This is incontrovertible evidence that
growing of hair is reversible and it can
be pretty fast. Wow. And there's more.
So, we all walk around with our
biological history encoded in your hair.
Like for example, if you have marijuana
6 months ago, it's going to be in your
hair.
>> I need to get a haircut. I'm joking.
>> So, my research lab had the idea that if
we could find what was happening in this
person's life when this young hair
become old, then we could understand the
mechanism of the aging process.
>> So, what is secret to anti-aging? It's
the proper allocation of energy.
>> Can you can you how what's the simplest
way you can explain that to me?
>> So, first energy is real and it's the
difference between feeling like you can
change the world or feeling completely
drained and a lot of people live on that
end of the spectrum and it's because
there's a finite energy budget with a
hierarchy of energy needs in the body.
For example, we did an experiment
because we wanted to know how much
energy does it cost to worry about the
future, to ruminate about yesterday. And
we found that the stress hormone
increased energy expenditure by 60%.
Right? So, it needs to steal energy from
some of the things that keep you young.
So, it's not the stress that burns us
down, it's the response to stress. And
the third piece is this energy is from
your mitochondria. And there's about
5,000 trillion mitochondria in your
body. And so, they made our bodies
possible. And they can change how you
feel. Well, I read that studies on
brains of dead people have found that
those with greater sense of purpose have
more efficient mitochondria.
>> Yes, we are really in service of the
mitochondria. They allow us to be alive.
>> Okay, I've got so many questions for you
based on what people wanted to know.
It's like how patients with me, chronic
fatigue or long COVID safely
rehabilitate their mitochondria? What I
consume, how does that impact the
efficiency of the energy? if red light
therapy impacts mitochondria and is
there anything I can do to have more
energy available? But before that, I've
heard you say that most diseases or
disorders can be explained by
understanding energy resistance.
>> Yeah, we think there's increased energy
resistance in cancer than Alzheimer's.
Like fundamentally, diabetes is a
disease of energy resistance.
>> So, is there anything I can do?
>> There is. So, we can start by
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>> Dr. Martin Picard, what is it that you
believe, know, or understand that most
people out there don't believe, know, or
understand?
>> We are energy.
We literally are the energy that's
flowing through the body.
>> Mhm.
>> And and that sounds a little woo if you
don't have context. And that's I think
something that we're just starting to
have the right scientific framework to
to understand to understand ourselves
from first principles as energetic
processes.
>> In a nutshell, what is it that people
are looking for when they
listen to this subject of energy?
>> Yeah, I think people want to understand
what is energy and how can I have more
energy? I can relate to that because
sometimes you know if I look through my
life sometimes I wake up and I feel
amazing and I really have in my view
done the same thing but then sometimes I
wake up and I don't feel amazing
>> and it feels kind of like roulette like
this sort of opaque mystery of how do I
wake up on with more days in a row and
feel amazing like I can take on the
world
>> and then there's also some friends that
I have who are suffering with different
things whether it's chronic illness or
long co or whatever who repeatedly wake
up and feel low energy for years, you
know, at a time.
>> Yeah, it's a really tough place to be
when you wake up repeatedly and and you
don't feel like you have the capacity,
the energy to be in the world. It's it's
a really tough place to be.
>> And and who are you and why did you
commit your life to this subject? I'm a
regular guy who with you know lived
experiences who who's gone through some
tough things that have taught me lessons
and have gone through wonderful things
that have made me feel like life is
really special and precious and then I
became a scientist and as I learned the
tools of science I started to see and I
discovered mitochondria I thought this
is an approach to start to bridge what's
true about the human experience that we
know from first experience empirically
and we know to be real not because you
know some white coatwearing doctor or
scientist you just said yes energy is
real it's in your mitochondria we know
it to be real from first experience
right because we we feel it and then
what science is telling us about how
things work in our bodies right and
about health and and disease and where
diseases come from so I had these
questions so I became a scientist to
bridge those domains of of existence the
the science and the experience um so
I've led a research group at Columbia
University for 10 years uh and founded
an institute uh to really build the
systems and technologies to to help
people grow, heal and and and transform.
>> You have a PhD in mitochondria.
>> Yep. My PhD was in mitochondrial biology
of aging.
>> I mean, there's a an image here in front
of me. Some people will just be
listening, so we'll try and explain it
for them, but there's an image here of a
video. I'll play the video on screen now
and it kind of looks like a looks a
little bit like an alien but I I I read
that this video was quite formative for
you. What is that video and why was that
formative moment in your career?
>> I took this video in England uh in
Newcastle upon time in the north of
England uh with my Jordy friends uh the
medical school there. I was a graduate
student and went there for kind of an
exchange and this is the first time I
saw mitochondria moving. I saw like the
inner life of ourselves and when I saw
this something struck me it's like oh my
god I'm able to see this right and to
see living mitochondria because of the
mitochondria inside of me. It's the
energy that's flowing through my
mitochondria in my eye, right, that's
allowing me to perceive to see this.
Mitochondria made multisellular life
possible. They made our bodies possible
and and we might just be a vehicle for
mitochondria to kind of propagate and
keep on living. So when I saw this like
this is mitochondria looking at
mitochondria
>> and then I was starting to understand
that mitochondria do more than just
transforming energy. What they're known
for is they take the food you eat and
then they take the oxygen that you
breathe in and then those two things the
food the oxygen converge inside the
mitochondria and then something really
special happens. The electrons that are
stuck on food that were stuck together
in a green leaf somewhere right
photosynthesis. What your mitochondria
do is they they kind of unpack this and
they rip off the electrons one by one
and then they flow them like a little
electrical circuit. And that happens in
like the 5,000 trillion mitochondria
that are in your body. And then when the
electrons flow, they need to flow
towards something just like in an
electrical circuit. Electrons flow from
one pole of the battery to the negative
to to the other pole of the battery. Uh
and that circuit is closed in the
mitochondria. So the the electrons from
the food you eat flow towards oxygen
that you breathe and then it becomes
water. And and it's that vital flow of
energy, electrons flowing towards oxygen
that allows us to be alive. And uh
mitochondria do this. And then as they
do this, they transform energy from food
biochemistry into electricity and into
signals and into heat. And the reason
the body is warm is because the
mitochondria as they transform and flow
electrons like a little energetic
circuit, they release heat. So the
source of heat, right, that makes us
warm. You shake someone's hand, you feel
their warmth. you were feeling they
weren't from their mitochondria.
>> So is there a mitochondria in every
single cell in my body?
>> There's on average a thousand
mitochondria per cell.
>> Per cell there's a thousand. So how many
is there in my body?
>> About 5,000 trillion.
>> Who should care
>> about the mitochondria and why should
they care about it?
>> Mhm. Anyone who cares about their
energy, right? About having enough
energy to do what they really care
about.
>> Uh we all care about different things.
We're we're all gifted and talented for
different things. Uh everyone has this,
you know, unique authentic self that
wants to come out. The only way for this
to come out and the only way for a
person to flourish is through energy.
>> Mhm.
>> If there's no energy flowing through
your body, you're dead, right? And if
the energy doesn't flow efficiently,
right, and smoothly through you as an
organism, then life feels hard. Like
you're not at your best. you feel tired
and and you feel like, you know, maybe
it's not worth it. You know, when you're
sick and your immune system is like
draining all of your energy, it's really
hard to be optimistic and it's hard to
be a good person and it's hard to be a
good dad
>> and it's hard to want to do good for the
world if you're struggling with energy.
Do
>> you know what it is? So many of us think
that that just is what it is and that we
can do nothing about that.
>> Yeah. You know, we we breathe in, we eat
food, and then how we feel is kind of
roulette.
>> Yeah.
>> There's this certain I think feeling a
lot of us have that we can't really
control that much.
>> Mhm.
>> Where do we need to start to understand?
Cuz the outcome I want from this
conversation is I want to live my life
with more energy to do the things that I
want to do. And I imagine the people
that are listening also feel the same
way. So where does one have to start?
I'd like to understand the basics and
then move to the actionable stuff like
things I can do
>> so that I live my life full of energy.
>> Yeah. So there there are three things
that are really foundational to how
energy works in the human body. One is
that you are the energy that's flowing
through this body.
>> I am the energy that's flowing through
my body.
>> Yes.
>> So I'm not my body.
>> You're not your body.
>> Okay. I'm the energy flowing through it.
>> You Stephen.
>> Yeah.
>> This expression now that I'm getting to
experience.
>> Thank you.
This expression is an expression of the
flow of energy. If there was no energy
flowing through your body, through your
heart, through your brain, like you
wouldn't be right. You'd be a cadaavver
and we'd say Steven is gone. You know, a
dead body.
>> Yeah. You'd be a dead body. The
difference between a dead body, a
cadaavver, and a living, thinking,
feeling, conscious person, who cares, is
the flow of energy.
>> Okay.
>> You you get so indoctrinated in this
worldview that the only thing that's
real is the physical stuff. and you know
the nucle the the genes that that you
got from your parents and the body the
physical body and that's the real stuff
what you can't see with your eyes not
real
>> right I think that's a reframe that's
kind of a bigger picture mindset shift
that uh we need to and and scientists
struggled with so number one is you are
the energy that flows and transforms
uh through this body number two is
there's a fixed energy budget right all
of us have a fairly fixed energy budget
to deal with and and for example if you
want to have more energy to do more
podcasts to write more articles to uh
you know be more creative. The solution
is not eating more because there's this
fixed energy budget and if you overload
the system you feed it too much food
especially too much sugar it's really
hard on the system and then the system
like an electrical system you jack up
the voltage right and then the system
starts to overheat. Uh so inflammation
is this this overheating there's too
much energy in the system and uh or the
cells are are burning too much energy
and they need to kind of tell other
cells that's and those signals we call
inflam inflammation cytoines.
>> Mhm. So there's a fixed energy budget
that you have to deal with and over time
the organism does a lot of of uh
finessing and adapting to kind of try to
preserve this energy budget
>> and that's somewhat linked to stress I
guess which is I read your work and it
talked about how stress was basically
just like an over consumption of energy.
It's requiring loads and loads and loads
of energy.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. We'll talk about that too then
because I think stress is a really
important one. What's the third?
>> The third one is life is resistance.
In order to be alive, in order to to
grow, to learn, uh to transform, right,
change your views, you need resistance
to go through some resistance.
>> Mhm.
>> You need energy to go through some
resistance, right? If energy just flows
and there's no zero resistance, then
there's no possible transformation. So
if life was always easy
>> and you never faced any challenge any
stress in your life then you would just
remain as is right and and it would be
very boring and from first principles
physics like we know this to be true you
know at a number of levels but for
example the sun this beautiful nuclear
reactor in the sky shoots energy right
as photons. So light is a form of energy
and as long as light you know just goes
and and photons travels in outer space
photon will remain photon light energy
will remain light energy until that
light energy hits a green leaf right and
the green leaf basically breaks or stops
the photon in its path. So it's it
offers a constraint right it offers
resistance. So when light energy faces
resistance now it can be converted and
that's the basis of making food. That's
how nature makes food. It crystallizes
energy from sunlight into molecules.
Life you know plants crystallize light
energy into carbohydrates. Uh and then
those are transformed into the different
kinds of food that we eat. We need
resistance for energy to transform into
something meaningful.
>> So what has um mitochondria got to do
with all of this?
>> Mitochondria are basically little
resistors, right? And and they are what
allows the flow of energy through the
system.
>> Have you got a picture of Okay, here we
go.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. So this is a an image of a
mitochondria.
>> A mitochondria. O N is a singular and
mitochondria is plural. Yeah. So this is
a mitochondrian and there's about a
thousand of these in each of your cells.
>> Okay. And there's about five trillion
cells in your body uh that have a
nucleus and that have these beautiful
mitochondria. And what you see here,
these little wings, these are called
christi. And the christi is where the
food you eat end up and where the oxygen
you breathe end up as well. So this is
where the electrons are flowing. There's
like little electrical circuits here.
And as the electrons are flowing, the
mitochondria become charged like little
batteries. So effectively a
mitochondrian like this has all of these
sites of oxygen consumption and and food
consumption and then that gets
transformed uh into a little charge
battery and once the battery is charged
uh the mitochondria can use that charge
to make ATP adenosine triphosphate which
is kind of the the cellular energy
currency. If a cell wants to contract
right a muscle cell wants to contract in
the gym it needs ATP. So it calls upon
the mitochondria says I need ATP and
then the mitochondria gets to work uh
and then flows uh electrons consumes
some food burns some oxygen that's why
you get out of breath right so when you
get out of breath is because the
mitochondria are using the oxygen and
calling for more oxygen what we've been
discovering is that mitochondria do a
lot more than just making ATP
>> okay
>> they use their their energized state to
produce signals to receive information
and then to produce signals
>> oh so they're talking to each other
>> they're talking to each other
>> and what are they saying?
>> They're they're it's a whole collective
and and they're talking to each other
kind of monitoring what's happening not
only inside the cell but outside the
cell. So on the surface of mitochondria
all along there are little receptors for
all sorts of signals that tells this
mitochondrian is there enough energy? Is
there are we running out of energy? Is
there a stress hormone here? Should we
be getting ready for you know something
dangerous? Uh so mitochondria are like
like a little distributed brain right?
Right. So they're like the intracellular
brain.
>> Am I right in thinking that they used to
be bacteria?
>> They are. Yeah, they did. Yeah.
>> What What is that story? Cuz I I think
someone said that to me before on the
show that our mitochondria are actually
bacteria that from prehistoric times or
something.
>> So the story is about 1.5 billion years
ago. Uh that there was two different
types of bacteria. One type was able to
use oxygen to transform energy, right?
So it could fuel on oxygen and and other
food substrates. The other type could
not. It was anorobic and the anorobic
bacterium was probably a little bigger
and it had like a few more genes. Um,
and it could only ferment its food and
kind of fermenting the food, spitting
out, you know, like lactate or like
yeast does. And what happened is the big
one either engulfed the small one,
right? Or maybe the small one kind of
infiltrated, colonized the big one. And
the story goes uh that this basically
gave a whole bunch more energy to the
big cell. That's one perspective. And
then with more energy, what can you do?
You can evolve more complexity. The
version I I favor based on the evidence
we have is that when mitochondria came
in and then they there was this new
structure, this symbiotic relationship,
mitochondria basically gave the ability
of the cell to perceive the environment
in a different way and to compute
information in a different way. So maybe
the the the coming of of mitochondria
into this big cell made the big cell
social because before this event most of
the evidence says that cells were
asocial. They were little bacteria
foraging for for for themselves and you
know kind of operating from a very
selfish uh perspective just trying to
replicate you know trying to survive.
When mitochondria came in it like gave
those cells a different view on life and
they're like woo we could work together.
How about you become a cell that gets
energy, right? And I become a cell that
uh moves, right? So then you're the gut
and I'm going to be the muscle and and
then then together those two cells can
do a lot more, right?
>> And fast forward a couple billion years
and here we are.
>> Here we are. Yeah. And and that led to,
you know, bodies with organs. You know,
the liver feeds the rest of the body.
