wisdom and you've got these experiences that now you can move forward and—just pushing, repeating. I've seen some of this in a few other athletes—really top level athletes, who I've had conversations with and they've said to me, privately, ‘I don't want to be doing this anymore. But I don't know who I am if I'm not doing this’. And that's not a good place to be. It's time to do something different. We've got a short life, we want to do some—we can move on without feeling like we're losing ourselves. It’s as surprising that as a change in the transition. Does that make sense? Tiffanee: Yes, I love that you asked this question because in my early podcast, I've tried—a couple of times attempted approaching this question. But I felt like I hadn't quite landed where I wanted it to with the people. So my question, because boxing is one... Because of my experience when I say boxers, when I walk into a boxing ring and somebody walks into the boxing club, especially a female. Through the first fight, we got to know everybody so you know everyone that you're training with. And I remember saying—I hadn't said this before—I remember saying in the early days, to like my parents, ‘I'm the only one there without a story. Ah, people have had marriage breakdowns, oh they're on drugs, oh they've got this, oh they've got that. They've got this big story and I'm just there like, this is me little not—no self-awareness me going’. Obviously I have a great time because I'm awesome. You know, like, did I not know what was coming. Lisa: You did have a story. Everyone has a story. Everyone. Tiffanee: Yes. And that's why I really connect with people in the boxing ring and people that walk in all boxing gym. You know that there's this deep story, don't know whether they know it or not. And I asked that question a couple of times to various people in this space, ‘If, do you think that the reason—so we have this we all have this drive to success, but what is the reason that’... The only thing that makes us succeed in one thing is this yearning desire for a resolution on some level. Lisa: Yes. Tiffanee: And we're either aware of it, or we're not. If we weren't totally fulfilled in all areas of our life, we wouldn't—especially when it comes to things like boxing or ultra marathons where it's attacks on your bollock. I have a friend and she's a really good friend of mine and we both started boxing, Judith Courtney I spoke to her on the first fight. For a couple of years, her life really revolved around boxing, again someone with a story and a metaphor and it was strong. But boxing meant so much it was her identity at that time on such a level. But when you break it down, especially for boxing, especially for females, especially for Australia, you know like it's sport where the decision is based on a couple of factors sitting around the ring saying whether you want to last. You know, it's an opinion based judging system. And it's often tampered with whoever decides. ‘What are you scoring? And well I like this style of fight, so I’m gonna score it this way.’ So you’re putting your head, your self worth and your identity, and your win right into the hands of other people. And boxing is a sport, especially for females, especially in Australia, where if you're not in, if you don't have a passion for it, nobody knows anything. If you walk out and say some of the top boxers in Australia's names to 90% of the population, they'll go ‘What? Who’? They take someone in just doing amateurs. You know, I know some of the top amateurs in this space. But if I say their name to most people, they'll go, Lisa: ‘No idea’. You know, famous... Tiffanee: Yes, exactly. So it's like, ‘What do we fight for’? You’re putting your body on the line. Yes, and this one fight this one result? This means the world to you. But guess what? We all want you to win, you might want you to win. Yes, the accolades are all waiting for you. But at the end of the day, too much time, you’re just saying you. Lisa: They don't believe the hype and that's a really good point. Sometimes, when you get even into podcasting, or you're in the public eye, and you get people telling you, ‘you're doing great, and you're amazing, and you're awesome’. Never believe that shit. Totally, they go to your head, because this is real. And you want to take your cues from the people that you love and respect and that are close to you at all times. Never take your cues from people— and this is not to—it's fantastic, having people love what you do and things like that. I’m not saying that. But what I'm saying is don't ever let that stuff get to you because it will change you. Tiffanee: Because what you’re doing is not who you are. And if people are loving you for what you do, you stop doing it and they drop away. Lisa: They drop away, and then all of a sudden you think... So in other words, just like in the boxing ring with the dudes in the corner are judging you and they have control over how you feel about yourself. If you lose, you're nobody you know. And if you don't finish that ultra marathon or you failed, not in my camp, that's not the way I operate it. That's not the way I coach. People who put in the hard work, do the discipline, go through the life-changing training, start on the startline, those are the people that I'm stoked about. What happens on the actual day, and you're going through the race, that's all up to the gods really. Hopefully, you give it your all. And if you gave it your all, then that's all you had to do. You gave it everything, you prepared your body right, you did that... Whether you won last, didn't finish, whatever, that's all about the learning curve. And then it's about standing back up again. So don't like—failure is— people say, ‘Oh, you know, you learn the most in failure’. Well, it's damn true. You do. And it's not pleasant always. But the journey in other words, the journey as we are doing the changing and developing and stuff. It's not all about race day or boxing day in the ring. It's all about the rest of the stuff. So, Tiffanee, you've done a project recently, and you're talking about on your recent podcast. You've sort of wanted to help people with paramedics. You were talking to—the trauma that they go through and or first responders in general. What was the correlation there between what you do and how you've been helping in that arena? Tiffanee: Yes, cool story. So when COVID hit— so, a couple years ago I did a camp with Craig Harper. I was on Craig Harper's podcast quite a bit. And he does a camp once a year for people to go down and spend three days, bit of luck, self-development camp, it's amazing. And I met one of the paramedics there two years ago. And from that, I'd done some boot camps and things a couple years ago with them. Now when COVID hit, Ryan had put a message in the Facebook group of support to the paramedics who was single, who will go into isolation, and it was gonna be a shitty time. And I commented on that, and I was like, ‘You're amazing. You're such a good soul’. And so she rang me up, she said, ‘I've got this idea. And she goes, ‘I'm going to get some funding together and give you a gig helping us stay fit online. So we're going to create a wellness hub’. Yes, so I put together this training program. And with that, I said, ‘Let's get together on Friday afternoon and feel good Friday, and we'll have a drink or whatever I have... Honey, soda water or just get together so people don't have to be alone’. And that quickly evolved into getting speakers on which involved into—evolved into this podcast. But, I found myself connect really strongly with paramedics and it was around this boxing analogy in my experience. But what I connected with is I look at these people, and they've chosen a career where they where they walk into trauma. And into walking into that trauma, in order to be a great paramedical first responder or a law enforcement officer or firefighter, you have to train yourself the ability to suppress emotions. So the first thing I saw was all you guys suppressing emotions. And I saw what that did to me. And I saw how that played out and the negative repercussions that I had to deal with. So I realized that this connection, there’s curiosity around these people and why do they deal with it, and what are their levels of self awareness? And how is it playing out for them? Is it playing out for them? Is it the same thing? Or am I on the wrong track? I'm still asking that question. And I've had so many conversations around it. And it's funny because I'm like, ‘Oh my god, you just these Tasmanian chicks sitting in front of my phone, zero qualifications in this area, but a huge amount of curiosity’. Lisa: Would you let that stop you Tiffanee? Tiffanee: Well, that's it. And I've sort of gone. I just—from any of the research that I've done, I haven't come across anyone asking these questions. Sometimes you find out great answers from a place of complete ignorance. And that's definitely where I come from in this space. Lisa: You ended up making conversations, and you're living here. Our first responders—I come from a—as I was saying before a family, firefighters, my dad, my brother, my husband, all firefighters. And they are exposed to inordinate amounts of horrific situations, let's just be honest, and the trauma that they go through, and that they see is a very big impact. Without getting into any details, like my husband's lost a few friends over the last few years to suicide. And to say it's not job-related, and we don't know all the details and so on, but it can be bloody well, bet your bottom dollar. A lot of it is what they've seen, what they've been through, and the lack of support around them. And especially I think, for me, they're expected to be tough and handle the gentle. And when you are—you have to be able to function in these sorts of traumatic situations, which is super, super important. You also need to not suppress our emotions and to realize we're humans that have emotional responses to what we're seeing. And that needs to be dealt with some freaky now, and I don't—you don't have the answers. I don't have all the answers, but we need to shine a light on it. And say, ‘Hey, people in all of these really caring professions—doctors, nurses, first responders, all of these people. We want these people to be compassionate, we want them to have a high level of humanity. And we need to support them in what they're doing and what they're facing and what they're seeing in the aftermath of that’. I don't think I could cope with it. Day in and day out. It's pretty phenomenal the job that they do, Tiffanee: Oh, it's huge, it's huge on an emotional level. And then on top of that, after looking at them, that these guys are—they're working under those conditions. But then just the conditions of shiftwork and which affects their diet, their exercise, their everything that creates a being that is resilient, is getting sorted out the walkthrough. It’s getting poked and prodded in every direction and then put into such a high-performance environment. I sat down with a friend of mine who has just recently joined the police force, and obviously he was getting into the academy and I was like, ‘Oh, no, whoa’. Lisa: What are you doing? Tiffanee: I said to him, ‘We want to have you on a podcast’. He says, ‘Give me a few years in the force’. I'm like, ‘No, right. because this may seem with you having breakfast asking you in your first year of becoming a police officer’, because he said, ‘Uh, yeah, I've become hyper vigilant from day one is now when I walk into a restaurant I check the exits I check the things’. That doesn't happen without your body... Lisa: Responding. Tiffanee: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Your amygdala switched on. You're having these physiological responses. You're putting yourself into hyper awareness all the time. You can hear. When you start responding to things like you said, you hear a certain language or something in a background conversation and you become aware of it like that you switched on, switched on, switched on. Lisa: I can see it on my mind, my husband. you know, like, if I put the smoothie blender on, without telling him, his cortisol is up like that. He's very sensitive to loud sounds. In their job, they're exposed to the sirens and tones going off all the time. And so he's hyper responsive to those noises, the phone going. That in every single time it sends his body into a fight or flight, and trying to help him sort of bring that down really quickly, but that’s what they’re programmed. 23 years of responding to tones. And in the middle of the night when you're in a deep sleep phase, and then, whatever the case may be, that stuff has an effect on your—you just constantly—and you think about it, like a bus will go past and lead out to your brakes. Immediately the—’what's happening’? It's just because they're good at their job, they're good at responding really quickly. And it keeps them in a state of—for the next couple of hours, the body's got a whole lot of cortisol running around, and that puts up your blood sugar levels, and that causes insulin resistance, and that causes weight gain. And all of these knock on effects. Tiffanee: Yes. A conversation I always have is, there's no divide between your physical and your mental health. I'm a different person mentally, when I'm underslept, undernourished, and your physical body creates the chemicals that give you mental balance and equanimity. Lisa: Yes. And this is why I think like, why I love epigenetics is in the programs that we both do, because we can help people look at the chemistry and the hormones, it's because they all want to know about the food and the exercise. But actually understanding your hormones, your personality type, what part of your brain you use the most, how you respond in different situations, and from a genetic perspective, really helps you understand how to get the best out of your body and not to play into your problem. So we both been very close to being very similar body types. We know we need movement. If you stick me at this desk all day, I'm going to be one angry person. I need regular movement breaks, I need little bits of food. I need, throughout the day, I'm burning very high. And I need them to shut down at night. I know all these things. So I'm called constantly aware of those, and that helps me balance out. And I wouldn't say, I've got the site's down because, gee sometimes I still have big meltdowns. But I'm watching myself—even when I have a meltdown, and I lose control whether I'm crying or I'm angry, or whatever the case may be, I'm watching myself, and I'm observing my behavior. And I'm thinking, ‘How did I do that? And why did I do that? And how do I bring myself back down’? So we're really on bringing awareness to the problem, even when I haven't mastered it, if it makes sense. Tiffanee: Hmm. We're talking about conditioning. And you asked earlier how some of this conditioning plays out from the abuses. And what I noticed over the last few years was this accommodating—like my first response to things is to accommodate. So what I would find is I'd have constant—I remember having a conversation. I can't remember conversations. I remember being at work, I was a trainer and the owner of the gym and said, ‘Oh, can we do blah, blah’? And almost before people finished speaking, I'm like, ‘Yes, yes. Yes, cool, cool’. I just—I don't want conflict, I just want to be everything for you. Whatever you need Lisa: Whatever you want me to be Tiffanee: Yes. And then I'd find myself laying around a bit like, ‘Did I just agree to that’? You know and it took me a long time to realize that, ‘Ah, this is a conditioned response that you will accommodate the other person and it doesn't matter what you think or feel because you don't think or feel right now. You just accommodate and deal with it later’. And so what I've learned to do, which is hard for activators because we like to react and to respond. What I've learned to do is listen, try, and think and feel in the moment and then say, ‘Can you give me a day or so before I commit to that’? So this new setting boundaries. I don't have boundaries before, zero boundaries. So it was kind of a—I used to just dodged through life trying to keep massive distance between people because I didn't know how to set boundaries. So it just would avoid it and avoid conflict. And yes, so that was my way of keeping myself safe then. But now it is, I just say, ‘Hey, I think that that sounds good. But do you mind if I just commit and get back to you’... Lisa: And that though, is a perfect answer. I really, really struggle with this. I'm still struggling with this one as my business partner Neil is like, ‘Just stop doing stuff for people and saving everybody in the planet. You've got to make a living’. And I’m like, ‘I know, but that other situation, that situation, excuse, excuse, excuse’. And I'm like, ‘Listen to yourself. You’re burning yourself out. You can't put your resources into our things. You're not helping them’. But you know, I'm like, ‘I know, I know. I know. But’... It's something I struggle with on a day to day basis, because I just want to heal the world, fix everything. I have to make a living. I have to have money in my bank. Now. I can't just do what I want. And I really struggle with it. I really struggle with saying no. And that no is a perfect answer. And that's definitely a work in progress. You know, on the other hand, it's like, ‘Okay, well, deal with things that you know that you can be’. But it's hitting boundaries because I do burn out because I'm doing too many things with too many people and trying to help, too. And spreading yourself too thin and then you don't do a good job. That's the other thing Tiffanee: Yes. And maybe beat yourself up over it. Lisa: Yes, then you fail. It’s an ongoing problem. Hey, look, Tiffanee, I've taken up so much of your time already. It's been absolutely fabulous to have you on the show firstly. And to get to know you. I think we'll be doing things in the future together, I hope because you're a pretty cool young lady. I think you're amazing. I want people to go and listen to Roll With The Punches with Tiffanee Cook. And Tiffanee, where else can people can find you if they want to reach out to you after hearing your amazing story and what you do? Tiffanee: They can find me on Facebook, Tiffanee Cook, Tiffanee, with a double E. Or @tiffaneeandco Instagram. More @rollwiththepunches_podcast on Instagram. Yes, all the usual places. Lisa: Okay, we'll grab all those links on getting seen them all over to me and we'll share them in the show notes. Tiffanee, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's been absolutely fabulous. Tiffanee: Lisa, I have loved it. Thank you. That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
If You're Not Feeling Very Worky Today, Your Feeling Is Valid If you woke up not feeling very worky today, you're not alone. All around the world, this happens for reasons that are either obvious or hard to dig. Being in a funk is a real struggle that can last from days to months and can impact many important decisions that you make. It happens in the workplace and beyond. Being in this situation may lead you to deliberate whether to stay in a job or not, to stay in a relationship or not, to adopt a certain lifestyle or not, and so on. This feeling is valid, but when it does happen, do you usually deal with it from a place of fear, or from a place of strength? In another fun and insightful episode, host Lisa Cummings and fellow StrengthsFinder facilitator TyAnn Osborn share their personal and professional take on what it means to be in a funk, and effective ways to turn that "funky monkey" situation around. (Expect some hints of Beastie Boys along the way too.) Here’s their conversation. Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings. And you know, I'm always telling you, it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with my other host here in the room, TyAnn Osborn. Today, we are going to talk about being in a funk. So very often, we go to strengths events, we get invited in to deliver training, and often it's from an inspirational standpoint. We want to get to know each other better, we want to communicate better, we want to get to know a new team... TyAnn: Right. Lisa: Team building... TyAnn: Very positive. Very fun. Lisa: And then the reality of the world is we have days when mojo meter is level zero. We have seasons, times, months, weeks, where sometimes you're just in a funk. Once, I had an entire, probably six months of a job where I was in a funk and I was like, “What is wrong with me? I like the people, I like the job, the pay is good. Life is good. Everything on paper sounds so right. What is wrong?" And almost never do people think, “Well, this would be a great opportunity to use my strengths!” It just doesn't come up for people. But I know that you have ideas for this, and you've talked about them being one of the best things you could do for yourself when you find yourself in a funk or you think someone else might be in a funk. Step 1: Acknowledge When You’re Feeling Funky Lisa: So, if you are going to even begin applying strengths to this concept, what would you start with? TyAnn: I think that's so true. And like Lisa said, often when we come in, we've done a big team building event, everyone's all jazzed up, this is exciting. And then you go back to your desk, and work happens. Or life happens. And you're like, “Oh, that was fun.” But meanwhile, Now my customer is upset with me. My kid’s upset with me... My spouse is upset with me... I have to make dinner... Whatever it is, and life just happens. Or, like she said, sometimes you can't really put your finger on it. And for whatever reason, you're just like, “Oh, I feel like a funky monkey, I don't know why.” That sounds more cute than you might actually be feeling. Lisa: Sounds like Brass Monkey. Makes me think of Beastie Boys. TyAnn: ‘Love Beastie Boys. Yes, that's my jam. Lisa: (sings) TyAnn: So I think it's really easy to use strengths when things are going well. But I think really a powerful application is when you're not feeling that great. And so what do you do? So I would say the first thing is, be able to recognize when you are feeling funky. And sometimes we don't want to intellectually allow ourselves to even go there. Or like you said, “I shouldn't be feeling bad about myself. I'm getting paid good money!" Lisa: "My thinking skills tell me that does not make sense and therefore I must feel great!" TyAnn: "This must be a first world problem because look at me, I have a job and on paper, everything looks fine... I'm not hungry. I'm able to feed myself, I'm able to provide for my family..." And whatever. And here's the deal. Lisa: "You just feel like you're being a baby!" TyAnn: "You feel like you're being a baby." And again, you might say like, "Oh, this is a first world problem." But here's the deal: feelings are valid, because they're your feelings. And if you're feeling funky, you don't have to explain that away to yourself. It's okay. It's okay. I mean, nobody can discount your feelings because they're your feelings. It's okay. So I would say the first thing is just to put that baggage aside for “I shouldn't be feeling this way,” because that's the quickest way to really start some problems internally. Lisa: Let's break that piece down, like you're saying, Step 1 is to figure out that you're feeling like a funky monkey. And then what actually is it. Well, if our client base is representative of many more people in corporate, which I think they are, like, if you're feeling wimpy about it, or feeling like you're being a baby, it's easy to want to discard it, push past it pretty quickly, or to not really spend any time going, what is it actually? Lisa: When I ask people, “What do you think you're really feeling about the situation?” And people will be like, “Well, I'm anxious about it, it's stressing me out.” Those are the two... I think they're the easy words: stressed, anxious. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: I know you can tell me if you hear others are saying like anything past it. TyAnn: They're socially acceptable to say. You know, what is not socially acceptable, is to say I'm scared. And usually, if someone's angry about something, almost always fear is underneath that. And anxiety? Fear is almost always underneath that. And so when you peel it back, you're like — “What's making you so stressed about that?” “Well, I'm afraid I'm not going to do a good job.” "Okay, so what if you don't do a good job?” And so you can kind of follow this line of thinking. “Well, if I don't do a good job, I'm gonna get a bad performance review, right?” “Okay. So what if you get a bad performance review?” “Well, then you know, I'm not going to get a raise.” “Okay, so what if you don't get a raise?” “Well, then, you know, this might happen.” And we tend to have an irrational fear. And sometimes I call it like the “bag lady” fear — that you're going to end up as a bag lady sort of pushing the shopping cart living under the overpass. Lisa: This is a real fear. TyAnn: This is a real fear. Lisa: I had a situation where I took a wrong job. I took a job that was a bad fit for me. TyAnn: By the way, this happens all the time. I have also done this. Lisa: Yes, and you've also written blog entries about the Mondays, the case of the Mondays that you get. TyAnn: That's right. This happens. Lisa: Yes, this happens. So when I picked that role, and I thought, “I think that the answer is to leave.” But then there was so much baggage hanging on to the leaving. So I was in a funk because I got myself stuck in a thought circle. And we actually went through a process, kind of like what you described. "What is the worst that could happen there? And then what would happen there? And then what would happen there?" So I just played it out off of quitting. And what would happen? "Oh, well I just, I would disappoint people because I put them through an interview process. How could I do that to them? They went through this whole thing. They picked me!" TyAnn: They would be mad at you. Lisa: Yes! I didn't want to be viewed unfavorably. I didn't want them to be angry with me. But also, I didn't want to be a jerk to them. I thought what if I'm not giving it enough time? TyAnn: Hmm. What if you're a quitter? Lisa: What if I'm a quitter? What if I'm a poor decision maker? TyAnn: [7:05] ***You're branded with the scarlet Q that you'd have around for the rest of your life.*** Lisa: Yeah. I mean, these are things. And then it was... Okay, and then what? Let's say I quit. Well, normally, I'm a planner. I think ahead. I think far ahead. I would have been deciding what I am going to do next. And then I would get myself lined up for it. And then I would have it all lined up, and I would have an acceleration lane all planned up. I didn't have any of that. So this would be all new territory. I decided, well, this would be a good time to start a business. Not this business but it was a different one. But I was like — okay, what if I don't get any customers? What if I have no revenue? What if I… TyAnn: And now I have to make a business plan. And now that's a huge project. Lisa: Yeah. And I was like, “Oh, we had just purchased this land that we wanted, that was the forever plan. What if I ruin, what if I single-handedly ruin the forever plan because I took one wrong job?” TyAnn: Oh, that's a lot of pressure. Lisa: But you know, even when you go through the worst, when I realized I was really just being a chicken, and that the worst that could happen...you know what we came to when we stayed up really late that night, just talking about, “No, seriously, what is the worst?” TyAnn: What was it? Lisa: We were going to live on an RV and be camp hosts in a lovely State Park, and it was like, “Oh, this is okay.” TyAnn: Which by the way, I have not one but multiple friends who are doing that right now. Lisa: On purpose? TyAnn: That is their dream. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: Yeah. Like that's the thing. Lisa: Yeah. And at the time, it was just like, “Well, we had an RV. So we literally wasn't something to purchase. It was just like we take the thing that we have while we lost the house, because remember, I lost the whole dream farm. We lost the farm. TyAnn: It burned. It burned up overnight. Lisa: Yeah. I brought it crashing down in flames. And then it was right there. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: So the answer was there. I'm not saying it made it unscary, but that was a funk breaker. So I know it was a bit of a long story to support your point, but I was in a funk — because I was stuck in a decision. TyAnn: You were afraid. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: It was fear. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: But you knew the right thing to do. Lisa: I guess so. TyAnn: You wanted to leave. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: You were just afraid. Lisa: But we fire ourselves on that often. I know. I do. And I know that a lot of customers do... And many smaller things because, well, you know, we work with plenty of people who are not in a funk because they're making self-actualizing giant life decisions. That does happen as well. You know who you are. If you're listening to the show and you stayed after one of the sessions, and we’re like... TyAnn: Right...which we love by the way. Lisa: Oh my God, this made me realize... TyAnn: I made the complete wrong job. Lisa: But also it happens in the everyday mundane. TyAnn: Yeah, absolutely. Identifying The Root Of The Funky Feeling Is Not Magic But A Process TyAnn: I hear this a lot. And believe me, this is kind of what keeps coaches in business, is working with people who kind of get to even like the 40, 50-plus category who are like: “You know what? I've worked all this time, and I've sort of made it. I've gotten to wherever it was in the career in the company. I've gotten to whatever level job that I thought was the place I wanted to be, and kind of, is this all there is?” Or like, “I thought somehow I would be riding my unicorn to work and playing with puppies all day. And you know what? I don't. I don't like it. I don't like what I do... I don't really like who I've become.” Or, “My kid drew a picture of the family and I'm not in it.” What we've heard from a colleague of ours... Or something else happens. This is why people have a midlife crisis or a complete breakdown. Talk about a funk. And that's something where you know that there's that little voice whispering in you, of discontent, and you have shoved it down. And you know, when you push that bad boy down, just like feelings, it is like your jack-in-the-box analogy — that thing will shoot out in a very ugly and untimely way. Lisa: That's true. And you know, it's like, once you've been shoving it down, long enough people know. And you're like, I have the pit in my stomach. I know it's off, but I don't know what is off. I can't put my finger on it. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: And then boom, Jack in the box jumps out. TyAnn: Or people feel scared because “I have set up my life now where now I have the big house, or I'm supporting my whole family.” Or I mean, whatever it is. And we kind of make it bigger in our head sometimes. Lisa: Oh, I had one of those recently in a Strengths session. She said, she called it her "big kid bills." And she was like, “I have the house, I have the car, I have the stuff, I have everything. And I've got my mind all wrapped up in keeping with the Joneses.” And she's like, “All I want to do is just go buy a Honda Accord and live in a one-bedroom apartment and unravel it all. And I can't even do that.” TyAnn: So like, “more money, more problems.” And I mean that's why I think there's such a pull right now for downsizing, for minimalism, for “let's chuck it all and go live in that RV and go be the camp host...” And there's a huge movement for that right now. I mean, even in the design world, there's you know, “Minimalism is in!" Not "Rococo is in.” You know what I mean? Lisa: I don't even know what that is. TyAnn: "The heavily layered look is out!" So you see this, there's a real pull and desire for that. And so it's real. It's a thing and it's okay to just sit back and think, “I've worked and maybe I've been the one pushing this, and I feel funky. I don’t know if I want this.” Lisa: Okay, so I'm your client. We've been talking Strengths. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: I do the CliftonStrengths assessment. I am in fact, in a funk and I did do my assessment. I know my top strengths. I think I'm gonna talk to Ty as my coach. So I'm going to start to open up to the concept and kind of like, talk through what's going on, so I can figure it out because I can't put my thumb on what is making the funky monkey situation happen. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: So what do you do, like if you're in a corporate office, you know, most of our customers are, and they're like living through the funk, and they've acknowledged the funk isn't gonna go away in a one conversation sort of thing. This isn't a magic dust... TyAnn: And I wish it was. I would charge a lot more. Lisa: No kidding! Poof! Life is amazing! TyAnn: For $20,000, I will solve your funkiness! Lisa: 1 hour! TyAnn: Shazam! Yeah, sadly, a little bit more of a process. Lisa: So I know like in one podcast episode, we can't end it and say, “And here…” TyAnn: Here's your 30-second easy answer. Lisa: It will be jerky if I'm like, “Go pay Ty $20,000 so she can get you the answer.” That's not the most fun. TyAnn: But there are some things you can do, for sure. Lisa: Yeah, So getting a coach is a great one. But what else, like what actions can people take away when they're living through the funk, they're in the middle of it, and they're getting to the other side? Look Up To A Coach Or Your Strengths Report As Your 'Spirit Guide' TyAnn: So one thing you said, getting a coach. So I would say absolutely. I'm a huge fan of that, not just because I'm a coach, but because I believe it works. So if your company supports that, awesome! But if they don't, see if you can reach out to a trusted person, because often when you're in it, it can be really hard to see. You know what I mean? So it can be helpful to have spirit guides — somebody to walk beside you on that. So that's a) if you can, you know, put your hand up, and that takes being a little bit vulnerable. But it's okay to just say, “You know what, I gotta get some help here." Because there's no prize for doing that hard and by yourself. Just a little clue to life here. And something too that when you can pull out your Strengths — and again, I realized when you're feeling funky, you might not be thinking Strengths, I mean, that might not be it — but I encourage you, like reach back in your desk and pull up that report. And there's going to be a piece in there about Brings & Needs, that I really like. And you know, often when you first read it, you kind of blow through some of that. But oftentimes, when we're feeling funky, it's because we have a need that's not being met. And each one of our strengths themes has a really specific thing that we need in order to feel fulfilled in that way. And so almost invariably, when I find myself in a funk, I can go back and like literally put my finger on the thing that I am not getting. And it is illuminating to be able to give language or a word to, “Oh my gosh, I thought it was just me. I am not getting this. This is what I need.” And life isn't about putting your needs on a shelf and doing it, again, the hard way. You are at your best and the world needs the best of you, not the most mediocre funky version of you. That's not helpful to anyone. Does that make sense? Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. And if they have the full 34 report, the version that you get the lesser themes at the bottom, you might look at the bottom 5 to 7. And you might notice, if you don't think of these as weaknesses, you think of these as potential energy drainers. Well, you look at that list. And you might think, “Oh right, look at that one. It's number 33 of 34. And I'm using that all day, every day. It's taking a lot of me to give it.” TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Because you can be totally competent in those areas. By the way, if you're new to Strengths, it can be at the bottom of your list in the stack rank of 34. You can get competent, you can do the thing, but it's sucking it all out of you and you're empty by giving it. TyAnn: Right Lisa: And it can really make you feel funky if you're having to do that over time. TyAnn: Absolutely. And you know, Gallup’s got these engagement metrics that we talk about with our clients. And you know, the data shows that people who are able to use their strengths during the day — six times as likely to be engaged, three times as likely to have a better quality of life. And as I tell my clients, this doesn't mean I only get to work on fun stuff all day long, that really, you know, it is the Ty land. That's not life. But what the research behind this shows is that something in my day brings me energy. And because it does, it lifts me up enough so that then I can get through that noise and deal with some of that stuff that might be pulling on my themes that are at the bottom of my stack. Does that make sense? Lisa: Yeah. So gas in the tank. It gets you back up there so you can get through the day doing things that you're paid to do even if you don't like those things. TyAnn: That's just it. Because sometimes clients are like, “Oh, well, this means I don't have to do those other parts of my job I don't like.” I'm like, “Yeah, no, it's still work.” Now if 100% of your job you don't like, that's not something. But there needs to be something every day that kind of fills your tank, and then you can get through that other stuff. But I think that's where you can start to kind of put some analysis around the funk and then say, “Oh, my gosh, I didn't realize 75% of my job is doing that thing that takes so much energy. I can do it because I'm smart, I'm competent, I mean, I got to this point, I can do it. I just don't want it to take so much of my energy." And then, "Frankly, I don't even have enough energy left to do the things that do excite me." Which then, that becomes sad, you know. I don't even have enough energy to play the drums. Or, I found this happening with me. I love to read, that's kind of my thing. I found if I get in a funk, I'll stop reading. And that's when I've noticed that, man something's really wrong with me. Because I love to read. So if I don't have enough energy to read... Lisa: Okay, you know, we're into these analog tools in the list, this would be a good list like, "Can you remember back to times when you were in a funk and what might the signs be?” And some things like that. You stop reading. I might skip my drum practice for the day I notice. I let myself get a little disorganized, like if my trash starts to overflow because I'm Mrs. Cleanly, I'm Mrs. Tidy is basically me, so I noticed... Oh, if a couple of little signs, like my fingernails are very chipped and my trash is overflowing and I'm playing Tetris waiting for it to fall out — I know, I'm not in my normal game. TyAnn: Isn't that interesting? Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: So kind of know that about yourself, like what are these little signs, little guideposts along the way so that you can pay attention to those before you get to sort of the edge of the cliff, and you've fallen off. Unleash Your Best You — The World Needs It Lisa: Okay, this is good. So we have to-dos for them. Okay, we've got lists to make.... What are your early warning signs guideposts? TyAnn: Absolutely. Raise your hand if you're feeling funky and see if you can get a spirit guide to help you out. Lisa: Yeah. And if you need a coach Ty, is really amazing. One thing I love about your style in this regard is, well, depth, obviously. You get corporate, you get people's busy lives, but you're both empathetic and tough at the same time — not empathy in the Gallup sense of the word, but like, you feel the person for how they need to be seen and heard and appreciated in the moment. But then you can also tell the truth. You're not afraid of... TyAnn: I definitely have huge compassion for people because — especially with the clients we work with — I've been there. You know, we've had these jobs. I have had the job where I felt like I had to be on 24/7. I've had the ex-pat job where I literally felt like I was on 24/7 because I had a whole job on the other side of the world, and just when that job was ending, the US was coming online. I've had the job where I got 300 emails a day. I've had the job where you go into the Ops review, and you have to prepare a 75-page deck that you get yelled at about. I mean, we've lived this, right? Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: I've been in a place where you get promoted to a position that you're like, “I don't want this. I don't want my boss's job. I don't want any of these jobs.” Lisa: “Why did I do this?” TyAnn: “Why did I do this?” But you know what, I've also had things that are great. And I'm just saying, life can be awesome. And you have tremendous and powerful skills. And we just want to harness those so that we can unleash the best of you in the world — because that's what the world needs. Lisa: Yeah. Okay, that is a perfect end to this. One thing I am going to put in the show notes for you is a link to http://leadthroughstrengths.com/negative. There's one called /positive and there's one /negative. And it's a list of emotions. It's like an inventory of emotions. And so if one of your takeaways is coaching — great, bring on Ty. If you are more like, “Hey, I just need to DIY this right now, and I'm going to go back to the very beginning of this episode and do that thing where I'm trying to figure out beyond saying I'm stressed or anxious, what's going on with me with this funk... That list, it just gives you a whole different set of words to say — "Oh, yeah, I think I'm just angry about this thing that got switched up on me at work. And I've just had the bee in my bonnet for a while, using an old saying, and now that put me into a funk.” So that will be a good resource as well, if you have trouble naming it. And remember Ty’s wisdom, I will call it, which is — you don't have to look at these emotions and name these emotions so that you can go tell your boss you're feeling it. This is actually you just doing it so you can understand what is making the funk. Right? TyAnn: Yeah, absolutely. And it could be, I mean, I've seen this before, you could be mad because you're not getting recognized, you know. You're mad, you worked on that project and somebody else got the credit for it. You know, all these things. And you might think, “I can't say that out loud, because that sounds really petty.” You know, then someone's going to be like... But that's a valid feeling. That's totally valid. So I love that lists can help spark that for you. So write that stuff down so you can help in your mind...just get kind of granular on what specifically is it that's causing the funk. Because once we know, and we can drill into that, then we can help start building bridges to get over the funk. Lisa: Yeah. And you layer that with what you described about going back through your report and reading the needs. And if you have the full report, looking at the very bottom, so you might see something that is a soul sucker for you that you didn't know. You have a pretty good inventory either of, “Oh, I've got my early warning signs”, or, “Oh, I've figured out what might have spurred this.” Like that moment where you didn't get recognized, maybe you're annoyed for about 30 seconds, and then you're like, “Yeah, [24:33] ***I'm a grown-up*** so I'm over it.” And then you move on — but you didn't get over it. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: You just told yourself you did. TyAnn: Right. Or maybe that's like the 5th time that that's happened in this job, and it's just like, it's like your bee in your bonnet. It doesn't go away. It's there. And then every time that happens again, it's just that confirmation that's like see, this is in here. And maybe one of your themes is Significance, and maybe yours needs to be recognized. And so that's a really good starting point to think... What's going on here? How can I put more Venn in this diagram than these things that are totally opposite? So I think that's just a great place to start. Lisa: It is. And speaking of starts, we're stopping. [Laughs] So even though we're at the end of the episode, you know we always talk about how using your strengths will make you a stronger performer. And in this time, if you're listening to this, if you are in one of those moments where you are in a funk, don't forget that your strengths do strengthen your performance. Because, I think to Ty's point, it is not the first thing that comes to mind. But if you're experiencing the funk right now and you're feeling like the brass monkey-funky monkey, get over to your CliftonStrengths report and get...reflecting? Is that what you would call it? TyAnn: Yeah. You’re reflecting. Yeah, go back and dig into those Brings & Needs, and I think you'll find some wisdom there. Lisa: All right. With that, we will see you next time. Bye for now. Need More Resources To Help You Further Beat Those Funky Blues? Check These Out Lisa mentioned how being in a funk is largely linked to being “stressed” and “anxious,” based on her experience discussing the situation with her clients. Listen to her as she explains how having a bad day, a person/team who frustrates you, and an environment where you feel mismatched might bring out the shadow side of your strengths in What Do Strengths Look Like Under Stress? Here you will learn how to reframe them from bad to better. Or listen to Lisa’s grandma Venetta as she shares 5 career lessons. In one of the lessons, she encourages listeners to simply step back, get some perspective and look for the good in things even when stressed at work and feeling overwhelmed. The rest of her shared nuggets are just as golden! Funky moments, whether major or minor ones, are all part of life, as the path towards our goals is not always straight and smooth. Our episode on How To Start Living Your Best Life with Lisa and Strother Gaines will inspire you to embrace situations that can throw you off your path yet lead you to reroute or arrange new ones. All this points to the importance of anchoring on your CliftonStrengths talent themes in life. See you in the next episode with Lisa and TyAnn.
Self Care Ideas That Most Corporate Professionals Haven't Considered You can't go very far when you're running on empty, no matter how hard you push. And that's why we've come up with this fun episode for you — consider it a virtual "filling station." All you need to do for now is hit the brake, find clarity, and refill your tank with self care ideas that use your natural talents. Just like operating from your unique strengths, practicing self care makes a world of difference. Self care is not self-ish, because it results in giving your world the best of you [very punny, right?]. No matter your role in your team, your strengths can guide you in choosing the tasks that replenish you so that you can contribute your best - and achieve goals with less effort. Our host Lisa Cummings is joined once again by TyAnn Osborn, and together they will guide you towards the things that could re-energize you. As you'll find out, filling up on self care ideas doesn’t have to be limited to studying mindfulness, meditation, and massage. Surprisingly, self care can feel really practical in the workplace, despite the typical connotation, which seems to live outside of the office. There are many self care ideas that come right out of your natural talents - ways you can approach your work to re-energize you while you simultaneously get things done. Here’s their conversation: Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and you know, I'm always telling you, it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with my other host here in the room, TyAnn Osborn. TyAnn: Hi! Lisa: Today, we're talking about... We don't know yet what we're talking about, because we're doing a spin-the-wheel, where it tells us what we're talking about for the day. So let's spin. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: Ooh, this one is talking about self care ideas... TyAnn: Self care. Lisa: When you run empty. TyAnn: Well... Lisa: No, you should just start this Ty, because you've talked about when the cup is empty, you have nothing to give. We definitely need some self care ideas up in here. How These Self Care Ideas Can Help You Avoid Burnout TyAnn: That's it. So I think this is a really important topic right now. And, you know, we're all facing different struggles, no matter what it is. Depending on when you listen, there can be any number of things happening. Maybe you've got a personal health struggle, maybe you're facing job troubles, potential job loss. Maybe you've got some family stuff going on, kids stuff going on. I don't know, maybe there was a global pandemic. There's all kinds of things happening in the world right now, and something is probably happening in your life. And here's the deal. You know, we have a lot of demands and pulls on our time and our energy. And often, we're trying to give so much to other people. If you're a manager, a people manager, you know, you're really trying to show up and be the best for your team. If you've got kids you're trying to give. If you're a volunteer, you're trying to give. But the truth is, you can't give from an empty cup. And so this is really where we've got to build self care ideas in our own life so that we can have our own replenishment - things that help us so that we can help give to other people. Because, believe me, if you're just gonna keep pouring, nothing's gonna come out. Lisa: That's a good point. It's kind of like, if you use your cup metaphor, I'm going to drink, there's nothing there. I'm trying to take a sip, there's nothing there. TyAnn: Yeah, you're still slurping on that straw, like (slurps)... Nothing happening. Lisa: And I, I see this with a lot of clients where we want to be it all. We want to give it all. We want to do it all. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: I have very high expectations of myself that I never meet. I see customers who have high expectations of themselves that they never meet, and they feel crushing expectations from other people around them, so that same family member, teammate, boss, all of those situations, and they are like, "Everyone wants a piece of me, and I've got nothing." TyAnn: Yeah, "I've got nothing to give." And believe me, that is the number one recipe for burnout right there. Because, you know, we're people and a lot of us are strong in terms of achievement, and being able to really, you know, move forward. That's why we're successful in our careers. And we've kind of gotten to these points. But believe me, there's only so far you can push this before you will just hit a wall. And often, you and I've talked about this before, oftentimes your body will tell you you've hit a wall before your brain will intellectually let you believe it. And, you know, I heard this one time on Oprah, she said, the universe speaks to you. And first, it'll be a whisper. And if you don't listen, then it'll start tapping a little louder. And finally, you know, if you keep not listening, it'll smack you upside the head. So I think it's really important to generate self care ideas, and create a practice. And we can talk about, "What does that look like from a strengths perspective?" Lisa: Yeah. When I think about self care ideas, I think about fitness. I think about fuel in the body, like what you're eating and drinking. I think about, "Am I consciously trying to direct my work to allow energizing things?" TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: I also think about hobbies. Am I doing things in life that fill my cup back up? TyAnn: Yeah. Different Energizers For Different Folks — Scrap The Judgment Lisa: There are a lot of things I think people can list if you ask, "What things energize you?" TyAnn: Yes. Lisa: But then how many do you allow yourself to do, and how do you know the payoff, like, “Okay, if I allow myself to sleep 9 hours a night, which my body thinks it wants…” TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: We can have self care ideas, but we might not give ourselves permission to try them. It feels self-indulgent. TyAnn: So true. Lisa: ...I think, "I don't have time for that. I have too much to do." But I think I also would like to drive to a gym and go do yoga in the morning and then, start work around noon, and... TyAnn: Play with your dogs and the drums and take a nap. Lisa: Yeah, I have songs to write. I have drums to play. I have dogs to take care of. I have a husband to hang out with. I have a lot to do. And that takes up a whole workday all by itself. These are beautiful self care ideas, yet I need to bring home the bacon too. TyAnn: Right?! Did you time for work? Lisa: Who's got time for that? TyAnn: Yeah. So how do you fit these self care ideas into your day? And how does this feel like not just one more thing I have to do? And then where can I get the biggest bang for my buck? Lisa: Yeah. Good point. You can have self care ideas, but they can also feel burdensome because they take up time. So what's the first step? I mean, and we're doing this related to strengths. TyAnn: So what are all the answers to this mystery? So a few things. I will just offer a personal bias. I think this word "self care" is used a lot now. It's thrown around. And sometimes when I hear it, it feels a little soft. Or it's all about like taking long hot bubble baths or something. And I think that feels a little squishy to me. So how about we just say, things that replenish you? Whatever that is for you. Lisa: The magic wand, we are now turning "self care ideas" into "things that replenish you." Very simple. That definitely makes it less squishy. TyAnn: Yeah. And I also think we can take away judgment on that, because something that makes you feel good might not make me feel good. So it's very personal to you. Lisa: Well, I think that we have one of those because I think that you're making fun of bubble baths, but that you actually do like them. And you like to read in the bath. TyAnn: I do. Lisa: Meanwhile, when we built our house, we built a bathless house because we don't take baths. TyAnn: Hey, interesting trend in real estate, right? Lisa: Is it?. I didn't realize that. TyAnn: As someone who just went through that process, now you go in, it's kind of polarizing. Bath person. No bath person. Some people have the big freestanding bathtub, it's a whole spa. Other people are like, "No, that's big waste." So it is a good metaphor for this topic. Lisa: It totally is. TyAnn: Because one person's replenishment is another person’s waste of space. So that's something that I do for myself and actually recommend for my clients as well. It’s just...take out a white sheet of paper. I'm a big believer in like analog tools, or get a whiteboard, and then just list out stuff you like. And here's what's interesting. Sometimes that can be paralyzing to clients, like, “Oh, my God, where do I even start?” So just take away all of the judgment. It can be little things like, "I like chocolate ice cream." That can't be my entire self care regimen, by the way, or I'd gain 50 pounds. But, you know, just start listing without judging the list. Creation and editing are two very different processes. Separate them so we can start listing out things. Start with the creation of a list. Write all of the things that replenish you. If that feels too limiting, just write things that you like - activities you enjoy. Lisa: Don't judge it while it's landing on the page. TyAnn: No judgment. As Planet Fitness says "this is a no judgement zone," (even though they misspelled judgment). So... Lisa: They did? TyAnn: Some judgment... Lisa: You’re judging the judgment spelling, that is. TyAnn: I know, judgment, right? Slightly judgy. So I would just say, try that, or I get clients stuck on... "I can only list work things that I'm excited about..." Lisa: Ha ha. I hear your Maximizer talent coming out. Maybe we can do categories for their self care ideas. Tyann: Yeah. Lisa: Let's come up with some categories. You could list work things that you like, TyAnn: Could be... Lisa: Work people that you like. TyAnn: (laughs) That's a big one. Lisa: Because people are like, “You replenish me. When I'm around you, my energy goes up.” TyAnn: But there are some people who don't replenish us. So they wouldn't go on the list. Lisa: Right? Ha ha. Okay. So we've got work...tasks or responsibilities. We've got people. TyAnn: Maybe workplaces. Lisa: Ooh, like physical places? TyAnn: Yes. Or maybe if you get to travel somewhere that's fun. Or maybe traveling for you to some location you dread that maybe you have to go once a quarter. And that's really a de-energizer for you. So don't put that on your list. Lisa: And you might know, "Hey, I'll make another list of things I need to get my energy up because I know it's going to be drained more...when these things happen." TyAnn: So this is the “things that bring me energy” list. So work stuff... and get as granular as you can in terms of work tasks. So I don't recommend putting things on there like, the XYZ project, because that's way too big. So get very granular about what specifically about that project did you like? Did you like interacting with the project team members, because it was just that awesome team where you really felt like you clicked with everyone? Or was it because you got to be out front? That would be me. You know it to be out on stage or I get to be the one making the presentation. Or maybe you're that spreadsheet jockey and you came up with just a brilliant thing that you pushed a button and all these magic happened, and it was the coolest thing ever. That would not be me. But for someone that could be. Lisa: You can also see trends after the list is complete...if you make yourself stick with the list-making when it gets tough for a minute. Then you can see bigger trends. Like one that I know for me I've figured out is, I like making things, but I like making a class. I like making an audio file. I like making a song up. I like making all sorts of different types of making. Some are very tech-focused. Some are super creative, but I couldn't see that trend until I listed a bunch of the details. That's when you get self care ideas that you never expected. They don't come out on the first pass. TyAnn: That’s great! I love that. So then you can go back and say what is it about these things that are similar? It's a creative process. Embracing What’s 'Weird' And Improving On What’s 'Standard' Are Self Care Steps Too TyAnn: Yeah. And this is for people who are like, "Oh, I can't list that, because that...that doesn't count. Or, I don't want anyone to know that I secretly like to….[insert whatever crazy hobby it is]. I was working with a group of chemical engineers. And this one gentleman, he stood up, and he said, “I like Dutch oven cooking.” And I thought, what a brave thing to say in front of a room of other chemical engineers. And I'm like, “You go! Dutch oven cooking! What a specific niche thing to do.” It's a brilliant self care idea, but he never would have called it that. Lisa: Yeah. It makes me think of "things you do to decompress" as another category for the list of self care ideas. Tyann: I didn't even know that was a hobby. And I like to cook too. And whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It's all about what rejuvenates you. Lisa: Back to your analog self care idea list: I facilitate an activity like this. I'll put the timer on two minutes, and I'll say, “Don't let the pen stop... keep going as a stream of consciousness thing." What did I like doing when I was 9? What am I doing when I lose track of time? What activities are fun? Who is fun to be around? What am I good at? What comes easily to me? What makes me feel alive? What am I saying when I crack myself up? What topics to I love to learn about? What makes me different from the average person? If you just can't think of an answer, keep the pen going and move to another angle." What you brought up for me is my follow-on, that I'll often have people do, which is: Keep this out for a week, because you need to grab the little moments that you didn't even know, “Oh, I got a little spark out of that idea and it reminded me of a whole new set of self care ideas.” And one of them that I think is really cool is: What makes you weird? And if I just ask you that, like, how many things could you list? Well, I might be able to add more than a normal person. But the little things like, what has anyone ever commented on? Because they'll come up. They'll pop in your head later. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: Okay, a weird thing about me is I eat canned things, because I like to eat vegetables and I like to be efficient. And I don't like spending a lot of time on my food. But I do want quality food in me. So somewhere in the middle, I found a jar of beets that I eat for my snack or my lunch. That's weird. I just stick my fork in the jar of beets and I eat it. Isn't that bizarre? TyAnn: Lisa eats green beans out of the can as well. Lisa: I will. Green beans are doable... but.. some of them are too squishy, like canned asparagus and spinach. Those are a no-go… Green beans, corn, beets — all workable for moments of vegetable efficiency. But that is very weird. But if you start looking at it like, what energizes me? The energizing part isn't the beets. It's finding new efficiencies. Finding ways to break a rule, like that rule makes me think about how I don't have to cook because other people do. I remember a moment when I got feedback at my house that I was not running the dishwasher as often as it should be because we were running out of forks. And so my answer was *not* to wash dishes more frequently or run the dishwasher more frequently. It was to buy more forks. And I got a real kick out of that. It was my special way of being efficient and effective. So these weird things about you can generate surprising self care ideas. TyAnn: I love that. Lisa: When you see “Oh, I love coming up with something that is a solution to a problem that is not normal, that no one else would think of.” And I'll get a jazz out of that that will give me an hour-long high. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: So being able to write down those things, like the moments where you got a boost or you got a kick out of yourself. TyAnn: This is so great. So you've said a couple of things that I think are brilliant. Life is made up of all these little moments that are punctuated by the big thing. But 99% of life is...just we go through life, right? So that's where we can look. And so much of what you said is like a Maximizer coming out, which by the way, I'm that as well. But two examples for you in the food realm. So we started getting those home boxes that come with the food and the recipe. The box comes in, you have the recipe and you put it all together. Usually it's my job to put the ingredients together. Occasionally, my husband will put it together but he takes the recipe and goes exactly step by step and it comes out and, you know, it's fine. I'm different. I take the recipe and use it as a launchpad. It's like a starting point because I'm often thinking, "Hmm, you know, what would make this better?Just a little bit of shallot, a little bit of garlic, you know, a dash of cinnamon..." And then I’ll present it to him, he's like, “This is not the recipe.” I'm like, “I know. It's better. It's better.” That's like a hallmark of Maximizers: "I’m gonna make this better!" Lisa: And it makes you really excited. TyAnn: Oh, huge, huge jazz out of it. 'Cause I sort of have this image of myself back at the test kitchen of whatever company being all like, “I made it better,” even though that's not my job and I would never do that. Anyway, in my head, it's pretty exciting. So, and a long time ago, back when the interwebs were still very new, I had this website, and one of the things I did was reviews of restaurants and products. This is really crazy to think about now. But do you remember flight — I know, we'll get back there one day — and in the in-flight magazine, how there were always those lists of like, top 10 steak houses in the United States.... Well, I took that as a challenge. And so I decided to go visit all of them, and then do reviews on them and see if I really thought they were the top 10 steak houses. So then I had a whole thing on. Lisa: And you had this whole energy... TyAnn: I do! Lisa: ...about it. TyAnn: And I'm 100% sure no one ever read that. But it didn't matter. I wasn't doing it for the audience, I was doing it as, like, a quality kind of thing. Lisa: Hmmm. What's your take...you're making me think of...on the topic of self care ideas...how fulfilled we feel as humans and how alive we feel as humans, because I think there's a difference between being alive and feeling alive, like feeling alive for what you're doing. And that so much of it can come from striving and having a goal and that there's something around it even if it's something like, “I have this thing, I'm going to visit these 10…places." TyAnn: Whatever… Lisa: Whatever that thing is, so even making one of those lists...instead of it being an inventory of things you've found yourself get a charge out of it, could be like, “Oh, that sounds fun. I'm actually going to go do that.” TyAnn: You know, there was research that was done about, and this was really done on couples and families. And something that was particularly bonding was something they came up with and called it a quest. But it works for individuals too, that whenever you have a quest, something that you're doing together, and it doesn't have to be like, “We're gonna go visit every continent,” even though that could be fun, but that might be a little unattainable for a lot of people, it could just be, “We're gonna go check out all of the state parks in a 30-mile radius from our house.” Lisa: Yes! TyAnn: Or we're gonna find a public fishing hole near where we live. I mean, it doesn't, it literally doesn't matter what it is. It's just something that's a common goal for you. Bringing Strengths Into Self Care By Focusing On Things That Energize You Lisa: I like that as a very actionable thing that you could do with this, where you're like, "How can I do self care? Can I bring my strengths into it?" And by the way, you can look at them and say, "What would light these up?" And that can be part of your list making. But also, if you do things that feel easy to you and energizing to you, they probably are in alignment with your strengths naturally. TyAnn: That's a clue to strengths, too. Lisa: Yeah! TyAnn: Usually your strengths are things that bring you energy and you feel naturally attracted to. So it doesn't matter if it's, "You know what, I'm going to try a seasonal fruit or vegetable this month. This is going to be the month of asparagus, and I'm going to go try that.” Whatever. Or, "We're going to try a new place." You know, you often hear this, "We're going to try something new." Because if you put yourself out there a little bit, but it's a new adventure of some sort, it kind of satisfies a lot of this neat thing. And that's what really gets a lot of cool juices flowing for you. Doing the same thing over and over tends not to stroke that same area for you. Lisa: Yeah. And I like how you do the... If you're going to come up with a quest as one of the action items like, what could your quest be? And could you have a quest that would be a workplace quest or a family quest? And then could you do one that would feel really enlivening to one of your strengths? And then even if you wanted to have a work or family conversation around it, how could this quest be really fun for this family? TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Or how could this quest, this big aspirational goal that the team is heading toward, which… How could you find a way that one of your strengths comes alive through it? It would be a really cool conversation. TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: I don't know if this is the same video you were talking about with research? Jane McGonigal was a researcher and she was recovering from a concussion. She started a quest to get better. There's a TED talk where she describes what she did to power up. She called it Super Better. And it was how she gamified getting better. She was also a gamer and she figured out a way to get super better, but bits at a time. And this quest notion, whether or not she used those words. TyAnn: I love that. Lisa: ...it was baked into it. And it gives you a way to get there. Instead of feeling like, I think when people are bad at self care, when we're doing ourselves wrong, it's because I'm like, “Well, I'm, I haven't worked out this week, so I'm going to eat tater tots for breakfast.” TyAnn: We like tater tots in our house as well. Gotta say. Tater tots loving family. And then someone might say, well, and if I had tater tots for breakfast, I might as well just go all in and have cake for lunch. And... Lisa: Oh, and I put ice cream on my list of self care ideas. So we have that and then you're all downhill. TyAnn: But it's an interesting kind of this concept too. So you know, a lot of people have workout on their list because they think that's what should be on the list. So I would say stop shooting on yourself. What brings you energy is what brings you energy. No one's creating this, by the way. And so if you feel like a natural attraction to you would like to get more activity in your life, that doesn't have to mean I have to go to the gym for an hour and a half, and get on some torturous piece of equipment that I don't want to be on, that makes me feel icky... Or, I have to go to a Body Pump class where I'm embarrassed and don't know how to do it. That's not what that means. Lisa: Yeah, I think that thing, like remembering, there's a notion, maybe it's one that other people have put out there for you. Or maybe it's something you've made up about what that word means. Workout is a good example of one that's loaded. TyAnn: Yeah, a lot of baggage, Lisa: I think quick shout out to the book, Eat, Move, Sleep. That’s a really good one for self care ideas. TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: …asking yourself, how are you on your eating and moving and sleeping? But okay, like if you said, “Okay, I want to move.” TyAnn: Right. Lisa: What kind of moving is fun for me? Maybe for one person, it's taking a walk with a friend, and you got to have the social connection while you were power walking. For the next person, it’s going to a group exercise class. Like I had... I went and hooked up my Xbox again, for the Kinect, to dance to Fergie. I mean, it's silly, but that's a fun workout for me. So why don’t I do it? TyAnn: That counts. That counts. Lisa: And then you go, “Oh, well. Well, I do. Why don't I hook that back up? TyAnn: Right! Lisa: Why do I have that unplugged? TyAnn: So if you want to be Dance Dance Revolution, man, knock yourself out! Lisa: I love Dance Dance Revolution. TyAnn: Or if you just want to crank up the music, or take a walk, or if you want to try some, you know, whatever new class is out there... Lisa: Take a whole new class! Whatever sounds fun for you. TyAnn: ...there’s something. So I think it really is trying to get away again from, if you write something down because you feel you should, I would say take another look at that, because that's not bringing you energy. And this is supposed to be a self care list about things that are exciting to you and bring you energy. So if you feel like you should call your mom every day and spend an hour on the phone with her, but that doesn't bring you energy, don't put that on your list. Don’t put that on your list. Or even working out. If that doesn't sound so great to you, think about, “What does sound great to me? Hanging out with my friend sounds great. So maybe, I get an accountability partner at the gym. Then, that can be where I go to see my friends, I've kind of paired something I'm a little more iffy at with something I'm excited about. So together, I'm sort of killing two birds with one stone in a way that still feels awesome." Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: So I think that's part of that self care. So I would just say, get back to that creative space. Think about those things which bring you energy. Try to get down to those micro-segments. I like organizing, that brings me energy. And so if I'm feeling a little out of sorts, Lisa: Labeler. TyAnn: If I'm feeling a little out of sorts, I might just literally pull open my desk drawer and just get it sorted out. Lisa: Oh, this is the perfect closing to this. Self Care Need Not Be Hard Or Inconvenient — Grow On Micro Habits Lisa: On the best self care ideas: My favorite TyAnn concept of the universe is “stop making things so hard.” I make life hard because I think of all of these things I should be doing or want to do or that would feel great. But then they feel too gratuitous. It just feels like too much time. I don't have that much time for these eight hours of things I would prefer to do during the day. TyAnn: It's too much. Lisa: So the opening one drawer, and organizing one little space... TyAnn: Right. Lisa: The reading one page of a book, not even one chapter, but I like reading, I read one page. TyAnn: Yoohoo, ‘crushing it! I’m winning. Lisa: If you’ve read Atomic Habits, have you checked out that? TyAnn: Yes. Yeah. Lisa: It's like, I will put my workout shoes next to my bed, and I will put my workout shoes on and then maybe...I will do 10 push-ups, and that's your only expectation for yourself — 10 push-ups, just something that is... TyAnn: ...that you can crush, you can win... Lisa: ...very small and doable. TyAnn: Micro-habits. Lisa: ...and let it grow. TyAnn: And you're like, I want to eat more vegetables. Great, I ate one asparagus. Winning! (laughs) Right? As opposed to, “Well, now I have to become a vegan.” ...which seems like a big thing. Lisa: That is so funny as a closing thought too because I have some like vegan experimenting things that… TyAnn: Vegan-curious? Lisa: Yeah! Say I’m plant-curious. If you're listening, hey, Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong! TyAnn: We love Becky! Lisa: Becky's a vegetarian. I was talking about well, you know, if I were to do it, I would just go vegan because I don't eat dairy so I would just like, that's the big battle with going vegan to me anyway, is I can't eat dairy anyhow. So I got past the vegetarian vegan thing. But I don't know about that. And I started giving all of these reasons: "This gets in my way...this makes it a precarious approach...and this makes it inconvenient. And she's like, “Just have one more plant-based meal per day." I said, “Oh, hello!” I hadn't thought of that. TyAnn: Something doable. Lisa: Stop making everything all or none. Stop making everything have a mutually exclusive this or that. TyAnn: Stop making it so hard. Stop making it so hard. Lisa: And with that, I think it is…the perfect ending. So you've been listening to Lead Through Strength. As you think about not making it so hard and bringing your strengths into your self care practice, walk away with your list. Log those moments over the next month, maybe just a week or a few days. But catch the moments that were fun to you. Come let us know on social what they were for you because it is fun to hear the energizing moments for other people. TyAnn: Absolutely. We'll talk about all of the self care ideas. Lisa: We will. Because the variety is so much fun when you learn one person's trash is another person's treasure - in hobbies and in tasks at work. So with that, let us know which ones you're starting to implement. We would love to hear how you took five more minutes for your self care so that you can fill your cup because we don't want you out of water. With that, we'll see you next time. Bye for now. Resources: Self Care Ideas To Help You Fuel Up Your Strengths And Fire Up Your Life Vital to self care is staying at your top form and performing better at work by knowing what keeps your strengths honored and insulted. Visit Lisa’s insightful episode about finding energizing tasks at work to discover what situations (or cultures) can either drain or motivate you based on your strengths. But simply knowing what honors and insults your strengths or talents cannot complete a self care process. Lisa’s Strengths Blind Spots episode serves as a great reminder to “feed our talents the same way we feed our body." Spend time developing and nurturing them instead of squashing them down so they can best serve your performance and, ultimately, that of the team. Finally, check out this episode on Wellbeing: Bravely Build a Fit Body and Mind Through Strengths with Lisa and Matt Swenson. You’ll learn to create healthy strengths habits around the 5 essential elements of wellbeing: career, social, financial, physical, and community. Life-changing self care ideas!
