The Dark Side Of Biohacking and Human Consciousness – with Teemu Arina

11:24AM Aug 22, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Teemu Arina

Keywords:

health

extreme

biohacking

work

eating

people

healthy

sleep

longevity

morning

exercise

diet

influencers

put

kinds

body

ice baths

person

sense

leads

Do

you think you're living healthy, but actually the Healthy Living itself because you become a burden to yourself and others. It's and the whole definition of biohacking of optimization is to optimise the environment outside and inside of you. And I would say, to control the environment outside and inside of you.

You're listening to the high performance health podcast helping you optimise your health performance and longevity. My name is Angela Foster, and I'm a former corporate lawyer and high performance health coach. Each week I bring new cutting edge bio hacks, inspiring insights and high performance habits to unlock optimal health performance and longevity. So excited that you've chosen to join me today. Now let's dive in.

Hi friends. In this week's podcast, I'm chatting to Timo arena, a technology entrepreneur, author and professional speaker. Timo is one of the forefront thinkers on the digital transformation of learning work leadership, health and the future of humanity. And in 2015, he received the Leonardo award for humanity and digitization. He's the co author of the biohackers handbook for optimising health and well being with the technological and biological tools, and he's also the founder of biohacker centre, an independent research entity into optimal human performance based in Helsinki. He's also the founder and curator of the biohackers Summit, a leading international conference for better living through science, technology and nature that attracts 1000s of attendees annually. Just to let you know quickly before we dive into this week's episode, I'm speaking at the biohacker London event organised by Timo on the first of September. We've put a link in the show notes so you can come and join us in person. And now without further delay, let's dive into all things health and performance, latest tech consciousness and biohacking including the potential dark side of biohacking.

So, Timo, it's great to be here with you today. I enjoyed the summit particularly enjoyed your talk yesterday.

Thank you. Yeah, it's quite dark side of biohacking. It's quite unconventional topic, maybe. Because in these elements, people always like cheerleading, everyone is, you know, better, faster, stronger, superhuman, like, how do you optimise your day, what's your daily routine and all that and it's all about perfection. And I think it kind of comes from you know, when people go on stage, also, they want to, you know, share advice and you know, best practices. But I want to speak about, you know, the other side of it. And I mean, we can go into it, if you want to, like speak about the details, of course, what it's all about. But this whole health and wellness industry is, is quite interesting, the way how I see it is that people have some kind of trauma or unresolved things that often lead to the health problems in the first place. Let's say you put all your time into your work, you know, not in relationships, not in recovery, not in sleep, when you're in a bed here, but you like food or the hours in because you don't feel enough, you know, you want to get more done more hours and you want to be successful. You're driven by external validation, external gratification, often, you know, that's maybe feeling not enough in the context of your siblings, or your friends or family, or maybe your parents were asking a lot from you. And then like all that, like, need to, you know, top the game, even top your own achievements leads to stress and burnout and health problems. And then you know, that you know, misery and depression and pain that then leads into kind of the hero's journey where you overcome your problems, often like to fixing your body and taking care of your sleep and doing stress management and breath work and maybe fixing your nutrition and through supplementation. Starting to eat a proper diet, not something that actually drags you down, kind of common sense things in a biking community. But then that becomes the other control mechanism. Just like growing up, you know, the control mechanism was not feeling enough, and you need to like control your work and achieve all kinds of things, then suddenly, this achievement driven mentality is put into the health and wellness and that becomes like an extreme sport on its own. So it's so what is happening there, you haven't really healed the underlying problem that led to the health problems in the first place. And only when you recognise that, and you're able to, you know, look yourself into the mirror, and humbly ask like, why do I need to be better, faster, stronger, or result oriented and successful and all that like and that you find yourself worth without status or the validation and all that like, I mean, I think that's where the healing often starts. And it doesn't mean that you don't need to be successful. It doesn't mean you don't need to, you know, get things done. It doesn't mean you don't need to be healthy and live you know Even by by feeling good, but it's about the shadow and understanding like kind of what led you in there in the first place, and maybe being a little bit humble and, you know, care about yourself a little bit more so like, you know, different way, because it can be pretty lonely place. And one thing that it's about, I mean, that's kind of like, you know, the audience of this kind of conference, what they're kind of going through, but then you have the experts, the health influencers, who are also wounded healers, so, so they ended up with a wounding experience and then through, you know, all this biohacking. That was their wounded healer story, they heal themselves. So they want to have an emotional connection. So they want to dedicate their time in healing and helping others. And maybe they start sharing about it doing a health podcast, or doing like, maybe an Instagram account, or, or build a product, they get into this whole thing, they kind of embody that enthusiasm, in a sense. And so it becomes identity. There's nothing wrong about that, like that you find your passion, in a sense, it's, it's often even encouraged to find your passion. But what can happen is that because we need to brand ourselves, we need to make ourselves clear to our audiences what we are about. So if we take, for example, the case of lever King is a guy who was all about Oregon supplements and basically becoming big, and muscular, and successful. And all of that by eating basically raw, organic, you know, meat, basically, Oregon supplements and organ meats and all that. And then that's what their audience starts to portray you as, and then you start to produce content to them. And they start to like, what you do, you start to share what you do all of that. But what if there is a mismatch between who you are actually really, and the persona or the avatar or the illusion you created? That can be a pretty lonely place. And we in the case of libre king, he was taking hormones, but his story didn't allow him to tell that I'm taking hormones. So in the end, there was a leak, and someone spilled the beans and and show that, hey, he's actually taking hormones, and it's not natural. And it's I, you know, get in a, in a way for him, I would say it was a blessing when he got caught, in a sense, because then he said that, okay, from now on, I will try to do it in a natural way. But of course, he lost some credibility, but probably inside, you know, he felt maybe relieved, in a sense that he doesn't need to fake it. But there's so much of that, fake it till you make it kind of mentality. We have all this life. biohacking gurus, like, you know, I don't want to say names. But if you take, for example, Dave Asprey, who's been kind of the leading figure of this whole moment, what he has been all about is better, faster, stronger, that you take a pill, you could only sleep for hours or something and take nootropics you optimise your sleep so that your sleep is so efficient that you only need five hours of sleep or six hours of sleep. When you look at the studies, it's not really you know, the case that you can actually, it doesn't stand up, you can really get by with five hours of sleep, but it's a nice story for all these people interact, well, who are sleeping four or five hours that okay, I can sleep for five hours and still get gas. And yes, you can with all these stimulants, and these practices and like, you can actually squeeze a little bit more performance out and you can maybe feel that you're functioning better. But what happens there is like you are you have less wiggling role, you have less kind of buffer, you know, sense when you're burning the candle from both ends, you know, you don't have any room anymore, right? So you already are squeezing everything out. What if, you know, you don't have any room left, in a sense. And that's what happens very often in high performance culture is that you try to fit in every second every minute, to try to achieve more and more and more. What if you are like already fully optimised, you're running basically a marathon at the highest level? Like you have no room for mistake? You have no, you have no room basically. And, and that I think is kind of what is showing up in like so many people are worried that this guy actually looks older now. But he's still living the story that I'm a young guy, you know, he's still communicating that I'm ageing slower and I'm kicking ass and I'm so super healthy and all that and people are looking at it. Hey, there's something wrong. It doesn't look healthy, like you don't look healthy. And so