The heart keeps things flowing. The
brain kind of computes and and plans. Uh
so that's division of labor. It's uh and
it started with the mitochondria.
>> You you talked about energy resistance.
I've heard you say that most diseases or
disorders can be explained by
understanding energy resistance. Give me
a disease that's linked to energy
resistance.
>> The clearest is what we call insulin
resistance or diabetes, right? Diabetes
affects millions in the world.
Fundamentally, diabetes is a disease of
energy resistance. Uh so if the
resistance is too high
>> because
>> because you have um too much energy
pushed onto the system,
>> sugar, too much sugar, glucose.
>> Yeah, exactly. Or if the mitochondria
are impaired, right, and they can't flow
energy, then the the the energy is kind
of stuck. It faces greater constraints.
Like it wants to go in that direction,
but then there's a barrier and then
another barrier, another barrier. It's
like water flowing, right? nice and and
and and smooth. And then there's like a
dam, right? And if the dam has zero um
openings, right, then the the water
accumulates and then there's high
pressure and then at some point the the
water accumulates and ends up flooding
the the landscape and then damaging
things. So it's a bit like the same
thing. If now you open floodgates on the
dam, right, and then you can use that
energy to make electricity, for example.
You use the the movement of the water to
transform this into electricity. That's
basically what the mitochondria do. Uh
and if you move and you're physically
active, now the flow of energy through
the mitochondria can transform into
work, right? And to speed into uh
movement, right, into lifting.
>> Is this linked to cancer at all? Because
it sounds I mean I don't know much about
cancer, but
>> cells dividing out of um control
>> seemingly randomly. Yeah, I think that
there's a very good chance if you look
at the biology of cancer and what
scientists call the hallmarks of cancer,
there's like a a 10 item flywheel of
these are the core features of of
cancer. Uh all of those features have
some relationship some very direct with
increased energy resistance. Right? So
if energy can't flow smoothly and a cell
uh is you know burning too much energy
and it doesn't flow energy through the
mitochondria which is what cancer cells
do cancer cells ditch their mitochondria
and they revert back to this ancestral
you know cell that didn't have
mitochondria it was anorobic it was
spitting out lactate and we don't really
know why cells do this called the
Warberg effect and the Warberg effect is
when a cell in the presence of oxygen
right if it wanted it could use oxygen
flow electrons through mitochondria uh
and transform energy and and live a nice
social life like every cell in in this
social collective does in the body. Uh
what cancer cells do is they say I'm not
going to use my mitochondria even if
there's oxygen even if my mitochondria
can respire. And by doing this it seems
like cancer cells revert back to this
ancestral cell right that that just
cares about itself
>> the antisocial cell.
>> Yeah. then the the the organism will in
the tumor will try to make more blood
vessels around it. Right? It's called
angioenesis. So it's like the the cancer
cell trying to decrease energy
resistance. It says bring me more
oxygen.
>> So it's kind of like there's a sort of
alien all of a sudden that decides it no
longer wants to work with the rest of
the organism and that it's going to be
selfish and demand more and more
resources for itself
>> and it multiplies itself.
>> Yeah.
>> With equally selfish little aliens.
>> Yeah. And then the body responds by
listening to it and giving it more
resources. Is that what you're saying?
Why do the blood vessels surround the
cancer?
>> Yeah. It's like it's the cancer calling
for you know more energy.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. So energy resistance is the
product of two things. Is how much
energy is being demanded right? Like how
much power is being deployed in in the
in the tumor for example or in the
working muscle. Uh and then how much
energy is can flow through the system.
That's like the equivalent of current in
an electrical system. So if there's a
lot of demand, right, a lot of power is
being generated or a lot of activity is
happening like in a cancer cell, but
there's not enough flow to to to support
that activity, then that increases
resistance.
>> So is there any understanding as to how
those kind of cancers are caused? like
what what causes that moment where you
know you talked about the Wahberg effect
what causes that
>> the cancer community used to think that
the main driver for cancer was genetic
mutations but there's an emerging
perspective that changes in metabolism
changes in the way electrons flow
through through this energetic circuitry
through the mitochondria can actually
drive the uh instance of a of a new
cancer cell and then when a cell becomes
cancerous ditches it its mitochondria it
goes back to this selfish state and then
it makes more of itself
>> and it tries not to die. Explain that
part to me because I was reading about
how cancer cells try and evade death.
>> Yeah. The best way to think about this I
think is as a a social collective,
right? Every cell in this organism uh
cares about the same thing which is pres
preserving the the life and and the
health of the whole being,
>> right? So every cell in in this body is
in a social contract with every other
cell, right? A cancer cell basically uh
gets out of this agreement and says no
no no I'm going to fair for myself. I'm
going to take all the energy I can uh
and I'm going to make more of myself and
it it goes into you know bacterial mode
that happens um sometimes because of
mutations and it seems like there there
are other causes of this like for
example hypoglycemia
>> what's that
>> high blood glucose
>> right uh diabetes is a major risk factor
for developing cancer
why is that I don't think there there
are good explanations out there based on
like the molecular framework of of
disease and you know the the genetic
mutation perspective um if you look at
cancer from an an energetic perspective
and it's I think likely that the
increase in blood glucose increases the
pressure right there's more electrons
that are being pushed onto those cells
to those mitochondria and when you push
too much energy on a system that doesn't
need energy it's like you're trying to
shove you know a lot of of water through
a very small pipe
>> something goes wrong
>> yeah something goes wrong some something
can break. Uh so the the resistance is
uh if you push a lot of energy into a
very small you know container or into a
a channel that can't support that then
the the what happens kind of physically
is an increase in in the resistance to
the flow. Uh and then that can lead to
the cell trying to protect itself. Uh
that's what insulin resistance is in
diabetes. Right? Insulin resistance is a
protection mechanism. there's too much
glucose being pushed onto the cell,
right? And so that causes this excess,
you know, energy coming in. The cell
says, you know, too much and and it
damages the mitochondria, this excess
resistance because there's too much heat
produced, reactive oxygen species,
oxidative stress.
>> I was thinking about smoking and how
smoking also is carcoenic. It's
cancer-causing. Yeah.
>> And through the lens of the
mitochondria, how could something like
smoking be
cancer-causing? Yeah, it's clear that in
cigarette smoke there are carcinogens.
They're molecules that can damage the
genome and cause mutations. Uh it
there's a strong link between lung
cancer and smoking, but for all of the
other cancers, there's much less of a a
clear connection between exposure and
cancer, right? The cancers that that
affect and and kill most people, uh we
don't really know, you know, why they
come, when they come. uh and it's clear
that there's kind of a long history and
uh the the science behind you know
connecting metabolism and cancer shows
that obesity and uh high blood glucose
and diabetes especially which causes
very high you know excursion have very
high spikes in in blood glucose. Those
things are damaging to our cells. And
what the energy resistance principle
says is that biology processes energy in
terms of resistance and it makes that
kind of computation. How much energy is
flowing now? And then how much how much
energy demand and how much energy
pressure am I exposed to and if there's
an imbalance then that uh causes damage.
>> Rather than being innocent bystanders,
mitochondria are hijacked by cancer. The
tumor reprograms them to stop acting
like the body's protective energy
factories and starts using them as a
manufacturing plant to build more cancer
cells. Because of this, targeting
mitochondrial metabolism has become a
major promising frontier in developing
new cancer therapies.
>> Mhm.
>> It hijacks the the mitochondria and uses
them to produce more cancer cells. Mhm.
>> H.
>> So a normal cell
uh is driven its behavior is driven by
the mitochondria. Like mitochondria are
in the driver's seat,
>> right? Mitochondria can basically call
the shots. If is the cell to live and
divide, right? Or is the cell to
contract and remain this kind of cell?
Or if it's a stem cell, is it to divide
or remain a stem cell? Uh or is it to
die? Right? And cells have to make these
decisions all the time. And cell suicide
for the greater good is something that
happens all the time in our bodies. And
that's why and how we get rid of most
cancer cells, right? As far as we
understand, you have a cell that kind of
defects from the social collective and
then the organism has the wisdom to say,
okay, this is no longer ours. Let's get
rid of it, right? Because it could
become cancer. And most of the time that
works well. Uh but what cancer cells can
do is say, okay, I'm they ditch their
mitochondria and then they start to use
them for their own growth. uh and by
ditching their mitochondria they
basically immunize themselves against
the death that mitochondria could could
trigger. So mitochondria have a veto on
cell life or death and cancer somehow is
able to kind of get away from that.
>> And it's it's weird to think about
because yeah the things that are cause
cancer or that have a correlation to
cancer are things like you know as you
said like having too much of this stuff
here too much sugar
>> the white stuff. Yes.
>> High blood glucose levels etc are linked
to cancer. And one would wonder why
eating sugar in excess is going to
increase my probability of cancer. But
obviously it points to the fact that it
must be doing something to my energy
systems which are causing some kind of
malfunction somewhere.
>> Yeah. And what the energy resistance
principle allows us to understand is why
that is and what's really happening. If
you overload your body with excess
energy, the body has to deal with this.
And in a simple electrical system
circuit, if you jacked up, you know, the
voltage and the system is is too weak to
take this, then resistance goes through
the roof. the transistors start to melt
and then the system you know gets gets
damaged. The the same thing happens you
know in the body if you overload the
system with too much energy too many
electrons right very direct parallel
with the electrical circuit there
electrons stuck here on these little
glucose molecules if you ingest this now
it increases the voltage in the body and
then if the mitochondria can't keep up
and because they're they're not flowing
energy because you're sedentary you're
you're not moving um then that increases
the resistance right and then
>> and they might die or malfunction ion
>> correct or things get damaged, right?
The the clear connection here is too
much energy increase energy resistance.
So then the electrons that normally flow
smoothly in your metabolism, right, from
the food to your mitochondria,
then that whole circuit becomes more
resistive. And if you're an electron and
you're trying to go through the the
metabolic pathways looking for oxygen in
a mitochondrian, but then at every at
every point in this cascade, you face
resistance. there is more chance that
that electron kind of jets out and and
then becomes oxidative stress.
>> Well, then what's what's going on with
aging? I've got two women in front of me
and they have two different colors of
hair. Now, let's just pretend for
argument sake and for the sake of this
uh explanation that this is someone's
hair that's gone gray because of stress.
Um, and this is what she used to look
like or he used to look like in terms of
the color of their hair. What I found
really interesting because it kind of
speaks to lots of things that are going
on going on in the body is you're saying
you can actually reverse
gray hair
without dying it. And if so, what does
that tell us about what gray hair is?
But more broadly about stress, energy,
mitochondria, and everything in between.
>> Yeah. Uh what we discovered is that hair
graying is reversible. And and that was
surprising because what I've learned and
what most people learn is that when you
age, it's kind of this linear
progressive decline and and there's kind
of nothing you can do about it. Uh but
it turns out that if you look on most
people's head,
um you can see things like this. This is
obviously, you know, this was dyed and
all of the hairs were were white and
then all the hairs are are are dark. And
if you take a hair like this, uh the tip
here, right, was inside the body long
time ago. This is almost like if you
looked at tree rings,
>> right? You take a tree and you cut it in
cross-section, you see like the rings
and then you can say, "Ooh, this ring
was uh 30 years ago, right? And this
ring is today." Uh so you can use that
to kind of map the history of what
happened in the environment of of the
tree. You can do the same thing. We all
walk around with biological history
crystallized in in this hair. And that's
why if you want to know if someone had a
drug for example like a month ago or six
months ago or two years ago depending
how long the hair is, you can actually
use the hair and all along would be, you
know, the chemical signature of what you
took. So you can find marijuana in in
the hair, you know, here but not here.
So if you if you have marijuana 6 months
ago, it's going to be in your hair and
you're going to walk around uh with that
trace, that physical trace in in your
body.
>> He's got a haircut. I'm joking.
And the idea was if we could find hairs
on someone's head that the tip was uh
dark, right? And then when you look
closer to the body, it becomes white,
right? And you would say the hair was
young, it was young, it was young, it
was young, and then boom, it became old,
right? It lo it lost color. Hair growing
is a a classic hallmark of aging. Um
then we thought then you would know
something that something was happening
in this hair follicle in this person's
body, right? that made this young hair
become old and then maybe we could
understand the mechanisms of the aging
process. So this became kind of an
interesting scenario and through doing
this we found people started to send us
hair samples in Ziploc bags you know
over the mail uh and we were looking for
two colored hairs a single hair that has
two colors kind of like this uh and we
found hairs that uh you know head hair,
beard hair, pubic hairs that showed the
signature. the hair was dark and then it
became white or the hair was white and
it became dark again.
>> So we had physical evidence from like
multiple people that showed white hairs
can go back to being dark and this
contradicted this idea that you know
aging is this linear progressive process
that we're kind of doomed to experience
without any flexibility. I was one of
the participants in that study. I ended
up finding five hairs that had this
pattern. And when we looked at when the
reversal happened, we found that the re
reversal happened when I went on
vacation. And I would go back in those
days on annual uh cycling uh training
camps. So I would go for a week. Yeah.
Where all you do is you bike, you eat,
you sleep. Uh energy started to move
very differently in my body during that
that time. Um, and then when we looked
at the hair and we analyze the the
composition, the molecular composition,
that's what scientists do. You can take
a hair like this, snip the pieces, the
white segment, the dark segment, it's
all the same genome, right? Every hair
has the same genome, the same genetic
material, same food, uh, same physical
activity, same everything. Why some
hairs are like this or like that, uh,
was an opportunity to understand the
dynamics, the plasticity, like how life
can go from being young to old or old
back to young. Uh, and what we found was
that the main signal was a mitochondrial
signal. And in the white hair, I thought
there's going to be less color, right?
Obviously, but also probably less
mitochondria, less, you know, some other
things. We found that the white hairs
have more mitochondria
>> and there was an upregulation of the
body, the the hair follicle where the
hair was becoming old wasn't kind of
letting go of things. It was doing more.
So that means during that period of time
you are more stressed and using more
energy.
>> When cells become old instead of just
dying right they struggle and when a
cell has damage in the DNA or the
mitochondria not working properly or for
some reason they accumulate damage they
become old the cell struggles to make
more mitochondria and it it tries to
kind of compensate and then ends up
wasting a lot of energy in the process.
So on that hair what you looked at that
was gray let's call it um it had more
mitochondria because it was struggling
and why was it struggling?
>> It looks like stress hormones can you
know make a cell struggle for example
>> cortisol. Cortisol. Yes, if you're a
cell, right, and your perspective on the
world is pretty simple,
uh you don't have, you know, the senses
that, you know, we we enjoy, but you do
never let us, you know, sense the
environment. If cortisol comes and you
get the signal, uh it means there's
something out there in the environment
that's dangerous, right? You should be
preparing for having to fight or to
flight or there there's something out
there that's dangerous. Our cells
evolved to interpret cortisol in that
way. Um so, we did an experiment in the
dish. We wanted to know how much energy
does it cost to worry about the future,
right? Or how much energy does it cost
to ruminate about yesterday?
>> Mhm.