Do you ever pay much attention to your feet? Our feet are our first point of contact with the ground, and we walk around on them all day. But most people just wear shoes and call it a day. And if you’re a runner, then all the more reason to maintain good foot health! So how do we take care of our feet? Dave Liow, an exercise physiologist and holistic movement coach, joins me in this episode to discuss feet and how to optimise foot health. We talk about some common foot conditions, and he also shares advice on selecting the right shoes and improving foot mechanics. For runners and everyone else, don’t miss this episode and learn how you can achieve good foot health! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out how to take better care of your feet. Discover the benefits of going barefoot. Learn how to select the right shoe for you. Resources Holistic Movement Coach on YouTube The HMC Footy Show, foot exercises on YouTube How to start looking after your feet on YouTube Exercises for bunions on YouTube Holistic Movement Coach website Episode Highlights [03:29] Why Feet? When he started looking at movement, Dave noticed that the feet were one of the areas trainers had no idea about. People have 28 bones in the feet and 55 articulations from below the knee. Over a third of the bones here are in the feet, which tells us how important they are. It’s an area largely being neglected by movement experts and professionals. [05:45] What Shoes Do to Our Feet So much space in the brain is devoted to our feet and hands, and if you walk around with sensory deprivation chambers on them, you’ll lose that space. The bottom of the foot (plantar fascia) is extremely precarious, full of reflectors that send information to your brain about how you’re moving and interacting with the ground. By wearing shoes, we break that link. [09:56] Improving Foot Mechanics and Foot Health Keep your feet out of shoes as much as possible. Whenever Dave has the chance to go barefoot, he does. By going barefoot, you are giving as much information to your feet as you possibly can. Shoes provide a lot of support for your feet. Not wearing shoes will improve your feet’s strength. A healthy foot is a mobile foot. If you can’t do a lot with your toes, it shows you need to do some conditioning on your feet to make them smarter and stronger. Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems runners encounter. Listen to the full episode to learn more about some of the most common foot conditions! [17:21] Bunions and How They Affect Your Foot Health The exact cause of bunions is up for debate, but there is certainly a genetic and environmental component to it. A bunion is when your big toe starts to go in and some calcification forms around the joint. Bunions cause compressions in the foot, leading to problems in the nerves between the bones of your foot. There should be adequate space between your toes, allowing your foot to move and breathe. This also applies to your footwear—your shoe should have a wide toe box to give your toes enough space. You can do foot exercises for bunions to prevent the need for surgical treatment. [24:10] How to Deal with Plantar Fasciitis Typically, people who have plantar fascia issues will feel the bottom of their foot locked up, especially in the morning. Increasing your running distance too quickly and incorrect foot mechanics are common causes of plantar fasciitis. Icing the foot takes some of the pain away. Applying light pressure on the affected area can hydrate the tissues and make them healthier. Adding the right kind of load to it will help line up the fibres and make it strong again. Movement issues can disappear if you keep your body balanced. [29:55] On Running Shoes Dave and Lisa talk about a shoe that reportedly takes 4% of your running time. More track records are broken lately due to the improvement in the technology used to create running shoes. These new shoes are all about sports and performance, not health. There are different types of shoes for different purposes. Being barefoot all time can also cause issues because what goes on your skin can absorb what goes on it. [37:11] The Truth about High Heels When you add an incline to your heel, it lifts you and pushes you forward, breaking your kinetic chain. To avoid falling on their faces, people who wear high heels adjust by pushing their posture forward and arching the lower back more. When you’re in high heels, you’re effectively pointing your toes. This shortens the calf muscles, which can end up reducing the motion in your ankle, pulling you into pronation, and collapsing the arch. Wearing high heels often can change the way your muscles work. [44:21] Supplementation for the Cartilage and Joints Dave reads up on what he thinks is useful and what’s not, and he uses it on an individual basis. A decent multivitamin is a good place to start. Dave is a fan of probiotics and fish oil. However, if you’re sensitive to histamine, do your research first before taking probiotics. He also recommends working fermented food like kimchi and sauerkraut into your diet if it suits you. [51:08] Dave’s Take on Orthotics Dave thinks if you have a foot without a structural issue or a neurological deficit, you can do without orthotics. Orthotics provide support and are often prescribed to block motion. Foot mechanics change when you have your foot on the ground versus in the air. A lot of the mechanics that are put into orthotics aren’t done in a closed chain, which changes the whole way the foot works. If you think you may need an orthotic, consult first with someone who knows how they work and can give you proper advice. Dave takes a holistic approach when it comes to foot health [1:00:06] Dave’s Experience with Reflexology There are different types of reflexology, but it’s often associated with feet. The idea is your body is represented in smaller areas of your body that you can access. Dave has tried reflexology on himself, and it worked well. He particularly had some good results with the sinus points around the toes, which help to clear the sinuses. He finds it relaxing, because looking after your feet is looking after your whole body—it’s all connected. [1:02:52] How to Select the Right Shoe Be careful of the marketing of shoe science. In reality, it isn’t the shoe that makes the difference. Pick a neutral shoe that feels good. Research shows the more comfortable your shoe is, the more efficient you are. Get the lightest and the most minimalist shoe that you are happy with. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘I’m constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have taken on their feet’. ‘The foot and the ankle are a huge player in my model and certainly one that I think having a very big impact on how people move well’. ‘Shoe choice doesn’t start and finish when you’re done running—it’s throughout the day’. ‘Be careful where you expose your feet to because it will go in you and then we'll take it into your health. There's time and place for everything’. ‘It’s not about speed and power… It’s keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff and being in that preventative space’. ‘If you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you’re eating organic, you probably can’t… So certainly, some supplementation is useful’. ‘It’s not the shoe that does the running; it’s the person that does the running. Technique and conditioning and looking after yourself and your health has much more effect than a shoe ever will’. About Dave Liow Having mentored many coaches and trainers in New Zealand and Australia, Dave Liow is following his passion for sport and health and love for teaching. As a health professional, exercise physiologist and the founder of the Holistic Movement Coach Programme, he is constantly striving to find ways to be healthier and move better. You may connect with Dave on LinkedIn or Facebook. You can also visit his website or watch his YouTube videos to learn how to take better care of your feet. Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to achieve good foot health. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript of the Podcast! Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. So I have two guests. Dave Liow this time. Now Dave is a repeat offender on the show, and I love having him to guest. He is one of my great mentors. And I hope you're gonna get a lot out of today's session. Today, it's all about feet or so. This is one for the runners out there for sure. But also for just optimizing your foot health and also the whole kinetic chain, your feet where you connect with the ground obviously, and it affects your whole body. So we go to a deep dive into looking after yourself in regards to your feet. For the runners out there, it's all about playing for charters and bunions and picking the right running shoes. But there's also a whole lot of need for people to just have—want to know about good foot health. Before we head over to the show, Christmas is coming. So if you want to grab one of my books, or one of my jewellery pieces, I’ll love that. You can head over to lisatamati.com. All the things are on there. And we're gonna be having a little break over the Christmas period. Maybe one, maybe two weeks from the show. I'm not quite sure at the stage, depending on the team's requirements over that period. So I hope you do have a good time of the Christmas. If you're listening to this afterwards, I hope the New Year's starting off really well for you. Before I go over to the show, just a reminder, I do have a couple of places left. We're nearly full on our one-on-one consultations, health optimization coaching. If you have a problem that you'd like to get help with, whether it's a high performance, whether you're a top athlete and wanting to get to the next level, whether you're wanting to work on your mindset, or maybe you've got a really complicated health challenge that you're just not getting any answers for, or you're having trouble sifting through all of the information and getting the right stuff—then please reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com. Right. Now over to the show with Dave Liow from the Holistic Movement Coach. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone. Welcome back. Today I have the amazing, the incredible, awesomest, Dave Liow on the show. Dave, welcome back, repeat offender. Dave Liow: Hi Lisa. Lisa: I'm super stoked to have you today. Dave Liow: For the podcast you mean, right? Lisa: You’re a repeat offender for the podcast. Coming back to give us more. Not an offender in any other way. Dave is an expert that I've had on before and he's definitely one of my mentors. And he's been to—Neil, my business partner for many years. And he is a mentor to many of the coaches and top trainers in New Zealand and Australia. So that's Dave's background. And you've got a background in physiology, don’t you Dave? Dave: Yes. Lisa: You have a company called the Holistic Movement Coach. And will you—we're going to talk today about feet. People are like, ‘Wow, that's really interesting topic to talk about’. But it is. It's really, really exciting. Last time we had you on the show, we talked about the science of life, and that was one of the most popular episodes. So I'm really… Dave: Great! Lisa: …happy to have you back on and to share some more of your absolute amazing wisdom. So today we've picked feet. What are we gonna to talk about, Dave? What are we going to share about feet and what you need to be aware of? Dave: Well feet’s one of those interesting ones. So from—as a movement professional, which is really my background. Though, being a holistic movement coach, if you just look at movement, you're gonna come unstuck pretty soon. So when I started looking at movement though, one of the things that I noticed that was one of the areas that were neglected were feet. So we're seeing or looking at people's lumbar spines all the time and come to wideness not losing link from the top of the head. But a lot of trainers and movement professionals weren't even looking at people's feet. They had no idea what was going on, underneath those shoes of theirs. So for those of you who might think about maybe the back, whatever. Imagine if someone was wearing a big potato sack over their whole body, and you couldn't see where the spine was at trying to train them. So trying to work with someone and get them to move well without looking at their feet is to me just crazy. Lisa: Yes, nonsensical. Dave: Yeah. And we've got 28 bones in the feet. So 28 bones, and we've got 55 articulations from below the knee. Lisa: Wow. Dave: So over a third of the bones are in the feet there. So that tells you about just how important that area is there. We have a look at the muscles that run down below the knee too. We've got 50 muscles. So added it, 276 ortho muscles, I think that's about right muscles. We have 50 below the knee so that shows you just how important there is. And it's an area that I think has been largely neglected by moving professionals. Lisa: Yes, it makes the total amount of sense. And we are on them all day, and we just shove them in a pair of shoes. And sometimes those shoes, you know, like ladies' high-heeled shoes, and tight shoes, and badly shaped shoes and don't do a lot barefoot—going out barefoot. Let’s start there, let’s start like—what does shoes do? When we put a pair of shoes on our feet? What sort of things are we taking away from our brain? Like, I always liken it to going around with a pair of gloves on my hands all day. I'm not going to be able to paint a picture and initiate anything, am I? Because I've just taken away all my proprioception and my ability to coordinate those fine motor controls with my hands. So we get that sort of analogy but actually, we do that to our feet all the time. Dave: And that's a wonderful analogy, Lisa. And so the representation in your brain of your body is called homunculus. So your brain has representations of all your different body parts. And some body parts are represented very, very—have a very large representation in the brain because they may have a lot of sensation and require a lot of fine movement. So there's a huge representation in your brain of your face because if you look at the number of expressions you can do, and the articulations you can do with your tongue, your lips—there's a lot of area in the brain devoted to the face. Same with the hands as well. So you look at the fine movements you can do in your hands, isn't it? And how pink your hands are say compared to your elbow. It's incredible how much space in the brain is devoted to the hand. Now one other is the feet. The feet have a massive representation in the brain as well. But with that, though, we know the brain is plastic. It can evolve and it will adapt to whatever environment you're putting it into. If you're walking around with that, the gloves on your hand, or in this case as one of my mentors Phillip Beach would say, ‘With sensory deprivation chambers on your feet’… Lisa: Wow. Dave: ‘…you will lose that representation in your brain’. And the bottom of the feet is extremely propiocept. Isn’t it? So many on that plantar fascia, that part of the foot there, is full of receptors which send information up to your brain. Giving you information about where you are, how you're interacting with the ground, and how you're moving. And without that, and by breaking that link there, there's a price to pay. Lisa: Yes, yes. And we just willy nilly wear shoes from the day we're born, pretty much. And if we're lucky in childhood, we might have run around bare feet a little bit. But most of us have got his feet and shoes all day. So you're saying that the—what did you call it? the munculus? Dave: Homunculus. Lisa: Humunculus? Dave: Homunculus. Lisa: I never heard one before. I did, like, hear the representations. Like I don't know where I picked this up, some podcasts, some ways, something. If you have two fingers that you tape together for say a month. Dave: Yes. Lisa: When you untape them, you are unable to move them separately because the brain has wired them as being one unit. Another example of this is where people—they lose a limb. The brain still has the representation of that limb, even though the limbs are gone and they feel the pain of that limb. And this is like, the brain is like, ‘Hey, why? Where's my arm gone? Where's my leg gone’? or whatever. And we're doing this to much lesser degree but when we don't need our toes and our things wiggle and wobble and do the proprioception. Okay, and we can improve our performance. Now, as runners are listening to us, let's talk about a little bit why this is important for runners to be able to sense the grounds and have good proprioception. So what are some of the advantages of having good—taking good care of our feet and maybe going bare feet a little bit. Dave: Oh, massive. One of my buddies, one of the things he has around feet—he has a lot of background in horse training. And he says, ‘No foot, no horse’. If you have a horse which damaged his hoof, then that's pretty much the end of that horse. They can't do a lot. And for you being an ultra-runner, Lisa, I'm sure you understand when your foot goes wrong. Lisa: Oh, yes. I'm in trouble. Dave: Yes, you are, you're in a lot of trouble. So I'm constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have take on their feet. I work on my feet every day without fail. Lisa: Wow. Dave: I'm certainly not an ultra-runner. I'm not the same class as you guys. But the amount of care that I take on one of my major movement teachers… I know this time when I lift… Lisa: So okay, what are some of the things that you would do to improve your foot mechanics and your proprioception and stuff? I mean, obviously, it's a little bit difficult with our podcasts and we can't show. I’ve got some video but… Dave: So there's that saying, ‘use it or lose it’. If your foot’s in a sensory deprivation chamber, you're gonna lose it pretty quick. So I like my foot to be out of things as much as possible, though... Lisa: Like right now? Dave: Yes. Quite a surprise, no shoe. Yes, I don't really wear shoes much. I wear [10:14 unintelligible] more than other shoes. If I'm running off-road, I'll certainly—and on concrete—I’ll wear some shoes. And we'll kind of talk about the shoe design a bit later on. But whenever I can go barefoot, I will. So if I can give as much information to my feet as possible—that's going to keep them smart, but also gonna keep them strong because shoes add support. That's what they are. Lisa: Yes. Dave: You will not believe how much support shoes add. And you'll notice when you take them away, if you try and run barefoot, if you've been wearing sickly shoes with a lot of stability that added in there. So by going barefoot a fair amount of time, you get a very strong foot as well. So that doesn't come down to running shoes. And I guess we'll talk about running shoes in a bit. But if you're wearing running shoes all day, even when you're not running, well, you're adding support there 24/7. I understand that some people might want more support when you're running, when you've got high forces going through your feet, but walking around and running shoes all day or highly-supportive shoes. You're basically walking around with. Lisa: Crutches. Yes, and making yourself lazy. You're making yourself lazy. Yes. Dave: Yes, right. So you're certainly going barefoot as much as possible. Now I do a lot of work at night to make sure that my foot’s mobile. A healthy foot is a mobile foot. So one of the things that they’ll often say is ‘the foot is not a hoof’. A hoof is rock solid and hits the ground and off the coast. So look at what you can do with your hand. Okay, you should do an awful lot with your toes as well and get them moving. So if you've lost the ability to do that, it really shows that you need to do some conditioning work on your feet and get them smarter and stronger. Lisa: And if you don't, this is where some problems come up. If you can wiggle your toes and all that sort of stuff, you can prevent issues like yes—let's look at a couple of a common running problems that people get. Things like plantar fasciitis is a biggie, or even going up the leg a little bit. Like shin splints, and the problems in the calf, in the Achilles. Are these coming from the feet at all? Dave: Well, they’re coming from running. And there's some sort of mechanics going on there. But think of the foot, that's your first contact with the ground. When that goes wrong, everything in the chain will [12:37 unintelligible]. And if we think about something like a marathon, you've got 30 to 50,000 impact on the ground. That's a lot of race. So something's going wrong. This repetition over and over and over again. That's gonna end up breaking you. And we're talking about forces, which you can't—two to five times your body weight depending how you're running. Now that’s a hell of force, a hell of a repetition. If something's not working right there, you will pay the price. Will you pay that price? Well, it depends. But if we look at running injuries, straight off the top. Probably 15% of those will be at the knee. So the knee is normally the one that pays the price. But you know, I often say this in my lectures. Knee’s a dump. I knew that they kind of extracted and they've been—they have a little bit of rotation. But you see that one too much. And they have a little bit of sideways motion, but you don’t want too much of that either. So the knees are dump. So it's not only the knees fault that the knee gets some problems. It's normally the foot and ankle, or it's normally the hip, that's normally where I'll go. And if you're a runner and you're getting knee pain, I'd be looking at either the foot and ankle. After the foot and ankle I will be looking at their hips straight away. There's something going wrong in those areas there. So about 50% of people will get knee pain more common in females than males by a long shot. Now, we look at kind of around, kind of Achilles as well. That's another area that can get a fair bit of problems as well. That's probably around… Lisa: That's mum, as usual. Ringing in the middle of the podcast. Dave: Calling mum. So around 10% of people get Achilles issues. That's another really common one and that's more a male thing. So that's the case, the 40 plus male is that actually the shoe. But then you'll get your IT band and touch that, which is probably around like 5% of the injuries. [14:32 unintelligible] can be in the foot or your tibia as well. And that's probably around 5% too. So those are the main injuries. You'll see that getting running back, but knees if I was gonna go after one injury in running, knees are normally the one that pay the price. And there's certainly a big relationship between the foot and the knee. Ginormous. Lisa: Right. So it's not always go up. Mechanics of the knees is the actual problem is down, or above, or below. Dave: Yes. Almost always. Unless you've had an impact at the knee? Yes, you can treat the knee and always look at knee because if people come and see you for a knee injury, if you start playing the beat straight away, they'll go, ‘Well, hang on’. Lisa: ‘What's this going on’? But it does make sense that the kinetic chain and the linking together and trying to find out where the original problem was coming from. Not just where—because like Neil's always said to me, ‘You know, like, if you've got a problem with your ankle, it can affect your shoulder’. And I’m like, ‘How does that work’? You know? Dave: Absolutely. Yes. Where it goes, nobody knows. Lisa: And how do you trace it back? How do you trace up a back problem to the ankle? Or the piriformis? Dave: If you know what it should look like and it doesn't look like what it should look like, well, what happens if you change and make it look more like it should? How does that change things? And that's normally in a nutshell the approach that I'll take. I guess that’s where you need to have a reasonable reference library of saying that, nothing more than my fair share of runners. And I'm sure you have too. I mean, if you feel someone running down the street, now you go, ‘That's not a very experienced runner’, or ‘Oh, boy, that's very experienced runner’. Well, you know that because you've seen so many runners. So having that, I guess, experience in that database to draw from, and then understand the mechanics, and really add into it what you got. And I know what you gotta do in your Running Hot business. Well, you understand your body and you understand running technique, you can put that together and solve some wonderful problems. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. But it is like a bit of a counterintuitive thing. I had a guy like, ‘Oh my piriformis’. Like Neil said to me the other day when he saw me, ‘Oh my God. Your bunions are getting really out of control. We got to do something about that’. And I'm like, ‘Oh, is it’? Sometimes you don't notice the things because you're just seeing them every day. You know? So let's talk about—let’s say some specific type of things that we are looking at. So let's look at bunions for that. What are bunions? And what effect can they have on the mechanics of your feet and up the body? Dave: Yes. So bunions—the quarter bunions is up for debate. There is certainly a genetic component to it. So either your mum probably has bunions. I guess. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right on money. Dave: But that there’s also a big environmental part to it as well. So bunions, when your big toe starts to go in, then you'll end up with normally some calcification around that, well, that first joint—the joint in the big toe—that's probably a better way of saying it, around there as well. What that does too is compresses the foot. The big toe goes sideways compared to it goes to the next [18:02 unintelligible], that compresses the foot, as well. So we get a lot of compression in that foot. They cause a number of problems. In between those bones in your foot. You've got a lot of nerves that run through there. So when those toes get compressed together, those nerves can get very irritated. Next, become very, very painful. So and probably just as a little sideline here, if you were to pop your hands just in front of you there—if you're driving a car, listen to this, it's probably not such a good idea. But try this later on, you just put your hand down and look at your hand. So notice the space between your fingers there, that you put your foot down and have a look at your foot, you should also see space between your toes as well. Spacing’s really important to allow that room for the foot to move, to breathe. And also to get those space for all those straps in your foot to go. Lisa: And that’s with you naturally just having the foot there and not trying to spread them but just... Dave: Just naturally you should see space between your toes. Lisa: Oh, wow. Dave: That you see a nice wide foot there. I love it. I love a good wide foot. Yes, so compression in those toes. And that can be a footwear choice thing too. So if you have shoes, and we've talked about toe box, that's the front part of a shoe. So we go out the toe box, this area through here. So the step front pair of shoes give a wide toe box in a shoe design that lets the foot spread out versus one that narrow and pushes the toes together. Lisa: Gosh. I should know about that. Yes. A lot of the shows that I get, I get sponsored by some brand or whatever. And then like I couldn't wear them. Dave: Yes, the kiwi foot. Yes, and also this is a column that does this as well. Lisa: Yes. Dave: And with me, I've got a nice wide foot. I will not wish you for the narrow toe. It caused me nothing but problems. So footwear choice can be one of the things they also drive a bunion. Now the other part too is that, when you've got that big toe and that big toes moving sideways, rather than going through the foot, you will often go inside the foot and fall into it. You get more pronation than what you normally have. So we lose the arch of the foot because the way the foot’s designed to move is your desire to move through and move through the big toe. So, when we talk about the cycle of walking and running, we even have a phase of that called toe off. Because that's a really important part with a big toe pushes off. So if your big toe is going sideways, it's going to be—when you can't go through the toe, we’ll have to go around the toe. And that will cause a lot of wear and tear that can, after a while, that will start to break that foot down. Now that may require you to drink, unless you do some exercises. In Sydney, we have some real bunion experts and my team, some of my guys love working with bunions. And you can certainly bring that foot back if you have surgery to repair bunions. So if you don't do the work, well the same thing is going to happen again. You just go straight across and they'll end up having to cut your foot open. Lisa: Yes, yes. Dave: My mum had bunions. But I gave her a little exercise program, and I'm pretty sure that's on my—that may be on my YouTube channel. Lisa: Okay, we might get the link off here. Dave: And yes, if not, I'll put it on there. And yes, she had some exercise to do for bunions. Her bunions pain disappeared and my mum's in her 70s. So you can certainly reverse that and have her feet are straighter. I’ve had some people come back from their podiatrist and I go to say, ‘What the hell have you been doing? What have you been doing? Keep doing it. Because your toes are straightening, and your foot in better condition’. Lisa: So you can sometimes avoid surgery. Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. Dave: Well, and even if you have surgery, if you don't do the follow up, you're gonna end up having it again. It’s a huge amount of work with a huge amount of things you can do to help out your bunions. Lisa: Okay, that's really good because I have—got a very neglected bunion. I've always like, ‘Oh, it’s not causing me major troubles yet’. You know? Now I'm thinking, ‘Shoot. I need to address it’, because it's getting, like, Neil noticed that last time I was with him, it's getting worse. And I'm, ‘Oh, this is it? I thought it was the same old, same old’. Neil exclaimed no. And I've got troubles with piriformis. And I'm like, ‘I've been looking at piriformis trying in working on that’. And that could be, could be, could be, might not be, could be a knock on the feet there. Dave: So thinking about how that could relay. If you've got that bunion here, and your foot’s falling into pronation and it’ll take the knee with it, and it will take that whole hip and will rotate in and everything will rotate in there. What stops it? Well piriformis can stop that. So if piriformis is having to make up for a foot function issue there, well, that's worth working. If you release piriformis, and get that guy—well, now you've got nothing holding your foot together. So where's that guy next to the public often deal on the spine? That's probably where we're going next. And then it could be somewhere else too, or it could travel to the knee. Lisa: Yes. Dave: So, you know, we talked before about finding the source. Fixing the foot would be a really useful one. And if you're still on your feet, a fair amount, which knowing who you are, you certainly want that contact with the ground. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes. Dave: Sort it out. Lisa: Like paying attention to the little changes that are happening in your body because sometimes you think, ‘Oh, no, you know, it's all the same’. And then you don't see changes in your own body when you don't, when you see yourself every day, or your loved ones. Or sometimes you just like got your own little blind spots. Okay, so if we can dig that video out, we'll put that in the show notes for sure. Let's talk about plantar fasciitis because this is a major problem. One of the most common running problems, especially the people who have up the distance very quickly or done some things here, what is plantar fasciitis and what can we do to deal with it one? Dave: So the left part of fascia is a layer of fat or connective tissue that goes right along the bottom of the foot. And as I mentioned before, that has a lot of receptors on it. So it's very rich in receptors, though can get extremely painful. And typically people who have plantar fascia issues will get out of bed and they'll try to put their foot down, and take a snack, or walk, and start walking, and the whole bottom their foot will be locked up. It'll take a while for that to loosen up so they can use that foot. More often, you'll get that around the front of the heel, so none of them pointed the heel back in towards the centre of the foot. And sometimes that'll run up in bands as well. Now, the change in volume too quickly is your number one culprit which you mentioned. And that centre area. But certainly some foot mechanics can also have an issue there as well. So the plantar fascia is—in your foot, you've got well, definition you got 50 muscles that run below their knee—all could help control that foot. Your plantar fascia is there, it winds up, and plucky when you bend your big toe. It helps wind up that panic factor to help make the foot rigid to make it to leave so you can push off it. That's one of the—there’s sort of two main functions of a foot. The first one is to allow the foot to splat is my technical term. Hits the ground and conforms to the surface that it goes to, number one function. Second one is it becomes a rigid lever so you can repel off it. Well, that's pretty much what a foot does. If you have kind of with a narrow down. So we've got an issue there with that timing between backing and becoming a rigid lever. And the plantar fascia is wearing it somewhere there. Now there's—we can look at the plantar fascia, and you can try and treat the plantar fascia. But there's a lot of layers of muscles and a lot of timing that happened before that plantar fascia that’s been beaten up. So there's something gone wrong with the timing of how you're going from flat to rigid lever that's causing that. And particularly if you overload into that. So if you've increased your volume too much, that's often the last well, kilometre, or 1000 footsteps that broke the camel's back. So I want to look at what's happening with the ankle and the foot, and I'm always interested in the big toe when it comes to plantar fascia. Lisa: Right, so that's your big lever. Point, really big toes when you push off and you get that elasticity sort of wound up. Dave: Massively important part that big toes. The amount of bones you have in that big toe, and for those of you with bunions, or pinchy injuries in that big toe joint as well. That's a really important one to get looked at. That can have a massive effect on everything up the chain. Lisa: Wow. Yes. And what can you do about it? Are there some exercises that you recommend? Like, you might have fascia release, you make your ball rolling, that type of thing for the actual plantar fasciitis itself, the stretching and icing, and all that jazz? Dave: Icing can be nice, and that takes some of the pain away because it’s very painful. Having some light pressure in those areas too can help hydrate the tissues and get them healthier again. Because during—if you have some sore spots in their plantar fascia, often they won't have the hydration and the movement, because it's still layers and layers of tissue. Now, if you can get those moving better and hydrated, that will heal better. Adding some load to it can be useful too, you just need to be careful where you are in their injury spectrum. But it actually does require some loading because the loading will help actually line up the fibres and get that strong again. But it needs to be the right type of loading starting slowly and building up. That sort of mechanics. In big toe, you'd be wanting to have a look at and also what's happening with the ankle. Check that you've got enough dorsiflexion to get into more. How much can you bring your ankle? If you've got a restriction on the ankle and a restricted big toe, your plantar fascia—well, everything in the foot but the plantar fascia, may end up wearing that one. Lisa: Yes, yes. And there's a couple of tricks to do with the dorsiflexion that I can link to another video there that Neil's done. Where you can push that—I’ve forgotten it—talus bone. Where you pushing it back into—because sometimes there’s some sort of a line. Yes, this one, this one. Trying to find the words. Dave: Restoring their ankle dorsiflexion will be critical. I think that the foot and ankle, I'll look at three main zones in the body. In terms of my model for looking at movement. If you get the torso moving really well, that's very important for rotation. If you're running, you get the pelvis and hips moving really well, that would be my second zone. And the third zone would be the foot and ankle. So if you can get those three zones working well, normally I take 85% of the movement issues will just disappear. Right? And so the foot and ankle are a huge player in my model, and certainly one that I see having a very big impact on how people move well or done don’t move well. Lisa: Yes. Now, that's really good. So the torso, the pelvis, and the feet. So working on those areas in trying to get things balanced. Dave: Yes, well, the big thing on that that's where I missed them. Lisa: And those are the three areas—the key areas—and obviously it's the score a lot of work Dave but yes. It's everything from drills and exercises and it's what we do, what you do. Let's look at now, for runners, talking about running shoes, and buying running shoes, and picking a shoe that's good for you and what you're doing. You were showing me some running shoes before and for people on the podcast, you can't see, but says Kipchoge ones, what do you call them? What are those shoes? Dave: So these are Nike's Zoom Fly shoes. So for those of you who are listening to this, rather than watching it, so this is the shoe that Kipchoge wore to get his sub-2-hour marathon. And they have fibre placement, which have an awful lot of recoil. And also, it is over four centimeters of foam here, but the foam has incredible amount of recoil. Lisa: Wow. Dave: So the theory is these will take 4% of your running time. Lisa: Wow, that’s messed up. Dave: There’s actually a spreadsheet, which I got hold up to. We can actually look at your running times and calculate how much of a difference it would make to your running performance. And yes, I mean, who wouldn't pay for 4%? Lisa: Yes. Dave: Mostly runners, my straight line runners, will compete in these. And you'd be a magnet to, if you want to run fast on straight lines. These are extremely high and extremely unstable. If you wouldn’t run on trail with these, no way. Lisa: Like the HokaOnes, you know, like really deep into the thing that a big sole... Dave: No, these are high. And they're incredible amount of recoil. They do push you very much, your forefoot style. So what I’ve noticed for days, I totally didn't want to like these. Lisa: Cause you want more people to go bare feet. Dave: I ran in them last week. This is ridiculous. Lisa: Ridiculously good. Dave: The speed and ease is something else. And certainly most of my runners who run straight liner, competing in these and certainly in the meantime and now, unless athletes have sponsors, those are the shoes they are picking up. And why wouldn't you if you can—I mean getting 4% improvement in performance is there's something else, even with training. If you can get that by paying for it, why wouldn't you? Lisa: So basically, it's elasticity that they're using. It’s the spring, it's the coil, it's the ability to bounce you off the ground, it's like being on a trampoline. So you're gonna get more force. Dave: Right. Lisa: Taking your foot. Dave: Well, yes. The energy is returned a lot more efficiently. So you'll notice that there's a whole host of track records been broken lately, and then closed the marathon. And yes, the technology had a big part in playing it. I think that the next Olympics, the shoe feature extremely heavy. And a lot of a lot of other manufacturers are using this technology now. And they have a lot stricter with the technology they can use in those events now. So there's the level playing field. Lisa: If you want to level the playing field, it's a thing—if we start having an unlevel playing field, and that's where it becomes a bit problematic. Dave: And they're recouping broken now. And there'll be more broken with this sort of new technology coming through. Lisa: And from a foot health perspective, are they okay, in that respect, or you just didn't want to like them? Dave: No, it's not about—it’s sports. Sports is not about health. Lisa: Performance is not about health. No Dave: No. Lisa: It should be but it depends… It’s not always the case. Dave: That's the point, though. I mean, if you wear these around all throughout the day, why would you do that? And having four centimeters of foam between you and the ground can be put to sleep. So look, I would—if I'm wanting to do a fast run and I don't really do much of that anymore—but if I was doing a faster training run with them, with a buddy of mine who runs pretty quick, I would definitely wear these. I'm walking all day barefoot. I'm doing full exercises throughout my day. I'm waking up my feet all the time to look after my feet in-between. So you know, this foot choice, shoe choice doesn't stand finished when you're running. It's throughout the day. And that way, you'll choose a different type of shoe. If I was wearing a shoe during the day, my normal shoe would be something that's very minimal, which allows my foot to feel the ground and do things, if I need to wear footwear. Lisa: Yes. And sometimes you don't, you know? Dave: Yes. And I think that's an important thing too. We've always—there's always extremes. Yes. So I'll see the odd person is taken to the extreme, and they'll go barefoot all the time. And I think you need to be careful of that too. So from a health point of view, yes. So where I live, you wouldn't run—I have run some trails barefoot but there are sharp rocks around there. But also we have snakes there which is a bit of a problem. So I've done the odd barefoot run, but it makes you pretty nervous. The other part too, is what goes on your skin, goes in you. Lisa: Yes, me too. You talked about that on—what was it on? Something you were talking about the other day. You were talking the skin and your feet. When your lectures that I was learning from you, right? And you were saying how your daughter was barefoot, which was great, but you went to get some picture with the car. Dave: Yes. Lisa: And she wanted to run across the full court bare feet and you said, ‘No, put your shoes on’. Dave: Yes. Gotta have shoes. If you go into public toilets, or you're going on a forecourt of a petrol station, if you're walking barefoot on those, those chemicals are getting into your thing. Lisa: Yes. So also, if you're walking barefoot too, and certainly in Asia and I have an Asian background, you bringing into your house when you go in there too. So be careful where you expose your feet to, because it will go in you, and then we'll take it into your house. Lisa: Yes. Dave: So yes, there's time and place for everything. Lisa: Yes, yes, that's so true. And this is where some other minimalist shoes come in. So and like, social etiquette and stuff, you don't—you can't go to the gym without some sort of footwear on. Most places will tell you off. Well, gym maybe. Dave: My gym, we actually have a gym shoes off policy, right? If we want people to move well, we need all the sensors working well. So we want as much information from those shoes from those feet as possible. So people understand where they are on the ground. Then we have covered where people put their shoes in. And now not everyone is trying to barefoot. And we have some people who have some structural foot issues who do require some footwear, as well tend to move well. So, if you drop a dumbbell on your foot, having a shoe isn't really going to help you. But as one of my main etiquette contains the meat. Lisa: And most gyms prescribe that you have to have shoes on when you go to them. They do. And these social situations, you can't go to the opera with bare feet. It's not cool. And that brings me to ladies in high heels. What are we doing to our bodies when we wear… Dave: Oh boy. Lisa: …lovely, elegant? We look very elegant in high heels. What the hell are we doing to ourselves? Dave: Okay, so yes, you mentioned that word kinetic chain before. And the idea there is when you change one part, it will change something else with. That's what a kinetic chain does. Okay, a closed kinetic chain. So when you add an incline to your heel, and lift yourself up there, that pushes you forward. So if you have a stiletto on or something very high, you’ll fall on your face unless you adjusted. So where will you adjust? You'll normally do that by pushing your pose forward, by arching your lower back more. So often, the problem that you'll see with high heels will be it changes up the chain. As well as that when you're in high heels, you're effectively pointing your toes. So if you're in a flat shoe, you'd have been in your ankles. In a high heel, your toes are pointed more. So what that does is that will shorten the calf muscles. And that’s why, if you look at a woman in high heels, she has more definition in the calves because those calf muscles are shortened up. But if you're wearing high heels an awful lot there, what that will do is shorten up that calf, it may make it harder for you to bend that ankle again, which will cause you some different issues, and for those of you who are a bit more technical minded too, peroneus longus, okay, will be one of the muscles which is a part of the action which will be shortened. The peroneus longus comes around a riff underneath the foot and a wrench into the base of that big toe. So it pulls you down into pronation so it collapses the arch. So if you've been wearing high heels an awful lot, that peroneus longus can shorten, which can end up reducing your amount of bend in your ankle and also will pull you into more pronation. Apparently, the good thing that allows you to splat, but remember we also want to make the foot rigid after that so it can repel often. But if you end up mucking around with muscles, and changing the way they work, and certainly by placing a high heel, and you're certainly going to do that, that will do that. And it will change the way the peroneus longus works and wears out the muscles, which will change that timing, that intricate timing that we need to have in the foot. Lisa: Wow. And so ladies, keep your high heels for special occasions and not everyday use if you can. And I mean I—working with mum and she was in the bed for a long time, bedridden. Drop foot, you know, same thing basically. But just on a horizontal because she couldn't stand so she couldn't get that dorsiflexion happening, and then I was not aware of it at the time that this was a problem when it was happening, and I caught it quite late. And then we had to have her in a boot to try and straighten that out and now she's got a rigid ankle pretty much. So she's got no dorsiflexion, therefore she can't roll over the front of your foot and off nicely. So her whole gait is more flat footed. And these things knock on very early. And then it happens quite quickly that you start to get dropped foot. Even if you think about life, wake up in the morning and that first time the foot hits the floor, and you've got like, ‘Oh yes, stuff. Stuff on the calf muscles feeling scuffles within the Achilles. And this is a—getting onto the Achilles toe’. If you're getting that initial stiffness when you get up in the morning, there's something brewing and maybe start to look at it. Achilles is a good—that's a good indicator that so step in the morning. How are you feeling? If you're bouncing out of bed and you can get out of bed and run down the hallway and you find you've got nothing, then you probably, not too bad. Dave: I think that's a great point here. You should wake up feeling reasonably good. I mean it’s not a margarine commercial. You shouldn't jump out of bed, ‘Hey. Hello world’. That's probably the only thing you'd be happy about if you're eating that stuff. But that's a whole other conversation. I had a professional athlete who I was working with, and we were talking one morning and was actually helping, deciding—standing up, deciding we were gonna go with him. And he said, ‘Yes. So how things young is young? What’s your story? I didn't have a car stand up. And then I go, ‘Sharon district’. About 40 minutes later, I'm ready to move. That's normal, right? ‘No, no, that's not normal. Your body normal is not being in pain and struggling to move. That's not normal.. Lisa: Oh but it's age, Dave. That's the next thing, he’ll tell you. It’s just normal aging. Dave: So now I think too, you know. Let’s you've got a—sorry for those of you who are in different hemispheres. But a classic car in the southern hemisphere was a Ford Cortina. Now imagine you've got a 1984 Cortina in your garage, and it's chrome. It's beautiful. And you've looked after it wonderfully. That car drives fantastically in your own town, you think this is the best car ever. But if you take a 1980 Ford Cortina, and you don't maintain it, and you just drive it hard, you won't have it here today. Lisa: Yes. Dave: Okay. So if you've got a classic car, it can run really well. But you need to put some extra care and maintenance into it. Lisa: Absolutely. Dave: That's all it is. So, but you can have a young—you can have a new sports car. You can trash it's probably gonna be a little bit better. But yes, so the older you are, the more keen you’re taking care of your classic car. Lisa: We fit into the classic category now. Dave: That's another spin on that too. You know, ages is one thing. But I kind of look at these young athletes, I think you're—you can you can keep up with me. You haven't got the experience I've got. Play that card. It's not there's not just physical is a lot more that goes on to it. And take a look at the outer world. And know that certainly, the more of a mental game that's required, the better it suits your experience. Lisa: Yes, in Roman times, like, it's not about speed and power after a 100k, it sort of starts to come down to… Dave: Yes. Lisa: So yes, it is. It's an attitude for life. There's a number of rounds on the clock, but it's keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff, and being in that preventative space. And that's what we're both all about. And that's why you’re taking good care of your joints, and your muscles, and your hydration, and all of those exercises is really, really key. Let's talk a little bit now around, what's your take, I'd like to hear just on general and for joints and cartilage and stuff? Things like sulfur, MSM, conjugated salt, and so Glucosamine, that sort of supplementation for cartilage and joints you know anything about this? If it’s a cool thing or not? Dave: It's really cool at one of my key areas. Look, supplements are strange one. And certainly my take on that really changed over the last few years. And now if you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you're eating organic, you probably can't. So there's certainly some supplementation useful. I'm very big on getting an evidence base on that though. So there's this push where we've almost seen our science as lying now. We need to be able to do our supplementation, to what you want to choose. But what I found now is basically you become a victim to marketing now. So there's a fine line between the two. So I read up on what I think is useful, and what's not, and I use it on an individual basis. But I'd like to cover the basics first, and often think that we're thinking they're tasting things like curcumin. Another problem with curcumin by the way, as well some other some other supplements here when you're not even looking at the basics. So do the big rocks first. Lisa: Yes, I'm big on those pretty you know those ABCD. Selenium, zinc, magnesium-type base. Not sexy, but very essential for genetic functions. Yes. Dave: A decent multivitamin is probably a bloody good place to start, and then you can start fine tuning from there. Sure. I take a few other things, as well. I'm a big fan of a decent probiotic, and veering those probiotics around. I think that's really important. And I use that as a food source as a supplement. I do like my fish oils. I think there is a part to play in that. Lisa: Yes. Those are wild. Dave: Wild, wild, wild small fish is the way you want to go and watch out for the processing on those as well, they can get... Lisa: Very very important to get the right fish source, you get right fish source ,and you'll be doing the opposite to what you need to kick the company out especially... In our next conversation. I know we're getting a bit off topic but probiotics, I've done quite a lot of study around the probiotics, and some of the problems of probiotics, and has domains, and causing inflammation and allergic reactions. Have you found any one in particular that you'd say, ‘Yes, that one's been really good for a lot of people’. This got a good clinical base to it? Dave: Yes. There's a few brands that I tend to like. These… Lisa: Deep in here without any proof on that question, but I was interested for myself because I'm looking at our probiotics. Dave: Syntol is a brand I quite like. Syntol, S-Y-N-T-O-L iis a brand that I've used for probably the last decade. That's an industrial strength one which works really well. Also Bio-Heal is another one, which I think is a pretty decent one. And the reason I like those brands is that they don't need refrigeration. And the Syntol is more spore one so it can be a bit bitter as well. Lisa: Yes. Because it's got to get through the digestive, the stomach, the action, into the lower. And I know like the science in this area is still a very much an evolving space. And a lot of this, I have had a couple of clients been on probiotics that you get out of off the shelf or supermarket type thing. They ended up with histamine reactions and things like that because they do have often—so if you're sensitive to histamine and you might want to check it out a little bit more, and just be toe in the water and find out. So it's a little bit hard to know because I think the jury's still out in some regards. But I think but the spore based ones… Dave: Yes, there seems to be built in there. I feel like most fermented foods, they won't suit everyone, for sure. They served me really well. So I make my own kimchi. I make my kombucha. I make my own sauerkraut. Do some water kefir as well. I often use a little bit of fermented foods to help my gut work. And every culture and everywhere in the world has some form of fermented food. And we realize as developing communities that we need to look after our gut health needs, and we didn't have refrigeration was probably the other thing as well. Then those are very health giving. And it still exists in most cultures today, and it's certainly something that I'd recommend if it suits you to work into your diet. Lisa: Yes, and that is where I know—working with the PH-316 epigenetics programme that we do that there are certain biotypes. And one of them that can miss to watch the amount of fermented foods because it can again—cause histamine problems in inflammation in the body—so that is a bit of a bit more a personal genetic thing too, as rather than across the board. But to be fair, I think that's everything needs to be personalized nowadays. And we've got a lot I wouldn't say we've got an all sass but there is a lot of science around what type of thing for what person and which genes, for which foods, and I don't think it's by any means perfect yet. The science behind it, but we can get a bit of an idea on some of these things. So just because it's healthy for Dave doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be healthy for Lisa, you know? So a little bit of experiment, and I'm a big experimenter, versus showing one of my athletes into my pantry. And it looks more like a cumulus isn't well supplement shop rather than a... And I don't take on things all the time but I'm always experimenting on my own body, and trying to optimize, and to see what sort of things are having which effect and then trying to take note of it, and keep track of it, and trying to work out. A little bit hard when you keep chucking 100 variations at things. It's not exactly a clinical study where you do one variation. But… Dave: Eating is one. Lisa: Eating is one. Yes, exactly. And keeping testing. But back to the whole foot scenario talking that—I mean, you and I can end up in bloody all sorts of areas. What's your take on orthotics? I wanted to ask that again. Jury's out of my mind on orthotics and I'm not sure. Dave: That’s a real polarizing one. I'm gonna make myself unpopular with some people here, but here's my take on it. I'm not—I'm not a [51:17 unintelligible]. If you have a foot that hasn't got a structural issue, or a neurological deficit, you can work without orthotics. Okay, so orthotics add support, and they will normally block motion. Okay, that's what they're pretty much designed to do. So normally, when they describe orthotics, they'll look at, ‘Okay, there's too much motion. We will block that motion so that the foot can do its thing’. You block motion, some way though. What we know is that motion will be taken up somewhere else. And in that closed chain, where that motion goes will often have problems. So let's have a look, if you've got a foot that doesn't dorsiflex well, so the ankle doesn't bend well. Now what will happen is the only way you can bend their ankle now is to roll inside or to over pronate. That's the only way you can go there. But rather than go through the foot, you go around the foot now. So what may happen is, if you have no thoughts to stop that pronation, go, ‘What's happened now’? Okay? Now you can't pronate the foot, you can't work at the ankle, what's going to go next? You may end up taking up a knee. But now you'll end up with a knee issue, when you may come in with a foot issue. You may end up with a knee issue, or it may end up going into the hip or the lumbar spine, or as far as into the neck, which is a common thing or even to the head. I've seen from people who've had a foot issue and they get hit out when they start hitting the pavement because it goes right through the chain. And that's it ends up tearing them up. So when you enter [52:53 unintelligible], if you've got a painful foot, it can be very useful temporarily to change what's going on, or a structure or neurological deficit. Otherwise, think of a crutch. Okay, if I break my leg, ‘Oh, I want to break around my knee without smashing my knee to smithereens. I want to break around my knee and I want to wear crutches to start with’. Now, oh boy that feels so good having extra support in there. And I've restricted that range around my knee because it's too painful to move. But 10 years later, I wouldn't want to be still be wearing that same brace on my knee with a crutch. And I wouldn't want to go in there each year and get that brace changed a little bit and realtered. So I look at some of your thoughts that come into me and I look at that foot and I look at your foot and I go, ‘I have no idea’. I kind of—foot mechanics is tricky stuff. But I've put a fair bit of work into it. Like I understand how feet generally work, I think. I look at that foot and I look at that person, and I think, ‘I can’t see what’s that relating to at all’. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but that's not what I see. And there’s a few things around some of the theory of orthotics which are a little bit tricky around foot mechanics change when you have your foot on the ground versus when you—whether your foot in the air. Lisa: Of course. Dave: A lot of the mechanics that are put into orthotics aren't done in a closed chain, which changes the whole way the foot works. Though, there is some stuff there. I've had piles of orthotics thrown away over the year. I have products come into me and I go, ‘What?’ And I'll test them. It'll take people with them, without them, and they'll go better without them. I had some people that do need them though, because they had some neurological issues for their head structural foot issues, where their foot is broken beyond repair, where it does need some help. And making good orthotics, definitely—for those of you who maybe have a diabetic foot or have had some issues around there. Some of the orthotics I've seen that have come and have been worked about and are amazing, though there is some there are some amazing work on orthotics. And that's probably my outtake on this one. So finding someone who's very good at that, and looking after a foot in trouble is a real skill. Lisa: It is. I've got a friend, Lisa Whiteman, who owns a China podiatry clinics, right, throughout New Zealand, and their stuff is next level. But the science and technology that they have in order to get the right things for that. So if you're thinking of doing it, make sure you go to somebody who really knows this stuff, and not just any sort of orthotic. And test it, and try it, and see whether you're getting something through up the train, fix that. And question with the immediate, long term—I've never had any benefit out of an orthotic. And I've only got, again, one anecdotal in me. But we're not—like dealing with someone like my mum with a neurological problem, and limited dorsiflexion. I am considering the next opportunity I get to take down to Wellington to go and see my friend and go into her clinic and get her an assist, that might be, for example, a situation where something like that could be called for, because she's lost that motion and the ankle, so we haven't got it to work with. Dave: So we do have problems from the bottom up. So the foot can cause a problem going up, but also it can probably be going
How Can I Turn Conflicts Around When My Manager Hates Me? Certain situations can highlight the stark differences within a team, especially when your strengths seem opposite of others' strengths. For example, you might think “my manager hates me” when they seem to value other team members' ideas and blow off yours. To conform or to stay true to your natural talents becomes a tough choice to make. When you’re the manager, it takes some skill to build a balance between honoring your team members' strengths and honoring yours, especially where you think the business priorities and values are at stake. And when you manage a team with a very different set of top 5 or top 10 strengths, how exactly do you do it? Welcome to this episode, the first in a series with TyAnn Osborn, who role-plays and reflects with our host Lisa Cummings on the difficult scenarios where team members may have conflicting strengths. How do they handle the situation and turn conflicts around? Here’s the transcript of the episode. Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and you know, I'm always telling you, it's hard to find something more energizing than using your natural talents every day at work. Well, something that's just about as energizing is when I get to hang out with the other host here in the room, TyAnn Osborn. TyAnn: Hi! Lisa: Today, we're going to talk about a topic that we haven't decided yet, because I am going to use this spin-the-wheel thingy thingy, to tell us. *Spins the wheel* TyAnn: I like the sounds. Lisa: Oh, it says: ‘You don't like a teammate.’ When Someone On The Team Drives You Crazy Lisa: So today, we're going to talk about what you could do with your strengths when you don't like one of your teammates. Has this ever happened to you, Ty? TyAnn: No, I've always loved everyone that I worked with... No...[hint of sarcasm] Lisa: But I bet one of your clients has had this situation since you've never had it, 'wink-wink...' TyAnn: Of course, there's always someone that - for some reason - rubs you the wrong way. You just, you know, they're not your love language. And I work with clients all the time who have... there's always seems to be someone on the team who they just can't seem to get along with. Has this ever happened to you too? Lisa: Definitely. I mean, it's funny because I feel like a big thing about me is that I love people. And I love most people. TyAnn: Right. Me too! Lisa: But there are people that I don't jive with as well. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: And it takes some extra effort to understand where they're coming from, or really feel like, ‘Oh, I fully get them,’ or something like that. TyAnn: Which, you know, that's interesting when you're an individual contributor, when you feel that way, because you're like, ‘yeah, maybe that's just him’, you know. But when you're a manager, and you think, ‘Oh, I'm supposed to like everybody on the team’, or, ‘I need to not show favoritism but, eh, I kind of don't like that person. What do I do?’ It's kind of like being a parent; you're not supposed to not like one of your kids. So... Lisa: Or not have a favorite. TyAnn: Or not have a favorite. So, what do you do? Lisa: Okay, so let’s do a scenario? Let's do it like, you’re a manager. It will allow us to see the perspective of the manager thinking, "Ugh, that person is high maintenance on the team." And it will allow us to explore the flip side where a team member is thinking, "Ugh, my manager hates me. What should I do?" TyAnn: Yep. Lisa: You happen to have done CliftonStrengths as a team. TyAnn: Because you're a great manager. Lisa: 'Cause you're awesome. And there is a person on your team that you appreciate as a human, but as a performer, they feel very high-maintenance to you, they drive you kind of crazy. Let's pick some talent themes that might be seemingly opposite each other so we can make it a real scenario. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: Does one pop up for you as one that is least likely to be paired with another? TyAnn: I see Deliberative being perceived as a problem child, especially when a lot of other people on the team might be more, say Activator, or something that's very forward in motion. Either Achiever, Activator, something like that. So maybe you've got a team that's like, ‘Oh, we're always ready to go!’ And there's one person who seems like they never can just get on the bus. And they're always the one dragging their heels. Lisa: Yeah. Oh, we should do this on both directions. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: Let's take Achiever-Activator. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: And then let's take Deliberative. Say these are the two different people. And we can start with the manager, having Achiever-Activator, wanting stuff to get done quickly, and wanting to make decisions quickly. And the person who wants to take a little more time is the team member who reports to you, and then we’re gonna swap it. TyAnn: Okay. Okay, I've got a real life example on that. Lisa: Awesome. Okay. TyAnn: Absolutely. Lisa: So you're my manager. TyAnn: Okay. Lisa: You're Achiever-Activator [role play begins you can also watch the video version to get the subtleties]. TyAnn: Woohoo! Let's get going, man, come on! Lisa: And I'm saying, "Well, bad news. I'm going to miss that deadline that you gave me." TyAnn: Lisa, what's going on? I gave you the deadline. Come on! Chop, chop! Lisa: Well, the thing is, I *could* get it done, but I can't get it done *properly* right now, because we don't have all of the information. I've been trying to work with this other department. They've been dragging their heels. I’m waiting for them. If I do it now, I might just be giving you completely incorrect information because I'm seeing three or four ways this could all go wrong if I blaze ahead today, and it feels like I'm just gonna be wasting time…. TyAnn: Lisa, all I hear is excuses. I have stuff to get done too. We owe the marketing department this information. They're waiting on us to get this stuff into print. We're behind already and you know what, you're never going to have 100% confidence in what you do. So just give me something. Lisa: Uhum...[hangs head]. Okay, now that we've come out of our characters from our roleplay, I would say, you were kind of playing like the in-between our manager where you were trying to give the people listening to the podcast, like a little bit of a glimpse of inside your head, but also be somewhat mature, like, in how you... TyAnn: Right, right. Lisa: ...because you're balancing the two - and that the inside voice and the outside voice are really different. TyAnn: That’s true. My Team Member Frustrates Me: How Can I Moderate My Message To The Person? Lisa: Can you explain what was going on fully inside voice? Unfiltered. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: ...and then how, if you wanted to maturely talk to me, and still keep me engaged...how that might look? Tyann: I think that's a good point because hopefully, as you progress in your career, you just don't say the first thing that pops into your head. I always say, there's the reason why there's a little space between your head and your mouth. Yeah, have a little filter in there. But inside your head, it's very normal be like, "Oh, my God, you are so frustrating! I gave you the deadline. Arrgh, why didn't you say something sooner? You, you always do this. And all I'm hearing is excuses. Now you're throwing this other department under the bus. I cannot count on you. The rest of the team - we're getting it done. And we have to deal with the same things." So typically, what I see when I see this combination of strengths is a lot of frustration. That is usually the emotion that I see a lot, it’s frustration. Whoever has the action, it's like, "Oh, I'm just really angry with you." And whoever's on the receiving side, well, we can debrief how you feel. But usually it's a lot of frustration on that side, too. So that's kind of what's happening inside. And then on the outside, but I'm trying to be a good manager, and I'm trying not to just say, "Oh my God, you're such an idiot, and I hate you." 'Cause I would never say that to someone. But I'm trying to say, "You know, of course, we're never going to have 100% confidence in what we do, because that's not real life. So we have to get to a point where we may feel 80% confident, and how do we do that? And too, you can't always have an excuse for why things aren't happening. You have to take ownership of something, too." So that's what I was trying to moderate in the message. So you could feel some of that? Lisa: For sure. And I put you on the spot and I know this person is thinking, "I know my manager hates me, but I still don't want to deliver shoddy work." TyAnn: Right. Lisa: It's easier when you have time to think out the words for the feedback. It's simpler to give the vibe that, "I've been thinking about how I'm going to coach you and how we can improve this over time." What we've been doing is the in-the-moment heated feeling, "Oh, we just missed a really important deadline. You didn’t tell me. I am so upset." Tyann: Right. And now my butt's in the sling because of you. Lisa: Yeah. And I hear things from managers, like, "Everybody else can do it. You're the only one…" And then you don't want to give that as feedback... TyAnn: Right. Or you start hearing that relationship language like "always," and "never," which we say, you know, anytime you start hearing, "always," "never," that should be a clue. But when you definitely start feeling... Lisa: Alarm bells. TyAnn: Yeah, alarm bells should go off. But when you start feeling inside, like, "Oh, my God, you're always the problem. You're the problem employee. Everyone else can get it done on time, how come you can't?" And that's when you start hearing things like, you know, "Lisa's got to go." Lisa: Right. The employee also feels the My Manager Hates Me alarm bells. TyAnn: Absolutely. From the manager, perspective they're already thinking of firing the person. I always call it "my employee’s broken, I want a new one" syndrome. And, you know, that might be an answer. But I don't want that to be the first answer. To me, I want that to be the last answer. And I would like to try and see, "Can this marriage be saved before we go to it's broken?" Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: Because it takes a lot of effort to get another employee. Lisa: Oh, yeah. And I have something valuable to offer you with the Deliberative talents when they're dialed in well. TyAnn: Right. Yes. Absolutely. Lisa: I might sit in the seat... Okay, here's what I would say, like, what would be in my head if I were this team member? I would be thinking, "Yeah, other people get it done on time. And all of my teammates, ‘always’, ‘never’... all, all my teammates, give crappy work. I'm on a team where no one cares about quality, all they care about is speed. We do so many things three or four or five times because we were refused to do it right the first time because we won't take an extra minute to get the information from the other department, or fix that relationship that's creating the block that won't let us get the information. My manager hates me and hates my style. "And anytime I bring up the ‘what ifs’ or ‘this might go wrong’, people treat me like I’m the negative Nellie so I just shut down and don't say anything. But it doesn't mean I want to give you bad work." TyAnn: Mm hmm. So yeah, so you're surrounded by people that you think are...yeah... Lisa: Half-assing it. TyAnn: Half-assing it. And I like to say why half-ass when you can whole-ass? [smiles] Because you're right - then you're pretty probably seeing a bunch of rework that has to happen. When if we just put in the correct effort to begin with, you know, that wouldn't happen. But meanwhile, you've shut down. Lisa: I've shut down. TyAnn: ...because you've been shut down. Lisa: Yes. And I might be thinking, leading through Deliberative, seeing all of the activity that is resulting in, in my opinion, bad quality work out there, now I'm thinking, "Oh, look, the whole team is running around like chickens with their head cut off. Looks totally foolish. I'm the only one actually putting reasoning behind what we're doing. I'm the only one who's thinking I'm the only one who is bringing some rigor to this process. How is it that my manager hates me when I'm the voice of quality and avoiding a crisis that we're bound to experience if we don't pump the brakes?" TyAnn: Right. Lisa: And no one's valuing it. And then I'm thinking, "Well, clearly, I'm not a good fit for the job, or the company or the team, or maybe my manager. But if the whole team I perceive it like that…" TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: And maybe they are like that. Or maybe they've just conformed to your behavior, because as a manager, you've been so strong in your speed. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: At least you're clear. So that I'm grateful for. You know, opposites. My Manager Hates Me: Do I Conform And Please, Or Do I Look For Another Team? TyAnn: So you said two things that were really interesting. In this scenario, you talked about this, you were waiting on something from another team, so you were the only person who brought up even an interaction with another team. So to me that says you were thinking a little more systematically and holistically. So maybe these other guys should have been interacting with this other team, and they haven't been, so there's something going on there that should be paid attention to. But you also said something about maybe the rest of the team, they actually know things should be being done differently too, but here's what you find in a team. People want to please the manager. Because why? Because we are self-serving creatures. We do self-preservation activities, because that's what help... helps keep us alive. And at work, that's what helps keep us employed and... Lisa: You’re writing my performance review! TyAnn: You’re writing my review, you're helping me keep this job, you're helping me get paid more. And so it's not that there's a diabolical plot, it's just we are human beings, and we are doing these behaviors because if that's what you want for me, that's what I'm going to deliver. Even if I know there's something else that's possibly better. Lisa: Oh, it could even be especially if. What if I think I need you to think I'm a good performer? Because if I want to change roles, because this one isn't a good fit for me, I need you to... TyAnn: ...to support me. Lisa: Yeah, I need your support to move into another team. And when the next manager asks how I am as a performer... TyAnn: Right. Lisa: ...I want you to just say how amazing I am, not that I was your highest maintenance team member, right? TyAnn: So even if I thought you would be good for another role, they're going to say, what was Lisa's performance on your team? And I'm going to have to say Lisa was the worst performer. Who's going to want to take my lowest performer? That's going to be a much harder sell. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And so you end up with kind of these, I always call them like aberrant behaviors. And again, not because people are diabolical, or someone sitting around trying to figure out, you know, the worst way to do things. It's just...it's self-preservation in action. And so if we don't make a conscious effort to really stop and think about things, this is what happens unintentionally. So at the end of the day, you have good ideas, probably that aren't being heard. People are running off half-cocked. And you know, there's a bunch of rework - probably not very high quality. You know, ultimately, it's just not the best product and not the best environment, or certainly not as good as it could be something. That's what we tend to see. Lisa: Now even though this could be a perfectly good place to end this example, let's make sure that we've flipped the scenario. Because I think it's a good example for people to experience when the same situation exists, but the themes are flipped around, because it can just change the whole scene of how the team culture looks. You actually said you have a real example of this. So... TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: Is that, is that a shareable example if it's anonymized? Leverage Communication To Resolve StrengthsFinder Talent Theme Conflicts TyAnn: Absolutely. So I had this happen. And it doesn't often happen this way. But it did. And I thought it was a good story. I was working with a news crew, so the people you see on TV to put out the news. And the manager was very high Deliberative. Lisa: Okay. Nice. TyAnn: And the news people as you can imagine, very high action-oriented. I mean, and it was a newsroom. It was very much "we have to get this on the air right now." I mean, it was very high-pressured. And so Deliberative, you know, doesn't like high pressure, needs time to think, really wants to make sure that all the facts are correct, I would hate to put something out and have it be wrong. So the manager was feeling like, "I am working with a bunch of people who don't care about quality, are willing to be excessively risky with the reputation of our brand, because we might have to put a retraction out on the air. And that we're just going to be putting stuff out there that's half-baked, and I work with a bunch of people who I can't trust." Meanwhile, the reporters are saying, “Our manager is a wet blanket. Every time we take him a really cool idea, his first reaction is ‘no’, or he asks me 17,000 questions that I haven't fully thought through, I don't have the answers to. So he makes me feel stupid, or he makes me feel like, by the time I get through all of his questions, you know what, the moments passed, like, it doesn't even matter anymore. Or he'll never get back to me at all.” And so there was this just huge conflict between them with none of them feeling valued on the team. But you know, the funny thing is, I wasn't called in because there…to do a remediation or a problem. I was called in, because they were all high performers. That was a really interesting one to step into. Lisa: Wow. What you're bringing up for me is this idea that it really doesn't matter what the themes are, or what the job is, because you can take any of your top CliftonStrengths talent themes, and they could be applied to serve any role. Because it's easy to get caught up in this thing, where we're like, "On this team, this group of them feels bad and this group of them feels right, or for this manager, this, this serves me, and these are not serving me. But the reality is that our natural talents are (if we allow them to be) our easy buttons to performance." TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: It's this concept of, well, maybe it's gone wild. You know, strengths gone wild. So if they could be honed in a little bit, both things that you were just bringing up in that scenario, are valuable to the organization. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: It's just all of them can't be on blast... TyAnn: ...All the time. Right. So, Lisa, you often talk about keys on a keyboard, and when we play them together, and they're harmonious, we've got some good chords going. It sounds awesome, right? And so you're right, it's not that there's good strengths and bad strengths, or that, you know, these things are naturally in conflict. It's just kind of finding that right level, because I don't think anyone would say, "Yeah, we're just gonna slap junk on the TV. And if it's not, right, well, who cares?" I mean, no one's gonna say that, right? And no one's gonna say, "Well, we're going to chase down every possible lead until we get a 100%, you know, confidence in this. And meanwhile, it's just gonna be black on TV until we feel like we're 100% confident." Because that's not realistic, either. So ideally, it would be great to feel like, we can work with the pace that we need to and put out really quality content that I feel good about. And in the event of an escape, you know, or a quality issue, we have a good process in place to catch that and to do whatever we need to to make a quick correction. Lisa: Yeah. TyAnn: And so what I got him to do was, actually, to codify his thinking process. I said, "What are the top three questions you usually ask when someone comes to you with a new idea?’ And he said, ‘Well, I just wish people had thought through things a little bit better. So I wish they would think about this, this and this." And I said, "Great, let's capture that. Let's get that out to the team so that they can do that thinking and you don't have to." And that's it. That's easy. And I said, "How long would it take you to get back to the team then when they come to you with ideas? What...what would feel good and realistic?" And he said, "I could get back to people within 24 hours." So okay, so we went back to the team said, "Is that a commitment that's workable for you?" So we had both sides in a satisfied position. I wouldn't even say it's a compromise because it didn't feel like anyone was giving something up. It just felt more like communication. And so that together, we're better. And it was like a light bulb went on in terms of, now It didn't feel like I was just doing things the hard way, like it didn't feel like a struggle every day. It felt like people were almost looking for that next opportunity so that they can test the stuff out. Find Out Where One Is Coming From And Assume Positive Intent Lisa: Love it. So when you think about action items to give listeners, lets see what they can do with this. Maybe a person is thinking, "my manager hates me, so what are my next steps?" Or a manager is thinking, "Jim wears me out, so how can I give him a chance to show up at peak performance?" It's too bad that this becomes a recurring theme at the office. It's the same frustration over and over again, it's just that they haven't figured out how to talk about it yet. Often they'll bring in Ty to say, “Can you help us communicate better because we haven't been facing the tough conversation with each other - now it's messing things up." Tyann: Right. Lisa: I love that there's the facilitated process that could happen. And by the way, you can bring Ty into your organization to do this, if you need help. Sometimes it just still feels awkward for you to do it because you can't be neutral like a 3rd party. TyAnn: I'm always happy to come in and facilitate awkward conversation [all smiles]. Lisa: You are the number one awkward conversation facilitator. TyAnn: I could totally do that. But you can start this on your own as well. Lisa: Yeah. I think if I were to leave any parting words for the person who's trying to do it on their own first before they blow up to the team, or before they verbalize the feedback to someone else, it would be, really get clear. “Is it because my personal preferences are different from the business priority?” It's personal preference, business priority, which is which? Are they not the same? And if they're not, that can be okay. You just have to get clear with yourself to go, “Ah. I get it - this is why it wraps my gut up in a knot.” This is what I would rather it be like, but it's not like that, because it's real life. TyAnn: Right. Lisa: So I need to proceed like this. And then as I proceed like this with the business preference, because it's my job, it's what they're paying me for, then can I see some positive intent coming from that other person? Like, what are they actually aiming for here? Even though it's making me upset or making me feel frustrated, what are they trying to do that has good intent? Because nearly always, (sure, not always, there are nefarious characters out there somewhere), but nearly always people have good intent. TyAnn: Yep, absolutely. That's one of my favorite things, is assume positive intent. Because believe me, your life will be much better when you do. It's amazing how many people that I run into don't or do think someone's out there trying to get them. Believe me, the vast majority of people go to work, and they want to do a good job. So let's assume positive intent. And I think that's just when you feel yourself getting... getting anxious, or you see that team member and you can just feel yourself getting triggered, or that thing happens again, and you feel it in yourself, that's a really good moment to think, "What is it specifically that is triggering me about this?" And again, it doesn't have to be they are an awful human being, it's just something in them is different than how you would react in that situation. So I think, stop. Think about what it is. Think about the good thing that they bring. And then again, what problem are we trying to solve? What's our ultimate goal? And how can we both get there together? Lisa: What a perfect way to end this one. TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: So next time that comes up for you, be thinking of the other person, what's the positive intent? Where are they coming from that is good and how could that, if you know CliftonStrengths talent theme language, then what are they trying to accomplish? And since you already have the talent themes in a list (or the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book), you might get some ideas about where they're coming from. Tyann: Right. Lisa: Because sometimes you do feel a little baffled... TyAnn: Yeah. Lisa: ...at the beginning, like why do they act like this, or why do they think like this, or why do they approach work like this? Or why does my manager hate me like this? Just going to someone else's CliftonStrengths report and going, ‘Oh, they think this way, aha. This makes sense now.’ TyAnn: Reading the reports is a really good place to start. Lisa: It's great for helping you understand the other person. Alright, with that, you've been listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you've been learning to apply your greatest strengths, to make your work stronger, and now also looking at other people's strengths and trying to notice those so that the whole team can get better together. Thanks, Ty. TyAnn: Thanks, Lisa. Hate Is Unproductive — Understand More With These Additional Resources Whether you’re a manager or a team member, you can stop any tendency to hold a theme bias against others’ so-called “bad strengths." Listen to our conversation on that for more. Of course, most teams don't have true hate, but when a team member thinks that a leader dislikes them, their engagement and performance can take a quick nose dive. With the premise that conflicts arise in any widely diverse work environment, Lisa and Lead Through Strengths Facilitator Strother Gaines exchange views and tips in another episode on how to Ignite Better Team Collaboration Through Strengths. All this highlights the importance of energizing tasks at work. What can fuel or discourage best performance lies in how much CliftonStrengths talent themes are allowed and supported within the team — a challenge for some teams but highly doable.