I don't know I could be completely might be wrong, but I have a feeling that he is not telling something. And you know, then people, their audience also starts to see that there's a mismatch between the story that you tell, and the lies you tell, and the lies you tell yourself. And the public persona to kind of service animal, you became, in a sense. And I've seen this in so many different fields, we can go from health to some other area, you take some top YouTubers, you start to build, you know, something out of enthusiasm, and you become actually very, very good at it. And you do it from passion, then suddenly you get following, suddenly have 1000 followers, 10,000 followers, 100,000 followers, the pressure builds up, people want more of you, of kind of how they kind of box you right. So I know this because 10 years ago, I had all these like variables and headgear, and log eg readers and all that. So people actually expect that I must have like, 25 variables on me all the time. Because I'm press photos, I had those, because every time the journalist they wanted to put you know, those devices on let's let's put all the devices on. So then people started expecting that I have that. I was invited to conferences to speak about, you know, like, put all the devices on, you know, it's kind of like your audience starts to create you, in a sense, they, they turn you into a character, you become kind of caricature, in a sense, an over exaggeration of, of what it is. And an avatar, in a sense. I mean, people create avatars consciously or unconsciously. Like, if you think of anyone's Instagram profile, everyone knows that their Instagram profile is to certain extent fake, it's another representative of your real life. Like it there is always like deliberately taken photo angles, and it's also in success, right? It's it's all interesting moments of your life. So then people start to relate to that they see you as a successful person, you know, flies around, you know, goes to nice restaurants and always happy on family, you know, vacations, whatnot. But of course, you know, that, you know, your daily life is not as rosy, right? And everyone knows that everyone else's life is probably not that rosy. But it's still kind of compare yourself to that and and you feel less as a follower. So that's on both side there's depression.

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followers feel depressed, looking at everyone else's life is better. And then the people who are the influencers, they feel depressed, because they can't keep up with the role they build. So the social media, social technology was supposed to liberate us, make us happier, you know, more connected, it's actually making us more lonely. And there are so many of these influencers are millions of followers, and they just like, they just end up in mental locker rooms, and they quit or just take a break, they can't do that anymore. Because at some point, it's like too much. And it's also the same for not just for, you know, let's say, a healthy influenza, it can be also onlyfans model, I just read recently, about a woman who was really, really successful onlyfans model, you would think that with all that attention, she wouldn't be long, but she was the loneliest person on this planet. And she couldn't like continue the work because like, all she was doing is was in a studio, 16 hours per day, alone at all, basically, it's like, like feeding this machinery, paying the bills, but it's not fun in the end, and then you become a character again, like, people start to expect you to be a certain way you play a role. And in a way, that's what we do. When we grow up, we kind of start to play a role. All of us have, like some kind of mask, or persona. And it's, as you know, attached involves names, you know, I'm Sam Walton, I'm a biohacker. And if you think about how people introduce each other, it's also like, Okay, what do you do? Which school did you go? Like? Like, okay, okay, what do you do? Usually, it's like, people identify that, okay, I'm the CEO, or the health industry or something, they define themselves through the work that they do. Or they define themselves with their achievements. Or they define themselves. Online, of course, as the influencers, so they have an account or a website, or something like this. So then, like, the real self, is, of course, something different than what the labels are. And we all do it. It's called in psychology, it's called the narrative identity. So what is a narrative identity? Is the story you tell to yourself and to others who you are. And we are encouraged to do it. It's called the curriculum vitae. CV, right? And what do you put on your CV? Your achievements? And what do you leave out? Often the things you failed in, okay? So you only put your achievements and the often X accurate, sometimes things and there's all these personal branding gurus that tried to find, you know, in your, like, the things that you're really good at, and what to, like highlight and emphasise. And sometimes people make stuff up. Also, you know, they exaggerate, you know, their achievements or, or things they've done and all that, because you want to show that you're best to others. And as an employer, when I hire people, you know, I've got their CV and all that. My job is to figure out what are you lying on? Right? put you through test, you know, and I figure out like, okay, is this actually person, real person really good at sales and with people and whatnot? There's the narrative, and then there's reality, in a sense, but it's very interesting how people also relate to the stories in health and wellness and in life in general. I'm very interesting when I ask people, okay, who are you like, what is your story? Then listen very carefully to how they describe it. Do they describe it by external factors, like, things that they, let's say, you know, what school they went to, or achievements they received, or jobs they've done? Or the titles they hold awards? Or do they tell a story of, of their, let's say, life struggles, you know, I was born in a family, you know, we had nothing and then this and that happened, and now I have millions, or, or like, I had, I had to leave the war zone and something like this. It's kind of like, what is meaningful to you? What is meaningful to that person in their narrative, what they're sharing to you how they like, describe themselves in a sense. And what is interesting about mental disorders, is if you take diagnostic manual, mental illness, DCM five, there's Cluster B, personality disorders, there's narcissism, there's Machiavelli's and there's histrionic personality disorders borderline. What is these are actually Cluster B. So they're clustered together as that they're kind of related to the same constellation what is often behind there is insecurity. Like, we will think of narcissistic person that that person has like a huge ego. But no, they don't have actually ego up or they have an undeveloped ego. What does that mean? So when growing up and you're insecure, maybe you're like put put down by our, you know, parents, maybe they were also narcissistic or something like this, or like you failed like less next to your brother or sister or your friends or whatever. So you have this deep insecurity, deep sense of not fulfilling things. So, but you, you have role models. So you you're looking at with admiration, what others have, and you want that. And the way you get it, is that you imitate it. And you basically like you create a false facade, you create a facade. So it for some, it happens to materialism, so they show wealth that they don't have, right. So they kind of portray, they communicate an image that makes them feel that they have self worth. And they they make the environment validate that innocence. So, so they, they they push others, even to highlight how great they are, or like, how successful they are, how wealthy they are, like whatever. So they use these like different externalised factors to which they construct their identity. So, like, they're basically it's, it's, there's no one behind the mask. In a way, it's like a house of mirrors, you only see yourself or what do you see, you see all these other people, you see yourself in those other people who want that. So you kind of integrate the greatness from all of that. And that's what personal development, the industry is all about. Broken people going into all these conferences, imitating greatness, they go to listen to Tony Robbins or whatnot. And they will, you know, Tony is telling, like how you can become successful. And they try to imitate that greatness. And they read all these like personal development books and like how to manifest things and all that. So because deeply, they are afraid to look at who they are. So they start to look elsewhere, they try to see themselves as the idealised version. And that's what narrative identity also is. It's an idealised version of you. And now, you know, what happens in health and wellness. Because let's say you were, you had, you know, you had some type of you had a childhood trauma. So you had a childhood trauma or something that, you know, was related to these feelings of insecurity. And that leads to, you know, anxiety, dysfunctional relationships, overworking, whatever, you know, things because you're trying so hard not to be who you are. And that leads then to burnout and health problems and all kinds of issues. Interestingly, if I give you a couple of examples of health issues, like how do you relate to problems, like, like, are you you? Are you more likely to hide your emotions? Are you more likely to suppress your emotions? Or do you act out? Do you get angry and like, show everyone you know, your angriness? I'd say on average, on average,

I think it depends on the situation, but in most situations, I will remain quiet and look for a solution. I probably won't want to externalise it.