>> The thing you didn't do or the mistake
you made at work or that conversation
that went sideways, you know, with your
partner. Uh how much energy does that
cost to be thinking about this, to be,
you know, engaging your stress system,
to be releasing cortisol? Uh so two
students in the lab, Gabriel and Natalia
did that experiment. They put you put
cells in a dish. You give them the
equivalent of cortisol. how much energy
is going to cost for these cells to
prepare. There's nothing damaging
to the cortisol itself, but the cortisol
is a signal that there might be
something dangerous outside, right?
That's like when you're sitting down,
you get an email, you're like, I might
lose my job, right? Or I might not get
this contract and then you you have this
whole stress response. Your heart starts
to beat faster. How much energy does
that cost? Uh so in cells in a dish, we
can isolate that question really well.
We found that the stress hormone
increased energy expenditure like the
cost of life by 60%.
>> So when I'm stressed I'm using 60% more
energy theoretically.
>> I don't know about you but cells in a
dish.
>> Okay.
>> So there the beauty about like bodies
and you know with the mind and you know
this complex organism they're buffering
systems right? So you might I don't
think your energy expenditure increases
by 60% if you're stressed out but it
increases somewhat. What is that graph
there?
>> So there are two graphs here. Uh the top
one is the color of the hair of a single
hair from a young Asian woman who was
part of the study. And what we see here,
this is called the hair pigmentation
pattern, the HPP that we we developed in
the lab to understand quantitatively
bring science to this to hair graying
and and reversal. And so what you see
here is this hair was dark and then it
became white for two centimeters and
then boom completely regained color.
Actually it regained it was darker here
than it than it used to be. Right. And
then stayed dark afterwards. So this is
a hair that we received uh in the mail
as we were starting to to collect uh two
colored hairs. Um and then when we when
we saw this we we had found from a few
different people white hairs that had
regained color. We've never seen a hair
like this. That's dark, white, and then
dark. Right? So, I remember holding this
hair. I was like, "Oh my god, this is in
the same hair." This was
incontrovertible evidence that graying
of hair is reversible. And it can be
pretty pretty fast. Like this transition
here is just a few weeks. This is about
one week, right? So, this white hair
completely white regained color in just
about a week. Um so then we developed an
instrument which was a simple sheet on
the yaxis the vertical is most stressful
thing that ever happened to you. No
stress at all. 10 and zero. And then on
the x axis the horizontal was time. Yes.
On the far right is now. Right. This is
now. This is a year ago. And then we
labeled all the months. And then we ask
people and we ask this uh lady put a dot
on the graph that was the most stressful
time in the past year that anyone can do
the exercise past year most stressful
time.
Okay, maybe last March and then you put
a dot right in March number 10 and then
least stressful part zero and then put
other like meaningful things that
happened that were challenging. So
people put dots, you know, along the
this last year, then connect the dots,
right? The red graph is her dots
connected
>> and it correlates perfectly to her hair
going gray.
>> Correct. And what happened to her life?
She said she finished her PhD thesis and
she was jobless, but she was fine. She
was happy to be done with her studies
and then broke up with her boyfriend.
>> Oh, damn. And her hair went gray.
>> Yeah. Broke up with her boyfriend. She
didn't know what was happening with her
life. She had to travel to Europe. There
was some family drama. Uh she said these
were the la the most stressful two
months of my life.
>> There's a killer question here which is
if that remains chronic does that hair
follicule go gray forever.
>> Yeah.
>> I.e. if I go through a a stressful
period for 2 to 3 weeks and my hair goes
a bit gray. As long as I get out of that
stressful period as quick as possible,
does that hair then return to to black
or dark?
>> Yeah.
>> Do you see what I'm saying here?
>> Yes. It seems like and we ran some like
fancy mathematical model to understand
why this would be possible, why it could
happen like now for this hair and then
be reversible. But we know, you know,
very well if you have a full head of
gray hair and you're 70 years old,
you're not going to regain your color.
Yeah.
>> So there seems to what the model the
mathematical model suggested is that
there's a window of opportunity, right?
where a hair slowly accumulates damage,
becomes more and more probably
energetically inefficient, right? So
there's more and more energy resistance
and then there's a barrier and then when
the the hair hits that threshold now it
loses color.
>> It's done.
>> Yeah. But then if something changes in
the body, right, you go on vacation or
you start to do intermittent fasting and
then there's more energy available for
your dark hair. Now it can be reversed,
right? Because you can go back up
against that threshold. But then
eventually this hair is going to go gray
again. And then if you're way way down
like this hair turned gray 10 years ago
and you go back up, you're too far away
from threshold to regain color.
>> Okay?
>> So it suggests some threshold model that
there's a window of opportunity for some
something as binary as hair color. It's
black or it's white, right? So there's
kind of a window of opportunity there
where
>> where you can reverse gray hair.
>> Yes. I I do want to come back to this
hair thing, but it did make me think
because you you added a layer of nuance
there, which is about the mind.
>> Like if I go through my life um with a
more resilient mind and you get that bad
email and you go and I get the bad
email, I go, "Fuck it. Who cares?"
>> Yeah.
>> Am I therefore going to be a way more
productive person throughout those 24
hours because my mitochondria are using
less energy because there's less
cortisol?
>> Yeah. Based on what we know, I think
that's likely correct.
So, it's not the stress that burns us
down, it's the response to stress. And
nothing is free in biology. And for your
heart to beat a little faster, if you
mount a response to that email, right,
you're burning energy in your heart. And
then you're tensing your, you know, your
your shoulder. That's burning energy.
Now, your brain is going into like
rumination mode and then this thing and
then then it makes you think about your
childhood and this and like and then the
anx the anxiety and then you start to
sweat like everything costs energy.
So the chain of events is I get the
email. It's a very bad email. Says,
"You're fired, Stephen, from the dire.
We found a different host."
>> Yeah.
>> Um I look at the email that goes into my
psychology, my mind. I then have a story
I tell myself about what that email
means for me, my future, my children,
whatever. Which then causes a
physiological response of like chemicals
like cortisol.
>> Yeah.
um which goes into my cells, my
mitochondria, which then have to work a
little bit harder or use more energy,
>> which is ultimately then going to mean
that I'm more tired because I have a
finite amount of energy per day.
>> Mhm.
>> Is that is that sequence of events? I
ask about that sequence because it
offers me an opportunity to intervene at
some point.
>> Yes.
>> Yes. That's a great way to think about
it.
>> Don't open the laptop
>> or like get a little bit better with bad
news.
>> Yeah. or you know learn to be less
reactive, right? Or learn to to feel and
and um you know sit with be aware of
that reaction because the key solution
to kind of to to cutting that sequence
of event that ends up draining you is to
become aware of it.
>> Yeah. Become aware of it. Yeah.
>> Right. uh so you can kind of interrupt
this and people who study contemplative
practices and and meditation and you
know mindfulness approaches I think many
of them think this is kind of the key
right the the awareness the somatic
awareness or introsception so if you
feel into your your bodilies responses
you become free of do I mount a response
is that needed now or not
>> there's different types of stress right
there's like the acute stress which is
just you get the email you feel a little
bit of a spike but 5 minutes like you're
fine.
>> Yep.
>> And then there's the more chronic type
of stress where
>> you're waking up every day with the same
feeling of stress deep inside you for
many many days in a row, many weeks in a
row.
>> Um I hear that acute stress isn't all
that bad and it's very normal and
useful,
>> but it's this chronic stress that can
cause a lot of damage.
>> Yeah. And I think that brings us back to
the concept of how is energy flowing
through the body. And if it flows with
not enough resistance, you can't
survive. But if there's too much
resistance, then you get drained.
>> How do I think about this resistance
thing? Because I'm really struggling
with like understanding it.
>> Maybe one good example to to frame this
is exercise.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. When you start to exercise,
there's increased resistance in your
muscle, right? Your muscles are
contracting. So there's a physical
resistance there, but there's also
energy resistance. So the the energy is
trying to flow through the muscle and
then there's you have mitochondria. If
you have just a few mitochondria and the
muscles are contracting really hard like
you're running, you're sprinting, right?
You're doing interval training. Um, now
the mitochondria don't have the capacity
to flow as much energy as the muscle is
asking, right? So that imbalance of
demand to flow capacity. Now the the
product of this the demand divided by
flow capacity is resistance.
>> Okay? So if you demand a lot of your
muscle because of your your your sprint
uh but you don't have a lot of
mitochondria right it's going to feel
terrible uh and then because the
resistance creeps up and then your
muscle you know becomes really hot and
then eventually there's inflammation uh
and then it burns and and then it's
uncomfortable uh but then so that's like
an acute bout of of energy resistance.
What happens with exercise is once you
recover right the benefits of exercise
don't happen during the exercise they
happen after during the recovery. So if
you recover now you you're the muscles
are relaxing and you're resting
eventually you go you know for you go to
sleep. Uh it's the in during the
decrease in resistance now the cell says
next time this happens I better be
ready. Like this was really
uncomfortable. There was too much energy
shoved into a system that couldn't take
it right. Right? So, I need next I'm
going to make more mitochondria. So,
that that's what happens if you go from
being a sedentary couch potato, right,
to training for a marathon. You can
double the amount of mitochondria you
have in your muscles. And that's the
system feeling the the rise in
resistance like I don't have the
capacity to flow that much energy and
then adapting for this for the next time
and next time I'm going to be ready.
Let's make more mitochondria. So, that's
probably what where the benefits of
exercise come from. this spike in and
and why stress is is not a bad thing
intrinsically, right? If you have a
spike of stress, it stimulates the
process the the the it stimulates the
body to put in place things that in the
long run makes you more efficient,
decreases your resistance. Then you can
go through life with with less
resistance.
>> Coming back to this gray hair thing. So
if if we consider gray hair, my hair
going gray to be the last domino that
fell. So like the symptom
>> y
>> then what is what are the what is the
first domino
>> and can you walk me through the sequence
of events because one would assume that
if I understand that sequence of events
I can also understand how to then
reverse it
>> how to kind of take I got a couple of
gray hairs now and I actually
anecdotally do think weirdly now you've
said this that I have like gray hair
flare-ups where I'll go I'll you know go
through a couple of weeks or months of
doing something and I'll look in the
mirror like what I have 12 now I'm being
generous there's more like 25 I I have
25 now. In terms of those dominoes, the
symptom is gray hair. What is the first
domino that that falls? And what is the
sequence of events that leads to the
gray hair in the follicule?
>> So there's a finite energy budget and
then what the organism does is it
allocates energy in different places
like a business, right? You have this
budget. Do I put more energy here? Do I
put, you know, more resources here? If
so, I need to take resources away from
here. Right? So as stress happens in
your life, it pulls energy away from
some of the things that keep you young,
right? So there's uh there's a kind of a
hierarchy of energy needs in the body.
Not everything can be prioritized the
same way. Do you know Maslo's hierarchy
of human needs?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So Maslo's insight was uh
>> Oh my god, I just freaked out. My hand
reached down and I just felt someone's
head. It was just I was
>> acute stress response.
>> Yeah. I just Yeah. Caught us off. Sorry.
Maslo's hierarchy of needs. Yeah.
>> So there's there's a hierarchy of energy
needs in the body that's works similarly
to Maslo's hierarchy of needs. Maslo
said for a human being to be fully
realized first you need to have safety
and food and shelter secured. Right?
Once you have this and you feel this is
kind of covered in your life, then you
can start to think about building
relationships with other people, right?
Loving relationships. Once you have this
settled, now you can start to think
about building your skills, right? Like
becoming really good at something. Uh
and then once you have this covered now
you can devote energy to the more
frivolous things like spirituality what
do you call self-actualization and kind
of becoming your best self flourishing.
Uh so he saw this very much as uh this
is this needs to be covered uh and when
things get really hard and there are
constraints on your life the first thing
to go is the top of the pyramid right
your meditation practice or the
long-term type like I'm going to be a
better person no like I need to make
sure we can put food on the table next
week right um so this hierarchy of of
human needs I think aligns with
hierarchy of uh of energy needs in the
body and as far is the importance of
hair color goes, it's pretty low on the
hierarchy. So as the body gets older and
you have more and more cells in the body
that start to uh be less efficient right
there mitochondria working a little you
know less efficiently and uh and then
there there's more inflammation in the
body that's costing energy and uh
there's
more worries about you know professional
obligations and all of these things kind
of stack up and steal energy away from
the things that are there we call them
growth maintenance and repair. These are
like the anti-aging
processes in in the body and those need
energy, but they're not as important as,
you know, facing the stressor that you
think is life-threatening. Now,
>> so if there's a lion chasing me, my body
is going to commit all the the energy I
have to getting away from this lion. And
it might say, "Listen, Stephen, we're
not going to repair the skin next to
your eyes. you're going to get a couple
more wrinkles and we're not going to
make your we're not going to commit
energy to making sure your follicles in
your hair produce black pigment or
whatever.
>> So, I would then look aged. I would look
older.
>> But that's because all of my energy has
been going to something else which my
body considered to be a high priority.
>> Correct. Which also brings me to I guess
the famous uh what we always talk about
with presidents because presidents go
into office often with dark hair
>> and they come out with gray hair and
usually one does not age that quickly in
8 years. We see the same in the Premier
League with football managers. They walk
in on that first day they look very
spritly and energetic and two years
later they have gray hair, bags under
their eyes, wrinkles and they look like
they've aged 10 years.
>> Yeah. So, you're telling me actually
that the the real secret to anti-aging,
if there was one, is this is the proper
allocation of energy.
So, if you don't waste energy stressing
out about the future and the past, and
you can spend more time in the moment
not being overly reactive to things,
which uh is kind of a lifelong effort,
then more of that precious energy can go
towards anti-aging. Can I also pull more
energy in the top? Like, can I just if I
get more energy, does that mean that
there's less likelihood that we're going
to run out of energy when it comes to my
hair follicles being black or gray?
>> Yeah. The thing is, it doesn't look like
we have the flexibility. Like, if you
want to have more energy and you want to
age more slowly, uh, eating more does is
not going to give you more energy.
>> So, is there anything I can do to have
more energy available?
>> Uh, you you can become more efficient.
>> I can become more efficient, but I can't
put more in.
>> No. Hm. And how does one become more
efficient then? You know, you said about
stress. Okay, I'm going to live a less
stressed life.
>> Yeah, it seems like there's a few things
that we know makes organism more
efficient. One is exercising.
>> Okay.
>> Right. Because when you exercise again,
you're increasing energy resistance,
uncomfortable, potentially you're
damaging things, right? Because you're
you're uh increasing what we call
dissipative losses, right? Oxidative
stress and all sorts of things happen
during the the
during the exercise, but then when you
recover now, the body's like, "Next time
this happens, I'm going to be ready."
And the process of getting ready to to
go through a high resistance, you know,
gym session is that you make more
mitochondria, right? your muscles get
bigger and stronger and your heart
becomes more efficient and your
arteries, you know, become more become
softer and you develop, you know, the
the confidence that you can do this
well. Um, and then it becomes rewarding.