Whether you are a beginner or experienced ultramarathon runner, you need to be well-prepared for every run you do. Ultra running has its bright side — the uplifting community, the sense of accomplishment, and the goals of becoming stronger. However, there are certain risks involved in the sport, and as an athlete, you need to keep yourself informed. In this episode, Eugene Bingham joins me to explain the dangers of extreme sports and marathons. We share personal stories about the damage it could do to the body — experiences that should serve as a warning to runners. Eugene also discusses things to be aware of before and during races that can endanger us, giving us five specific tips for preparation and self-management. Don’t miss this episode and learn more about the risks of and preparations for ultra running and other extreme sports! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition, and mental performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. One-on-One Health Optimization Coaching If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research, and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about the risks and dangers of extreme sports and ultra running. Gain valuable insight into the things you need to be aware of before and during marathons. Understand the importance of listening to your body. Resources Death of a runner: The rare condition that tragically claimed a life by Eugene Bingham Desert Runners on TVNZ Episode Highlights [04:01] The Dangers of Extreme Sports and Ultramarathons Eugene participated in the 2020 Tarawera 100-mile race where an experienced runner died. The runner’s death certificate showed that he had a multi-organ failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and rhabdomyolysis. However, it was difficult to pinpoint the true cause of death since it can be a result of accumulated health conditions. [09:50] What Is Rhabdomyolysis? Rhabdomyolysis, or muscle breakdown, is quite common for runners. As the muscle breaks down, myoglobin from the muscle is released into the bloodstream, clogging the kidneys. It can be difficult to tell when this happens since symptoms can be easily mistaken for simple muscle soreness. This can happen to everyone, not just those who do extreme sports and ultra running. [16:27] Importance of Self-Management At some point, we have to ask ourselves if the damage we’re doing to our body is worth it. There are risks, and you have to be prepared for them. There is a culture of not quitting unless you’re taken by the ambulance. However, we have to listen to our body before it gets to that point. [20:19] Mental Toughness and Listening to Your Body As we grow, our physical abilities and mental maturity changes. Accept that the body may not be able to take what it could years ago. The goal of pushing your limits is good but keep in mind that you also need to train and prepare yourself. Being mentally tough also means knowing when to stop and rest. [22:53] Ultra Running: 5 Tips to Remember Do not take drugs like ibuprofen and Voltaire. Drink when you’re thirsty and do not over drink. Be prepared for a range of weather conditions. The race does not end at the finish line. Replenish yourself after every race. Look out for each other. [28:08] Always Have Support Eugene shares his experience of having hallucinations but was kept safe by his companions. Form connections and friendships with the people you meet in races. They are bonds that last forever. Listen to the full episode to hear Eugene and Lisa share more stories about how people have helped them during races! [38:33] Conditions to Be Aware of We need to be careful about dehydration. Symptoms of hyponatremia (having low sodium levels in your blood) are swelling, nausea, and lightheadedness. Low levels of potassium and electrolyte imbalance can result in tetany seizures. Electrolyte tablets are beneficial — make sure they have all the nutrients you need. Having no appetite after a race is dangerous. We need to replenish our bodies straight away. [47:10] Risks Are Exponential When you exponentially increase the distance you run, you exponentially increase our risks as well. All races are relative to pace. Never underestimate a race by distance. Take every race like a big deal and don’t become complacent. Recovery after a race is also crucial. Don’t succumb to peer pressure and sign up for a race immediately after. [51:53] Quick Checklist Do not expect that you can do it just because you’ve done it once before. Be aware of conditions such as rhabdomyolysis, heat stroke, hyponatremia, dehydration, seizures, electrolyte imbalances, and breaking ankles. Plan well — note altitudes and paths. Running is just like driving. Driving is considered dangerous but we don’t avoid it; we just take extra measures and precautions to make sure that we are safe. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘People need to be really conscious of the risks — they need to be prepared to put the time in. You've got to prepare your body and you've got to know your body’. ‘Having lined up at the start line with someone who didn't make it home — that really reinforces that these are real risks and you have to be prepared for them’. ‘The race doesn't end at the finish. Some of the most dangerous time is after that: when people get to the finish line and drive home, they're tired — you can crash easily’. ‘Sometimes there's a bit of competition, isn't there. But, number one, you've got to look out for each other. You are comrades — you've got to have each other's backs’. ‘It is incredible, those connections you make. Even if you don't see each other again, but yes, you've got that bond. That's forever’. ‘Take those precautions. Just be a bit careful. We want to push ourselves. Yes, we want to be out there. Yes, we want to find new limits, but we also want to get back home’. ‘Respect the distance. You cannot run something like this without respecting it’. About Eugene Bingham Eugene Bingham is a senior journalist at Stuff, co-host of the Dirt Church Radio trail running podcast with his mate Matt Rayment and an ultramarathon runner. In a career of almost 30 years, he’s reported and produced news and current affairs, winning multiple awards as an investigative journalist. His work has taken him to three Olympic Games, and a number of countries including Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Pacific. No matter where he goes, he always packs his running shoes. He has a marathon PB of 2h 43m and his longest event is the Tarawera Ultra 100-mile race which he ran in February 2020. Eugene is married to journalist Suzanne McFadden and they have two grown-up boys. You can listen to their podcast on Dirt Church Radio. You can also follow and support them on Patreon, Instagram, and Twitter. Have questions you’d like to ask? You can reach Eugene at his email. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be aware of the dangers of extreme sports and ultra running. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript For The Podcast! Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host, Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of Pushing the Limits. Today, I have journalist and ultramarathon running legend, Eugene Bingham, to guest. And Eugene is the host of the podcast, Dirt Church Radio, which I hope you guys are listening to. It's a really fascinating insight into the world of running and trail running. And he has a really unique style, him and his friend, Matt Raymond, run their podcast. So I hope you enjoy this interview. Today we're talking about the dangers of extreme sports, not just ultramarathon running, but doing—pushing your body to the limits. While, you know I'm definitely a proponent of going hard and mental toughness and pushing the body and all that sort of good stuff. We also need to know about the downside. We also need to know about the risks. And recently there was a death, unfortunately, at the Tarawera Ultramarathon of a very experienced ultramarathon runner. And so we're going to dive into some of the dangers and some of the things that need to be aware of when it comes to pushing the body to the limits. And so you have an informed consent and an understanding of what you're getting into when you're doing these sorts of things. Before we head over to the show, though, please give them a rating, review to the show if you enjoy the content. Really, really appreciate the comments and the reviews and if you can do that on iTunes, or wherever you're listening, that would be really, really appreciated. And if you haven't sold your Christmas stocking yet, please head over to my shop and check out my books, Running Hot, which is chronicling all my running adventures in my early days, Running to Extremes. Both of those books bestsellers, and my new book, Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds, which is really a book about overcoming incredible obstacles, the mindset that's required, the stuff that I learned while I was running and how it helped in this very real world situation, facing a very dire situation within the family. I hope you enjoy those books and if you have read them, please reach out to me, give me a review. Again, if you can, I'd really appreciate that you can reach me at lisa@lisatamati.com. And just a reminder too, we are still taking on a few people, on one on one health optimization coaching, if you're wanting to optimise your health, whether it be with a difficult health challenge, that you're not getting answers to mainstream health and you're wanting some help navigating the difficult waters that can sometimes be, please reach out to us. And we deal with some very intricate cases. And I have a huge network of people that I work with that we can also refer you out to. I am not a doctor, but I am a health optimisation coach and an epigenetics coach. And we use all of the things that we've spent years studying to help people navigate and advocate for them, and connect them to the right places. And this is a very different type of health service if you like and it's quite high touch and it's quite getting into the nitty gritty and being a detective basically. And I'm really enjoying this type of work and helping people whether it be with head injuries, with strokes, with cancer journeys, thyroid problems, or all these types of issues. Not that we have it or every answer there is under the sun. But we're very good at being detectives working out what's going on and referring you to the right places where required. So if you're interested in that, please reach out to us lisa@lisatamati.com. Right, now over to the show with Eugene Bingham. Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I have Eugene Bingham. I know he's so famous, he actually sit down with me to record this session. So fantastic to have you here. Right? How are you doing? Eugene Bingham: I'm very well, thank you. And thank you for having me on. Such an honour. Lisa: Fantastic. Yes. Well, I was lucky to be on your show. And you've been on mine, and we just really connected. So I wanted to get you back on because you've just written an article, which was very, I thought was an important one to discuss. And it was about the tragic death of an ultrarunner last year or this year in the Tarawera Ultramarathon. And while we don't want to go too deep into the specifics of that particular case or we'd like to know what you know about it... Eugene: Sure. Lisa: ...but wanted to have a discussion around the dangers of extreme sport or ultramarathon running and some of the things we just need to be aware of. So, obviously Eugene and I—neither of us are doctors or any of this should be construed as medical advice, but just as—have to give them out there... Eugene: Absolutely. Lisa: But as runners and people who have experienced quite a lot in the running scene, and I've certainly experienced enough drama, that it is something that we need to talk about. So Eugene, tell us a little bit about what happened? And what are you happy to share Eugene: Sure. Lisa: ...and what you wrote about in your article, which we will link to in the show notes, by the way. Eugene: Yes. Thank you. Sure. Yes, so I was a competitor in the Tarawera hundred mile race in February, which as you said—when you said last year, it does feel like last year, doesn't it? Oh gosh, it feels like it was five years ago. But it was February 2020, all those years ago. And in that race was sort of about 260 of us lined up. And then that race was a runner an older—oh, he’s 52. So from Japan, a very experienced runner, had run Tarawera previously, had run lots of other miles, and ultraraces. And unfortunately, about a kilometre or so from the finish, he collapsed, and about 34 hours into the race. And although people rushed to help them, and he was taken to retro hospital, and eventually to Auckland City Hospital, he died. And I remember, I remember the afternoon we heard about it, and Tarawera put it up on its Facebook page to let us all know that one of our fellow runners had died and I stopped. It was a shock. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: You know we do this thing, because we love it. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: And because we get enjoyment from it. And he was someone who paid the ultimate price. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: So I—we're a couple of hats, and one of them is a journalist, and so I—but really, what first kicked in was, I really want to know what happened. I really wanted to know what happened. I've had health issues myself, had a few scares and so on. A few wobbles and races, and I thought—just from my point of view, I was really curious to find out. But I also thought it was important to find out for other runners... Lisa: Yes, absolutely. Eugene: ...or say, I listen for others. And so I started to see if I could find out. COVID got the way a little bit and distracted me. But eventually I did manage to track down what happened there. Yes. Lisa: And what was the result of the findings in this particular case? I mean, we're gonna want to discuss a few. Eugene: Sure. Lisa: I think, in this case, it was a couple of things, wasn't it? But this is without picking—and we're certainly not picking on anybody or any, not race, or anything or saying this is bad or anything. But what was it that you discovered in it? Eugene: Yes. Lisa: So with that, research. Eugene: Sure. So initially, I remember the talk was that he might have had a stroke, or there might have been some sort of underlying condition. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: But I got a hold of his death certificate and it shows that he had multiorgan failure, and acute respiratory distress syndrome, which are both conditions that they can be in multiple causes of those sorts of things. But the one that jumped out to me was Rhabdo. You're gonna make me say that? The proper name for it. Lisa: Rhabdomyolysis Eugene: Thank you. Lisa: I'm an expert in rhabdo. Eugene: So yes, that was the third one on the list. And that was the one that really jumped out at me. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Months earlier, I'd spoken to Dr Marty Hoffman, who's in a University of California Davis in the States, and he's sort of recognised around the world. Basically, if there's an ultra—there's a paper about medicine involving ultrarunning, you'll find Marty Hoffman's name on it, he knows this stuff. So I'd run to him months ago, at the suggestion of a friend, Dr John Onate, and I had a good chat with him. And he sort of ran through the list of what we could be looking at here, but he was really—it was a stab in the dark at that point. But he told me then that they’re hipping no deaths from rhabdo, knowing deaths from rhabdo from ultrarunners. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Yes. And no knowing deaths from ultrarunners of the AH, exhausted and just talking it, ‘How can I train you’? Lisa: Yes. Eugene: So we were kind of that, like, ‘What could it be’? Yes. So when rhabdo appeared on the desk fit, I rang him back and said—I actually emailed him and said, ‘Hey, this is what it says’. And he was very surprised because he keeps track of deaths of ultrarunners around the world. And as he said, there hadn't been one recorded before, doesn't mean there hasn't been one, of course. Lisa: Yes, it doesn't mean. Eugene: It's just no one, yes, no one knows what causes. Lisa: And I think a lot of these things will have contributing factors in—completely unrelated but going through the journey with my dad recently it was at the end, he had multiple organ failure. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: He had sepsis however, and before that he had an abdominal aneurysm. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: So it shows the progression like it. What did he actually die off? Eugene: Yes. Yes. Lisa: He was born with the failure probably, or zips as chicken or eek scenario. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: So these things, one leads to an acute respiratory syndrome Eugene: Yes. Lisa: And they all lead on from one to the other when the body starts to shut down, basically. Eugene: It's a cascade isn’t it? Lisa: It’s a cascade. That is a very good way of putting it. So rhabdo—and while there is perhaps no documented case of a death from rhabdomyolysis, I don't know if they—I know in my life, I've had rhabdo. I can't even remember the number of times I've had rhabdo. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: I took away kidney damage from it and the last few years, I've been trying to unravel that damage and undo that. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: I'm getting there slowly. Eugene: Yes, yes. Lisa: So it is a very as if quite a common thing. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: So we don't know whether in this case that was actual final, what actually did it? It certainly would have been a major contributing factor. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: Well, what is rhabdo? I suppose we better explain what rhabdos are. Eugene: Yes. So I mean, well, from your experience, you will know better than me. But I spoke to Dr Hoffman and to Dr Tom Reynolds, who's the race doctor for—one of the race doctors for Tarawera. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: And they explained it as the muscle started to break down and the myoglobin from the muscle being released into the bloodstream. And then it basically just starts clogging up the kidneys and just causing real damage in your kidneys. The problem with it is the symptoms for sort of sound like a lot of other things and also can just sound like what you might expect running an ultramarathon. Lisa: Yes, the kind of that also. Eugene: Yes, tenderness of muscles, a bit of confusion, and so on. And then even some of the blood tests that you can do to pick it up. So they look for CK—you're much more proficient in the medical world than me. Lisa: Not more. Eugene: But the thing that they test for—it basically there was an experiment at Western States a number of years ago, where they tested bloods of people in Western states and they tested something like 160 runners, all of them had elevated CK levels. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: So in part, it's just a function of ultrarunning, your muscles are gonna break down to some extent. So that makes it very, very tricky to find out, to discover it. And Dr Hoffman said, ‘Sometimes the first sign that you get that someone's got rhabdo, is they have a seizure’. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: So it can be a tricky, tricky condition to pick up. Yes, that's really—it's hard, isn't it? It's really hard. Lisa: It is hard and—but when you are going for—and some of these races are 24, 36, 50 something hours, you're going to have some breakdown of muscle and you… Eugene: You are. Lisa: I mean, keeping an eye on the colour of your urine or if you are not producing… Eugene: Yes, that’s an important one. Yes. Lisa: It is probably the easiest thing to think about. Because like you say, the nausea and headaches and confusion and fatigue are all very general parts about running anyway. So keeping an eye on it, like getting a pouch of fluid. What I would find is that in the lower abdomen, and I don't know if whether this is an actual medical symptom or not. But in the lower abdomen, I've developed this pot gap running and, it wasn't fat, obviously. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: ...within a couple of hours. It was fluid, and would usually coincide with my kidneys—they’re not producing or producing very little output. So I think there might be a sign that something's going on there. Eugene: Right. Lisa: In rhabdo, like, we're talking ultramarathons, but I have seen a case of rhabdo in a half marathon in summer. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: Yes. So a mild case, but enough to be taken to hospital. So it's not even just people doing the extreme extreme stuff. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: But it is a very—and you have to ask yourself, how much damage are we doing every time we do and I often asked, ‘Why are you not running anymore’? ‘Why are you not doing it anymore’? And apart from life's gotten a bit crazy. Am I? Indeed yes. Eugene: Yes, yes. Lisa: Should I have not got the time to be doing offers? I want longevity and while I love ultras, and I love the culture. And I love what I got to do. And I'm certainly not, I mean, I train lots of ultrarunners. I for myself, don't want to put myself at that risk anymore. Now that I'm also 50 and I want longevity. And therefore my health comes before my sporting ambitions now. It didn't when I was younger, but now with—unfortunately, one of the side effects of studying medical stuff for the last five years, is that I'm now a little bit more cautious. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: Because ignorance is bliss. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: What you don't know, you just go and do. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: You don’t actually know the implications and sometimes, you don't actually know the implications until well down the track, like, you use to check. Eugene: Yes. yes, sure. Lisa: That's where I'm sitting at the moment, as far as the sort of the dangers and the risks. I mean, how did you feel as a runner, who—you were in the same race doing the same distance? You're a little bit north of 25 now. Eugene: Jump 47. Lisa: You're 47? Eugene: Yes. 47, yes. Lisa: And did this make you stop and think about, ‘Do I want to keep doing this stuff? How do I feel about it’? Eugene: Yes, it sure does. It sure does make your family think of that, doesn't that? I think it reinforces that you need to have really good self management. You need to be well prepared. I spoke to—when I spoke to Dr Reynolds, and I said to him, ‘We had this big conversation about all the cold coloured urine and all that sort of stuff’. That sounds a bit odd, and a little different other conditions that can come about. Yes, and so on. And I said to him, ‘Boy listen to all of that. Do you recommend people run ultramarathons’? And he said, ‘Look. At three o'clock when the medical team is full. And I've got my hands full, I look around, and I go, What the hell have we been doing this for’? But he says, ‘But it's a small proportion that gets badly affected. And as long as you manage your risks, and you're aware of it’, he said one of the things that he's really concerned about is people jumping up the distance too quickly. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Or the runner suddenly, ‘Wow, I'm gonna run 100 miler’, because it has become, I think it's… Lisa: The new marathon. Eugene: I told him, I spent more time trying to talk people out of doing milers than I do in trying to talk them into doing milers. I don't think I talk to any other or talked anyone into doing a miler. It's a very personal choice. I spend a lot of time talking to people out of it, makes me so again. But again, I don't know if that's a good idea, mate. Lisa: Me too. Eugene: Yes. And it sounds bad. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Try running podcasts. Lisa: I know. You know, my buddy out running. Eugene: Yes. But I just think people need to be really conscious of the risks. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: And they need to be prepared to put the time in. And that's one of the things that you've identified. You've got to prepare your body. And you've got to know your body. I mean, I took—I've been running my whole life. And I didn't take the decision to enter the miler, lightly, certainly would now knowing what I do know now. And when I say no, I mean, I'd always heard of rhabdo. I'd heard of AIH, I'd heard of dehydrational systems. And you sort of think about you sort of like, ‘Yes, yes, yes’. But having lined up at the start line with someone who didn't make it home that really reinforces that these are real risks, and you have to be prepared for them. You have to be ready for them. So, I'm not gonna stop ultrarunning, I don't think. But I'm certainly going to be a hell of a lot more careful. And listen to my body. Lisa: Exactly. Eugene: Sometimes you can get that. I find one side of ultra running that I struggle with a little bit is the whole kind of ‘You're not going to quit unless the ambulance takes you off the course’ kind of thing. I don't like that. I don’t really like that. Lisa: I totally agree. Eugene: You know, I agree. I love the whole mental toughness thing out of it. Don't get me wrong. That's one of the things that I enjoy about it. But you have to listen to your body. You have to listen to your body. I've pulled out of a 100k race, where I could have pushed on. You know. Looking back, it's like, ‘Yes, I could have pushed on, at what cost’? You know? Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Yes, it just wasn't worth it. Could I push through and be out there for another hours and hours and hours and hours? Putting myself... Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Yes, sure. I could have but what was the risk? What could have happened? And what do I get out of it? Instead I actually came away from that race having learned a hell of a lot of lessons. And they prepared me for the miler, actually. Lisa: Yes. And I think that’s some beautiful attitude and in a very wise mind. Some of the things that I did in my younger years or even—I’m talking 40s. Eugene: Yes, yes. Lisa: We're stupid. There is no other word for it. And especially in the 30s, my 30s, I thought I was bulletproof and I could push and I had that mentality, you're going to have to drag me away, framing and I have seen lots of others. And I have nearly pushed my body on a number of occasions to the point of death and I've been very, very lucky not to have died. I've had tetany seizures, which is where your potassium level and your electrolytes are so out of whack that the whole body cramps and so I'm having a heart attack. I was luckily at that at the point that I head out, I was in Alaska, and I'd been for six weeks out in Yukon with poor nutrition and so on and pushing the body every day. I just come off a mountain when this tetany seizure hit. Luckily, I was two minutes from a hospital, and they saved my life. Eugene: Wow. Lisa: But that would have been deadly very quickly. I've experienced extreme levels of dehydration in the Libyan desert where we only had like one and a half to two litres of water a day in 40 plus temperatures. And gone to the point where I no longer was in control of my body, and my—not only just hallucinations but the central nervous system starting to shut down. Massive kidney damage, and taking nearly two years to recover from that. I’ve had food poisoning while running across Niger, and again bleeding at both ends pushing it to the absolute limit I did pull out of that race at 64 hours after 222Ks but that was way too late. I've gotten away by the skin of my teeth. Not to mention going through war zones or military body areas Eugene: Yes. Lisa: Or being in really dangerous situations and that's a whole podcast in itself. But it wasn't worth it. Now I think I was just so afraid of failure I was so afraid of not achieving that, which I'd set out to do that. And I have to think about it now and go I wasn't in—people who are in war scenarios or some survival situation where you have to freakin go to the limit alive. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: But I wasn't in there. This is a—well, Libyan desert ended up like that, but you know what I mean? Eugene: Midnight summer bitches. Lisa: Oh yes, it’s some stupid shit. It really was. But at what costs? Now, I've had a lot of health issues in the last five to six years and a lot of that comes from—I haven't been able to have children you know and so on and so forth. And these are the contributing factors Eugene: Sure enough. Lisa: That's the only reason for certain things, but now as a coach and as an older wiser woman, I don't want to see people pushing their bodies to that point where they actually close to dying or causing major damage to the body. Eugene: Yes, yes. Lisa: It really is not worth it. Eugene: I mean this pushing the limits isn't there. And mentally, I think there's a lot to be said for having a goal that's going to stretch you when you are going to go for it. But the key is to be prepared, isn’t it? To actually have done the training... Lisa: The training Eugene: ...to prepare your body. To test—so that you know when your body's screaming at you, you know it’s saying, ‘Okay, you know what, you know to pull the pen or you know to stop and rest or whatever’. I think there was some good—Tom Reynolds had some five tips which are really good. Lisa: Yes. Let’s hear them Eugene: To prepare yourself for an ultra especially ultras but even marathons I suppose Lisa: Absolutely. Eugene: Number one on his list, and I think he would make this number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is don't take drugs like Ibuprofen and Voltaren and those sorts of things. Lisa: Super important. Eugene: Do not take them. Yes, super important. The second one is drink to thirst. You know that you can have problems—your own problems if you have too much liquid. Lisa: Yes, which we’re talking about in a sec. Eugene: Yes. Be prepared for the conditions. Have a plan for a range of conditions. So make sure you've got thermals. Make sure you've got your jackets and sawn and layers that you can take on and take off especially if you're going to some of these remote areas that we go to as ultrarunners. Number four, the race doesn't end at the finish. Pack warm clothes, get some food ready that you can eat, some liquids. And another thing that he pointed out to me is actually some of the most dangerous times is after that finish line. When people get to the finish line, and drive hard, and they're tired. Lisa: It's so true. Eugene: You can crash easily for a second crash. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: And number five is look out for each other. and I think that's so important. Sometimes there's a bit of competition isn't there? But number one, you've got to look out for each other Lisa: Yes. Eugene: You are comrades in this together and you've got to have each other's backs. And there's little relationships that you build up with someone you've never met before. I still remember having a good chat to a farmer from Jordan. I spent a lot of hours with him at Tarawera. Haven't spoken up since, never met him before in my life, but there we were together at Bizmates on the trail. Lisa: Awesome. Eugene: Keeping an eye on each other. Looking out for each other. You make sure they've got their bottles filled at the aid station. You make sure that they're not getting confused or anything like that—just looking out for each other. Simple isn’t it? Lisa: That’s gold. Eugene: And that was the five tips that he gave. Actually, they're pretty good tips. Lisa: They are very good tips, and a couple other ones to pick out like the training. In my early days as a coach, I remember taking an athlete who went from half marathon to running the Big Red Run 250Ks. Eugene: Wow. Lisa: Inside a month. Eugene: Oh. Lisa: Now on a red mat, that was stupid. Eugene: YeS. Lisa: He came over to do 100k to be fair, and he was doing so well. He just decided to carry on and to do the whole thing. And it was an incredible achievement. Eugene: Oh, yes. Lisa: However, broken my butt. Like, it never was quite the same afterwards. And he wasn't ready. He wasn't, like, his body wasn't ready. So when you prepare your body, when you're training, you doing these long runs, and you're doing back to back running, and you're doing strength training, you're doing mobility work, all these things are preparing the muscles so that they don't break down so quickly and they don't need—you don't need about rhabdo. And another big piece of the puzzle is the experience side of things. Because then you can actually start to feel when your body's doing a chick or not. As I run, I used to do like little chickens every half hour or an hour I'd go right I'm doing a control like a pilot would before he flies the airplane. ‘How is everything? How am I feeling? Have I ever drunk in the last 10 minutes? Have I eaten anything? When was the last time I weighed? When was the last time’... Just doing a mental checklist as often as you can. Now one of the hard things with ultra though is that you start to lose your brain function, so all the blood flow is going away from your executive function up here and you become like a bit of a moron. You’re like, ‘Oh, oh’. Eugene: Absolutely. Solving maths? Impossible. Lisa: Impossible. Or maybe doing a 24 hour race, the one at the Millennium Stadium, and there was some guys they’re testing us just for a laugh, doing Noughts and Crosses as we run around the track and our brain function is a day and night wore on just we weren't even able to add up one plus one anymore. We just completely like, ‘Eh’? He’s got low blood and my brain is not functioning. So what that does mean is that your ability to make good decisions is also impaired. I remember saying to one of my friends who was a paramedic and she was with me in Death Valley, in the second time I did Death Valley. And she says, I said to her, ‘You are responsible for my health’. I was lucky I had a crew in that situation. If you pull me out, you pull me out. I know that you won't pull me prematurely because you know what, it's taken me to get here. But my life is in your hands and I respect that. I respect you. I respect your knowledge as paramedic. If you tell me it's over, it's over. And she will be able to make that decision because I knew from my personality and from my matter that cost me to get there wasn't going to be pulling out anytime soon. So sometimes if you can have in the case where you have a crew have somebody say, ‘This is now getting dangerous’. And it's a fine line. Like I pulled my husband out of a race once, Northburn, a race that I co-founded a few years ago in the South Island. And he was doing the 100k and he actually rang me on the cellphone, and it seem the case, we had a massive storm up in the mountains. It was wild. It was his first 100k, he was in the mountains. He was scared shirtless. He was hypothermic. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, darling, just come home’. You know? So that was—and he could have pushed on. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: And mentally that cost him a lot because he pulled out, and he didn't push over that hub. So there's this fine line between it should’ve been ours... Eugene: But he lives to tell the story. Lisa: Exactly, and he's done that, so it wasn’t... Eugene: Exactly, that doesn't matter, you know? We love those stories. I love reading your books. I love reading the things that you've been through. But, my gosh, when you think about the risks as you say and the cost, and that's a common story. You're not alone in there, That's the sport we’re in. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: It's ridiculous to me. But you know, it's a tough one. And it's, I think that's a really good idea. Having someone who's who's got your back. Someone who you can trust, like you say, they're not going to pull you out you know just because you stub your toe. Oh gosh... Lisa: Just because you’re... Eugene: Exactly. Exactly. Who hasn't? But you can trust them so that when you've gone to that thin line, bang! Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Come on my area. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: And I was lucky to have a really good mate who phased me. I went through some hallucinations. Nothing major. But he thought it was—I had my mate. And he was looking out for me. In fact, he laughed at me. Lisa: What did you see in your hallucination? Eugene: Oh, I hit home. So we were running around on an unfamiliar course. We were coming around the back of Blue Lake. Up towards the Blue Lake aid station. So about 120km. And it was just before sunrise. So, you get that funny light. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: It's still dark, but the light is changing. And I swore coming up to the aid station, I swore I saw a robot sitting off to the side of the trail. And in my photo frame mind, I justified it as ‘Oh, it must be like reading, it must be scanning us telling the aid section that we're coming’. And so I saw it. And said to my mate, ‘James, there’s a robot. It's pretty cool’. And he's like, ‘The what’? ‘The robot there’. And he's like, ‘There’s nothing, man’. And I think it was a tree or something. I don't know what it was. But it's funny how I justified it to myself. So it was fine. And then after the light changed, I got a couple of situations where it's quite unlikely to cause hallucination or is vision going. But I—the ground was just like liquid glass. Lisa: Wow, that’s cool. Eugene: I was like, ‘Oh, should I put my foot down or not’? And James said, ‘What are you doing? Come on’! It was like, ‘What's going on with the ground’? Lisa: [32:58] inaudible the glass. Well. Eugene: So that was but—people have some great hallucinations, don't know. But the point of that was, I had my mate there. It was never unsafe. And I'm grateful for that. So I think that's a really good tip, Lisa, to have a crew with you. Lisa: I think hooking up. Or if you're in a race where you don't have crew—which most of them are. And that you do hook up with somebody. If you can try and not too many people because then your pacing will be all out. But if you can just hook up with one person or maybe two at the max. I remember running the Gobi Desert in the Sahara with same gash who was in the desert runners movie together and this is great footage and desert runners is playing at the moment on TVNZ if anyone wants to check it out, it’s a cool movie. And yes we're running along holding each other's hands, bawling our eyes out, and but we got each other through both of those messiest days, both in the Sahara, and in the Gobi. And we ran together in India as well but with crews in that case. But that comradeship that we have there was just gold. It just helped. When you [34:17] escaped shirtless you hit someone the and we did get lost and we did fold our paces and we did have all sorts of dramas and we kept each other going through all those hard times and I think that's one of the beautiful memories for me that I take away from that. And there were other people I've done the things with... And the depth of connection that you have with a human being when you've gone through something like that it's just next level. And that's one of the beautiful things because we’re talking about all our negatives here but it is just like—she’s a very amazing woman that one. She’s done incredible things. Eugene: It is incredible, isn’t it. Those connections you make. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: The friendships you forge. Even if you don't see each other again, but you've got that bond. That's forever. Lisa: Yes. Eugene: Those moments that you shared when you're vulnerable. Lisa: When you're up [35:11] Creek and literally. Guys who didn't even speak the same language or a woman I remember running in the Sahara at one point with a—I was crying, she was crying. She was from South America somewhere, didn't speak a word of English, or another French guy picked me up in Jordan when I was running across there and I'd passed out and he came along, picked me up, got me into the next checkpoint. The French guy and Niger, it's just like, ‘Wow’. The stuff that you help each other through. It's gold, but does this do happen, you know? Eugene: They do. They do. Yes. Lisa: We have one in the Gobi Desert. We had a young man, Nicholas Kruse was only like 30 or 31, I think. And he was first time doing it. And he wasn't trained enough, I don't think. And he—I think he underestimated the thing. And he unfortunately probably paid the ultimate price. And then you've got also the dangers. I mean, you got cases like with Turia Pitt, the forest fires in Australia, or there are things that could go wrong. Eugene: Yes, absolutely. Lisa: Even in these organisers' races. You have falls where you've hit your head and concussions and... Just because you're in an organised event, do not think that there isn't an element of danger, or that you're going to have to be self-reliant, you cannot. And inside these countries is beyond the abilities of the organisers actually to cover every base. Eugene: Absolutely. Well, even in races in New Zealand, we go to some remote places, and races route is difficult to get. You're not just going to be able to ring up 111 and get an ambulance there. Lisa: No. Eugene: It's not like that. I've been in a 100k race where—because there have been lots of runners going through this. It was a narrow bit of the trail. And it was really dry there. And runners have been going over this bit of land. And basically, as the day wore on, it sort of started to break down a little bit. And I was just the unlucky one stick on the trail in a way. And I slid down this bank... Lisa: Oh my god. Eugene: ...and down, down, down, down down, thinking, ‘Uh-oh, when's this going to stop’? Luckily, I hit, I came to a stop on a tree, not badly. And then basically had to scrape my way back up. Now, I was fine. But you know, those sorts of things can happen if I stumbled in a wrong way as I came off the trail and hit my head, whatever. So you are—yes, you will, I mean, it’s not... Well, I mean, when we've been out on a run in a cotton wool, so [37:57] do we. But we don't want to go everybody. But you don't need to be conscious. Lisa: I'll be conscious of it. I think... Eugene: And even when you're training too, when you're training, when you are going out in remote areas. Make sure you tell someone where you're going. Preferably run with some other mates. Maybe think about taking a locator beacon with you if you're going somewhere really remote. Lisa: Absolutely. Eugene: Have a phone with you, do those sorts of things. Take those precautions. Just be a bit careful. Yes, we want to push ourselves. Yes, we want to be out there. Yes, we want to find new limits. But we also want to get back home. Lisa: Yes, we want to come home to our families and not die on the way. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: If we can. I mean, people can take it to the level that they want to go to, but just don't want people going and thinking that everything's safe because it's an organised event or because hundreds of other people have done it, means absolutely nothing. Eugene: Absolutely. Lisa: I’ll tell you, like how many thousands of people have climbed Mount Everest, but it's still a frickin dangerous thing to do. Eugene: Absolutely. Lisa: Doesn't mean it's safe just because lots of people have done it. I think like—if we just went through a bit of a list now of some of your things that you'd like from a medical perspective, that you should gone this research on and find out about. One of them, so we've talked about rhabdomyolysis. Dehydration is the opposite, is well known, dehydration is what we think about more, and that's certainly something that can then can lead to troubles. And you've got hyponatraemia or EAH, so hyponatraemia let's just talk about that one briefly because it's a biggie. Hyponatraemia is a low sodium level in the body. I've had it. Lots of people give this. And it's again, a hard one to diagnose because it is very similar to the opposite problem, which is dehydration. So hyponatraemia you've actually got too much water on board. One of the signs of this I'm even doing was 100k, one of those Oxfam ones. And because we'd been walking for so long, it was a walking running situation thing. And I got really bad hyponatraemia in that one. I was drinking a lot. I wasn't having my electrolytes, right. And my hands were like elephant hands. Eugene: Wow. Lisa: So that's an indication that there's something going on. So look for signs like that, look for swelling, edema. And yes, that could like... Eugene: Nausea, lightheadedness, those sorts of things as well. Lisa: Coordination, going haywire. And the problem with hyponatraemia is you don't want to just be thinking it's dehydration and then drinking more. So it's an—it's a low sodium. So, your potassium and your sodium are having antagonistic relationships in your body. And you have, for every three bits of sodium that gets pushed out of the cells, three bits of potassium come into the cells. And it's like, it acts like a pump. And it's actually what helps your muscles contract. So if you get that sodium, potassium, ainger, other electrolytes out of whack, there's a whole lot of things that can happen. hyponatraemia being one of them. In another one being a tetany seizure, which is what I mentioned what I had in Alaska. Eugene: Yes, so what's that? Lisa: So this is where—in my case, it was a potassium that was really, really low in the body at 1.4. Like it’s deadly... Eugene: Wow. Lisa: Deadly low. And I'd had in the couple of weeks building up to this actual seizure. My hands were doing this, and I was cramping all the time. And that was so—if you ever start doing that, like this weird thing where your hands are starting to spin. Eugene: So, like dinosaur hands on. Lisa: Yes, so your fingers—for those listening can't see me do my funny thing here. It's the muscles contracting and your fingers are pulling in. So I remember, swimming at some point, and the lead up to this with this was happening to me. I was like, ‘What the hell's that’? And then it would go off again. But there was a sign that I didn't have enough potassium as I found out later. Eugene: All right. Lisa: So then I had, a couple of weeks later, this tetany seizure, and it started with the whole body. Just like every muscle in the body cramping all at the same time, the most painful thing you can ever—like really bad pain, including your face muscles, including your heart, which is the problem. And in there, the pain was horrific. I thought I was dying, I was. Luckily I just come off a mountain, or was taking shelter in a public library because it was pouring with rain and freezing cold. And this happened in the library. And there was a paramedic in the library who just happened to be fixing a light bulb. He saw me go down. Eugene: That’s one of the 43:10 [inaudible] moments. Lisa: Yes, that was very lucky. He put a gel straight into my mouth. He just happened to have a gel on him. And that gave a little bit of glucose and stuff too, and managed to release the seizure for a couple of minutes before it happened again. But by then he got me into the ambulance and around to the hospital pretty quick, smart. And they were able to save me. But that could have been deadly. That could have been a massive heart attack on the way out. I've seen that also happen and we were in the outback of Australia with friend Chris Ord. And he had a seizure at mile, coming in at 90 sort, and we've been running in 40 odd degrees heat and he'd been taking electrolyte tablets. So people electrolyte tablets are absolutely crucial. You've got to have them. The ones he was taking didn't have potassium. They had everything else in them but their ratios weren't right. And he ended up—we had to—again incredible pain, whole body seizing, racing him into the hospital Alice Springs. What I did do and what you can do in a case like that is give him three cans of Redbull—not advertising for Redbull or because generally that’s a shit thing to be drinking. And this case, with what it's got in it and the sugars and stuff that helped. So yes, but that's just a potassium sodium balance. Eugene: Yes .That's the thing, isn't it? We're missing with our chemistry. We're missing with the body's chemistry. I don't know what it was but I had one race where I just finished and as soon as I finished, I started shaking. Lisa: Oh, yes. Eugene: Shaking and shaking. I couldn't stop for hours. And it wasn't cold. I wasn't cold. Lisa: Oh, I know what it is. Eugene: Well, what is it? Because... Lisa: I don't know the name of it. But I've had that many times. It's basically where you've just got nothing left in the body. Eugene: Yes, somebody said to me, glycogen. Yes, just the glycogen is gone. Lisa: You just got nothing, you got nothing to heat because you know we heating ourselves all the time with our glycogen supplies and our glucose is running out of their body. And you were just on absolute zero basically, taking your blood sugar, I bet you’re in a really, really low Eugene: Right. Lisa: And so like, in Death—I’m telling my bloody stories, but... Eugene: Why not? Lisa: A member in Death Valley. We be head like 55 degrees during the day, I’ve had heat stroke and had all that. And then at nighttime, it was 40 degrees. And I got shivers. I was doing that. I was like this and it was 40 degrees.And I was like, ‘Really, what the hell is going on? It's 40 degrees’. It was a lot colder than it had been, but I just had nothing left in the tank and therefore I was shaking. And that can be a real danger when you say in the Himalayas, which I've also done and that's where you just cannot warm up. You can't keep your heat going. And these can run into other problems where you just stuck—your blood sugar just keep dropping, and you can end up when—going into a coma just because your blood sugar is too low, and you got hypothermia. Eugene: The other problem that happens. And I've had this a couple of times after ultras is I just have zero appetite, I can't, I just can't face the thought of food. You got to get something into you, you go start replenishing your body, you got to look at soups or something to get some nutrition back into it. Because like you say, it can be dangerous. Lisa: And that's a recovery too, like, if you can get something in it will help you recover a heck of a lot faster even like just generally fully training runs, if you can get something in within an hour. But usually within an hour, you just do not feel, you just feel like vomiting if you eat too much. So you just have to take a little, little, little nibble, nibble, nibble. And something that you're really—usually savoury salty things that you will get have a taste for. So soup or things or something like that. Just trying to eat something in. My gosh, there's a lot to be worried about. Eugene: And that's the thing, that's the thing. These are all things that you need to be conscious of. But you manage your rests, don't you? You can manage them. And what one of the other things that Dr Reynold said, and I think is pertinent today, what just what we're dwelling on the bad things is that these risks are exponential. So he says, ‘Don't think that you run 100k all year, well, then 160Ks, that's only another 60k’. It's an exponential increase, and an exponential increase in those risks as well. So conscious of those things as well. Lisa: So watch when you're jumping up in this. Eugene: Yes. Lisa: And also don't fall into the trap of thinking, ‘Oh, I did it once. Therefore, it's a piece of cake. I could do it either’. I've run into this where I came off the back of a Himalayan one. I just done 222Ks. I thought it was the bee's knees. And then I went and did it just a couple of weeks later and I hadn't recovered properly a 50k in Australia. And the wheels freakin came off at 25k. It wasn't the—I had to be risky for some beer drinking Ausies in the middle of the bush. I'll tell you your ego suddenly deflated. Eugene: Yes, absolutely, Lisa and it's—I learned that lesson even just with the map just for the marathon. Lisa: Don’t say that. Eugene: But just for the marathon. I ran my first marathon when I was 21 and I trained for it. And so I found it actually quite easy. I don't mean that—I wasn't fast but but it was I got to the end of it. I can't keep waiting for the wall. The wall never came. I got—I thought, ‘Ah’! So I made the mistake thinking marathon is easy. A piece of cake. Yes, run up on the next one. [49:13] ecruzi hardly did any training. Lisa: Oh. Eugene: My bad, so bad. And it was like it was just the marathon telling me, ‘Sunshine’... Lisa: Respect. Eugene: ‘Respect the distance’. You cannot run something like this without respecting it. And it was a good listen. Lisa: Good listen. Eugene: Good listen, I'll let my listen. But I let my listen. Lisa: And in by that token, respect any distance. People often say to me, I'm just doing it, I'm just doing half marathons, or I'm just doing marathons and because I've done lots of ultramarathons they think, ‘Oh, that would be nothing for you’. And I'm like, ‘Hell no’. Eugene: Hell no. Absolutely. Lisa: Every distance has to respect because it’s sort of basic thing for starters. 100 metres is a long way when you're going at Usain Bolt and 5k is really fast when you're going at your maximum. And a team K is an attunity. It's all relative to pace for status. And the second thing is never think because you did it once. Next time, it's going to be sweet. And Eugene has given us an absolute good example of that. And it is. It’s like take every race is that first is a big deal. And you have to prepare your body for it. And don't—oh, another mistake I made this was awesome. Another embarrassing thing. So you know. Done 25 years of stupid stuff and then when my mum got sick I didn't train obviously properly for 10 months and then I ran across the north on and raising money for charity a friend who’ve died, Samuel Gibson a wonderful man that we lost. And I was so moved. I decided I'm going to run anyway. And I have not been training for 10 months because I've been looking after my mum and I sort of thought out, this sweet, have done this backwards and upside down. I can do this. Oh my God, my ass got handed to me. And I got through it. But oh, hell, it was hell. It was not funny. So prepare. And even though you've done it a100 times doesn't mean you still got it. Eugene: That's right. That's right. Lisa: I assume I don't got it now. Eugene: And that point you made earlier about recovery, too. I did a 100k race and then you had this plan to recover, to take weeks off, got peer pressure. Mates we're doing a 50k. ‘Come on. Come on, man. I don't want peer pressure. Peer pressure’. ‘Okay. You’re already lined up to this 50k race’. Oh boy. And it just set me backwards. It set me back so far, you know? Lisa: Mentaly too. Eugene: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, yes, respect things. Lisa: We've got to respect things. We've got to not expect that our bodies got it just because we've done it once before. Be aware of things like rhabdomyolysis, heatstroke, hyponatraemia, altitude if you're doing altitude, podcasts in itself, be aware of burnout... Eugene: Hypothermia. Lisa: ...hypothermia, dehydration. All of these things are things that we can and do happen to be seizures, electrolyte imbalances, getting lost, going through dangerous places, breaking ankles, and all that sort of thing. So part, it is, can happen. So, be aware of that. And we're not saying don't go out and have adventures, because that'd be really critical. But prepare for those adventures. Get proper training. Get proper coaching. Know what you're in for. Eugene: It's like driving a car. One of the most dangerous things we do. But we make sure we wear our seatbelts, we make sure our cars have got a Warrant of Fitness and the service, and everything. We make sure there's air in the tires, we make sure there's fuel in the tank, and our bodies have got to be like that as well. Lisa: Exactly. Eugene: That driving is so so dangerous. You know, so many people a year die on our roads. Lisa: Yes, more than ultras. Eugene: Yes, so we don't not drive. We just make sure that when we drive we are prepared and our cars are prepared. Well, that's the same as running. There are risks, not as much as driving. But there are risks, but we just make sure we've got air in the tires, we've got fuel in the tank, that we're serviced, and ready to go when we line up for races. Lisa: Brilliant. Eugene, you've been fantastic today. And now you've got another thing to get to. So I want to thank you for writing that article. And thank you for your honesty and openness about this because it's really important that we do talk about it in our running community and to share the good, the bad and the ugly. So I think it's important. And keep up the great work. Of course, people should go and listen to Dirt Church Radio. It's a fantastic podcast that Eugene: We have great gear that’s wireless. Lisa: Honoured to be on your show, mate. And I love talking to you and I love what you do. So thanks very much, mate for being on the show today. Eugene: Anytime. Thanks, Lisa. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
Using Hobbies To Make Money And To Uncover Strengths Outside Of The Office Your personal hobbies — those things you do outside of work for fun and creative expression — are most likely a mirror of your talent themes. That's why discovering your top strengths through StrengthsFinder often leads to that aha moment where it becomes crystal clear why you do those things you are so passionate about. Many even get to maximize and thrive with their natural talents by using hobbies to make money, and you could be one of them. Often you're good at what you like, and you like what you're naturally good at. Sara Regan talks to our host Lisa Cummings in this fun conversation, where Sara shares what arts or passion she’s most drawn into, as well as her reflection on the link between those hobbies and her talent themes. What's cool is that using your hobbies to make money doesn't have to mean that you do something drastic. Often, people think that they should quit their current job and go chase their passion. But then they don't know what the passion is, so they live in this state of dis-ease. Or, they know their passion, but it's not going to earn much cash. For example, Lisa was obsessed with beach volleyball. She loved it. She'd be over the moon to get paid to do it. However, she's short, and doesn't have the best vertical jump in the world. So if she spent decades using hobbies to make money - in this case, she would have made none. Lisa tells on herself with this example because so many people are all-or-none on this topic. In fact, your hobbies don't have to directly earn you a living. You're still using hobbies to make money if you learn from them and re-apply themes from them. For example, Lisa loves to be active, so being a corporate trainer is great because she can stand and deliver while moving around a lot. She also loves to pump people up. She could have done this as a volleyball coach, and she can also do it when she inspires people to see their greatness in corporate life. See, the beauty in all of this is that there isn't one answer. It's rarely about one single passion. It's about watching your energy, and using your "energy makers" in any role. That's emotionally freeing. Imagine the difference in "I can use this in *any* role" (yay), versus "I am eternally hunting for *the* role" (disappointing). Here’s the transcript of the show. Your Hobbies Feed Your Strengths Lisa: Hello, hello everyone! I'm Lisa Cummings from Lead Through Strengths. So excited today to be joined by Sara Regan, one of our facilitators from Lead Through Strengths. And I'm psyched to bring you some new fresh thinking and tips on applying your strengths at work. It's an interesting outcome you can get from strengths — it’s remembering the things that are really fun to you and how they are clues to your talent. When you're remembering what's fun to you, and where you lose track of time, you might be simultaneously figuring out how using your hobbies to make money is possible in your existing job. So Sara, will you, by way of being the model example, will you tell us about some of the things that you personally do for fun, a hobby or two...those kinds of things? And how, when you look back on them, you think, “No wonder I got involved in that thing, because it totally lines up with my strengths.” Sara: Oh, that's a great question, and it's a question everybody should reflect on themselves. That’s great. One of my hobbies, one of the things that I've always been drawn to is music. So I enjoy music. I play piano at home. I play pretty often. And what I have found that I need and I'm drawn to even more so is singing and singing with a choir. So, the idea of going to karaoke or going to sing in a wedding, you know, I've done those things, but I actually don't enjoy those. They give me panic. I can talk to 500 people but I don't really want to go to karaoke. [Side note from the editors: isn't it interesting to see Sara's Relator (her #2) and Connectedness (her #4) talents at work. She likes to sing, but she doesn't want to be center stage as the front person. She wants to be embedded in the whole thing, and a choir is perfect for seeing and hearing the individual parts - and how they make the whole when they come together. If you contrast that with Lisa's Woo (her #5), it's no wonder that she's the lead singer in her rock band. It's all about preferences, and these preferences show up whether you're in your play time or work time. Although neither of them are using hobbies to make money as a career, they're both able to see these connections about how they naturally think and act - whether in a hobby or in the main career zone.] But what I do want to do is I want to sing where I'm part of a larger group, and be part of the whole. I think it goes back to what I was talking about with mosaic tile. It's like many things coming together and being a part of that, but there are some things that can happen when you step back and look at something in its entirety. And so one of the things that I do regularly is that I sing in a choral group, and we do about four concerts a year. We do like hardcore heavy-duty choral music — Bach B Minor Mass, Handel’s Messiah, Verdi Requiem... So things that I didn't have much experience, even though I have a music background. But I love the challenge of learning really hard music. I think it feeds my Learner theme. And I’m not thinking about other things when I am up there. And Connectedness. I think that's part of what also gets fed there, it’s being part of something larger than myself. So that's been one of the things that I have still been able to keep as a hobby, even though life has gotten complicated and busy lately. Lisa: Yeah. It makes total sense. I could see the Connectedness, how you're part of it. You know that you're contributing to it but you're not trying to pop out in the dazzly, “upstage someone else” kind of way. And when you said hardcore and being in a rock band I'm like, “Yeah, she's hardcore metal," and then, “No, we're talking Bach here.” Yes, it’s a whole different thing! Sara: There will be stops, like flicks their lighter when we’re singing. Lisa: Well, if you listen to Rival Sons, one of my favorite rock bands, you'll have gospel choir mixed with lighters, so it can happen. Sara: Yes. We appreciate all kinds of music. I love to listen to most...all kinds of genre — blues and jazz. But as a singer, maybe it's partly because of… I don’t know, I don’t have a rock band that I can be a part of. But the group that I'm a part of is about 80 people and it's often 8-part harmony, so it's something about the harmony. That really is, what I'm…. what I want to be part of, knowing that there's so many things happening at the same time. But... Lisa: Yeah. Sara: Masterplan... Level Up With Insight From Your Hobbies Lisa: It makes so much sense when you look at your talent themes. I mean, Strategic and Connectedness really pop out for me about how the pieces would fit together, but 8-part harmony is so complex in how you can get your head around it in a way that simplifies it to you but also having the presence and awareness of the others simultaneously. A cool hobby for that. Oh, and for people who are listening, your Carnegie Hall hasn't happened yet. It’s coming up, right? Sara: That's true. So this is a total bucket list kind of opportunity where our group is going to be traveling to Carnegie Hall in the fall to perform Verdi Requiem, a very powerful piece, and it would be hard not to be blown away and feel that experience of music. So I’m all signed up and ready to go. Lisa: That is so amazing. So depending on when people are watching this or listening to it, we'll make sure that we put it in a blog post format so that if someone wants to search it and see that after the fact, maybe if you get a little video footage, we can upload that and people could come back. Or if they're listening after you've already been, they will see it right now inside of that. Sara: Yeah, fun! Lisa: So cool! I like how you're modeling that you're using hobbies to make money. Even though you're not using Carnegie Hall to directly make money, you're showing how all of your top talent themes are embedded in your everyday thinking and doing. They're "written all over you." I think this will help a lot of people because it's easier to think of what you enjoy rather than to declare what your superpower is. Please let us know when we can see the video of your Carnegie Hall moment. Sara: I'll make sure. I don't remember the date off the top of my head but I will certainly. Lisa: So many useful ideas and examples about how to apply your strengths. Now if this made you say, “Oh my gosh, I totally need Sara at my event to kick-off strengths with my team” — if you're thinking about doing it, you want to request Sara, when you come to our contact page, be sure to request Sara for your event. Using Hobbies To Make Money - Want More Ideas For Translating Them To Your Current Role? Lisa previously interviewed the multi-talented Melissa Dinwiddie on how to spark creativity. Get a dose of useful insights and inspiration on how she discovered, understood and nurtured her strengths through playing the ukelele, dancing salsa and the Argentine tango, doing improv classes, calligraphy and a host of other hobbies, and actually earning money from many of those. You could be feeding your Learner theme when you uncover your hobbies and interests through your strengths. And when you tap on Focus to fully develop these hobbies and share your creations with others, you'll find yourself enjoying your life through the exciting opportunities and experiences that come your way.
Adventure can feel overwhelming if we don't make it simple. This episode is dedicated to give you some tools and tips to make it simple and action-oriented. When I say simple, I am always thinking through the lens of “what can I do tomorrow?” Magic is when things are not as they seem. You are actually tricking the brain into a new and different experience. The micro-experience are the everyday moments that pass us by. If we can learn to create opportunities for magic moments by tricking our brain, we are taking the first step towards connecting through adventure. How to create the conditions for serendipitous adventure experiences? Episode 3...find your starting point...When I talked with Trina she revealed that some of her greatest adventures happened when she was lazy, which means she has an opportunity to be intentional about creating the conditions for serendipitous adventure experiences You might begin to realize that our thoughts are truly the starting point of many of our experiences. Given that, I want to offer some ways to frame your mindset around what the first steps might look like. Changing locations Fun First I wonder.... unexpected/ unplanned One of the unique elements of Ordinary Sherpa is the tribe of Sherpas who are offering insights, and suggestions. FB group suggestions Curated crowd-sourced resources The following are suggestions from Ordinary Sherpas like you: Lisa: "So not sure if this would qualify as an adventure, but my dad did something super cool when we were young that I always remembered. He would wake us up in the middle of the night (probably really like 9pm, but felt much later at the time) to take us on an adventure. One time he took us to a local carnival, another time it was a drive in movie, and once I remember we went to look at Christmas lights. Nothing expensive or far, but there was just something so magical about being half asleep and being whisked out bed to do something fun. It felt so exciting! My dad was amazing that way... ❤️" Dawn: "One intentional thing I like to do is meet people along the journey and get their advice on where to go and what to see if they're local or even tourists and what they've enjoyed the most on their trip. This approach has helped me and my girlfriends discover a salsa club in Manhattan & Russian/Turkish bathhouse in Greenwich Village. They are the best memories from our NYC trip." Tony: "Star Watching. Eye's only, telescope, using a phone app where the constellation lines appear. Grab some hot chocolate with Milky Way bars." (the element of Fun first...milky way bars and hot chocolate at night!) Reframe Expectations: planning a trip: What are the minimum requirements of planning? Mystery trip, ask a stranger, you decide Workout vs. hike. 5K weekly challenge Perspective: Summer camp example “Deep sea diving” Tips for Cultivating Magical Moments Brown Sign Adventures: Road trips, state and county highlights (historical, parks, beach, etc.) Why is this place special? Notice and take note! Seasonal Adventure List: engage the family in this one. Some example of things on our Winter Adventure list (in Wisconsin) Ice Skating (Venues, DIY, random locations) Snow Sculptures///make and Igloo? Snow shoe Turn garage into a roller rink Family art class (Kids Drawing channel, local orgs) Better yet, have someone else make the list. Ordinary Sherpa is partnering with The Adventure Challenge. They have curated a family adventure challenge book. We purchased the family adventure Challenge book (they also have a couples and friends version) and I will say it has all the magic baked into it. .....element of mystery, unexpected, no planning, and gives you the structure to just do it! My intent is not to sell you anything, because I actually was planning to curate lists for you, but after trying this as a family I am going to highly recommend that if the first steps are hard, or you are simply out of ideas - you might want to check this out. I am also thinking it's a great way to gift experiences vs. things, especially this year! I do have a link to purchase and a coupon code in the show notes. I wouldn't be sharing it if I didn't LOVE it. I also have a fun announcement related to this at the end of the show! Adventure to-go bags Swim bag: Beach towels, goggles, sunscreen, baby powder Travel bag: chapstick, tweezers, band aids, extra contact lenses, charging cord and battery pack, hair ties, dental picks Camping bin: Smores kit, head lamps, propane tank, hammock. Kids carry-ons: Kanteens, snacks, drawing supplies, 2 books, 2 toys, blanket, and pipe cleaners! There is no wrong first step. The only thing you could do wrong is do nothing! ANNOUCNEMENT: To help all of you get started I have a fun announcement. As I mentioned earlier in the episode we are thrilled with The Adventure Challenge and they have created Advent(ure) Calendars for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. In light of that Ordinary Sherpa is doing a giveaway. If you would like to be entered into the drawing you simply need to leave a written review on the podcast platform you are listening on. Then email us at info@ordinarysherpa.com with the screen name you left the review under. We will pick 1 prize for each 5 written reviews we get and announce the winner on the next show. This episode will be dropping on November 25th and I will run the prize drawing until we either award 10 advent(ure) calendars or until December 9th so families can get them in time to participate in the mystery adventures. Again these are family-friendly adventures that you scratch off each day and design for you to experience adventure with your family. And don't forget if you are interested in the Adventure Challenge books use our link below and coupon code ORDINARYSHERPA for 10% off your entire purchase. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I look forward to reading your reviews and connecting with you soon. Products and Partners mentioned in this episode: The Adventure Challenge: We purchased the Family Adventure Challenge. They also have Couples and Friends editions. We also will be giving away Advent(ure) Calendars to any listener who leaves a review between November 20, 2020 through December 6, 2020. You can use ORDINARYSHERPA for a 10% discount at checkout. Kleen Kanteen: These are the indestructible water bottles that I referenced. We all have our own and I bought extra caps too. The sippy top was a nice feature for when the kids were toddlers. Kleen Kanteens Adult:https://amzn.to/37bClp8 caps with loop: https://amzn.to/39dddAI Kids: https://amzn.to/2HvzChc sippy cup top: https://amzn.to/3l1MmtU *Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
Contrary to popular belief, optimum nutrition is not one-size-fits-all. What works for others may not work for you. Our body type is dictated by genes that we cannot change. What we can do is tailor our exercise and diet so that our genes respond and are expressed the way they are supposed to. This week, Neil joins me to explain how to personalise your optimum nutrition and exercise. Throughout the episode, we emphasise the importance of knowing your body type in building the right diet and exercise for your specific set of genes. If you want to achieve optimum nutrition and health according to your genes, then this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. You can also join our free live webinar on runners' warm-up to learn how a structured and specific warm-up can make a massive difference in how you run. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Know the three general body types. Get Neil’s recommendations for each body type to get optimum nutrition. Discover the role of genes in shaping our biology. Resources Email lisa@lisatamati.com to know more about my health optimisation consulting. The Search for the Perfect Protein by Dr David Minkoff Episode Highlights [04:17] Genes and Body Types All body types are unique. Genes are the blueprint of the body. Everything that happens in the environment affects your genes. The exercise and food we give our bodies dictate how our genes express themselves. Our bodies can significantly change if we do the wrong exercise or give it below optimum nutrition. We may end up with an unhealthy body. [09:15] The 3 Major Body Types The formation of body types starts at embryogenesis. It depends on which layer (ectoderm, mesoderm, or endoderm) is provided with more energy. Different bodies will respond to exercise in different ways. Ectomorphs are taller, slimmer, and leaner with a low percentage of body fat. Mesomorphs are shorter and have the classic triangle shape (broad shoulders and narrow waists). Endomorphs are great at putting on fats and muscles. They have bigger bones and evenly shaped lower and upper bodies. [14:46] Nutrition and Exercise for Mesomorphs Mesomorphs are agile and quick responders. As a result, they are coordinated and athletic. Activities that work well for this body type include 20- to 40-minute CrossFit-style exercise, intensity interval training and short bursts of high-intensity activity. Make sure to have enough rest to avoid injuries and health burnout. Have three full meals a day, with regular snacks. Get your protein up for recovery. [24:32] Nutrition and Exercise for Endomorphs Endomorphs are good at endurance and strength. Get heavier weights and lower repetitions. Start slow and exercise optimally late in the day. Also, take longer warm-ups. Take later breakfast and lunch, with lunch as the biggest meal of the day. Increase your vegetable intake. [31:22] Fasting for Different Body Types Women have to be a little careful with more prolonged fasting because of their cycle. Fasting should be shorter for ectomorphs and mesomorphs. For ectomorphs, 12 hours intermittent fast is good. Endomorphs can last up to 16 hours or longer. They take two to three meals per day. [33:05] Nutrition and Exercise for Ectomorphs Ectomorphs have a more developed nervous system and are suitable for speed endurance. Cycling and swimming help calm their body. Because they have stiffer and more rigid body tissue, speed, endurance and flexibility work should be balanced. You can put a heavier load with higher repetitions — for instance, 12 to 20 reps. Do this at 7 in the morning and in the afternoon. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘We’re all born with around 23,000 genes; we’re all born with a blueprint. That’s a blueprint of our genes, and those genes were given when born. But what we can do now in a way our body responds with the exercise and food we give it will dictate how our genes express themselves’. ‘Here's my genes. Here's how I can optimise them, and how I can also be aware of perhaps some of the weaknesses that I might have and how I can make the best out of my body, and out of my mind, and out of my sporting performance and out of my health’. ‘If you look around — look at your family, your friends, those around you — you'll see that we are all different shapes. And we should be different shapes. It's okay to be different shapes’. ‘You can still be a long-distance runner, but it becomes more important, then, that you rest harder’. ‘You can get gains without pain’. ‘It's okay to be me, in all aspects’. ‘There are advantages and there are disadvantages to every body type. The thing to take away is let's work with our advantages’. Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can personalise their diets and exercise based on their body type. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Introduction: Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host, Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits this week. Coming up, I have a very good interview with Neil Wagstaff, who has been on the show regularly, my business partner at Running Hot Coaching. And today we are getting into personalized nutrition and personalized exercise. So, understanding how to build the right exercise and diet plan for your specific set of genes. So, this is related a little bit to a couple of episodes that we've done prior, but it's focusing in on the nutrition aspects, and on the exercise aspect. So I hope you really enjoy the session. Now Christmas is coming up. So if you haven't got your Christmas presents ready yet, you might want to grab one of my books. We've got three Running Hot and my first one, Running To Extremes, both of those chronicling my adventures all around the planet. Lots of successes and failures, and lots of laughing, lots of fun we have at those books. And my recent book, Relentless—how a mother and daughter defied the odds, which is really a book about empowering you to overcome obstacles, think outside the square, take control of your own health. And it's a love story between a mother and a daughter and family. So I hope you grab one of those for your Christmas present this year. You can get them over on lisatamati.com, under the shop banner. And before we go over to Neil, I just want to remind you, we are taking on a small—very small number—of clients on one-on-one sessions. If you have a health problem—I just was getting asked all the time, ‘Can you please help me with this or that problem’? And so we've actually opened up a number of places, we're only dealing with 10 people at a time on their health journeys. If you've got a complicated health journey that you want to help with, or you want high performance, or you've got some big massive goal that you have, and you need some support around your mindset, or brain injuries, or a cancer journey, or stroke, or whatever the case may be, then please reach out to us, support at lisatamati.com and tell us what you're looking for. And we can see whether we'll be able to help you. We're enjoying working with a number of people and getting some fantastic results. So, let us know if you want to do that. Please also give a rating and review to the show if you haven't. It really, really helps the show. And I can't emphasize enough how appreciated that is when I get a rating or a review from a listener, it really makes my day. I love hearing from listeners because you don’t—you're always talking into a microphone, you don't actually get a lot of feedback. So, we do appreciate you telling us what you think. And if there's guest recommendations or if there's things that you want us to talk about then maybe we can add to the list, then please let us know. Okay? Reach out to us. And yes, right, over to the show now. We'll be enjoying this conversation with Neil Wagstaff, all around personalized diet and exercise. Welcome back, everybody. Fantastic to have you with us again. Today, I have Neil Wagstaff in Havelock North, my business partner at Running Hot Coach, my long-time coach, and exercise scientist, brilliant man, welcome to the show again, Neil. Fantastic to have you back again. Neil Wagstaff: Thanks, Lisa. Nice introduction. I like that. Lisa: Yes, well, got to [00:03:40 unintelligible] you up a little bit. (laughs) Neil: Very nicely. Very nicely. Lisa: All very well entertained, by the way people. So today's subject and I love having these conversations with Neil because we love to learn together, develop our philosophies together, train together. Yes, it's all fantastic. So today we're going to be looking at exercise and nutrition, and how to personalize it to you, so that you are doing the right diet and the right types of exercise for your particular body. So, Neil, where do you want to start with this? Do you want to start with the body types and that type of thing? Neil: If we give people a little bit of an overview of just the phenotype, what we're going to be looking at and then we can go into some of the body types in there. So just everyone should appreciate and understand, Lisa, they're all unique. And it's okay to be different. It's okay to be themselves. And gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all program for the exercise and nutrition point of view. And your exercise and nutrition should be personalized to you. Now as we look at that and sort through, it is good to look at it through the lens of—which is where we're going to be looking at it—through the lens of epigenetics. So, as you know, we’re all born with around 23,000 genes, we’re all born with our blueprint. That’s our blueprint of our genes, and those genes are what we’re given when born. But what we can do now and where our body responds with the exercise and food we give it will dictate how our genes express themselves. So, if we're giving ourselves the wrong type of exercise, or the wrong type of nutrition, or doing it at the wrong times of day, or a different time of day, then our genes can respond in a different way. And what we get as a result that is a phenotype, with you and I looking at each other with how we look. Our phenotype can look some differently different, it can be affected from a health point of view, if we've got the exercise, wrong time of day, wrong dosage, and the wrong intensity. And the same from nutrition point of view—wrong foods, wrong time of day, and the wrong amount. And all of a sudden, our phenotype can change quite significantly. And we can end up with a body that is not in a good state from a health point of view. Lisa: Yes, and this is where the one-size-fits-all approach of the fitness industry—up until recently, at least—has put certain body types in down the wrong direction. And you use a couple of terms there, I just want to clarify, and people would have heard on a couple of our earlier podcasts, if they have listened to a number of them. We're really big on understanding your genes and understanding how to optimize your genes and how to make the best out of your body, and not seeing the genes as something as deterministic. But seeing them as a, ‘Well, here’s my genes, here's how I can optimize them and how I can also be aware of perhaps some of the weaknesses that I might have, and how I can make the best out of my body and out of my mind and out of my sporting performance and out of my health’. So the word phenotype is a word that we use in our daily language now. But people probably don't quite understand what a phenotype. So, if you think of your DNA, your 23,000 genes odd, we're still counting, but around about there. And then everything that happens in your environment, or your food, your nutrition, the way you think, the perspective on life, your emotional well-being—all of these things affect your genes. And what is the result of that is how you are. That includes not only the way you look physically, but also the state of your mind, the state of your body, and the state of your health. It’s a combination. So the ‘epi’ meaning above the gene, it’s outside of the genes, what's influencing the genes. So when we talk about genes being turned on and off, this is where it gets exciting because we have the ability. So, we inherited our genes, we can't do anything about that, mum and dad did that for us. We are given the blueprint half from mum, half from dad, we got to make this or that. However, which genes are actually activated and which are being transcribed—transcription is a word that is used in regards to genes—and actually read is very much in our control. So some people get a little bit nervous when they hear genes or ‘Getting my gene system, maybe I'll come back with some bad genes’. Well, there's no such thing really as having—well, there is some bad mutations and so on—but we don't need to say, ‘Well, that means I'm going to get cancer. I've got the bracket gene, so I'm going to get cancer’. Or ‘I've got the MTHFR gene and the methylation, and I've got some bad mutations, therefore I am going to get XYZ’. That's not the case. It's like, ‘Oh, okay, got a bit of a problem here. Right, I have to do some certain interventions, or certain things that can help support my body’. And that's what we're all about. And today we want to focus in on the exercise part of the puzzle, and also the nutrition part of the puzzle. So, if we go now into some broad body types, to give you a bit of a framework to build this around, and unfortunately, the podcast, for those watching on YouTube, we do have slides and stuff, but we haven't got them with us today. It's a little bit hard to picture. But if we go in now and talk a little bit about the three major body types, Neil, can you explain visually how they look? And what, yes? Neil: Yes. So somatotypes, as they're called, are basically three different body shapes. Okay, so different bodies are going to respond to exercise in different ways. Okay? So an ectomorph are generally taller, longer, slimmer, low percentage of body fat, leaner, and generally, depending on what they're doing, we'll find—will often struggle to put more lean tissue on. And regardless of whether exercising or not, they normally keep a similar sort of shape. A mesomorph are normally a little bit shorter in stature, then that sort of traditional triangle shape. So broader shoulders, narrow at the waist, and shorter with the lower limbs, and they're very, very good at putting on muscle mass and usually put it on very quickly. And they're usually those a little bit more agile, quick, good coordination. And usually those good in the sporting arena as well. Endomorphs are usually bigger bones, great putting on all tissues. So great putting on adipose tissue or body fat, also great putting on muscle. So bigger, much, much bigger units from a body point of view and evenly sort of shape with upper and lower body so that that mass is kind of distributed quite nicely across the whole body as well. And if you look around you, look at your family, your friends, those around you, you'll see that we all different shapes. And we should be different shapes, it's okay to be different shapes. If I'm an endomorph, I don’t want to spend my entire time... Lisa: ...trying to be an ectomorph. Neil: ...trying to be an ectomorph. But this is the way the health and fitness industry has been set up, it is the picture of, ‘This is what we should all look like we should all look like this’. And we should all be great, which for some people, they're going to fit into that box and they're going to go, ‘Yay works for me’. Others, it's just not good news. We need to trade some more individuality and personalization around it, that people getting the right results. If we take it a step further as well, this whole process starts when you're growing in your mum's tummy. So, the science of embryology, this all happens at that phase. And if you imagine as you're growing in mum's tummy, how much energy you're given to each of your derms. So you've got your ectoderm, your mesoderm, and your endoderm. As you're developing and growing in mum’s tummy, you'll get certain amount of energy into each of those derms. So this whole process of what body shape or somatotype you're going to be starting as you're growing in your mum’s tummy. As you're developing—I’m just kind of sit as a ecto-meso, a little more on the ecto side. So, I'm kind of taller, stroke, with muscle — I can put some muscle tissue on more than the true ectomorph could. As I was developing in my mum’s tummy, I have much more energy go into my ectoderm. So, I have more development through my nervous system. So, I've got quite an active nervous system, more sensitive to pain, and a little bit of a very active mind. And probably described the body's a little bit more fragile than an endomorph body would be, which has more development through the digestive tract, and the ability to put more on tissue. So therefore, a much more resilient body, going to be better to deal with the calibre stress... Lisa: The human weight Neil: Endurance wise, it’s great at taking a whole lot of burn, physical endurance. From an exercise point of view, it’s a sort of body that's going to be well suited to powerlifting and things like that, but great endurance wise, Lisa: Dwayne Johnson is a good example of one of those, isn’t it? The Rock. Neil: Very much so. Very, very resilient body. This whole process is starting, as you—when you come into the world, you're kind of already going to be an ecto, a meso, or an endo, or a combination of—you might be an ecto-meso, meso-endo, and an endo-ecto. But if you can start to relate as you're listening and look at your body shape, and start to think about where, what sort of body shape I've got, and what sort of activities should I be doing for that for that body? And what time of day, should I be doing it? And how should, what sort of dose of exercise should I be applying? Then you can start to get some good wins. Okay, you can start get some real, real good wins with your exercise and nutrition plan. Neil: And that's what we sort of want to cover off today, it’s a little bit of a broad—it's a very broad overview. So Neil, and I have a program where we actually do your genes and have a have a whole technology behind us if you wanted to go into it and do a deep dive and find out exactly what you are and where you sit and what the right recommendations are for your body—the right foods, the right exercise, the right times a day. But to just give you a broader overview here, what are some takeaways from today, so start to think where do I sit? So, I know that I sit on the ecto-meso sort of side of things. So I'm not a true-true mesomorph but I am quite muscular in built. I'm a little bit taller than your average mesomorph. So I have some ectomorph tendencies as well. So if I'm looking for me, there are certain things that are really good for me and certain things that are not so good for me. And so, we're going to cover off a little bit today, those from them three major groups, the ectomorph, endomorph, and the mesomorph. What some high level wins that you can just take away from this podcast today and actually go, ‘I think I fall into that category or a combination of those two’, and then you can start to experiment. I mean, of course, come and see us, ask us some questions, do the program if you want to do it, but if you don't want to do it, you can take some high level wins away from this. So for the—let's start with a mesomorph because it's sort of the part that I fall into and know quite well. So the mesomorph from our body type is very good at putting on lean muscle mass, they're very quick adapters. So when they exercise, they get results quite quickly. They're very coordinated usually and quite athletic. From a personality perspective, they can be quite into challenge and into beating everybody else, very competitive. They love to express themselves. So they're quiet, they need to be able to share their thoughts. Sometimes there's no filter between the brain and the mouth. And they have a dominance in testosterone and adrenaline if they're true mesomorph. And this means that they have a bit more of a risk-taking personality, they have a lot of drive and determination, they can push through, and they tend to go hard out. And they like a lot of change, and a lot of like, challenge, and that sort of thing. So, you can see, possibly, that I fit nicely into that category with a bit of ectomorph in there as well. So for that person, Neil, can you explain what are some of the high level wins for them from an eating and an exercise perspective? Neil: Yes, no worries, Lisa. So natural strengths for the sort of body you're just describing is going to be good from sort of hand eye coordination point of view. So, getting involved in activities that involve good hand eye coordination. They're going to be quite agile and quick, they're going to be able to move quickly, and respond quickly. From a body awareness point of view, they're going to have good connection with their body. Often you'll find—if you're the sort of body, you'll be able to pick things up quite quickly. Try sport, try an activity, and get it quite quickly. As you say, quick responders, so the type of exercise you're doing, and you're going to respond quickly to. To be fair and probably very honest, this is the message the sort of people that the fitness industry is... Lisa: Catering to Neil: ...screaming about for years when you should do high intensity and sport training. So CrossFit style exercise, high-intensity interval training, short bursts of high intensity exercise worked very, very well for this body. So if you've got this body, those shorter sessions are sort of 20 to 40 minutes, is going to work very well for your body. And things to be careful of here exercising for too long. So exercising for long periods of time, it's a lot to involve in, resulting in additional information and additional load on the body. So one of the biggest wins—and we've worked a lot on this, at least ourselves as well with your programming—is making sure that there’s enough rest in the program. Here, it's all about going hard but then resting hard. Going hard, resting hard. Now what often happens is, a lot of our athletes, the runners that we work with, and just people looking for general health goals as well, we find that they go hard really well, but they don't rest so well. So, you end up with that inflammation, that additional load on the body, and then the next one, you end up with the injuries, niggles, and health burnout as well. So just, yes, rest hard and all right to work out, make sure the rest hard is there as well. Move daily, the regular movement. As I'm talking to Lisa, now she's moving around on a... Lisa: Rocket board. Neil: Rocket board. So she's rocking back and forth. That’s great for her, it means we can do what we're doing. And she can stay in flow and she can stay in flow because she's moving regularly. For this body type, leaving it sat still, desk all day, is a recipe for disaster. Lisa: Kills