Yeah, so people who are more likely to externalise, so they act out very strongly, they're more likely to hypertension and heart disease.

That's interesting. And yet you think they would release it? Yeah, it's

kind of like, they, they're gonna release it, but also, like, it's an extreme. So it's like that, constantly, they had the need to release it. And there's a physiological response to the release, right? So they're a little bit like, it's Derek. escalated so far. Yeah, they escalate everything. Now, the ones who are always like, staying quiet, not showing emotion suppressing it are more likely to have autoimmune disease, they have immune system dysregulation, they have got issues. So there's this idea, you know, the body stores, the trauma Keeps the Score. Exactly. So what happens there is like, if you don't produce it, somehow will it will come out in some other way. So it can come out as, as, you know, some kind of illness. For me it came as as an ulcer stressful at the illness. So I was like, you know, putting all the work in but not you know, allowing myself to relax and like I'm also like, pretty Finis, you know, emotionless sometimes not acting out Yeah, but there is a fine balance there. So it's kind of like it's good that you externalise it a little bit, but not that it becomes a burden for everyone else, and that you don't internalise it too much that you become all as the victim or like the one will just like,

become nothing depressed. Because I think from my own experience, like when I look at my background, where I've burnt out with corporate law, like totally sacrifice sleep, and then the kind of when you were talking about you can be so going to that tipping point, right, where then the next thing knocks you over for me, it was then having three pregnancies in four years, three children, three C sections. And that was enough to then tip me into depression. And I left law and I think sometimes when you suppress stuff, and you've kind of lost that self identity, and that's when I then the mental health, then took its toll physically right, so I was hospitalised with pneumonia. And I think almost to me, it's interesting what you're saying there about people going to these events when they're broken. And they look, we see people go to like Tony Robbins events and things. And they need to go regularly, because they have lost their sense of self, they almost need a tune up, right? Every time they go. And then they come and it's almost like, a bit of like, if you pay someone a compliment, and they're like, Oh, I live off that for a day. But then if they go to one of these big events, and they're part of that community, they might live off that for months, and they get this buzz, but then it kind of falls away, right? Because not the real them then they have to go back and be inspired again.

But this is why corporations have all kinds of like, you know, offsides and all that like to cheer people up, take them somewhere else. Like, just for a minute, we are a team that they get back to the dysfunctional organisation. But yeah, what is interesting is there is when you're faced with challenges that are like overwhelming people resorting to coping mechanisms, coping mechanisms are the way how you cope with stress and trauma. And there is like learned behaviours there how you deal with it, it's often also learned from parents, like, like, how did they cope with the situation? So you kind of start to imitate that if they like, take the, you know, alcohol bottle? Or did they like smoke cigarettes? Or? Or did they yell or act out? Or like, did they suppress it and, and in the end, like, those coping mechanisms are our, our way of like, soothing yourself, often, that's what addictions are. So you try to soothe like, try to make yourself feel a bit more comfortable. In that life overwhelming situation, sometimes those coping mechanisms are pretty productive, they can be helpful, but they can also be causing more dysfunction. And they're in a health and wellness industry. What I see is like if you if you've got, let's say, got problems. And that was like, overwhelming. And then you went through, you know, fixing your gut and healing, then you're utterly afraid of getting the gut issues again. So you have a trauma. Now, now, suddenly, everything that comes to food, you start to control that. So the extreme diet that is called hyper country are hypochondriacs, right. So like extreme attention to healthy living. So almost like the Healthy Living itself becomes neurotic. Yeah, orthorexia. Exactly, yeah. So you think you are living healthy, but actually the Healthy Living itself, because how unhealthy like you become a burden to yourself and others sounds, it's the whole definition of biohacking health optimization is to optimise the environment outside on the inside of you. And I would say, to control the environment outside and inside of you. So when you get a ring that measures your sleep and stress and all that, this becomes a control mechanism through which you, you know, you first become aware of your sleep, and your stress levels and your recovery. And if you if you kind of you can, you can have a very dysfunctional relationship with these things. Also. Basically, I know people who they're absolutely neurotic about their sleep scores, that needs to be perfect, needs to be high. If it's, for some reason is it's not optimal. Their whole day is ruined, almost like

some people wake up, I think that they know in anticipation of looking at the ring data, basically to see. Yeah, because it's it's getting that dopamine hit in the morning.

But I see that it's kind of like these are kind of there's two sides to everything, like two sides of the coin. So this can be the greatest tool for healing that you kind of programme reprogram yourself into new, healthier habits where you're more in balance, but it can also lead to that Another dark place, yes, it can become something that starts to control too much what you do. And then when you look at it, like, whatever trauma or experience that led to the health problems in the first place, then the mechanism, how you tried to deal with it leads you to another unhealthy place. And so you'd replace another addiction. Let's say you were overworking work was your addiction, you replace with with another addiction, which is now being healthy. And we see that like, what's gonna happen if you like, let's say exercise too much. Or you go on extreme diets, you're like long term on like extreme diets, like, woman might lose hormonal cycles, like with very extended ketogenic diets, or you're on weight loss things and you're malnourished, and like, you look great on from the outside, you think but like on the inside your total wreck, your coffee issues and all kinds of stuff, your body doesn't recover and bounce back, or we are all focused on exercise, and you don't give your body enough time to recover. Because that growth doesn't happen when you exercise. The grow doesn't read when you read the book, it happens when you go to sleep or take a break, relax, like that's when the growth usually happens is exercise or eating, something's just a stimulus. So if you don't give your body a break, it becomes a sport on its own. Like it becomes pretty hard. So I mean, these are very obvious to the health and wellness industry, people, but there's a lot of extremism in there. And like I explained about, then these influencers, the ones who get most of the views, who get hundreds of 1000s of followers are millions, they are the extreme examples of some narrow area, like Libra King, you know, just organ meats. Or let's say you have carnivore

that people like I was looking at it, because I kind of come at it from a more like, I think you do more holistic aspect, right? of physical, spiritual, emotional, mental health. When people look at that, and they just zoned in on one end angle, it's super extreme, is really restrictive. It's very difficult to do to just even something like the carnivore diet. I'm surprised by how many women it seems quite a masculine diet, how many women will embrace that and do it is antisocial. It's hard to eat out. It's hard to be among friends. Why do you think people are so driven to find those extremes? And then follow that influencer and kind of replicate it, then something goes wrong, but they'll find another extreme right?