You, you know, it becomes enjoyable. So,
all of these things now that you're off
the gym session,
>> right, you spend an hour in the gym
telling the body, "This is what we're
going to do in the future." And then the
body's like, "Okay, I'm going to get
ready." if there's a fixed energy
budget, the only way really to to get
ready for this is to become more
efficient. So by having more
mitochondria, by having a more fluid um
and kind of flexible cardiovascular
system and uh by putting in place all of
these changes, decreasing inflammation,
right? All of these things make more
energy available. It decreases the
energetic cost of doing the activity and
then there's more energy available for
anti-aging, growth, maintenance, and
repair, vitality. So, I suspect that's
why you burn more energy when you
exercise, but you feel like you have
more. And you don't actually have more.
The feeling that you have more energy is
simply energy flowing more smoothly
through this thing.
>> It's more efficient. I've got more
mitochondria.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. What What else? What about food?
You know, I've got uh I've got coffee
here. I've got some alcohol here. I've
got the sugar.
what I consume, how does that impact the
efficiency of the energy flowing through
my body?
>> Yeah, great question. Uh alcohol, what
we know about alcohol is that as we
talked about earlier, nothing is free in
biology, right? So, if you put something
in the body that shouldn't be there,
effectively a toxin like ethanol, which
is what's in there, uh it's going to
cost energy to get rid of it. So there
are detoxification systems in your liver
primarily that takes alcohol, breaks
down the molecule and then you can pee
it out, right? Or metabolize it for
energy even. Uh so there's a bunch of of
energy in ethanol, but when you take
alcohol, it doesn't give you more
energy. If anything, the next day you
feel like because what happens is
you you waste energy degrading the
alcohol, right? and and even though it's
a net plus, you're putting calories in
the machine in the body. Uh but uh what
ends up happening is you burn energy
getting rid of it. So there's a a cool
study where they brought people in, they
gave them a bunch of alcohol, they're
you know effectually effectively drunk
and then they measured how much energy
are they burning and you can do those
kind of studies. We we've done those
studies in the lab in a small room. You
put a human being and then you just
measure how much energy does it cost for
them to stay alive, right? Then you ask
them to not do too much in this smaller
room. They're just sitting down reading
a book. Um and then then you can ask
them, "Okay, now drink this alcohol."
And then you measure, you look, you
minute by minute they drink the alcohol
and then you start to see, oo, it climbs
up. So the alcohol, even though you feel
relaxed inside under the hood, the
body's like burning energy to get rid of
the alcohol. And other toxins probably
work the same way. You know, pesticides
or kind of the things we eat that we
shouldn't be eating. The reason why
those things might be bad for our health
maybe because they they steal energy
away from you know a growing body for
example uh there's good data in South
America children who are exposed to more
pathogens right there's no sanitation
they walk barefoot they they eat stuff
you know that's not clean and um they
have more pathogens uh in their gut
right there there's more uh viruses
bacteria and parasites uh it costs
energy to fight those things enough.
That's why you feel like when
you're burning when when you're fighting
a flu for example, right? Your immune
system, your immune cells are like,
whoa, you know, virus like COVID or, you
know, any, you know, seasonal flu virus.
The immune system goes into overdrive to
kill this virus and get rid of it. And
then that the immune system steals
energy away from the brain, from from
your mind. And then you feel like ah
everything is so difficult. You just
want to be in bed over covers. you feel
cold, which is strategy to basically
save energy. So all of the what's called
sickness behavior, right? All of those
features of your behavior, you become
asocial, right? Your skin is more
sensitive, so you avoid moving. Uh it's
like all of those features can be
understood as energy conservation
strategies, stressors, alcohol,
parasites, all kind of have this
increase the cost of living. Uh and then
because there's a cap on your energy
budget, uh then that energy needs to be
coming from somewhere else.
>> And if you're in those states for long
periods of time, you're in a chronic
state of um I guess like energetic
distraction is the way I'd think about
it.
>> That's that's a cool way to think about
it.
>> I was thinking about it. I was thinking
about it like if you you my body has an
army of 10 soldiers and usually those 10
soldiers are like at work doing the
things that I need to do to survive and
grow and flourish. And then when I have
one of these, I don't know, some sort of
toxic substance comes into my body,
you're basically saying that four of
those soldiers have to be reassigned to
go deal with this invader.
>> And so now I only have six that are
focused on everything I need to
flourish, which is why I probably feel
sometimes.
>> Yeah, exactly. Um, and what if if
there's only six working on my, you
know, fundamental requirements to
flourish, then some of those things are
going to have to give way and I might
end up with gray hair and I might end up
with wrinkles or maybe my brain won't
function the same. Maybe a disease,
>> you know, my immune system won't be
taken care of in the same way.
>> Yeah. Immune system won't be there
clearing the cancer cells, for example.
Um, and the repair processes that happen
all the time in the brain, right?
clearing out proteins that you don't
need, uh repairing dam DNA that's get
gotten damaged, making new mitochondria.
All of these processes happen like every
day. Every day you go through a little
phase of getting rid of the things that
don't work too well to make more of the
things that work well like mitochondria,
quality control, it's called, right? So
there's this quality control cycle. Old
mitochondria that don't work too too
well anymore, they get degraded. It's
called mphagy. Autophagy is selfeing.
Mphagy is selfeing of the mitochondria.
So when a cell, for example, is is
hungry. If you pull energy away from the
cell, the cell goes into a mode like, oh
I might run out of energy. I need
to be really efficient here. So let's
get rid of those mitochondria that
aren't really contributing their share.
Uh, and then I'll have just the best
functioning mitochondria, and then when
food comes back on board, the cell makes
more of the better ones. It made me
think of Alzheimer's and dementia,
weirdly, because I don't really know a
huge amount about Alzheimer's and
dementia, but I know that something
clearly goes wrong in the body that
produces these plaques
>> and and you know, you often hear that
there's lots of things we consume or do
that increase our probability of getting
Alzheimer's and dementia.
>> So, is that at all linked to the same
sort of like energy distraction? It's
been long believed that the plaque right
that you've heard about uh amaloided
plaques and tow tangles and there's kind
of this idea that the brain accumulates
proteins and it's those proteins that
cause Alzheimer's. I think that's what
most people have heard and what most
people believe because it came from you
know white coatwearing scientists and
university professors. Um that is not
the truth. And what is more true is and
and let me just say why it's not the
truth. You can have people in their 60s
and their 70s and their 80s zero protein
deposit in the brain. We can image this
now pretty well with neuroiming. You can
have people zero protein deposit in the
brain and they have full-blown
Alzheimer's and dementia. And you have
the other extreme people with loads of
amaloid plaques and towangles completely
normal cognition.
So those extremes really tell us this
hypothesis this amaloid you know protein
aggregates in the brain as a driver of
dementia and neuro degeneration is not
correct. Uh what we know happens
energetically in the brain is that
initially in the early stages of
Alzheimer's there's kind of an increase
in energy demand in the there's specific
brain regions that tend to be more
affected in some people not not all
people tend to have those protein
deposits. those regions start to burn
more energy. This is early phase, right?
And then at this point, probably this is
the brain trying to cope, right? It's
like something's not working great, but
it's working harder, right?
>> Like like with the gray hair.
>> Yeah, exactly. And then over time the
those brain regions become hypometabolic
and then that's when you start to have
symptoms.
>> What does that mean?
>> That's that's when people start to have
memory issues. And uh you said
>> hyper metabolic.
>> Hyper metabolic. This is hyper metabolic
is kind of this energy distraction you
were talking about like there's more
energy being burned here. Normal
metabolic is you know you use 100 units
of energy for the brain and this let's
say this brain region 100 units of
energy is what this brain region needs
to just sustain normal healthy
functions. Uh if there's a problem with
the mitochondria or if there's a problem
with you know the cell communicating
with the synapses right the cells talk
to each other through these things
called synapses. uh if there's a problem
now the the that part of the brain is
going to need to do more work to
compensate uh and then we know something
happens with neurodeeneration and
Alzheimer's is inflammation
neuroinflammation that basically means
there are some cells in the brain that
are trying to heal the brain and part of
that healing process is kind of a stress
response locally and then that stress
response leads to the secretion of
little proteins we call cytoines and
then it's basically those cells saying
something's wrong. We need to fix this.
So that costs energy. So you have those
cells that get activated. They they
secrete those proteins to say please
help. You know the we need to
reestablish homeostasis. We need to
reestablish normal healthy balance. But
that process of reestablishing of
healing costs energy just like when
you're post exercise your muscle invests
energy to to become stronger. So in that
kind of early phase hyper meta
metabolism is when you spend more energy
hyper uh function some people have
called it and then eventually it seems
like those brain regions get tired out
and then they become hypom metabolic so
they burn less energy. So if you look at
the brain of someone with Alzheimer's,
there are these regions that are that
burn less energy and energy is so
central to everything including
cognition, right? In order to have an
idea and to be conscious of that idea,
you need to burn energy. So the the
brain kind of burning less energy in
later stages kind of reflects this lack
of function. You know, the the it's
difficult to remember, you know, old
memories. It's it's remembered. It's
difficult to to make associations. it
becomes difficult to plan in the future
um and to regulate your emotions and you
know a lot of people with dementia end
up having kind of mood issues. They
become really depressed and it
>> is this is this why they call it type
three diabetes because I've just heard
that phrase quite a lot recently.
>> Yeah. And so my hunch is that
Alzheimer's and dementia more generally
is a disorder of energy and specifically
it's a disorder of you know increased
energy resistance. So there's type three
diabetes comes from the fact that when
the brain gets sick, right? And symptoms
of dementia start to appear like loss of
memory and mood and depression and that
constellation of symptoms. When you look
in the brain, it's burning less energy,
but it's also harder for glucose to get
inside the brain.
>> It's less efficient.
>> It's so there's yes a loss of efficiency
but an increased resistance, right? or a
decrease in conductance for energy for
glucose for example to get inside the
brain to be processed and and be used.
>> And why might that be?
>> Because you're pushing too much glucose
on the system.
>> Oh, okay.
>> If you load up the system all the time
with with glucose, with sugar in the
blood and glycemia is high, you have
diabetes perhaps. This is all the time
like pressure pushing energy onto this
the system that's like really delicate
and it's not like jacking the the
voltage on your lamp that eventually you
know is going to catch fire. uh we are a
slow burning fire right like the inside
of our our cells you have the electrons
flowing and when there are sparks flying
it damages the mitochondria it damages
this damages that and that increases
that's what aging is aging the the most
basic mechanism of aging including brain
aging that leads to Alzheimer's is the
accumulation of little damage little
mutations little defects little
imperfections and as the imperfections
accumulate the system becomes less
efficient insulin resistance basically
And diabetes refers to the fact that
muscles but also the brain can has the
capacity to say I I can't anymore like
glucose too much for me too much
resistance too much you know damage that
I that I'm exposed to. So if you're a
muscle cell and you want to protect
yourself against this excess energy
pressure right from the glucose from the
from the electrons uh you can become
insensitive or resistant to insulin. So
then you you take the the receptors that
are sitting on top of the surface of the
cell, you pull those out, right? So then
the cell no longer is sensitive to
insulin. So then the body's like whoa,
like glucose is way high. What you a
normal healthy body releases insulin,
floods the blood, insulin goes to the
surface of uh of your muscles and then
says take in the glucose because there's
too much glucose in the blood. It's
we're going to damage the brain. We're
going to damage the eyes. We're going to
damage the nerves. So muscle please take
in that glucose. But when the muscle is
overwhelmed and the mitochondria are
starting to be uh you know at capacity
in terms of how much energy they can uh
resist and and and flow then they shut
down the valves right so the muscle
cells become insulin resistant and then
glucose intolerant and that protects the
mitochondria in the muscle cells. Uh but
then gluc blood glucose uh starts to
increase. So the next step in this
cascade is well if there's too much
energy in circulation too much sugar too
much fat what what can we do with this
and that's where fat stores you know
adeposity uh comes in so obesity
is a protection mechanism against excess
energy resistance
>> one way to think about this hypothesis
that
dementia Alzheimer's is linked to an
overflow of glucose let's today is to
look at other civilizations or um I
don't know tribes the tribe in Africa
who don't have a lot of glucose do they
still get Alzheimer's and dementia I
don't know the literature on this but
it's clear that people who if you if we
look at what makes you more likely to
have Alzheimer's what makes you less
likely to have Alzheimer's all the
things that make you more likely to have
Alzheimer's contribute to increasing
this energy resistance right too much
sugar in the blood diabetes
physical inactivity, right? If you don't
move, energy doesn't flow through your
mitochondria. So, it just stacks up,
accumulates, and and the things that
protects the brain, protects you against
Alzheimer's and dementia or things that
let energy flow, physical activity, uh
not eating too much, especially not
eating too much sugar, uh and and then
ketones. There's new, you know, data now
showing that ketones can uh, you know,
enter the brain and be metabolized more
easily and can even kind of improve
cognition. And the ketogenic diet, which
I know you've tried, many people report
more energy on the ketogenic diet. It's
not because you eat more calories. It's
because those uh electrons that are
stuck on ketones instead of being stuck
on glucose can flow more more easily.
And those ketones are made by
mitochondria in your liver. This is a
really beautiful story of this the
sociality of mitochondria and the
organism. The liver mitochondria is
where ketones are made. If you eat like
fat, right, avocados and oil and and
meat and uh butter and uh those fat
molecules and go in the liver and then
the mitochondria in the liver, take
those fat, transform them into ketones
and then put the ketones into the blood.
The kidneys also do a little bit of this
and then the ketones go to the brain and
then they feed the mitochondria in the
brain. So you have mitochondria in the
liver talking and feeding mitochondria
in the brain. And the path for a ketone
to go from blood to mitochondria is much
shorter in terms of number of enzymes,
number of resistors, if you want to
think about it energetically uh than for
glucose. That path is very long. The
ketone path is much shorter. I just want
to make sure on that point that I don't
misunderstand because you know it sound
it could have sounded like you're saying
that too much energy might cause
Alzheimer's but actually you're saying
you're not saying because I think of
ketones as energy and I I'm I'm shot in
you know ketones all the time. I don't
want to flood my brain with energy so
that you know malfunctions gets
Alzheimer's.
It's it for some reason it's really hard
to overwhelm the brain
>> with ketones
>> and with ketones or overwhelm the body
if you eat fat like it's it's very easy
to feel like I'm full.
>> I've had you know a good enough meal if
you bring sugar into the picture and you
mix sugar and fat now things like taste
so good and there's like an extra reward
and a lot of people eat for different
reasons not just because they're hungry.
That's because it's so rewarding to eat
something fatty and sugary, especially
the sugar part. Then you you lose
regulation and that's why I think the
GLP-1 drugs are are so powerful because
they they address the problem where it
starts. Like how much food are you
putting into the system? Yeah, I did
look at the stats there on the tribes in
Africa and it says when researchers
study indigenous groups such as the
Hadza hunter gatherer tribe in Tanzania
or rural
agrarian populations like the Euraba
they find that Alzheimer's and vascular
dementia are exceptionally rare.