me. Neil: So don't be sitting in the tree in the afternoon. Okay, be conscious about moving in that 2 to 4pm window, getting out and moving. If you sat at your desk, then stuff where you can work and move is very useful as well. Lisa indicated that about having a competition—the challenge, whatever you’re doing, exercise-wise. This is why for the mesomorph programs like CrossFit works so well. You get a workout after the board, it’s like, ‘Right. What is the challenge for today? I don't know what it's going to be, what is it? We've got the challenge, it’s up on the board, the way we go, and now the whole group of people I can be’. So that’s why it works so well for the mesomorph. Looking for opportunities as well. Working out earlier in the morning. Some good wins when you work out through the afternoon. But make sure that you are dipping things down and going through your working install exercises in the late afternoon and evening. So you turn in the body down, mobility work, meditation work, stuff that's going to slow the system down and get you into a parasympathetic state. So, you're then ready to rest and recover and go and do the same thing the next the next day. Lisa: Don't go hard out all night, which I used to do, day and night (laughs). Relinquish. Neil: Rest, rest, rest hard. Food wise, you can start to see that it's a similar—it's going to be with the amount of movement that we're encouraging for the mesomorph. It’s like, ‘Right we're going to need to feel that’. So food to this body is like kindling on a fire. If you put it in and it burns through it quickly, transit time from mouth to bomb is pretty quick. So you need to keep fuelling. So, three good meals, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then regular snacks. So, you're going to be looking at up to sort of five or six meals a day, that paleo style food recommendation, again has come out from the fitness industry, is great for the mesomorph. Lisa: This type... Neil: Okay? And enough protein. Protein is going to be key. Often we find that a lot of mesos we work with, and some are even vegetarian or vegan, where we get some massive wins, is getting the protein up. So protein is needed for the recovery, it's needed to see more so for this body type, so getting that happening and increasing that can be can be key. Lisa: And to that point, quickly we did a podcast was two weeks ago, I think, with Dr. David Minkoff, make sure you go and listen to that podcast because it was all about the perfect amino combination and getting the right—so amino acids bring the building blocks of proteins, and this is a game changer for a lot of athletes, especially people who are in the mesomorph interview. Definitely if you're vegan or vegetarian and try in your office body type, or if you're like me, and you're constantly dealing with a protein deficiency, then that can be really detrimental to your health. And there's a product that Dr. Minkoff has put out, which is just next level. I've had some great ones with it already with a couple of people that I'm working with and with myself. And just healing much better, much more calmer and so on because you're finally getting all the proteins that you need in the right combination. So make sure you go and listen to that because when you have a steak, only 33% of that steak is actually going to turn into protein. So just because you eat meat, don't think you've already got it covered. So make sure you go and listen to that episode a couple of weeks ago. Just as an aside, but the mesomorph does need a lot more protein. The mesomorph also has a lot more oxidative stress—they have a lot more oxidants. So, they need a lot of antioxidant support. So these antioxidants are things like your vitamin C, which I've just done a massive series on as well. Very, very important for this body type to define as your master, antioxidant bioflavonoids. So, getting your fruits and your veggies and your things that have got this antioxidants in there can really help this type as well. Neil: Connecting the dots a little bit for the listeners as well, Lisa, is that we're recommending here, when we said sort of dosage wise, we were talking about that sort of 20 to 45 minutes short session. Now it could be, we got some runners listening and doing ultra-marathon runners like you used to, with your big distance you've done in the past, is looking at right, it doesn't mean you've got to stop running long distances and you've got to cut back to doing 20 to 45-minute sessions. You can still be a long-distance runner, but it becomes more important then that you rest harder. So the rest dosage needs to go up. Plus, really conscious then, are you getting the right amount of food in each day? And is there enough protein to support that additional workload? So it's getting clever with going, ‘Right. There's other exercise that I want to do, which isn't necessarily the best choice of exercise for my body type, but I love it. So I'm going to carry on doing that. But now I can use the other information I've got to go right. What do I need more of to support my body through this’? Lisa: And that's working in the grey, if you like. We've got our personal goals and then we've got our genetics and what they want. So, it's that's what we help with people to work in that grey area to make—like I wanted to do ultras, I did it for 25 years and had some fantastic times and successes but it did come at a cost because I wasn't aware of all this spec being and not necessarily covering all my bases which lead to problems, as shall we say. Okay, let's move over now to the endomorph body type. So, these are those—the types of people that are bigger boned, like literally bigger boned, and they have more muscle mass, more bone mass, and they tend to be conservationists in their body type. So, my mom's a classic example of an endomorph body type. Can level the smell of an oily rag basically, as far as food goes for a long period of time, and not lose weight and also not lose muscle which can have huge advantages and huge disadvantages. So Neil, what are some of the exercise and food recommendations for the endomorph body type? Neil: But generally, these guys' bodies we said when we're talking about the embryology side with the body shapes, these bodies are going to be good for endurance, they're going to be great for strength, you can put a significant amount of load through them. Okay, so we've talked for now you start to see some differences coming in. We talked about the mesomorph, short, sharp, high-intensity, fast, explosive, quick style movements, Cross fit style stuff. Now we're going to talk about getting heavier weights. Okay? So heavier weights, lower repetitions, could be in the sort of five to eight rep range with good rest periods in between. So, you can get gains without pain. That message again, that's come out of the fitness industry over the years is, ‘Got to keep pushing. No pain, no gain’. Yes, we can get gain without the pain, that's fine. Just let the body take its time, put some good loads for a bit. Things to take into care in here as well as we've got runners listening, which we probably have with the audience. Lisa's looking at making sure you've got a longer warm up. So, this body is going to take longer to warm up, if you're going to do some endurance stuff, give it a good 15, 20 minutes. A mesomorph body type might not need as long to warm up. Okay? There's going to be differences and care for the perfect repetitive impact and jumping without the extended warm up can still do them, but you need the longer the longer warm up for it. Now, and generally in the morning, this body type—we said with a mesomorph get up early and get into some stuff. What we're saying here with this, the endo body shape is start slower. This body is going to have a different hormone balance as well. So, getting up early and loading the body with a high intensity class at 6am is probably going to result in that body putting on all adipose tissue and body fat tissue. So you could do bootcamp, literally three days a week. You can train like a HIIT train and get better or not change at all. So both are just crazy concepts. I train three mornings a week, I eat six meals a day, and I'm getting better. So it's looking at—the morning should be about improving your circulation and rising slowly. So if you want to move, move, but keep at low volume. Lisa: Low stress level. Go for a walk. Neil: Low stress level. Ease into the day, spend time in nature, and then slower heavy lifting will start to get you better results. Optimum times—when doing some training is going to be later in the day. So, the later you can push your training in the day, the better against slow start, pick up steam, and then go hard. And then use your energy before you go down into the latter part of the day. And yes, just look at low reps, try it and test it. Okay? Like you said at the start, if you want to get the exact, here you are, come and look at the program. If you want to play with it and test it, see what results you get. Some more traditional style lifting, bigger compound movements, get some good weights through the body, and that weight will—sorry the body will respond well to that additional resistance. And that applies to guys and girls. Ladies, don't worry that you're going to start getting bigger. The result of this will start to change shape in a positive way by getting more load through your body. Lisa: Exactly, and muscles are good things, girls. And an example of this is my brother Dawson, who looks like The Rock actually. And his classic training style is heavy, heavy weights, and doing them quite slowly. Whereas if you watch us two at the gym, I'm going hard out hard out, like back-to-back seats, changing. And he's sitting near with his music on and he's doing one set, and then he's having a rest, and then he's doing another set and having a rest. And I used to think, ‘Shit, I don't want to do that because that's wasting my day. Like I don't want to spend so long at the gym’. And then he’s cut it down to the size he wants. But that's the right way to exercise for his body. Conversely, with my husband, Haisley—and I've said this before—I used to make them do CrossFit at 6am in the morning, which was a complete disaster for his body. Neil: You’re a hard woman, Lisa. Lisa: Yes, I am a hard woman. Poor Haisley. And now that he does super long-distance running. And he does heavy weights, he doesn't like doing the weights particularly, so I got to drag him to the gym. But that—his body responds to that heavier slower weights but don't make him do CrossFit, he won't get the results and it won't be a good experience for him. From a meal perspective, let's talk a little bit about their eating times and the chronobiology of their—when they should eat. Neil: Yes. We talked about with the mesos that five or six times a day, the food is like kindling on a fire. Now we're going to change that. For this body type, we're looking at potentially changing the meals to say 10, 2, and 6. So later breakfast, later lunch, with lunch being the biggest meal. Lunch being the biggest meal of the day and then a smaller dinner as well. And in some key cases, depending how close you are to the meso and how close you are to the ecto in some cases, looking at—for the endomorphs looking at getting rid of breakfast all together and having a longer fast in the morning. Higher vegetarian. High vegetarian intake for these bodies as well. And it's amazing, some of the local wins we've had with some of the guys working with locally in Hawke's Bay. Big guys, big sportsmen as well, and just going from eating sort of four or five times a day, lots of meat, reducing that meat down, increasing the vegetarian portion of food that's going into a diet, longer fast in the morning. Their energy has gone through the roof, their clarity of mind has gone through the roof. Their resilience with regards to niggles and injuries that they had before, which was probably down to inflammation, has now started to go. And the results they're getting is phenomenal. Now, again, you see in the media that everyone should be fasting’s next best thing. What we're seeing now that for some people it is the next best thing, it's the perfect thing. Lisa: For these guys, it’s great. Neil: For these guys, it’s great. For others, if you put me on a fasting process like that, when we talked about the ectomorph having the high nervous development in the nervous system, need carbohydrates for the brain. I'd be out cold by lunchtime, if I follow through a meal time like that. I would have probably eaten one of my limbs. So the more time for a person... Lisa: I mean, you could do a fast. But you do a shorter fast don't you, Neil? So you do a 12-hour as opposed to... Neil: Yes, so generally I won’t eat after seven in the evening and then don't eat until seven again in the morning. Lisa: So it’s a 12-hour fast type of thing? Yes Neil: So, to kick start my day, I need to eat the carbs. Lisa: Yes. And so that's just working in with your thing. Because there is good things about fasting, don't get me wrong here. Like there is really good things about fasting for all body types to a certain degree. Woman have to be a little bit careful with a longer, longer fast, in relation to—so I find and if you're of an ectomorph side of the wheel then, and to a certain extent, a meso, then your fast should be a little bit shorter. There are some great things about fasting, especially if you're dealing with weight issues or inflammation on the body. Or if there's some specialized reasons why you want to do longer fasts for autophagy, inhibiting mTOR and things like that. But that's outside today's discussion. But it is a general rule, a good 12-hour intermittent fast for an ecto is a great thing to give your body a rest. For an endomorph, if you can last for up to 16 hours or even longer, brilliant. And you can actually even go for longer periods of time if you're really on the endomorph side of the scale without too much detriment. So it's a learning to understand but definitely only two to three meals a day. And not five to six meals a day is probably a key takeaway point. Neil: Correct. And the way we've had the biggest wins just as a little summary for these guys is changing the exercise time. So, moving the exercise the later in the day, and going to three meals, at 10, 2, and 6. Huge, huge, huge wins. Lisa: Already. Neil: So it's simple changes, massive results. Lisa: Yes, slower, slower periods in between your seats, or long-distance slow sort of aerobic activity perfect for these guys. Okay, now let's go to the ectomorph, the last sort of group on the spectrum, if you like. What do these guys need? Neil: So these guys are generally going to be your speed endurance guys and girls. They're going to be the ones that got the ability to live on that threshold. So, they often be your triathletes, your sort of middle-distance runners, those people that—and some people also long-distance runners—but they can live on the edge, that lactate threshold quite comfortably and enjoy it for quite long periods of time. So high drive to do that as well. So, they want to do that, enjoy doing that. And we talked as well about them being more developed in the nervous system. So, the rhythmical exercise of cycling and running and swimming, that helps calm his body a little bit as well. So the rhythm is a good exercise, almost like a meditation, will help calm that I find being able to process my thoughts of mine while I'm on a bike or running is the best place to do it. Things to be careful of. This body will often be stiffer through the spinal cord and will often have to tie some more rigid tissue. So, you need a balance of that speed endurance work and but also to complement that, you're going to need a lot of mobility work, flexibility work. Okay? Stuff that's going to mobilize, moving up the spine. From a repetition point of view, we've just talked about the endomorph having higher reps. I am personally, historically would always come out... Lisa: Oh right. Actually. Neil: ...generally done a strength block a couple of times a year. I would end up doing reps of sort of five to eight heavy lifting and that's when I'd usually pick up most of my injuries. The reason is my body just wasn't, is... Lisa: Not designed for that. Neil: Not capable—capable is not the right word—it’s not designed, as you say, to do that. I can put some heavier load through it but we need to be a lot more careful than an endomorph body would. So high reps, 12 to 20 reps, lots of mobility work and really going a day of high intensity, endurance base work followed by a day of recovery, yoga, mobility work, and peaking and troughing like that. Okay, and good windows of opportunity with exercise around seven in the morning. And then again in the afternoon, depending on what works best for this body type. Okay, again, seeing quite big differences. Differences in body shape, therefore differences in the type of exercise you're going to respond to and the results you're going to get from it. Lisa: Yes. Now, I think that rounds it out really nicely. So you got your ecto, your endo, and your mesomorph. And this is a helicopter view, guys. If you want to dig deeper into the whole science of the genetics and epigenetics, then we can get really granular. Like we can tell you, ‘Don't eat kale, do eat spinach’, like down to that root sort of level. But just to keep it so you can take away some wins for today, those that I think, try and identify what you are. Whether you're like me, a bit of a mixture between a mesomorph and an ectomorph, and where use it on that scale, listen to this, again. Pick out some of those—because this is about low hanging fruit and getting a couple of wins. And if you take away from this that you should be eating a little bit later in the day and doing your exercise later in the day, then that's a little bit already a positive one then, that’s an understanding. I think one of the biggest things that I've gotten out of this whole genetics, this whole genre of it, you and I’ve gone down, Neil, in the functional genomics and the epigenetics is, it's okay to be me. In that in all aspects, whether it's us working together in our business, in the way our brains work, in the way our personality is, in the times of the day that we do things, right through to the nutrition, and right through to the social, and understanding, ‘Hey, I was born this way’. Not that this is an excuse to be not great at something, but it does explain why I do things in a certain way, and why my brain works in a certain way, why my body reacts in certain ways. And that gives you permission to be you because like as a young woman, I know that I was always wanting to be an ectomorph. I always wanted to be the super skinny model type girl and I was a muscular athletic girl and that was not okay because that was not what I wanted to be. And I know Neil's struggled with the same thing here. Small calf muscles and thought, ‘If I do a billion reps of calf muscle exercise, I’m going to have big calves’. And you're pushing should have basically, aren’t you, Neil? You can’t be what you’re not. Neil: They weren’t enough. Lisa: Now you love your calves because you can run a lot faster than I can, that's for sure. Neil: Yes. They’ll look great in heels. Lisa: Exactly. And you know, for someone like mum who struggles with the weight because of the endomorph tendencies. I tell you what if she hadn't had that type of body, she wouldn't have got up out of a wheelchair after two years of being unable to walk. Because she still had muscle mass. She still had good bones, she still didn't have osteoporosis, or anything. So there are advantages and there are disadvantages to everybody type. The thing to take away is let's work with our advantages. Let's be aware of our weaknesses and let's accept ourselves, I think, as we are and understand ourselves better. And that's probably a good place to wrap it up... Neil: Nicely. Lisa: ...for the day. Neil: We'll wrapped up. Very good. Lisa: Okay guys, well thank you very much once again for listening to us. Please do reach out to either Neil or I if you want support doing this program. We'd love to have you join us of course. Or if you've got any other health issues or whatever you want to talk about, or your fitness journey, you're running, you've got some goals, please reach out to us. You can get us at support@lisatamati.com. Give the show a rating and review and share this please with your friends. We love doing this type of thing, aren’t we, Neil? If we could just do this all day, we’ll be stoked. Neil: Would be nice. Would be nice. Lisa: We love teaching, we love sharing, we love having good content out there in the world. So, thanks very much, guys and we'll see you again next week. That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
Exercise gives our body a physical and mental boost. It’s good stress, but it’s stress nonetheless. Thus, doing a running warm-up before an interval run or training is integral to get the most benefits out of running. Neil joins me in this episode to explain the steps in preparing for a running workout. We emphasise the importance of setting your mindset before training. We also cite different examples of run-specific movements, drills and breathing exercises. If you are a runner wanting to do a running warm-up right, then this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: You will learn about the role of stress levels and mindset when preparing for training. Know more about running warm-up and breathing exercises. Discover the importance of run-specific movements. Resources Email lisa@lisatamati.com to know more about my health optimisation consulting. Visit my YouTube channel to watch warm-up, workout and training videos for runners. Episode Highlights [03:47] Understanding Your Bucket of Stress The bucket of stress is filled with things going on in your daily life. You layer exercise on top of it. Having an overflowing bucket and doing high-intensity interval running will cause more stress to the body, causing injuries and pain. Conduct a wellness check to assess your current state. The checklist includes sleep, nutrition, hydration, movement, energy, body, and stress. Listen to the full episode to learn more about computing your wellness score! Change your warm-up and training to suit how you are feeling. [12:13] Shifting Your Mindset Neil is a father of three. He works out because he wants to be a superhero for his kids. Figure out what training means for you. Mindset is essential when doing a workout. You need to shift from work mode to training mode. Incorporate diaphragmatic breathing exercises to activate your body’s parasympathetic state. [18:47] Activating Your Muscles Spiky balls, rolling sticks and foam rollers are some of the tools you can use to activate your muscles. Expose your feet to neural stimulation to get them to move freely. Because the feet are connected to other parts of the body, activating it will start to relax the muscles and tissues above it. Activation may vary from person to person. Some people have a lot of tension in their bodies, while others are hypermobile. [22:11] Static vs Dynamic Stretching Static stretching is holding a single stretch in one position for 30 seconds or longer. Doing a static stretch lengthens and switches off the muscles, making them too relaxed. The body thus becomes too floppy. Static stretching has its benefits after a run or during a yoga session but not before a run. Dynamic movements allow the body to move more freely. [25:48] Warm-Ups and Fascia The fascia connects the different parts of our body from our head to toes. Fascia lines run across the body. Warm-ups should help open, lengthen and move the fascia. Stretching and moving the fascia allow you to move better and run more freely. [31:47] Doing Drills It is best to do run-specific movements and drills. Ball of foot hops and carioca are some of the drills to help you warm up. Listen to the full episode to learn how Neil does his warm-ups! Listening to music helps to have cadence. You may create playlists for before and after you run. If you’re doing a recovery run, you can use calmer music. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘That's what training is about. It's not about the actual run where you actually get the results. It’s in the recovery phase’. ‘How you prepare your mind is going to be key when you understand your “why” before you warm up’. ‘A lot of people find their toes are bunched together and tight. If we can get some movement through those, we start to get more benefit from our running as well’. ‘Gone are the days of static stretching and standing on the doorstep during your quad stretch, holding. All you're doing there is switching the nervous system off and increasing your likelihood of injury and discomfort’. ‘You take which bits of the tools you want out of the toolbox, and then you start using them from your perspective’. ‘Looking at what you're currently doing, who you are and how much in a warm-up — what percentage you use each tool for will be quite different for each person’. ‘You will have — and I promise you this — a much more fun run, and you'll enjoy it more if you've put the time into this warm-up piece of the puzzle’. Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can optimise their running warm-up. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of Pushing The Limits. Today, I have Neil Wagstaff, who is my wingman at Running Hot Coaching, and we're going to be talking everything about running and preparation for a good training session — how to tell if you're ready for that session that's on your list today. We're talking about stress levels. We're talking sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. We're talking activating muscles. We're talking lymph and circulation and a whole lot of great info that you don't want to miss if you're into exercising, fitness or running. Before we go over to the show, though, I just want to remind you please give a rating and review to the show if you enjoy it. Share it with your family and friends. We've been going now for five and a half years, and we've been in the top 200 globally ranked shows in health and fitness genre, and we really appreciate your support. And every one of those reviews and ratings really helps the show get seen by more people, heard by more people, so that they can get this great information that we're getting out. Just want to also let you know, we are taking on a small number of clients on one-on-one health optimisation consulting. If you got a really tricky health situation, if you're not getting the results that you want in the normal world, if you are needing help navigating some complicated situations, then we'd love to help you. We only work with a very, very few people at a time. And that requires quite a commitment from us, from the research side of things in helping people optimise their health or navigate their way back to health. So if it sounds like something like you would like to know about, please email me lisa@lisatamati.com. We only work with a very few people at a time at that level. So just letting you know that that's available. Now over to the show with Neil Wagstaff in Havelock North. And I hope you enjoy this fantastic interview. Lisa: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. This week, I have my wingman, Neil Wagstaff. Neil, how are you doing? Neil: I'm good. Thanks, mate. I'm very good. How are you? Lisa: It's very hot here. I'm sweating as well. Neil: Here as well. Lisa: Very humid! Right, people. Today, we have a really good webinar for you, podcast episode for you, all around the importance of — this one’s for runners, really — and it's all around runners warm-ups. Why do you need to do one, what's included, why you need to incorporate breathing into that warm-up routine. It's more than just running warm-ups, believe me, you'll get some great value, if you're a runner in this one, or if you're into fitness. And we're going to be talking about the importance of running specific movements to prepare for your run. And we're going to be going over some of our top drills to activate your body and get you ready. So, Neil, we did a fabulous session yesterday on this, and it was so valuable we decided we got to record this for the podcast, so… Over to you, mate. Neil: Thanks, mate. Thanks, and as you say, it is a lot more than just the runners warm-up, but it's… Gone are the days we just lace up your shoes and run out the door. That's what many, you know, we definitely did in the older days. And a lot of our clients we work with do, a lot of people, as you said in the introduction, as well, it’s not just the runners. It's in an exercise environment as well. So we put a lot of emphasis on this in the gym environment. So important, there should be some good nuggets for everyone. So the first thing first before you even think about the warm-up is understanding about what we call your bucket of stress. So the bucket of stress, if you will imagine you've got that bucket sitting in front of you. And within that bucket, there's things that will fill it up. Now some of those things are going to be what's going on in your daily life. They're going to be your kids. They're going to be your work. They're going to be family. They're going to be other stresses that are happening, and then you layer exercise on the top of it. So with the bucket stress, it’s understanding how full yours is. If you're going to go out and do a high-intensity interval run, where you're doing 1K intervals at 80, 90% of your max effort, and your bucket is already overflowing, then that run, those interval runs on top are just going to cause your body more stress or more loads, which will give you a pretty harsh response, which will then result in injuries, niggles and pain. Lisa: Yeah. Neil: On days where your bucket is full, what you want to be doing is really changing your workout or changing your routine to suit how you're feeling. Okay, you know, I've had massive conversations over the years about the bucket. What's your— give us your perspective of it and how you manage your routine a little bit differently now. Lisa: Yeah, and I'm still probably a bad example some days. Neil: You’re a good work in progress. You’re a good work in progress. Lisa: Do what I say not what I preach sometimes. But it's really, I have really adopted the fact that it is important to do a warm-up when you're preparing for a run. And also to understand what we're trying to get across here is that just because stress is good for your body— I mean, sorry, running is good for your body or exercise is a good stressor, if you like, it is still adding to your total stress load. So the level that Neil used to run it when he was not a dad of three little children and had a bit more time and didn't have a massive German, a couple of businesses to run, he could dedicate more intense time to training without breaking himself, if it makes sense. Now, because his energies are split in every which way, he has to be a little bit more careful how he prepares for an event, the time that he takes for it, and the time that he prepares his body. So if your training plan says today, you should be going out and smashing a really long run or a really intense run, but you haven't got the resources because you had a really shitty night sleep, and you didn't drink enough yesterday, and you didn't eat properly, and the kids have been up all night, and goodness knows what else — you've got a lot of stress and a lot of worries on your mind — then you're probably not going to get to that adaption— adaptation, sorry, when you do that training, which is what you're actually doing it for. It's not just about ticking the box because my coach said or my plan said that I had to do that today. And I've ticked the box, therefore I am good to go. It is about saying, 'Is my body going to respond to this training session today’? Yes or no? Or, ‘Would I be permitted to postpone that really intense workout to a little bit later, maybe tomorrow? And I'll get to bed early tonight. And I’ll drink well, and I’ll hydrate well. An I’ll do all the other bits and pieces as well. And then I might be a bit more prepared for that'. Does it make sense? So you’re not doing things when your body is not going to get the adaptations because that's what training is about. It's not about the actual run where you actually get the results; it’s in the recovery phase. So understanding where your body is at, which is a really good segue into our wellness checklist. Isn't that, Neil? Neil: Yeah. So yes, you go through as well as, just asking yourself each day, where you're at a number of different things and things we get with our wellness checklist. And you can all do it at home as you listen to this. It’s a simple scale of 1 to 10. So 1 to 10 on these things we're going to talk about. How well did you sleep? That's the first one. How well have you eaten, and where you're at from nutrition point of view? Lisa's already mentioned hydration, number three. So how well have you hydrated? How well have you moved? What sort of exercise movement have you done in the past day? On a scale of 1 to 10. And then energy wise, where's your energy score at? 1 being the toilet, 10 being at rock and roll levels, you’re ready to party. And body, any niggles, any injuries? And your stress score, so 1 with the stress will be low and 10 will be good. That gives you a total score. If you've got a score up over 50, and it'd be a good indication that you're ready to go and do a warmup that relates to what's in your program. If it’s saying that, we're doing the example, the 1K, then that puts us in a position that we should be ready to do it. If my score is lower, which some days it is, then I'll look at my program and go right, I've got intervals. But I mean, my score’s down at 40. So those two workouts don't match up then. So what I then do is go, ‘I can still go train, but my training may be a recovery run instead so I feel my energy levels back up’. If you are continuously having low scores with this full stress bucket, it's not a runner's warm-up you want to be considering. It's about— it's really another strategy, which is how am I going to empty some of my stresses out of my bucket? Because your bucket should be managed on a daily basis. So that you, you know, 80, 90% of the time you're doing what your program says, it's just having the confidence and understanding that some days when things don't go perfectly you can tweak it. Okay, so just to recap: sleep, nutrition, hydration, movement, energy, body, and stress, scale of one to 10. 1 being in the toilet, 10 being rock and roll. And we can send the, or add the… Lisa: Yeah, we’ll put this in the show notes, actually, the checklist. Neil: Wellness check to the show notes. Yeah, so that's understanding again really helps you manage your bucket. So before you've even warmed up, you're asking, what's my session I'm going to do? Now, I know what type of warm-up to do. The other bit to consider as well is really, really a little bit about your why. If you are… Many programs out there, what we've looked at over the years, designed by ex-professional runners, often male, without giving them a hard time, and often by men. And in our business, we work with a lot of ladies. Over 70% of our business is working with females. And a lot of our athletes we're working with, mums or dads, and they have got busy work lives, busy family lives. So those programs are running five, six days a week just doesn't work. So ask the question as well, what's your why? And who are you? So for me, personally, as Lisa knows, my three little ones, Ellen, Cameron, Annie, I love the idea of getting dressed up as Superman. Okay, and we shared a couple of pictures of me dressed up as Superman. So it's understanding what your why is and why you're doing it. I want to be a superhero for my kids. Therefore, the type of workout is different now, as Lisa said earlier, than I was doing in my… pre-kids. And when I was back in my 30s, then I was thinking more like a professional parkour athlete and wanted it to be doing. So therefore, the warm-up is going to be different. So what we're trying to do, and the big thing especially from Lisa's perspective as well, is how important mindset is. We're really big on that with what we do as well. So understanding what mindset you're going into this workout in. So for me, I'm going in as a superhero, wanting to be a superhero, for my kids. Some people who are listening will be going in with a professional athlete mentality. So how you prepare your mind is going to be key when you understand your ‘why’ before you warm up. There's no need for me to warm up like a professional athlete if I'm wanting to go and warm up like a superhero. It’s a different mindset as I do that. Does that make sense? Lisa: Yeah, it does make sense. And I mean, like, I'll give you an example out of my sort of, you know, day. So if I'm, like, full on busy with the business all day, and I'm sitting a lot at the computer and meetings, and blah, blah, blah. And then comes five o'clock and I go right, I'm shutting the computer, I'm out the door. And if I go out without any preparation, and we've had arguments with people, they said, ‘Well, I've just slowly increased my pace. Isn't that a warm-up’? No, it's not a warm up. And I'm still guilty of this on occasion when because you're like, you've got half an hour, and you got to get out the door. And you don't want to do a warm-up, and so… But there's a couple of pieces missing out of that puzzle. One, there's a really important reason why you— firstly, you want to shift your mind, you've been in work mode all day. And now you got to, ‘Oh my gosh, I got to go and train’. And the last thing you feel like when you've been sitting for hours in a static position is to go and do a full on workout. So you have to change your mindset because you can fail before you get out the door. And a lot of people have this argument with themselves every single day. It's like, ‘That’s on my list, but I’m knackered from work, and I don't feel like going out the door. And I just want to go home and eat a packet of chips and sit on the couch’. And so there's a couple of tricks that I use to get myself out of that thought process. So the couple of rituals that I do. So when I go and I go, ‘Right, I'm going to get into my training gear, regardless of whether I'm going out the door or not because I'm just going to do that’. And when I just go and do that, I put my training gear on, that is a ritual for me that I am… My body starts to go, ‘Oh, when we're heading for training. We better get ready’. And it gives you enough, a couple of minutes, just to get your mind in that new space. You've been in the work space or the driving space or whatever you've been in, and now you're entering a new phase, and you're bringing yourself into the present moment. You're getting your gear on, and for me, putting my running gear on as always, for me, like putting on my armor, and I'm getting ready for a battle of sorts. It doesn't always have to be a hardcore workout, but I'm getting ready for action. Then the next thing I do once my gear is on, it's like, well, ‘I might as well just do a little bit of a warm-up and see how I go’. Like this is when I'm having those days when I don't want to train, you know, you know those ones. These are the tricks that I do to get myself out the door. So then I start to activate my muscles. And we're going to go through a whole list of things with Neil, right now. But just from a mindset point of view, when I start doing my dynamic stretches and my activation and my thing, and I'm getting my heart rate up. And then by the time I've done that for a few minutes, my mind is ready for the actually going out and then my body is also woken up. So that's just a little bit of a mindset tip to get yourself out the door and bring yourself into the present moment. We also like to incorporate in that some breathing exercises, just, we could talk for hours on breathing. There is so much to learn about breathing. But just to give you just a simple quick exercise that you can do before you go out. So you've just come from work. You're going to do a box breathing exercise, where you're breathing in for four in the inhale, holding it for four, out for four with the exhale — a nice strong exhale — and then holding it for four. And you just do that box rhythm for maybe three, maybe four breaths. And in that time, close your eyes, seem to yourself into your body, start to feel your heart pumping, start to feel how do my arms and my legs feel, and you're just pulling your focus in, and then you'll be ready. Once the time you've opened your eyes, you'll be ready to get underway or get your warm-up sorted. So those are just a couple of little quick mindset tips to help you over that hump, whether it's in the morning and you get out of bed and you're going training or after work or whatever the case may be. Neil: Perfect, Lisa. Let’s go with the breathing just to add in as well, it’s the… often, when you've not just flipping the mindset, you're also flipping things like the diaphragm. A lot of the time, if people have been in a sympathetic state throughout the day, which a lot of us are throughout the day now. Then if we go to, we're breathing through our upper chest and breathing through our shoulders, a lot of people will get massive results, just by them realizing that they can breathe properly into their lungs, and they're actually going out with not having enough energy to run because their breathing patterns, off. So getting that breath going, and as Lisa said, with the nasal breathing is a great thing to add in, a very simple thing to add in as well. As we go through this, this already, we haven't even got to the moving part yet, we've already had quite a long discussion, we want people to realise is we're creating a toolbox for you. That's a toolbox of things that you'll be able to pull out when you need them. Some of you won't need the breathing as much as others, depending on what else has happened in your day already. It's a great thing to do. But some of you may find you've had quite a relaxing afternoon before you go run, and you're already breathing very nicely. So you don't need to use the breathing as much as someone that's been in a stressful situation for the afternoon or is in a very sympathetic state before they head out. Lisa: Just briefly on the sympathetic and I think I've covered this in a couple of podcasts. But just to recap.. Sorry, took the computer over. You have a parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So you, when you're in a sympathetic state, what we're meaning by that is that you're in a hypervigilant, alert, stressed out state, where you are producing quite a lot of stress hormones. Your cortisol levels might be up. Your adrenaline might be up. And your heart rate might be up, and your breathing, very often, is in the upper third of the chest. And this is telling your body, 'I'm in fight or flight mode. There’s dangerous things happening to me’, even if those dangerous things are just emails and a shitty telephone call from the boss. Yeah, that isn't necessarily a lion or a tiger that, you know, used to be chasing us when we were back in the caveman days. But it's the same response in the body. And so what we’re wanting to do with this breathing exercise is to doing some diaphragmatic breathing, so that's breathing into the belly, and we're going to do sessions on breathing because honestly, that's a couple of bucks worth. But it's all about flipping it, getting that sympathetic nervous system activated. So you have nerves in the bottom of your lungs. And when you do very good strong exhales are really important in breathing in with the diaphragm, you're actually activating those nerves at the bottom of the lungs and tuning on that parasympathetic state. Now that parasympathetic state is all about rest and digest and recovery and immunity and all those repair processes. Now, we are going into an exercise situation, but to start off in a place of not being stressed is a good place to start. So flipping your mind and flipping your body over from one thing into the next thing. So that's just a very brief touch on sympathetic versus parasympathetic states. Neil: The next piece in the… or the next tool in the toolbox is going to be our rolling or myofascial release. So the tools we use for this are spiky balls, one of our favourites, rolling stick, which like rolling pin and a foam roller. Easy wins and low hanging fruit are always going to be your feet because they spend most of the day wrapped up in a shoe. And generally, our feet don't move as well as they should. Our feet should ideally move like our hands do, and our toes should move like our fingers. For most of us they don't so getting them out, getting them exposed to more neural stimulation and releasing any tight bits in the feet and getting them moving more freely makes a massive difference. You got... Lisa: Can you explain the neural stimulation? I think that's— it’s really why they're activating those fibers in the feet is the connection to the brain and the coordination and… Neil: Connection to the brain. One thing it does, it's like waking your feet up. So if I spent all day with my hand, for example, in a big glove and deprived it of senses and deprived it of being able to feel and touch things, I'd lose connection with what was going on around me. So I start to lose connection with understanding what was hot, what was cold and what things should feel like. If I can have that stimulation through my foot, and the great thing with a spiky ball, we're not going to smash it, is it starts to wake the feet up again. So all I'm saying is, wake up, wake up! I'm sending messages from my feet through my nervous system up to my brain going, ‘Ah, that's how I move my big toe’. Ah, that's the big toe, with running real important. But that's how I move it. And that's how my other toes move. A lot of people find their toes are bunched together and tight. If we can get some movement through those, we start to get more benefit from our running as well. Other people are going to have calves that are locked up and feet that are locked up, everything in your body is connected. So if we start to stimulate the feet, we get massive results with people who've got lower back pain or people who have got shoulder pain or neck pain, because the connection with the fascia in the bottom of your foot, it then runs up the back of your body up across your calf, your hamstrings, your hips, starts to relax a tissue above as well. So simply two things that are going to happen as you do that. One is you're going to get some muscles relax that need to be relaxed. Then the other thing, you can actually start waking the feet up. Okay, depending on where, and it's gonna be very much dependent on where you're at as a person. Some people are carrying loads of tension in their body, and some people are hypermobile. So those that are hypermobile aren’t gonna need these tools as much as those that are rigid and stiff. Yeah, do I make sense? Lisa: Yeah. Neil: You need these tools for what you need. And that's the emphasis we want to make is doing this whole thing when we finish talking about it. And its shortest version would be between five and eight minutes or longer version might be 12 to 15 minutes, but some of you are going to use more tools than others. So some of you, what we've discussed already, may use the breathing more than the rolling. But feet is an easy win, calves are an easy win. Rolling around the hip area, the glutes is a very easy win, the quads and getting those areas both, switching off muscles that needs to be switched off. But also starting to wake up muscles that need to be woken up. And it's easy ways to do that with those tools. Gone are the days of static stretching and standing on the doorstep during your quad stretch, holding. All you're doing there is switching the nervous system off and increasing your likelihood of injury and discomfort. Lisa: So just to explain what static and dynamic is for those who perhaps aren't familiar with that term. So static stretching, where you're holding a single stretch in one position for, I don't know, 30 seconds or something or longer. And that's not a good thing to do prior to a run or exercise because you're actually lengthening that muscle, and you're switching it off and making it too relaxed and then you're going to be able to flop it, for lack of a better description when you go out. And so you want to be waking it up, activating it, getting the blood flowing through it, but not turning it off. The static stretching has its value but that comes after the run or if you're doing, say, a yoga session or something like that, then it's a different thing. But you wouldn't go into a yoga class and then go for a run, for example. That would be a recipe for injury, but you're wanting to activate these different areas. The other thing to note with the foam roller was don't smash the crap out of yourself like, it's not go hard or go home. Cause I used to do that, to be fair, you know, when I first started with foam rolling years ago. It was like, ‘Ah, the more it hurts, the more I have to do it’, and, you know, as with everything, yep, you fight through the pain. But actually, the more we've learned about lymph and all the other stuff that we've learned in activating, you don't need to go full ball hard. If it's that painful, you should be around, what, six and seven, right, Neil, for what you're doing with the foam rolling. And you know, we have lots of videos and stuff on our YouTube channel if anybody wants to check it out, or, of course, joining our club and you'll find out all that sort of detailed information. So that's the activation phase. Your hips, your calves, your feet are a good place to start. Neil: It's a good technique, just simple techniques to work with are released with awareness. So we've already talked about breathing. If you find a sensitive spot, you can apply some pressure to that, getting no more than sort of six or seven out of 10. Use your breath, in through your nose, out through your nose to actually release. Your nervous system, we’ve already talked about and your body is fully connected. So by using my mind to tell my brain and to tell my foot or the muscles in my foot to switch off or switch on, I can have that control over my body. I'm using the spiky ball to stimulate it, which gives me something to feel and then I can say, right, wake up or tone down. So use the breath with awareness or release with awareness by using the breath to actually switch things off. If something feels tight, you can imagine the muscle actually switching off, toning down, almost like it's got a volume button on it and you're turning it down. Okay. The next technique, which is a good one, is a pin and stretch. So if you find a niggly spot, thinking about rolling the calves. I'm sitting on the floor with my calf and leg up on a roller. If I find a niggly spot, then I can actually pin it. And then I can move my foot backwards and forwards. So I'm pinning and then stretching. I'm moving my foot in and out of plantar and dorsiflexion. Okay, and then actually flushing the muscles as well is another great technique. We're rolling up and down and across the muscle and a great way to… almost like imagining like your muscle’s like a sponge, where you're you're wringing it out and then putting it back in a bucket of water so it can absorb again, and wring it out. So you’re flushing out and getting fluid moving backwards and forwards. Lisa: Yep. And so on. Yeah, that's absolutely, that’s key. Neil: Right So next on our list. So now we've breathed, we've worked out where we're at, if we come back from the top, we've worked out more from mindset, breathing, rolling. And now we're going to look at our — the body is all connected — so we're going to look at our fascia. So the body is connected, again, like static stretching — gone are the days where we should be looking at the body in isolation, and looking at warming up or moving specific muscles like our chest on its own, or biceps or triceps on their own, or our thighs on their own. The body is connected from toes to head. So the fact that it’s connected from toes to head, and there is myofascial lines that are running right across our bodies — front, side, back. We want to be in a position that the movements we're doing in our warm-up should help open, lengthen, move. Imagine your fascia like a superhero suit. I love talking about superheroes and the superhero suit. And you can— that superhero suit should move easily; you should be able to move easily in it. So what we're doing with these big fascia movements, is you want to be in a position where you're getting that superhero suit just to fit a little bit better or fit a bit more comfortably. And if you do that, then it fits more comfortably when you start running. You're running more freely, we haven't got any sticky bits. Okay. Lisa: So like, just explain a little bit, you know, in two seconds, it's like the chicken skin is. I know. It's like each of these subjects we could do an hour on that seriously, but the fascia, so we all know we've got ligaments, we've got tendons, we've got muscles, but a lot of people really have a struggle. What the hell is fascia then? And what do you mean it's all over my body? And you get that? Like, you know, that… Neil: Connects absolutely everything. In two seconds, fascia connects everything. It will connect the tissue, like you described the chicken skin on chicken. It's on the superficial level. It connects muscles, it connects bone, it connects your vital organs. So if there's anything locked up in any of that fascia, it's almost like a, like a web, if you look at it. Lisa: That’s a good analogy. Neil: And have a look at it. And depending on what parts your body you're looking at will depend on how dense that web is. Lisa: Like a spider cobweb’s like. Neil: Exactly, exactly that. You move that to the… To move freely, if I've got something as locked up and my fascia’s sticky, or it's not moving as well as it could, then it could be that I've got a shoulder pain on my left shoulder. And that's actually my right foot. So it’s looking at, and all we're doing with these big fascia movements and looking at myofascial lines, and very simply speaking of the anterior, posterior and downside of the body as well, you’re starting to get that suit to fit more comfortably. We're starting to iron out any of those sticky spots. Now, if you find that as you're moving through some of these movements, that you find that you are stickier in some areas and others, it starts to let you know that you've got some imbalances there. Now on top of that, as part of dynamic movement, you then want to add in some run-specific movements. So if I'm going to run, I'm going to be spending time on a single leg. I want to, at some point in my warm-up, I want to be doing something that ideally is on a single leg and is involving opposite arm and opposite leg, like running will. So the warm-ups and dynamic movements we include as part of our warm-up will include stuff that resembles running, gets blood flow and heart rate up, gets tissue open and ready to move and work and gets me ready for the run. So when I get into the run, I'm not spending the first 2 or 3K trying to iron myself out. Open up my fascia, I'm actually running comfy, my body is now awake; my blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and tissue are all up and warmer. And I'm in a position where I can move more freely. Yeah, do I make sense? Lisa: Yep. So without having been able to show you visually here how to do the exercises, what we are working on is giving a little, some sample runner’s warm-ups to do that will show you some of the dynamic movements that we're talking about here to open up and get that fascia going. We haven't got that organised yet, have we, Neil. Hopefully, by the time this comes out, we might have something or coming soon. To give you a bit of an example of the types of things that we're talking about here. So just to recap from the top once again because it sounds like a hell of a lot to do before every single run. But actually, we're talking five to eight minutes. Or if you're doing a really— that's the other thing, if you're doing a super intense workout, you need to warm up longer. Like today I did an interval session, so I spent more time on the rolling and the activating and the getting the heart rate up and doing the drills, which we'll cover in a second. And before I actually went hard, because I don't want an injury. And the harder the training session is, the more I'm going to be engaging all my muscles to sprint, then I need to have everything at operating temperature. If you think about a car on a winter's morning, if you turn the motor off and then jam your foot on the accelerator and tear off, what's going to happen? Your car's not going to be very happy with you because it hasn't been able to warm up, get the blood going or the petrol going or whatever it is in a car, and get it up to warmth, get it up to speed, before you go flat tech if it makes sense. So we've done the mindset, changing your mindset, putting your gear on, getting your head in a good space, tricking yourself into just getting out the blumming door for starters. Then we've covered off some breathing. We've covered off some activation exercises — rolling the feet, rolling the calves, rolling around the hips with the foam rollers and the balls. Then we've gone and looked at some warm-up exercises, which is activating all your fascia or getting your heart rate up and so on. And the last piece of the puzzle — and this should all take you five to eight minutes, 10 minutes if you're doing a hard session — the last part of the puzzle, Neil, what's it? Neil: It’s the drills. So we do some run-specific drills that are same with the dynamic movement. And this becomes part of the dynamic movements, there's quite a lot of crossover here anyways. It's part of that movement. So things like we were talking about — opposite arm, opposite leg movement. So things like, some of our favourite ones are simple things like ball of foot hops, which is like a skipping movement, where we're just bouncing, landing on the ball of the foot with the heel kissing the floor. So warming the body up, starting to get the elasticity and the muscle doing the job it should and getting ourselves ready to roll. We use some other run-specific movements like forward land, which is simple opposite arm, opposite leg movement, where we're starting to really work on the pull of the leg and the action of running. And then another good one that we get some great results with is our carioca, which is a crisscross of the legs. And you can do carioca and have a look, and you'll see that all, we've got videos of these drills, if anyone wants them. Lisa: Yeah, email us. Neil: Please let us know. And the whole idea of these is that, again, everything — hips are open, heart rate’s up, blood pressure's up, we're ready to move. And we've done some movements that are run-specific, so when we go run, we're actually ready to run. So to break it down and give you an example of what my normal warm-up would look like — I'll always run my feet. Okay, I will always go through my breathing, sort of goes from my breathing start and then go through and roll my feet, and I roll my calves, and I roll across the top of my hips and up either side of my back. So they’re my go-tos. From there, I will do three usually big fascia movements, one for the front of the body, one for the solid body, one for the back of the body. And then I go through two or three drills. I’ll go and run. On a recovery run that will take me about five minutes. Okay, on a higher intensity run, as Lisa was saying before, on interval run, that might take me sort of 12 to 15 minutes. But it's you… You take which bits of the tools you want out of the toolbox, and then you start using them from your perspective. The other bit to throw in, just throw the mix, finally, is just looking as well, I'm a big fan of using music. We've talked about this quite a lot before as well as. So music helps me have a cadence. So if I'm doing an interval run, I find music really helps me with cadence to help me keep my cadence up. I'm doing a recovery run, then I don't enjoy using music as much because I'd rather you know, hang out and make it more of a meditative state and chill out from there. So thinking as well about what's in your playlist. Does music motivate you and help add to the mindset? Or does silence help add to the mindset? Working out what you need for each run and should it be part of that session; I use music often in my warm-up. And the music I choose for recovery run is significantly different than one I use when I'm warming up for an interval run. One's going to be really lifting me intensit-wise and mindset wise, the other is going to be letting me know that this is going to be cruising, it's going to be laid back, it's going to be about recovery. Using music as well can make quite a significant difference. Lisa: Because it's… Sorry. It's all about the mind part of the puzzle really. You know, you put, I don't know, Thunderstruck on when you're trying to do an interval session. And you're like, yeah! And you going for it, and the cadence helps you and so on. And that's using your body to activate those that, again, in that case, you're activating some adrenaline and getting that going, which you need for that session. And then you know, you want to calmer ones with you if you're just doing a recovery where you don't want to be smashing yourself and you just want to be cruising, then you want a more cruising music. But just on that note, though, just be aware, if you're in traffic, you know, it can be really dangerous. And I've been hit by a car because I had bloody things in my ears, and I was unaware of the traffic around me. So just being a little bit cautious if you are out running on roads and crossing streets, especially when you come to intersections, and you can’t hear that car coming around the corner. Neil: Pick what you're doing and where you're doing it. Lisa: Be aware, be aware of your environment. Neil: Looking, then you should have that toolbox in place now. Looking at what you're currently doing, who you are and how much of a warm-up — what percentage you use each tool for will be quite different for each person. So as we said at the start, some people will need to spend more time breathing. Some people will need to spend more time rolling. Others might need to spend more time with the dynamic warm-up. You'll all do a little bit of each but it's going to be, the percentage will be different. And when you use each tool, it’s going to depend on what you're doing and what's on your program. Lisa: And one other point here is that you will have — and I promise you this — a much more fun run, and you'll enjoy it more if you've put the time into this warm-up piece of the puzzle. Because I know a lot of us are under time pressure and stress. And we've got like, ‘I've got 30 minutes, I've got to get my running today. That's all I've got, I don't want to spend 10 minutes warming up’. Okay, negotiate with yourself and try to do at least five minutes, because it's better to get that five minutes because that other 25 is going to bring you more than that extra five minutes of running, if that makes sense. Because you— if you talk to runners, most people and if you're a beginner, you might not be aware of this, but the first 20 to 25 minutes are absolute crap for everybody all the time. You know, it's very rare, where you just run out the door, if you haven't warmed up, that you'll be enjoying yourself and your body will be stiff, it'll be sore, it'll be not activated, you won't have a good posture, you'll feel like your heart and your cardiovascular system isn't woken up. All of that can be avoided if you do all of this in the preparation. It's like laying the foundation of a house. If you do it on quicksand, you're not going to have a very stable house. If you do it on concrete and you put your foundations and your poles in properly, you're gonna have a house that stands for a long time. You're going to enjoy your run a lot more. You know, today's session was was a classic example of that, you know, interval session full on, hardcore, big good workout, warm-up prior and the session wasn't nearly so difficult than if I just jumped out the door and done it. So don't underestimate that. Neil: Good polling, Lis. I liked it. Lisa: Don't underestimate a good warm-up. So people, if you've enjoyed this content, please share this with your friends and family. Share it, get it out there, get it out in the world, we really appreciate you doing that. And if you, you know, want to come and join us at Running Hot Coaching, this is what we do. And what we love is to help people with their running journeys and inform people. And as you can see, we take a very holistic approach to our running into our health programs and to all of the programs that we do. Because we look at people as whole people and not as runners or not as ‘You've got a health issue or specific health issue’. We look at the whole person the whole time so that you can actually get the best performance because there's no optimal performance without optimal health. That's probably a good place to leave it, actually. Neil: I like it. Lisa: Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Neil, for your wisdom as always — epic. Really appreciate you, right. And we'll see you again next week. Thanks, guys! That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends. And head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
Sepsis is a massive health issue worldwide. According to WHO, nearly 50 million people get sepsis every year, killing 11 million. Here in New Zealand, one in five ICU patients dies because of it. Thus, raising awareness about the role of vitamin C in sepsis can help save lives. Dr Anitra Carr joins us in this episode to expand our understanding of the role of vitamin C in our body. She also explains how vitamin C functions not only as an antioxidant but also as a cofactor in many different mechanisms, particularly in fighting cancer and sepsis. Everything we share in this episode will be helpful for you should you find yourself or a loved one admitted to a hospital, so tune in. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn more about vitamin C’s antioxidant properties. Discover how vitamin C helps patients with pneumonia and sepsis. Learn about vitamin C’s role as a cofactor and how it ensures the proper functioning of different body processes. Resources Read more about Dr Carr's study on vitamin C levels in patients with pneumonia. Access Dr Carr's review on recommended doses of vitamin C. Health and Immune Function Benefits of Kiwifruit-derived Vitamin C by Dr Anitra Carr Read more about Dr Carr's ongoing clinical trial on vitamin C and its effect on COVID-19 patients. Learn more about Dr Paul Marik's protocol for sepsis using vitamin C and steroids. Learn more about Dr Fowler's Phase 1 safety trial of IV vitamin C in patients with severe sepsis. Watch Professor Margreet Vissers' lecture on her work on vitamin C. Episode Highlights [04:40] How Dr Carr’s Research on Vitamin C Started Dr Carr’s research began in 1998, where she studied how reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by white blood cells react with our tissues. White blood cells produce ROS to help kill bacteria. However, they can also react with the tissues and create inflammation. Dr Carr then began investigating how vitamin C’s antioxidant properties help decrease inflammation. She also studied the benefits of vitamin C in preventing atherosclerotic plaques and the development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). [09:42] Vitamin C as an Antioxidant Vitamin C has real antioxidant properties. Metal ions produce oxidants in the body; vitamin C donates electrons to these ions, converting them to the reduced state. The recommended daily dose to benefit from the antioxidant potential of vitamin C is 60 to 90 milligrammes in men and 75 milligrammes in women. You need a higher dose (120 milligrammes) of the vitamin to protect yourself from CVD and cancer. [17:57] Vitamin C in Food vs. Vitamin C Tablet Dr Carr conducted a comparative dosing study between kiwi fruit and vitamin C tablets. She found no difference in the vitamin C obtained from food and tablets. The body recognises the same molecule and takes up the same amount. [21:36] Vitamin C in Sepsis and Pneumonia Patients with pneumonia can develop sepsis, resulting in multi-organ failure, septic shock and, eventually, death. In observational studies in patients with pneumonia, Dr Carr found that the lower the vitamin C levels, the higher the oxidative stress. The body's requirement for vitamin C goes up by at least 30-fold when you get pneumonia and sepsis; it is hard to get those amounts orally. ICU patients need a vitamin C dose of 100 milligrammes per day. In these patients, the actual levels of vitamin C measured in the blood is lower compared to the amount they are receiving. [25:25] Why Is Vitamin C Testing Not a Protocol in Hospitals? Doctors are not familiar with the importance, recent research and mode of action of vitamin C because it is not taught in medical schools. The hospital system is not set up to routinely measure vitamin C. In trials, vitamin C is treated as a drug rather than a vitamin. We need to know how vitamin C works to create proper and adequate study designs. [32:27] What Are Some of the Future Vitamin C Studies We Can Conduct? We need studies about the frequency, dosing and timing of its administration. We need to learn about the finer details of the vitamin rather than doing the same study designs. It is tough to obtain research funding due to the misinformation surrounding vitamin C. We also need to educate doctors and patients alike about the science behind vitamin C. [43:16] Vitamin C as a Cofactor Our cells rely on enzymes to carry out chemical reactions. A cofactor helps enzyme function. Vitamin C functions as a cofactor for the enzyme that synthesises noradrenaline and vasopressin. These hormones help in blood pressure regulation. It’s better to give ICU patients vitamin C than giving them vasopressin drugs. This allows the body to naturally produce the hormone, preventing the side effects of getting vasopressin externally. Vitamin C is also a cofactor of collagen, which plays a role in stopping cancer metastasis and wound healing. [54:30] Vitamin C in Epigenetics The expression of DNA may be regulated by adding or removing methyl groups. Vitamin C is a cofactor for enzymes that modify DNA methylation. It controls the switching on and off of genes, playing a possible role in personalised medicine. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘I’m much more interested in the whole person and how they're feeling, not what's happening inside a single cell’. ‘Don't wait until they're at death's door and at septic shock. It's hard for a vitamin to do something at this stage, even a really high-dose vitamin’. ‘A lot of these studies were designed to reproduce the first studies that came out to see if they could reproduce it also. That's why they’re using similar regimes. But now that we know more about it, each study adds another piece to the puzzle’. ‘There’s bigger issues at play with the whole pharmacological model that our whole system is built upon, and that nutrients and nutrition isn't taught in medical school. So, we're up against this big sort of brick wall’. ‘People go into a hospital setting or something, and they expect to have the latest and greatest information available, that the doctors know all that. And unfortunately, that's not always the case’. ‘Every person's life that is saved is a family that's not grieving’. ‘It’s the reason I’m doing this podcast, and it's the reason you're doing your research. And hopefully together and with many others, we can move the story along so that people get helped’. About Dr Anitra Dr Anitra Carr holds a PhD in Clinical Biochemistry/Pathology. She started researching vitamin C when she undertook a postdoctoral research position at the Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, USA, and was also awarded an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr Carr produced a number of high-impact publications in the field of vitamin C in human health and disease. Dr Carr is currently a Research Associate Professor at the University of Otago, Christchurch, School of Medicine. She has established her own research group, the Nutrition in Medicine Research Group, and undertakes translational bench-to-bedside research comprising observational studies and clinical trials on the role of oral and intravenous vitamin C in infection, cancer, metabolic health, mood and cognitive health. Dr Carr endeavours to understand the underlying biochemical mechanisms of action as well as improve patient outcomes and quality of life. She also pursues various ways to improve clinician and general public understanding of the roles of vitamin C in human health and disease. You may contact Dr Carr through anitra.carr@otago.ac.nz or call +64 3 364 0649. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about the benefits of vitamin C in sepsis and pneumonia. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to the show! This week, I have another fantastic interview with another amazing scientist. But before we get there, I just want to remind you please give a rating and review to the show if you're enjoying the content and share it with your family and friends. I really appreciate that. And if you haven't already grabbed a copy of my book Relentless, make sure you do, you won't regret it. It's an incredible story that is really about taking control of your own health and being responsible for your own health and thinking outside the box. And it's the story of bringing my mum back to health after a mess of aneurysm. And it will really make you think about those—the way our medical system works and about why you need to be proactive when it comes to health and prevention, preventative health. And it's really just a heart-warming story as well. So, you can grab that on my website at lisatamati.com. Or you can go to any bookshop in New Zealand and order that or get that and it's available also on audiobook for those people who love to listen to books rather than reading them, I know, I certainly do a lot of that. And just to also remind that if you have any questions around some of the topics that we've discussed on the podcast episodes, please reach out to me lisa@lisatamati.com. And if you want help with one of your health journeys or your performance journeys, or you want to work on some goal setting, on some mindset, please reach out there as well. We'd love to work with you. So today I have the Dr Anitra Carr, who is a scientist at Otago University. She's currently a research associate professor at the University of Otago, Christchurch School of Medicine. She's established her own research group, the Nutrition in Medicine Research Group and undertakes translational bench to bedside research comprising observational studies and clinical trials on the role of oral and intravenous vitamin C in infection, cancer, metabolic health, mood, cognitive health. And she endeavours to understand the underlying biochemical mechanisms of action as well as improve our patient outcomes. So, she's a person who loves to actually not just be in the lab and looking at petri dishes, but to actually help people in human intervention study. She currently has a study underway, which I'm really, really excited and waiting with bated breath to see what comes out. It’s a sepsis study, in the Christchurch hospital with 40 patients. And we talk a little bit about that today. And we talk about the role of vitamin C today. Continuing the conversations that we've had with some of the world's best vitamin C researchers. We're looking at the antioxidant properties, we're looking at the pro-oxidant properties, we're looking at vitamin C as a cofactor in so many different mechanisms in the body. We talking about its role in the production of adrenaline and vasopressin, in hypoxia inducible factors, in relation to cancer, and especially in relation to sepsis, which is obviously a very important one for me. One in five ICU patients in New Zealand dies of sepsis. This is a massive problem. Worldwide, between 30 and 50 million people a year get sepsis. This is something that you really need to know about. You need to understand it and Dr Anitra Carr, also shares why you may not get a doctor in a hospital situation, actually understanding all the information that we're going to be sharing with you today. So, educate yourself, learn from this and enjoy the show with Dr Anitra Carr. Lisa: Well, hi, everybody. And welcome back to the show. Today I have Dr Anitra Carr, and today we're continuing the series around vitamin C. We've had some brilliant doctors and scientists on in the last few weeks and it's been really exciting to share some of the latest research and we have one of our own Kiwi scientists with us today, Dr Anitra Carr from Christchurch. Welcome to the show. Dr Anitra Carr: Hi, Lisa! Lisa: It's fantastic to have you. So, Dr Anitra, can you just tell us a little bit of your background and how you got involved with vitamin C research? Dr Anitra: Well, I first started researching back in the late 90s. So, 1998 and I had just finished a PhD with the University of Otago and I had been studying how reactive oxygen species that are produced by white blood cells react with our own tissues, damage their own tissues because these white blood cells produce these really reactive oxidants, such as hydrogen peroxide, which is hair bleach, and hypochlorous acid, which is household bleach. So very strong oxidants and they produce these to help kill bacteria in our bodies. But these oxidants can also react with their own tissues and that's what contributes to inflammation and the processes of inflammation. And so, I've just been studying how these oxidants react to certain components in our tissues. And when I finished that, I thought it’d be really interesting to investigate how antioxidants, such as vitamin C, which is one of the most potent antioxidants in our body, and help potentially protect against this damage. So, scavenge those oxidants before they react with our tissues, and help decrease the inflammation associated with them and features and conditions. And so, I applied to various people in the United States, I wanted to go to continue my research in the United States. And so I applied to several people over there who are doing research in the area that I was interested in, and they'll write back and say, ‘Yes, we have postdoctoral positions available.’ And so I selected one, on the advice of my PhD supervisor, and this was Professor Balz Frei. He was at the time in Boston. And after I said, ‘Yes, I'd like to work with him.’ He wrote back and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I'm moving to the west coast to Oregon. And I'm going to be the director, the new director of the Linus Pauling Institute.’ Lisa: Oh, wow. Dr Anitra: Great opportunity it is. I like the West Coast of the United States. I've done a bit of work in California during my PhD. And so, I was quite happy with it. And so Linus Pauling had died just a few years prior to that. And so, the Linus Pauling Institute, which was in California, at the time, kind of needed a new home, I think they're in Palo Alto. And so they ended up going to Oregon State University because that was—for a couple of reasons—that was Linus Pauling alma mater. So, he had done his undergraduate research when he was in a cultural college. And also, because the library there was going to be able to host his papers. And so he has this collection of his writings and papers, thousands and thousands of documents, because as you've stated before, he's one of the only people to have been awarded two unshared Nobel prizes. So one was in chemistry around his work on the nature of the chemical bond. And the other one was a Peace Prize for his anti-nuclear campaign. And so the Oregon State University Library has his complete collection, it's called the Linus Pauling Special Collection. And so I spent a few years at Oregon State University researching how vitamin C can protect against oxidation of low density lipoprotein particles, which are what the body uses to export fat and cholesterol around the body, because the cells need cholesterol. But most people know low density lipoprotein protein as bad cholesterol. I mean, it's not intrinsically bad. But if it becomes oxidized, it can contribute to the development of atherosclerotic plaques and contribute to cardiovascular disease. And so I was looking at how vitamin C can protect against oxidation of this particle, and thereby potentially peak against development of atherosclerosis. And I was... Lisa: What was the outcome of it? That would be really interesting. Dr Anitra: Yes. So, I was particularly interested in the oxidants produced by white blood cells, because these can react with these low density lipoprotein particles and oxidized them. And vitamin C is a great scavenger in particular, and I was interested in how much do you need and how the particulars—is the real biochemical level? And, but also during this time, so late 1990s. We were interested—Professor Balz Frei was interested in the recommended dietary intakes for vitamin C. Because in a lot of countries they are very low—these recommendations, primarily to prevent deficiency diseases, such as scurvy. Whereas, we believe you know, that the recommendations should be high to help reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer and that sort of thing. That's a bit helpful to the outcome. So, in the late 90s, in 1998, the Food and Nutrition board of the Institutes of Medicine was re-examining the recommended dietary intake for the antioxidant vitamins, the A, C, and E in the United States. And we write a comprehensive review around all the scientific evidence at the time for what sort of doses of vitamin C appear to protect against cardiovascular disease and cancer. And so, we made a recommendation of 120 milligrams a day, which was, at that time twice what the recommended dietary intake in the States, it was 60 milligrams a day at the time. And so we submitted that document, and it was considered by the Food and Nutrition Board. And also another review, I'd written around vitamin C's antioxidant roles in the body versus its pro-oxidant roles. Vitamin C, referred to as pro-oxidant. Lisa: Yes, I’ve heard that. To get hit around the antioxidant and as a pro-oxidant. Dr Anitra: Vitamin C is an antioxidant. It's not a not oxidant, pro-oxidant. But what it does is it can reduce—so antioxidants donate electrons, and they reduce oxidized compounds. So, it reduces transition metal ions such as copper and iron. So, these are metals in our body that can read off cycles so they can produce oxidants. Lisa: Yes, and we've talked about redox before in the podcast. Dr Anitra: Yes, so what vitamin C does is it converts these metal ions into a reduced state and metal ions can go on and generate oxidants. Lisa: So it gives ion and copper a longer life, does it? It sort of gives them—ion and copper away to keep going? Dr Anitra: Regenerates them so that these metal ions can keep producing oxidants. But in our body, these metal ions are all sequestered away and protected by proteins, they're not floating around free. In the body, vitamin C doesn't seem to do that, based on the evidence, it seems to just have it’s true antioxidant roles, not this kind of prooxidant by-product, as you might call it. So, this sort of evidence was considered by the Food and Nutrition Board and they decided, ‘Yes, it does have an antioxidant role in the body.’ And, and so they also referred to Mark Levine's seminal work to kind of work out a dose, a daily dose of vitamin C, they thought would be good to help foster this antioxidant potential on the body—potentially protect against these other chronic long-term diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. And so they did end up increasing the RDA for vitamin C instead from 50 to 90 milligrams a day for men, and 75 milligrams a day for women. So that was good, not quite as high as we would have liked to see, but still a step in the right direction. Lisa: A very conservative, aren’t they? They are slow to respond and conservative? Because you think like being the preventative space would be a good thing, if we're trying to... Dr Anitra: It is. Prevention is a lot cheaper, a lot easier to prevent a disease. Lisa: Exactly. But I think New Zealand's even worse, isn't it? I think we're at 45 milligrams, which is I think it is. Dr Anitra: One of the lowest in the world, yes. Lisa: That’s got to change, sorry. Dr Anitra: So we're trying to generate the evidence to help support them increase in RDA. Lisa: Gosh, so it's also slow, like you've been doing this for what? 20-like years. And still... Dr Anitra: They do say that translation of science into medical research into clinical practice takes 15 to 20 years. Lisa: Wow, that is a really interesting statement. Because this is why I think, like sharing the sort of information direct from the experts, if you like, and I sit this was Professor Margreet Vissers too, that we have to make sort of educated decisions as people in trouble now. Whether you've got cancer or whether like my case who have a dad who had sepsis, you have to make an educated decision now based on you're running out of time. And we're waiting for the research and the research will be great, but it will be another 10 to 20 years down the line before it actually… And then in the medical world, it seems to be a very slow—Doctor Fowler said that beautifully when I had him on last week. It's like trying to shift a supertanker, Critical Care he was referring to is very, very slowly coming around. And I had Dr Ron Hunninghake on as well from the Riordan Institute, another fantastic doctor, and he talked about Medical Mavericks. Dr Hugh Riordan had written three books on people who were really ahead of their time, got in trouble for it and then actually the research and everything caught up with them later. So that's interesting. So, if you’re listening to this, New Zealand has got 45 milligrams as the RDA, that's just to keep you out of scurvy. Right? So, okay, so you've done all this antioxidant research and this with RSS and at the Linus Pauling Institute, when did you start to develop an interest in the infectious diseases, sepsis side of that, because I'd really love to... Dr Anitra: Yes, that's, that's more recent. So, after a few years—three years at the Institute, I decided to have our first child and move back to New Zealand. And I made the decision to quit science and just focus on bringing up our family, ended up having three children. Stayed home for nine years looking out after our children. And I made the decision that they were more important than my career Lisa: Wonderful. That's an interesting fact, as well as a mom and a scientist, like, an incredibly dedicated career that you'd have spent years getting there and then trying to juggle mum roles with scientist roles, and taking nine years out of your career. Has that hurt your career massively? Or I would have catch up so to speak? Dr Anitra: It hasn't hurt my career. I mean, I'm 10 years behind my contemporaries, my colleagues because I took that time out. But that's the decision I made. And I stand by it because the first three years of a child's life are very important. So I thought I'll dedicate myself to the children in the early years. And after those nine years, right? I've done my time and really can’t get back to work. Lisa: Mum's going to be a working mum from now on. Dr Anitra: But I just went back to work part time, so, within school hours, so that I'll still be there for them after school hours. And one of the things that drew me back to work—I was recruited back to run a human intervention study. What really excited me because when I was in the lab doing lead-based research, I always felt too removed from the need to be helping. And so I’m much more interested in the whole person and how they're feeling, not what's happening inside a single cell. Lisa: Yes. Yes, it makes sense. Dr Anitra: I was really excited and really grateful to be recruited back, especially after taking nine years out for my... Discoveries have been made during that time that I had no idea until I went back and I've got a bit of catching up to do. And... Lisa: So what was that first intervention study, that human... Dr Anitra: This was a kiwi fruit study. So kiwi fruit is very high in vitamin C. In summary, we're interested in how many kiwi fruit do you need to eat to get adequate and optimal vitamin C level. So it's just kind of a dosing study? Lisa: Brilliant. Dr Anitra: Then we went on to compare kiwi fruit with tablets. So, animal research had shown our food sources of Vitamin C seemed to be a bit better than tablet sources. And so we would—we thought we'd translate that into a human study. And what we found is there's no difference Lisa: There's no difference. Uptake of vitamin C from food versus tablets, the body is really good at it. Because we need vitamin C, our body has adapted ways to... Lisa: Take it wherever it gets it. Dr Anitra: Take it up, regardless of the source. Lisa: Wow, that's... Dr Anitra: The structure of vitamin C's the same in foods as it is in tablets. So the body recognizes it the same, takes up the same amounts. I mean, the benefit of food is that you're also getting all the other vitamins and minerals and fibre. So, we still recommend food. But it is in our daily diets these days, it's very hard to get 200 milligrams a day of vitamin C. Lisa: Just fruits and veggies. Yes. Dr Anitra: That’s just fruit and vegetables. And as you know, different fruits and vegetables have quite different amounts of vitamin C, which a lot of people aren't aware of. Lisa: No. No. Dr Anitra: I mean, people know that kiwi fruit and citrus are high, but they may not realize that apples and bananas are actually quite low in vitamin C. Lisa: Or capsicums are quite high… You wouldn’t think that broccoli… And if you decide to take a supplement, is there a bit of supplement? Like, I have heard concerns about corn-derived vitamin C because of the glyphosate discussion, and that’s a bit hard to track really, the types of vitamin C. But is there any sort of research around—I mean, I've talked previously with a couple of doctors and scientists around liposomal delivery. Have you seen anything in that department or any supplementation method that's better? Dr Anitra: Not convincingly better. I mean, there might be trials that show that’s slightly better than just your normal chewable vitamin C. But I just go for the standard, cheap vitamin. Lisa: Yes, doesn't have to be super special. Like it's a pretty simple molecule, isn't it? Like, the body is pretty, like you say, it needs it, it knows it. Dr Anitra: Liposomal vitamin C kind of wrapped up in lipids, and the body doesn't need it because like you said it’s designed to recognize vitamin C in its natural form, in foods and such like. Lisa: Yes—who was that? I think Dr Thomas Levy was saying it bypasses some of the digestive issues because with vitamin C, you can get digestive stress when you take a bigger... Dr Anitra: When you take a higher dose. Some people, we're talking about more than four grams a day, and some people can get stress, it does but you can use that. Lisa: Okay. So then you've moved into—and forgive me for jumping here—but very keen to talk about the role of sepsis and pneumonia and patients in ICU reasons Dr Anitra: So, after about five years of doing that research part time, I managed to get at Health Research Council, such as speakers Health Research Fellowship, which allowed me to move into the more clinical arena of studying infection, which was an area I was interested in. And done some observational studies where we have recruited patients who have pneumonia, measured the vitamin C levels, and levels of oxidative stress. And found that they have very low levels of vitamin C and high levels of oxidative stress. And the more severe the condition, the worse it is, the lower the vitamin C levels, and the higher the oxidative stress. So, if those patients with pneumonia are going to develop sepsis, and sepsis is kind of this uncontrolled inflammatory response to a severe infection. And that can develop into multi organ failure and the patient’s taken to the intensive care unit. And it can go on further to develop into septic shock due to failure of the cardiovascular system. And up to half those patients die, it’s the major cause of death in critically ill patients. Lisa: Yes. And that's what I unfortunately experienced with my dad. And so, with the organs are starting to break down. So, when you get anything like pneumonia or sepsis, the body's requirement just goes up, a hundred-fold or more. Dr Anitra: Yes, at least 30-fold. Yes. So, it's very hard to get those amounts into a patient orally. And so, when the patients are in the intensive care unit, they're generally sedated because they're being mechanically ventilated. And so, they're given nutrition in two different ways because they can't eat. And so, the main way is to drip feed it directly into the stomach, liquid nutrition in the stomach through nasal gastric tube. The other way is to inject it directly into the bloodstream. And so, the recommended amounts of vitamin C by these means is about 100 milligrams a day. Lisa: That’s nothing. Dr Anitra: But what we did on one of our studies was we looked at how much vitamin C these patients should theoretically have in their blood based on how much vitamin C they're consuming. Because 100 milligrams a day in a healthy person is more than adequate to—provides adequate plasma, what we would consider adequate plasma levels. And so, we mapped out what it would look like in these patients based on how much they were getting. And then we compared it with what we actually measured in their blood, it’s way lower than what theoretically should have been. And so, this, this was an indication that you still need a lot more vitamin C than they're getting in the standard liquid nutrition. And that the body also has these much higher requirements, which has been shown previously by other researchers. Lisa: And so this leading to almost a scurvy-like situation. I mean, some of these severe sepsis people—I mean, seeing one of your [unintelligible 24:53] that sort of normal community cohort of people, young people, middle aged people, and then down into the more severe pneumonia and then sepsis, and severe sepsis. And they are just over the scurvy level. So basically, their bodies are falling apart because of that, as well as the sepsis if you like. and it's... Dr Anitra: And that’s even on top of being given a day of at least 100 milligrams a day, that's still really low. Lisa: That's just not touching the sides. Dr Anitra: Yes and... Lisa: Why is this not like—for people going into the hospital, why is it that even though—okay, we may not know the dosages, why is not every hospital testing at least the really sick patients, what their vitamin C levels are, and then treating it the nutrient deficiency only? Even apart from the high dose intravenous stuff, but just actually—with my dad, I was unable to get a vitamin C test done to prove my case. I couldn't prove my case because I couldn't get it tested. Dr Anitra: Yes, no, it's so true. It's because doctors don't learn about nutrients in medical school, it’s not part of their training. Lisa: At all, yes. Dr Anitra: So they're not familiar with how important they are for the body. They're not familiar with all the recent research around all the different functions and mechanisms of action that vitamin C carries out. Over the last 10 years, all these brand-new mechanisms and functions have been discovered, and they think we know everything there is to know about it. Lisa: Yes, and we don't. Dr Anitra: [unintelligible 26:34] the time. It’s basically exciting. Lisa: Yes, it is. Dr Anitra: So basically, they don't understand. The hospital system isn't set up to routinely measure it. It is only ever measured if scurvy—if someone comes in with suspected scurvy. And even then, a lot of doctors aren't used to recognizing the symptoms of scurvy. It's not something they're familiar with because it doesn’t... Lisa: They think it no longer exists because it’s what sailors had in the 1800s. Dr Anitra: ...the parents and the wisdom. Lisa: It’s basically in the sick population. Dr Anitra: It is. But I think... So when I first applied for funding to carry out these studies, in pneumonia and sepsis, there were only a couple of papers have been published at that time looking at vitamin C sepsis, and that was Berry Fowler's safety dosing study. Lisa: That is phase one trial. Dr Anitra: And another one, small one in Iran. So, there was very, very little information out there at the time. And so, I put in an application for us to carry out an intervention study in our ICU at Christchurch. So just a small one, 40 people—20 placebo control of vitamin C and 20 getting intravenous vitamin C. And not long after that, Paul Marik's study came out and that stimulated real explosion and research in this field because of the media interest. So the media picked up on it. And it hit the world. I've been talking about this for years to doctors. I see doctors and they're trying to get to talk about it. But it wasn't until it hit the media, and they heard about it through the media, they thought, ‘Okay, maybe there's something here.’ So that just goes to show how important media can be. Lisa: Exactly why we're doing the show. I have not seen it. But you know what I mean? We've got to get this from the ground up moving. Dr Anitra: Yes. And so since then, there's been many studies carried out around the world, all of different quality. And so we're learning more and more information, real-time clinical trials, they take a long time to run. Recruitment being the most difficult part. The other thing is that, a lot of the clinical trials, the clinical researches are used to running drug trials and so they treat vitamin C like a drug, but it's not a drug. It's a nutrient, it’s a vitamin, that the body is specially designed to take up and use very different from drugs. And so they don't always understand how vitamin C works in the body. And it's important to know how it's working in order to design good studies, good quality studies. So a lot of the data that's come out may be impacted by how well the study was done and thought out. So we still don't know all the important essays about the dose, how often should you give it, when should you give it? I mean, ideally it should be given you know, as early as possible. Lisa: Early as possible. Dr Anitra: Don't wait until they're at death's door and septic shock. It's hard for vitamin C to do something at that stage even really high, even a really high dose vitamin. The earlier that you give it, the longer you can get it for digest. Most of these trials have given it for four days and they stop. Lisa: Yes, I've wondered that. Dr Anitra: The whole time, they're in the ICU because once pharmacokinetic study showed that when you stop that vitamin C, some of those patients just drop straight back down to where they were. Now they need to keep that continued input. Lisa: So why? Why has it been made that it's only—all of those I've seen, I think have been 4-day, 96 hour studies. And occasionally one of them is or for the latest day in ICU, but most of them have been 96 hours and most of them have been very, very conservative dosing. From what I understand conservative dosing. And I know Dr Berry Fowler said where there's some consideration about oxalate in kidney function. And I'm like, ‘Yes, but this is still a very low risk for somebody who's got sepsis.’ Dr Anitra: If a patient has kidney dysfunction in ICU they put them on haemodialysis anyway, so which clears that excess vitamin C. So it's not such an issue for those patients. But yes, a lot of these studies were designed to reproduce the first studies that came out to see if they are reproducible. so, that's why they’re using similar regimes. But now that we know more about it, each study adds another piece to the puzzle. And so hopefully, future studies will look more into what dose we actually need and it only varies depending on the... Lisa: The severity Dr Anitra: Severity, etc. How long? And I believe, once they leave the ICU... So patients who survived sepsis, they can go on to have real problems, physical disabilities, cognitive issues, psychological issues, like depression, anxiety. And so, I really believe they keep taking vitamin C when they leave the hospital just orally, that might help with those conditions that hasn't been researched yet. That's a whole area of research that should be carried out to. Lisa: So, if I was to ask you, in your dream world where your resources are unlimited, and you had lots of money, and you had lots of people to help you do all these and you have enough patience to enrol. What are some other things that you would like as a scientist and you understand some of the mechanisms and the cofactors—which I want to get on to as well—what are some of the studies that you would like to see happen? So, we can move this along faster. What are some of the key things? So, quality of life afterwards? Yes, like dosages, what? Dr Anitra: Really practical things that the doctors need to know, I think, what's important, like, how much to give, how often to give it? Most of the studies are done four times a day because that's what was done in the initial studies. Is it better to give it continuously? So, when they're in the ICU, can you just use drugs continuously, rather than this kind of bolus dosing? So, do more research around that. So the frequency and dosing and timing like when do you administer it, how long should you administer it for? I mean, there's so many important aspects around that. And we've got the foundational research done now, we can start teasing out the finer details now, I think. Rather than just doing the same study designs over and over again, Lisa: Yes and reproducing. Dr Anitra: Modify their study designs to start addressing these other issues. And there's some really big studies underway at the moment. One in Canada with 800 people. I mean, they'll give us really good information, those sorts of studies, rather than the little studies. Unless you live in small countries. Lisa: Small countries that can’t afford those things that cost millions and millions of dollars. And is there a trouble with funding because it's not a drug that we're developing here? Does it make it harder to get funding? Dr Anitra: It's extremely hard to get funding because often on the CSUN committee, it's often medical people on these who don't believe in vitamin C. The bad press or the misinformation don't understand the importance, the relevance and so, that's why this outreach is really important. It's just educating people about the science behind it. It's not hocus pocus. Lisa: Yes, I mean, if I can share—I mean, I've shared a little bit on the past episodes with my case with my dad. I know and I felt they just put me in that, wackery quackery caught and they paid lip service to listening to me. They didn't really and but I’m quite—well in this case, I had to be quite forceful because my dad was dying. And I didn't go away, most people would go away because—and I just wish I knew then what I know now even because I wasn't that deep into the research. And now I am deep into the research and really an advocate for this. But I was treated like—there was one really good doctor who listened to me, who advocated, he didn't believe in it, he didn't understand the mechanisms of action or any of that sciency stuff. But he did advocate for me at the ethics committee, whereas everyone else would just roll their eyes basically. And this is why I think it's so important to share this, to come back again and again to the science for science for science, and for them to just open up their eyes just because they didn't learn it in medical school. And it's not in the current textbook for, like you say, because it takes 20 years probably to get it to the textbook. Because it's a vitamin, they just immediately shut down, it’s how I felt. They just immediately, ‘Well, just eat an orange and you're good to go.’ I mean, the surgeon—I had a friend that was going into surgery, and she was like, ‘Should I have intravenous vitamin C, before I go into surgery to prepare my body?’ Very logical thing to do in my eyes. It’s like, ‘You don’t need that, just eat an orange,’ and it's like, ‘Oh, you don't get the whole why and how, and what happens when the body goes through a trauma and a surgery, or a sepsis or any of these things.’And I don't know, like there's a bigger issue at play with the whole pharmacological model that our whole system is built upon. And that nutrients and nutrition isn't taught in medical school. So we're up against this big sort of brick wall. And when I tell my story to people just, sharing with friends and things, they’ll be going, ‘But where's the downside? He was dying anyway, why couldn't he have it?’ And I said, ‘Well, you're up against machinery, you're up against ethics committees, legal battles, and a system that is just very staid and conservative in its approach.’ And that's not to criticize individual people within the system. I'm not wanting to do that. I'm just trying to make people aware because people go into a hospital setting or something, and they expect to have the latest and greatest information available that the doctors know all that. And unfortunately, that's not always the case. Do you find that frustrating? Dr Anitra: I mean, it's not the doctors’ fault as such, because they're very busy people, they don't have time to keep up with all the literature, and they're not likely to be going into the nutrition literature in the first place. Which is why we try and publish as much of that stuff and the clinical literature, they're more likely to see it then. And they have the patient's best interests at heart. They've just heard the bad things about vitamin C and the misinformation. And so they don't want to do harm to the patient, I guess. It’s the view that they’re coming from and they don't have time to read all the latest information. And that's why just piece by piece, chip away at theirs, and educate them and hopefully it'll come into the training of the new doctors. And future hopefully, more nutrition courses will be introduced into training because it's not just vitamin C. The body needs all the vitamins that are all vital to life. That's where the name comes from. You don't hit them, you die. It's as simple as that. So, yes, I think that it is vital that this information gets into the appropriate arenas. Lisa: Yes. And I think that's why I'm passionate about the show is that my sort of outlook on the whole thing is, ‘Yes, I'm not a doctor, but I can give voice to doctors and researchers. And I can curate and I can investigate and I can share.’ And this is a very emotional topic for me or for obvious reasons, but I'm trying to take the emotion out of it because that doesn't help the discussion. And it’s really hard but I understand the importance—because I know that if I share things in an emotional manner, then I'll get shut down as having mental health problems in a group being a grieving daughter. When actually I’m an intelligent person who's educated herself in this. I've got the best people, and the best researchers, and the best scientists, and the best doctors sharing the latest research. And I hope that by doing that you can get one mind after the other and just get them to understand rather than the emotional side of things. Because what I do want to also share with the story is that every person's life that is saved is a family that's not grieving. These are not statistics. When Dr Berry Fowler's research, with Dr Merricks research and you see a drop from, I think Dr Merricks was 40%, mortality to 8% and Dr Berry’s was something like 49, down to 29. Don't quote me on the numbers, but big numbers in drops and mortality. And you go, those are just dozens, if not hundreds of lives that are saved. And those families are saved from that grief. And worldwide, I've heard a couple of estimates between 30 and 50 million people a year who get sepsis. Of those, one in five—I've heard in your research—one in five in New Zealand ICU dies of sepsis. This is a huge problem. This is as big as cancer and actually is one of the complications often of cancer therapies. So, I don't think people understand the enormity of sepsis itself. And then pneumonia, and then we can go into the discussion of COVID, and cancer, and all those other things. It's like we're talking millions of lives every year around the world. So this research is just absolutely crucial. Sorry, I've gotten on my bandwagon a little bit. But I really want to get this information out there. And that I think it's really, really important. And let’s change track a little bit and just talk a little bit briefly because I haven't covered this subject with the other vitamin C interviews that I've done. Around the cofactor, so vitamin C is a cofactor for so many different areas. So I remember from one of your lectures, it has epigenetic influences and hairs like with collagen synthesis, and that's not just for your skin and your and your nails, but also has implications for cancer. You've got your health, which Professor Margreet Vissers talked about your hypoxia inducible factor, tumor growth. Can you just go and give me a little bit of information around—the vasopressin one would be very good and anything else that pops to mind there. Dr Anitra: Yes, so the cofactor is a compound that helps enzyme function. So everything in our cells relies on the functions of enzymes to carry out reactions in ourselves or the chemical reactions require enzymes. And so a cofactor supports that function. And so early on when I was just starting in this area of research in the field of sepsis, I was looking at the different cofactor functions of vitamin C, and one of them is a cofactor for the enzyme which synthesizes noradrenaline. And noradrenaline is one of the main drugs, as you might say, that's given to patients who are going into septic shock. So it's given to the patients to try and increase the blood pressure. And it works by making the muscles around the blood vessels contract. Makes the blood vessels a bit smaller, so it increases your blood pressure. And so vitamin C is a cofactor for the enzyme that naturally synthesizes noradrenaline in our body. And there's another enzyme which synthesizes hormones, one of which is vasopressin. And this is another drug that's also sometimes given to these patients to help your blood pressure. And it works by increasing the re-uptake of water by the kidney. So, that increases your blood volume and hence, your blood pressure. So, for a lot of ICU patients, they're given noradrenaline and sometimes they're given vasopressin on top of that. Really try and get the blood pressure up. Lisa: Yes, their collapsing cardiovascular system. Dr Anitra: And I realized, ‘Oh wait a minute vitamin C is also cofactor for this enzyme that synthesizes vasopressin.’ So here it is, a cofactor for two quite different enzymes that synthesize vasopressors naturally in our body. And so, if these patients are coming into the ICU, very low in vitamin C, and going into shock, is one of those reasons because they don't have enough vitamin C in the body to support natural vasopressor function. The doctors have to give them these drugs but if we're able to get them vitamin C, early enough that it can potentially support their own natural synthesis of these vasopressors in the body, which is a much better way to do it. Because if drugs are given from the outside, they're often given in high doses and not regulated, and so can cause side effects. There is a difference being produced in the body, the body knows what it's doing. It regulates how much and how often, all those sort of 46:07 engineering emails and so you don't get the nasty side effects. Lisa: Can I share a bit of a story there? Because both my mom and her case was—she had an aneurysm four years ago, she was on noradrenaline, and could only be given in an ICU. And originally she was in the neurological ward. And they couldn't do it there. And I only realized like she was going into a coma. So she had massive brain damage going into a coma. That when they took her up to ICU, they could give her the noradrenaline that opened up that the vessels in the heat it a little bit, or keep the pressure up, so that the vessels were open to stop the vasospasm in her case, which was killing parts of the brain. But she'd been in the neurological ward where they couldn't give any of that earlier. And so the damage had already been done partly. And then with the case with my dad, back then I didn't know anything about vitamin C, of course. With the case with my dad in July, this year, I got vitamin C, but it was on day 13 of his 15-day battle, because I had paid to go through ethics committees and all of that sort of jazz. So he was an absolute death's doorstep, should have been dead days ago, according to the doctors. They couldn't believe he was still going but he was one tough man. I don’t know how he was still alive but he was. And the very first infusion that we got a vitamin C, immediately we were able to take him off norad for a period of about eight hours. We needed the vitamin C again, that took me another 18 hours before I could get permission to get the second one. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it in the six-hour bolus, which was ideal. We gave him initially 15 grams. So this was again, multiple organ failure, fecal matter, and the creatinine, desperate, desperate, desperate straits. His CRP, c-reactive protein dropped from 246 down to 115. His white blood cell count improved and his kidney function went from 27% to 33%. And I was able to take him on vasopressors and noradrenaline for about eight hours. That is incredible for someone who could die at any moment. And we eventually—we failed because I struggled to get the second and I struggled to get the third infusion and it really was too late. But even at that point, I thought it might be interesting for your research—I have all the medical records by the way, if you want to have a look at the data exactly. But it really was a strong—he doesn't need the noradrenaline, his blood pressure was going up. And that was a really, really good sign. As the dropping of the CRP, which was still very high at 115 but it was way better than where it had been. So goodness, what would have happened if I'd had him on day one from the surgery? Yes. And, and none of it is understood. So that's one of the cofactors that… And that brings to mind just as someone who's connecting the dots, if you have an HPA axis problem, like your adrenals aren't doing the job well. And your cortisol, vitamin C would probably be a good thing to take to support. Dr Anitra: And sometimes it’s referred to as a stress hormone because it is involved in the adrenal response. And people who are under stress, or in animal studies who have stress animals they appear, they use more vitamin C, and they generate more vitamin C, the animals they can synthesize it themselves, they generate more vitamin C to compensate for that. We are not there anymore. So we have to take more if we're under stressful conditions. Lisa: Exactly. And that's a really—it's just a funny thing of evolution that we've lost the ability to synthesize more as we like animals, like the goat, especially it can synthesize like a ton more when it needs that. We will give them big brains so that we can make vitamin C so we can take it. What are some of the other cofactors? Just as we start to wrap it up, but just a couple of the other important cofactors. And collagen? Why is collagen important apart from you want my skin and hair, and your joints? Well, I did hear in one of the lectures about collagen helping stop metastasis of cancers? Dr Anitra: Right, yes, that's one mechanism. It's also very important in wound healing. And, interestingly, a lot of—a reasonable number of surgeons are aware of this and that they're a lot more open to people taking vitamin C around surgery before and after surgery just to help affect wound healing. Lisa: Oh, wow. Yes. Dr Anitra: Which is great. And Lisa: And oncologists, are they sort of open to... Dr Anitra: Least so Lisa: Least so. Yes. In fact, I've had friends who have told us, if you take intravenous vitamin C, we won't do any treatments. And this is... Dr Anitra: And that is primarily around all the misunderstanding around those early, early trials around intravenous. What I'm seeing is when Linus Pauling showed a feat of vital intravenous vitamin C. The clinicians at the Mayo Clinic who tried to reproduce those studies, they used oral doses, so just small doses over a day. But back in those days, they weren't aware of the different pharmacokinetics of vitamin C, they thought oral and intravenous, are just the same, like the drug. But it's quite different. Oral uptake is a lot lower, much smaller amounts are taken up versus intravenous, you can get really high doses. And very quickly, Lisa: Up to 200 times. I heard Professor Gabi Dachs, saying that intravenous is up to 200 times for short periods, but that short periods makes a difference, because you can get that into the tumor cells and to—so that… And this is the problem. Professor Margreet Vissers was saying the original controversy around Linus Pauling’s work and because they didn't have an understanding of how can possibly this mechanism of action been working. They just pursued it, basically. And it caused this big rift, those on the side, and those on that side, and for the next—what are we? 40 something years later—we'll still actually, it's problematic. Dr Anitra: Yes, it wasn't really till Mark Levine did his really detailed pharmacokinetic studies that people realized the big differences between oral and intravenous. And also there’s more recent discoveries of vitamin C's cofactor functions around regulating genes through herbs and through the epigenetic enzymes. These are all mechanisms, which could be involved and its anticancer mechanisms as such. And so the epigenetic area is a very, very exciting, very interesting area of research. And I think it'll enable us to personalize medicine in the future. Lisa: Oh! I mean, I have an epigenetics program as one of my health programs. And yes, that's looking at okay, how genes being influenced by your environment, and let's optimize your environment to your genes. And the vitamin C helps serve to give people an understanding, so is vitamin C helping produce the enzymes that read the DNA? And then therefore having the reactions. Is that how it works? Dr Anitra: It works as a code. Lisa: the transcription Dr Anitra: Yes, so it helps the function of the enzymes which modify the DNA. So genetics is about the DNA itself. Epigenetics is above the DNA. So it's a way to regulate the DNA as you know. Usually through adding methyl groups to the dynast DNA, adding and subtracting and that affects how the DNA is read by the enzymes that read DNA and transcribe it. Lisa: Turning them on or off, or simplify. Dr Anitra: So vitamin C, regulates the enzymes which modify the methyl groups and stimulates them coming off or stimulates different mechanisms happening. So switching certain genes on, switching certain genes off, now it can teach you to regulate thousands of genes in our body through stimulation of these enzymes. Lisa: Wow. So yes, I've heard somewhere, I think it was seven or 8000 genes that are possibly affected by this. So we are really at the beginning of the vitamin C journey, as far as the epigenetics mechanisms is concerned. Yes, that's exciting. Dr Anitra: A lot of its functions, not just in cancer, but in all areas of health and disease, these functions could be playing a role. So yes, huge areas of research possible there. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes. Is there a—I remember Professor Margaret, talking about Tt? Is that one of the enzymes? The Tt one? Dr Anitra: It is an enzyme, that's right. Lisa: And that's important for cancer in some way? Dr Anitra: Now, the enzyme search modifies the methylated DNA, some regulation that epigenetics. And it's definitely difficult. Lisa: To replicate it in the cancer process. Wow. Okay, we're getting quite technical here. Doctor Anitra, I just want to say thank you very much for your dedication because I've listened to a couple of interviews with you. And you've actually sacrificed quite a lot to do the research that you're doing because there isn't a heck of a lot of funding and things are out there. So, thank you for doing all that. It's a labour of love, I can imagine. It's a long, slow process, getting the information, getting it to be watertight—scientifically watertight, so that we can actually get people help, who need help. And that at the end of the day it’s the reason I'm doing this podcast. And it's the reason you're doing your research, and hopefully together and with many others, we can move the story along so that people get helped. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you think would be an important message for people listening today? Dr Anitra: Well, I think—I mean, of course, infection is very relevant these days with COVID. There’s a lot of information and misinformation floating around out there about vitamin C and COVID. And at this stage, the studies are still at the really early, early stages. Americans have done a study which shows that patients with COVID in the ICU do have low vitamin C levels, like other similar conditions. COVID is a severe respiratory infection like pneumonia and sepsis or complications with COVID. And so, I think that the key is to stay healthy, eat a good healthy... Lisa: Boost your immune system, yes. Dr Anitra: Yes, to support your immune system, it doesn't mean you won't get COVID. But it may decrease the severity and the duration, so it doesn't go on to become the more severe version, the pneumonia and sepsis. So I think that's an important message and if you do get infection, your requirements, dear God, so you do need to take more vitamin C, you need to take gram amounts, rather than milligram amounts. Want you to prevent getting even more severe. So, I'm all for prevention as much as possible, not leaving it till it's too late. So, I think, yes, just look after yourself, eat well. Lisa: Yes. And get your vitamin C. Come buy some kiwi fruit, and some oranges today, and some lemons, and capsicum. And some supplements maybe. Just as a final thing, you yourself, have a study that's currently underway, which is really, really exciting. And this is based in the Christchurch hospital, I believe, in 40 patients and with sepsis. Can you just tell us a little bit, the parameters of that study and when you think you'll have some results from it? Dr Anitra: So this was patients with septic shock. So once again, at the end. And they were administered either placebo control, so half the patients and the other half were given intravenous vitamin C at a dose of 100 milligrams per kilogram body tissue per day, which equates to about six to seven grams a day. The reason for that, I have wanted to use the high dose, Berry Fowler. But the ethics committee—because when I put this into the ethics committee, there were only the two studies out, which was Berry Fowler's and the small study headed by Iran. And they said, ‘Well, slightly more people have received a lot lower dose versus the higher dose. So we'd rather use the lower dose.’’ Even though there'd be no adverse events at any dose. And subsequently, no adverse events and any studies. Lisa: No. Dr Anitra: And so, we've used the lower dose, we've only just finished recruiting the last patients. It took a while and we had issues of lockdown. And so now we're in the process of analysing the samples that we've collected analysing the data. And so hopefully, we're about to pull that together, sometime next year and publish the results next year. Lisa: Brilliant. I can't wait to see that. And yes, that's a little bit frustrating because I would have liked to have seen a study with the 15 to 18. And even that I thought was still very conservative compared to some of the cancer dosages. But I understand from what Dr Berry Fowler said because of the decreased kidney function often in septic patients and so on, but it's just like yes, but the dying often. And it's because that was one of the arguments that was thrown at me, I could damage my dad's kidneys. The sepsis was doing that quite nicely and he was dying anyway. So why the hell? So, but I think even at those dosages, we’ll hopefully see some fantastic results come out of it. And hopefully, in future we'll be able to do slightly more high-powered dosages. Dr Anitra: Yes. Well, the key is also the size of the study, our study is very small. And we were interested in being a scientist. I'm interested in how it's working in the body because once you understand how it's working, it makes it easier to design better studies and not our future studies. And so, our study will be too small to show a yes or no, it decreases mortality or not—that we're leaving it up to the large studies to show there. And hopefully, we can put a bit more science behind how it's working, what's happening in the body. Lisa: And it's such a complicated thing to design a study. People don't probably realize how the parameters and the limitations and the number of variables that you can look at and the primary outcomes and the secondary outcomes and so on. Dr Anitra: Sepsis is such a complex variable that comes in as unique in this situation. So there's huge variability in the data. And that's where the biggest studies are good, because it helps decrease... Lisa: The statistical... Dr Anitra: The statistical analyses of those studies. Yes, I'm looking forward to the results of the big studies coming out. Lisa: Yes, but these, these smaller ones are really, really important. So, and it's great that we've got one going in New Zealand. So, thank you very much for your work, Dr Anitra. It’s been absolutely fascinating. And thank you for your dedication to this. I really, really appreciate you. Dr Anitra: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
On "Bad" Strengths: The Perception Behind Annoying Coworkers If you just got into StrengthsFinder, chances are you are all fired up knowing about your top strengths and, maybe, how they compare to others'. Many of us scroll through all the 34 talent themes and then mentally assign some of them to people or teams that we know. This tendency is generally okay because our experiences working with people or teams allow us to match up some positive perceptions of their dominant themes, albeit on a surface level. It comes naturally to us. But when you skew this perception a little bit on the wayward side, what do you get? Theme bias. In this episode, host Lisa Cummings and Lead Through Strengths facilitator Sara Regan introduce the different forms and dangers of theme bias and how to reverse a perception of bad strengths or annoying coworkers. Here’s the transcript of Lisa’s interview with Sara as they exchange views about theme bias and seemingly annoying coworkers. Lisa: Hello, everyone, it's Lisa and Sara from Lead Through Strengths, and we're here today to give you some fresh ideas about how to apply your strengths at work. Are Bad Strengths A Real Thing? Lisa: So you talk about the demonizing of a strength or making a strength the bad guy, or even fearing that there's a bad one that maybe this isn't the good one to have in this organization. How would you experience that in working with teams and what would you offer them as another way? Sara: Sure. And I think anytime that I'm working with a team, I am going to bring up theme bias. And that's whether it's the first time I'm seeing them, or maybe the fifth time in a year, I'm going to return to this because I think it's just natural for us. I can say to groups that if they look through that full list of 34 themes and kind of scan that, I will stop on one or two of them. And they will think, “Oh, I'm really glad I don't have that one.” Or maybe, "That's good for the work that other people do in a different kind of organization, but for our team, we don't really need that here. That wouldn't fit.” Or they point their finger to one and say, “Oh, I bet so and so had that theme and that's why I find it so hard to work with them.” So I feel like all of those are examples of theme bias, and it's really important for people to be on the lookout for it because a little bit of StrengthsFinder language can sometimes be detrimental, where people start labeling each other and making assumptions. It takes a long time to develop the fluency of understanding all 34 themes. So for me, what I want people to do is to have that awareness of their own dominant themes. I wouldn't fully understand every other theme that folks have in the room, but that they have an understanding that none are better than others. And all of those themes are neutral. So I try to bring that conversation up regularly. If I'm working with a team over time, you know, how are we doing with that theme bias and check in with people. I just feel like it's very foundational to the whole principle. And that we are different people. We bring something different to the party, and we need to be honored and appreciated for that. I see also some ties in with diversity and inclusion, about how we bring our whole selves to work. And it's really a very profound metaphor, I think, for thinking about diversity. We want to start with curiosity, not making assumptions. We want to ask questions, we want to assume that differences are an advantage, or to know that and to seek that out. And so I feel like that's an important message or for teams to take away with this work. Dissolving Bias By Starting Conversations Through StrengthsFinder Lisa: Totally. And I see a lot of eyes open when we talk. They'll bring up diversity and they'll say, “Oh, this is a big thing in the organization.” And then we can introduce the idea of cognitive diversity, and how you think differently because you lead through these different talent themes. For a second, forget all the other really obvious, surface things that people are talking about. Let's talk about how you think, how you act, and how these things drive you. And I've noticed that over the years, when we bring up that "theme bias" stuff, you get them to the end of phase one where they're realizing, “Okay, I'm a little bit biased against this other one in other people. I think people who lead through xyz talent are my annoying coworkers." Then they start to see, “Oh, I have this bias against this talent theme. I had something on my top 5 or top 10 and I like it, but I don't think that it's really going to be accepted well in this work culture, so I think I'm going to turn that one down to a volume-level-one or save that more for my home life.” Have you experienced that kind of example personally or with teams? And how do you get them through that bias when they're convinced that they have an annoying coworker who causes all of the toxicity on the team? Sara: Yes. Both within myself and with teams. And certainly, the bias can be directed towards other things, but it can be towards our own. And I think what people struggle with is, as you were talking about seeing the workplace and application of a particular thing, you might say, “Yeah, that shows up in my parenting role or as a volunteer or outside of work but I don't know that that is going. I don't know that that's what the team is looking for. Or I don't need to know that I use that.” And so I really want people to not dismiss and leave something in the door but to look, I think usually through some questioning and some deeper conversation. They might see the small ways that...and even big ways that they just haven't been tuned into, that something that's really serving them well. My personal example was being caught up or when somebody was asking me about Connectedness. I call Connectedness sometimes the "squishy" theme — it can take all different kinds of forms I feel like it's a bit of a shapeshifter. But it was early on when I was maybe like, first few months of doing StrengthsFinder trainings and somebody asked me about Connectedness like, “Yeah, well, how do you use that at work?” And I wasn't really sure. And I'm the facilitator, like I should know this stuff. And it prompted me to really do a lot more reflection. Connectedness is certainly a bit of my mindset in which we are all connected. We're all people sharing the same planet at the same time. It's about how we treat each other. It's about reciprocity. So it ties into my values. But since learning more, I’ve also seen very strong business applications and have met people in very high-powered jobs who are using things like Connectedness. One of the people that I will often tell a story about was a person who is a chief economist at a Wall Street firm that everybody would know the name of. He had Connectedness in his top 5, and had a lot of thinking themes. But for him, he was able to explain well. “Of course, I’m Connectedness. I'm thinking on a macro level. I'm taking things that are seemed disparate to other people, but I'm seeing a connection that other people don't.” So when there is bias about a particular theme, and I'll just ask people, you know, “Are you struggling with any of these things? Is there anything you want to learn more about?” And in sharing that story, you can almost see the person who's been a little reticent just comes to life like that. “Yeah, you know what, I do have that one. And that's okay.” And so that's part of what I feel — a value that I bring to this — because I've been asked for a while that I've accumulated a lot of those stories so that if there's people who need a new perspective, I can usually draw upon somebody else's experience with it. And it just puts them to ease. Annoying Coworkers: 'Outliers' Who Bring An Important Contribution To The Table Lisa: Yeah, that is so good. And those examples make all the difference. I mean, sometimes exploring examples of people you respect and admire can turn your stereotype-loving mind in a new direction. Instead of assuming they're going to be the annoying coworker, you instead show up with an open mind about how that talent can bring unexpected nuance. In fact, often, the teammates who used to be frustrating will suddenly seem ultra-valuable to you because they live in a headspace that isn't fun for you. Isn't it great if someone else can do the work in that space if it sucks the life out of you. So, using Sara's example of Connectedness, I've seen several people get surprised when they learn nuances about this talent theme - how it shows up in different people. This respected economist leads through Connectedness. It helps her see the economy as a complex system with many levers. The software engineer was worried that he would be viewed as "soft" but quickly realized that Connectedness is exactly why he's so good in his coding language. He sees the ripple effect of every action. One character can change the whole app." The business analyst who leads through Connectedness has an outstanding network of peers. She keeps in touch with people across verticals, industries, and past companies. It helps her get things done because she has relationships everywhere. The account manager who leads through Connectedness sees how his answer to the customer impacts people in another department. He understands the downstream impact, and can simultaneously help the upset customer feel like the only person in the room. Well, it's the same thing happening. It's just different words to describe the same thing. And you have so many rich examples to help people make it concrete. Sometimes you need these examples to allow yourself to see the value. Even if it's not an annoying coworker - sometimes you might think it's your personal talent that is frustrating. Sara: I've also noticed people might have a harder time coming to appreciate certain talents inside of certain industries (whether inside of themselves or someone else). At this point, I'm kind of prepped that this perception might happen. It's helpful to look at their team charts ahead of time. And I do pay attention to who are those outliers. There is this group where there's a lot of Context, Analytical, Strategic, and some people who have different themes. I want to make sure that everybody will understand that they're bringing something different, but something that's equally valued and maybe even more important, because it's an outlier thing. And so I feel like it has helped people who might feel like they're a little bit of a fish out of water or they know they're different than a lot of their teammates. But know that that's bringing a value and helping other people to appreciate that as well. Given the language, it's really about the common language because often people have intuited this or they have a sense, but it's being able to put language to it. And because it's a validated instrument, and it's been around and done by Gallup, the polling people, I feel like it gets a little bit of that credibility as well. Lisa: And something that you've mentioned often is permission. Sometimes it just allows them to say, “Oh, there's this way I think and this thing that I do,” And instead of feeling like, “one of these things is not like the other, and I don't do this like everyone on my team, so therefore, I should squash it.” If it gives them the feeling, “Oh, here's this thing, they're gonna miss this. It’s a contribution I should offer because they're not thinking.” This suddenly gives them permission to use it as a contribution rather than that "annoying coworker" person who thinks of the other things. Sara: Oh I think that is so true. Those outline the strengths you know. And if we believe the definition of a strength's near-perfect performance every time, we want everybody on the team to bring that, and that's what's really exciting — it’s when you think about not only your own individual performance, and how that can impact striving for that near-perfect. But what if you're surrounded by teammates who are also delivering the appropriate performance? What does that mean for what that team can accomplish? And what's possible because of that? So to be able to tap into that, unleash it to set up the right type of conversations, related to "that is really exciting for me." Lisa: So many good ideas from Sara. Now, it's your turn to go apply these and think about how they could show up in your workplace and how you could make a bigger contribution with your strengths by taking these ideas and actually applying them to your real life. Make them real for you. So let us know how it goes for you as you begin to claim these talents. Do something with them, apply them at work, and share that strengths contribution with the world. Bye for now. More Insights On Theme Bias With These Additional Resources In an earlier podcast, Lisa exchanged insights with another Lead Through Strengths facilitator Strother Gaines on What To Do When You Don’t Like Your Strengths or when you think you don’t like someone else’s strengths. Strother encourages viewers to bring out what they deem to be their “weird” or “rare” strength, leverage it fully and make it stand out instead of squashing it. Then Lisa yet again tackles the dangers of strengths-related cognitive biases in another podcast, Do Your Strengths Come With Unconscious Biases? using mostly her own experiences, especially her accidental biases to highlight her points. She's not immune to thinking that there's an annoying coworker out there - it takes effort to show up with your most mature thinking.
Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is a known antioxidant. Clinicians have conducted numerous studies to discover its role and effectiveness on life-threatening diseases such as sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), cancer and COVID-19. Dr Alpha 'Berry' Fowler joins us in this episode to share his work on vitamin C and its role in improving the survival of critically ill patients. He also talks about ongoing trials on vitamin C and its possible benefits on COVID patients. If you want to know more about the research backing up the success of vitamin C in disease treatment, then this episode is for you. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn the mechanism of sepsis in lung disease. Discover the role of vitamin C in treating patients with sepsis and ARDS. Find out more about past and ongoing trials on vitamin C. Resources Learn about Dr Fowler's Phase 1 safety trial of IV vitamin C in patients with severe sepsis. Explanation lecture of the CITRIS-ALI study by Dr Fowler JAMA publication on CITRIS-ALI Article on the sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores and mortality of patients involved in the CITRIS-ALI trials Dr Paul Marik's protocol for sepsis using vitamin C and steroids Episode Highlights [04:02] How Dr Fowler's Research on Bacterial Sepsis Began Dr Fowler started working on mouse models to investigate sepsis. A solution made from mouse pellets was injected into ten mice, five of which received a treatment of vitamin C. The septic mice in the control group all died while those treated with vitamin C were crawling around, drinking water and eating. Dr Fowler then started using animal models to determine how vitamin C treats sepsis. [09:05] How Sepsis Damages the Lungs In sepsis, the lung barrier is injured. The progression of sepsis traps activated neutrophils in the capillary space of the lungs. Activated neutrophils release their DNA and enzymes, damaging the capillaries. Plasma then fills the air spaces, causing the patient to drown in their fluid. [09:34] The Role of Vitamin C in a Septic Lung In vitamin C-treated mice, the lung’s barrier function is preserved. Vitamin C stops neutrophils from disgorging their DNA into the extracellular space. Free DNA has become a marker to predict mortality. Blood reanalysis showed vitamin C lowered free DNA circulation as a result. Vitamin C completely inhibits the expression and appearance of inflammatory proteins. [16:15] Phase 1 Safety Trial Outcomes In a randomised, blinded trial, 24 patients were enrolled to determine the safety of vitamin C. Organ failure score was tracked in all patients. The higher the score, the higher the incidence of mortality. Patients treated with vitamin C saw a dramatic and significant reduction in their organ failure score. Vitamin C also improved their chance of survival. Intermittent infusion of vitamin C every 6 hours could get the plasma level up to 3000 times the normal level. [25:47] Phase 2 Proof-of-Concept Trial Outcomes Patients enrolled in the study had septic ARDS. The vitamin C treatment resulted in no adverse event. After 96 hours, 19 of 83 placebo patients died while only 4 of 84 patients with vitamin C died. Upon follow-up after 28 days, 46% of placebo patients died while only 30% of treatment patients died. This was the first blinded trial to show vitamin C’s impact on the mortality of patients with ARDS. [28:17] Explaining the Inconsistency of the SOFA Score Jean-Louis Vincent created the SOFA score. Jean-Louis Vincent sent a letter to the editors of Dr Fowler's work that the data was incorrectly analysed. Reanalysis showed the patients who died had the top SOFA score. Vitamin C significantly impacted organ failure scores. Vitamin C treatment resulted in a significant number of ICU-free days, improved mortality and more hospital-free days at day 60. [36:05] Is There Another Trial Underway? The NIH tasked the Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) Network to turn towards COVID treatment. Dr Fowler started a trial on vitamin C as a treatment for patients with early COVID pneumonia, and the results are dramatic. There is another trial for sepsis and vitamin C planned by the PETAL Network involving 1000 patients across 69 medical centres. [39:48] Why Larger Doses of Vitamin C Are Not Administered The primary concern for higher doses of vitamin C is the formation of renal stones. A safety trial is first recommended before vitamin C treatment for COVID pneumonia can begin. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘The cage that the mice got the sepsis and the vitamin C, they were all crawling around, drinking water and eating. And I knew at that point that we had stumbled on something pretty significant’. ‘One of the first things we found was that the lungs of the treated mice that were septic, they weren’t injured’. ‘Most people understand sepsis as being a bacterial infection, but they don't understand that it's actually taking all the organs and causing oxidative damage to multiple organs, not just the lungs’. ‘We had kind of a basic grasp on the immune system and how vitamin C could alter the septic immune response and how vitamin C could protect the lung’. ‘Vitamin C was actually improving the possibility of survival’. ‘The amount of vitamin C that you administer is critical. Dose matters’. ‘You’re going to save not only thousands and eventually more — hundreds and thousands of lives. You’re going to reduce hospital bills enormously’. About Dr Fowler In his 35 years of service at VCU, Alpha A. ‘Berry’ Fowler, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Director, VCU Johnson Center for Critical Care and Pulmonary Research, has had a profound influence at VCU and beyond. Considering his robust grant support and over 300 publications and abstracts in clinical areas including adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis, he might well be lauded for that alone. Likewise, with over 16 years as Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine (PDCCM) Division Chair, with numerous ‘Top Doc’ awards and other honours, his pursuit of excellence in clinical care, impacting thousands of patients and their families, might well be the highlight of most careers. To learn more about Dr Fowler’s research on vitamin C, you may contact him at 804-828-9071 or send a message to alpha.fowler@vcuhealth.org. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your friends so that they can learn more about vitamin C. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. If you would like to work with Lisa one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation with Lisa here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations Lisa's latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how a mother and daughter defied the odds after an aneurysm left Lisa’s mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74 and the medical professionals told her there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Lisa used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and to bring her mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For Lisa’s other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling her ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for Lisa and Neil’s online run training coaching. For their epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. For Lisa’s gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. To pushing the limits, Lisa Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone and welcome to Pushing the Limits. This week I have an exciting interview with intensive care medicine doctor, Dr Berry Fowler, who is an intensivist from the Virginia Commonwealth University. The director of the VCU unit via 35 years of service at the VCU Johnson Center for Critical Care and Pulmonary Research. And he's also the author of a number of studies around vitamin C. So today we're continuing that conversation that we've been having in the last few weeks around the importance of vitamin C. Last week, we had Professor Margreet Vissers on, from Otago University, talking about—who worked with vitamin C in cancer. She's been studying this for 20 years. And Dr Berry Fowler has been studying vitamin C in regards to sepsis and pneumonia and how to use it in COVID. And he's been researching in this area with vitamin C for over 15 years. So some really amazing insights into this incredible vitamin and how it can help with all of these things. So please don't miss this episode. If you enjoy the content, please share it with your family and friends. You know, there’s some important messages that we're wanting to get out in this vitamin C thing that I've been doing, because I lost my father recently and this would have been a major player and I was desperate to get him help with intravenous vitamin C, and I was unable to until way too late. And so I'm desperately wanting to get out the information about this research about the clinical studies that have been done, the research that's been done, to share this really important information. As always, I really appreciate a rating or review for the show. If you can do that, that'd be so so appreciated. And if you've got any questions, please email me at support@lisa tamati.com, if you want to discuss anything that was brought up in these topics, in this podcast. I'm also doing some one on one consultations. I have a limited number of spaces available for people who are wanting to work with me one on one. If you are facing difficulties in areas from whether it be around some of your health aspects like head injuries, obviously I've spent five years researching head injuries. I have a lot of knowledge around vitamin C. I have a lot of knowledge around biohacking, around epigenetics trained as an epigenetics coach, gene testing, and so on. And I work with a very small number of people who are needing help with these areas. As well as of course run coaching and mindset in high performance. So if you're wanting to get some one on one support with me, please reach out to me it's lisa@lisatamati.com. And I can send you the information there. Right over to the show now with Dr Barry fellow who is sitting in Virginia in the USA. Well welcome everybody to Pushing the Limits. This week. I have a very special interview continuing our series around intravenous vitamin C or vitamin C in general. I have Dr Barry Fowler with me, who is sitting in Virginia and Dr Fowler has agreed to come and have a little chat today about his work in this area. Dr Fowler, I've done a wonderful extra introduction. So we won't go into all your amazing credentials and your achievements, of which there have been many. But Dr Fowler, can you just give us a little bit of background? You are the director of the VCU Virginia University over in the States. Can you tell us a little bit about your work and your background? Dr Berry Fowler: Okay, well, I am professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine and I'm one of the ancient doctors in the division, just turning 71 last week. I trained at the Medical College of Georgia in the US, then went to the Medical College of Virginia in the US, then went to the University of Colorado for pulmonary and critical care disease training, and then came back and joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University which used to be the Medical College of Virginia, it's now VCU, in 1982 and I've been here ever since. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: I rose slowly through the ranks. I led the pulmonary division for a number of years, for approximately 17 years, and then stepped aside in 2016. And all during this time, at least for 13 years now, we've had this interest in vitamin C. And it's interesting how our interest in vitamin C developed. It first started at a very molecular level where we were studying cardiac ischemia, but some of the heart attendings. And then slowly began to get back to what we have been doing for years which was bacterial sepsis. And we had some molecular reasons that drove us towards vitamin C. And so first thing we did was we created an animal model of sepsis. And let me explain that. It was pretty straightforward to create. We had 30 gram mice and we went to the mouse cage and collected mouse pellets. Then took them to the laboratory and sonicated them really hard until it became a solution. Lisa: So this is the fecal matter. Yes. Dr Berry: And we would take that solution and centrifuge it really hard so that all the solid matter went to the bottom of the tube and we just took off the liquid from the top, which contained multiple different kinds of organisms. Lisa: So all the bacteria. Yes. Dr Berry: Yes. And so we took that, put it in the refrigerator overnight and then came in the next morning. And we had 10 mice. We had 5 control mice and then 5 treatment mice. So all the mice first were injected into their peritoneal space, you mentioned that earlier, with a tenth of an mL of this solution containing all this bacteria. And so all 10 mice. And then in the mice that were going to receive the vitamin C, we injected a tenth of an mL, which was 200 micrograms per gram of bodyweight of the mice and then closed off the light. By that point, it was about 4:00 in the afternoon. And just let the mice sit in the laboratory where we had left them and I always get to work at 6:00 in the morning and I was thinking, ‘Holy cow, I got to see what's going on.’ And so I went into the lab where we had the mice and the cage that was the control mice that were septic. They were all dead. In the cage that the mice got the sepsis and the vitamin C, they were all crawling around drinking water and eating. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: And I knew at that point that we had stumbled on something pretty significant. This take us back to around 2010. Maybe 2009. My laboratory has had this intense interest in sepsis ever since I finished my training at the University of Colorado. And so what we decided is that we would begin to use the treatment animals and some control animals to determine exactly how vitamin C was working. Lisa: To look at the molecular, the mechanism of action. Why is this happening? Why are they surviving better? Dr Berry: So what we did was—in these studies, we were always comparing the control mice to the treated mice. And one of the first things we found was that the lungs of the treated mice that were septic, they weren't injured. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: And we have a number of ways to determine the way a lung is injured. One of the things that happens in sepsis, and this might have been what you and I were talking about earlier, is the lungs barrier function, which is the ability to keep the blood in the blood and keep the air in the air. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: It gets injured. And so the bloodstream floods into the airspaces of the lung. Lisa: And fills it. Dr Berry: Yes. And one of the things we discovered was lung barrier function was preserved and the vitamin C treated septic mice. Lisa: Wow. So you're perceiving that it’s stopping the plasma and the neutrophils getting into the alveolar space. Dr Berry: Exactly. Lisa: And the NET— of one of your lectures, you talk about neutrophil extracellular traps (NET). Is that a part of the barrier function? Dr: Berry: Very nice. When are you starting medical school? Lisa: Thank you, Dr Fowler. Dr Berry: So what happens as sepsis progresses is that there are a bunch of molecules that live in the capillaries of the lung that begin to get expressed. And what they do is they trap neutrophils that are activated in the capillary space of the lung. And one of the things that happens in a highly activated neutrophil is they disgorge their DNA and all of the enzyme systems inside a neutrophil begin to damage the capillaries. And then what happens as the capillaries get injured, the plasma from the lung, just a vein from the bloodstream, just flows into the lungs. Lisa: So you’re basically lost—it's like your skin barrier, if you like, between the ear and your insides is disintegrating. Dr Berry: Well, one injury from sepsis is like drowning. Lisa: Wow, so you fill it with your own fluid. Dr Berry: The airspaces of the lung fill up with your own plasma. Lisa: So when you have, cause sepsis—I don't think most people are not aware of the progression of sepsis to acute respiratory distress syndrome. That this is a sort of a linear progression that happens, isn't it? That you actually get lung—because most people understand sepsis as being a bacterial infection but they don't understand that it's actually taking all the organs and causing oxidative damage to multiple organs, not just the lungs, but particularly the lungs. And so this is a very important finding that what you've had here because this means that if you can stop the vitamin C, if the vitamin C can stop the neutrophils from disgorging their own DNA into the extracellular space, which is then, that's in a marker, isn't it? That cell-free DNA, when you take a plasma drawn and you see that cell-free DNA floating around at a certain level, that's a predictor of mortality, isn't it? Dr Berry: Listen, you've done some fabulous reading. But let me just tell you, it's been known for several years that in septic individuals, one of the unfortunate things that will predict mortality is how high the cell-free DNA arises in the circulation. And I don't want to jump too far here, but I will tell you and the vitamin C trial that we reported one year ago this month, that when we reanalyzed the blood from those individuals, we found that vitamin C dramatically lowered the cell-free DNA in the treated patients. Lisa: Wow. That was in the CITRIS-ALI study? Dr Berry: Exactly. Lisa: Oh, okay. That's a new finding from that study because, yes, we will go through that progression of how you got to do that study. So let's bookmark that for a moment and backtrack because that is a very important finding for that study. So let’s backtrack a little bit. So we are talking about vitamin C being able to protect the lungs if we put it very simply and protect the barrier function of the lungs, stop the neutrophils from disgorging the DNA and causing these traps, which is a predictor of mortality. What are other things is vitamin C doing? And why is a septic patient, without fail, going to be very low in vitamin C? So you’re using that for Vitamin C. Dr Berry: I'll get to that in a minute. But what we demonstrated in a huge number of murine mouse studies is that the septic lung in a control animal, the septic lung began to express many inflammatory proteins. And that's just your endogenous immune system trying to protect itself. But we showed in the next cage, in the septic mice that we had treated with Vitamin C, that the expression and the appearance of those inflammatory proteins was totally inhibited completely. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: Yes. The idea of leaping from preclinical animal studies into humans was that we had kind of a basic grasp on the immune system and how Vitamin C could alter the septic immune response and how Vitamin C could protect the lung. Well, protecting the lung in terms of septic critical illness is very, very important. Lisa: Absolutely. And so then you went to a phase one safety trial, which was really to look at some basic markers. Is this going to be damaging for people if they get vitamin C and look at hypertension? And is it going to affect the kidneys and so on. I think some of those safety mechanisms. Can you tell us a little bit about that phase one safety trial and then the outcomes of that trial? Dr Berry: Well, I can tell you, I had this really close colleague. His office sat right next to mine. He's a molecular biologist, basic scientist. And after we'd done all these murine studies, one day he walked in, he looked at me, said, ‘Fowler, this needs to go into the hospital. We've developed all this data. You've got to make it happen to get it into the hospital’. We designed this little safety trial, enrolled 24 patients. The safety trial was randomized and it was blinded. And so half the trial was just controlled sepsis. The other half was septic patients treated with Vitamin C and we had no idea who the hell was giving vitamin C to people who were critically ill. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: And we found it had no impact. But one of the things we were shocked at, and we were just trying to define, was vitamin C safe? Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: One of the things we tracked was what is called an Organ Failure Score. And we found that all of the patients treated with Vitamin C, their Organ Failure Score reduced dramatically and significantly. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: And the way Organ Failure Scores, basically you're counting numbers. A higher number is a higher incidence of mortality. Lower numbers are improved and that vitamin C was actually improving the possibility of survival. Lisa: So this is like, in my father's case, is the sepsis progressed and I was unable to get him Vitamin C as we discussed earlier, Dr Fowler, early enough for him to get to survive. But as I watched his sepsis progress, more and more organs started to fail. So his liver started to fail. His kidneys started to fail. His heart started to fail. And so this is the Organ Failure Score. If this person's Organ Failure Score is going up, that is a very strong predictor of mortality. Dr Berry: Yes. Lisa: Okay, so this was reduced with the people who received the Vitamin C in the small trial. Dr Berry: So what we did, we took the data, we combined it with our preclinical data, and applied to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. They had just published an announcement where they were asking for anybody who could think of some clever trial. And we said, ‘Well’. And so we submitted an application. What the NIH wanted, they wanted the proposal for a phase two, proof of concept trial. Lisa: Right. Dr Berry: And so what we proposed was a trial that had seven medical centers. I have friends in seven medical centers around the US. And with this application in and that was I guess you guys don't remember Hurricane Sandy. Lisa: Yes, I do. Dr Berry: Hurricane Sandy was just—it killed the Atlantic Coast of the US. And the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute happens to sit on the Atlantic Coast in Washington, D.C. And it was a year and a half before we found out that we had received the highest priority score because of the application that we had submitted. And the NIH gave us 3.2 million dollars to do a multicenter, randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trial, proposing to administer 50 milligrams per kilogram of intravenous Vitamin C every six hours for ninety six hours. Patients were continuously receiving vitamin C. Lisa: Can you explain why that continuous topping up that level is important every six hours? Dr Berry: That's a great question. So from the safety trial that we had performed, we analyzed the plasma Vitamin C levels that we had achieved by infusing. So basically someone your size, for example, would probably get maybe 3 1/2 grams intravenously every six hours for ninety six hours. And what we showed was, we could get the plasma level up to basically three thousand times the normal plasma level. So from a normal diet, human plasma levels of vitamin C are about 70 to 80 micromolar. When you give the protocol that we had settled with, we got the Vitamin C levels up to five millimolar. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: Yes. And so that's what we were shooting for in this NIH trial. And that's what we did. We charged into it, the trial. What we had proposed again, was the Organ Failure Score as well as the two biomarkers. We also proposed in the secondary outcomes, days on mechanical ventilation. Lisa: Yes, which is hugely important. Dr Berry: And what we were studying specifically, was patients who were septic, who had gone on to develop acute lung injury called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, ARDS. And so when a patient was septic, like your father, we would become a fly on the wall and visit the patient every day until a lung injury developed. And that's when they would get randomized. Lisa: This was a critical—from my analysis of the data, that was a critical thing in the phase. So you had to wait until I basically had developed ARDS before you were able to put them. So this wasn't really a sepsis trial, but more of an ARDS trial. So the progression of the sickness comes into play here, doesn't it? If you’ve gone through day one, like in the phase... Dr Berry: In the safety trial... Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: The second aseptic individual walked in the door, that's when they got random. Lisa: Which is a much better, more effective with the timing. Dr Berry: We had a couple of patients who got Vitamin C in the emergency room. Lisa: Yes, wow. Dr Berry: You know you have to get informed consent. You have to get the pharmacy on board and get the patient enthused. Lisa: I wish I'd had you tending to my father. We could have had that from the moment he got to the emergency. That would have been, I think we would have had a different outcome. But so this was a key point that you had to wait until I had developed ARDS. So in this CITRIS-ALI trial, so here you have, I think it was 47 patients in the control and 47 in the intervention group, was it right? Dr Berry: 83. And 84 in the Vitamin C treatment. Lisa: Oh, 83. I'm sorry. Sorry. So 167. One of the big questions I had in my— why was mortality not one of the primary objectives of the study? Dr Berry: That has been the most frequent question. When we answered the NIH, they had put out a program called, UM1, and we applied to the UM1 program and they were not interested in mortality as a primary outcome. Part of it was this. There had been hundreds of sepsis trials and nobody had ever shown any impact on a treatment for sepsis. And so NIH didn't want to get burned again so they said that they wanted a physiological outcome. That was the Organ Failure Score. And they wanted a biochemical outcome. Those were the biomarkers. Lisa: It's the C-reactive protein, procalcitonin and thrombomodulin. And yes. So the reasoning was that we don't want to shoot for the stars here and automatically hope for a decrease in mortality and a decrease of days in hospital. We're going to go for something else just to see if this has legs, so to speak, if this treatment is possible, possibly going to work. And that's why they went for the safer scores, rather than the mortality. Looking back, do you think... Dr Berry: By the way, we haven't talked about this yet, but SOFA stand for Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score. Lisa: Thank you. Yes, it's amazing the jargon that you pick up and then forget that you haven't explained yourself. So what actually was the outcome? This was a seven multicenter trial. You did a double blinded. This was incredibly important because I know Dr Paul Marik had also done a study with intravenous Vitamin C, thiamine, and hydrocortisone. And one of the criticisms that was thrown at him was that it wasn’t a double blind, randomized controlled trial, so it didn't have any meaning, which is absolutely tragic. So this was—what was the outcomes of this phase two trial? Dr Berry: So we enrolled 170 patients. One of the placebo patients we had to take out because that patient did not have septic ARDS. They had Acute Eosinophilic Pneumonia. That's something else to discuss later. And then in the Vitamin C arm, we had two patients with Acute Leukemia who had no coagulation in their bloodstream and they were hemorrhaging into their lung and that was not sepsis. So as I mentioned, we had 83 in the control placebo and 84 in the vitamin C-treated group. First of all, we saw no, and I emphasize capital N-O, adverse events. There was not a single adverse event. Lisa: Exactly. Dr Berry: All right. And so what we showed was in 96 hours, placebo patients in the trial, 19 of 83 died within 96 hours. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: In the Vitamin C group, 4 of 84 patients died. And if you look at the statistics and the analysis of that, the difference is P=0.0007. We then followed the patients out because in sepsis trials, there's always this demand to see what is happening to a patient at 28 days. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: And what we showed was 46% of placebo patients died and only 30% of the Vitamin C treated septic patients with ARDS died. Lisa: Wow, that's a huge result in my mind. Dr Berry: And that was the first trial. I'm not slapping myself on the back, but I will just tell you, that was the first trial to ever show in a blinded fashion, an impact on ARDS. Lisa: Yes. On mortality of ARDS. Dr Berry: Yes. Lisa: And this was extremely sick people. Now, unfortunately, the SOFA scores didn't show any difference and the C-reactive protein markers didn't show any difference. Dr Berry: So let me explain. Lisa: Is it because... Yes, is it because of the mortality. Dr Berry: So we thought publishing the results of the trial in probably one of the most important journals on the planet, JAMA, which as it turns out, is a very, very conservative journal. And they had their ideas about what we could and we couldn't say. So we published, and this is very important for you to listen to and all of your listeners, we published that there was no difference in the SOFA scores at 96 hours. And immediately, letters to the editor started coming in and one of the most important letters to the editor was the person who created the SOFA score. His name is Jean-Louis Vincent in Brussels, Belgium. He told us that we had analyzed the data incorrectly and that what we were reporting was a survivorship bias. Lisa: What does that mean? Dr Berry: And what he said we needed to do, and he provided five publications where he had important statisticians tell him that analyzing the data, like we reported, as a worst rank, best rank scenario, that we had to reanalyze it so that the patients who died, what we were reporting was the SOFA scores on the people who had survived. Lisa: Not the ones who died. Dr Berry: We had not considered the SOFA score on the patients who died. Lisa: And because they died so quickly. Dr Berry: So what we did was we went back and the people who died along the way, those 19 patients, they got the top SOFA score. The patients who survived and left the unit, they got a low SOFA score. And so when we reanalyzed the data, according to the way these letters that had come in from Dr Vincent and two or three other colleagues, it turns out that Vitamin C significantly impacted the Organ Failure Score. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: And then we—here's the important thing, we reported that February 25th of 2020. So you can go to JAMA, you can look it up and you can see our response to the SOFA score reanalysis. Lisa: Because this was a key factor in my father's case. They threw the CITRIS-ALI trial at me and the original data from JAMA, which said negative result, which when I analyzed... Dr Berry: That lets you know that the doctors were not reading JAMA. Lisa: Exactly. And they weren't on the up to date and they did not look at secondary outcomes and they did not look at the parameters of the score and I was not able to present the case. They had just read it briefly. Dr Berry: Let me go on. We had a strong trend to ventilator-free days and the people who got the Vitamin C, but it just missed statistical significance. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: But we had a strong significance for the people who got Vitamin C in Intensive Care Unit-free days. Lisa: Which is huge. Dr Berry: So the people who got Vitamin C had a significantly higher number of ICU-free days. There was an improved mortality. The other thing is patients who got Vitamin C had significantly more hospital-free days at day 60. Lisa: Wow. So they were actually out of the system altogether. Do you think—now this is controversial, I'm playing devil's advocate here. But do you think the fact that it costs so much for someone to be in ICU when they have sepsis—I think in America it's something like, to the order of 60,000 dollars US a day—and the medications that they are typically on are costing around 20,000 dollars a day, do you think that if you come along with Vitamin C and you start dropping the mortality rate, you start dropping the days? Is that part of the resistance to accept and acknowledge these findings, that the pharmaceutical companies are going to lose out on profit? Dr Berry: Oh no no no. No, no, no. At VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University—that Anitra knows well—the average care cost per day is about 46,000 per day because that accounts for medical care, nursing care, radiology, all laboratory data, respiratory care, caring for the ventilator. All of that is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 45 to 50,000 dollars per day. And so, if you have a treatment, first of all, that gets people out of the ICU earlier and keeps them out of the hospital, think about the impact on the cost of care. Lisa: Yes, it’d be huge. Dr Berry: But here's the other thing. There's not going to be any drug company out there who would argue with that. They are all trying to do the best they can with their different antibiotics, but the common antibiotics that are administered in an ICU when patients are septic levofloxacin, meropenem, vancomycin. Just one day of meropenem is 1500 per day. Lisa: Exactly. It's a lot of money. Dr Berry: Yes. Lisa: So you don't think that... Dr Berry: And listen to this. That's the cost of the drug. That's not the cost of pharmacy preparing the drug, cost of nursing administering the drug and so on and so on and so on. Lisa: Okay, so all right. So if you can work this problem out and if you can get this in all ICUs around the world, we're going to save not only thousands and eventually more hundreds of thousands of lives, you're going to reduce the hospital bills enormously. So this is incredibly important work. And you've proven—so the statisticians proved in that phase two trial that the way that you are measuring it was incorrect because a lot of people, as you said, 19 died in those first four days in the control group and only four, so that skewed—if you like—the statistics to initially look like we hadn't had a win here. Now, that's been rescinded and you've managed to get JAMA to publish it in a different light, that the SOFA score was impacted. What has been the effect now? Have you got another trial underway or have you got one in sight? Because this work’s too important, obviously, not to be taken further into a phase three. Dr Berry: All right, so you are in New Zealand where there's not much COVID. Lisa: No. Dr Berry: We are in the United States, where it's a pandemic, where we are close to 220,000 people who have died from the virus. We are at 50,000 new cases per day. Lisa: Oh my God. It's so... Dr Berry: And there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,800 to 2,000 patients dying per day of COVID. And so because of that, the network that I'm part of, that unfortunately—I'm going to have to jump off and listen to it, because it's been going on since 2:00, the annual meeting of the Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury Network, abbreviated P-E-T-A-L, the PETAL Network. The PETAL Network was tasked by the NIH to turn sharply towards COVID treatments. Lisa: Yes. That makes sense. Dr Berry: And so we were thinking, ‘Well, maybe vitamin C to treat patients with early COVID pneumonia’. And so what we did was we started a trial. We have studied 20 patients now and that trial is complete, where patients who develop COVID infection and develop early COVID pneumonia, so it's just at the start of an oxygen requirement, are treated with Vitamin C and the results have been pretty dramatic. We are in the midst of writing that up. But again, it's a—open label trial. It's not blinded. Everybody in the world knows that an open label trial does not have the power like we did with CITRIS-ALI. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: And so what is happening at a world level is that all of the health organizations around the world have come to bear to try to design treatments for COVID pneumonia. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: And that is ongoing right now. And there are like 9 or 10 major networks in, across the world. Probably, I'm not sure if New Zealand is included in that, but Europe, the US, possibly Australia. I don't know if they commit to participating in what is called the network of networks formation. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: So right now, the next trial for patients with sepsis that's not COVID is going to be conducted by the PETAL Network where we will be probably next April, starting a trial with a thousand patients. Lisa: Wow. Dr Berry: Using vitamin C conducted by the PETAL Network. Lisa: Gotcha. Dr Berry: And the PETAL Network has 69 medical centers. So doing a trial that would get a thousand patients can be done within a year. Lisa: Wow. So this is exciting stuff because this is hopefully you'll be able to reproduce and show a strong correlation between intravenous vitamin C and I'd like to see the decrease in the mortality rate. That would be a key factor. Some centers are already using vitamin C because as you mentioned before, there were no adverse reactions. And this is like in all of the studies that I've seen there has never— this is a low risk intervention and my argument when fighting for my father was that, ‘He's dying. There is no other options. Why can't I throw the bus in? Why can't I put intravenous Vitamin C’? And they were like, ‘You still have to go through all the ethics committees’. I had to sign off from every single doctor and every single nurse in the ICU unit of which there are many. Dr Berry: Well, let me make another statement. So Paul Marik, who was using 1.5 grams of Vitamin C, 200 milligrams of thiamine and 50 milligrams of hydrocortisone, administered every six hours. That meant that the patients were only getting 7 grams. Lisa: Very small amount. Dr Berry: In the CITRIS-ALI, I mean, some patients got 16 to 18 or 20 grams. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: According to body weights, 50 milligrams per kilogram. In the aftermath of that article that you mentioned that Marik published, there have been efforts to repeat that trial. The vitamins trial came out in January, using that and it failed. Then another trial, the ACTS trial using the Marik protocol failed. And then a trial that I just participated in called the VICTAS trial completely failed. And so the Marik protocol is not an effective treatment for sepsis. And well, look. As I think Anitra Carr mentioned to me a couple of years back, the amount of vitamin C that you administer is critical. Lisa: Absolutely. Dr Berry: So dose matters. And the adult, again, of your size, you probably weigh 120 pounds or something would probably get somewhere in the neighborhood of about 12 and a half to 13 grams, spread out over a 24-hour period. And then you would get it for four days. Lisa: Yes. And that is still a relatively low dose. Dr Berry: It is. Lisa: When I'm doing intravenous vitamin C with my mum, I did it with my dad prior and unfortunately, months prior to his aneurysm. Too little, too late. We were getting 30 grams. We get 30 grams a week. When I take my mum and niece today for an intravenous Vitamin C is a prophylactic as I try to keep her, as a 79 year old healthy, 30 grams. So why—I had this question certainly with Dr Marik’s protocol. It seemed to me to be very low, although the six hourly is obviously a very important point as well. Why not do the bigger dosages? Like in Japan, I know they did a study with up to a hundred grams of Vitamin C in a burns case, a burns trial, where they had some markers of sepsis there. Why are you not trying higher levels? Dr Berry: Let me come in here quick? Because I'm going to have to jump off in about 8 minutes. But listen to this. The major concern for those high doses of vitamin C, and if you talk to the oncologists who have been using it for years, they will give, like you said, they will give massive doses. And I'm talking massive, like in somebody with pancreatic cancer, they will get 60 to 80 grams intravenously, Monday, Wednesday and Friday for seven weeks. Lisa: Yes. Dr Berry: But the major concern, in somebody who's septic, who's hypotensive, in shock, that you're giving vitamin C, one of the major concerns is that it causes a significant rise in oxalate crystals formatiion in the kidneys. Now, I will mention here in the CITRIS trial, we had no evidence of renal stone formation. Lisa: No. And I mean, that was one of the arguments that the doctors had at me, ‘You could have damaged his kidneys’. And I said, ‘Well, the last time I looked, being dead damages your kidneys too’. To me, that wasn't even a consideration. And he had—after the very first vitamin C, and for my dad, his kidney function went from 27 percent to 33 percent. He's actually improved his kidney function overnight. And I know that's just one anecdotal case, but kidney stones are not going to kill you either. So surely that's not the most important consideration here when you've got a septic patient who is on death's doorstep. Dr Berry: With vitamin C struggling in the United States after the CITRIS trial, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, they always have to be concerned about adverse events. And we have put together a trial randomized and double blind using Vitamin C in patients with COVID-pneumonia. That's about to start. Lisa: Wonderful. Dr Berry: And we had, I unfortunately let my IND, Investigational New Drug lapse after CITRIS. And so I've had to claw our way back into the good graces of the FDA. And one of their major, major, major complaints was, ‘You're going to be forming renal stones’. And we're using the same protocol that we used in CITRIS. So FDA got their nephrologists involved and finally gave us the IND. But for us to begin treatment of COVID pneumonia, they have demanded that we first do a small safety trial to show that we are not causing any renal stone formation. We can get that done. We currently have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 COVID patients in the MCV hospitals right now. Lisa: Wow. Well, Dr Fowler, look, I know I'd love to spend another five hours with you discussing all this because I think it's incredibly important, both for COVID and for the sepsis and for pneumonia and for obviously, for cancer. I just want to thank you for your dedication to this. I mean, you could be in retirement and sunning yourself somewhere, relaxing, but, you know... Dr Berry: That's right. Lisa: You know that this work is critically important. And I heard one of your lectures is the equivalent of two 747 planes going down every day filled with people. Dr Berry: Every day in the United States. Lisa: In the United States alone. Dr Berry: That’s just in the U.S. Lisa: Yes. And these people, thousands of families being destroyed with losing loved ones. I'm one of those, unfortunately, sitting here all the way in New Zealand. And so this work is incredibly important. So please keep going. And I'm desperate to hear what comes from this COVID clinical trials and the other sepsis trials, obviously. So thank you so much for your work, Dr Fowler, and I really appreciate you. Dr Berry: It's been wonderful meeting you and speaking with you, and your and your audience. And when you have Anitra on a couple of weeks, give her my regards. Lisa: I will definitely do that, Dr Fowler. That's been awesome. Thank you, Dr Fowler. And all the very best there in Virginia. Dr Berry: Take care. Bye. That’s it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
Once You Get Your CliftonStrengths Report, How Should You Take Action? Your CliftonStrengths report reflects your greatest strengths. As you focus on applying them to work, you might also wonder how to handle situations that call for talent themes way below your top 5 or top 10. If you're like most people, you'll want to dial up your bottom talents. Unfortunately, this can be a very draining process with a low return on your effort. Instead, your high-leverage will come from studying the top talents in your CliftonStrengths report — then double down on your superpowers. If you need to take action on your lesser talents at the bottom of the CliftonStrengths report, there are strategies for mitigating these potential weaknesses: 1. You can partner with others who have that as a top talent. 2. You can stop doing some of the activities that call on the low talent area. 3. You can even do a task-switcheroo with a peer so that you're both in your respective strengths zones. In this interview, Lisa Cummings and StrengthsFinder facilitator Sara Regan reflect on the value of looking at the full CliftonStrengths report as you navigate through work using your strengths. Here’s the transcript of the insightful conversation between Lisa and Sara: Lisa: Hello everyone, I'm Lisa Cummings from Lead Through Strengths. So excited today to be joined by Sara Regan, one of our facilitators from Lead Through Strengths, and I'm psyched to bring you some new fresh thinking and tips on applying your CliftonStrengths report (results) at work. Intentionally Applying Top Talents From Your CliftonStrengths Report Lisa: So that makes me think of a question on situational fluency. So a lot of people in the workplace, are thinking about — “How do I read a room?” “How do I get comfortable?” “How do I hone my chops in a skill?” And usually, people think about putting in the hours, putting in the work — doing the hustle behind the thing they want to get good at. What else could you layer on for them, related to using their results from the CliftonStrengths report? Sara: Right, I guess a few things. 1) I wouldn't discount just putting the time in but putting the time in a very conscious way. To be reflective about what they're learning along the way, can really help people to build that ability to shift and pivot in a little bit more fluency so that level of consciousness strengths come into play. There will be people who have certain themes and profiles and talents that allow that to happen more naturally. One of the things I like about strengths is it can certainly help us zero in on what we're really gifted at and where our talent lies. 2) When I'm doing coaching with people, or sometimes working with teams and we're looking at the whole 34, there are some lesser themes and it's sometimes they simply need the awareness. Let's take Adaptability, it is a strength that usually allows people to go with the flow and adjust in a very calm and seamless way when maybe other people are freaking out, or the house is on fire these people maintain that calm presence and can shift. If Adaptability is number 34 for you, sometimes just knowing that, and knowing there will be situations when I need to really dig deep and so it can bring that clarity of focus of…”this is hard for me, but it's possible.” I need to think and act like somebody with high Adaptability. Study them. Listen to a podcast. Learn as much as you can and emulate what you can to do that shift, and then leaning on your other strengths that can help fill in as well. Now let's say that same person has Learner at very high — will stay curious, keep asking questions, partnering with other people who have different things that you can lean on. That, I find, is what helps people to navigate the unknown. CliftonStrengths Report: Knowing What To Do With Your Bottom 5 Lisa: I love it. I think you just gave a really good case for getting the premium version of Clifton strengths to get the full 34. You can do it without, but you get that very quick look at what is at the bottom of the CliftonStrengths report. And then instead of thinking of them as weaknesses, you think of them as potential drains or challenge points. I experienced the exact one that you were describing, but I could only see it in the rearview mirror so I looked back at an old job and I realized, “Oh I was so...soul-sucked.” And I couldn't figure out why because I loved the people, I loved the job. It all looked great on paper but it wore me out and I couldn't figure out why. Adaptability was the explanation for it when I look back, because it's low on my list. I can do it and I would tap into the need to have urgent phone calls and get interrupted constantly. I did it, well, because I cared about the people that I worked with so that's what gave me the juice to keep going. But it wasn't fun because focus wanted to be like — “Hey, I'm in my cave working, and I need to have an uninterrupted time to be at my best.” So have you ever found any like that in yourself? Sara: Absolutely. The situation that came to my mind was thinking about a different leader that I worked with before. He had Positivity as number 34. He became more conscious of when he needed to dial that up. Sometimes, I'm talking about calibrating these things and when we dial them up and dial them back and he had gotten some feedback along the way that people didn't always feel like there was the opportunity to celebrate, or the pat on the back. Achiever number 1 so we're off to the next project. You don't want to be uncomfortable. They were in place for too long, we need to keep moving. And so for him that was that — that way to think of the specific times when he needed to bring more of that Positivity forward. Your example was really interesting to me too because I think it proves that point that we can do these as needed with a lot of thought, and some consciousness. We can put the items at the bottom of our CliftonStrengths report into action. But we can't really live in that zone. And if we do, we're gonna experience burnout. We'll be stressed or just not as engaged — and maybe in a way that we don't fully understand. So I think that that can be a really powerful takeaway, and then that seeing the full 34 helps us with that. Your question about my own personal experience. Consistency is pretty low on my CliftonStrengths report. Context is low. And I know this is interesting too that I have had people who have Context very high, reporting to me. I've also reported to someone who had Context number 1. So, it sets up really important conversations about how you can get your best work done and how to communicate most effectively. I love it when we can bypass what might be an interpersonal attention or a misunderstanding or just literally not seeing eye to eye. But with that awareness and stepping back, being able to have a much greater appreciation. The other thing that has happened to the Connectedness believes that the universe gives us things that we need and opportunities to learn. My daughter has Context number 1, and so I had to develop an appreciation for this theme. I can't have bias. I really wanted to understand and I see how beautifully it helps her do what she needs to do. So there's lessons to be learned I think by seeing that full report and paying attention to when we can dial them up and when we just need to maybe step away from work that really calls us to stay in that that we can assume too much. Lisa: So many good angles there and more cases for getting the full 34 CliftonStrengths report — because you can identify, “Oh that wears me out to be in that headspace. Wouldn't it be convenient if I used partnerships with other people, rather than feeling like you're head-butting with them, and they drive me crazy. Instead it could be like, oh they like thinking like this. What a benefit we could bring to each other.” So good! One person's trash is another person's treasure. All right, now that you've picked up some new ideas from Sara, think about this: How does it apply to you? How does this concept show up in you and what could you do with it, given your top five talent themes and how you could apply those at work? We wish you the best as you claim those talents, and share them with the world. Learn More About Maximizing Your CliftonStrengths Report In an earlier Lead Through Strengths podcasts, Pete Mockaitis, trainer and chief at Awesome At Your Job, gave some more interesting scenarios to this podcast’s topic when he provided insights on How To Use Your StrengthsFinder Report. Through the CliftonStrengths assessment, he recognized how he had been applying his strengths in his academic and professional life. But there are instances when a CliftonStrengths report reveals a strength or two that you think are irrelevant to your job, are not supported by the workplace culture or something that you simply don’t like. Listen as Strother Gaines talks about What To Do When You Don’t Like Your Strengths in this podcast episode with Lisa. On whether Working On Your Weakness Zone Leads To Burnout?, Lisa presents 3 tell-tale signs you could be and what you can do about it, whether you’re an employee, a strengths-champion or a people-leader. Better yet, if you’re a manager looking to power up your team’s efficiency and wanting to contribute to overall business performance, Jessica Rhodes shares magical ideas in this podcast episode on How To Use Your Team’s Talents To Swap Tasks And Leverage Their Strengths.