Yeah, veganism has been of course, one of those being carnivores. And other one. calorie restricted diets can be one, I met one guy who realised that all his problems was because he was eating because he was eating. Yeah, so he was overweight. And like, like once he went on an extended fast, he felt more energy. Of course, when your body gets into ketosis and all that, like you have like more steady energy after like 24 hours, then the hunger went away. And he was like, just a week not eating. I mean, he had all the mass, of course, like to deal with that situation. So then he extended that this guy was two months without eating. So his whole story was that like, all his problems originated from him eating. So solving his problem was to go to the other extreme, which is not eating at all. And of course, that's not healthy either. Like for kidneys, like all that lexicon. Got some pretty interesting challenges out of that, like, I've never heard, like, you could even do it two months past, but that guy did it. And he was really wired when I met him, like, it was like six weeks into it. Yeah, that was the other thing. He had so much energy that he was gonna say, Yeah, of course, that's, that's going to be challenging. But in the end, that's also how we learn. Often when we try to change our lives, we get go a little bit extreme, right? And that the most common question I get, what is your morning routine? What is your evening routine? What is your diet? People want blueprint? Give me the blueprint that gives me you know, the Holy Grail. So they want, you know, telling me what I need to exactly do.

And there's not going to be the same I was having this conversation with Steven Kotler right. So personality doesn't scale biology does. So if you are an early morning person, and you have a good routine that I might learn from as another say, morning lark, then I might be able to replicate some of it. But if you're an early morning person, and it suits your personality and your work ethic, and I'm a night owl and I try and replicate it is not gonna work.

Yeah, yeah. There's also this that I mean, let's say you want to lose weight, people go on to this 30 day, 60 day, whatever. Get ready for BH kind of crazy diets or exercise regimens or something, it's very extreme often, and it's very, you know, uncompromising does a certain extent, and I guess you need to do that to learn. It's kind of like, you have to, it's like you do martial arts, you can start to improvise from the first class, you have to actually learn the positions that got us there, like there's certain, you know, kind of programmes, you have to learn first, and you repeat them over and over again, like in bite, you do the 21, more exactly the same way, like years. And only when you have like, you know, perfect that that then you can start to improvise, in a sense, you don't need need to rely anymore on technique. So you learn to technique in a way, I think it's the same with diets and daily routines and all that. In order to learn the technique, you have to kind of repeat it over and over again. So it becomes second nature. And once you do that, you start to see maybe the inefficiencies in it or like, you learn to kind of play a little bit with what's actually happening. So for example, daily routines, it might be the morning routine might be a bit different, depending on what kind of day you're going to have, right? But there is a benefit of taking our daily routines. Because most of the time, we are robots, like at personal time, we just repeat the same stuff over and over and over again. You know, think about what you usually do in the morning? Like, do you make a cup of coffee immediately? Or do you read a newspaper? Or do you look at the same sign or whatever we do, like people tend to repeat the same things. Because it's easy. It's like that it is basically learning something new is hard, changing our patterns is hard. Relying on the things that are familiar to you, that you usually do, is quite easy. So we're quite lazy. So because we're quite lazy, we tend to do the same things, we tend to look at us and TV programmes, you know, we tend to order the same food, we tend to go to the same restaurants, we tend to do the same choices, when we have a break, we tend to do the same things in the morning, same things in the evening. And that's where the dysfunction comes from. So there is some patterns there that repeat over time, that are actually healthy and beneficial to your growth and progress. And then there's patterns of behaviour that are detrimental. And, you know, not good for, let's say, your longevity, or productivity or health or wellness or your mental health or physical or whatever. And then indentifying those processes and patterns is of course important that you kind of analyse your daily routines and news, yeah, okay, I could do this differently. But the thing is that people can easily change everything at once. It's kind of a network, just like in the brain. So we have to like, adjust it a little bit. So just a little bit, your morning routine not changed completely. But start to do, let's say if you don't do any exercise, just bring a little bit of exercise volume and coffee, always, to kind of make these cues you attach into certain cues, or in a certain sequence of habits, you get that a new habit, it's easier to do it that way, instead of like trying to change everything. Like if you never exercise going six times a week to the gym is not gonna be easy. It's easier to start, you know, small and grow bigger from there.

Why do you think people don't want to do that? Why do you think they're driven to extremes.

They need someone from the outside to show them because they don't have any accountability to themselves, they need someone else to be accountable to. So they want someone else to tell what to do. And they want to show someone else what they're doing. They want someone else to give feedback. It's what it's quite lonely and hard to do alone. So that's why we go into all kinds of retreats where we suddenly do a new, completely new routine in the company of someone else. And often when we go back home, you know, we just go back into our own old ways of being and we're like, Okay, what happened. But it's a good example of how hard it is like to go on a company off site, and you do a team work, and then you come back to the work, you don't really bring it back. So it's kind of similar process. But in the end, I see that there's a lot of sub conscious processes that people do. So like this kind of methodological approach, where you use data and you kind of distract the analyse your daily routines is very beneficial because you can start to see some things about yourself, okay, I'm always doing this, I could do this differently. But that can also become like a neurotic thing that you know, I always need to do this or my day is ruined. And I fully understand it. I go to the phone every morning when I travel I feel like you know because because I'm not having it so it's it's like routines bring comfort. You know it brings life something to attach to it brings a sense of security. And that's why people do it. And I believe that's also why people, the very common question that I have, when it comes to, you know, this healthy living, and all that is like, don't you want to enjoy your life? What do you mean by enjoying your life is, is basically enjoyment there is that you're doing the things you repeatedly do, and you like, doing something difficult and different, feels not so enjoyable. So learning something new is not enjoyable, doing the things that you are used to do repeatedly is enjoyable. So just to give you a simple example, we can ask for a diet or exercise, but we can have a person who is utterly bored and terrified of the idea of doing exercise. And then we can have a person who is utterly terrified and anxious about the idea of not getting on a run more in the morning or getting some exercise in it, this can be the same person, it's just a different neural wiring and, you know, feedback loops and dopamine and all that like same person can be both the one who is addicted to exercise, and completely disgusted about it. Same with food also same person and be absolutely addicted to bread, and pasta, and all this like carbohydrates. And the same person can be utterly disgusted of the idea of having, you know, fast carbohydrates, same person, different wiring, and the transition, or how you kind of transition from that wiring to the other is always like super difficult, it's very comfortable, just do what you always do. And in the end, in the core of all this personal development movement and helped optimise all of that is actually behaviour change, that you try to change behaviour is super difficult, and super hard. And I fully understand that, you know, people are seeking for a magic pill or, you know, just appeal, they can pop in and suddenly their problems are gone. You know, sans or, or, or it's very device driven, right? To live a healthy, you know, you don't really need red light panels and like, fancy rings and all that. But these are kind of, you know, it keeps you busy. You know, it's like a child with a toy. You know, you play with toys, like how do you how do you learn these new things. So it's like you need this toy. So the way I see about, for example, it's a sleep optimal sleep tracking, this can be a fun toy, to start to pay attention to sleep, and start, you know, the process of rethinking the way you optimise your sleep and daily patterns. But ultimately, you don't really need it. Like you can actually do a lot of it without any of technology, but it speeds up your learning process. It reflects it back to you, it makes you more aware. But ultimately, the role of the technology is that it disappears. It's no longer needed. It served its purpose. But if it became something you rely on that you can live without it, then you are captured, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you can't like like my friend. He's been using ordering for five years. And he decided to take a break for six months, he had withdrawal symptoms, he had anxiety of not being able to see the data. Like, it's it's quite interesting how you can become attached into into these numbers, also. And that's also what people who don't do it, who never did it. Formal question I get it like, don't you get stressed for having that data? Like, what if it becomes, you know, a source of problems on its own? I understand that scepticism. It's very rare, actually. Most common problem. Yeah, most people, for most people, it's, you know, they're handled pretty well. Like it's kind of you don't take it too seriously. But it's a useful tool. But the moment where it's no longer a servant tool, but it becomes a master that controls you than that for a while. And I think that's kind of what people fear is the dead diet, or the ring, or whatever thing is no longer to serving you. But it becomes a self serving thing on its own. And it's like feels everything.