>> Mhm. which again means that it points to
western diets,
>> western diet, western
>> lifestyles,
>> behavior. You know, these people move
all the time. Um, and they don't eat too
much. Um, most of them don't need to
kind of rely on their fat capacitor.
They don't have excess energy to just
store away. And for for some people,
there's congenital leanness, right? Like
you're you're born lean and you're g
like you can't put on fat if you eat too
much. the the high sugar or high fat
just accumulates in the blood and then
it it gets lodged in ectopic ways. So in
the it gets lodged in the muscle or in
the liver or in the brain um and and
then that causes damage because of you
know this like excess energy pressure
and then the system overheats
>> skinny fat.
>> Skinny fat. Yeah.
>> And that stores it near around your
livers and stuff. What's that called
that fat inside you?
>> Visceral.
>> Visceral fat. And the visceral fat is
linked to increased inflammation and
it's linked to a bunch of diseases. But
this is just a symptom like the
increased fat. And I think the reason
why obesity in general we say obesity is
bad is because obesity reflects a deeper
state, a more important state with which
is this increased energy resistance.
Like there's too much energy in the
system and the system can't flow it.
Like the mitochondria can't keep up. So
to protect themselves, they store that
and store that away and and then uh then
then you become obese.
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So on this point of food then fasting,
autophagy, all these words that I've
heard. If you were giving me advice on
everything you know about how to create
a body that is very very efficient in
how I deal with the energy that I have.
What advice would you give me as it
relates to eating?
>> Develop that awareness of what your body
needs. So when I think about how I eat,
I don't think about, you know, my weight
or my body. I think about how am I
feeling and do I need more food, right?
Am I like depleted or am I tired and
exhausted because there's too much food
on board and my organism is like
struggling to keep up with this excess
like friction or excess you know energy
pressure and on my brain on my on my
mitochondria. So I think about it from
the perspective of my mitochondria. What
do my mitochondria need? Uh and in
general it's much harder to uh you know
deplete the mitochondria like not eating
too much. So if you're thinking about
okay there's this food there do I snack
do I not snack uh
generally eating too much there there
are clear consequences to this like it
increases the resistance or the friction
in in your mitochondria not eating
enough is typically innocuous for most
people
>> because we we have stores don't we of
glycogen and we have stores of glucose
in our body in our muscles anyway so if
we were running low then our our body
can go get some fat metabolize it
>> exactly make ketones
>> make ketones
>> y yeah the Most people have enough
energy on board, right, in the form of
fat, some glycogen in your muscles and
your liver, uh, to live at least a
month.
>> I mean, I'm I'm a big big fan of
survival documentaries. And one of the
most remarkable things you see in
survival documentaries, I'm even
thinking about some that I've watched,
is people can survive for seemingly
months without eating anything,
>> and they can't survive long without
water. Yeah.
>> But they can survive for months without
eating anything
um because their body will start to kind
of go into its reserves. Yeah.
>> And break down muscle and all these
other things.
>> Yeah. Yeah. The record is the world
record for not eating is over 300 days.
>> Wow.
>> Irish man. Um and he lost I forget the
exact numbers. 250 lb 300 lb.
>> What does this say about hunger? And
also what does it say about this society
we live in where we have some people
have like five meals. Some people
basically just eat from morning till
night, you know.
>> Yeah. I I think a lot of us eat not
because we're hungry. I think a lot of
us as have learned to eat to to subserve
some other need and eating is quite
rewarding. It taps into the same
systems, you know, as gambling and um
kind of connecting with other human
beings. So, we know some people eat
emotionally, right? When they're
stressed out, they they they eat more.
Um, so I think hunger is is something to
be skeptical of because there are many
pathways that I think kind of converge
on hunger. Like if you feel sad, you
feel like bored, um, hunger will kind of
get you out of boredom because of the
salt, because of this, especially if you
had salty, sugary things around, uh,
it's a rewarding thing that will get you
out of uncomfortable other uncomfortable
sensations. I think most of us overeat.
That's um a good general assumption to
make. You're probably overeating.
>> I think I probably am.
>> Um it's harder to overeat if you
restrict your eating window, right? And
that works really well for some people.
Um like eating, for example, a very
severe kind of window would be 2 p.m. to
6 p.m., right? So you eat for 4 hours
and you kind of put this around dinner
time so you can be social with your
partner or something like that. Uh that
tends to work well for a lot of people
who have been in the habit of
overeating. Um and my dad, you know,
still thinks to this day, he's 69 now.
Um that breakfast is the most important
meal of the day. That's what he learned
when he was a kid. And he wants to
believe that this is true. I don't think
it's true for most people. And
especially if you're in your 60s, 70s,
right? Like metabolism changes. And if
you're always eating you, the body never
goes into this state of I must be
efficient, right? And then if you go
into that state of I must be efficient,
you accumulate poorly functioning
mitochondria and then there's more
friction, you know, in your whole body.
There's more inflammation, which is a
signal of that energy friction or
resistance and then you don't feel as
good, right? You don't feel you have as
much energy. So many people who go from
eating three meals a day plus or minus
snacks to like intermittent fasting,
they just say, "I'm going to eat
whatever I want, however much I want,
but just in those four hours or 6
hours." Most of those people uh have a
lot more energy. They experience, right,
that they have more energy. It's not
because there's more energy in their
body. If anything, they're putting fewer
calories in the body, but the way energy
flows now, it flows more efficiently.
And we don't perceive the amount of
energy, we perceive the flow energy or
the transformation of energy.
>> And I was just reading there that it
says that this idea that breakfast is
the most important meal of the day came
from an advertising campaign
>> that was designed to sell cereal and
bacon.
>> Um before the industrial revolution,
breakfast wasn't a heavily scrutinized
meal. People often just ate whatever was
left over from the night before or they
ate a quick heavy meal before going out
to do physical farm labor. But as people
moved into cities and took sedentary
office jobs, those heavy greasy
breakfasts started causing widespread in
ingestion.
ingestion. Enter Harvey Kelloggs.
Yes, that Kelloggs. He ran a famous
health sanitarium and believed that a
clean, light, grain-based diet would
cure ingestion and improve overall
health. He co-invented cornflakes and he
and other cereal pioneers pushed the
narrative that a healthy cold cereal
breakfast was essential for a productive
day. And your dad bought it hookline and
sinker.
>> Yep. I mean, a lot of people did.
>> Everybody did.
>> And and I did until recently until I
started to like feel into this. I would
have this big bowl of cereals. That's
how I grew up as well. And then I would
feel like this low like this um you know
low energy and I think now I understand
why because I was overloading my system
with way too much kind of rapidly
available sugary energy that I didn't
need. Uh and then the body needs to find
a way to handle this. Either you get fat
which I can't do. So then it goes kind
of into my brain and then makes me feel
lousy.
>> So on this point then just to close off
on this diet question. If I want to feel
really really optimal on a given day, I
probably do want a smaller eating window
and I probably want to eat just what I
need and I want to not overeat. I don't
want to undereat, but I don't want to
overeat.
>> If you undereat, you're going to pick it
up tomorrow.
>> I'll pick it up tomorrow anyway. So,
I'll be fine tomorrow. But the worst
thing is overeating today, which is
going to impact my performance today.
>> Correct.
>> And food is one thing that influences
where energy goes in the body, how it
flows. Um and and just maybe to close
the loop on that example like when
you're sick and you're fighting an
infection.
>> Yeah.
>> I had a a beautiful opportunity to
understand not just under understand to
experience this one day. It was New
Year's Eve uh 31st in the evening and I
started to feel like a little scratchy
throat. I'm like, "Oh, I think I'm
getting sick." So I I go to, you know,
the the evening dinner. I didn't cough
or anything. out of I don't think I was
contagious, but I just could feel right
like something was was coming up. I felt
terrible. I was I had started to have
like full-blown flu symptoms. Went home
early at like 10 9:00 p.m. Um and then I
went to bed. It was horrible night. Hor
I felt even I was in pain and then my I
had like massive fever. I took a bath, a
warm bath to help my fever kind of, you
know, go up so that it could fight the
high fever stimulates your immune cells
and weakens the virus. So, it's a it's
it's usually a good thing. Um, and then
next day I was out and I was so
depressed and I was like, I should write
about this. I'm writing a book on on
energy and energy constraints and like
the the division partitioning of energy
in and the body. I was like, I should
write about this. This is so
interesting. My immune system is in
full-blown defense mode. And it's not
like I I was like I could feel my heart.
I'm wearing this aura. My heart rate was
like 110 at at rest instead of being
like 60, you know, normally. So there's
all of this energy flowing through. It's
like wow. Like my metabolic rate
objectively is higher. We know this is
true from from you know good studies on
that when you're fighting something you
burn more energy. U yet I'm feeling
completely drained. Right? And so it's
not like the amount of energy that's
flowing through that I should feel more
energetic. My immune system in that
moment uh was draining all my energy
drain sucking away my energy from you
know from my from my mind from my brain
perhaps. Um and I remember thinking it
wouldn't be a whole lot of energy if I
just pull my laptop like prop myself on
the bed and then start to write what I'm
experiencing in the moment. Right? Like
the uh and but I couldn't muster the
strength. It's like what what the
like why would I care? I couldn't care,
right? And this is the stuff I care
about on a daily basis. But in that
state of my energy being disrupted, I
couldn't care about this. And then I
started to think about work and about,
you know, the the lab and about uh, you
know, family things. I was like, whoa,
it's my whole life feels so different.
>> I don't care about anything.
>> Yeah. I don't care about anything. I
just I'm just trying to survive.
>> That's so interesting cuz I can relate
so much.
>> Yeah. I mean, but everyone has been
through like a difficult like you when
you're really sick
>> or when you're really stressed.
>> Yeah.
>> Or just anything that's all consuming
like that.
>> Exactly. That's like Maslo's pyramid,
right? The the top is squished and
you're like survival and
>> like where where did I go? Where's
where's Yeah, I remember that.
>> So, I was still me, right? I was still
Martin, but I I felt completely
different. The quality of my of my mind,
the quality of of my intention was like
completely different. I was just trying
to survive. I didn't care about anything
else. So that episode went on for like
two days or so. Through day number
three, I was able to take my computer
and like start to feel again the
purpose. But it was so interesting that
just the what what it felt like when I
was able to write about it and really
feel into it. It felt like I was
diffused energy like the light for
example, right? Is a form of energy. You
can have a laser. And the difference
between a laser and a an incandescent
light bulb like an old style filament
light bulb is not the amount of energy
is the the way the energy is patterned.
>> And in a laser you have every photon
that are kind of in phase with one
another
>> and then there's a coherence to it,
right? And it's the coherence that gives
a laser its power.
>> Uh it's not the total amount of energy.
the same amount of energy if you put in
an incandescent light bulb. Now it's the
same energy but it's diffused, right?
Every photon is doing its own thing.
They're all going in all over the place.
And then if you want to look at how far
can these photons go, right? How far can
my mind go? Caring about things. The
diffused energy doesn't go very far. Uh
but the the laser can go super far. So
my mind had become like a diffuse
incandescent light bulb.
>> I the two things came to mind when you
said that. The first is in my previous
company because we were a startup fast
growing we had cash flow issues
cash making sure we had enough money
coming in from our clients whatever to
pay our staff was always a problem for
anyone that doesn't know um when a
business is growing quickly it's usually
spending more today than it's receiving
in. So even if you're you're growing
from like 1 million to 6 million to 12
million to 25 million or whatever as we
did you you still have a cash flow
problem. And there would be times when
we're nearing the end of the month and
months months in a row and I had the
same cash flow stress. I couldn't pay
the team. They they always got paid.
They never knew. We always figured it
out.
>> But what I'd notice is in those moments
of really really high stress sometimes,
not always, but there were periods where
I lost motivation.
>> And what I meant by that is I literally
as a 23 24 year old like CEO of all
these hundreds of people, some of them
old double my age, I basically hide at
home. And what I mean by hide at home is
like I didn't have the I lost purpose
for this business. Like I I'd
wake up for it might last a week or two
weeks and I just didn't have the
purpose, the quote motivation as they
call it to like go out and be a leader.
And now as you say I go, oh, it was
because I was stressed and it would last
for when the cash flow issue would
resolve my motivation, my purpose, the
reason why we're doing this
>> zoomed back into focus. And I think
that's really important because you know
we do have a lot of entrepreneurs
watching the show and they'll beat
themselves up sometimes because they
lose motivation and as a founder and as
a CEO it's you feel so guilty that you
>> the the source of motivation and
inspiration leadership for this group of
people. You could lose it but now I
understand what it was. Now I understand
that I was at like an a chronic well uh
yeah a bit of a chronic energy deficit
in that moment.
>> Yeah. The other thing actually made me
think about as well when you you said
about this diffusion of energy. It
actually made me think about businesses
and OKRs and goals.
>> Yeah.
>> It made me think about if you take 10 10
people in a startup and they're all
really really focused on the same goal.
>> They are way more successful. But
sometimes you don't have a clear goal
and you're all pointing in different
directions.
>> Yes. So there's incoherence.
>> There's incoherence.
>> Yes.
>> Yes. But you need to be a laser. And
this is why OKRs are so important
because you can point all the energy at
the problem. Yes,
>> this is traction.
>> Yes.
>> Towards a particular goal.
>> This is what purpose does.
>> Purpose focuses energy. And I think the
reason purpose is so powerful, right?
And why you need to have that, right? To
to feel it. I I I want to say like you
have purpose, it kind of becomes this
must find my purpose, you know, must
like I'm on a a spiritual journey to
find
>> stresses you out and then you're imp.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Uh but when you uh
somehow find your yourself in a place
where you feel like those things, you
know, that are in your life are
meaningful, right? And that the path
you're on is purposeful. I think what
this does is it brings all of your
energy that might be diffused like a
light bulb and boom, it brings it like a
laser. And then you can go that
distance, right? You can go through that
half day without eating. You can go
through that month, right, where it's
like you have all all of these meetings
and it doesn't feel as difficult as it
would if you were going kind of all over
the place. Focus, I think, brings our
energy into a coherent state. And then
it feels like coherence, right? It feels
like I know what I'm doing this. then it
becomes very easy to say no to this and
to say yes to just the right thing
because there's this coherence not just
energetic coherence that you know allows
you to do more with less energy uh but
also this coherence of mind right and
and maybe of spirit if we want to go
there
>> um I'm going to ask the team to play a
clip it's a clip of Kevin Olirri talking
about this idea of signal and noise and
he's referencing his experiences with um
Steve Jobs who he used to work with and
also Elon Musk
>> look how wildly successful he was. But
here's why.
There's a concept that he understood
that very few people focused on back
then in the early 90s of signal to noise
ratio.
What was so brilliant about jobs
that I tell every CEO now and I don't
care if you're an S&P 500 CEO or you're
just starting a business. His vision of
signal was the top three to five things
you have to get done in the next 18
hours. Not your vision for the business
next week or next month or next year.
Just the next 18 hours you're awake.
You're going to get those three things
or those five things done that you have
deemed critical for your mission. They
must get done today. Anything that stops
you from doing that is the noise.