Welcome to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. A show about innovations, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry brought to you by Talkpush the leading recruitment automation platform.Max: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Recruitment Hackers. This is Max and today I would like to welcome Lisa on the show. Lisa Shepherd. Lisa: Hi everyone. Max: Hi Lisa. So Lisa is someone I had the pleasure of meeting when interacting with Sitel and has a long experience in high volume recruitment in the BPO sector and financial services. And is now a consultant as well. Can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up in the high volume recruiting space? Lisa: It's pretty interesting. My career didn't start in high volume. It obviously started as most people did, on the agency side and then moved into in-house. But over the years I kind of found myself more in professional services, IT, outsourcing, then financial services outsourcing, and then most recently with Sitel. So it kind of, I think once you start in one path it kind of leads to other opportunities. So, you know, when I moved to Miami, I wasn't expecting to be approached by such a global organization, because in Miami, you assume it's more regional headquarters.When I got approached by Sitel for the role, I was like, wow. Okay. 80,000 people across the globe, hiring between, you know, 16, 17,000 people a year. So yeah, it was such a great opportunity that I jumped at it. Max: I love volume. You can make a small difference in so many people's lives. I also started out doing a lot of IT recruitment myself, and I thought the job was tense, which is why I'm happy to work on automation and technology now. But, Miami being international, I'm not that surprised. We have a few, BPO companies that are operating out of Florida. Like iQor and Sitel and others.How long have you been in Florida now? Lisa: Oh my gosh, almost three and a half years. And actually originally I was wanting to move to New York. Florida wasn't really somewhere that kind of was on my radar, but the company I was working for at time TMF, had a regional headquarters here. And when I thought about it, I thought, why would I move from London to New York to have the same weather? and expense? When I could move to the sunshine state and be close to them, the beach, my dad actually lives close. So it was kind of a no brainer. Max: Perfect. Yeah. I think it sounds like if people want to go and retire there, that means that they should just start working there. And, that's the world that we're moving into now where people are finding a work life balance through relocation and moving closer to their dream spots and still keeping an occupation. So, today, you're doing consulting work. Can you tell us a little bit about that? is it technology related?Lisa: It's interesting, actually. So, you know, this kind of happened due to COVID. So there's always a silver lining to everything. I set up my LLC very quickly and I got approached by a contact of mine and what's happened is over the last few months, I've ended up with two clients who are private equity backed.And both of them are at, you know, early stages of either a carve out or an acquisition. And so we're in a situation whereby they're smaller businesses. So it's not a high volume, they're smaller businesses, but they're, you know, either it's a carve out with no back office support. So no TA function, whatsoever or it's a merger, people have left.You've got to organize it, trying to merge during a pandemic. And people leave. And then suddenly again, you don't have a system that's being used across the board. You don't have a team. You've got local HR doing all the recruitment. You've got high spend, you know. Both of them have very similar situations in that they just need someone to come in and put in a process, put in a strategy, look at the team and put in systems.So, yeah, it's pretty, interesting. Lots of ambiguity and very stressful in a sense, not for me, but for them. And that they're trying to do all of this whilst not being in an office. Really difficult. Very difficult.Max: Yeah. You have to switch on that camera and smile at the camera a lot.Lisa: You do, and you have to get your hair done in the morning and get on that camera. So, you know, it's been very interesting, I think either way it's difficult at the early stages of an acquisition or a carve out. You know, especially people that have come from a smaller business and now suddenly they're part of a larger business or they're part of a larger business and now they're part of a smaller business as well. There's so much change and it doesn't suit everyone and trying to get everyone to come on that journey with you is very hard when you can't be face to face with them. When it comes to setting up a TA function and systems is the same thing, trying to get the hiring managers to align with the strategy.It's just difficult. It's just different ways of communicating and trying to sell the story to candidates as well. Again, different ways of communicating. So you just have to be, you know, think out of the box. Yeah.Max: That's the part that I'm most interested in talking to you about, this talking to candidates and how it differs from one team's to another's mindset. And let's centralize, you know, best practices and then roll them out and sort you know, a one size fits all approach that is going to alienate local teams and local brands, and misses the opportunity to create meaningful connections at the front of the funnel for companies that know their local markets, and they know their sort of, one size fits all approach.Have you been on both sides of these battles Lisa: It's funny, I've been in both. I've been in a situation where they were very localized and centralized. So the idea was that we have a global process, but not to lose the local nuances. And then again, a different situation whereby it was extremely localized, but somehow they wanted to have a global process, but still keep it very localized. And quite frankly from what I've seen, you need to meet somewhere in the middle. If you're a global organization, you need to have one voice. If you're trying to create a culture, and have, you know, competencies and values that align, there's got to be one approach, but with those local nuances. So how you attract candidates in different markets hugely varies, right? And how you talk to them and the messaging that goes out, but it needs to still be an aligned message. And I've seen it where it hasn't been. So you create silos within a business and you're not creating a culture per se. And no one feels part of an organization.Max: let's get down to specifics then, like when you're saying, when do you cross the line? If I'm allowed to speak in a different language, through a different channel, advertising on different boards and with a different step by step process, you know, there's five interviews in one part of the business and there's only two in another part. If all of that is fair game, which I believe it is, then what isn't?Lisa: You need to have at least you're saying the same thing, right? So who are we as an organization? What is the stress sheet? What's important to us as a business? And you know, what are the type of people that we want to attract into our business that align with our values?If you're talking to the same language, so to speak, but not the same language, but saying the same thing to every single candidate and assessing candidates against those premises, then I think it's fine, right? You have to have some consistency because you have to have a fair process. So, you know, if you're doing five interviews for one candidate and two for another, then obviously that's not right.But if it's totally different jobs then that's fine. My view is as long as everyone's kind of saying the same thing about the business and passionate about it, you know, if you have a central HR function, then as long as you provide those guidelines to local HR, to local TA teams, as long as everyone buys into what that is.Then I think then off you go. Right? As long as the results, as long as you're hitting your numbers, as long as you know, the tenure of those people that you're attracting is good and you don't have crazy attrition, then you're doing something right. Max: Yeah, I think it sounds pretty easy when you say it, actually, it sounds like, okay. I mean it's just a set of guidelines and values and then off you go. On the technology side, it's not so easy because most of the tech stack is focused on the North American market, maybe Europe. And does not really do that well with other markets on the sourcing side.But maybe this crisis is an opportunity to centralize more than ever. I mean now, if we can hire from anywhere, as long as you got an internet connection, then maybe there should be one size fits all. You know.Lisa: I still don't think that would work.I still think, you know, especially if you're looking in Asia, for example, how you manage the process in India versus Singapore is going to be very different. And so as much as you know, yes, maybe this is the opportunity to get one system, for sure, but if that system allows you to have local nuances then amazing.Which I think is not easy to find when you're looking at technology, when you know, for example, when I was in Sitel and we were looking at various different pieces of technology, CRM, et cetera. We really needed something that was agile when you're working with so many different markets in Latin America and Southeast Asia, you need to have that diversity to say, okay, well, we want this kind of process in this location and this process in this location, but we still want to use the same tool. We need to be able to tell a story to the business. We need to be able to share MI, and be able to see how we're doing against our KPIs as a TA function, then great, we can still show all of that if you have one system. But when you don't or you're working off spreadsheets and you're trying to manage, you know, high volume from social media, from all different places. It's insane. You can't, I mean, it was almost impossible. Max: I agree. I've been trying for years and I agree it's almost impossible. I know.Lisa: I think actually over the years, with utilizing things like, you know, Facebook as an example, and Instagram, and really trying to attract people from those tools, fairly hard, because quite often you don't necessarily know where the candidate actually heard about your organization, first off.So, you know, they could have seen your advert on Facebook, but then gone to your website and applied online. So, that's another challenge that I think businesses have and I've seen is where did that person really come from? Do we know that our methods are working? How do we know? Unless they directly apply from that link, which doesn't always happen. So, to understand how social media is evolving you need to see where your candidates are coming from. Max: Very difficult. We used to classify channel Facebook, but now we have to split it into communication channel in order to try to be fair with every channel. And ultimately you recommend that...I do see the value that at the end of the process, you ask the candidate, by the way, where did you first hear about us? And they may not remember exactly, but it's as good as any source almost, if you've got a lot of channels activated.Lisa: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's the only way to really get a true answer. As much as we want to automate that piece, you just have to ask the question. Max: Yeah. It's like one of those questions that, you know, you're never going to get a perfect answer, but that's as good as anything else, like a good comparison would be like, are you happy right now?There are so many different ways of finding out whether somebody is happy or not. There's like, you know, physiological signs and other things, but really the best way to find out is just to ask them and hope they're not lying.Lisa: Right. Exactly.Max: How do you see the market evolving right now? Obviously from your perspective you're dealing with some internal changes in your companies. Could you give some insights into how talent acquisition has changed for your clients over the last few months and dealing with the pandemic? And the response to the pandemic, things that went better than expected and things that went harder than expected, perhaps.Lisa: So I think it's a fascinating thing, right? So to kind of see these changes and see how different businesses react to it. I think for me, that's been the most interesting because now I've seen a very large BPO and now two smaller kind of private equity owned organizations and how they have various different approaches.I think a lot of people are talking about you know, there's going to be so much more flexibility. Everyone's going to be able to work from home. It's going to be amazing. I actually don't necessarily see that in the smaller businesses. What I see is at the moment, yes, people can work from home, but we're planning for people to be back in the office.So when you're hiring, you need to hire someone that is still in the vicinity of our location. So there's a lot of talk about, maybe some of the larger organizations… You know, especially those that are most well known are talking about, you're not going to have people come into the office. Everyone's going to be remote. I don't think for smaller businesses that is necessarily a long term option. Maybe there will be more flexibility for people. You come in two, three days a week when maybe before it was five days a week, but I think to create a connection and create a good working environment they feel like they need to have people back in the office. So that's very interesting. And especially because both businesses are at very early stages of their creation, so there's definitely a feeling that we need to get people together. So that's one thing From a TA perspective, it's been interesting to see how hiring managers have responded to interviewing people on zoom and whatever, you know, virtual thing that they're using.Positives and negatives. I think obviously in terms of having more flexibility on time and, you know, just doing what they need to do, because we still have to hire through a pandemic. They've done it, but I think, again, when I look at the smaller businesses I'm working with, I think we're losing some of our technique.And you know, trying to make the right decisions when you're interviewing someone on a video is very difficult, especially for senior roles. I think there's still a feeling that I want to meet this person face to face. So that's very interesting. But then when I go back into the kind of high volume space, when Sitel, just before I left, we had rolled out a hundred percent automated process in the U.S, so assessment and face to face, well sort of virtual interviewing process. And that worked from what I've seen and what I've heard that worked extremely well for them. And I suspect that they won't necessarily go back to having candidates come and sit in the reception of the call center waiting to do an interview or an assessment and spending maybe two, three hours there. I think it would be extreme and very different world for them now, which I think is hugely positive and was exactly what they wanted to achieve, but needed a little bit of a push. And the pandemic kind of gave them that push, especially in the U.S actually for sure, in the U.S.So, you know, when you're looking at high volume, I think it's been great in the sense of going virtual. I think for the smaller businesses that have more sort of intimate relationships with candidates and have to spend more time. assessing candidates for fit has definitely been more challenging.And managing a process, remotely is fairly challenging. Managing people's diaries and you know, sometimes you have two interviewers and doing that virtually and sharing information on your logins and then the internet goes down and it makes an interview much harder to do, I think than face to face.But we'll see, you know, I still think it's evolving. When this pandemic comes to an end we'll see how businesses react, but I do think some of these smaller companies will go back to being in the office.Max: Yeah. There's a case to be made for faster collaboration, faster iteration, easier to make meetings, easier to get people's attention. Easier to do training. All of that is easier in person, easier to go for a drink afterwards as well. Lisa: You're creating a culture, you know, if you're a business that is still in that sort of startup mode, you're trying to create a culture. And that's very hard to do when everyone's on remote call on a video.So yeah, for the two businesses I'm working with very, very hard because really early stages and very interesting that trying to do all of that remotely. Max: Maybe I can give you a couple of tips on how we do it at Talkpush. We've got 60 people working in eight different countries, everybody working from home and has been that way for a while pre pandemic. We randomly allocate two people together once every week or two weeks for a water cooler chat so that they get to know each other on a non-work basis, mixing departments between themselves. So we build some team building there.I don't participate personally, but we do have lunches in front of the webcam and a bunch of other things I've seen online. Like people having charade competitions and karaoke competitions, all kinds of things in order to make it, feel like you're connected.Lisa: Yeah, I love all of those ideas. The two businesses I'm working with are about a thousand people each so I think there's definitely opportunities for them to do some bits and pieces, but I still think they're still trying to deal with this situation as much as where, you know, four or five months in, that there's still an element of figuring out what to do day to day, just to keep the business going. So I think in some places you forget that you're also still trying to create a culture. And right now they're just trying to make sure that they're keeping the revenues up right? to survive. But that will come because attrition will go up and that's when you really, you have to focus on your employee value proposition for sure.Max: Yeah. I think everybody's trying to wonder who's going to tender a resignation three months from now when the unemployment goes down. Lisa: But also, actually I'm finding in some markets, the unemployment is not that high. So, you know, back in 2008, and the last crash that I remember, there was an assumption that there's going to be tons of great people out there. We're going to hire, it's going to be super easy for us to hire because now we're in a recession. So everyone's looking for a job. And what happened then is happening now. In some industries, yes, absolutely. There are a lot of people who are available, but not in all industries. And, you know, then people get lazy and they don't create a good experience. And I'm starting to see that now with one or two clients, there's an assumption that they're going to get the best candidates, but some of these people are still working and we're actually approaching candidates who are still in jobs, thank God. But, they don't want to move because they don't want to take the risk. So that's the other side, right?Max: My first reaction, when you said people are getting lazy, I thought you were talking about candidates, it's like, they're getting their checks in the mail.Lisa: I would never say that, now. I mean corporations are getting lazy because they think it's easy to attract, so they don't want to spend too much time doing it. And you know, us at talent acquisition are having to educate managers and senior leaders to say, guys, the people that you have asked us to approach, they're still working.Some of them are still working and they don't want to move because, you know, they don't want to risk coming out of a business that whether, you know, still got a job and still earning cash, to an organization that is fairly new. So it's pretty interesting that, as much as there's an assumption, that's not always the case. Max: Well, I think it's ridiculous to have that mentality If you're in Talent Acquisition to think, oh, now it's easier to hire. And so, of course it may well be true, but if it's easier for you, it's easier for everybody else. Hence you still have to beat competition for the best talent.Lisa: Exactly. And that's a problem, people get lazy and then you're not able to fill your roles.Max: Okay, well, parting words, last question. Tell me how you think that the role in Talent Acquisition is evolving and what are the qualities required to be competitive in let's say 20, 25, that are, you know, not such a big deal now or a few years ago, in which direction is the Talent Acquisition profession evolving.And how do you keep your team competitive and on the edge of this battle for talent?Lisa: I think it is going to come down to technology. Yes. And depending on what market you're in high volume or not, we need to be able to be on top of the newest technology that's on the market that can help us source the best candidates.So that's the first thing. But then the second thing is you still need to have that human skill of building relationships with your stakeholders and with your candidates. Irrelevant, whether you're doing high volume or not. I think there's, you know, a lot of people talk about, oh, we won't need people anymore. It will be automated. And you know, you're gonna use AI and it's going to be great and that's how you will select your candidates. There will be, of course there's an element of that. And there will be in 2025, no doubt, but there will still be the human element. We talk about the human part of human resources, right?TA is a huge part of that. And as it gets harder and harder to attract talent, you need individuals who can build relationships, who can do that and attract the best candidates. And in terms of how businesses attract candidates it has to be more than the package. And I still have this conversation today with organizations and businesses to talk about, especially smaller businesses, to talk about, okay, you might have a really great benefits package in one of your jurisdictions. But, what is it, what do you believe in right? What's your strategy? What are you doing in the local community? That to me is what people are looking at these days in businesses.Like what does that business do? do I really align with their ethics and you know, their values? Is that me? Can I see myself working there long term? So I think more and more, it's going to become harder for organizations to really be able to articulate that and focus on that because of course the bottom line is bottom line. You always need to focus on the cash.But they also need to look at who they are and how they're being portrayed in the market. and that will get harder and harder. And especially since social media changes so quickly. That's the other piece like being on top of where candidates are looking for jobs or where you can attract their attention. More and more, that there's so much advertising on social media these days you get bombarded.So how do you differentiate yourself as an organization to people that you want to attract? That also is going to get harder and harder. So being on top of that and constantly recreating, it's going to be super important. Max: Well, it sounds like a very complicated career to be in. Lisa: Yeah, but you know, we love it.Max: There's that storytelling piece, then you gotta be on the edge of technology. Then sort of a strategic positioning where you want to stand out and be able to develop an identity that people can feel drawn towards and want to be associated with. Quite a juggling act.But, yeah, it does sound fun. And, it was fun talking with you, Lisa and catching up after your hopefully temporary departure from the BPO sector. Where can people get a hold of you?Lisa: So obviously linkedin and I have my email address on there. So get in touch, send me a message.If you want to talk, I'm here. Max: Thank you, Lisa.Lisa: Thanks, cheers, max, have a good one. Max: And that was, Lisa Shephard, from Florida, an English woman in Florida with an interesting perspective on whether the work from home trend that has been initiated with the pandemic will last much longer, especially for small businesses who rely on speed of execution and the energy that you get from the team meeting in person.If you liked the interview and you want to hear more about the exciting world of volume hiring and talent acquisition automation, please subscribe to the recruitment hackers podcast and share with your friends.
My guest today is digital governance advocate Lisa Welchman. For the past twenty years, Lisa has helped organizations manage the flow of their digital information. In this episode, she tells us about how content models and governance frameworks can help organizations manage their information more intentionally and safely. Listen to the full conversation https://theinformeddotlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/episode-11-lisa-welchman.mp3 Show notes Lisa Welchman Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, by Lisa Welchman Insight Timer Scientific Eve Read the full transcript Jorge: All right, Lisa, tell us about yourself. Lisa: Not sure what you want to know. Do you want to know technical Lisa, musical Lisa, all of the Lisas? Jorge: Lisa sounds like a very multi-faceted person and I am super intrigued now by everything you've said, so why don't we take those in that order? Lisa: So there's governance Lisa. I don't remember which one I said first. There's governance Lisa, what I really have been doing – it's taken me a while to figure it out – for the last 20 years, is help – usually businesses, but sometimes nonprofits, sometimes higher education, sometimes governments sometimes NGOs – so anyone, I guess – organizations, let's put it that way. I help organizations who are dealing with it sort of multi-faceted online presence figure out how to get organized so that they can make that with better intention, higher quality, and more recently, I've also been saying safely; with safety in mind, right? So as everyone knows, but I'll just say it again, the web sort of crept on organizations particularly ones that already existed prior to the advent of the commercial web, sort of snuck up on people and so they've tried to impose some of their previous work practices. And previous disciplines and domains like marketing, IT. to try to make digital fit within those confines of what this groups already doing. It doesn't really, right? Because while there are a lot of similarities and a lot of things the marketing team could claim as theirs, or an IT team could claim as theirs, there are some unique ways that information flows inside an organization that demands some tweaks to that and even some new things the adage that work model. So that's what I spend most of my time doing. It's really helping these organizations digest digital and integrate those practices in their organization. So that's for one that existed already prior to that. Occasionally, I'll work with dot-coms. Sometimes very different model. They're all digital, right? So they're trying to figure out the reverse which is how they impose structure and any kind of governing practice into a new business model. So the aim is the same which is how can we create and put things online and safe manner and a clear manner and with intention. So that's what I spend most of my time doing. In my spare time, I do all kinds of things. My son says I don't know how to sit still or I'm a production-oriented person. I don't think that's entirely true, but he might be right. And you know, I spend time I make a lot of music and recording music. I posted music on the Insight Meditation timer so I create these interesting meditation pieces and put those online. Creating them helps me relax and I like to share that with other people. And I also quilt which is a fun thing to do. We were mentioning before we hit the record button that quilting is very mathematically oriented geometry in particular. It's just a fun way to relax to sort of design and make those quilts as well. So those are probably the primary things that I do. Jorge: What type of music do you play? Lisa: The first thing I am is a singer. The second thing that I am is a jazz pianist. This is in order of competency. So I sing the best. And I do a lot of that. I was trained as a classical singer and then we do some jazz on the side because I grew up in a time where there were a lot of replays of Cole Porter songbook all the American Songbook, all this classic Gershwin all that sort of thing. So I grew up with that songbook; listening to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. My dad was a jazz nut. A lot of musicians in my family. And so, I started to Jazz sing probably when I was in my 20s. And I started to get annoyed at not being able to find someone to play the piano for me consistently. And so I learned a little bit piano, taking like five or six years of piano lessons in childhood. And so I thought you know by the time I finish complaining about this I could have learned how to do this myself. So I also play jazz piano, but it's really hard to accompany yourself. So I have a lot of admiration for people who do that. But I do it for pleasure. It's fun. I wanted to talk about when we did this… to talk about just organization in general. Information organization, inside of a business or corporation or whatever you want to call it, school. And then also the organization of the team that makes that information so, you know, I think that's just an important component that I really like to bring out. Because when you asked me to do this it was confusing to me, and I've come to the conclusion – and I may have actually written in this in my book and forgot about it – but there was just this symbiotic relationship between the team that creates the information and the information. And those things need to be architected in complementary ways so that they can support each other. And there's also sort of a chicken and egg thing that comes on. When I work with a lot of digital teams inside of an organization, the number one complaint is usually the content people, right? And they're usually inside the marketing team, and they're upset because they're trying to create some sort of content model – could be an information model – and they're not able to do it consistently because they don't have any authority over the team of people that make that content. That's a complaint. You know what it should be, you know how the information should flow, whether or not that's omni-channel, whether or not it's just a simple modular reuse of certain types of content, chunks not omni-channel. It could be just the reuse of content on a set of websites or single website. They can't get control over that information flowing is usually because the team isn't structured to do so. Jorge: The shape of the team affects the shape of the information, right? Lisa: Or the other way around. In fact, that is what I think is the really interesting question. What's dominant? That's why I'm calling it a symbiotic relationship. So say you're – I don't know – an airplane manufacturer. There's a few of those, like we could be talking about any of them. So you're an airplane manufacturer and you've existed since airplanes have been manufactured and you have work processes and models that are in place to support paper-based content delivery or information delivery. And it's very very controlled in that way and you're conservative. So all of that information comes out of that office of communications or marketing department has reviewed and that's how it gets done. In comes the World Wide Web, into that model, and we all know – I won't tell that story again – the web comes, everyone claims it, and you get a lot of things popping up inside the organization. So maybe one business aspect of the organization thinks they want to have a website that says this, and another says that. And so you get this fragmentation. That's what happened; it's happened to everything on the web. Let's not talk about dot coms right now. Let's just keep that to businesses that existed prior to the web and had the web sort of imposed on them. Right? So all of a sudden here comes the web things start to pop up because you have new rules about how to manage the web in the organization, and then you fast forward 25 years, which is now, and you say something like. Oh, I want to do omni-channel, right? How would you actually get that done? So who's driving that and what's the structure of people to get that done? Say you figure that out; you figure out how to do omni-channel. It means that you need to be consistent about certain content standards across the organization. If you live in an organization that has a highly decentralized behavior, the culture is one of decentralization, and where certain business units are allowed to make certain decisions, they may not like having a consistent content model imposed on them. And you can say, well so what? They don't like it, they still have to do it. But if the culture is that that's not how they do it, they don't actually have to do it. Right? And that's the governing problem that affects the piece: how do you make these people do that? Or you could say, there's another thing you could say: we're going to say it stays decentralized but we still want you to follow this content model, but we don't want you to produce it in a decentralized way, we want you to make your stuff, send it back to headquarters, we'll review it, and we'll clean it up and brush it up and make it the way we want, and then we will deploy it. That's a horrible content model. It creates a bottleneck. But that's a way to get it done. So there's a lot of different ways to get it done. But you have to settle on something and a certain set of compromises that you have to make on the people side and a content side to get it done. That's the struggle. Jorge: For the benefit of our listeners, what is a content model? Lisa: Content model to me is the structures and processes that need to be put in place in order to deliver information to the community of users that you want to deliver, when they want it, how they want it, just in time right in time. How do we best do that serve the mission of the organization? Maybe that might just mean minimal content reuse for folks, right? It may mean highly modular content. One of those exciting things that for me and my career is that I started out at Cisco Systems. And they already had a multichannel delivery in 1999. And I talked about this in my book, but and I keep talking about it, but it's true. Like people come to me now. They still can't do multi-channel content delivery . So we had a content model Framemaker that basically imposed content reuse and they delivered to multiple channels. The channels were to a CD-ROM drive, make a book that you can put in a box – this is 1999 – make a book that you can put in the box with the servers or routers that Cisco sold, and the last one, or the last two ones were push to the web and push to the intranet — basic content information so that the sales team could see the information and they knew what they were selling. And there's a lot of redundancy in that content. So they created a model that you knew what content needed to be used for which delivery whether it's the book, CD-ROM, or the web. So they created that model. And my point is that when you create a content model there's a certain type of workflow that goes along with that content model. If you're going to reuse a title, if you're going to reuse a whole white paper – which at that time was a big deal – you have to think about who needs to touch those things in workflow to get them working particularly well. And my point is that that content model may not fit well with how an organization works culturally. You might be insisting on consistency across multiple business units when they never had to do it before. And that means that they don't have shared work practices. Maybe they don't want to use the same standard. Maybe they don't like the writing style; one business unit doesn't like the writing style that's used for the content and they're used to having their own. And see how this push and pull. And you have to create that sort of symbiotic relationship between a workflow and the content so you get the right balance. It's real challenge. I mean, I'm listening to myself and understand that I'm making this sound really really complicated, but it's not. It's very simple in a lot of ways what's complicated is people. People don't want to do it. Jorge: So the way that you're describing it, it sounds to me like what the content model does, is it brings everyone onto the same playing field when it comes to language, right? Like you said that in the Cisco example, all those various channels by which content got communicated to folks ended up informing the sales team and getting them to a degree of cohesiveness about what they were selling. So I can see how that would influence the culture of the organization because in some ways it's like you're putting rails around the language they use. Lisa: Right. And you know, people don't like that. The interesting thing about the digital space and the web space is that the way that it came out of the box was very sort of wild and unruly. Everyone likes to say “Wild West,” but it is a good example. There weren't any rules. When I was at Cisco, we were making up stuff as we went along. Jorge: I'm wondering about how people did this before the internet because you're talking about the arrival of the web in particular as this kind of turning point of sorts. Lisa: I think yes, if you know what it's just it's… It is a significant inflection point for for humanity, the sharing of information globally and instantly is definitely an inflection point for human beings and I think we're just starting that. We celebrated the 30th anniversary of the web this year who that's really nothing. I say all the time it took, you know, a really really long time for printing to mature, it took a really really long time for the phone to commoditize, it took a long time for people to know how to manufacture cars safely. We're struggling with all these things right now. How do we have consistent standards across the board? Lucky for us, the World Wide Web is standards-based. If you don't follow certain standards, it's just isn't going to push through the browser. It's not going to work. So I'm not talking about the technology. I'm talking about standards within our organization. And people like to say that organizations don't make standards or have standards and that's just not true. Organizations usually have a consistent business card, a consistent brand which includes a consistent mark. They have consistent ways that they use language. They have consistency around the way that they house their employees. They have these big campuses that have consistent layouts that have naming conventions for their conference rooms. So when I walk in and they tell me, ” we don't do standards here.” I'm like, “that's just not true. What you haven't decided is that digital is something that should be in that set of things that you all do in a standardized way”. Right? And part of that is the web has a culture of do what you want when you want. And I grew up in that culture. There were no rules and so the web as a discipline and digital as a discipline needs to mature. Now does that mean that everything has to be sort of choked through this gate of sameness? No. That would be one way to do it, right? But that doesn't mean it just means that an organization needs to be consistent about how they push information through the organization and therefore consistent about how they staff for those positions that move that information. So a lot of times, I'm walking in and there's a digital team that's already formed with names in it: UX; it's usually split somewhere between IT and marketing communications and some loud people in the business units. They all have names, they all have jobs, and they basically are saying “give me a governing framework, but don't change my job.” Right? And that's not how it works. If you want to have an omni-channel experience for your users. You're probably going to have to change the way you create information, which means you're going to have to change the jobs of people that create information and that's really what people are pushing up against, right? They'll all agree that this is a great content model. We want to do this type of delivery scheme for information management for our users. But as soon as you say that means you're going to lose your power or you have to move from here or no marketing, IT does get a say about certain systems, or you need to tell the business units to rein themselves in about making certain choices people get really in a muddle. Right? And so that's really what they're bucking up against and it makes it a very interesting human problem. Jorge: When you're talking about content and communications, I can think of at least two different kinds of communication and content being produced. One is the sort of stuff that goes out to the world. So you're talking for example about marketing and marketing produces content that gets shared with people outside the organization. And then there is content that is meant for internal consumption, just for the folks who work at the company. And I'm guessing that these governance frameworks affect both. Is that the case? Lisa: Well, they often are different governing frameworks. So a governing framework for me is about decision-making. Who gets to make decisions about standards. A content model is a standard for delivering content. Brand has a set of standards that are underneath it. IT has a set of standards. Right? So it's decision-making about standards. In some organizations the internet and the intranet, which is that external and internal content names, which I'm talking about websites just to be simple, right? Those things aren't managed by the same team. It doesn't happen that often. So the governing framework of who makes decisions about standards for the intranet and internet might be similar. In most instances, it's not the same. Some other organization does the internet and some other one does any external-facing things. And so you might have different governing frameworks, and you often do. Right? Because it's who makes decisions about the standards for internally consumed content might be different. Marketing usually doesn't want to have anything to do with that but everything to do with external, right? So those are going to be different types of governing frameworks. However, the types of decision-making that happens in a governance framework are threefold: strategies, policies, and standards. So standards might be made by different people in the group, strategies might be different, but oftentimes the policy-making framework is the same for internet and intranet because it usually has to do with compliance and regulatory aspects and then talking about the legal team or compliance team and that can sort of roll up . But sometimes that can be different as well. So these are just sort of dry things that nobody wants to think about. But it is the thing that people fight about the most. I have a new visual design for the website. Who gets to decide what that is? That's the number one fight. It is the number one fight inside of an organization, used to be what's on the home page. Number one fight, right? So figuring out who makes these decisions about standards is really important and if you can figure that out once for the internet, once for the intranet, once for the extranet, what that decision-making paradigm is, multiple projects and operational teams can flow through that governing framework. But people don't want to do that. It's really fascinating. I've been doing this for 20 years and just now with the sort of blow-ups that you're seeing in the dot-coms are people starting to say, “oh wait, this stuff needs to be governed. There needs to be policy, there needs to be standards, whose supposed to be making rules about safety? How do you make safe online products?” Right? And so it's really fascinating that now after 20 years, I think we've reached a letter level of maturity and another inflection point where were like, okay, you see what we can happen when we blow this stuff up in a very large way. How are we going to govern that from a Global Perspective? Right? That's really the tough question, who's going to make rent rules about how we govern the World Wide Web – not from a technology perspective, but almost behaviorally. What is okay stuff to do on the web and not okay stuff to do? So that challenge can be in a business, in a big dot com, working the inside a for-profit business, in a non-profit, for a government. The way that the web is governed in China is very different than the way the web is governed in France. So this governance thing, not self-serving, I think is central right now. Whether or not you're trying to publish content in a way that makes sense for whether or not you trying to govern the whole web. It's the same problem. Jorge: How has doing this work influenced the way that you use information yourself? Lisa: Do you mean actually doing the work of working with the folks on a governing model? Or just in general, what have I absorbed in my own work practices? Jorge: The latter, because it's a meta thing, right? Like you're advising folks on how to be more intentional about their use of information and I'm wondering if you have picked up any patterns, any best practices that have helped you in your own use of information. Lisa: Probably yes. But I would say what probably is more true is the reverse. So you asked me about myself at the beginning of this podcast and I talked about music and I talked about quilting and I talked about governance. Well, what do all of those things have in common? They are all very highly organized. So despite looking at my not organized home or my not visually organized tasks, which would make some people crazy, in my head I'm very organized. So I studied philosophy in school and people think that when I say that they're thinking of a Jean-Paul Sartre with a beret on their head and smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Right? And thinking existential thoughts. And I did a little bit of that. But then I got very quickly to symbolic logic. And for every year, which was four years of undergrad in the US and then a year in grad school where I decided didn't want to be a philosophy professor. For every year, I took symbolic logic very very deeply. And I was very interested in semantics. People don't talk about the semantic web anymore for all the reasons we were talking about. Delivering on the semantic web would be very very challenging High degree of organization across the board. So people don't talk about that. So I think what's more happening is my love of organization has led me to this aspect of managing and thinking about digital – so not in a visual, in my face kind of way, where people really need to have visual organization – in fact, I collect art and it's all abstract. All abstract art. Would make people crazy. I'm really trying to impose organization on things, on any type of paradigm that I see, I'm always trying to systematize it and figure out, how does this work? Like add a meta- level, what is going on? What are the dynamics that are happening? That's what I'm really interested in. You know, what are the dynamics of Team? What are the dynamics of the content? How are these two things going to dance together, partner to partner, in a way that's elegant, that gets the job done, but also allows the other one to have its own entity, have its own being. And so that's really what's happened. I love organizational patterns, period. If I can quilt them, if I can chord-progress them through music, absolutely fantastic. One of the interesting things I talk about in my book is how the reason that I like jazz is because it has a structural frame underneath it. Right? And on top of it you can improvise. And that's really, I think, what everybody's trying to get to. Some people want to improvise a little bit, some people a lot. But organizations need that structured frame so that everyone just one understands what the patterns are and then if you get that right and you allow each entity inside the team to maximize what they do well within that frame, then you get the best of both worlds. You get a structured content model that is really well managed. You get people who love their jobs because they're allowed to improvise and freestyle within that framework and do things that they love. And you get this beautiful output that your customers or your citizens, whoever it might be, actually are congruent with. And I'd say in the digital space we see very little of that dance. You just sort of see everybody either trying to freestyle or we see it so locked down that it's not interesting or it's not really delivering. And so that I think is really going to be the challenge of the next 20 or 30 years for the enterprise, which is how to create that balance. How to make my team and marketing work together when they have two very different types of work patterns. There's so much freestyle going on that some of the stuff that's getting delivered is not safe. Right? And so I think we're going to be calming down and actually putting into place governing models in the organization and more broadly across the web, the cross vertical market spaces like healthcare, using that as an example, to make sure that things are operating with intention – I love that word, I use it all the time – and safely. Jorge: When you use this fabulous analogy with jazz – and I think it is fabulous because this notion that the structure is what grants you the freedom to improvise — the fact that it's not turning into a mush because everyone is working off the same underlying structures. When I think of good jazz, they are making amazing music that works with the structure but also feels loose and the players are listening to each other and responding to what the others are doing. And there's this kind of looseness. So there is a balance between the structure and also the looseness of going to where the music takes them. And the notion that popped in my mind is that that requires a certain degree of mastery on the part of the players. Right? Lisa: Yeah, I would say so. One thing is I'll say I'm less judgmental than you are about good jazz. So I like the type of jazz you're talking about and might even lean in your direction personally, but I would also say there's highly scripted jazz. Musicians are in a big band in their reading off of the thing and only occasionally will somebody stand up and solo. But for the most time, they're reading music and they're playing that. Right? And so that's good and true if that's your intention. One of the things that I say when content teams in the corporate structure of an organization do not want to decentralize the creation of content outside of that, they don't want to give it to the business units because they don't trust them to do a good job, and I say,” hire well and train often.” That's a job they don't want to do. You'd be surprised still how much of information and content creation is collateral duty for people who are not trained to do that. So you're going to get kind of crap, right? Just as there are people who are trained to select and deploy web content management systems and to understand how technology stack works. Those people aren't necessarily only in IT or only in marketing. If you know how to do that well you can get a job anywhere because IT and marketing are trying to pick up those things. So there are disciplines and competencies, particularly in the digital space, that need to be written down and then you need to hire well or you need to train people to do something well. And then you get that quality. And that's all the freestyling part that you said that you liked a lot. I like it too because I think that's what most people want. They want to go to work and do something that they love and do it well and be in an environment that supports them in doing that. And then you have happy employees, happy at work. And then you have happy people. When you have happy people, I think you get less of the bad things in the world. If you have people going to jobs that they don't like or that push against their needs that's not going to help anyone globally, or just humanity globally. And maybe I'm just stretching that out a little bit but I think that's important component the human components important when to bring in. Jorge: I love this idea of setting up these structures not necessarily with the objective of constraining people, but to make their work easier and make them happier. I love that. This is actually a great place to wrap it up. So where can folks find you, Lisa? Lisa: Well, they can find a little bit about me and a contact form at lisawelchman.com and they can buy my book Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design either at Rosenfeld Media or on Amazon. Jorge: I'm also wondering where folks can listen to your music. Lisa: If you are a part of the Insight Timer community, I'll tell people a secret: I publish my music under a name, Scientific Eve. So see, even in that even in my arty name there's science. Jorge: Well, fantastic. Thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for sharing just in general what you're doing. It sounds fascinating. Lisa: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. End music: “Good Morning” by Scientific Eve
更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Adrienne: So tell me about how Rocky is a survivor.Lisa: So, Rocky is a survivor, for two reasons. One because of her surviving in the bushes, but... and that was only when she was really only a month old and we took her in. But she really earned her name last year, when she was about a year old, Rocky liked going out on my balcony, and I used to let her go out on my balcony without a leash or without supervision and she decided that she wanted to see what was beyond the balcony, so she climbed up to the top of the balcony which was like a concrete wall and she jumped. When I, you know five minutes after I had noticed that she has jumped, I went looking for her all around my apartment building. This was probably at eleven o'clock at night, and I couldn't find her anywhere, so I thought she had jumped to the roof next to my apartment building and she was out hanging around with other cats. I was very worried, but it was dark and I couldn't find her so I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning at five o'clock, a very worried mother looking for my cat, and I noticed that she had fallen actually between my apartment building and the roof, the apartment building next to mine and wasn't moving, so I picked her up and I brought her to the hospital and it turned out that she had actually broken her pelvis bone, which means that she could move her two front paws but she could not move her back paws, so she basically couldn't walk at all.Adrienne: Oh, my goodness.
更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Adrienne: So, Lisa, what is that you're drinking?Lisa: Oolong tea. Iced oolong tea.Adrienne: Is it your favorite drink?Lisa: It's not really my favorite drink. My favorite drink is Diet Coke. I love Diet Coke, but a couple of years ago, I was drinking only Diet Coke and started to realize that that probably was not the healthiest thing for me to be drinking, so I switched to oolong tea.Adrienne: What are the benefits?Lisa: So there is a couple of benefits. One benefit which I really like is that it absorbs fat, or when you're eating foods that are high in fat and drinking it with oolong for some reason it absorbs some of the fat, so there have been studies that prove that oolong tea does contribute to weight loss, and that's why if you go to a lot of Chinese restaurants they'll always serve tea with the meal and most likely its oolong tea cause for some reason it absorbs fat, plus oolong tea also has anti-oxidants, which are cancer-fighting and makes it so much healthier, so it fights fat and cancer.Adrienne: So now you only drink oolong tea?Lisa: Well, in my research on the healthiest drink, I also found that green tea was even healthier than oolong tea, so now I drink oolong tea, green tea, and always a bit of diet coke.Adrienne: So what are the benefits of green tea?Lisa: Green tea, also, I think it has more anti-oxidants. They did a study of green tea and found that people who drink green tea lost more weight than people who weren't drinking green tea, so anything that either absorbs fat and contributes to weight loss is a drink for me.Adrienne: OK, but I thought green tea had a lot of caffeine in it, so I thought actually that green tea was maybe is not the best tea to be drinking.Lisa: That's what a lot of people think actually, and in fact, green tea, so if you look at on a scale of drinks like tea and coffee and green tea and oolong tea, the drink that has the least amount of caffeine is actually green tea and that is because it's not processed. The leaves are just dried. Then the next drink that has more caffeine is oolong tea because the leaves are semi-processed. After that, the next drink that has more caffeine is coffee actually, obviously, everyone knows coffee has a lot of caffeine, but the drink that has the most caffeine is English tea.Adrienne: Very interesting. I learned a lot from you today.
Today’s episode is an interview with Yalonda Haywood, “The Breakout Expert”. Meet Yalonda: Yalonda Haywood, “The Breakout Expert”, is a wife, mother, minister, author, speaker, and business-life coach. As a child, she was creatively gifted and always knew she was meant for more. After finishing high school, she did what was expected. She pursued her undergrad studies, received her MBA, built a great 6 figure corporate career and started a family with the love of her life. Although all of the pieces were in place, she one day she woke up and realized she was missing something. While being successful at doing what was normal and expected, she had failed at doing what was authentic, purposeful, divine and fulfilling. One day while on business travel, she simply heard the words “Your pain has a purpose. With each trial, I taught you to break out and keep going. You are an expert at breaking out. Now teach others to do the same”. That’s when “The Breakout Expert” was born. Yalonda decided to partner with God as she repurposed her pain and became a business-life coach dedicated to helping others break free. Through her T.R.U.T.H. ™ system, lives are transformed, relationships are restored, businesses are birthed, lids are removed, careers are accelerated, pain is repurposed and the possibilities… let’s just say they simply become limitless. Her mission: No More Walls. She is determined to help others break free of every invisible wall that is holding them back while teaching them how to gain a keen E&W IQ™. Yes, a sharp emotional and worth intelligence! Podcast Transcript Lisa: “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, Dare2Dream! Today I have a super treat for us. We have, for the first time to the Dare2Dream audience, Yalonda Haywood. And she is “The Breakout Expert”. She is a wife, a mother, a minister, an author, speaker, and business life coach. That's a lot of stuff that she’s got going on! As a child, she was creatively gifted and always knew she was meant for more. After finishing high school; she did what was expected. She pursued her undergraduate studies, received her MBA, built a great six-figure corporate career, and started a family with the love of her life. Although all of the pieces were in place, she one day woke up and realized she was missing something. While being successful at doing what was normal and expected, she had failed at doing what was authentic, purposeful, divine, and fulfilling. One day, while on a business trip, she simply heard the words, “Your pain has a purpose. With each trial, I taught you to break out and keep going. You are an expert at breaking out.” Now she teaches others to do the same. That's when the break-out expert was born! Yalonda decided to partner with God, as she repurposed her pain and became a business life coach, dedicated to helping others break free. Through her trademark system T.R.U.T.H. spelled out T-R-U-T-H; she lives and transforms relationships and restores businesses and helps them remove barriers through careers and repurposing their pain. And the possibilities just say that they are simply limitless. Her mission, “No More Walls”, she is determined to help others Break Free of every invisible wall that is holding them back while teaching them how to get gain a keen E&W IQ™, and she's going to have to tell us more about what that is. And yes, a sharp emotional and worth intelligence. So, that's enough to say Amen! And so, without further ado, I am going to ask that our guest, Yalonda Haywood, the breakout expert, tell us first what is the secret to your success?” Yalonda: “Well firstly, let me say thank you so much for having me today. I consider it an honor and the privilege to connect with you and your listeners. The secret to my success, I honestly feel can be summed up in one word - or two - Leap and Trust. Anytime I have ever hit another level, it required me to trust in God, to trust in the gifts, skills, talents, abilities that He has blessed me with, and then simply to leap. I know that I have a way of getting in my own head, which will allow me to get in my own way. And so, I have to leap. I have to go; I can't stay stagnant. I firmly believe that God is able to correct my course when I’m moving. But when I am standing still, He can't correct me, because I'm not walking forward in the faith that I proclaim and profess.” Lisa: “That’s awesome! So, tell me, and our listeners here at Dare2Dream. I know that, as I was introducing you to our audience, that you are also not just a wife, a mother, but you're also a minister. So, tell us a little bit about how you connect with God and what you do on a daily basis, and tell us about, maybe if you have a routine that that's associated with.” Yalonda: “So, let me just say, I feel like God has always been a part of my life. So, becoming a minister for me just, it really was a way of allowing the world to know what God and I already knew. It was our secret and we just shared it with others. I connected with Him, my first experience of remembering that was at age 12, and then again at age 17. I can remember really making a commitment to walk with Him. And over the years, my routine has changed, and it changes with the seasons. But the thing that stays consistent, is I don't focus on ministering to other people. I focus on being ministered to by God and worshipping Him and everybody else benefits from the overflow of our relationship. So, for me, if I'm in a steady flow; that looks like when I wake up in the morning, I acknowledge his presence in my life. That's the first thing. I thank Him, I thank the Holy Spirit for filling me, for guiding me, for leading me, and that's before my feet literally hit the floor. That is a must do for me, because I know truly in Him, I live, move, and have my very being. And then there’s study time. Sometimes I am studying a book out of the Bible, and sometimes I'm studying a book that leads me back to the word to validate what the author is writing. But it still allows me to feed my spirit with the consistent word. And then there's always prayer. Prayer for me is the glue that holds everything together. When I'm praying, I'm going to have the prayers for others, the prayers for my family, the prayers for myself, the prayers for work. I really categorize my prayers so that I can make sure that I'm spreading God’s love across every area of life that I'm responsible for touching. And so, there are times and there are seasons, just to be honest, where it's heads down every day in the word because I really need it. That means I am in a place where I need to fill my cup. And then there are some seasons where it may be a few times per week, and I'm living off - I call it “the bear” - I call it ‘the bear season’ where I’ve stored up. And that's carrying me while I go out and do some of the work that God has assigned for me to do.” Lisa: “Amen! Amen! I know in my own practice, and the Dare2Dream audience is aware of this, is that establishing a routine in the morning, of connecting with God, and also gratitude. And so, I employ a method called “Gratitude Blitz”. And so, I am thankful that you too, have incorporated that into what you do. So, I know also that you are an author, a speaker, and a business life coach. But also, a wife and a mother - so tell me how are you balancing all those big, big, big titles?” Yalonda: “Lord help me! I’ll start off with the wife because I balance well because my husband and I are a team. And he supports the work that God is calling me to do. And it’s not a relationship of asking for permission. It’s a relationship where I seek his agreement. And as long as we are in agreement, Team Haywood knows how to function. He knows when, “Hey, I'm on Daddy duty, I got the kids, I got dinner, I got the house”. And then there are days when I'm on mommy duty, “I got the kids, I got the dog, I got the house” – we balance it well together. As a mom, I'm present. That’s important to me. And I don't mean present like “Yes, my kids are going to be clothed, and fed and clean”. But present where when we are connecting; I'm looking into their eyes. I want to make sure when I say, “Are you okay?” or “How are you? How was your day?” That I look past their words, and I know that they are okay, or I know something's not right, or how was their day. I bring them into the activities. My youngest, Justin, has now taken a new interest in cooking; and whenever he hears a pot or pan, he's like, “Oh, what are we doing today?”, And he's washing his hands and getting ready. I invite him into that place with me, because it's another way for me to integrate quality time into the things that are necessary and just must be done. As far as being an author, that is the download from God. He speaks outright; He speaks outright. And when the downloading comes a lot. Like this weekend was just a true weekend of downloading, and I said to my husband, “I got to write, I got to get this out.” And so, I was gone. I went to a café. I got nestled in a corner and a table, I had many cups of coffee, and I was there for like six- and eight-hour sprints; just getting it done. But then when I came home, I was able to be present again. My mind wasn’t divided. So, for me sometimes, it's a matter of just getting the work done when it's time to work and knowing when it's time to relax so that I can connect in the most meaningful ways possible with my family. So that we're creating memories and not just going through a task list every day.” Lisa: “Got it. That's good! So, you also are an author. So, tell us about this book. This latest book that you have coming out. We are - as you can tell - I love reading and would love to hear about it.” Yalonda: “So, this latest work that I'm finishing, and is actually and is getting ready to go to editing and print, is “Break Out: It’s Time to Have the Talk”. And it's a book/workbook. This particular work is very near and dear to my heart, because in ministry; I birthed forth a company called “Rest Remains Funeral Program”. That particular company allowed me to do really creative design work for those who wanted to honor the life of their loved one it a special way. However, as my clients came through the door; it became more than just creating a program, of course, it became a ministry as we began to heal hearts. And I kept hearing a recurring theme about all of the pieces that were not put together before a tragedy occurred, or before life happened, or before someone passed away. And I watched people, not be able to enter into the grieving process because they were too busy trying to be the administrator of the affairs. Because everything was in shambles. I learned quickly that when we put the pieces together, we leave the final gift of peace. So, this particular workbook, it’s a way of guiding us through how to deal with our inner emotions, our inner thoughts, how to stand in our own truth about what we would like in times of crisis, medical emergencies, or post-life plans. So, we deal with us first in this workbook, and then it teaches you how to have the talk with your family, and how to organize your affairs. So, if that day comes - or I should say when that day comes - everything is already put together, and you truly give your family the final gift of peace, and they're not in a state of worry and chaos.” Lisa: “Amen! So definitely keep us posted on that, because, as you said, it's not if it happens but it's when it happens, and we all need to be prepared for the inevitable and preparing our families for when it's our time, and especially, I know myself as my parents are getting older, and older family members and aunts and all that, to have that type of resource just feels like an amazing gift to the community. So, thank you. And then you are a business life coach. Tell us about the work that you’re doing there?” Yalonda: “I love it, I love what I do. As you stated in the introduction, I was in a place of seeking. I was really seeking God for what is the next leap for Yalonda? I felt like I was in a place of transition and change. I was feeling a void that I knew could not be filled by the world, or man, or riches, or wealth, and I was looking at what is that missing piece? And I found myself traveling. And as I was traveling, I simply heard God say to me, “You are an expert at breaking out. I have told you how to break out, now teach others to do the same.” And He said, “You are the breakout expert.” And it was in that moment, that if a choir could sing if the heavens could begin to dance; that happened in my heart because I knew exactly what He meant. I began to go back over the course of my life that had thrown me some hard curve balls; from overcoming childhood abuse and molestation, to marital challenges, to financial disaster, and having to rebuild. All of those things; the grief that was in my heart from so many obstacles in having to walk hand-in-hand with Him as He healed me and made me whole again; I was like “God, I got it”, I broke out. And I knew that my trials were not for naught. They were to be capitalized upon; so that God would get the glory from everything that the enemy thought he would use to destroy me, but God actually used to build me. And so, in my work as a Business Life Coach, I'm a creative strategist. Creativity is a true gift, I see in color, I hear in color, I see pictures when people talk. I mean it's just the way God created me, it's unique. And I am able to bring my clients in, and the first phase of my program is that mental clarity; it is helping them develop that emotional and worth intelligence, where they become really keenly in tune with what they are thinking, what they are feeling, they own those emotions, they regain their worth, because sometimes the circumstances and the trials of life come and try to rob us of who we are, whose we are, and what we are entitled to. And so, you regain that worth, and then you really begin to work with me to create a strategy to break out of the place that you are so that you can tap into the life that you really want.” Lisa: “Alright! That’s amazing! So how did you come to be the breakout expert? How did you land there?” Yalonda: “You mean in the coaching?” Lisa: “Yes” Yalonda: “I leaped! I literally leaped! My secret sauce to success is to leap. And I am immediately obedient. So, when I hear the Lord say, “Do something”, I have to activate - once I know, if I'm sure it's Him, I activate. So, for me, I took all of the experience – coaching is new, but it's not new. I say if you count 20 years in Ministry, the sister girl talks, the let me pick your brains, the “Yalonda what do you think about this?”, or can you help me, can you look at this, if you count all of that? I’ve been coaching for two decades, definitely. It's not new, but I formalized it. I made it official. I went ahead and called a spade, a spade and said: “I am a business life coach”. I help people rebound, I help people come up with strategy, I am the creative juice behind their visions. And you know I went ahead and I, myself, up leveled. I secured a coach. I think that's really, really, important to invest in where you want to grow. So, I wanted to grow in that area. So, I needed to invest in myself so that I could continue to be coached; so that I could coach others at a higher level. I invested in all of the tools that were needed. You know, to really begin to develop a presence. From my marketing to my personal branding representatives that I partnered with, to photography that I partner with, to new relationships and networking in the industry, I really began to become a student to the craft that I wanted to perfect. And I would spend hours and hours every single day making sure that I was creating the content and material that would be valuable to the clients that I would work with. I don't believe in putting something into the market that's not of the standard that would represent God first, and something that I would want myself. So, I invested the time, the energy, the prayers, the heart, and making sure I had a great program. So, the breakout expert really was just born when I made that decision to leap, and then I rolled up my sleeves and I got to work.” Lisa: “Well, it sounds like this investment thing in yourself, and taking that leap and trusting God really help you to get to that place. And I am a big supporter of investing in ourselves. I think as women, and especially women of color; we spend so much time investing in the people that are around us, our loved ones, our friends, in our communities, in our churches, and it's like the same when you're on the airplane and the stewardess says, “Put your airbag on first”. And so, it sounds like you have taken that to heart. I applaud you for making that leap and making the investment. Now, this is interesting, your system is spelled out truth T-R-U-T-H. So, can you just give us just a peek into what that represents?” Yalonda: “When I was doing what I call my ‘self-check’ I have to stay true to myself. So, I’m writing all of this wonderful content, and I called five people in my life that I know that are near dear and just really know Yalonda. And I said to them, “Whenever I have helped you at any phase in life; what is something that you can say about how I relate?” And four of the five said to me, “Oh you just give us the truth. You tell it like it is. There is no sugarcoating with you. We don't have to worry about where we stand, you just going to give the truth”. Instantly, I look back at my content and I could see ‘truth’. So, the T stands for Touch the Walls. Because in order to break out, you must break down the invisible wall. So, you got to touch them; you got to know they're there. The R stands for Reflect Inwardly. This is where you really begin to take a look at where you are self-sabotaging, and you learn how to repurpose your pain, reprogram the mind, and reframe your actions. The U stands for Unlock the Potential. Sometimes as you go through life and there are all of these walls that are holding you back; your potential gets locked up. And so, I take clients through the exercise of teaching them how to unlock all of that greatness. The next T is Torch It, and this is where we ignite the passion and the fire. Now that the potential is unlocked, you will become, you will get excited about what your hands will be able to do, and so we really go through an exercise of identifying your reason why, and I'm teaching you tactics to stay connected to your purpose so that you don't get derailed by distractions. The last is Hit the Ground Running. It does not matter if you break down a wall, if you see your potential, if you get excited if you don't take action. And so, we’ll use this phase of my program to help you make stellar career business plans on so that he really began to gain momentum and put your faith into action.” Lisa: “Nice, Nice, That's nice. So, changing gears just a little bit, and so I love this question because if I were asking myself this question, I have a bunch to say. But if you could send a message back to yourself at any age: 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago - what would the message be, and why?” Yalonda: “Oh Lisa, if I could send a message to myself – it would be, “take off the mask.” It really would be “take off the mask”, because I hit some hard roads in life, but I kept going. And I presented myself well put together when there were many times I was so broken on the inside - and it's almost an oxymoron - because I didn't trust the God that I trusted beyond all others, to do what I know only He could do in me. If I just would have paused, if I would have stopped, if I would have been honest with myself about where I was, I would have gotten to my place of authenticity and my place of divine Serenity a lot faster, quicker, and more powerfully. I didn't begin to show up in the full power of who God created me to be, until I took the mask off and I was able to say, “I'm hurt, I’m broken, I'm scared, I'm unsure, I don't know.” And when I work, when I really began to do that; I realized I didn't have that much to worry about. Things started happening so quickly for me. That's what I would tell myself and then I would tell my young self to trust - trust the unction. I am today where I dreamed of being when I was 17. When I was 17, I said to myself, “I'm going to be a motivational speaker, and I want to write books, and I want to travel the world, and I want to help people.” Then someone said to me “You can't make money doing that.” And so, I said to me, “Oh, well I guess I'll go to college.” And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with higher education, I totally believe in it and encourage people to go further. But if I would have listened to me, and cut out the sound of the world and got in tune with the sound of my own voice? The journey would not have been the forty-year journey through the desert. (laughs) It would have been a quicker route to where I was ultimately designed to be anyway.” Lisa: “All right. I think I have some stories that I share about that I wilderness trek that took 40 years. So, I can definitely concur and relate to that. So, I'm thinking about, you know, all the things that you're doing - all the things that you're responsible for - I want to also just connect back a little bit to your mission. And so your mission, as it's clearly stated in your bio, is “No More Walls”. So, tell me about what that means to you, what that means potentially to people who connect with you, to help them find their own truth, and also to the Dare2Dream podcast audience.” Yalonda: “So, no more walls from me echoes in my ears so loudly. It’s a reminder that I don't have to live with limits when I serve a limitless Savior. It is a reminder to me that everything is possible to him who believes. That I don't need the permission of a man to put me in a box. I wasn't designed to be restricted. I'm not designed to be imprisoned by fear, doubt, and unbelief - and I say that to the listeners - you're not. You are designed by the One who created the wind, who is free-flowing, that blows; that created, hung the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky. He painted the canvas of the universe. That means that for you as an individual, you are uniquely designed and created, and you should not live within a box. You should not live with walls that prevent you from running hard, from going fast, from getting all that Heaven will allow for you. One of my most favorite scriptures is Psalms 27:13 through 14. And when you talk about all of the things that I do, sometimes when you look at them on paper, it can seem overwhelming to people. But it’s not for me because I don't live my life with walls anymore. I am guided by Him, and God just – He’s the Master project manager. Hallelujah! He absolutely tells me how to orchestrate my life and all of the pieces come together and that scripture says, “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” And, for me, I hold so fast to that in my mission of No More Walls, because it reminds me that I'm not going to fight in this journey, that I am putting my faith and my hopes in the right place. But if I have courage that He is going to give me the strength - and it's His responsibility to strengthen my hand, because that's what it promised He shall strengthen thine heart He shall strengthen my hand He is the one that gives me what I need so that I'm able to operate in excellence in everything that He's calling me to do. And I always take that, Lisa, and I couple it with 1st Thessalonians, I think 5 and 24, which says “Faithful is he who calls me, who also will do it.” And so I don't faint, because He is faithful. I don't live with walls, because He's going to strengthen me. I don't resist and hold back, because I know that He's going to fulfill the purpose in my life. And so I say to the listeners, whenever you find yourself at that place of transition, whenever you are daring to dream, as you would say in this community, bank on yourself. Put your confidence, your trust, and your faith in the one that you serve and then just Dream. Most of everything that I do today that has created a different lifestyle for me and my family, that changed the trajectory of us living beneath our means in a place that was financially hard, came when I started to dream. I didn't have to know all of the pieces, I didn't have to know how. I entered into my first six-figure career because I dared to dream. Someone said “try it”, and I said “okay!” and I did, and it's simply worked! It just worked! I realize that I knew things, and I had skills that I may not have known what to call them, but it didn't diminish the skill nonetheless. I may not have understood the industry lingo, but once I got in there, I fit right in. You have to be willing to take that leap because on the other side of your fear, is the manifestation of all of the promises and the blessing that life has for you.” Lisa: “Amen! Let the church say Amen! So, I want to leave some time as well for you to go a little bit into if you want the E&W IQ™, and then also how the Dare2Dream listeners can reach you, connect with you, and understand more about the work you're doing as the breakout expert.” Yalonda: “All right. So, E&W IQ™, a new system that I created for emotional and worth intelligence. And so, a lot of times we are told to be strong, to keep going, oh don't let that get you down, don't worry about that, you've got it, and what happens is we process that as knowledge, but not necessarily our truth. Because the truth maybe “yeah I will overcome, but right now I am simply hurt.” Or the truth may be “yes I'm going to stay in this marriage, but this broke me, and I have broken pieces.” It could be the grief of losing a loved one, or the grief of losing a job, or the things that you work for, but we got to keep going! And so, you don't become emotionally smart, because you numb and dumb down your emotion. And so, one of the things I teach people who work with me is how to really get back in tune to what you're thinking, and how you are feeling so that you learn how to process those emotions in an intelligent way. You are not uneven, you are very strategic and practical about how you begin to approach - you're not up one day and down the next - that's the emotional part in its cliff note version. The worth part is having to come into a relationship with what you are really worth. It's amazing to me, and I am guilty - I was guilty - it was amazing to me that I had gifts that were uniquely mine. They were my unique blueprint for how I would show up in the world. And my phone was ringing off the hook with people who wanted to connect with me, but my ‘having level’ and my ‘worth’ wasn't there. And I can perceive in my mind about how to charge someone, or how to ask a person to invest in the knowledge that they wanted to receive from me. Or when I would get a job when it was just in corporate, I would be afraid to negotiate a salary, because I didn't have a worth intelligence. But when I learned how to really lay out what I bring, the value that I bring to the table, how I show up in the world, all of the unique skills, gifts, talents, and abilities that make me uniquely Yalonda, my worth started to go up. I realized that I didn't have to be timid about the investment of working with me, I didn't have to be timid about what I deliver, I didn't have to be timid if I received a job offer that did not match my ‘having level’. I was okay with saying no, and knowing that something else was going to come back with - be more in line with my belief system about what I was worth. And so, I teach people how to get a connection with that. And so, a couple of ways that you can connect with me is one, at yalondahaywood.com, my website is yalondahaywood.com and it is a little under construction right now, to be released in the next 30 days, it’s having a makeover, but going to that website. And ‘Yalonda’, because of my mom, is Y-A-L-O-N-D-A, and ‘Haywood’ is H-A-Y-W-O-O-D. You're able to fill out a contact form and that puts you in my queue for us to have a breakout session, during this breakout session I will help you assess what is your next best move, so that you can make the biggest leap to break out of the invisible wall that's holding you back. Another way to connect with me is, I will be speaking at the end of this month, Lisa, at the Me, Myself, and I Leadership Empowerment Weekend, hosted by Martha Cooper-Hudson. I am a guest speaker on her panel, so you can register for that event at rediscovhergetaway.com, and it's just the way I said it rediscover her H-E-R getaway dot-com. I will be there all weekend doing some - I'm so excited about the work I'm going to do there March 28th through the 31st. I'm super excited, I have activities that are just bubbling over on the inside of me that's going to help people get major breakthroughs. My Facebook page is @YalondaHaywood, Business Life Coach, and my Instagram is @YalondaHaywood as well, so pretty consistent across the board. Also, Lisa, I wanted to share with your listeners a work that I did when I was in Jamaica. as I was working through some things in myself, God just started downpouring - every single day He would download a lesson to me, and so I have a mini-devotional called “The Journey to One Love”. I was in Jamaica you know that's all about one love. And I was becoming one with myself as I was becoming one with the Father, so today you can get that for free by going to yalondahaywood.com/onelove. And I hope that 7-Day devotional will take you through some powerful and impactful moments to really reflect about where you are, as you raise your E&W IQ™.” Lisa: “So there are a lot of different ways that we can connect with Yalonda, and if you are in, I believe the conference is in North Carolina, you can connect with that, and I'll be sure to put all the information in the show notes. But before we close out, I want to make sure that I thank my sister Yalonda for coming on, and sharing her story, for opening up, being transparent, and authentic, sharing her truth as well with this audience, and of course for her daring to dream. And I want to leave the final word to her before we depart.” Yalonda: “The final word I would say is believe in yourself. You are well able, you really are well able, so whatever it is that you're daring to dream, if you're asking yourself if you can do that job, if you can make that next move, if you can start that business, or if you should, the answer lies within you. Believe in yourself. Believe in the One that promises to be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path. And I promise you, if you just start walking, He will correct your path, and get you on the course to bountiful blessings. So, breakout!” Scripture reference: “13 I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” Psalm 27:13-14 (KJV) “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:24 (KJV) Connect with Yalonda: http://yalondahaywood.com/ https://www.instagram.com/yalondahaywood/ https://www.facebook.com/yalondahaywood/ Free e-Book – Breakout: The Journey to One Love Connect with Us: www.dare2dreamcareers.com Work with Us: https://bit.ly/2rIJ462 Real Girlfriends Prayer Devotional: https://amzn.to/2U23GlV Join the Dare2Dream FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/CoachLisaEaly/