Because if you look at the words, we believe they're either on an extreme form of diet, or they're very casual about the way they there doesn't seem to be. I don't think there's a good number of or a very high number of people who kind of apply an 8020 rule or even a 9010 to their diet. I think if you look at it that across the year it will be segmented on I'm going on holiday or I have something like this. Now we have a really extreme to get into shape for it. And then the moment they're on holiday, the whole thing falls away. They're eating they're drinking Massive amounts of inflammation, they come back. They're like, I need to go on a detox. And that was another extreme thing. And they just kind of hop in and out.

There's a lot of ignorance, for sure. It all Yeah, that's a good, good way to think that's also like, just being super casual about it is also one extreme. Yeah, it is kind of like, you're like, you don't want to know, like, and you might have bypassing also going on, like, you have this psychological bypass, that you know, like being super concerned about health and healthy eating is somehow like sick. That actually, like, I'm just fine by eating healthy food, you know, there's this whole idea and concept that, you know, like, being extreme is unhealthy. And for me, you know, the fact that I'm kind of eating like, my mother was making food that's already healthy. But my, my goal, my colleague, co author of the Packers handbook, Dr. All is aware, he has looked at 1000s of people's blood biomarkers, there is no one who is healthy, especially those who eat like regular home food. Like there's a lot of deficiencies and problems and issues that you can identify there. So they're just ignorant, you know, they just tell themselves a story that I'm generally, you know, living healthy. And I see it a lot like in corporate world, you know, yeah, you know, every evening, some glasses of wine, you know, like, going late, you know, and all that, like, I guess from the corporate law world, like,

I remember when I go in and I speak to corporates, what I find is, there's a lot of like, as a coping mechanism, it's like, cool down with wine warm up with caffeine. Yeah, it's kind of the routine.

Yeah, but then then you can have also healthy approach to the same thing with a bypass involved. So for example, you can have healthy, the most healthiest stimulants. So we have like mould free coffee, which is like tested to be toxin free. And you know, have all these like beautiful things, we put in steel, a steel plant in our central nervous system stimulant. And then you have alcohol in the evening. But it's actually organic, biodynamic, it's you know, without sulphides, and you also take glutathione at the anus to sustain with it so that you reduce its risks, toxicity, so you kind of like, you keep on doing the unhealthy things, but you manage it in a way, but it's fine. I mean, it's a smarter way of doing it. And you can massively reduce the damage that you do to your body by being aware of these things that you can do. And so, so you can do a lot of damaging things, if you understand the biochemistry, and we kind of hack hack away with it. So I like the idea of it, that you're a bit smarter, doing the same thing, but you do it differently. And I would say like in last 10 years, like, I'm still working like a workaholic.

Yeah. You're super productive.

You're getting a lot of things done. I

read the biohackers handbook. One of the things that first appealed to me with my background was the kind of, well firstly, the whole holistic piece, and I think from a European perspective is very different than how the Americans see biohacking, but also the productivity that you had in there and kind of the performance. When you say you're working still really, really hard. How How, how would you say in terms of your How do you maintain creativity, and productivity and that sense of balance with your work?

Yeah, so I would say like, like, that I do still work like a crazy maniac. But I do it clearly, based on data in a much more healthy way. Because I'm not like speeding up my ageing process actually has been improving my biomarkers are better than they were 10 years ago. And I definitely have more work and more, you know, responsibilities and all that. But I would say like, the thing that broad most of the difference is not in the way how I do the work. It's actually in the way how I recover from it. So it's like it's about learning meditation and breath work. And you know, also how food can help you know, to reduce inflammation and optimise you know, with all the phytochemicals and anti inflammatory compounds and like nutrients and amino acids and all that like just to build bringing the other neurotransmitter building blocks that you have all the all the hormonal support or the adrenal function support, like a lot of that that can be super helpful. So you can maintain this crazy lifestyle in the sense

like for you then. So like on a on a day, how do you what's your approach in terms of you mentioned you So in the morning, yeah, but if you want to have that balance between being hyper productive, but still enjoying life still recovering really well, I always think of it like a bank bank account on this right in terms of energy. Yeah, and you're kind of paying in and withdrawing deposits, you got to pay enough. And if you're gonna keep withdrawing, how do you? What do you utilise?

I think there's like cycles in the year like, there's, like people have been asked before, it's like, what is your day look like. But like, last two weeks, I've done like 12 lights. So if you have that many, like, flights and travel and different hotels and locations, and early morning wake ups, and late evening things and all kinds of stuff, you don't have a daily routine to say, right, but you have like strategies that we implement, but what I tried to do is when I come back from these kind of crazy trips, that's when I you know, focus on, on on like, a healthy way of recovering as quickly as I can from the so I'm ready for the next battle. So it's that kind of time in between, which is important. A lot of people they just feel that with another, you know, cycle of productivity that or they think, you know, they send me a couple of more emails, or, you know, answer a couple of more messages, all that I tried to keep my phone in aeroplane mode when I'm at home, until I've done all my morning things. So I take it off aeroplane mode, once I've done all the important things in the day, that helps me to, you know, recover from things. So I tried on start my morning. So most people when they wake up, they have like, their cortisol levels are high, their stress levels are high, immediately, you know, they just as quickly as possible, they get out of the door, and go to meetings and workplaces and all that I use that time, the first three, three hours of the morning are a lot of things that people are looking forward to after they get back from work. So I do you know, I go to the sauna, I do breath work, I do some exercise, I you know, I make some, you know, nice beverage or whatever. And I go outside, I collect some plants for lunch, wild herbs, whatever. And then I start my workday. I work then like, you know, could be could be like, anywhere between five to seven hours of really formative work. But I can do it because I start my day like that. And I don't need