So this signal to noise ratio to be
successful for Steve Jobs was 8020. 80
signal, 20 noise. And I knew that to be
true with him because he would email me
at 2:30 in the morning, expect me to get
back to him because back then we didn't
have texts. It was all email.
He was right. He was right. And the only
other person that I've seen that has a
higher ratio than that
is Elon Musk. He has no noise. He does
not deal with noise. He is 100% signal
24 seconds, you know, every cycle. I
mean, the guy is just 60 seconds of
every minute, 60 minutes of every hour,
the 18 hours he's awake, it's all
signal. And look what he's achieved.
>> And so I can really sort of summarize
this for my audience, signal is the most
urgent thing you should be focused on
right now. And noise is basically
everything.
>> No, the goals you set for the the wake
the that you were awake. If you're going
to be awake 18 hours,
>> yeah,
>> and you've determined that there's three
things you have to get done, you're
going to get those done. No matter what
it takes, you're going to get those
done. And you're not going to let
anything distract you from the three to
five things. If you're a CEO and you
achieve that and you can get those done
with 80% of your time based on that,
you're extraordinarily successful.
>> In that clip, he's basically saying that
the most successful entrepreneurs in the
world are remarkably good at focusing on
the signal. He said that from his time
working with Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs
would be 80% signal. I he wakes up in
the morning and he knows exactly what we
need to work on. And I watch these
interviews with Johnny Ives. I'll
actually also play the Johnny Ives
interview because I send this round to
everybody. So, I'm going to play it
where Johnny is talks about how
remarkably focused Steve Jobs was.
>> This sounds really simplistic, but it
still shocks me how few people actually
practice this. Um, and it's a struggle
to practice, but is is this issue of
focus? Um, Steve was the most remarkably
focused person I've ever met in my life.
And um, and the thing with focus is it's
not sort of like this thing you aspire
to or you you decide on Monday, you know
what, I'm going to be focused.
It is a every minute a why are we
talking about this? This is what we're
working on. You can achieve so much when
you truly focus. And one of the things
that Steve would say, um, because I
think he was concerned that I wasn't,
um, he would say, um, how many things
have you said no to? And I would,
honestly, I I would have these
sacrificial things because I, I mean,
wanted to be very honest about it. And
so I say, oh, I said no to this and no
to that. and um he but he he knew that I
wasn't vaguely interested in doing those
things anyway. Um so there was no real
sacrifice. What what focus means is
saying no to something that you with
every bone in your body you think is a
phenomenal idea
and you wake up thinking about it but
you say no to it because you're focusing
on something else.
>> There's something in giving your entire
being of focus to something. Maybe it's
in the context switching or whatever it
is. That means your probability of being
successful at that particular thing
drastically drastically increases.
>> Solving hard problems is hard.
>> Yeah.
>> But these great great founders they they
solve them because they're so they're
focusing every available unit of energy
on the thing.
>> Mhm. Yes. I think the reason this is is
because of a physical principle about
energy which is called resonance. Right.
If you walk through life with such
clarity of mind, right, like this is
what the truth is. This is where we're
going, right? And and you live and you
breathe that you become like a
resonator. You hold this energy pattern
and it comes out not just in in your
actions and your emails. It comes out in
the way you speak and it comes out in
the the things you turn attention to,
right? It turns out in your tone of
voice, in the care that you, you know,
look at people with. It comes out in
every facet of you, right? So you become
the emblematic leader I guess uh for for
that thing that you're 100% into. What
this does is that it's picked up by
other people, right? Maybe this gets
like vibes. You have that vibe. You have
like the founders vibe, right? Or like
the entrepreneurs vibe. I think this is
real and this is the energy that's
flowing through your mitochondria
somehow becoming coherent and you know
aligned and it feels meaningful. It
feels purposeful and then you live like
that and then other people around you
that resonate with it, right? Like
people are drawn to a a pure signal.
Like if you have that specific signal,
it's like a a music like a symphony,
right? Like when it sounds when it's on
tune, then people that want to come on
board like they feel this and then it
gets amplified. It's so funny because we
were talking there about Steve Jobs
being often side as a prime example of
someone who is really intensely focused
with with with his energy and what
you've just described sounds almost
perfectly like what people said about
him when they described him as having a
reality distortion field.
>> You probably heard this term. Um, the
reality distortion field, they called it
his RDF, was a term coined by Apple
software engineer Bud Trible in 1981 to
describe Steve Jobs uncanny, almost
hypnotic ability to convince everyone
around him to believe practically
anything. And people who work closely
with Jobs described the RDF, the reality
distortion field, as a confounding mix
of intense charisma, unyielding
willpower, and sheer persistence in a
certain direction, which pulled you with
him.
>> Mhm. That's an energetic quality. And in
physics, if you have something that's
has a really strong energy, then it can
entrain other things. If the the source
resonator is strong enough, people will
come in resonance. And then it looks
spooky. It looks like wa this thing you
know synchronicity or this you know this
thing happened and somehow you know he
was able to mobilize this this donor and
you know fundraising is like easier than
it should be and so like all of these
things snowball because you hold that
you know that that vibe you hold that
energy and amplifies.
>> I mean exactly that. So I was just
reading this quote from someone that
used to work with Steve Jobs um and he
said that it would cause two things. It
would be like he was casting spells on
you but he was also bending time in
physics. They said Apple engineer Andy
Herzfield recalled that if you told
Steve Jobs a task would take 6 months,
he would look you in the eye and say,
"You can do it in 2 weeks." Because of
the sheer force of his conviction,
engineers would often actually end up
doing it in 2 weeks, completely
rewriting their own understanding of
what was possible. And even Bill Gates
famously remarked on Job's charisma
saying, "I was like a minor wizard
because he was casting spells and I
would see people mesmerized so much so
that I was so jealous." Gates noted that
even when Jobs was lying or wrong, he
had everybody completely hooked. M
>> what's clear to make some like something
like this happen is you need to um feel
that there's something compelling like
you need to feel something is important
and again that's not a rational thing
like you need to feel it in yourself um
and then you need to kind of bring that
energy into focus and bring attention to
it right and then then that's where
ideas start to come you build a
structure around it to to sustain that
flow
>> you said um at the start that we are the
energy flowing through ourselves and if
I think about The fact that every
barrier or obstacle we have in the world
is actually other people. Like that is
true. Like for me to become the
president, prime minister, best salesp
person in the world, best
philanthropist, what I need to do if I
am energy is convince other energy
to change its shape.
>> I think that's what amazing people do.
Uh they're able to, you know, see
something, hold that vision so strongly
and then mobilize others, right? And
then new things become uh possible. I
think that's what great leaders do. And
I I now approach, you know, other human
beings and, you know, my my son, like my
six-year-old son, Noah, I see him as,
yes, a little boy and yes, a lot of
energy and yes, you know, some some
challenges that come with this, but he's
this beautiful little energy pattern,
right? He's this energy flowing through
this little child's body, but my role as
a parent is to provide just around the
right amount of resistance, right? The
right amount of constraints. If I don't
provide any constraint, I say do
whatever you want, have whatever you
want uh you know any time then like
that's not good for development. Kids
need to feel you know some boundaries
and so those are like resistance right
little constraints but if every minute
like me putting constraint no you can't
do this no you can't do that then it
damages the system it traumatizes the
system
>> going to grow in exactly so the the art
really of parenting and I think the art
of of leadership is providing the right
structure right so that the energy has
some constraints like there's a
challenge there needs to be a challenge
for the team to meet right challenge is
like a barrier It's like a little
resistor. Of course, there's challenges.
You're like, it's difficult to get
there. And if it's not difficult, then
everywhere everyone's bored. If it's
like, yeah, we're going to do the same
thing as we did last year. And then next
year, we do the same thing. That's not
the same kind of energy as we need to
double this year. And then we need to
double the, you know, the year after.
This kind of goal or challenge is a form
of constraint, something you have to
work through. I think that's why the
human mind is naturally drawn to
challenges like what's the next
challenge? Why go down deep in the ocean
to discover new creatures? Why go in the
Amazon trying to discover new species of
little bugs? Why go into space? Like
this is all curiosity driven. It's like
the mind wanting to have something to
hit against. Cuz if there's nothing to
hit against, if there's no resistance,
then it's there's no purpose.
>> I was thinking about worthwhile goals as
actually being magnets for energy. You
think about going to the moon. The moon
pulled energy towards it. So, we found
ourselves to the moon. And actually if
you bring that down into your own life
as like a leader of a company you go
>> okay if I set a worthwhile goal I'm
going to pull
>> people energy
>> towards it
>> and if I have an unworthwhile goal
energy won't be attracted so maybe a
worthwhile goal is actually
philosophically a magnet for energy
>> yeah I think so and people are energetic
processes so my my six-year-old son is
this beautiful movement of energy my
goal is to nurture it right and not just
with food and physically but to nurture
his curiosity
uh and is transformation
>> linked to this. I read that studies on
brains of dead people have found that
those with a greater sense of purpose
have more efficient mitochondria.
>> This is a beautiful study in it was run
in Chicago. Every year people would come
to the hospital and then fill out
questionnaires and meet with a a
therapist and neuroscychologist and they
would ask them questions and test their
memory and their cognition. And then
every year they would report how much
purpose they felt like they had, how
much sense of connection with other
human beings or with something greater
than themselves, how optimistic they
were about the future, right? And some
people are like more optimistic, happy
and and and purposeful than than others,
but there's always kind of fluctuations,
right? Like we go through fluctuations.
As we go through life, no matter how
lucky you are, life always ends up being
challenging in in some ways. So we asked
how people felt, how much purpose people
experience before they died. Is that
related to the mitochondria in their
brain? And the only way you can ask this
question is to look at the brain after
the person died, right? So then you have
how the person felt right before they
how much purpose they experienced and
then you look at the mitochondria after
they die
>> where
>> in in the the dorsal prefrontal cortex.
So that little part of the brain that's
involved in, you know, uh, active
reasoning and executive function and the
mitochondria in the people who felt more
purpose had a greater energy
transformation capacity.
>> What does that mean in simple terms?
>> The resistance was lower. This could
mean uh that if you feel more life
purpose, the mitochondria in your brain
can flow energy more easily.
>> Or it could mean the inverse of that.
Well, it could mean that having
mitochondria in your brain that can flow
energy more easily just changes how you
see life.
>> Makes you feel more purposeful.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Or it could mean that purpose itself is
creating more efficient mitochondria.
>> Exactly. People have done studies in
animals and we've done some of those
studies where you can basically change
the state of mind of a mouse by like
stressing it out chronically and then
you make it feel defeated and like a
really stressful life and you ask, does
this change the mitochondria in the
brain? Right? Can the experience of
stress change a mitochondria in the
brain? 100%. That happens. Now you can
say okay now let's change a mitochondria
in the brain. You can like open up the
brain inject a little something that
either boost the mitochondria or inhibit
and activate the mitochondria increase
or decrease resistance. And then you ask
does this change how the animal appears
to feel? How the animals behave in terms
of anxiety or social interactions with
other animals, sociality or dominance
100%. So the the best science shows it
goes both ways. So how you feel can
change the mitochondria. The
mitochondria can change probably how you
feel.
>> And so and again we're theorizing here.
If I don't have purpose in my life, it's
going to change the mitochondria. And
then if it if my mitochondria becomes
more inefficient
>> then what what will I notice as the next
symptom?
>> Yeah, probably fatigue is the first
thing that kind of starts to pop up. You
feel drained. You don't feel you have
you know enough energy. burn out
>> probably feels like burnout and you
start to lose enthusiasm for you know
for the future you become more
pessimistic. So there's kind of a
constellation of things we call
depression or you know burnout or we put
labels on these things but really every
person starts to experience life as less
enjoyable, less purposeful, less
meaningful um regardless of the the
diagnostic title we put on it. which is
interesting because I've I've
interviewed a few people that are
experts on the subject of depression and
also addiction frankly. And one of the
things that I remember Johan Hari saying
to me who wrote a book called Lost
Connections is that in some cultures the
cure that they apply for depressive
symptoms is giving someone purpose in
their life.
>> Mhm. Yeah. That's so powerful. My hunch
is that most of what we call depression
is a loss of coherence. And when we're
isolated, we did a study recently to
look at the energetics of mental stress.
When you feel like you're being pulled
aside and judged and right, what does
that do energetically to the body? And
and there's this protein marker in the
blood that reflects energy friction,
energy resistance, right? If the
mitochondria can't flow energy smoothly,
this protein gets made and then it's in
kind of a blood biomarker. It's elevated
in cancer where we think there's
increased energy resistance. It's
elevated in Alzheimer's where we think
there's increased energy resistance in
the brain. It's elevated in diabetes
where there's increased energy
resistance with the insulin resistance.
It's elevated in all sorts of
pathologies, hypertension and the heart
disease. And it's a marker that the
organism energetically is not doing
well. there's it's not efficient, right?
It's almost a marker of inefficiency. We
did this study where you bring people
in, we put an intravenous line so we can
measure the blood markers uh and then we
tell them, "Okay, just relax.
Everything's fine. You're doing great."
And then they they sit down, they relax
for 30 minutes, cortisol goes down,
heart rate goes down, blood pressure
goes down, and then our lovely study
coordinator, Katherine, walked into the
room and then looked at the participants
said, "Now you're going to be judged.
You're going to have to deliver a
speech. And here's a situation. You were
in a shopping mall. You were, you know,
you grabbed this this scarf. You put it
on just to try. But then the security
guard caught you. And then they're
accusing you of shoplifting. So now
you're in court. You need to defend
yourselves in front of the the the judge
and you need to tell the judge what
should happen to the security guard.
Should you lose his job or and then we
tell them you have two minutes to
prepare your three minute defense in
front of the judge. Most people start to
feel the the anxiety and then we we
monitor heart rate at the same time and
blood pressure and and then we draw
blood and so you can see everyone's
physiology wasting energy, right? The
energetic cost of stress. You see this
on the monitor on the other side, you
know, in the control room. And then we
put a camera in front of them that
mocks, you know, video records him. And
then we have a white coatwearing old
white man who stands six feet in front
of them, looks at them straight in the
eyes, they start talking. And then they
have to look into into the camera and
they do their their defense and they
know someone's looking at them. And what
we saw was that this energy stress
marker goes up just with mental stress.
You're not doing exercise. You're not
doing anything strenuous. You're just
going through this phase of
what's going to happen to me, to my ego,
to to my sense of self.
>> So, what's the downstream consequence of
this thing, this stress chemical being
in your body?
>> Yeah. So, that protein is called GDF-15.
>> Yeah.
>> Growth differentiation factor 15, the
name doesn't matter, but that energetic
stress marker, you're asking the right
question. What does it do and what does
it matter? And it turns out this protein
goes to the brain.
>> Yeah. And that protein can be made by
any organ in the body except one,
the brain. What is it doing? It's very
useful to know where where's a receptor,
right? Because you need to have for
signaling and biology to happen, you
need a signal and you need a receptor, a
sensor, right? Uh where's a receptor for
this protein, do you think? Only in one
organ in the body.
>> Is it in here?