Join the Marriage After God movement and grab a copy of our new book today. https://marriageaftergod.com In this episode, we interview Matt & Lisa Jacobson From http://FaithfulMan.com and http://Club31Women.com & Faithful Family podcast. Here is a quote from our book Marriage After God “Your marriage is the message you are preaching to others. The way you and your spouse interact with each other reveals the gospel you believe.” Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the Spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain a deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry and the impact we have in each other’s lives and in this world, just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order or if we are not unified please help us to change course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point others to you and may you be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith of Marriage after God. [Lisa] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're in part five of the Marriage after God series, and we're gonna be talking with Matt and Lisa Jacobsen about marriage being your first ministry. [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage after God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is marriage after God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us on week five of this series that we're doing. I hope you're enjoying it. You're definitely going to enjoy today's guests. But before we move on, as always, we want to invite you to leave a review. Those reviews help the podcast get seen by new audiences. So, if you've been enjoying the content, we'd love a star rating, which is the easiest way to do it, all you gotta do is tap a star in the app. And if you really, really want to and have time, leaving us a text review would be awesome. We read every single one of 'em, and we love them, so thank you for that. [Jennifer] Another way you can support this podcast-- [Aaron] So today on this episode, we're gonna be talking about content from chapter five of our book, Marriage after God. And the chapter's titled, "Your First Ministry." and we thought, what better way to talk about this chapter than to talk with our pastors and ask them who inspired us and showed us what it looked like to recognize our marriage as ministry. And now we actually reference them and talk about them in this chapter, and so today we have Matt and Lisa Jacobson with us, welcome. [Lisa] Hey, nice to be here. [Matt] Awesome to be here, you bet. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're in our garage, sitting on our couches. And today we're gonna be talking about this topic. But before we talk about that, why don't you introduce to the audience, just in case they don't know you guys, who you are, children, marriage, all that. [Matt] Okay, well, Matt Jacobsen, and this is my lovely woman. [Lisa] Hey, hello. [Matt] Lisa, and so we've been married for 26 years. We have eight kids between the ages of 12 and about 25. [Lisa] Yup. [Matt] Right, and there are four of them are out of the house and moved on. And so, what keeps us busy when we're not just hanging out and kissing in a dark corner somewhere. [Lisa] That's right. We also, we do homeschool and we do a lot of work with our kids. Our kids help us out with what we do at home and also in our ministry. [Matt] And so, speaking of ministries. So, my website is Faithfulman.com. [Lisa] And I'm Lisa with Club31women.com. [Matt] And so that is a writing ministry that speaks to marriage, parenting, church, and culture. Biblical perspective on those things. And so, that comprises a lot of what takes up our time in a given week. And then, of course, we're the pastors of a small local fellowship as well. [Aaron] Yeah, it's our fellowship. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] You're our pastors. And we love you guys. And by the way, if everyone listening didn't hear what those were, that's faithfulman.com and club31women.com. You guys should definitely check them out. And why don't you tell them about your newest podcast that you guys just launched? [Matt] Awesome, okay. Well, the name of that podcast is Faithful Life. And it's essentially a podcast that is pursuing the and exploring the topic of what does it mean to live as a biblical Christian. There are a lot of people in the world, lot of Christians, people who identify as Christians, who are living a life that is really separate or tangential to the Bible. And really, if you're going to be a biblical Christian, you've gotta know what the Bible says about these various aspects of life: marriage, parenting, how we're to live within church community and then how we're to interact with the culture. And so, that's the focus of the podcast, faithful-- [Lisa] With a lot of emphasis on practical ways to do that, sometimes we kinda know in our heads what the right thing to do is, or what we believe the Bible says, but then how does that look in our day-to-day life, and that's something that matt and I really have a passion for is just connecting those two things. [Matt] And a little bit of experience. It's only been, what, 26 years you've been married and walking with the Lord and learning through all of the eight children. [Aaron] So we just want everyone to check out their podcast; it's called Faithful Life. And you're gonna love it. Just search for it wherever you listen to podcasts. So, let's get into the icebreaker question. And this is how we start all the episodes. It's just a fun question. How does your spouse like their coffee and what does that say about them? [Lisa] Okay, I get to go first on this one. Because everybody that knows Matt Jacobson well knows that he likes his coffee black, but, even more importantly, he likes it burning hot so that it burns a hole in your tongue, so he, if-- [Matt] And you better not put it in a cold cup. [Lisa] Right, the best way to show love to Matt Jacobson is to heat up the cup first and then pour his coffee into it. [Matt] Wow, that's one of the ways over the years you've shown love to me. But right, so anyway-- [Lisa] In the coffee-- [Matt] No, that's right in the coffee, in the realm of coffee. And Lisa takes her coffee with a teaspoon of sugar and cream and-- [Lisa] That's right, I like it a little sweet. [Matt] She likes it a little sweet, that's right. [Aaron] And it's just like her character too. Little sweet. [Matt] And I love making coffee for her; I do. In the morning, I love making coffee. I love bringing her a cup of coffee in the morning. [Jennifer] And you guys do coffee as a family a lot, so can you just share a little bit about that 'cause I just love that. [Matt] Okay, so, why don't you tell how we've corrupted our young children? [Lisa] Well, we started off in our marriage. We started each day with having coffee. Matt would make a coffee tray for him and I, and we would sit and have coffee together. And then as each child came along, we then slowly incorporated them into this special time until it became something our whole family just loves and so even our older kids when they come home for the holidays or different vacations, they'll come and that's the thing they look forward to most is having our time together over a pot of coffee. And we just talk about what we're thinking about, what's going on in our world, and it's just a really close family time. [Matt] And you know, oh, sorry. That whole process of incorporating the kids into it. It's kind of funny because it's really a metaphor, or an example, if you will, of what happens in your family. Over time, we're very strict with the older kids. I don't even remember when we began allowing them to have coffee. Including them. I don't even remember, do you remember how old they were? [Lisa] No. [Matt] But, as time went on, the younger kids just get to start earlier and earlier. And I think we started, did Hawkin have his first? [Lisa] He was about seven or eight maybe-- [Aaron] It was a bottle right? [Lisa] When he had his first cup of coffee. [Matt] That's right. [Lisa] A very, very tiny cup of coffee, mostly milk. [Jennifer] Mostly milk, yeah. [Matt] Yeah, right, and so now we're going, okay, so. [Lisa] Almost because their dad's kind of soft on the issue. [Matt] I am; I am. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, I follow Lisa on Instagram, and I love watching your stories because you'll post about it every once in a while of just your guys' family time around that, and it's beautiful and you can just tell, just from that short glimpse that you give the rest of us that it's a really beautiful time that you're cultivating in your family. [Matt] And in some senses, like you see the snapshot, and it is awesome, it really is. But, it's just so normal, a part of life, and a wonderful life is built on a lot of normal moments that you just string together over time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, it's true, yeah, it's good. [Matt] And so, yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, there's the big one-offs that are memorable, but then there's the, it's the everyday things that shape who we are, it's all those habits that we have and those routines. I love that. Why don't you share the quote from the chapter? And then we'll just start asking questions. [Jennifer] Okay, so this is from chapter five of Marriage after God. "Your marriage is the message you are preaching to other, "the way you and your spouse interact with each other "reveals the gospel you believe." [Aaron] Matt and Lisa, how would you that that is true in what you guys have experienced, because it's something that you've definitely not only shown us through your own marriage, but also directly have shown us in ours in saying hey, you can't expect to have this ministry over here if your home doesn't match. So could you give me some insight on how this quote plays out in real life? [Matt] Well, one of the things that you just naturally see in life is you see people in ministry and what's the big joke in America, at least it used to be, I don't know if it still is, who are the worst kids in church? The PKs, the preacher's kids, right? And so, that is so antithetical to how we're called to live in the word of God because we are called ambassadors. That means that we are representatives of the kingdom of God on earth. We bear the name of Christ, and we're his representatives. And how is it possible that you have this ministry or you have this public presence, and then it's not true in your own personal life. You wanna tell somebody about the wonderful truths of Scripture. And you wanna tell somebody the gospel and explain to them how they can have a wonderful relationship with the Lord. And then you don't have, you're not living those wonderful relationships in your family. I know that we had seen a lot of this early on. And we were even involved in a particular church, years and years ago, they were lovely people but focused just on evangelism and kinda lost the relationships with their kids over time. We just saw-- [Lisa] And in their marriage. [Matt] This family's disintegrating. And the marriage is. Then we though, you know what, the life that we're called to as believers is much more holistic than that. And the truths of the gospel are supposed to be manifest in our lives. And if I could just say one more thing. I know you've got a lot to say, too. You see in the instructions for church leadership in the book of 1 Timothy, one of the principal requirements of anybody in ministry and this is serving as an elder or a deacon within the church. [Aaron] Yes, specific position. [Matt] One of the principal requirements is that you've demonstrated that your children have yielded hearts to you. You're governing your family well. You're leading your family well. There's a sense of order and peace in your home. So God wants it to be true at home before we go out to represent him to the world. [Aaron] And what does Paul tell Timothy, he says how can you presume to manage the household of God if you can't manage your own home, which is how he, after all that teaching, he says that it doesn't make sense. [Matt] Yeah. [Lisa] And I think that Matt's kind of big picture guy. And I'm more of what does that look like in my day kind of person. And one thing I had noticed that in Scripture, when it talks about how we are to be towards one another, how we're to be, to be loving, patient, kind. And we apply all of those things to out there. So, just an example: I go to the grocery store, and the cashier's taking forever to get me through the line. And she apologizes, but I've read the Bible, so I'm going to be, oh it's fine, I'll wait. I understand you're trying your hardest, and we'll get through here because I'm being patient, and I'm being kind. And then I go home, and I have a different response when it takes Matt forever to come out and help me bring in the groceries in the house. Or, because I'll be snippin' at him-- [Matt] Has that ever happened, like even one time in our marriage? [Lisa] Like I wait for you? Do you really wanna bring that up? [Aaron] Everyone listening was like that was just today. [Lisa] So, but it really struck home to me that all those things that we think apply to out there to strangers or maybe to friends. It somehow, or maybe there's a disconnect, to actually sometimes the hardest person, sometimes, is actually the person your married to. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, thinking about our own marriage. I used to do this thing where I would always be upbeat and positive and smiley with everyone. And then I'd come home and immediately my countenance would change, and Aaron-- [Aaron] I finally called you out on it, I was like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 'cause Aaron would be like-- [Aaron] Why do they get the smiles and then I get this? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] What is this? [Jennifer] And then I remember specifically him saying, I want your best. And I had to figure it out. I had to figure out why I was doing that and check my flesh on it really. [Aaron] Well, I think there's a default position of, well, I have you, therefore you should deal with who I actually wanna be today, and everyone else has to, I want them to see the best part of me. It's almost like it's just totally backwards. And it's actually lying. [Matt] Well, the harsh reality of the circumstance is who you actually are in terms of your personal character is who you are when the doors are shut and you're letting your hair down, so to speak, and you're just being your natural self with the people where the consequences might not be as immediate or severe as they might be if you do this in public. And so, that's the reality of who we are. And so, it's important to take stock on those things. How am I with the people that I'm closest to because those are the people that we tend to take for granted and those are the circumstances that we tend to be a little less guarded. [Aaron] Now that you're saying that, I'm thinking, it's actually probably infinitely less damaging to be that kind of person in public, when people they may be offended for the moment, but they're gonna forget your face in like eight seconds 'cause they don't live with you than the person that we literally spend hours and hours a day and our lifetime with: our children, our spouse. We sacrifice the main thing for the non-main thing. [Matt] Totally, and that's of course humanly speaking, in terms of the cost, over the long-term. [Aaron] Yeah, publicly. [Matt] But relative to the Lord's perspective on these relations, he wants it to be the same everywhere. [Aaron] Yeah. [Matt] He wants us to be loving and in the spirit everywhere with the people, especially close to us, but also with everybody else that we're interacting with. [Aaron] Or repentant if we're not. [Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, there is grace Right? [Aaron] Which changes us. [Matt] Well, you know what, you brought up the R word: repentance. And that is such an important word and such an abused word in our Christian religious world because repentance has a specific meaning. It's a word that has a definition. And we cut ourselves so much slack and we dip back into the same sins over and, how about this, just this sin we're talking about here where we're not being kind to our spouse, but we've got it for everybody else. And, oh, I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. Please forgive me. And Lord, I was unkind to my wife, please forgive me. I should have been more kind. And then we go on our day, and then I do it again. And then I do it again. Have I repented if I just keep walking in that same sin? [Aaron] No, you've apologized. [Matt] I've apologized, right? [Aaron] You're sorry for being-- [Matt] Because to repent means I used to do that, and now I'm doing this. It means to turn from, that's the definition of the word. And it's such a good word for Christians, all of us, to really wrestle with, and say, you know what, have I really repented and forsaken that sin? Because that's what it means to walk as God would have us as a couple and not to just keep going back, over and over and over again. [Aaron] I think of this quote. I'm not gonna say who said it, but someone in our family used to say, "If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it." That's kind of the idea; we say sorry over and over and over again. But in reality, our heart hasn't changed. We're just allowing something, whether we're intentionally doing something. We're not intentionally walking in the spirit, so therefore, we're defaulting to walking in the flesh, and we haven't repented of anything. This is something that I had to recognize in my life with certain sin in my life was I was sorry, but usually I was sorry for the shame or the regret or being caught or the remorse I see in your face or the pain I've caused you, Jennifer, but I'd never had been sorry for my sin which is what leads to repentance, and then I change and walk in that. So thanks for bringing that clarity. [Matt] Yeah, absolutely. And so to come full circle on your question, what does it mean to have a marriage that is reflecting the gospel? Well, if you have a marriage that is the kind of marriage that someone else is interested in, then you're not creating this incredible disconnect in the mind of the person that you're sharing the gospel with because what are you inviting them to? If the gospel hasn't affected and hasn't made your marriage beautiful, what are you inviting them to? Here we are married, and we have a bad, bickering, difficult, challenging marriage, and I'm out there telling somebody that Jesus loves them and died for them. It's so critical 'cause as we, and I know you guys have talked about on your podcast and certainly in your book, that your marriage is the gospel you're preaching, that is the gospel you're preaching. And the power of your message will not be one iota stronger or more influential than is the meaning and the love and the strength of your marriage relationship. [Jennifer] That's so good. I hope everyone hits rewind and just listens to that a few times. [Aaron] Yeah, and let's take marriage out of the picture, just in the Christian individual's life. If the gospel's not true in our life, so for me, when I was walking in my addiction to pornography, and I wasn't repentant of it, I thought I was, I was sorry for it; I was sorry for what it did to me, but I wasn't truly repentant of it. I could never tell someone that Christ came to bring freedom, which is what the Bible teaches us, that's the fruit of the gospel. [Matt] There you go. [Aaron] Because I couldn't walk in freedom. Like you said, I'm literally showing them, like, hey, here's God, he's awesome-- [Jennifer] He's powerless. [Aaron] He's powerless. [Jennifer] In my life. [Matt]right. [Aaron] He can't, and this isn't about just all of the sudden everything being healed and perfect and great, but this is definitely the truth of freedom from sin and death, which is what the Bible teaches, which is what Christ came to destroy. He took the power away from it. [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] But he doesn't have that in my life. Therefore, you should love God and believe in Jesus, but he can't actually do anything for the core of who you are. He can't change your physical situation or your spiritual situation, but, you know what, he's the thing you should believe in. It just doesn't make any sense. [Matt] No, it doesn't. We just need to remember that even if we're not saying anything, even if we're not on the street corner, preaching the gospel. We're preaching a sermon every time we walk out the door together. We're preaching a sermon. We're literally saying, this is what it means to be a Christian man and a Christian woman. Whether you mean to or not, you're preaching a sermon. The question is, what's the message that you're giving other people? [Jennifer] And how, can you explain, just for those people listening, how are they giving that message to other people? [Matt] It tends to be if you're living in a town and you've got your immediate circle and then you've got your circle of influence, the people you interact with, the people at the bank, the people at the gas station, the people at the grocery store, they know, over the course of time, they know whether you're a Christian or not. It just becomes evident that that is who you are. People probably don't realize it, but as somebody who identifies as a Christian, people watch you a little closer. They tend to want to just scrutinize you a little bit, or when we're at a restaurant. [Lisa] I was gonna say, what I was thinking about was how many times we've been in an airplane, traveling together, in a restaurant together, we have been stopped so many times by people we didn't even realize were watching us, someone who's serving us or the flight attendant, and said, you know, you two are just such a loving couple. And they could just see the way we were just interacting. And so people do notice that. And often times, especially at a restaurant, they'll see that we've prayed, so they also know that we're believers. And we've had a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with those people just even based on their observation of us. [Aaron] Well, it's uncommon. It's uncommon; it's normal to have cold relationships and being on the phones. It's uncommon to see engagement and true infatuation and adoration or-- [Lisa] Yeah, like the last time we were on a flight, we had a flight attendant come to us at the end of the flight, it was a long flight. And she said, "You know, the other flight attendants and I "were all talking about you two." Really? We're not that interesting. [Matt] Well, we were kissing, I mean. We were getting along kissing. [Lisa] That's right; that's right. And they were just observing how we were with each other, and how cute it was and thought we were maybe somewhat newly married. And I'm like, "Oh, no, we've been married 26 years, "and we have eight kids." Like, no way, yeah, really. [Aaron] And you're still in love? [Lisa] Yeah, yeah, it was really astonishing. [Matt] And you mentioned something about praying in a restaurant. And I know a lot of people listening probably do. It's probably less common these days than it has been in the past, but a lot of people still bow their heads and pray in a restaurant. Personally, I love doing that. I love just the witness: I'm a Christian, and I'm gonna give God thanks for this food. So I like doing that. But if you're somebody out there who does that, can I just encourage you to leave a fat, hog tip? Okay, because-- [Lisa] It's like a bonus. [Aaron] It is a bonus. [Matt] Because you've literally hoisted your flag at the table, I'm a Christian, and so, leave a great taste in your waiter's or server's mouth. [Aaron] It's a little sacrifice. [Matt] It's so small, yeah, so small. So small, but it's a good testimony, too. Just to say, you know what, love the Lord, and oh, by the way, God bless you. [Aaron] Going back to the, I think that's a great little bit of advice of how to spread the love of God. Like, hey, we love God and we just wanted to bless you, thank you-- [Matt] And certainly if it's a place that you go back more than once. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's true. [Aaron] Oh yeah! [Matt] You have struck up, well you've created an opportunity to strike up a conversation with the person because they're, well, first of all, they're business people, right? They wanna make money. So they wanna serve you well, and it's just an opportunity, that's all. Just an opportunity, if you're going to pray, then by all means, please don't complain about the food. [Aaron] I was gonna say that actually. There's certain Christiany things that we do, maybe we were raised that way, and we just pray. We're Christians, we love God, we pray. But then, let's say we're bickering at the table, or we are being super rude to the waiters, or our kids are throwing food on the floor and silverware. That is a part of our witness. [Lisa] It is. [Aaron] How we are. And they're like, you did the thing that I thought you were gonna do. They're looking for us to fail. [Jennifer] To fail, right. [Aaron] Doesn't mean we're not gonna fail, but the majority of the time, our hearts should be aware of how we're being, which goes back to that marriage being your ministry. You guys had this awesome, oh, people noticed us, and they stopped us and said thank you. We've had the other side of it. And no one's actually confronted us and saw us fighting, but we've had people message us after the fact. We've mentioned this a few times. And like, "Hey, we saw you in the store. "I didn't stop and say hi, but just wanted to say hi." And they'd message us on Instagram. And then we were like, "Oh my gosh, I think we were, were we fighting?" [Jennifer] This was a long time ago; we've gotten better since then. This was a long time ago. [Aaron] It made us aware, man, like, well, A, we have a social media presence, but it doesn't matter if you do. Like if you're a Christian, there's people that know you. You have friends, you have neighbors, you have, and people that may not know you personally, they're gonna see you regularly in your small town, or big town, I guess, because you frequent the same places. What kind of fragrance as a couple and as Christians do we give in this world where we say one thing and act a different way? That's literally what hypocrisy is. We talk about this, actually, in this chapter. We talk about, we're gonna ask you a question in a second, another question, but it doesn't make any sense if we're trying to minister in other ways, and then in the home, there is no real ministry happening. And so, question for you guys is are marriages being a ministry, and being our first ministry, because it's our first one another, our closest neighbor, we always like to say is our spouse and then our kids and everyone else. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Well, this husband, he's a minister, and he doesn't actually have time to be focused on his family. Or a wife that's doing this thing over here for God, and she doesn't have time to serve her home and children. Are there marriages that are exempt from this? Why or why not? [Lisa] I don't know that there are exemptions in that sense although Matt might want to address that, but what that's come to mind, I do have many women write me who are in a marriage situation where the spouse is not a believer or at least not walking with God. And I know that that's a greater challenge, and I wouldn't want to put undue burden on that couple, especially the one that's trying to be faithful, and the other is not walking that way. There has to be grace for that, and the one person has to, you know, scripture tells us to keep quiet and just keep shining the light of Christ in their home. But I also wouldn't want to feel like, oh, I can't minister to others now because my spouse is not walking in truth right now. [Matt] And the way I would look at that is the Bible teaches us what is normal and how we are to walk as normal Christians in this world. And when it comes to marriage, what's normal is the way Jesus loves the church, his bride. That's how we're supposed to love our bride. That's normal. And that instruction, love your wife as Christ loved the church, that's not a special instruction for somebody who happens to be in the public eye. That is an instruction for absolutely every Christian man, every man who stands up and says, I follow Lord; I have committed my life to Christ. I have repented of my sin, and I'm a Christian. Every man who has said that should have a wife who says, I'm the most cherished woman I know. And no man is exempt from that. And so, here's the thing, if a church lays claim to being full of godly men, then there's one thing you know for sure, it's full of cherished wives. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be a godly man and not cherish your wife. And so in that sense, I would say nobody's exempt from this, but, of course, we live in a broken world with lots of relationships and circumstances, and people have struggled. And God has grace for those things. But in those circumstances, the person, whatever they are, wherever they fall on the spectrum, difficult and virtually sad and very challenging to not that bad, wherever they are in the spectrum, their job is to draw near to God and walk as closely to God as he wants them, as he desires them to, and to seek them in those circumstances. But I appreciate you bringing that up because there are lot of people, lots of wives, lots of husbands, a husband called us recently. His wife left, he's got, I think they've got five kids. One of the kids has Down's Syndrome, and the wife's just like, "I'm done." And she left, and he didn't want her to leave, he tried to love her right up through, for several years, up to point where she left. He himself has remained faithful and has a ministry even though she's left, so it's true, it's not that you don't have a ministry. It's just that God provides his standards and principles and requirements for Christian men, for Christian wives, and for marriage. And then sin comes in and everything else is an exception to the rule, but the rule is every man is to cherish his wife in the way Jesus Christ loves the church. [Aaron] So, I do appreciate Lisa that you brought that up, too, because I'm sure that we have people that listen, and one of the spouses is not walking, is not a believer, and we get, praise God, he gives provision for this in his word, in 1 Peter, he shows, it's funny because it's to the wife, it's almost like he knew that men were gonna be more prone to this, not being faithful, which is sad, but it's true. But even then I think, you're right, that it doesn't mean they can't have ministry outside of the home because their marriage isn't in order correctly faith wise, but that doesn't mean that their first ministry still isn't their spouse. Like you said, they still have a call, the wife or the husband, to serve and love their spouse the way the Bible has called them to, faithfully, whether they receive it or not, of course. And that's also, I don't wanna say qualifies, I don't know if that's the right word, but, it still prepares them to do ministry outside their home because it's in order. Instead of, I'm not going to love my husband or my wife like this because they're treating me this way, but I am gonna go love over here, that's not gonna produce the kind of fruit that God's looking for. But I did appreciate that. I think it's totally relevant to recognize that there are these non-ideal marriages. [Matt] You know, and one of the things that might be important to mention here is wherever you are on the spectrum: you have a spectacular marriage all the way to it's terrible. We tend to fall into this wrong thought process that goes something like this: you're walking in sin; therefore, I can't help being the way I am. [Lisa] Oh, now, that's a good point. [Matt] And the fact of the matter is is the way you act has nothing to do with my capacity as a believer to walk in holiness. [Lisa] Right, no that's-- [Matt] And we kinda cut ourselves a little slack there, don't we? 'Cause if you're a certain way, well then that gives me license to be another way in response-- [Aaron] Yeah, if you only respected me, I would treat you or love you as Christ loves the church. [Matt] That's right, and every one of us has the capacity according to the word of God to walk in holiness, irrespective of how our spouse is walking. Now we certainly make it easier, right? If we're walking in holiness for the other person. But, we can't blame our distance from God on how someone else has chosen to act. [Aaron] Amen. [Jennifer] Taking a look into your guys' marriage. You know, you've been married quite a while. So go back to the beginning. Was there a learning curve in your guys' relationship on how to love and respect each other and cherish each other in that? [Matt] OH, absolutely. I was the most loving husband in the world. The only problem-- [Aaron] That's a real laugh, by the way. [Matt] The only-- [Lisa] Revisionist history, I think that's what it's-- [Matt] The only problem with it is I was loving Lisa in the way that said love to me. [Lisa] Oh, that's true. [Matt] We'd like to tell the story, in fact, we tell it on our own podcast. We just have this crazy story where I literally am superman husband, okay? I am helping out with everything. [Lisa] It's our first year of marriage. [Matt] First year of marriage. I am helping out with everything. I am helping with, not the laundry, you wouldn't let me touch the laundry 'cause she said, nope, that's mine; I will do the laundry. Everything else, the vacuuming, folding the laundry. [Lisa] Cleaning the bathrooms. [Matt] Cleaning the bathrooms, everything else, the dishes, everything, I'm helping, I'm helping. I'm doing it all, and I'm thinking-- [Lisa] And I'm getting madder and madder and-- [Matt] And she's over in the kitchen. And there's the flames, you know, the ones coming out of her eyes, are visible from across the room, and I-- [Aaron] Although I have never seen Lisa angry before, so I couldn't-- [Lisa] Oh, I'm capable. [Matt] And I thought, what is wrong with this woman? You can't find five guys in the entire state of Oregon that do the things that I do with a willing heart, and I'm trying to bless you, you're just, there's nothing that will make you happy. You can't be blessed; I don't know what your problem is. And so, she just takes the towel, and she almost busts a dish on me as she sets the plate down on the counter. And then she takes the towel and throws it on the counter. [Lisa] Thank you. [Matt] And I'm going, what in the world. She turns to me, and she goes, "I just don't know why you don't love me." [Lisa] True story. [Aaron] What's happening? [Matt] And I'm going, okay, am I losing my mind here? And I'm going, you've gotta be kid, you've literally got to be kidding me. [Lisa] So my thinking is I can vacuum, I can clean the bathrooms, anybody can do that. But there's only one guy in my life that can take me out and spend some time with me and listen to my thoughts. [Aaron] Look in my eyes-- [Lisa] Yes! [Aaron] And talk to me. [Lisa] And so he could just feel my frustration over time. So, the more frustrated he would feel-- [Matt] I would try harder. [Lisa] The more he'd vacuum. [Matt] I'd do more! [Lisa] And I'm just like, put the stupid vacuum down. I just want to spend time with yo. [Matt] So I'm going, wow, that's easy. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who knew love was that easy? So in our case, it was just me taking the initiative to say, okay, we're gonna go out at such-and-such a day, and it didn't matter what it was. We'd go for a walk; we could go have a cup of coffee. And I mean, at any time you as a husband tell your wife, "Hey, I just wanna spend some time with you." You can turn one cup of coffee into an awesome date. You really can. [Lisa] It doesn't take much. [Matt] It doesn't take much. You talk about learning curve, absolutely we had to learn each other and what was important to you and what was important to me and this is so true in absolutely every area of marriage. For instance, we've given you the for instance in terms of the learning curve, but in terms of discovering what it is your spouse is interested in, what they like, what's important to them. There's a very, very interesting way of finding out. [Aaron] You ask. [Matt] You ask a question! Yeah, yeah, and it's such a great thing to do because you know what happens when I turn to you and I ask you a question about you. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] Who doesn't like talking about themselves? Who doesn't like being known and explored and discovered. Who doesn't like someone being interested in them. So that's what we do when we turn to our spouse and say, okay, I wanna ask you a question. I wanna ask you what are three things that I can do that would make you feel loved? So that's just the normal stuff of marriage. But you know what? And you can even take it right into the subject of sex. And you can say, what are things that you enjoy when we come together physically? What are some of those things? Because, you know what, we tend to love the other person with the things that we want. [Lisa] I think that sometimes people boil this down to love languages, which is interesting and helpful. But what we're talking about is so much more than a love language, for one thing, those things change over time. It depends when the season when we had four kids, five and under, the vacuum really helped a lot, and I had a, not that I still didn't want to go out, [Aaron] Right, in that season, that was much more loving. [Lisa] Yeah, it was loving; it did mean a lot. [Matt] And physical touch when we had five kids. What would the age's spread have been with our five kids? [Lisa] Yeah, six and under. [Matt] Five kids six and under. Physical touch was less important to her in those years. [Lisa] Imagine that. [Matt] You know? She's got kids. You got enough of that. [Jennifer] Her tank is full. [Matt] Yeah, I'm touching 24/7, exactly. Right, so it does change over time. [Lisa] So instead of thinking of it as big subjects of love language, think of it as who you are as a person and where are you at today, where are you at in this season, where are you at in your life right now. And that involves that continual seeking and pursuing and asking. [Jennifer] So continual even after 26 years. Like you guys are still asking? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You have gotten there yet? [Matt] Absolutely. [Aaron] You haven't gotten to the-- [Matt] No, we're seeking each other all the time. And you know what? [Jennifer] And it's fun, right? [Lisa] It is. [Matt] It is fun, absolutely fun. And the thing is, if you love the other person, it's not a burden to do it. You actually want to know where they're at. You wanna know where their heart is at. [Lisa] And I think it can even be in somewhat negative things like say, I notice something triggers Matt into a bad mood or just like a dark, you know. And it used to be, when we were younger, that would just like, oh, fine, if you're gonna be in a bad mood, then I'll just stay away from you. I'm not saying those things, but that was my basic attitude. And I feel like over the years, now, let's say something like that happens, which it does, then I can say, I noticed, like something happened, you know, we had a good start today, and then something kind of went sideways. You wanna tell me about that? Did something happen or did I say something? Not in a defensive way, but just really, we've had some really good conversations about that. He'd go, "You know, I wasn't aware of that." Sometimes even going back to your childhood. As a child, my mom treated me a certain way, so now whenever I hear this phrase, it takes me back to a time when I didn't feel cared for. [Aaron] Yeah. [Lisa] And you're thinking, oh, well, I didn't mean to [Aaron] I know how it feels. [Lisa] communicate that I didn't care for you. But I can see that that would translate to that. And now I know, and I can be more mindful of that. [Aaron] And lovingly. Just the loving hey, is everything okay? Not because you're bothered by it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] But because you're concerned for it. [Lisa] Yes. [Aaron] Which then, I'm sure, Matt, you would experience. There's been times that I don't even know why I'm brooding. It just takes a moment to be checked on it. And then I'm like, oh, I actually don't know why I'm brooding right now; I actually do feel irritated. I don't know why. Which it totally could be a hormonal thing, it could be a something I ate, and maybe there's something spiritual going on that we need to be praying through, but that approach of not taking it personally because we do that. Why are you doing this around me? I was in a great mood, now you just brought me down. But rather, helper, but for each, an actual concern. Hey, is everything alright? That was a really good bit of advice. I think everyone listening is gonna be loving these tips because this is 26 years of you guys learning this. We're only 12 in, what is that? We're not even half. [Matt] It'll go quick; it'll go quick. [Aaron] We are halfway to the kids, though. [Matt] Oh, that's right. [Lisa] Yeah. [Matt] And you got started earlier than we did. [Aaron] We got started earlier, so we might bypass you So you guys'll [Matt] Outpace us, yeah, that's right. But then there's adoption, we can stay ahead of 'em. [Aaron] It's true, that's true. So I'm loving these tips. And it all plays back into this. Right now, you're talking about how you guys minister to each other. Loving each other, cultivating intimacy, the communication, the strong bond which allows us, then, it frees us to be more able to minister outside the home. Not that it can't happen, but when you guys are so connected, so close, there's more freedom, and less internal turmoil. [Matt] I might even say it a little differently. I would say what it does is it authenticates the message. [Aaron] That's perfect. [Matt] And you know, we see this principle, well not just principle, we see this exact teaching in the high priestly prayer that Jesus prays in John 17 where he's saying, their unity, let them be one as we are one, Jesus is praying. Let them, his followers, those who come to Christ, who come to a repentance and become the children of God. Let them be one as we are one that the world might believe that you have sent me. The unity that we have, the oneness that we have is the authentication of the message of Christ that he came from the Father. And so, that's so true in the church as a whole, and it's absolutely true in marriage. When we're walking in love, when we're walking in unity, when we're exuding that, where we go through life, it authenticates the message when we do speak the truth of the gospel to someone. [Lisa] And not just out there, but in our own homes, to our kids. [Matt] Oh, that's just so true. [Lisa] When your kids are little, you can kinda get away with it, or at least you think you are. [Aaron] We think we think we are. [Lisa] Believe me, as they get older, they'll tell the world what it's really like at home. They'll tell their friends. [Matt] They do. [Lisa] I'm just saying because it's reality. And the opposite is true, too, that if you are loving each other, it's a witness to them, it's an encouragement to them. Our kids all want to get married. They want to have that kind of marriage. And that's a huge blessing. One of the things that we recently asked one of our older daughters, who's in her twenties. I think it was a Father's Day thing. What do you like most about your dad? She said that, "He loves Mom so well." And it was such a beautiful testimony that yeah, they're watching, they know whether you have loved each other in those quiet moments. [Aaron] Well, when you think about it, almost everyone probably listening, when they look back and they think about their home and how they were raised, I'm sure a lot of them, being raised in Christian homes or not, maybe heard the Bible, but did they see it? Did they see the Bible; did they see the gospel? They don't remember what they ate. They don't remember all the places they've been. But they definitely remember how Mom and Dad were together. They definitely remember how Mom and Dad treated them. And that's where the ministry in our home comes in. 'Cause I've told Jennifer this. I said, Jennifer, all of these things that we have, Unveiled Wife, Husband Revolution, our podcast. I said all of that means absolutely nothing if my kids don't know the Lord. And so, not just our ministry to each other that we have a healthy marriage and that we're godly, and that we love each other and respect each other and honor each other and cherish each other and serve each other, but that my kids see it. And that they recognize what we're doing and why we're doing it, and that at the end of the day, they look back and they say thank you to us, not because of us alone, but because we were obedient. I want my kids to say that. I want my kids to say, "Mom and Dad loved each other. "I just know it; they loved me, and they showed me "who God was and they lived it every day. "They didn't just use their words." As James says, don't just be hearers only, but doers of the word. Are we just listening and not doing? Are we just telling and doing the opposite? The do what I say, not what I do? [Lisa] Right, right. [Matt] Do what I say, not what I do. It works every time, just not the way the parent thought it was going to work. [Aaron] Exactly and so I just, going back to that, that's what I want everyone listening to understand. The main purpose of this chapter in the book, is, and it's early on in the book, it's chapter five, and it's setting this idea of we could want to do lots of things for God, but God wants us to do what he's told us to do. And if we can't be faithful with the little thing, and the little thing is our children, our spouse, our home, this is a little picture of the world. If I can't minister to my wife and love her as Christ loves the church, I have no right going and loving a stranger like that. I could. [Matt] I think what we do is we tend to think like, I know what you're saying, as this is the little thing, so to do the big thing. I actually think that reality is kind of on its head. [Aaron] Okay. [Matt] I think the big thing we're doing is we're being faithful with our spouses, we're being faithful in discipling our children. And it's a great, big deal, and see-- [Aaron] Man, I heard that, yeah. [Matt] If the church had been teaching and focusing on that these past, what, I dunno, however many years. [Aaron] 60 or 70 years. [Matt] Would the church be in the state that it's in today with disintegrating families and churches filled with unfulfilled marriages and disappointments and divorce and all of those things. It's a great big deal. And if we're faithful here, God can entrust with ministry elsewhere. [Jennifer] In chapter 14 of the book, we talk about how what God sees as extraordinary is so different than what the world deems extraordinary. When we look at our own lives, it is that day-to-day, all those little choices of discipling our children, being faithful to one another, that is extraordinary because that is where God is working. [Aaron] Especially today, it's normal, you brought up the word normal, it's common, that's what it is, it's common in the world for there to be divorce and unfaithfulness and children who are rebellious and hate their parents. It is extraordinary and remarkable now even though it should be normal for a marriage to have love in it. [Matt] Well, that's just it. [Aaron] The gospel. [Matt] It is normal, biblical marriage to have a loving, close, wonderful, fulfilling, enjoyable, beautiful oneness in marriage. That is normal Christianity; that's normal marriage. The problem is, is we see what's common around us in the world, and we get used to what's common, and start thinking that that's normal, but it's not. If you have a biblical perspective, if you walk God's way, and your marriage reflects God's priorities and principles, then you're gonna have an awesome, wonderful, beautiful, loving, enjoyable marriage because that's what a normal Christian marriage really is. [Jennifer] And the power of God's testimony in your life is actually powerful. [Matt] Absolutely, right, exactly. [Aaron] Well, people can't argue with it. I mean, they can argue with anything. We were just talking about this. When you're around people that are walking a certain way, makes it easier to believe that you can too. That goes both ways. So when you see someone, and you're like man they're, like the stewardesses looking at you. They don't your whole story, but they know the story they just saw. You're not faking it when you're sitting in the aisle, whatever row you're in and like, oh we want everyone to see that we're perfect. We have this smile on because you can't fake it. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] Everyone fakes it, and no one falls for it. Like, oh-- [Jennifer] Maybe for a short flight, but not long one like you said. [Aaron] Yeah, the short flight's, but yeah. [Matt] That's right. [Aaron] And again, we keep going back to this. God's not interested in just us having a happy marriage and a healthy marriage. [Matt] No. [Aaron] For the sake of happy and healthy marriage. That's not an end game. [Matt] That's exactly right. [Aaron] It's the means to the end, like you said. It's what, what was the word you used? It verifies, no-- [Matt] Authenticates. [Aaron] It authenticates. [Matt] Yeah. [Aaron] What's sad and still is very powerful to realize is when we're not it doesn't make God the liar. It makes us the liar. [Matt] It reminds me or brings to mind that phrase. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power. 'Cause you look at it from a galloping horse at 100 yards, and it looks like Christianity. It looks like something that's related to God and related to the Bible. But then you get close and you see, well, no, actually. It's not real; it's not true, and that's when we see the disintegration in the next generation when the kids are like, I don't want any part of that. Again, you just can't hide that. And especially, you mentioned, Lisa, you said, yeah, you can't hide it, your kids will absolutely tell the story and we know of a family. The snapshot looks amazing, and nobody would know this, but their kids told us recently, oh yeah, our parents yell all the time. And you'd never know it, but the kids know it. And the kids are now talking; they're all older now. And now they're saying, oh, no, no, no, no. Parents yell all the time. So that's why it's gotta be true there because if you're out witnessing, if you're that parents, and it could be yelling or bickering or fighting or cheating on your taxes or any number of things, but if you're that parent, and in the gas stations, you're telling a guy, oh, hey, the Lord Jesus Christ died for you, and God loves you, and he wants you to have a relationship. The kid is sitting there going, "Are you kidding me?" it's so important that for the things that we say to be true about how we live. It's called not being a hypocrite, and your kids can figure it out at a very early age. [Aaron] All of this was so good. I'm encouraged; it makes me think about my marriage even though we're constantly working on it, I just think, man, I wanna-- Makes me think [Jennifer] Of the kids. [Aaron] Yeah, I wanna pursue you more. I want to constantly be doing that for the sake of our outward ministry and for the sake of our home, so thank you for these stories, the openness with us. We're gonna ask you our question that we're asking everyone. What is your definition of a marriage after God? [Lisa] I think that it's that ever growing a deeper love for each other. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think sometimes we just go, well, it's perfect, so we throw our hands, or it's not perfect, so we throw our hands up. Instead of thinking, no, I'm gonna move forward in this. And I'm gonna grow in these areas. I can even think of things I have struggled with. Believe it or not, I do have a temper. And Matt has the ability, somehow, to press that button better than anybody else I know. [Matt] Well, I mean, just on a boring Saturday. I mean if there's nothing else to do. [Lisa] Press my buttons. So I'll find myself reacting to him, and I will stop myself literally mid-sentence and go, wait, it's like, yep, like okay. [Aaron] That's a good-- [Lisa] What I wanted say was. I didn't quite the first two seconds or minutes, however the situation was, wasn't right. But checking myself and going, okay, but that's not who I wanna be. That's how I was, but that's not who I wanna be anymore, so I wanna try again. And giving each other that grace to grow, but being determined to change and not say, this is not who I wanna be; I do want us to be loving close. [Matt] And for me, I think I would boil it down. I mean, that's a huge subject, right? And there's so many facets to it. But I would boil it down to this. The fundamental understanding that my marriage is what God is doing in the world. It's not what I'm doing in the world. It's not the thing that I have; I have a marriage. My marriage is what God is doing in the world. The Bible says what God has put together let no man put asunder. This is something God is doing, and so if you have that basic, fundamental faith about this relationship, it's a foundation and a starting point for moving forward. [Jennifer] Thank you guys so much for joining us today. This has just been, like Aaron said, incredible and inspiring. If people were inspired today and they want to follow you more, can you just remind them where they can find you? [Lisa] We have a podcast, Faithful Life. And we'd love to have you join us over there. And we also, both of us have a website. Matt has faithfulman.com, and I have club31women.com. [Matt] And then you're also on Instagram, club31women and faithfulman, on Instagram, so you can find us there as well. [Aaron] Everyone listening, definitely go follow them, they are golden. [Jennifer] If you like Marriage after God, and you like what we share, you're definitely gonna like them. [Aaron] We actually just steal all of our content from them and repurpose them. They have been integral in the growth and maturity in our life. And so, we appreciate you guys. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] And we thank you for not only sharing with our audience now, but for sharing with us over the last five years. [Lisa And Matt] We love you guys. [Aaron] That we've known you guys. So, we're gonna close out with a prayer. Jennifer's gonna pray and then, yeah. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage with such a significant purpose of revealing to the world your divine love. Please help us to make choices that reflect your love in the way we love one another. May we choose to walk in obedience. Thank you for your word which instructs us and shows us how we should walk in obedience. Please continue to give us wisdom and strength as we choose to walk in the spirit and not our flesh. We pray we would make our marriage a priority. We pray we would gain deeper understanding of how our marriage is our first ministry, and the impact we have in each other's lives and in this world just by remaining faithful to your word. If our priorities are ever out of order, or if we are not unified, please help us to change our course. Constantly direct our hearts to align with yours. May our marriage always be in a place where you can use us as a symbol to point other to you, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. [Matt] Amen. [Aaron] So, thank you all for listening today. I hope this blessed you guys. And as always, we want you guys to have a conversation about this. Go on a date, and discuss the things that we talked about today. We have, what is it, 11 more episodes in this series. 11 more interviews to come. They're gonna be awesome; please stay tuned. We look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageafterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
Oakland entrepreneur Jessica Gray Schipp shares her life's journey of coping with multiple food allergies and her book #AllergicToEverything, a cookbook and guide for people living with multiple food allergies.Transcript:Lisa:Method to the Madness is next. You're listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer, and today I'm speaking with Jessica Gray Schipp. She's the author of a new cookbook and guide for people suffering from multiple food allergies.Welcome to the program, Jessica.Jessica:Thank you.Lisa:You just wrote this book called Allergic to Everything, which is an incredible guide and a cookbook for people with allergies. Are you allergic to everything?Jessica:I'm allergic to several things. It's called #Allergic to Everything and I am allergic to wheat, gluten, corn, soy, oats, eggs, shellfish, and possibly sesame.Lisa:You've been through a lot.Jessica:Yes.Lisa:This has taken decades to put this together. How did you figure out what to do first? Tell us your life's journey.Jessica:Well, I knew I was lowered to shellfish when I was a little kid. I was about six and I had an anaphylactic reaction and that was really scary, so I kind of grew up conscious of what it was like to have that happen. And then when I was in my, I would say like mid-twenties, I started getting a lot of hives and odd reactions that I didn't know what it was.Lisa:And this is out east?Jessica:And this is on the East Coast, yeah. And I was just going to literally every type of doctor that I could think of. My mom's a nurse practitioner, so she was sending me to like specialists and using her network and my body just slowly got worse and worse and worse. And then I ended up in Bloomington, Indiana with a friend from grad school and I arrived on her doorstep and I essentially looked like I was just dead. I had sties, I had hives everywhere and I didn't even know kind of how sick I was because I was so used to living that way.But she forced me to a doctor and they were basically like-Lisa:That was the first time you'd seen a doctor about it?Jessica:No, I had been seeing specialists but nobody identified it as food allergies and they didn't really know. So they just kept throwing me on steroids and different medications. And finally at that point in Bloomington, I was just in a place of I'm either dying of cancer or I have food allergies and I have to see what I can do. So I moved back home at that point and I did an elimination diet using all of these different tests I had gotten done with the food stuff because I was basically everything I reacted to. And I think that's also because my system was so hyperactive because it was so irritated all the time that it was triggering responses to more than what I really-Lisa:What does that mean? Elimination Diet? Because you talk about that and you also talk about the symptom tracker that you put together, which is also in the book.Jessica:Well I would say the elimination diet, I didn't start doing it with a symptom tracker. The one that's in the book is kind of a design that I came up with from trial and error and my experiences and what worked for me. I initially used something called a health minder, which I had found on Amazon and it was awesome, but it didn't quite track everything I wanted it to, so I've kind of made my own model.But in terms of the elimination diet, I did that without tracking initially. You basically, a lot of people start with removing the top eight food allergens.Lisa:And what are those?Jessica:Those are wheat, eggs, milk, fish, shellfish, nuts and peanuts.Lisa:Not corn?Jessica:No, corn's not one of the top eight, but I guarantee you this is my philosophy actually because we're shoving it in so much of the food.Lisa:Exactly.Jessica:I'm almost positive that when they revamped that topic eight, that that's going to end up on there [crosstalk]Lisa:I grew up in the Midwest and one of the things I noticed was the simultaneous rise of obesity and GMO corn farming.Jessica:No kidding. No kidding.Lisa:Even though no one is pinpointing that.Jessica:Yeah, and it's cheap.Lisa:Why do you think that's been left off the top?Jessica:I think that just not... I don't know. I think there's not a lot of money in research right now for food allergies. There aren't even really very reliable tests that have been developed. Everything does a lot of false positives. So it's really weird, which going back to the elimination diet, that's really the best way to determine what's triggering things.Lisa:It's very time consuming though, isn't it?Jessica:It's very time consuming. Yeah. Yeah. The process of writing the book took about six years, but the process of getting through the elimination phase and starting to learn about foods probably took like three months but a good year of getting used to it because at first I was just eating a piece of cheese or string cheese, just really basic foods like seed crackers, just nuts, like very plain stuff. And then after I got comfortable with that, I was able to expand and start trying to figure out how to cook the foods that I really missed because there's a lot to be missed when you have to take so much out.Lisa:So when you say "cook the foods you missed," coming up with recipes that would taste somewhat like them because you're not using the ingredients and that they've done in this book.Jessica:Yes. Yeah, so it's really a book of kind of comfort food and super holiday friendly and things just like muffins and breads and pizza and pasta sauce and tacos and it's super kid friendly too, I would say. I think I just had this desire to go back to the foods that I had grown up with-Lisa:Comfort food.Jessica:And figure out... Yeah, exactly, and figure out how to go from there.Lisa:Backing up a little bit, you were in Indiana, you went to this doctor, you started the elimination diet and then?Jessica:And then it was a long process of kind of realizing that I had to start tracking certain things when I would have reactions because you're supposed to add one food back in at a time and then kind of wash yourself for up to basically three days, give or take. Because reactions can happen in many different ways. They can be on your skin, they can be in your digestive system, they can be instant or they can show up in three days. It's kind of a bizarre, bizarre world.Lisa:And the other thing is if you're social at all and you go out to eat at people's homes or in restaurants.Jessica:Yeah, don't trust anybody because nobody knows what they're talking about. And I love my friends and they are, some of them are really amazing and truly have an understanding and have memorized stuff and there are certain people that I really trust. But then there are other people who I know they intend well but they don't know that the shredded cheese that they're using happens to have corn starch on it to prohibit mold. And cornstarch really, really gets to me instantly. I get hives, which I hate. I hate when my symptoms show up on my body.Lisa:Well, in a way that's good because then you know pretty quickly something's wrong.Jessica:Right, that's true.Lisa:In the midst of this discovery. Where were you shopping?Jessica:I was in the Midwest at first and basically I went home pretty quickly after that. I went back to right outside of Washington, DC, in Arlington and I moved back in with my mom, which was hard because I had just gotten my master's and I thought I was going to go into the world rather than a retreat. But yeah, so I went home and my mom has always been very health conscious, so she... There's a little place called Mom's Organic Market and I think it's an Alexandria technically, but it's a great little like health food type of store. And I kind of stuck to stuff like that. And Trader Joe's for just basics, which I still love Trader Joe's today because they just offer so much of high quality stuff at amazing prices.My mom trained me in the organic produce selection and I kind of did like a little work trade. So I did their grocery shopping and did some cooking. And in exchange I got to kind of take some time. I had asthma as a kid. My mom kind of suspected that I had some corn allergies as a kid too because she kind of thought that I would get like fussy when I ate things with corn syrup in it. So there were periods where she suspected it, but nothing was identified until I was 27 when all of this kind of came together.Lisa:How did you get out here?Jessica:I eventually started looking for jobs and I'd kind of always dreamed of California and I found an AmeriCorps position working in East Oakland at a school and the whole idea was kind of like teaching creativity and putting creativity back into the classroom, which my undergrad was an art education so it was a really good fit and they give you a stipend to help you move across. So I ended up driving my little Honda Civic out here and it was pretty beautiful and incredible. And then I ended up, I thought I was coming to California and I was going to be this picturesque mountains and everything. And then I wound up like right in the middle of another city and it was kind of like what?Lisa:You mean like East Oakland?Jessica:Yeah. Being here has been the most incredible part of this journey. The food culture here is phenomenal. Really, you just have access to everythingLisa:People don't realize that unless they've lived elsewhere.Jessica:Yes.Lisa:Because if you're in the Midwest, you have to carve out time to find organic food.Jessica:Yes. Or those little co-ops. The co-ops are like the way to go.Lisa:The co-ops, they're usually near universities.Jessica:Totally. Yeah.Lisa:It's not easy.Jessica:No, no.Lisa:To find good food.Jessica:That's, yeah, 100% I agree with that. Yeah, and I guess that's been the blessing of being here is just that a whole... Like Berkeley Bowl and just a whole new world happened for me and I moved in with a bunch of foodies and learned a lot from them. And so all of these different things kind of came together.Lisa:And how did your allergies, did it improve here or...Jessica:Yeah. Yeah, it's been actually a drastic difference. I think the climate is better for me in some ways. So I think my skin in general has been a lot less irritated, but, but I think my quality of life has been better since moving out here. And I'm not sure exactly why.Lisa:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today I'm speaking with Oakland based entrepreneur, Jessica Gray Schipp, the author of a book called Allergic to Everything for people suffering from multiple food allergies.So tell me when you decided to write this book.Jessica:I didn't really specifically decide to write it at first, I just started writing down the recipes that were working for me and I had a little notebook. I've always, you can see my journal here, I always have a journal. And so I just kind of started writing down what was working and I had some friends over for dinner and my friend Phil had asked me like, "What is that recipe? How did you do that? I can't even tell it's allergen free," which was kind of this real goal of mine was to trick the people into thinking the food had all their allergens.But yeah, and he looked at the notebook and he was just like, "Jess, you should publish this." And I hadn't considered that and I didn't think of it that way. And then I kind of ran with it.Lisa:And then when you say "ran with it," what are the steps that you took?Jessica:Well, it was more of a jog because I was teaching full time. So I started in the summers when I had my summers off. The first summer I basically typed up this notebook and wound up with about, or I guess it took me two summers to do that, but I wound up with about 115 recipes that I developed. And then more recently, so in August, I actually left my teaching job to do this full time and try to give it a real stab. And I sat down and wrote the guide, which I didn't realize was going to be so lengthy but-Lisa:It's comprehensive. I really enjoyed that.Jessica:Thank you for saying that.Lisa:Well yeah, you...Jessica:Thank you for saying that.Lisa:Not only recipes but you list resources for people, you get into household cleaning substances, that you can make on your own. I was surprised how comprehensive. It's over 200 pages.Jessica:Thank you. Yeah-Lisa:And also what to put in a pantry.Jessica:Right? Like your staples and where to get them and how to do it and you can do it affordably and you can also spend a lot of money on this stuff. There's a million ways to do it. Yeah, and it was fascinating to kind of go in because I think before moving out to California, I hadn't started to consider what was in the products I was using on my skin, for example. I was using really sensitive simple lotions and stuff like that. But for hair-Lisa:But even laundry detergent.Jessica:Or laundry detergent, exactly.Lisa:And people use these softeners and they always smell.Jessica:And they're full of chemicals and it's gross stuff and it irritates sensitive skin even if you don't have allergens. So just kind of all of that stuff has gone into it. And then just simple things like reading ingredient labels.Lisa:Just today I read an article that the USDA, they just announced now that instead of saying whether something has GMO ingredients, genetically modified, now they are opting for bio-engineered or BE on products. Some people think it's to avoid the labeled GMO because that's kind of a bad thing.Jessica:It has a stigma.Lisa:But it also allows companies to choose between the option of either writing out the warning saying, "This contains bio engineered food," include a just a BE label or this code that you have to swipe, which they assume most consumers will not do. It seems like it's a constant battle to get the true ingredients listed because...Jessica:Well, I want to comment on what you were just saying about the labeling of food. I think that that's one of the most frustrating things because you can slap all natural on it and it means absolutely nothing. They allow a lot of loopholes in this kind of stuff, which is why it's so important no matter what to flip the package over and actually read the ingredients.Lisa:Some of these ingredients, you look at them and you don't even know how to say them.Jessica:Well, and that's my rule. I have a 10 ingredient or less rule and you need to be able to pronounce all of them. The chemicals, it just, it's really unreal.Lisa:And this is mostly processed food.Jessica:It's mostly processed food, yeah, that has that.Lisa:So people who are shopping the middle aisles are going to see more of that.Jessica:Correct. Yeah. I'm a big a perimeter shopper now. I go into the middles for my brown rice pasta or some crackers.Lisa:Or olive oils.Jessica:Or olive oil, yeah, definitely loved my olive oil. I've been leaning into avocado oil too. That's-Lisa:And you talk about coconut being a good alternative to corn oils and things like that.Jessica:Yes. I think one of the interesting things was too with my skin, how irritated it was at the beginning of this journey. I started just trying to figure out natural things I could use to moisturize because normal lotion wasn't working. So coconut oil was something that was really, I was just like slathering it on. And it was really, really healing for me, which was interesting because a lot of doctors had told me to try these lotions with oats, which I hadn't realized at first that I was allergic too.There are also gluten free versions, but oats just in general give me a scarf rash. And so it was really weird and it was like making me more and more irritated. So then I started going backwards and doing just really simple like olive oil on my skin and it was amazing.Lisa:The difference.Jessica:And anti-inflammatory and yeah.Lisa:So tell me the difference between allergy and a simple intolerance.Jessica:It shows up differently in symptoms. Some things are more severe and tolerance is like your body and your system just can't handle it.Lisa:Is that worse than an allergy?Jessica:Yeah, because you're hurting yourself and you might not necessarily be aware. Like, if you continue, let's say you're a celiac and you're eating gluten, that can lead to huge complications where your digestive system just stops functioning on its own. There's all these thresholds. But I find all of those areas, like I go into it in the book but at the same time I find, I don't like all of the little narrow paths that they put with this. Like if a food doesn't work for you, I think it's good to stay away from it and find an alternative.Because people talk about food sensitivities and food intolerance and food allergy and what is the difference? And it's confusing but I think with intolerance is really your body won't tolerate it and you just have all these weird symptoms and you're used to living with them. So you go with it and you don't realize what's on the other side when you...Lisa:So it affects your mental health as well.Jessica:Yeah. Oh definitely. I think so hugely.Lisa:In your book, you lay out in a really nice way the daily symptom tracker also sort of a guide for the elimination diets. So this book is something somebody can actually start writing in right away.Jessica:Right.Lisa:Is that your copyrighted food tracker?Jessica:Yes.Lisa:It's not available yet?Jessica:No.Lisa:To the public. How did you finance publishing book? How are you doing it?Jessica:I took everything I had saved up from my teaching salary, which was challenging, and my Grandma Donna passed away a couple years ago and left me a little bit of money and I was going to use it for a business or an investment on a house and I decided to put it into this book because I just really believe in it. So I've put about $25,000 into getting to-Lisa:Of your own personal money.Jessica:Yeah, of my own money, into it now. And to finish the project, I decided to go onto Kickstarter and so the project is live now and it's live through June 17th at 11:11 PM.Lisa:And what are you trying to raise on Kickstarter?Jessica:$33,000.Lisa:And that'll take you to where you need to...Jessica:And that'll take me to where I need to be and to do it properly, to get the editing done and the printing, to mail out the rewards. Shipping is phenomenal when it comes to Kickstarter, which was a really interesting to learn.Lisa:What do you mean?Jessica:I would say about a third of that amount of money is what it costs to actually send the rewards to the backers. It adds up. And if you can do media mail for books, which is great, but if you add in-Lisa:What are your rewards for backers?Jessica:Currently we have the book. I have a dinner party option, so that's kind of low end, high end, and then in the middle there are gift sets so you can do like an apron gift set. I'm really, really big into aprons. I'm in love with them. I started sewing my own and then I just actually added a new reward, which I'm really excited about, which is a grocery tote but also a cooler. So it's kind of like bring it to the grocery store or to the picnic because I know you're carrying all your own food if you're allergic. And I'm trying to keep it really, really simple because it's really about the book at the root of it.Lisa:And how do people find out about a Kickstarter campaign?Jessica:I have a URL that is forwarding right now straight to the Kickstarter so people can go to hashtag, the word hashtag, and the word allergic together, hashtagallergic.com.Lisa:Not the symbol, the word?Jessica:No the word. Yeah, so hashtag written out, allergic written.com and it'll take you right there. But also if you're on Kickstarter you can just type in the word allergic or allergies and it should come right up.Lisa:And you also have a website?Jessica:Yes.Lisa:What is the link to that?Jessica:The website is allergictoeverything.life and on the website, this has been kind of a new experiment and I'm still playing around with it. At first it was a platform to share what was going on with the Kickstarter, but I've been working on starting a blog and sharing some recipes through there. So I don't have a huge collection, but it's something I'm going to keep growing so people can go on there for food, food tips, and I have all my favorite resources. I have recipes for my food allergy purse.Lisa:Do you ever list restaurants that might accommodate allergies in the Bay Area?Jessica:No, but that's something that I am really interested in doing actually. And I think that we live in such a friendly place for that. A couple of days ago, a woman from Toronto who has, that's kind of her mission in the food allergy world. She reviews places you can eat and she does profiles of people. So she did a profile of me and she really wanted to get into the places that you know you can eat and that are friendly. And I think that that's so important and I think we're really lucky on the West Coast to have such-Lisa:We are, but you made a point earlier that it was a good one. Even your friends, let's say someone decides they're going to have you over and you're allergic to allium, which is onions, garlic and all this stuff.Jessica:Right?Lisa:And they say, "There's nothing, I swear to you, there's nothing in this." And yet they use a canned broth.Jessica:Correct.Lisa:In a soup or a sauce, which is full of allium.Jessica:And probably maltodextrin.Lisa:And it doesn't say it on the label. It says "natural ingredients."Jessica:Right. That's the most unfair.Lisa:And so you can't get mad at people, but there needs to be a raising of awareness and that's something that you've done in this book.Jessica:Yeah. And I think that's my biggest motivation for all of this is... Well, it's really to make people's lives easier, learning how to navigate all these little intricacies, but awareness is so important because people just don't know and it's not their fault. It's just a matter of education and...Lisa:I just noticed there's more and more food allergies and I can't help but think that it's our air, it's our water, it's our soil. I don't know if anyone is looking at the root causes of this.Jessica:Yeah, I don't think many people are. I think there's a lot of people burying the root causes.Lisa:You don't mention it in your book either. But depending on where you come from, what you're exposed to.Jessica:One of the things that I think about a lot with that, which gets me a little crazy if I think about it too much, but is the fact that, so I'm able to eat meat, right? And let's say I want to eat a steak, but they're feeding that cow corn, which I'm allergic to.Lisa:GMO corn probably.Jessica:Yeah. So how does it affect me with the end product? And that's just something that is mind boggling and...Lisa:It is, but out here you can actually seek out a butcher that that gets meat from local people who they know what they're feeding the animals. But that's not true in most places.Jessica:Right, and most of the population doesn't have that luxury. And if they do, maybe they can't afford it. There's a lot of barriers to it, but I think it's a really systemic problem that needs to be looked at from the ground up. But when we keep coming up with these new, what did you say it was going to be, BE, on the package?Lisa:Yes, bio engineering.Jessica:And the natural ingredients.Lisa:It's deflecting.Jessica:It's deflecting. It's like the whole sugar thing in the 70s or whenever that whole epidemic started, but it's really incredible the lengths that companies go through to bury the truth from people and to just keep people uneducated.Lisa:Even sugar, it's not so easy in some places to find something made from natural sugar. It's either going to be genetically modified sugar beets or corn.Jessica:Yeah, and sugar is super inflammatory too, so it kind of all comes out the same in your system. But corn syrup, I really, I just really hate that stuff. I just feel like it's toxic and it's in everything.Lisa:What were your biggest challenges along the way or maybe surprises along the way as well in this whole process of getting this book out?Jessica:Well, I'm in the midst of the challenges right now. It's been really hard to connect with the community that I'm trying to connect with because there's a lot of barriers. So-Lisa:What are they?Jessica:I'm part of a lot of groups online for example with like food allergy communities. But I'm not allowed to post my project because it's seen as fundraising or an endorsement of a fundraising project. And same thing with every single organization that I've reached out to and I'm sending thirties of emails a day trying to get people to help me put this out there.So that's been the greatest challenge and the greatest barrier really. This isn't even about profit, it's just about getting it into the hands of people who need it, the hands of people who are struggling or just foodies who want to cook. Because really the book is... Anybody can use it. It's not, you by no means have to be allergic to appreciated.So connecting with people has been challenging and I feel like I've really had to prove myself in ways that have just been shocking to me. I didn't think I would have to beg food allergy people to see me as an authentic person just trying to put a resource out there.Lisa:Any positive surprises or challenges?Jessica:A lot of positive surprises. I've been just in awe of the support of family and friends and I had an amazing launch day, which was just incredible. But just-Lisa:When was your launch date?Jessica:I launched on May 15th during Food Allergy Awareness Week. So the campaign will be a total of 33 days. It ends on June 17th.Lisa:Let's talk about what you're going to do if you do make it. And if you don't make it.Jessica:To make the goal, I need a 1000 people to put $20 into the project. I think it's really feasible. And if the project succeeds, the plan is then I want the rewards to get out to people and the book itself to get out to people by December. So I will just jump right into the editing phase and illustration and then getting the book printed and shipped out.So I've been working with editors and plotting around that. I think it should take about between four and six months. I've given myself a lot of given myself enough padding, I think to make that happen. I really believe in this book and I'm not really focused on what's going to happen if it doesn't work because it's going to work. So on June 17th, I will know and I'm just kind of trusting that the next thing, yeah, will come and it will happen.Lisa:And so then you're going to be busy touring with this book.Jessica:Then I'm going to be really busy. Yeah, if it hasn't been busy enough, Kickstarter has been an adventure. It's a lot of work.Lisa:Let's say you get the book out and you're onto the next thing. Do you know what that's going to be?Jessica:Well I already have a another book in mind that is going to be like #Allergic to Everything Light because I think this book has a lot of comfort, delicious recipes. And I think that my cooking has shifted over time. So I kind of want to put just my newer, lighter. Yeah, just a little bit healthier. Initially, the things that I missed were breads and things with sugar in it and things like that. But no matter what, I've always been a teacher and I'll always be a teacher. So however I can teach, that's what I'll be doing.I was teaching for about five years, everything from yearbook to coaching robotics actually here at Berkeley. I was with high school most recently. And I think something that I think about in the future is teaching on the college level. I've kind of snaked my way up through all the grades and I found a really sweet spot in high school. But I think there's a really sweet spot in young adulthood when you're studying what you want and learning how you can manipulate the world and leave it a better place.Lisa:Do you feel like you've reached your comfort zone of allergies? You have your allergies under control?Jessica:I think I have my allergies under control. I don't always have temptation under control because it's a tempting world when everybody you live with is eating pizza. It's not always that easy not to eat it. Certain things I noticed trigger me and I'm still looking at them, like sesame for example. I kind of think that sesame oil causes me issues, but then I don't always think so. So I don't know. I think it's kind of an ongoing process.Yeah, and something to revisit too because a lot of people end up removing things and their system kind of gets this little break and then they're able to reincorporate them, which I've tried that. I haven't found that to be successful for myself, but I think it's possible for a lot of people, so yeah, I think it's a lifelong.Lisa:In your research, do you think that the human body will evolve to accept these bio engineered or GMO products ultimately?Jessica:I feel like we're evolving to reject them. If you look at just the ratio of wheat in things and the ratio of corn in things and that with the number of people affected by these things and the rate of the increase of allergens being diagnosed, especially in kids, it's outrageous. I don't think that we're helping ourselves. I think we're hiding a lot of things behind big bureaucratic systems.The way that the book is written is to be able to be used by anybody who's dealing with any of the top eight allergens. And this question has come up a lot by people looking at the project, wondering if their child's allergic to dairy and nuts, will they still be able to eat? And the answer is yes because every recipe is going to be flexible and your allergen will be able to be substituted within that. And I would say only 30% of the book probably contains those two items.So even without the flexibility of the recipes, there's still a ton of resources for everybody, but it is friendly to to all top eight allergens. And part of the reason that I wanted to do that is because I know that nobody's journey is the same and nobody's allergens look exactly the same and mine aren't all the top eight, but the top eight are responsible for 90% of the food allergic reactions. So I wanted to try to include as many people as I could.I think the things that made me fall in love with food, I think the food is all about our memories and about our experiences and little things go a long way and food attaches us to memories. And that's how we make memories with each other. And there's just a real sense of comfort in it, whether it was my grandmother taking the time to slice the grapes for the fruit salad and just shows love.Friendsgiving is how I started celebrating Thanksgiving when I came out here and just bringing people together. And I think that food really connects us with each other and with ourselves. And it's a big reflection on how we're taking care of ourselves and I think it's important and I think this book is important. I hope that people will consider supporting the project regardless of whether or not you have food allergies. Because I can practically guarantee, you know somebody who has food allergies and they deserve this resource.Lisa:Well, thank you, Jessica.Jessica:Thank you.Lisa:You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University. We'll be back in two weeks at this same time. 