anyone in between, we just literally go for five to seven hours to

morning in the morning, I do at the moment. But during this five to seven hours, I'm doing a movement throughout the day. So I use a standing desk. And I split my work into 20 to 30 minute blocks. And in between I do a little bit of like I can do some kettlebells or just like hanging from a bar or something like this. You know, even like red light therapy and all that I do as a foreign quick break, I might do some quick bread work stuff, I might even deep into ice bath. So I've kind of set it up so that at home, I can I can be literally in a tomb call. And after that I just dump into into the fridge in the ice bath for a couple of minutes get out, go to another meeting. So it's kind of like I can't do this if I'm in a typical office environment, right? Of course not. But it's it's like that, that then allows you to have focused attention for the rest of the day. And then in the evening, when you know you start there is no more energy. Then then I might and by the way I don't eat during the day. I don't have lunch. No, not really, I don't really have breakfast at all. I've had 10 years. I've had one meal a day to dinners in the window for hours. So I thought it was like during the day I focus on getting things done on work done. In the evening, that's when I focus on the eating and digesting the food. Because there's the parasympathetic nervous system activation and digestion is it's not assumed but a nervous system things when people have a lot of gut issues because they do a lot of work and then they eat zimmel dangerously also. So their nervous system you know is highly active and that doesn't help with digestion. So I tried to like that when I'm done with my things. That's when I was on more of the recovery stuff and that includes also eating and then in the morning I might make a you know beverage like cup of coffee with butter and MCT oil I use the coffee as a carrier for nutrients. So I have I stack supplements but I like to use them in liquid form. So recently I've been using Oregon supplements over my coffee so I put like liver and heart kidney bull testicles in my coffee reindeer bone broth sounds gross, but it's gonna say how does this taste? It's absolutely amazing. I was in a bar. I was in a marketing conference recently there was directors from big companies. And I was I was making them this my morning coffee and they were like, What is this? I put medicine on mushrooms in there like Chaga mushrooms and spices and all kinds of stuff. And they're like, Ooh, what is this? bull testicles with reindeer bone broth. And people are like, we look at their face. They're like, and then they taste and they're like, they they freakin like it. And then they ask where and buy it.

Seriously unmusical morning coffee.

Yeah, balls. Testicles also mean coffee. So what what why? Why would you put pull testicles or heart or kidney or liver into your coffees because let's you let's take real liver, for example, you have a lot of minerals that you don't usually get from food that well, you have things like Selenium. Woman get also iron from there, you have magnesium, you have B vitamins that are building blocks for stress hormones. Also, you have I mean, you have some amino acids there as well. But there is there is a lot of the things that a stressful person needs just like metabolic trip throughout the day, the process and then I put the fats, which is kind of like because you're already in a fasted state, your body is in a fat burning mode, because it's using ketones as fuel in the morning, I just continue that with fats mainly. So I kind of continue that ketogenic state that I'm in after the night's sleep. And only in the evening, I eat carbohydrates. And that's also supportive for sleep. So I do more of a cyclical ketogenic diet, I don't really eat a ketogenic diet. But I do fast the whole day. So one meal a day has shown in rodent studies, that the same amount of calories when you give them within a four hour window versus rodents that could eat them, say more calories within 24 hours. The ones who could eat it at any time they want they develop metabolic disease, more likely. Constant grazing. Yeah, their body has no moments of the process. That is key here is autophagy. autophagy is the process through which your body is recycling damaged cells. So this doesn't happen. Here if you have gotten constantly food available, because I need to fast for it. And it can be amplified with the adulteration, like ice baths and sauna. And you can be amplified by yeah, there's some, some supplements also for it, for sure. But we recommend

this with women, or do you recommend they because a

woman woman can also do one meal a day? Yes, even and not disrupt their hormones? Not if they if they load on carbohydrates in the evening, okay? Yeah, like, or, or at least, if you eat only a fat and protein based diet with some fibres, then at least once a week have a good carb reload, then it's less likely to affect your hormones. But it's good to remember that hormones can begin the key building block for hormones is actually fats and fatty acids. And if you're in a high, low fat diet, that's that's also pretty problematic for hormones as well. So like going on extreme high fat diet is problematic going to extreme low fat diet is kind of problematic, both hormonally. So there's a sweet balance for poor woman in this case. And I would also recommend if you do a lot of exercise, a lot of physical things that you also cycle in carbohydrates, but from a productivity standpoint, if you want to get things done from a longevity standpoint, calorie restriction, high fat diets ketogenic diets, based on studies, this is you know, the most beneficial for slowing down the ageing process and rejuvenation. And my, like, my colleague in our company, see him blonde, who wrote the book metabolic autocracy about these processes and stronger by stress. He has done an on the kind of kind of a longevity or ageing study called Dunedin pace. It's one of those gold standard studies on the ageing speed. It measures how many years you age, on average, an average year for someone of your age. So if the result is one year and your age one year in one year, or if it's 0.7, for example, then you age 0.7 years in one year. And these tests became quite famous because of Brian Johnson, who is this millionaire guy who's sold his company to pay Paul and he realised that he's like fat and inflamed and tired and all kinds of things. And then he's been, he has been spending now 2 million to try to slow down his ageing process a year. And he's doing a DNA test result is a bit over 1.7 right now. And he looks young 1.7. So

he's ageing faster?

No, no 0.00 Yeah, sorry, zero point, it's a bit over 0.7 and see him land. His test results came back now. It's 0.62. It's a world record now. And what he does is only one meal a day. So it's like what I've done for 10 years. What he has also done for 10 years, one meal a day. And he exercises mainly on strength training, not like long cardio stuff. And he it's a cyclical ketogenic diet. He's mainly on ketosis most of the time. And then he does he goes to sauna on a regular basis. Yeah,

I've done I've done his programme actually has already good longevity. Yeah.

Yeah, like, if you look at in there, and what the longevity programme is about, like, you don't need 2 million a year. Like you don't these

programmes, brilliant, because it's very simple. And it lays out like three tiers in terms of their results, you probably know this already. But just people listening that the results that you want to get, ultimately, like transcending to what he calls God Mode. And I found it was like, really well done.