>> It's right in here. Yeah. So in the
brain stem the the brain stem is where
kind of the the basic survival systems
of the body are and there's a region in
the brain stem called the area postrema
doesn't matter it's it's known as the
vomiting and nausea center for the brain
>> wait so if something happens I'm
extremely stressed the world is judging
me this protein goes into my blood and
then it goes up into my brain stem and
it docks in there
>> correct
>> and then what happens
>> and then turns out the brain interpret
this as there's something running out of
energy
>> there's something running out of energy
Okay,
>> something in the body is not right.
There's something running out of energy
and then the brain makes two decisions
very similar to when you're sick. That
protein GDF-15 is called a cytoine. It's
the same thing that immune cells produce
when they're activated during an
infection.
>> Okay. So, your body thinks you're sick.
>> Yes.
>> And then what?
>> And then does two things. Save energy.
Conserve energy.
>> So, you lose motivation.
>> Yes. Lose motivation.
>> Feel depressed.
>> Feel depressed.
>> Can't go to the gym.
>> Yes. doesn't feel worth it. We know this
specifically from animal studies. If you
inject animals with GFD, they hunch in a
ball and they don't do anything, right?
They go into this sickness behavior.
That's number one. Number two, the brain
says something's running out of energy
first. Let's conserve energy, number
one. But two, let's mobilize energy,
right? Let's put glucose into the blood.
Let's put fat into the blood because
there might be cells out there that are,
you know, running out of energy and we
need to rescue them.
>> Are you going to get belly fat? visceral
fat. Yeah.
>> Yeah. You're going to get belly fat from
this.
>> Yeah. When stress hormones are up,
right, and you're increasing blood
glucose, increasing uh blood lipids, if
the rest of the body doesn't need it,
which is what kind of happens during a
stress response like this, that fat gets
lodged where it shouldn't called ectopic
fat. And that's what belly fat is.
>> Okay. So, let's go a bit further. This
is happening. Um, if this is chronic, I
guess it's going to lead at some point
to disease.
>> Mhm. What the best studies show on this
is when you have high level of this
energetic stress marker this protein
you're more likely if you follow people
then studies were done where you take
the blood you measure this protein some
people have very high levels some people
have very low levels uh and then you
wait 14 years this is actually a study
from the UK called the UK bioank so if
you measure the protein and stress
cytoine and you ask what happens to
people with high GDF-15 versus people
with low GDF-15 turns out people with
high GDF-15 are more likely to develop
mental illness, h bipolar disease,
depression, schizophrenia. People with
high GDF-15 are more likely to develop
cardiovascular disease, hypertension.
People with high GF are more likely to
be dead. At this point, we don't know if
it makes a difference, if it's from
mental stress, if it's from physical
stress, if it's from an organ
struggling, right, that's sick and
trying to to heal itself. High energy
stress, high energy resistance in the
body based on this marker is called a
prognostic indicator. It's an indicator
that something bad might happen. And uh
and and people with high GDF-15 also,
they don't like to take the stairs. They
don't like to walk for pleasure. They
don't like to go out to the gym. They
don't like to go out with friends.
>> They don't like to exercise. What would
>> correct? Yeah. Because it it if you're
getting the signal like when you're
sick, right? If GF15 is made somewhere
in your body, it goes to your brain,
you're getting the signal, you're
running out of energy.
>> So, I guess the the question everyone's
asking as they're listening to this now
is,
how do I prevent GDF-15 or whatever it's
called, this stress cytoine thing that
goes and docks in my brain? How do I
prevent it from floating around in my
blood so often?
>> Good question. Taking the time to feel.
>> Meditation.
>> Meditation. My bloody fiance is right.
uh what we know is there's some initial
evidence that GDF-15 increases
throughout the day, right? Uh so the
purpose of sleep then might be to reduce
energy resistance, right? Like what we
were talking about earlier, it's not
about having like finding this one
optimal level of resistance and sticking
there. It's about this movement of
increasing resistance and then
decreasing resistance and increasing
resistance, decreasing resistance. It's
kind of this movement of life. And I
guess all the other things we talked
about earlier as it relates to lifestyle
factors like keeping away from these
sort of extreme stresses, eating way too
much, starving oneself, oxidative
stress. None of the solutions here are
rocket science, are they?
>> Mhm.
>> Do you know what I mean?
>> Mhm.
>> If we just look back in time of how we
used to live, you know, a little bit
more human out in nature with people,
with friends, offscreens.
>> Yeah.
>> Eating stuff that grows in the ground or
has legs and runs.
>> A lot of that is pretty like a pretty
simple playbook for like how to live a
good life.
>> Yeah. and to not be so bloody stressed
out all the time.
>> I think part of it is yes, living a life
that is more aligned with the way we
evolved,
>> right? Which is connecting to other
human beings and not eating too much.
And um I think that's one piece and but
that's like everyone knows this.
>> Yeah.
>> Why aren't we doing it?
>> And I think part of the reason is
because we we have this kind of
misconception of ourselves as a
molecular machine, right? And it's like
need to maintain your car. If I'm like a
a machine, if I'm like a car, then I'm
just going to put more fuel in and I
should feel better. And then you do and
then you you eat more and then you don't
feel better. And that's I think
extremely disempowering. People want to
be empowered. And people want to have
knowledge, but they want to know what to
do so they can be their best version of
themselves, so they can flourish.
>> So, you know what's interesting? Before
you arrived, I I did something I've
never done before. I went through all of
the interviews you've done and I looked
at all the comments because I wanted to
understand the people that have listened
to you frequently. What what what is it
they feel like they would love to ask
you or what they haven't gotten from
other interviews. One of the most
popular comments which was seen roughly
10% of time was the audience asking
about supplements and the question that
they had is that they know you
personally lean on lifestyle
interventions but the biohacking
community is very interested in
compounds like methylene blue urethylene
A and NAD plus boosters. In your opinion
what does the sort of clinical data or
clinical consensus actually say about
these supplements? Are they a shortcut?
Are they a band-aid? Are they useful? I
think there are shortcuts to to some
states. I lean away from them because I
think once we start to think that
there's a magic pill to solve a complex
issue to solve the way that you're
feeling becomes like the there's a magic
pill for this and then you don't need to
bring awareness to what you are.
>> But can I do both?
>> I think so. In in some cases, I don't
really know how metalene blue does
everything it's supposed to be doing.
What uh biologically metine blue seems
to be able to give electrons to the
mitochondria. So maybe there's something
there that metaline blue can kind of
relieve energy resistance in the
mitochondria. NAD+ is probably the best
supported uh intervention to reduce
inflammation. Also, it's an electron
carrier. So it take electrons from food
and then gives them to the electron
transport chain. So the mitochondria can
flow those electrons with low
resistance. So if you're depleted of
NAD, there's that's going to cause
increased resistance for electrons to
flow through the this metabolic circuit.
>> So NAD+ seems to calm things down a
little bit in terms of energy
processing. And if
>> Yeah. And most people are not deficient
of NAD+. So giving more to the system
might not help. But for for reasons I
don't really understand, it seems like
it helps some people and it makes people
uh feel more energetic. So
>> is that in pill form? Like how do people
take NAD+? Cuz I know there was some
like drips one time that some guy gave
me.
>> Yes, I think there there's uh oral
supplements that are uh precursors to
NAD. If you eat NAD directly, it doesn't
the bioavailability it's called, it
doesn't get into you know your cells
very well. you can inject infuse IV
intravenously uh NAD+ directly and then
that that gets to your cells better. Um
that's not a an approved or kind of
recommended medical intervention but
I've seen people with mitochondrial
disease you know saying that it helps
them and and normal healthy people as
well who feel more energy.
>> What about this uralithn A?
>> Uralithin A is a new compound that seems
to stimulate the degradation of bad
mitochondria.
So we talked about autophagy, mphagy
earlier. So a cell that has a thousand
mitochondria. There are always some that
are getting a little old and then
eventually they're degraded. Especially
if you fast, right? If the cell is a
little starved is going to degrade the
ones that are least functional and
there's kind of a whole selection
process that happens inside the cell to
know which mitochondria are bad, which
ones are good. But the bad mitochondria
get targeted and then they get degraded
if you're fasting or if you're pushing
the system like during exercise. What
uralin a seems to do is to kind of
accelerate this process. Right? So it
accelerates the degradation of the bad
mitochondria the mphigy so that the cell
has to make more of the good ones. I'm
looking at some of the studies here and
it says the clinical evidence for
uralythin A has rapidly expanded over
the last few years transitioning from a
compelling animal data study to highly
rigorous placeboc controlled human
clinical trials and overwhelmingly the
human research confirms that uriththan a
targets mitochondrial dysfunction and
systemic inflammation with one study in
2022 in the JAMAMA network open study
journal um where they took adults aged
65 to 90 and gave one of them placebo
one of the groups placebo and the other
uriththan A for 4 months. And at the end
of that they found that the group that
were given uraliththn A showed
statistically significant improvements
in muscle endurance and a reduction in
biomarkers of mitochondrial
inefficiency.
>> Mhm.
>> I should be on uriththn A then
>> everyone should.
>> Do you take any of that? I
>> don't.
>> You don't take any supplements?
>> I don't. I'm skeptical of this. You
know, there's always kind of a new
supplement that does amazing things,
especially if it cures mitochondrial
dysfunction. Mitochondria have dozens of
functions.
>> Yeah. And so the term mitochondrial
dysfunction is I think a little
misleading. Like there was a lot of hype
about NAD. There was a lot of hype about
co-enzyme Q, CoQ10. Uh there was a lot
of hype about all sorts of things.
Anti-inflammatory, you know, berries and
antioxidants was a big thing like 10, 20
years ago. Turns out not to be so
useful. Uh actually impairs normal
adaptation and signaling if you eat too
many antioxidants. Um so urin feels like
the next fad. Uh maybe it's real. Uh, I
think the science is fairly compelling,
but I'm I I trust the wisdom of my body
and my mitochondria more than I trust
the the pharma company that's trying to
to make and sell this.
>> And what does that mean in in practical
terms, trusting the wisdom of your body?
Like, what does that mean for you?
>> It means um recognizing that I am the
the energy that's flowing through this
thing and this thing is nature. Like we
are a piece of nature. Something that's
true across the animal kingdom and the
the living kingdom is things heal. And
we don't think about this in biio
medicine. We think about diseases. We
study, you know, when things go wrong
and we try to understand the molecular,
you know, features of diseases. There's
not really a science of the healing
process. But the basis of health, it's
clear you need to heal continuously.
Heal, you know, repair the DNA that's
damaged. Repair the mitochondria that
are getting old. You get rid of them.
You make new ones. like preserving the
wholeness of the system. To heal means
to become whole again.
>> Is that contingent on me being in a
natural environment for my nature to
heal? Because if you think about me and
you sat in here now, we're sat in a like
a dark bunker basically with no
sunlight. And listen, most of us live in
such a dark bunker with very little
sunlight. So we then have to take
vitamin D.
>> So because we live outside of our true
nature, I'm wondering if actually we do
need to take some supplements cuz
>> we're not going to heal. we are going to
heal
>> even but if I sit in here all day I'm
not going to get vitamin D and then
that's going to cause problems.
>> Yes. So we're not in the optimal
environment when you're in that kind of
environment. So I think there and
there's good research showing if you put
a plant in a hospital room patients
recover faster. There's been studies
looking at like windows with natural
light and you see nature if you're in a
hospital for example people recover
better. And there's good data on like
nature exposure. Is it like the more
better oxygen? You know a little tiny
bit more oxygen if you're in a forest.
Is it like the phyitochemicals, the
things that are produced by the by the
plants? Like we don't really know what
it is. Is it just seeing green, seeing
something that hears that sounds and
looks like what you evolved to be
around? So, we don't really know, but we
know exposure to nature kind of helps
calm the body and somehow improve
recovery.
>> Whoa. What's that on your face?
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One type of help people also wanted to
know about from you which was even more
discussed was about red light therapy.
>> Red light therapy as a support for your
mitochondria.
>> Interestingly, the red light therapy is
a pretty big thing now. There are
hundreds of different devices, helmets,
a hairbrush
band.
>> I think I've got one here actually. I
think this is this this is a red light
>> therapy hairbrush.
>> Therapy hairbrush.
>> Yeah. Uh someone was just telling me
their dad is part of a study now. He
puts a helmet with red light, you know,
every day because he has like
predmentia. By doing this, the idea is
uh light is energy.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. Energy is not a thing, but it's
the potential for change. It's the
capacity to change something. Red light
like this, especially the red, the
infrared that you don't see with your
eye, can penetrate tissue. It can go
through your hair, through your skull,
and then into your brain. And then there
it seems to do something and change
metabolism. So how is it doing this? The
best hypothesis we have is that for
light to do something in biology, there
needs to be something in biology that
resonates with it, right? That can uh
offer the right amount of resistance,
right? To the photons, the red light
photons hit and then there's
transformation of energy. That receptor,
the antenna, the cellular antenna for
red light seems to be mitochondria. So
there's something in the mitochondria
where the electrons flow and then boom
they meet with oxygen to become
metabolic water. Uh that is called
cytochrome C oxidase.
>> I'm going to try and say this in
layman's terms. It if I take red light
and I put it on my skin, it doesn't even
need to touch my skin. I can put it just
close to my skin.
>> The red light is going into the
mitochondria of my cell and it's helping
the mitochondria to become more
efficient.
>> That's the idea.
>> So why should you wake up every day and
do bloody red light? If you're deficient
in that in that way, that might be good.
Uh that might also offset, you know, the
the natural order that your body has has
created.
>> Oh, what do you mean by that? you think
it might be. I think that in in general
that's why I kind of veer away from
supplements because the organism is this
beautiful dynamic equilibrium of like
everything you know energetically
dancing with each other where you have
the mitochondria that transform energy
and then you know genes are expressed
and then this other cell is doing this
this cell is doing this and there's this
beautiful balance and uh when the system
is out of balance now there's signals
like inflammation right signals of this
imbalance uh at an energetic level and
then that turns into molecular level and
then the system tries to come back into
balance, right? And
>> wow, I never realized this that too much
red light can be bad for you.
>> I don't know if there's studies that
show too much red light is bad for you,
but there's like phototoxicity is a
thing and there you can buy a whole bed
of like really intense light. And I
think if you stay too long in those,
that's probably not good. There's a a
very compelling study that was published
last year uh on blood glucose regulation
and I know you've talked about blood
glucose on other episodes.