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Datavest CEO & Founder Rob Nicholas Stone discusses the monetization of private data through his blockchain based application DATAVEST, a cooperative that monetizes user data and pays back individuals in the form of datanotes.Transcript:INTROMethod to the Madness is next.You're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating innovators. Last time on Method to the Madness we talked with Block chain at Berkeley about block chain technology and what that means. Today we're going to be talking with Rob Nicholas Stone, the founder and CEO of DATAVEST, an application that sits on top of this block chain technology.LISA: Thanks for coming in Rob. ROB: Yeah, absolutely!LISA: What is DATAVEST?ROB: DATAVEST is a way for individuals to monetize the value of their personal data. LISA: How is that different from what's going on right now? Rob: Data right now is being monetized. It's being capitalized by some of the largest corporations. And they're able to do that because they have the ability to kind of aggregate all of this data from multiple sources from millions of users. What we're saying is that it's an unfair exchange and the value of your data, the data that you're providing to these companies is greater than the value that is returned to you and it's driving up the largest market capitalizations of the largest kind of Internet platforms.LISA: So it sounds like you're creating a meta transaction in which the intrinsic value of my data is more than just what I'm giving to Facebook or whatever.ROB: Individually we don't have much leverage negotiating a fair price for our data. There's a value premium when that data is aggregated. It's been difficult to find a mechanism for allowing individuals to share that data and benefit from the aggregate value that's generated by a platform like Facebook. One of the challenges we had initially was trying to figure out how do we value data is it a pro-rata share of current revenue that that's generated from that data. Is it the kind of commodity price wanted sold by maybe a data broker? or in the context of Facebook and Instagram and Google and Amazon, they're able to capitalize the value because this data, even if they don't know what the application is going to be in the future they're able to price that into the current value of the company. One way that you could look at it is looking at the market capitalization of say Facebook and dividing by the number of users of Facebook. And that's going to be a much larger number than the current revenue of Facebook divided by the number of users.LISA: I'm curious why you wanted to do this because reading about block chain technology the history of it, originally it was of culturally and socially revolutionary idea. Since that time about 10 years ago, I feel like it's lost a little bit of that sheen but what you're doing is sort of a throwback to that original idea which is that it belongs to the people. ROB: Right. I knew that everybody had this form of capital that was extremely extremely valuable. And I also knew that in order to appropriately monetize this data, individuals had to have ownership over the application of the data. And so the first two months was basically me trying to figure out how to provide individuals with how to give them a vested interest in the applications that are built atop the aggregate data that's provided. The first idea was we would basically issue individual stock in our company and that company would use this data and monetize it and capitalize it and they would have this vested interest not just in the current value of their data but also the future value. Obviously that for millions of people would be extremely difficult to do. It would be almost a logistical nightmare to pull off in. And so that's where cryptocurrency came into the equation through block chain, through smart contracts. There's a way to design a platform and issue this currency that is similar to equity in a sense, in that it provides individuals with a vested interest in the platform in the application. And so that that's kind of how I arrived at the block chain space.LISA: What is the problem DATAVEST is trying to solve?ROB:A lot of the inequality or injustice right now occurs around this asymmetry of information. Whenever a corporation or a company or organization has more information about you than you have about them, it creates an inbalance. The reason why we decided to issue a digital currency in exchange for data is that I see currency as a form of language and it's a means, a tool of communicating and exchanging value. And what's interesting about data information knowledge is when it's exchanged there's no less of it in the hands of the one transacting it. If I explain an idea to you, I still have the idea and now you have it too. There's a greater supply. There was a book called Unjust Deserts written by Gar Alperovitz and he lays out the idea of this technological residual and it's kind of the gains in productivity not attributed to say capital or labor but is a product of technological advance generally speaking, where it's difficult almost impossible to attribute individual credit for this social phenomenon, but what capitalism tells us to do is is ascribe individual credit for the product of a social phenomenon. Similar to language, a piece of data or a word has very little meaning without the alphabet, without the multiple arrangements of those words and concepts and so similar to this our data doesn't have much value alone when it's siloed. This has been the challenge is that that individuals don't have a way to benefit. It's almost as if language has been co-opted or or taken, monopolized by a lot of these companies and corporations. The reason why we created DATAVEST was to create a platform, a cooperative platform, that basically co-ops back this data and information that's been taken from us and allows us to benefit in this common language through this digital currency.LISA:That's revolutionary. It reminds me of Marx and Veblen. Where did you begin to start thinking about these kinds of ideas?ROB: Maybe Veblen, actually. It's funny that you bring that up. He wrote about this idea of absentee ownership when capital is invested by those not vested in the in the company that that capital goes towards. It creates a kind of perverse incentive. If individuals had ownership and they were also the consumers within a company, the incentives are not really to to maximize profit at the expense of higher prices for consumers. I guess another way to put it is if consumers were the owners what would that look like? Right now there's a there's kind of a movement applying the concepts and ideas of cooperatives to Internet platforms. It's called Platform co-operative-ism and it's a guy named Trevor Schultz. He's a professor at the New School in New York and he's written a lot about this. If you look at maybe Uber and what that would look like as a platform co-operative, you'd have the situation where the drivers and the riders are the owners of the ride share company or YouTube platform where the content creators and users benefit from the value created in a business sense by that platform or AirBNB owned by those running out their houses and those using it. It's just, it's an alignment of incentives that I think is more rational. If the economy is unequal for rational reasons that's one thing. But when it's completely irrational and I couldn't ignore it any longer, if if you look back at kind of the progression of capitalism from laissez faire in the 19th century John Maynard Keynes basically kind of saving capitalism in a sense by figuring out a monetary policy that could or fiscal spending that could increase employment. But in finance everyone always talks about inflation, as well, we need a healthy level of inflation. But when you think about it its inflation is really just a decrease in purchasing power and Keynes, his kind of insight was that it's difficult to lower nominal wages. But if you print more money you devalue the currency, you can lower real wages without kind of workers knowing about it. So it almost seemed like a trick. It's like you're tricking labor into thinking that they're getting paid the same amount, that excess profit from real wages going down, you know goes towards the owners of the company. And so the stock market benefits from that. Seeing the irrationality there, this plays into kind of how we've created our currency. It's not like the Federal Reserve where a couple banks have access to the discount window. It's every single individual has direct access to the analog of the Federal Reserve. You have a direct line into creating new money and it goes to you, not to some large institution.LISA: What are some of the challenges that you're facing right now?ROB: I think the principal challenge is explaining a new idea and trying to communicate something really that hasn't been done successfully before.LISA: Why did you choose the co-op structure?ROB: I don't know if you've ever used Apple Itunes. It's basically data as a service or software as a service where you subscribe to a service and pay a fee. We're kind of turning that on its head. The future revenue that could be generated by this data needs to stay in the hands of those who produced it. If you were structuring this as a C corporation where the data was owned by conventional corporate structure. What happens when Amazon or some platform wants to buy all of the data and then what happens to the value of the currency when all of a sudden you know whoever is acquiring the information the data decides to use that monetize that more for their existing shareholders? We've created a co-operative where the data is always owned by the individuals who are producing the data. We own this data.Companies can only subscribe to it and they never own.ID/BREAKIf you're just tuning in you're listening to method to the madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley. I'm your host Lisa Kiefer. Today I'm speaking with the CEO and founder of DATAVEST, Rob Nicholas Stone. As we continue our de-mystification of block chain technology and the token economies.LISA: A member of your board recently told me that you were the most dangerous man in America. What do you think he said that?ROB: So I think the reason why he said that was when I first met with him I laid out a plan for disrupting not only Silicon Valley but also Wall Street and fiat currency and how to go about creating a new non-sovereign alternative to national fiat.LISA: What's your background your history how you came to this idea?ROB: It came about in kind of a strange way. I'd done a lot of work in microfinance in Argentina. I worked at Morgan Stanley working kind of closely with their Institute of Sustainable Investing, so socially responsible investing and it was always about how do we direct capital to where it's most productive. The insight or the 3:00 a.m. epiphany for me was that everybody already has a form of extremely valuable capital. They're just they just don't have the framework to monetize it and receive the full value of that data.LISA: How long is that when that light bulb went off?ROB: That's about eight months ago. LISA: Well people are talking about universal basic income now. And to me this is sort of a workaround to that. I could get money from my data every month instead of trying to figure out a universal basic income through the federal government.ROB: Right. And we framed it sometimes this way. It seems strident to kind of imagine this could actually provide consistent guaranteed level of income to individuals but it really is, it is a private sector mechanism for UBI that requires no subsidies no welfare just receiving kind of the value that you're already creating. Back in 1965 Lewis Kelso, he is kind of the founder the creator of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, and he said that the challenge of our age is figuring out a way that workers or individuals can take ownership in the technology that's essentially replacing them. Thinking currently about that, what's driving the technological advances that we're seeing right now? A lot of it is this networked data and so you could achieve two things at once, you allow individuals to have access to a form of capital and at the same time that capital happens to be the core ingredients, the fuel that's driving the technological advances that we're seeing currently. So it's a way to gain ownership over this technology for anyone essentially with a with a smartphone and internet connection is able to accrue value.LISA: Where do I find out about this?ROB: It will be on a mobile app so you download the app and you're presented with, we're calling them data funds, that it could be a specific sector or a company innovative new technology and you're able to invest your data into that company and receive an asset that's derived from that data. We're calling them data notes. Users will receive this immediately upon the investment of their data.LISA: Give me an example of a company that I would say OK I'm going to open my data to you.ROB: An example that I think really drives this point home is, I don't know if you've ever used Twenty-Three and Me? There's nothing more personal than our genetic information or genetic data and in companies like this are able to aggregate millions of potential volunteers who are or are willing to provide this and sell that off to pharmaceutical companies to create some of the most profitable new drugs or treatments or therapies and the individual is not compensated.LISA: In fact, we have to pay to actually do it.ROB: Right. What we're trying to do is create a way for individuals providing data such as this to drive some of the most innovative kind of medical breakthroughs but also be vested in the value that's created from its application and the application is great. It's just the fact that those who are creating this information, this data, are forgotten about. One example is that hedge funds are basically purchasing your data there. They're going to companies such as Yodaly that are transaction aggregators and they're looking at kind of trends in our spending and they're trading on that information. Hedge funds are really some of the biggest buyers of this type of data. They call it alternative data. Hedge Fund wants access to some alternative data, some transaction data that they're already collecting from us. What we would require is that they subscribe to access this information that's totally anonymized. They don't really care who you are. They just want the data and they want to pick up trends in consumer preferences and what people are buying and they're able to trade on that. So data in that revenue that they pay will be rerouted through smart contracts and this gets back to the value of the block chain to repurchasing the currency on the secondary market and compensating individuals who actually provided that data. This is a form of ownership.LISA: So if I'm a member of this, will I have like a little token bank on my computer and every now and then I see some monetary value?ROB: That's right. You'll have a wallet. LISA: So I don't need a bank for this. ROB: You don't need a bank. The idea getting back to kind of the idea of universal basic income is that we wanted anyone in the world to be able to gain access to this. Anyone with a smartphone and internet connection is able to start accruing this capital that they already have. When you kind of sit back and think about it, they're making billions of dollars based on data that we've provided them with. What we're thinking about is how to use our own information, share it, cooperatively own it, and monetize it kind of directly. The future revenue that we create at DATAVEST through aggregating this information is directly driven back into the value of the currency. As revenue comes in, that revenue is redirected into supporting the value of the currency.LISA: So let's say I have two hundred of your one of your tokens called?ROB: Data notes. LISA: OK. Data notes. Where can I spend those?ROB: Initially you're able to convert those into U.S. dollars. They're completely liquid. So you're able to exchange them for other digital currencies or you're able to just cash them out and we're using Ethereum. And it's done through Etherium. LISA: You're letting Etherium do your mining?ROB: Right. LISA: So you don't have to worry about massive computers. ROB: Right. LISA: Why did you choose Etherium?ROB: We chose Etherium, a technology that allows us to design a platform that works for us, because of the ability to design smart contracts that achieve the purpose of our intention.LISA: What is a smart contract? What does that mean?ROB: The reason why DATAVEST is using smart contracts is a lot of crypto currencies right now, they haven't figured out a way to have the off chain organization or company benefit the currency directly. So what we've done is we've created a protocol or smart contract that as DATAVEST as a platform generates revenue, we have that revenue going directly into supporting the value of the currency and that's done through our currency repurchase protocol. Which, it's basically like a stock buyback by a company where the company wants to return value directly to shareholders by buying stock on the market and taking it back as treasury stock. You increase demand, you reduce supply, and that benefits our end users and they have a vested kind of interest in almost a form of ownership in the platform. You can put anything, you could almost put anything in into it, any kind of contract. It triggers an event based on something happening off chain. So as revenue comes in, that triggers the repurchase of currency without any intermediary. So it's rules-based governance of monetary policy essentially. What we've done by creating kind of a cooperative structure with smart contracts is that there's kind of two extremes right now. You have the kind of purist crypto currency folks that they don't want anything off chain. They don't want to leave any kind of room for active governance. And then you have on the other side permission block chain, which basically means you know it's a corporation is calling all the shots and determining everything. We tried to find a middle ground where there's a democratic processes in place through the co-operative and there is a level of governance that can kind of manage the supply of this currency in a rational way.LISA: Where does the U.S. government come in or any government come into play here? If I'm a user and I start getting money from my data, my private data, say I'm starting to accumulate some tokens. Is that money taxed?ROB: It should be. It should absolutely be taxed. And the question, the outstanding question still for us, since this is really new territory, is how is it going to be treated? If you're being compensated for your investment of data, is that being treated as income? Or is that data considered an asset that you're exchanging for an equivalent amount of value? My opinion is that it should be considered an asset, a form of capital, and that capital exchange for data notes represents an equivalent exchange that you would be…your cost basis would be the market value of data notes at that time.LISA: Right. And so if they go up them I'm taxed on the gain. ROB; That's right. LISA: When do you expect to go live with DATAVEST as an application?ROB: Right now we're planning within the next six to eight months a private beta or a closed beta to recruit the pioneer users of this application. We're planning our full launch to be shortly after that ,hopefully within nine to 12 months we'll have this, you'll be able to start making money from your data.LISA: An idea like this seems very disruptive to say Facebook. Why do you think of Facebook or Google or one of the other overlords wouldn't enter into this marketplace? What are their constraints doing something like this or do they have constraints?ROB: They do and I get this question a lot. It's well OK. You're doing this you're a small startup. You have these billion dollar platforms that you're potentially disrupting. What prevents them from doing the same thing. And their challenge is that they were started in a way that the incentives between their users and the shareholders of those companies aren't aligned. And so the more that a shareholder makes, the less money there is available to users to monetize. So if one of these platforms, all of a sudden Zuckerberg decided to kind of monetize data for his users rather than shareholders, what would happen is, well, he'd get sued I think.LISA: By the shareholders?ROB: Right. They've created a zero sum game where –a situation where one wins at the other's expense. And so we design DATAVEST to align the incentives between those who are funding our startup our platform that we're building and the users that are going to be creating the preponderance of value of the platform. When I bring up the idea of capitalized value of data, just meaning that this data is being priced based on its its future revenue that it potentially could generate, the mechanism that DATAVEST is using is, we're issuing a form of digital currency directly for the investment of data. Data is an asset. It's a strange asset but it's an investable asset. When you invest it, you want to be entitled to kind of the future revenue generating potential that it creates. So we're not tying it to how much capital you already have, how wealthy you are. Anyone can gain access to this and actually the only way to gain access to this is through providing this asset that doesn't cost you any money. It's just utilizing and benefiting you for the capital that you already have.LISA: So do you know who your target beta is going to be? Is it going to be a city? Is it going to be a certain demographic of people? Do you know that yet? ROB: Yes. So we're based out of Pasadena, California. And so we're actually working at my house in Altadena. We converted are barn into an office and we kind of have an urban ranch and horses and donkeys and chickens and it's kind of a fun corporate headquarters but we’ll probaby have to move soon. But you know it's been good while it lasted but so we're thinking Pasadena just maybe an interesting place. There was research done that Pasadena will be kind of representative of the demographics within the U.S. as a whole and I think it was like 15 to 20 years. So we think it's a would be a good kind of case study or a good place to do this. LISA: And you have a child, a two year old son?ROB: Yep yep turns two March 26.LISA: Well I have to ask you..you're pretty deep into this new technology, block chain and the token economies. Do you have any particular fears for your child as we move forward or are you optimistic?ROB: I guess if you kind of imagine all potential futures right now where we are, it's difficult. I don't wanna be negative but it's difficult to see one that is going to make sense or I'm going to be happy with for him and that's part of why I'm doing this is, you have four, really four companies that are as Jaron Lanier calls it the siren servers that are collecting all this information on all of us. And you know one worry and it's not it's not an irrational concern is that what happens when one of these companies develops a technology through using this data our data, big data is our data, and using that to develop A.I. They're using machine learning and when they get to a point where they're so far ahead of everyone else it's going to be very difficult to catch up. So I guess my concern is that they do kind of have a breakthrough in this area. It's going to be tough to kind of catch up with that technology for anyone else. And that's going to only be benefiting the same or tiny kind of small number of people.LISA: So it sounds like your approach at DATAVEST is very democratic and an opportunity to bridge the you know, we talk about the 1 percent. It sounds like that big divide could possibly be bridged if everyone gets compensated for their private data.ROB: That's exactly right. And and we get rid of this asymmetric information that’s of companies whether it's financial institutions or these Internet platforms that are kind of using our information against us that we think we have to take ownership over it and be entitled to kind of the value that it creates and have that be shared.LISA: What's coming up for DATAVEST in the future?ROB: If we imagine that enough of us sign up and decide to take ownership back of this information, this data, there's an opportunity that once you get to a critical mass, we're hoping we can sign up a million users within the first year, that at some point you don't want to be selling or brokering this data to third parties who are then benefiting making all the money essentially. So asset management firms, hedge funds, they’re they're big buyers of this type of data, that would be transaction data, geo-location data.They're kind of buying this up wherever they can get it. And it would make too much sense not to take that in-house. So we've come up with the idea, this is kind of our Second Stage part of this, that we could create a cooperatively owned hedge fund. And the interesting thing about a hedge fund is most people can never invest in one. But the ironic part I guess is that everyone can actually own a hedge fund company. And so there's an opportunity that we can cooperatively own this investment firm that is directly trading based on our information and we're directly benefiting from it. We would have all of that revenue driven back into the hands of the users. And it's almost the portfolio managers dream come true to have direct access and intel from individuals all across the world be able to look at the trends, of the change in demand, consumer purchases, even pose questions. And the interesting thing from an investment application is that the data value of some of the poorest people in the world is actually greater than the data value of individuals in the U.S. And so if we're only monetizing this data based on this advertising model, that would only benefit wealthier individuals. But what this does is anywhere there's anywhere there's asymmetric information a profit can be made and that profit, and there's less information and a lot of these frontier and emerging markets that we have the opportunity that any intel or any information they provide on prices that they're facing is essentially tradable information, that can that can return value to those individuals and put them on the map and give them a form of capital that they've never had.LISA: I know there's going to be a lot of interest in this. So is there a way that listeners can reach you or DATAVEST? Is there a website? ROB: Absolutely! Our website is DATAVEST.org and my email is Rob at DATAVEST dot org. There is a place where you can put your e-mail to kind of sign up to be one of the first users of this.LISA: Wow! thank you for being on Method to the Madness and once you launch, I'd love to have you back on. ROB: You'll be investing your data soon.LISA: I will be investing my data. Thank you.ROB: Thank you.OUTRO:You've been listening to Method to the
Carl: Hello everyone, Carl Quested here, thanks for tuning in for another episode of The Real Agent Podcast. This week’s episode I’m joined by Lisa B., Lisa has been around the real estate industry for let’s just say many years - and has a lot of experience - from being an agent through to a principal, and now she’s a coach and mentor. Her current business is The Real Estate Hotline where she provides ad hoc and I guess emergency advice and assistance for Agents, Principals and everyone involved in the real estate industry. A really great episode here. I love Lisa’s approach to business and life so I hope you get as much out this episode as I have. As always please leave us some feedback. And enjoy the episode. Carl: Lisa thanks for joining us. Lisa: Yay! Hi! Thanks Carl, thanks for having me. Carl: That’s okay. Now we were chatting a bit before the start. So we’ve got to try and pick up on some of the gold we talked about, because there was some fantastic, fantastic information shared in there. Lisa: Sure. Carl: So Lisa tell me when did your real estate journey begin? Lisa: Oh God. Well I’m 49 now Carl, so it’s a long long time ago, when I was in my early 20’s. So when I started, I did the licensing course full time for one year – that was before I went into real estate. That was when I said, I’m burning all my bridges, I’m going into real estate and I have to make it work. This is going to happen! I door knocked lots of real estate offices to try to get a job and I ended up working for an office where I said look “Just pay me part time and I’ll work full time” just so I could prove myself. And I ended up doing that. On the first day in the office I sold a house and it started from there.. Then I went full time. That’s how I started in a real estate office, and then after about 18 months the guy who owned the business, his wife passed away suddenly, she had a brain aneurism. Very sad.. Carl: Oh wow. Lisa: And because she passed away, he came in and asked me did I want to buy the office. And I’d only been in real estate 18 months. I didn’t really know what I was doing as far as owning an office - I was only in my early 20’s, - 23 or 24, and I was like…. ‘Yeah sure, why not, Yeah, what could go wrong?’. And I bought the business and that’s where I started my journey. I just love it. Once I think real estate is in your blood it’s very hard to do anything else. It is just something, that I’m so passionate about, I absolutely love it. Carl: And so at the age of 23, 24, taking over a real estate business, I mean, it’s very different I think today because obviously taking over a real estate business can literally just be taking over database right? You can literally pick up a computer and you can run it from home. I know there are different models and stuff like that. But back then, you had to have an office, right? You had to have a retail presence, you had to have windows displays and everything like that, so it must have been a pretty big undertaking. Lisa: Oh it was. And yes the things that can go wrong, went wrong. We had a property manager who was taking money. I’d had all the books checked. I’d gone through everything with the solicitor. And one day the property manager had a day off and then she had the next day off… and then it was just all these phone calls about money going missing and all that sort of thing. And I just didn’t know what to do. And I called a real estate agent that was close by, I rang him and said ‘ What do I do?’ Oh God, he helped me out so much. Gerard Payne. Oh my God he helped me out so much. And I was like ‘What the hell have I done?’. But it was scary back then. You had the physical office that you had to pay rent, had to do all these things. The over heads were so big, newspaper advertising and it was hard - but it was easy. Carl: Yes. Lisa: Back then everybody did the same thing, It was like you had newspaper advertising, your for sale signs, letter box drops, door knocks - that was really it. That was the focus of your business. So it was hard work getting out there, but it was easy because everybody was doing the same thing and there were no distractions. Where as now, I kind of feel sorry for the agents that are starting out, because there are so many shiny objects to chase. Social media, and this and that, and this and that. Door knocking. What the hell do I do first? It is a lot more complicated and I think a lot of the agents have to get back to the basics. To start with the basics, of door knocking, building your database, getting your brand known and all those sort of things. Just start with that and don’t chase every shiny object that comes along. Carl: I think, Yeah. It is very interesting, isn’t it? Because whilst the game has changed, the rules have essentially stayed the same right? Because people buy from people. So the ways in which you make those connections might be more intricate, because now you’ve got social media, you’ve got video marketing, but if you can get in front of people, like door knocking….. if you can get in touch with people over the phone……. Lisa: Yes. Carl: You are making that connection --- so as long as that connection is being made. Lisa: Yes. Carl: Use the ones that you’re most familiar with, use the ones that work for you that kind of get traction straight away. Lisa: Yes. That’s right, we now live in a world where people can like, know and trust you even before they meet you - which is crazy. People can look at you online and look at your website or follow you on Facebook and go ‘hey you know what - they follow South Sydney, you know the best football team’ that sort of thing. They can like you for who you follow or they like you because they relate to you in some way, and it can make life a lot easier because of that as well, but I think if you’re new in real estate and you don’t have a database, you haven’t got warm calls to make - you’ve got to start with the cold calls. Carl: Yes definitely. And I think you’re absolutely right. We still see so many agents getting their profile picture with their arms folded across their chest and yet their profile talks about honesty, integrity and trust. They’re all the same things that every other agent is talking about. When what someone is looking for is exactly what you say, you know, what footy teams they follow? What charitable organisations do they support? What are they about as a person, because you know in today’s society that’s what we’re looking for, we’re looking for that sort of, I guess a matching personality that says…… Lisa: The commonality. Carl: Yes. This is someone that I gel with, yes, they’re good at their job but I also like them as a person. And that is very different to how I think, maybe things in the past have been. Lisa: I know your personality Carl! You know what I mean? It’s like, you get to know someone’s personality from being on Facebook, you get to know their sense of humour and all that sort of thing. And you think.. I really like this person and that’s what’s happening out there now. Which I didn’t have that when I started in real estate, so in lots of ways.... it’s become easier as long as you focus on the right things. Building your profile, your online profile, your brand and doing some video marketing and building up your online resume… and that’s what I think a lot of people think… they think they don’t need to focus that much time on it.. It’s like if you don’t get on page one of Google, well you know who is? Realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, openagent.com.au, whichagent.com.au All of those are on page one, and if you’re not, they are intercepting your client, I call them the interceptors now. They’re intercepting your clients before they get to you. Because a person goes to sell a house or buy a house, and they will type in houses for sale in a suburb and guess who comes up? All those interceptors, they’re taking away real estate agents potential clients - so agents need to be on page one of Google. You need to work on your online profile so that they’re not intercepting your clients. Carl: Yeah totally. I think, you know those websites that you mentioned, I mean real estate agents are the middlemen in the process of selling property, where now what’s happening is REA and those other groups are becoming middle men in the process of an agent meeting a client. Lisa: Yes. Carl: You know. It’s adding more friction to a process that should have less friction in it. It’s interesting to see how the web space is changing I think and moulding. It’s good to see more and more agents becoming aware of how to use the tools but I think there’s still quite a long way to go. Lisa: Yes, there’s still a long way to go. I mean I started with video marketing back in, Oh God, 7 or 8 years ago, it was new back then. It was… nobody did it. So it’s like it’s starting to become a lot more of the norm but…... it’s something…... video marketing changes your life, like it really does. When you do it correctly, it’s something that people can really feel that commonality with you straight away. You don’t even have to be in front of the camera, and it might just be video testimonials as well. So there are so many, so many tools there, that people can use, that can really just help them so much, in so many ways. Whether it’s to get them on to page one of Google or building their brand and building their profile and getting that ‘like, know and trust’ factor from people. Carl: So in terms of your business right now, so you’ve evolved from being the agent, being principal and now you are sort of a more coaching and mentoring capacity. Lisa: Yes. Carl: So talk to us about Real Estate Hotline and what that does for agents? Lisa: Yes, sure. I mean I’ve owned lots of different offices. I’ve owned an independent under my own name, I’ve owned franchises and I’ve owned my own brand name. Over my long time in real estate. I’ve done lots of different things. So I’ve got a lots of different perspectives. I was a Jenman Approved Office, don’t hold that against me. Lol So I’ve done a lot of things. When I get into something like real estate, I want to know all facets of it. I’ve done auctions, I’ve done open houses, I’ve done vendor paid advertising, I’ve done the exact opposite of all of that. I’ve done all sort of different things, so I can get perspectives. And so that’s what I can offer people with The Real Estate Hotline,.... years and years of perspective. Different things that people ring up about on the hotline….. And some people prefer to email, Facebook messenger or they call…. Whatever they like.. so it’s not just strictly calls. You know some of my clients are principals that just feel alone. They just need somebody to talk to, their spouse says not to talk about work when they’re at home,. They can’t talk about things to staff members - ( some of that is about confidentiality within their office, and some because they don’t want to feel they don’t know what they are talking about as well.) Carl: Of course. Lisa: It’s kind of a lifeline for real estate, a helpline, whatever. A hotline that you can talk about anything, so people will talk about staff problems, talk about the competition with different things that the competition are doing. Or whether it’s just getting a sale or listing together (I don’t mean ‘JUST’ getting a listing or sale together - that’s everything in a real estate business) but whether it’s holding hands through a situation. Some I have had say.. ‘I can’t do this anymore, I just can’t do real estate anymore!’ It’s like wait, stop. Take a breath kind of thing. I cheer them on when they get results. Cheer them on from the sidelines. We might look at ads and copy, newsletters. Or it might be just grammar checks or things like that. With my clients I follow them on social media and it might just be that I see they spelt something wrong. So I would quickly message them and say.. change this or change that, just to make sure their brands are protected as well. It might be about planning meetings, It might be just how to be happy in real estate, about the balance. I’ve done a lot of Tony Robbins in my life as well since 1994. I’ve done everyone of his programs, I don’t know how many times, a gazillion times. And I have really live by his philosophies. And I’m an Accredited Life Coach, and an Accredited NLP Master Practitioner, so I’ve been doing coaching a long time - since 2003. And it’s all the same stuff that I use on myself. At date with destiny, with Tony Robbins, he gets you do something which is called your primary question. So it’s a question that you ask yourself everyday and before you make decisions. You ask this primary question, and sometimes they are really destructive questions. It might be ‘Is that my fault?’ or things like that - so it’s all things that I go through with my coaching clients as well. To sort of know how your mind works, and why you’re thinking the way you’re thinking. So in my diary, I‘ve got my primary question that I want to ask myself at the front of my diary. I’ve got my values and my rules. So what’s important to me? What’s my values, to make sure that I don’t drift off. That I’m congruent with who I am and what I want to do. And my identity because sometimes your identity can become a bit jaded with certain things in life. If I’m a top salesperson and then I have a few bad months, then I don’t feel like I’m the top sales person anymore. So all these different tools and techniques - I absolutely live by and if ever I start to feel off - I know exactly where I need to go. It’s like being a mechanic and knowing exactly which screw to turn, or whatever… you know what I mean? That’s what the hotline does as well, people are going through different things and I can kind of tune in and see, see what’s really going on. As well as just as a practical real estate advice. So I just love it Carl, It’s something that... everyday it’s so different. It’s different but the same as I said to you - people will say things like ‘Oh this and this and this just happened’ and in my head I think.. ‘Yeah that happened to me 25 years ago’. Carl: (laughing). Lisa: There’s nothing really knew that I see, it’s all the same but it’s new to them. It’s just understanding where people are coming from. And I guess because of my long career in real estate, I can really understand how people feel too. Like discount agents, things like that…. you know, they’ve been around since the day dot.. It is just about getting better. It’s making sure that you’re prepared, it’s just doing all the right things. Yeah, everything that you can to win that listing. Carl: I think it’s such a valuable service because people underestimate I think, how lonely a real estate role can be, because….. there’s the Facebook persona I like to call it, where you know, you can only really post, I mean….. it’s the same with the kids, anyone who’s got kids, very rarely do you post a picture of your kid screaming. Lisa: (laughing). Carl: Right? You post the one where they’re all smiling and happy. You know, sitting down looking angelic. Lisa: True. Carl: But the reality is very different to that. And I think real estate is pretty much the same. I saw a guy a few weeks back, he posted in one of the real estate groups that he was having a rough time, wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue his career in real estate. Lisa: Yes. Carl: And he got flogged for it. You know, for sort of for being open and trying to share that. Lisa: (hmmm) Carl: Yeah, and you know it was a case of everyone sort of came back, and sort of you know said you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to fix that. And you know, you’re not trying hard enough and all this kind of stuff. Lisa: Wow. If that’s same guy, I actually gave him my online course. I’ve got an online course that real estate agents buy, it’s a 10 week online course. If that’s the same guy I ended up giving him my course. I private messaged him and gave him the course. I just felt sorry for him. I understood exactly the way he felt and you’re right, people don’t understand! People go.., ‘oh you do this, do that, do this’. Yes, it’s sad when you are trying to reach out and you’re getting slammed for it. Carl: Yeah and it’s exactly that, that you know the isolating feeling of, if you’re not posting a new listing everyday and you’re not posting pictures of form 6’s, you’re not posting happy update videos all the time like other real estate agents. You start to sort of feel more and more isolated because you’re going, I’ve only got 2 new listing this month or I’ve got that property that’s been hanging around for ages, and everyone else seems to be selling them in 4 days. Lisa: Yes. Carl: You know. I think the need for an outlet, sort of an impartial person is so important - because like you say, you can’t talk to your staff necessarily and say, you know. ‘I’m feeling really low right now’, and you don’t want to take that home and burden your partner with it. You want to be able to chat with somebody independently and I guess that’s exactly what a coach or mentor is there to do - to listen and provide constructive direction to help you to course correct. Lisa: Exactly. And it’s not everybody wants to be top producer. Some people just want to make a living. Some people really just want that balance, they just want to be able to sell 3 or 4 homes a month and have time off with their kids.. and that’s really important to them. So it’s working through to get that balance, it might be you know, Tony Robbins has got a life wheel - the life wheel - it helps you to work out where you are spending most of your time and just improving a little bit, improving on 1 or 2 areas.. Only improving 5% everyday on certain things that you need to do - but it is lonely being a business owner - it is lonely and you can’t say to your friends or to your staff ‘oh God, I made no money this month’ or whatever. Whereas with me they can say ‘I really, need to make some money and I need to do this, I need to get some listings and some sales. Okay let’s focus, what are we going to do first, where are you now exactly’. So it is, it’s a lonely thing being a business owner, it’s a lonely time. And being in sales, I know when I started in real estate I used to ring a guy Win Abel his name was, he worked at Bevans in Wollongong and I’d ring him and say I’ve got a buyer on a house, what do I now? (this was when I first started) He’d say… ‘Oh okay, well get them to make an offer or do this.. Or do that. I had no clue. Carl: Yes. Lisa: When I first started, my first week in real estate, I thought what do I do? Because.... you don’t want to feel silly either asking your principal or asking someone else, .. or if you are a thousand dollars apart or something on a deal. What else can you do to get this sale together? If you feel that you’ve tried everything…. well maybe you haven’t tried everything. Maybe there’s a few other things that we can do. So yes, I just like being there for people. It’s what I love to do. Help people and as I’ve said - I’ve got a lot of different perspectives and I’ve written books etc. So if people want to write a book or people want to set up podcast, we do that or anything that help build a profile. We might look at their online profile. Most times people say.. ‘I just don’t know what to do now’. So okay I do a report on their online profile. And say okay well…. this is what you’ve got to do and you’ve got to include this and take that photo away and just help them with their branding as well. Because a lot of agents are great salespeople, they’re great belly to belly - but as far as working on their business, they are not good. They don’t want to do it either.. it’s like ‘oh I don’t want to do it, I just want somebody else to do that’. So it’s just helping them to be able to work not only in their business, as well as on their business. Carl: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s very hard as well because I think a lot of agents probably look at the coaching industry and I sort of use that term loosely.. The coach, the wider coaching industry and you know they’ve got people wanting to charge you know $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month for their you know, for their coaching, one on one coaching and things like that and I think it sort of naturally turns them off. I don’t know if you’re happy to talk about the pricing you charge on the podcast but…. Lisa: Yes sure. My coaching is just $99/week, $400/month and that’s access whenever they need it. A lot of it is just a 5 minute phone call or a 5 minute email or something like that. For $100 a week, you’re getting my experience, my knowledge and accountability too. Some people use the hotline for accountability. So it’s sending in your results once a month to go, this is what I’m committed to doing and this is what I’ve actually done. Carl: Yes. Lisa: It’s like when you’re sending it to somebody, it’s like ‘Oh God! I’ve got to do this’. You know what I mean? Carl: Yes. Lisa: A girlfriend and I are going to lose 4 kilos in the next month or so right? So we’re sending photos of our scales every morning. Just accountability. Carl: Yes. Lisa: To send it to somebody else, I’m thinking. Grrrrr it’s the same as it was yesterday. I better do something. And that’s the same with the accountability of the sales person to say…. if they have only door knocked 5 houses and made no phone calls, they’ve done no flyers, they’ve done absolutely nothing for the week…. then it’s not surprising that they’ve got no listings and no sales. And so you’ve got to do the actions - so it’s really looking at the accountability of the actions first and to be able to get a numbers…. so the accountability is a big thing as well. Carl: And so Lisa in terms of who you work best with. Like, do you sort of find, is there a sort of a type of agent that you are able to assist the best in terms of where they are in their career or income wise or anything like that. Lisa: No. Just people that are open to it. Some people are just so much in their own world, they’re not open to coaching so people that just want to learn. Carl: Yes. Lisa: I mean I’ve got people who have just started out in sales. I’ve got people that are principals. I’ve got people that are making really good incomes and selling a lot. And I’ve people that are just wanting to get their results up - so it’s so different, but it’s got to be people whereby we gel together well too. There’s some people that obviously wouldn’t suit me. And I wouldn’t suit them. As long as people are open to learning and open to discussion - because I’m not here to say ‘Oh I think you should do this, I think you should do that, or you’ve got to do this’. It’s talking through what they are comfortable with. Some people are not comfortable phone prospecting, and some people hate it. So then, let’s find a way to get somebody else do it - like your services Carl or whatever. Or it might be they’ve got to build a database a different way. It’s working out what those people, what their strengths are – what they like to do - if they don’t like it they’re not going to do it. Carl: I think that’s really key isn’t it.. there is certainly a lot of practitioners and coaches and mentors out there. Which, they really sort of do push one specific angle and say this is how you have to do it. And I think the problem with that is, it’s kind of like trying to make everyone the same. Like you say, work in different ways. We have clients that hate doing telemarketing like you said so they use us to do it. We have others that say ‘You know what? Telemarketing – I’m not doing it full stop’. And they find other ways to generate business, we have people that you know that are purely online. They don’t do any print media. They don’t do any of that kind of stuff. Just purely online so it’s refreshing I think that you don’t come in and say this is the way that you have to do it. You’re more to sort of guide them on their chosen path. Lisa: Yes, I mean. People, if they don’t believe in it, then they’re not going do it. I always like to say.. you know how some people say that trainers and coaches just train and coach because they can’t do. And it’s like, I’ve done so much in my career and I’m still doing it. So I kind of like it when people ask me or say that statement to me.. because from having so many different perspectives and all that sort of thing… I remember the first time I went out door knocking – I was so scared, I was so scared. And I was like, you know what - I’m just going to do one, if I’m still alive - I can say that I’ve done it, so I did one. Then the next day I did two, then the next day I did three. And I got to actually like it. It’s just really kind of getting people to just…. sometimes they have to get out of their comfort zone and have to do things that they hate to do- things that they don’t like to do, but it’s kind of working with the people on what they are prepared to do. Carl: Goes back to what you said, what was it you said, the principle question? Lisa: The primary question. Carl: The primary question. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Okay. Carl: Understanding, that yes, you’ve got to do this. It’s not very comfortable but if it aligns with your primary question, or what your ultimate why is, then obviously it’s going to help you get the result you need to achieve. Lisa: That’s right. It’s your purpose, your outcomes and all those sort of things. Why you’re doing this. I just love real estate Carl. It’s just such an amazing profession. And it’s something that the sky’s the limit on income. The flexibility, the things that you learn. Growth. It is quite addictive. It’s kind of you can fill all of your needs and I guess I just like to help people through those tough times as well. Whether it’s just holding their hand or cheering them on. That’s my role now and I just love it. Carl: So let’s dig a bit deeper if we can, let’s say we’ve got somebody listening to the podcast right now - who is like that person I mentioned on Facebook - they are feeling isolated and a bit broken and considering throwing in the towel. What would be some of the initial steps - that you’ll get them to review - either about themselves or their career? That you know, do from this podcast and actually maybe take stock, what would be the first step you’d get them to evaluate? Lisa: Well they’ve got to look at whether they like where they are working. That can be a big thing as well, people that are working in offices that hate the environment. Say... they don’t like their principal. So…… Are they happy where they are? That’s a big thing and I think when you’re looking at joining a real estate office it’s got to be a fit. There’s got to be a team fit with the principal in the office and I guess the way they do things as well. If you don’t believe in a certain way of operating you know, make sure your environments right first. I think that’s a huge thing. Getting your own mind right, something that I always suggest is certain rituals in the morning. So it might be get up at the certain time and you go on the treadmill, or you go for a run or you go for a walk, you listen to good things. You listen to Tony Robbins or you listen to any of the sales trainers or Wayne Dyer or somebody like that - whatever your thing is to listen to, have the good stuff going in. There’s too many horrible things in the news and we hear all these horrible things, get your mind right early in the morning. Write out your goals. I had my goals on my phone for a while and it’s just not the same as writing them down - goals - typing it in rather than writing it in your journal you just don’t get the same feeling. When you write them down, there’s just something about it, it just makes different pathways with your brain and your hand doing it. That you actually feel it and you get excited and I don’t feel you get excited writing it down to an app. I have an app which I still use sometimes it’s called “wonderlist”. I still make lists on there, but it’s not the same emotion that I get from actually writing down my goals and when I started in Real Estate I used to write down every day - I make so much money in Real Estate. I bring in $30000/month from real estate That was just after I started in Real Estate, (1994 – when our average selling fee was $5000). It was something that I would write out 50 times every single day - just to get that embedded in my brain. That you start to believe it - you can do it. Because you’ve got to have the belief in yourself. If you don’t believe that your going do it, if you’ve got money blocks or you’ve got something like that - you need to work on it. And that’s something writing things out or affirmations and listening to good things, you know…. Listening to Tony Robbins or whoever as I’ve said you choose…., that’s a big thing. And I think the next thing is to have a farm area that you’re going to make your home. Think everybody’s going to know me in this area. Get one listing and then everyone around you knows you from that one listing. You’ll do ‘just listed’ everywhere, doorknocking, and open house everywhere and then a ‘just sold’ everywhere. And then you list another one and then up the road, and it’s like all around there. So you’re just all over your farm area - that people can’t help but know you. And have that goal that I’m going to take over this area. This is my patch, and nobody’s getting in here. And get upset when another agent lists one in there. Get angry because that should have been yours. Carl: Yes. Lisa: And I mean, it’s okay to get angry with yourself. Just don’t do it all the time. Learn from it. That’s the thing I think, really just make sure where you’re working, that you’re happy. Get your mind right in the morning. And make sure that you know your outcomes and your goals and that sort of thing. And then get out there, have your area and do it. Carl: And I think a few fall for that trap – the old trap of thinking that you’ve got a bad farm area. So you see a lot of agents do this. They work an area for the best part of three weeks and go, it’s just a terrible farm area and try move on to next one and the next one. They don’t build up any consistency. A big part of being a real estate agent is showing your consistency. Again, there’s so many different ways of getting listings. But you look at someone like Chris Gilmore who letterbox drops 50 weeks every year, to every homeowner - whether they want to see his flyers or not, that’s consistency, you know. Lisa: Yes. Carl: You know what to expect from Chris. 50 weeks every year, you’re going to get a flyer in your letterbox, you start to appreciate that consistency and if Chris was one that was like ‘I don’t like this suburb anymore, I’m going to try a different suburb’, and kept on moving around. People wouldn’t list with him because he wouldn’t have the consistency. Lisa: No. They’ve got to know you. They’ve got to hear from you and it’s a like a letterbox drop, a phone call, and a door knock and a whatever. And also I’ve got to say with the farm area, make sure that there are enough sales in there that turn over, that it’s not like a small patch that you pick and there’s one house a year. (Laughing). Carl: Yes. Lisa: So, it’s got to be enough properties with enough sales. And you know, people say it’s different in my area and really it’s not. Some areas are different in rural or something like that. Where it’s a bit harder to door knock because it’s an acre in between properties or something. You know, that is different. But your normal residential areas are pretty much the same. These people are living in those houses are either landlords or they are potential sellers. And I think too, one thing that I always focused on, with everything that was going on, with other offices making listings and sales outside of my office. It was like I only have to win the person that I’m with now. I’ve got a listing presentation today - that’s all I need to focus on. So I need to win that person. I would make a listing appointment for tomorrow - I only need to win that person. You get one a day or you get one every couple of days, you’re laughing and try for one result a day, Whether it’s a listing, a sale or a house that’s too dear that needs a price adjustment. Get the price adjustment . Be honest with the sellers, that if they need to….they’ve got to be told, don’t step around the hard conversation. Carl: Yes. Lisa: You know, aim for result a day. It’s loving the one that you’re with and conquering the one that you’re with. Conquering the one you’re with as in win them over. Carl: Not sort of focusing on the next, 3-6 months or whatever, you know. Give that person. I mean, we always talk about presence, about being present for that meeting, it’s about being switched on, and listening to that person and understanding what their goals are for the property. Not focusing on what you know is going to be happening pre the listing meeting, because I think a lot of people, start to spend it before they have made it. Lisa: Yes. Carl: A lot of them start thinking they have won the business before they have even signed it up. They’re already thinking about what they’re going to do with income before they have won the listing. Lisa: Yes. For sure, actually there’s a lady Lois Buckett, she owns a real estate office at Lennox Head. And I did an interview with her the other day. And she said that vendors can smell commission breath a mile away. Carl: (Laughing). Lisa: Right? And I thought what a great line. I haven’t heard that before. But, you know, if you’re going to listing presentations and you’re not winning them. Check in on your energy because if you’re coming across as desperate, you’re not going to get the listing. You’ve got to actually be the opposite. If you go in there desperate, you want that sale, you want that listing. They’re going to smell it a mile away. They smell desperation a mile away. You’ve got to act the opposite. That you’re there. You’re present. You want their business BUT… You don’t need it, BUT.. you want it, you know what I mean. And that’s the difference between a lot of people I think really, winning the listing or repelling. Carl: Energy is very important. I think you know, I can’t recall if it’s Tony Robbins or Tim Ferriss that said, ‘If you can’t spare 15 minutes for meditation, then really you need at least 3 hours’. Lisa: Yes. Exactly. Carl: I think it’s so true, that salespeople will go into those listing presentation, they’re frazzled. They’re rushed. Maybe they’re running late, they’re thinking what they are going to do next. And you’re absolutely right - the person can sense that, they are not their priority number one in that time frame. Lisa: No, or the boss is saying, you better list three by the end of the month or you haven’t got your job anymore. That’s the other thing. Carl: Yes. And the pressure is too much. Lisa: Yes. The pressure of results and that’s when you’ve got to come back and go, I just need to not have that commission breath, that desperation – and it’s really going in with helping the person. You’re there to help them sell and these are the things that you can do.... To get them sold for the best price with the least amount of time. Which is what the sellers ultimately want. Carl: Well, Lisa I really appreciate your time in coming on the show. I think, what you’re offering as I said offline, is a fantastic service and I think at the price point where if a lot of people are too scared to employ a coach or get someone on their side. Every person so far that I’ve interviewed, that has been successful also said the same thing. To get a coach, have a mentor. To have somebody, to have a sounding board. The fact that they can have somebody with your depth of experience for you know. much much less than it would be for a ‘normal’ coach. I think it is a fantastic service to offer. Lisa: Yes, exactly. I wish I would have had it when I started in real estate. I really do. Just everything, from sales, the procedure to everything. So yes. Carl: Where can we find out more, do you do a discovery call that people who want to sign up can have.. or what’s the process? Lisa: No, not normally.. They just go to my website. www.TheRealEstateHotline.com.au and then when they join up – (But… I’m happy to do a call if anybody wants to ring me up anytime if they’re considering joining - that’s fine). But if they know they want to join, then they just join. There’s a form that they fill in, it’s like a discovery form for me – and it tells me everything, where they are now - where they want to get to - all that sort of thing - then we just go from there - after I receive their form back, then I ring them and see exactly where they are, where we go from now kind of thing. So yes, if anybody wants to ring me, they can ring me anytime. Carl: Perfect. Now you’re very active on Facebook. ‘Let’s talk about Real Estate’ has been growing, and has a great active user base as well. I spend a lot of time in there myself. And so, If you’re not part of that https://www.facebook.com/groups/Letstalkaboutrealestate/ or just look it up on your phone. I will include links to Lisa’s website and to the facebook group as well. So Lisa thanks once again for coming on, I really appreciate it. Lisa: Thanks, Carl. I appreciate it too. Carl can be contact here https://agentmail.com.au/contact-us/
This Episode’s Focus on Strengths In this episode, Lisa has a fun conversation with Melissa Dinwiddie. Melissa is a multi-talented, creative person who lights up your day with her voice and enthusiasm! She helps her clients to use their strengths to get their mojo back when they feel like their innovation gene has left the building. You’ll find lots of ideas to spark your creative mojo in this episode. Plus, you’ll hear about her “Passion Pluralite” life, as she calls it, so listen in. You’ll walk away with a newly formed opinion of what’s possible for a multi-passionate person. It’s inspiring to see someone who wouldn’t settle for “one thing” or one activity driving her entire career path. As she’s working with her clients, Melissa always keeps in mind her Top 5 Talent Themes from the Clifton StrengthsFinder: Connectedness, Achiever, Input, Futuristic, and Positivity. You’ll hear why this combination of Talents makes Melissa one of the most knowledgeable, multi-talented, creative people you will ever meet. What You’ll Learn Find your unique you. Melissa Dinwiddie is a multi-talented woman who has many different interests. She knows a lot about a lot of things. She always took for granted that she had so many interests, until she had a conversation with a client that led to a life-altering Ah Ha moment. In that moment, she realized that she had a unique gift, and that her Connectedness and Positivity Strengths made her a natural at consulting and collaborating with others. This led to her career working with clients to improve their creativity – which leads to innovation, increased profitability, and achievement. Use your Strengths. Connectedness and Positivity also enable her to look for meaning and connection all around her. She is always using that information to figure out how she can help her clients. Always say “Yes, and…” Improv class, which is one of Melissa’s newer hobbies, taught her to always say “Yes, and…” instead of “Yes, but…” because when you say it, you keep thing going and growing. This approach generates more new ideas, and allows for more creativity. Saying “but” is really just another way of saying no. It shuts down creativity. It leaves your team with more potential conflict and stifled creativity. Adding many ideas to the big mosh-pit brings forth more possibilities, and will empower your team members. When people are scared that they’re gonna be cut down, they become afraid to speak up (and you might be missing the best idea yet). Understand your Strengths…to overcome them. This might sound counter-intuitive, yet Melissa gives a great example when speaking about her Achiever Talent Theme. In the past, her need to achieve kept her stuck in self-perfection. By understanding how the Achiever Strength has the possibility to (counter intuitively) limit her ability to finish projects, she has developed self-compassion. She now considers herself to be a “recovering perfectionist”. So, if you tend to be a perfectionist at work, remember, everything doesn’t always have to be perfect; sometimes it just needs to get done. Give yourself a break! Lisa adds that the Achiever Talent Theme in its pure form is all about completing tasks and getting to the finish line. She hypothesizes that Melissa’s other StrengthsFinder Talents may be playing into her perfectionist tendencies too. While her Achiever wants to get things done, her Input will want to keep sponging up learning and insights that broaden her view of the project. Speaking of opening up possibilities, her Futuristic Talent will keep her in constant “what-if” mode. The fascination and vision of what can be can also keep you in rework mode. And her Connectedness Talent could have event played into her perfectionist tendencies because she sees connections and wants to share them with other people. Imagine when she’s creating courses and wants to keep tinkering so that every person with every perspective can get what they need. Ahhh, feeding your talents can be so energizing. And, sometimes, they can derail your progress if you’re not keeping an eye on the outcomes you set out to achieve. Schedule sandbox time every day. Our modern lives are super-busy, and often jam-packed with activities and projects every single day (even the weekends). Melissa suggests you spend 15 minutes every day relaxing, like you used to do as a kid. Play in the sandbox, doodle on paper, or go for a walk – whatever floats your boat. She’s proven that just that short amount of downtime can rejuvenate your creativity, and you will have a much easier time coming up with new ideas or finishing projects you’ve neglected. So schedule a short break time every day, and see what happens. Finding your “true passion” takes practice. People often ask career coaches and StrengthsFinder consultants how they can find their “true passions”. Melissa has an answer for them: Go out and try different things. She cites the example of learning to dance, another recent hobby. It took her 3 – 4 years of different types of dancing to figure out that she loves salsa and Argentine tango. In the work environment, you may be in a role you don’t love. Maybe you even hate your job. Look at the tasks your perform, and pay attention to what you actually do enjoy. Then find ways to get more of them added to your job responsibilities. If you stick with it, you’ll end up happier, more successful, and your business will be more profitable. Remember, knowing your Strengths and understanding them can have a huge impact on your personal and professional lives. So go out there and create. Resources of the Episode To connect with Melissa and grab some creativity resources, check out her website. You can also connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Ready to live a full-color life? Melissa’s Live Creative Now podcast is filled with practical tips and inspiration on creativity and creative productivity. Feeding your creative hungers is one of the fastest ways to happiness, joy, and self-fulfillment. Not only will you feel more alive, it’s how you will change the world! Subscribe To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from the website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published. StrengthsFinder Mini-Course For Managers If you’re a people-manager and you want to sharpen your strengths based support, come join our monthly mini-course. We don’t charge for this because we want to help you keep the StrengthsFinder momentum going. Teams who receive strengths feedback have 8.9% greater profitability. Yowza! Sounds like a great reason to join. Source: Asplund, J., & Blacksmith, N. “Strengthening Your Company’s Performance.” Gallup Business Journal. Go Live Your Talents Remember, using your strengths every day at work makes you a stronger performer. Go claim your talents and share them with the world! Read the full conversation: Lisa: Today, this show is all about using your natural talents to unleash your creative side at work. Your guest is so super interesting. She's actually dedicated her career to instigating creativity around the world. She works with teams to help them get their Mojo back when they feel like their innovation gene has left the building. She might even change your mind today about how very important play is at work. And speaking of play on the literal side, your guest plays the Ukulele and even brings that into her work world. So get ready. You're about to see how your creative expression can help you offer your value to the world. So Melissa Dinwiddie, welcome to the show. Melissa: Wow. Thanks Lisa. That was like the greatest intro ever. Lisa: It could have only been better if I had primed you for it so that you could have your Ukulele ready to play a little tune. Right. So, okay. You know, this show, it's all about exploring strengths from every angle. We're getting a unique angle of creativity today and we're bringing in strengths to that. So when you mentioned to me that when you first considered your top five StrengthsFinder talents that the one called Input was interesting to you because at first you didn't see that as something special and you. So tell us more about how that went down for you. In your mind, how did you open yourself up to the idea that it could actually be a superpower that you were overlooking? Melissa: I was doing a trade with a woman who was, at the time, my yoga teacher and she's also a life coach and so she was trading coaching. She was giving me some coaching and I was creating a website for her. It was maybe the third time that she had asked me about how to do something inside of a WordPress website, upload an image or create a new page or something, and I was showing her. And then she said, well, what if I want to do, you know, x, Y, z? And I said, oh, well there's three different plugins that I know of for that. And she looked at me and she said, how do you know all this stuff? And I said, I don’t know, I just, I made my own website a number of times so I know this stuff. And she's like, I think you don't appreciate how that, you knowing all this stuff, like that's not normal, that's normal in a really cool, really cool way. Melissa: Like you could, you could do consulting and you know, Blah Blah Blah. And it, it was that moment that made me realize, wow, this is something that's unusual about me in a good way. And it made me flash back to a moment, years earlier, this would have been back in the late 90’s, mid 90’s when I had started doing calligraphy, which became a huge passion of mine and that ultimately turned into a career. But at this point I was still a relatively new calligrapher and I was at a workshop and it was one of the first workshops I had been to with this calligraphy guild that I had joined. And somebody asked about a tool called an automatic pen. Well, what is an automatic pen and how is that different from, you know, this other kind of pen? Well, I, when I got into calligraphy, I had taken, like I'd ordered all the, there were two big stores that had, at the time, this was really before the Internet took off, so they had these paper catalogs. So of course I had ordered these paper catalogs and that was my bedtime reading. I would go to bed and pour through these catalogs and read all the details about every single tool and every single book. And so I just knew all this stuff. And so here I was, I'd been doing calligraphy for, you know, less than a year or something, and I was spouting off “well and automatic pen is its way and it works in this way and the way it's different from quick pan is blah blah”. And I remember the people looking at me like, are you an alien? Like they just didn't know you've been, I've been doing calligraphy for eight years and you just started, eight months ago, how do you know all this stuff? Melissa: And I, didn't realize that that was, I didn't have a word for it. I was just who I was. So I didn't realize that it was unique or unusual or a particular strength. And it just was this quirky thing about me that I didn't even realize was quirky. So yeah, that, was probably of my StrengthsFinder strengths. That was probably the first one that I went, oh yeah, that I can totally see as a strength because the things that I'm passionate about, I dive in and I learn everything that I can about them because that's what I do and then it nothing makes me happier than sharing that knowledge with other people, so it's a natural for consulting. Lisa: So cool. I love when I have clients with Input. It is so much fun to hear because they love going deep and gathering all the information and learning about a topic and then really directing it to what they're into, whether it's a hobby or work and then sharing it and it becomes such a collaboration strength too because you can add so much value because you realize, oh, not everyone does that. I mean, if I know if I got into calligraphy, I would flip through and look at the pretty pens and that's about it. I didn't know anything about any specs. Melissa: Right, right. Yeah, it, it definitely comes in really handy. The other one, I'm number five for me is Positivity and that one I recognized right away and people are always telling me, Oh my God, you have so much energy and you're such a cheerleader, you know, and that's just my personality. I hadn't really thought of that as a particular strength either, but I see it like I use that every day and the work that I do with clients and the groups that I lead that, that I am always essentially cheering people on. I mean not with like pompoms or something, but you know, I always have a positive spin on things and that it's not pollyannaish. It's just, it's just how I am. I think actually that's quite related to my top strength of Connectedness, which I mean I read that and when that's a strength, what? Lisa: That one always surprises people. They go, Huh, I would never think of that one. Melissa: Never would have thought of it. But I think that really ties in with my Positivity that this sort of outlook of always finding meaning and connection and you know, there's always this sense that everyone and everything is connected and I'm not like a religious person, but I'm it definitely infuses kind of everything I do Lisa: Well, knowing a little bit more about you and how you bring play into your work and how you’re an improviser, that's a high Positivity. It just makes complete sense because there's a fun-loving elements of it. It's finding the good times and things like if you're going to be here on the planet, go have a good time while you're at it, why not? And that tends to be one of the outlooks of people with high Positivity. So when I saw that and then knew that you were into play and Improv, I thought, oh well, it's just so perfect. Melissa: Yeah. And of course the sort of core piece of Improv is to say “yes, and”. Lisa: Yes, please say more about that. How that has shown up at work for you? Because most of the corporate people I work with are completely unfamiliar with Improv. Maybe you can talk about how that looks for people in a meeting or how that looks for people in either supporting each other's ideas versus squashing it if they gave it a “yeah, but.” Melissa: That got really clear for me when I think it was like my first Improv class, I've been doing improv for about three years now and although I've been improvising, interestingly enough, I've been drawn to improvisational creative forms for a really long time. For example, I got into salsa dancing and Argentine tango and those are purely improvisational dance forms. They are based on a vocabulary of movement and each social dance has its own vocabulary of movement, but within that vocabulary it is 100 percent improv and then when I got into music, the music that I was drawn to was jazz, which is an enormous umbrella that covers so many different styles of music within it, but the one thing that is a consistent among all of them is that there have improvisational elements, so it's really not that big of a surprise that I would end up doing improv. Melissa: Now I can connect that all together. My very first improv class, there was an exercise where a group of us were sitting up on the little stage area. We were supposed to pretend that we were in a meeting creating, we're talking about creating some, I don't know, some random object that we made up on the spot and about how to market it, I think. And so the first part of the exercise was that whenever anybody says something, let's, you know, let's throw a big party with confetti and invite the whole town or you know, whatever it was we were supposed to respond with, “yes, but,” and then add something. Right. So we did that for a while and then we stopped, and we replayed the same scene essentially. But this time whenever somebody gave an idea, the response was to be “yes, and”, and what was so interesting was when we did the “yes but” or “well, but” it would turn into just squashing, squashing just that: No, no, no, no, no. And it stopped everything where when the exercise was “yes, and” it became this like crazy mashup and it just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And when you bring that “yes, and” to say a meeting where you're generating ideas or something and if you can respond to somebody else from that space of “yes, and” it opens up so many possibilities, you know, there's time later where you can refine things and cut things out and look at the, you know, the reality of our budget is limited to x or whatever. But to generate ideas, you have to be in that space of “yes, and”, and people don't like to put an idea out there if they know that there's a chance that it's going to be cut down. Right. Nobody likes that. That feels terrible. So that's a really important place to bring that Improv scale of “Yes, and”. Lisa: I love the example too, of how you used it and actually had the contrast of the “yes, but” or the “well, but” with the “yes, and in the same situation because right, it just stops all the momentum and turns everything. And it's kind of like the eeyore moment. Melissa: Totally. Yeah. And “yes, but” is really another way of saying “no” Lisa: it true. Another thing that you're getting me thinking about reflecting on a work day and how you can have these breakthroughs and also sparked me to think about something you mentioned about your Achiever talent, how when now when you look back on a work day, you can kind of see that when you're fueled up, it's because you've achieved something and felt productive and that you feel frustrated when you're not. What does that process look like for you? And just exploring them and seeing how they show up. Melissa: That one for me, in some ways it feels like as a liability as much as a strength only because, my history is being way too much of a perfectionist. I mean, I am now a card carrying him perfectionist, which means a recovering perfectionist. It's the same thing, which means basically that I treat myself with self-compassion. I was so stuck in perfectionism. I mean my Achiever strength was, you know, so blown out of proportion, there was no balance to it. There was nothing, nothing connected with the Achiever that you know, just sort of say it's okay. You get to be a human being, you get to be human. What ended up happening was, I mean, I call myself an artist. I had a career, a business. I still have a business and our business primarily making Jewish marriage contract. It's basically a side business these days. It used to be my main business and for about a decade while I was making my living from my art, I didn't create anything for myself purely for play, except once a year I would go on a retreat with my calligraphy guild and then I would do some things for myself, but the whole rest of the year, all the other 360 days of the year, the only art I ever created was to other people's specifications and partly or a big chunk of that was because I was so trapped in perfectionist paralysis that anything that I would create, I would think, well that's not good enough. That's crap. And so it became so painful to try to do anything that I just didn't do it. But I was in such denial about it that I told myself, you know, I bought into the story, I created this story that it was because I just didn't have time and it wasn't until February 1st 2011 when I was actually interviewing an artist for my first online course that I created called the thriving artists project and this particular artist mentors other artists who want to have fine art, you know, professional fine art gallery, exhibiting art careers. Melissa: And they get stuck in resistance as anybody else on the planet. Surprisingly enough. And so this artist that I was interviewing would tell her mentees, if you can't put 15 minutes a day into your art, you're making an excuse. And she was just talking about what she told her mentees. But in that moment, I was so nailed. She was, she was talking to me. She didn't realize she was talking to me, but she was saying to me, and by the time I got off that phone call first I got very defensive inside. But then I realized, oh my God, she is right. For the past decade I have been making an excuse because of fear, and so that day, and it was February 1st 2011, I committed to putting 15 minutes a day into making time for the joy of creative sandbox time that you talk about. Lisa: Is that your creative sandbox time? Melissa: Absolutely. That is. I didn't have that terminology at that point, but yeah, that's, that's my creative sandbox time. That is my playtime where in fact, in order to get myself into that head space where I could put even just 15 minutes into making art, I had to set up a bunch of sorts of ground rules for myself and it started off with maybe four or five. You know, it's all about the process. It's not the product let go of the outcome. When you get to the place where, you know, it's not done yet, it needs something, but you're not sure what and you're afraid to try anything because you might ruin it. One of my rules was go ahead and ruin it. And over a period of a two or three years that expanded into 10 rules for the creative sandbox. It's now what I call my creative sandbox manifesto. Melissa: And the sandbox image was because I realized at one point that I wasn't taking time to do art. I'd started making some art, but the art that I was making, I stopped after a while, a couple of weeks into it or something, I just wasn't getting to my art table anymore and I couldn't figure out why because I wanted so badly to get back to making art. And one day I was looking at the table and I realized, oh my God, the art that I'm making right now has nothing different from when I'm working for a client. So it feels like work to me. It was very meticulous. It was very design-y. There was nothing improvisational about, there was nothing playful about it. It was the opposite of play. And I realized it was like this light bulb went off over my head and that's when I thought I need to play. Melissa: I need to be like my little four-year-old nephew playing in a sandbox, making messes, thinking, oh, what would happen if I poured water on this? What would happen if I did this? That's the headspace that I needed to be in. And so that's, what I develop those, those rules to help me get into that headspace. Lisa: It's so cool. And the boy, I mean, you know that in the corporate world this is such a thing for people because you have this push-pull and your mind whether or not someone's specific talent is Achiever. People have a drive to get stuff done is push for the next thing, but then you know you need white space. You have to explicitly sometimes not manage yourself to a goal or you burn yourself out. And there's this internal fight thing and you even sparked for me a thought that takes it beyond the moment to moment push-pull, but even the overall career stress that people put themselves under when they think of finding their passion or finding their calling. Lisa: And I, think I remember you talking about callings as an elusive thing and that it's normal to resist them and refuse the call, that sort of thing. And I'd love to hear… you just got me sparked on that idea to what's your take on work as a calling and what do you do for those people who are beating themselves up over the fact that they feel like they don't have one? Melissa: Oh my God. So that makes me think about a conversation that I had a number of years ago with a woman in my synagogue and I was talking about this stuff was pretty new to me then I was like, wow, I'm discovering this new direction for my life or I'm helping people get connected to their creative side, which for most of us has been, you know, got quashed down pretty early, including me. Melissa: I mean a lot of people get quashed down at age five or six or something was like age 13 when I stopped making art. But for most of us that that gets really squashed and you know, so I was finding my passion again and our passion number 17 or whatever. So I figured out that I have a lot of them and this woman said, well, what do you do if you don't, if you don't have a passion. And I was stumped. I did not know how to answer her question. And it was only later when I was reading an article by somebody who I think she calls herself like the passion mentor or something, I can't remember, but she was writing about how, you know, passions, we have this idea that you're going to have this Eureka moment. You're going to open a door and boom. Melissa: Yeah, that's my passion, I found it. And the reality is, even though I spent, I can't tell you how many times I've told the story of various passions I've had in my life: dance, calligraphy, getting back to social dancing, writing, improv, music. So many different passions. And the story has always been, oh, you know, then I discovered this and that became my next passion. But that's not really what happened. Really, what happened was with dance, I was too scared to try dancing as a little kid. I had some movement classes when I was like four. And then I had friends who were in ballet, but I had this image of the mean ballet teacher with the big stick who would like hit you if you don't do things right or. So I never took any dance classes. And then in I think my freshman year in high school, some friends of mine, we got together, and we took a class at a community center. Melissa: We thought it was going to be, you know, mtv kind of how to dance to Madonna's material girl or something, you know, like the music video kind of dance. And it was actually, it was a modern dance class, which I didn't realize was much more classical style. And we were like, wow, this is lame. So I didn't, you know, I ended that class and forgot about it. So finally, you know, years later after, you know, first thinking about dance, I took a class at this local dance school and that's the moment where I went, oh my God, I want to do this every day. But it was, you know, three or four years of, tipping my toe into different kinds of dance before I discovered that dance school and Bingo had my Eureka moment. Every passionate I've ever had has been like that. Melissa: You have some kind of interest in something enough to try it. And you know, maybe the first time it doesn't do anything for you. But for some reason you go back to it at some point again and maybe the next time you find something new in that and eventually you know, you try it a little more and then it starts to develop a little more meaning for you. And then you dive in a little bit deeper and it's the sort of back and forth thing and it happens, you know, much more organically. It's much more like, you know, there are people out there in the world who feel like they had this instant, you know, love at first sight moment with their spouse or their partner. Right? But most people, it didn't actually happen that way with me, my husband, it took me two and a half years to see him as a contender and, he's like best match I could ever imagine for myself. Melissa: And that's what it's like with, with our passions for activities or pursuits. Lisa: What a good metaphor because it is like, I mean I can see the relationship metaphor so strongly that you meet somebody and then you think, hey, I actually enjoyed my time there, or I feel better when that person enters the room. Then when they leave the room and then you think, well, I'm going to hang out with that person some more, and it's the same with responsibilities and tasks in the work that you do. You can say, oh, that things kind of neat. I've never done it. I'm going to hang out with that thing a little bit more. And then you start exploring all the offshoots of it and it's so much like that at work and people for whatever reason, feel like there should be the Eureka moment you talked about and not the process of experimenting and going, okay, that thing's cool. I'm going to follow that path and all of the arms and legs that it has, and then you find that one thing that's super awesome and really fuels you up and I don't know why it's like that, but it does make me sad because a lot of people beat themselves up because they haven't found “the calling” or “the passion” and I know you use that term passion, plural light and looking at the plural like we have. We love a lot of things. Yeah, you have a lot of hobbies. You have a lot of interests, so let yourself feel that way about your work as well and go explore them. Maybe we can end with that exploration combined with how you explore your creative energy through your doodles because I think that's so fascinating and people will dig finding their own version of what you do with your doodling. Will you share about that? Melissa: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So what I know about myself is that if I don't get a little bit, at least a little bit of time in the creative sandbox every day, my day doesn't go as well. It just, it makes me happy. It feeds me, it nourishes me. I also know that, uh, the thing I do first is the thing that gets done. So if I want to make sure that I get something into my day, it works best if I get it in first thing. I was not making, not making time for my creative play and realized I have to do it like before I even get out of bed. So I figured out, well, you know, I can bring a sketchbook and a pen, have it on my bedside table and then I can draw first thing in the morning. And so I set a timer for 15 or 20 minutes and I doodle first thing in the morning and I intentionally call it doodling because I want to be in that space of Improv. Melissa: That space of being in the creative sandbox like a four-year-old playing in the sand so that it's all about exploration and following my curiosity and not about trying to make something perfect or even good. And so it's just been an incredible self-growth experience to do this for the past, well, it's really since the start of the year, so it's been three months that I've been doing this. Every day I spend, you know, 15 or 20 minutes usually with a pen and some paper and a sketchbook, just doodling. It's like a spiritual, a spiritual practice because you learn so much about yourself. You know? Just today, there was a page where I had started something and I got really frustrated with it weeks back because I could see that it was going to require all this meticulous work that I just didn't want to invest in. It was going to drive me straight into that perfectionist place, which I don't like. I don't want to be in. And I came back to it today and thought, oh well I don't have to look at it that way I could come at it from a creative sandbox mindset and not worry about if these lines are perfectly rounded or whatever. And I was able to come back to that piece that I had totally rejected and really enjoy it and learn something and kind of expand my ability to break down those perfectionist walls from this one little doodle. So I highly recommended it. And it doesn't have to be pen and paper. I mean, you could do it with sound, you could do it with movement. You can do it with, you know, they're just so many ways that you can express yourself in, the equivalent of a doodle. Lisa: And I even do my white space. It's not quite my creative sandbox, but just my white space to clear my brain. My office is at home and in the woods and I take walks with the dogs and I just insert them in the middle of the day to give myself that moment. To not be distracted, to not be listening to shows. To not be learning, to not be in a meeting and it clears, it clears the space in a different way. And I'm the uber efficient. I mean I get so caught up that I'll listen to podcasts while I'm in the shower just because I want every moment to be so productive. And so it's that moment where I go, no, I'm just breathing, I'm listening to the wind listening to the birds and just let it rest for a minute. And then I get all these strokes of brilliance in that time and the sandbox time and the white space time. Lisa: I hope for everyone reading that this gives you some inspiration to bring that creativity back into your work day. To try yes, and if that's not something that's been part of your vocabulary, that you give that, some, just give that some air go, try that. It's easy to implement at work. Just show up and say “yes, and”, and your next set of meetings and don't squash an idea even if the squash comes to your mind, let it ride, let it ride and do that later. And let the ideas and the big breakthroughs happen. So thank you everyone for reading this Lead Through Strengths today. Melissa, this has been great. The readers are going to want to check you out. You have a show to tell them about, tell us how they can find you and your doodle delicious life. Melissa: Oh sure. Well, my website is Melissadinwitty.com.com, but that's hard to spell so you can also get to the exact same place livingacreativelife.com and my podcast is livecreativenow, which you can find there are. You can go to live creativenow.com, which will take you there as well. Lisa: Thank you. And we'll put all of that in the show notes so you guys can find it super easily and we'll get you her twitter and Instagram and Facebook links as well. So guys, remember using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you're always focused on fixing your weaknesses, always stuck in that perfectionist zone she's been talking about today then you're choosing the path of most resistance and you can choose instead to claim your talents and share them with the world.