Yeah, it's kind of there's tiers like you can like, like, kind of what is the minimum that you should do? And then the god modules, like all kinds of things based on studies that you could potentially do. There's something

it's nowhere near? Like, it's not expensive to do if you saw me, no, it's not on that poll with no,

it's not about like consuming, trendy supplements and all that, like, he recommends like a source of amino acids, things like just jello, for example. So just gelatin with source of collagen. Now there's all kinds of like collagen products on the market, of course, like, more branded, more like isolated from bonds and all that. But yeah, like he's, he's protocol, there's a lot a lot about, like slowing down the different processes of ageing. As you age, there's certain nutrients that there is an increased need for and there are certain processes in the body that slowed down. Good example is NAD, NAD levels are half of what they when you are 45, NAD levels are half of what they were when you were 18 in your mitochondria. So anything that boosts and supports NAD levels, is going to be beneficial for your recovery time. And slowing down your ageing process and all that you can have a supplement that support your NAD levels. Or you can do things like autophagy or fasting or sleeping in up and reducing stress and all that is also going to help your NAD levels. So a lot of the Healthy Living things are actually free. But the thing is also, like a lot of these things require you to go to a little bit of a area of like he calls it

like this kind of zone of being uncomfortable. So it's like, you know, outside of the comfort zone. Yeah, like you like you kind of like do ice baths and you do saunas, and you do heavy workouts, and you fast and you you know, you go to sleep even though you don't want to and all that. So I guess there is a little bit of control that will definitely help with the ageing process. But it's a good question, like, based on the study is the strongest the indicator for longevity and rodent studies is calorie restriction. The most proven method for slowing down ageing in humans is calorie restriction. What does that mean? Then you're probably going to live long but you can be a bit miserable and be tired all the time. Yeah, likely be adolescent. All that. So if you on the other hand, you focus on growth in a way you trigger growth hormone all the time, you have like excess calories and nutrients and all that you might, you know, develop diabetes and cancer. So it's kind of like what do you what do you want to have like, do you want to live long and miserable or do you want to have cancer? Of course it's not black and white and cancer is more than that. And it's it's often just luck also partly with that, but with metabolic disease, definitely you can reduce your risk factors a lot. And degenerative diseases are the biggest risk factors of our generation in a sense of dying or any generation really, that if you look at it 60s 62% Not sorry, 64% of people who are more than 65 years old, there are more than two degenerative diseases 27% of world population has one or more degenerative disease. And those are what is a degenerative disease. It's like diabetes, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, nervous system issues like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. So or degeneration of the discs in your back or like something like this. So processes that break down the body slowly. And the things that speed it up is, of course, kind of typical up vestre and modern lifestyle, which is full of stress and not sleeping enough and like running from one place to another, and sleeping, sleeping on optimally and eating bad food and all that. Or, well, not bad food, but like

inflammatory food,

inflammatory foods. And, and then the things that would potentially slow it down, I think that reduce oxidative stress on a cellular level, that reduced the risk of DNA damage that reduce metabolic issues. And you can definitely, based on studies like different lifestyle factors, and dietary interventions can reduce your risk of diabetes and Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. But the thing is that you have to, like do it 1020 years earlier, like you can't do it, when you have heart disease or diabetes, I mean, you can't do something you can kind of there's ways to track yourself back, back to health. But it's more expensive, you know, sounds like a lot of damage has already been done, compared to if you actually do it in a more preventive way. And preventive health care is the future, I think, in terms of medicine, because the health care system is is not a healthcare system. It's a sick care system that focuses on diagnosis of sickness and illness. It basically focuses on diagnosing things that went for the things that show that it's already too late man. And, of course, they give you some pill or something to just like, help you to deal with it. And or, or restore the balance for a minute. But in the end to prevent that, that doesn't happen again. That's not like part of the equation, or to take action before you are ill. And I believe it's cheaper. That's don't believe. But that's the truth is that it's cheaper to increase health than it is to treat sickness. And it's cheaper to prevent disease than it is to treat sickness, because it's pretty cheap, almost free choices that you do every day that will help reduce that risk factor. Of course, you could hit be hit by a car, and for my generation is, you know, it's the biggest risk factor outside of degenerative diseases is that I will be hit by a car. So it's good idea to use a seatbelt. You know, 30 is, it's actually the biggest preventive health thing that you can do is to use a seatbelt. But it's less likely that you will die of an infectious disease, or a virus or something like this, it's much more likely that you will die of heart disease, and cancer and metabolic issues. And

when you think about it, like having been through a pandemic, a lot of governments initially were like, we can see obesity is a problem. We need to be more preventative. And certainly here in the UK, the Prime Minister initially was like, I want to get everyone healthy and fit, I'm gonna go out running, but it was it was relatively short lived in terms of any kind of prevention in terms of actually changing people's fundamental health risks.

Everyone heard during the pandemic that if you have one of these degenerative diseases, you're in a risk group. But Newsflash, it's for everything. Like any kind of seasonal flu or influenza or any kind of risk of hospitalisation goes off the roof. If you have a degenerative disease, like it's a comorbidity, you know, it's like it's an increased risk of morbidity in an event of instability in your system in any any kind of case. So

far, we've not seemingly reduced

we haven't, we haven't focused on it at all. You could take obesity, obesity is one of the best biggest risk factors cofactors and, at least in Europe, in average. 30 33% of men are overweight. And sorry 50 56% are overweight, and it's about 33% that have obesity. So obesity is a huge risk factor, but being overweight is also but like, basically. Like, there's countries like Spain where it's 60% 60%. Yeah, 60% are overweight or obese. And, and the thing is that these numbers are going up, based on world obesity, association studies, and predictions. These are going up very fast. Like, for a woman, woman, it's less. If I remember, it's like 25 26%.

Do you think women are more conscious of the health or

potentially smaller portions of food, I don't know what it is, maybe they take less risks. But in the end, fossil for woman, it will go from like, let's say 25% to 30%, in just a couple of years, in predicted, so we're not getting better at the pandemic actually accelerated a lot of these predictions because people were, didn't go to the gym, they ordered everything at home, you know, they didn't move around, they didn't meet the people. So and it's not that it happened, then that actually be installed behaviours, a collective level that are still there, there's still a lot of people who order food at home, that's sort of going out. There's still a lot of people who don't go to the gym, because they kind of got used to not going there.

People walk less now, because they work from home, they'd rather

have to own gold and go to a meeting. So there is a lot of behaviours that were implemented on a collective level during that time, that are just making us all worse, in that, those, those statistics and predictions in that regard. So in us, the life expectancy has been basically increasing all industrial time, from like, 45 to over 80 years. But now it's first time it's declining. And it's because of modern lifestyle. So you would think that biohacking wouldn't be the solution. I like becoming aware and optimising these things. But people often start these things too late, they need a trauma, first, they need some kind of health issue, they need need, like, doctor to tell them that you're gonna die if you don't change something, and often the even then people don't change anything. It's actually very interesting. You can tell someone who has cancer, that you have to do something for the next 18 months. And it's like, the adherence is super low.

Even when they have cancer, even even if they know

what they could potentially do to just extent their health, health fun little bit life and little bit. They still don't do it. And it's in medicine, medicine, there's the adherence problem is like 60% of people don't do what the doctor tells them to do. The adherence to taking a pill is pretty high, right? Yeah, let's try try lifestyle. Yeah, lifestyles too hard. It's even harder. It's easier at the Appeals is 60% adherence, oh, this pill is 60%. Yeah, lifestyle is even worse. If you tell someone you have to lose weight, you know, you start you should like start exercise detail before like most people don't, like at personal people aren't going to do anything.

Which kind of brings us back to the beginning, when you're looking at the sense of self, and people's kind of self actualization. And how they create their reality. What do you think is the answer, like you talked a little bit about meditation, I know from my own journey, it was actually going inwards was the only way for me to kind of become more in alignment with who I was, and allow that to kind of come out. I'm curious what you think the answer is?

Yeah, I mean, I explained the dangers of the extremes, you know, sense. And like that there is some shadow also, you know, what leads to certain plays, but if like most people don't change their behaviour, it's actually very beneficial that if your extreme health behaviours driven by trauma, that is actually it's beneficial that, you know, it becomes a control mechanism because it's actually a healthier control mechanism. And let's say you know, smoking crack cocaine, so like or drinking alcohol, like a sponge, so there's, there's it's so soothing mechanism, it's actually one of the healthier ones to be a bit like exercise health, you know, diet, not in a sense, but the problem here is that there's an industry Without exploits these people, you know, amount of exploits them in a sense. I mean, it's a free market economy. So if there is a need, you know, there's a supply very soon. So people are sold all kinds of solutions. And then we have this extreme health influencers who sell pretty extreme solutions, in a sense, and that's fine on its own. And, and we kind of need these characters in a sense to, you know, become aware of what is possible, because there's always like someone who is kind of an Olympic athlete in doing something to the extreme. Yeah, so I think like, internet, at least, and through these platforms is providing some alternatives to the kind of basic narrative, eat the food pyramid kind of thing, like government suggestions, or regulations, which people kind of intuitively feel is not working, if it was working, we would actually we would improve our targets, obesity would go down, right, you know, you know, cardiovascular disease, cancer, all of these would go down, if, if it is working, if it was working, if the system is working, we would improve. But it will look at the data we are not improving. So we need something else. And that I think is kind of what deep inside people feel is like, we need a new system, we need something else. And I believe that, like the preventive health care system, could potentially be, you know, something that brings, you know, hope and maybe focus on healthspan. And they'll spend optimization, a lot of this data is very beneficial. And what AI is bringing, because this is very complex, it's very easy, right? It's not easy, but it's like what medicine has at its best done is to reduce human health into a single variable, like cholesterol level or a blood sugar level. But actually, health is more complex than that. And everyone who does this stuff, in the extreme knows that, you know, you can't just measure cholesterol level, you have to measure hundreds of things. And it's about understanding the deficiencies and fixing the colour, like issues in a systematic lab level. And that there's correlations between things. Like you can't just look at the thyroid, you have to look at like a lot of things. For example, if you have tyroid problems, so if you want to fix it, so in the end, the way how I see it is that because it was very hard, and messy and complex to look at a complex picture, the answer was a reductionist approach of like reducing human health into single variable. Now with the help of machine learning and data that artificial intelligence could potentially analyse, you can have very soon a conversation with an advanced intelligence, about your health specifically, like that knows your DNA, your blood work, your daily patterns, your your behaviours, your data from your reading, your gut issues, and microbiome, microbial analysis and all that. And you can have a conversation, what should I order? You know, when I order a food delivery? Like what type of exercise would be optimal for me based on my genetics? Should I eat more kale or not? And like, a lot of these conversations that people are having with doctors or dietitians or nutritionists, or like personal trainers, and all that these people who we consider experts are not actually able to even deliver optimal answers, because it's very complex. And so we would think, with doctors, for example, that they would understand nutrition, but on the average amount of nutritional training that doctors get in medical school is, according to my doctor colleagues, two hours, about two hours, I mean, they know about a lot about what's going on in the human body and how it works and like they specialise in very narrow areas, but they're not experts on nutrition at all, like but still they behave like dental, as if they are the experts. They dismiss

like they know and they say no, no need to look at that. You don't need to worry about your micronutrients that's got nothing to do with your thyroid.

I mean, we've seen them before they show up to you like when you're recovering from heart surgery, they bring you like, a piece of bread and

apple crumble and custard.

Yeah, lovely English breakfast. So the way I see it this that because we humans, we are not very good. This complexity is where it's actually beneficial that are in capabilities being replaced by machines that are much more intelligent, capable of doing it. So it means that you know, you will have have a personal trainer or guide that is actually in the form of an algorithm that does a better job than any doctor or nutritionist or personal trainer can do. But in the end, it doesn't change the fact that you have to do the work exactly you have to do you have to change the behaviour. And the biggest obstacle, absolutely biggest success factor, to actually being able to change your lifestyle is not data, it's not certain devices, not certain diet, it is community is people who surround yourself with if you're surrounded by people who laugh at your diet, you're not gonna continue doing it. But if you're surrounded by people who support you, and we learn from, that's beneficial. And that's what I see, you know, these kind of conferences like health optimization summit and Barker summit today organised. It's a place where you find people who are struggling with the same issue as you are, they want to change something, and you find others day that doesn't really matter as much as the, you know, new friends that you can surround yourself with. And I think technology can there also help that we can more easily connect to others who are, you know, want to, you know, achieve the same or change the same things, want to do the crazy ice baths or breath work every morning or whatever, like, it's so important. That's why people pay for gym memberships. That's why people pay for all kinds of programmes and coaches and all that. So that they would have someone who they're accountable to because they're not accountable to themselves, or have a community that they feel they're accountable to. Because they they can't really, you know, easily do that change as long. So that's kind of what is key that all right. Yeah.

So on that note, we can close on the biohacker. Summit is next in October,

yeah, 14th and 15th of October, in Amsterdam. And every year we have a different team that we focus on. Previously, we had teams like longevity and all that now. Now. It's expanding consciousness. So it's in all its in different forms for computing October, and we also plan to do an event in 2024, in Helsinki in Finland, and that will focus actually on daily routines, most likely. It's going to gather in all different perspectives and people and technology isn't all that like the darker tackling on these on these things

that we spoke about. mazing and you just relaunched your podcast.

Yeah, the bikers podcast, this is running again. And we feature a lot of the excellent presentations that have been given in Parker summit previously, and then I'm adding my own takes or if the topic is, let's say, ketogenic diets, then I speak about that life and what's the latest science and all that like, in combination with some some of the world's top experts

explaining it? Amazing, like, can people connect with you, Tim?

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm on Instagram, obviously, if you want to see my fake profile online, so

my facade so my cafe shot photographs?

Yeah, yeah, they're modern, but like, Microsoft mythos on Instagram, and blockers on mit.com. And they're more than a.com for my ideas. Awesome. Thank you very much.

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