>> How much glucose in the blood is really
important because it causes this like
energy resistance energy friction in all
of your cells especially the brain
perhaps. So when you eat a bunch of
sugar or you eat a meal with
carbohydrates blood glucose typically
spikes. If you get stressed out just
psychological stress will increase blood
glucose. So those glucose spikes can
increase energy resistance and then
start to cause damage, accelerate aging
and so on. So what the body does in the
normal healthy organism is able to
regulate blood glucose. So if you eat a
big meal, there's amount enough insulin
that's released and then the glucose can
come into cells and to the muscles and
and to the fat and and then you
preserve, you know, what's called normal
glycemia, normal blood glucose. It turns
out if you shine a red light on the back
of people as they ingest a big bunch of
glucose, the spike in glucose is not as
high. And what they did in that study
that was interesting is they measured
mitochondrial metabolism through the
mouth. You can measure oxygen coming in
and CO2 coming out which is coming from
mitochondria. So you can measure the the
energy metabolism which is really the
mitochondrial metabolism as people are
doing this. And what they found is that
people who had red light on their back,
their metabolism was actually uh a
little higher. So the electrons, the
flow of energy was increased with the
red light and and they think that might
be why the glucose didn't spike as much
because the electrons that came into the
blood were able to flow through the
mitochondria. Um, so this points to some
regulation of energy regulation in
inside the mitochondria that I don't
fully understand, but I think there
there's something promising here and it
certainly supports, you know, the idea
that energy modalities outside of
ourselves, you know, light or
electromagnetic fields under human
beings that are, you know, you energy
energetic process is affecting my
metabolism all the time. We respond to
each other energetically, metabolically.
Uh, I think it it supports that idea
that you're in an energetic process and
you're influenced by other forms of
energy even if you don't see it.
>> I'm really um stunned by this idea that
there is such thing as getting too much
red light and that that can have harm
for your cells because there is I'll be
honest you know there's been a couple of
times where I just put that thing on and
maybe like read a book for a long time
like an hour or two.
>> Did you ever feel adverse effects from
this?
>> I never felt adverse effects. However,
looking at some of the studies, it seems
to suggest that red light therapy
follows a bell curve model.
>> Mhm.
>> They found in this one particular study
I was reading about in 2009, that low to
moderate doses of light perfectly
stimulate the mitochondria to produce
ATP and a healthy small burst of ROS,
reactive oxygen species to trigger
cellular repair. However, this
particular study also showed that when
the dose is pushed too high, the light
creates massive amounts of reactive
oxidative species and this excess
oxidative stress overwhelms the cell's
antidioxidant defenses completely
shutting down mitochondrial respiration
and in inducing cellular aptosis, cell
death instead of healing. Mhm. Yeah.
That this bell-shaped relationship is
something we see in many domains of
biology and physiology. Same as like
workout exercising like most people know
if you do a workout that's like half an
hour, an hour or two hours. If you're an
athlete and you're like really well
conditioned, it's fine. And then you
recover for you know 23 hours after your
1 hour workout and that's great. It
actually makes you more efficient. gives
you the idea the impression you have
more energy which is really energy
flowing more efficiently but if you work
out for eight hours
>> that's not good right so the too much
you you crash not enough you're not at
your optimal so there's where is the
optimal state and biology and the whole
mind body unit has kind of worked out
through evolution and through your life
and development to find this sweet spot
>> if you know how to listen to it
>> and that's that's easier said than done
>> yes if you can live in alignment and
There's a lot of noise out there.
>> There is, you know, for the same reason
you closed your eyes earlier when I
asked you to kind of feel inside. This
is a good analogy for I think what it
means to kind of listen to her energy.
And maybe we could do a little exercise
if you're interested.
>> Sure.
>> Yeah.
>> So, we'll do a little exercise. Uh you
can close your eyes if you want.
>> Everyone at home also close your eyes
unless you are driving.
>> Yeah. And we'll use the breath. So, you
can start by just feeling your body. You
can feel kind of gravity pulling your
body down into the chair.
And then we'll take a little breath in
and then breath out and then all the way
down. And then hold your breath with
empty lungs
and then hold there for as long as you
can.
And just pay attention to the sensations
that are emerging in your body,
whether it's on your belly and your
chest and your neck and your head.
And the longer you wait, the more
intense those sensations are.
You can hold for as long as you want and
when you can't and just take a take a
breath. Deep breath.
What did that feel like?
>> It felt I felt lots of vibrations.
>> It's kind of like waves. I felt like
kind of like waves going across my body,
but I It was almost like I could feel
the energy moving through my body.
>> Mhm.
>> It's kind of how it felt.
>> I suddenly was very apparent clear of my
heartbeat. I could feel everything.
>> Mhm.
>> In a way that I can't typically feel
everything.
>> Yeah. Any kind of negative feeling or
any sensation that was uncomfortable? I
mean it near the end when I couldn't
when I hadn't breathed in a while it was
a bit uncomfortable.
>> Yeah. What did that feel like?
>> Like like I was starving for oxygen.
Like I was starving for air.
>> Yeah. You know running out of air and
like drowning is one of the most
horrible like aversive experience that I
think we evolved to dislike. Right. So
what what was happening there in our
bodies as we were doing this is oxygen
is being consumed by mitochondria
continuously. Right. every millisecond
mitochondria consume oxygen and now
you're not bringing oxygen through your
breath and then they produce CO2 carbon
dioxide right so mitochondria are
burning the oxygen little bit by a
little bit and then they're producing
carbon dioxide CO2 and we evolved to
feel those signals very very sensitively
>> so that's the pressure that I felt
>> well I think that yes so the subjective
experience right what you described
there is an experience of energy
starting to stall Because if there's no
oxygen in your mitochondria, the
electrons like h where do I go? And then
there's like extreme level of
resistance.
>> Like the most extreme case of energy
resistance I think that most people will
be familiar with is like a heart attack.
>> Mhm.
>> My dad had a heart attack a few years
ago and he woke up during the night with
this terrible contraction like a
pressure in in the chest and he said it
was like 400 lb like pressure on his
chest. Terrible pain. Worst pain he's
ever had. What what's happening like
where where what is that pain? The
source of that pain really is blood flow
can no longer bring oxygen to
mitochondria in the heart.
>> Oh, so the mitochondria are like
panicking.
>> Yeah.
>> So panicking is kind of a we're imposing
now experience onto a biological
process. But you have the electrons that
are flowing through mitochondria all the
time. They're flowing on oxy onto
oxygen, right? From food to oxygen and
they're just nice freely floating. That
feels great or it feels like you just
normal life. And then all of a sudden
there's no more oxygen. So the electron
I have nowhere to go. That feels
terrible. The electrons can't flow. So
they start to backflow. That is what
causes oxidative stress. That's why the
heart gets damaged during a heart
attack, right? Because the electrons
can't flow to oxygen because of this
little clot. Uh and for some reason that
we don't really understand
this feels extremely aversive. So what
you experience there by holding your
breath and anyone who's listening to
this can try on their own. hold your
breath for as long as possible. It feels
horrible. And now imagine living your
life with just like 5% 10% of this
horrible feeling like you wake up in the
morning and you have this like
trace of like running out of energy,
right? Running out of oxygen. Uh I think
that's what some mental illnesses feel
like. And there's very interesting data
showing that if you inject people with a
signal of energetic stress, lactate, you
can trigger a panic attack.
You're not messing with the brain there.
You're not like, you know, kind of doing
something to the to neurochemistry. What
you're doing is you're injecting the
human body with a signal that the
mitochondria can't keep up with energy
flow. You're tricking the body into
thinking that energy resistance has just
been jacked up to very high levels. This
feels like anxiety. And people with
traumatic memories like post-traumatic
stress disorder, PTSD, the simple
injection of an energetic stress signal
of lactate in the blood can reawaken
traumatic memories. So there's this
emerging notion in psychiatry called met
in metabolic psychiatry uh where people
understand mental illnesses as energetic
disorders of the brain. And what I think
is is happening in those kind of chronic
state of of ill-being, right? where
people don't feel themselves, they don't
feel well, they you know the
hypervigilance, anxiety. Uh it's quite
likely at this point I think that part
of that is driven by energy not flowing
properly and then the body just lives at
high energy resistance all the time. And
there's data directly measuring energy
resistance in the brain from a group
MLAN in in Harvard uh and then lactate
tends to be elevated in people with
mental illness and this marker GDF-15
also is elevated in mental illness. And
so the cure again or the the thing to
ease that is all the lifestyle factors
that we talked about purpose and you
know check we've covered that ground.
>> Yeah life changes you know changing your
life circumstances that's really hard to
do. Uh exercising seems to help a lot of
people but a lot of people don't feel
they have the capacity to exercise. Uh
and ketones seem to be a lifesaving for
some people. going on a ketogenic diet
and I've met now dozens of individuals
whose lives were crushed by you know
schizoffective disorder, bipolar
disorder, major depressive disorder and
they were treatment resistant right
meaning like the phicotherapy the drugs
that they were given were not helping in
some cases were making things worse uh
with like difficult side effects and
then they changed her diet cutting all
sugars and they went on a ketogenic diet
medical ketogenic therapy
Uh and then they started to monitor
ketones and many people reported you
know that this was life-changing like
first the first thing they many people
notice is they have more energy. The
ketogenic diet does not work for
everyone.
>> Mhm.
>> We don't know why.
And the same way that we're all
different, we all respond differently to
even medications, right, that are
supposed to work the same for everyone.
We have a science of averages. Like the
science that we use to get knowledge to
inform our lives is almost entirely a
science of averages. Meaning like all of
the studies we do like the the highest
gold standard studies we consider to be
RCTs randomized control trials. These
RCTs if you run an RCT what you do is
you take let's say a thousand people
then you randomize half 500 into this
group normal diet and then 500 into
ketogenic diet. And then you say great
now let's look at their depressive
symptoms right or or their anxiety
symptoms and then you have them on the
diet for two months and then after you
assess and then you compare the groups
right you lump 500 human beings together
and you say what's the average
depression or anxiety symptoms in this
in these 500 people then you average
these people together and then you group
them and then you compare means
>> and I guess the other important point
here is gender which is so many of these
studies were skewed towards men uh in
many cases and that doesn't apply to
women a lot of the time. And this is
part of the reason we've had so many
conversations on this show about women's
health is because we're just now
discovering that, you know, once upon a
time scientists would treat women like
little men and assume that everything
just applied
>> but actually we're entirely different.
And so
>> this averages thing, you also need to
think about the nuances of like who,
gender, where they're from, their
biology, their DNA. You just said that
you you get the skinny fat thing or the
visceral fat, whatever. I don't get
that.
>> Mhm. But if we were doing an average of
like three people,
>> maybe we'd come to a conclusion based on
me and me and the other person who was
like me, but that wouldn't apply to you.
>> Yeah. And that's really problematic.
Like all of the the health
recommendations that we have and the the
way drugs get approved uh and the way we
determine whether a drug is useful or
not for disease X or or Y is by
comparing groups. And whenever you you
peel the surface of a clinical study of
an RCT, you find some people like are
amazing responders and they're cured.
They don't have symptoms. And then some
people don't respond. These are called
non-responders. And then some people get
worse.
>> The most commented thing across the
videos you featured on um and the most
passionate thing uh the most urgent
thing according to the the people that
were watching your work that they wanted
to ask you was about longcoid mefs. I'm
not sure what that is. and fibromyalgia.
Um, for patients with me, CFS, and
you'll have to explain to me what that
is, or long COVID, the standard advice
given is to exercise for metitochondrial
health. Um, but for them, it often
triggers severe crashes. What is
happening at the cellular level when the
energy budget is broken and how can
these individuals safely rehabilitate
their mitochondria without causing
further damage?
>> Yeah, that's a really tough problem. And
>> this was the most repeatedly the most
liked, the most commented thing on your
videos
>> because these people are suffering and
they're just not being given answers, I
guess.
>> Yeah. In the US there's an estimated
like 3 to 5 million people who have
either myalgic and sephil ancilitis uh
chronic fatigue syndrome, ME/CFS or you
know longcoid version of this. Uh in the
UK it's somewhere between like two and
three million I think. And then
worldwide there's 20 24 million people
have these syndromes, right?
>> What are the symptoms for someone that
hasn't experienced it? What are the
symptoms that they're experiencing?
>> Chronic fatigue,
>> just always being sort of tired and low
energy. Feeling low energy.
>> Yeah. Feeling low energy um is is an
experience, right? So it's you go to
your doctor say I feel so tired and then
you look in the blood works,
everything's fine. But so there's a
disconnect between what we know how to
measure biochemically and then what the
person is experiencing. We don't have a
good understanding of the connection
between the biology and the biochemistry
in the blood and even process in the
brain and how people feel. So there's a
disconnect here and uh ME/CFS you know
chronic fatigue uh long COVID these
people have been a little bit ostracized
uh from the medical you know community
because doctors are are really stuck uh
they have the these patients which are
really difficult you know patients to to
deal with. first they don't know what's
wrong with them and second they don't
have tools to help them get better uh
and and then the classical thing is well
exercise but then many of these people
when they exercise they actually get
worse and and there's some studies that
show increased inflammation so those
signals of energy resistance increase
energy friction in the body uh go up
after exercise in a normal person in
these people with chronic fatigue it
seems like they can skyrocket and then
that leads to this postexertional
malaise
Right? We talked earlier about how the
marker of energetic stress GDF-15 can go
to the brain and make you feel sick,
right? Or make you feel, you know,
nauseous or, you know, tired. Other
cytoines from the immune system when
you're sick, uh, when you're fighting an
infection do the same thing. The best
study on on mitochondria and chronic
fatigue syndrome was published last year
or the year before and it showed that
there is a deficiency in energy
transformation in the mitochondria, the
muscle. They took muscle biopsies,
little piece of muscle from the from the
quad, from the the thigh. And then they
looked at how well can the mitochondria
in the muscle of people with chronic
fatigue syndrome flow energy. And what
they found is the capacity is much
lower. If the mitochondria can't flux
energy properly, you should feel like
you don't have the capacity to push
right to exercise. So why is that? Why
do those people have you lower
mitochondrial energy transformation
capacity? We don't know. There are so
many stories and I' I've been curious
and interested about this uh and I
remember uh this uh family friend who
came for dinner uh one night and she uh
she was asking me what do you work on
and what do you do and so I tell her we
work on mitochondria and psychobiology
mitochondrial psychobiology how the mind
and the body relate you know
energetically and she said well I have
an interesting story for you I said okay
what's the story I used to have chronic
fatigue syndrome so I I perked up I was
like what happened. She was visibly an
energetic person. She didn't it didn't
look like she had, you know, an issue
with energy. So, she said, uh, she was
in her 20s and she had like she was
debilitated. She couldn't work and, you
know, she lived in this place and, you
know, her life would kind of, you know,
completely upside down because she
didn't have energy to do anything,
which is, I think, a common story. and
she was in bed like multiple hours, you
know, every day and struggling to go get
groceries and everything was a drag
about life. And then one summer, uh,
this guy from Hawaii, which was a friend
of a friend, came over, uh, for the for
the summer just to for a little trip and
they had an affair. She had a boyfriend
and this was a long time that she that
she had had a, you know, a human
connection like this. So you're saying
>> I I'm not saying
what what end what ended up happening is
she said my chronic fatigue kind of
lifted and I didn't have to do anything
and then after that summer she never had
chronic fatigue again uh and she kind of
reintegrated the normal life. I don't
know what the lesson is here. I don't
know if there's a generalizable
principle, but there's a lot of those
stories where people end up in a really
dark place in their life and either
they're diagnosed with the mental
illness or with chronic fatigue syndrome
or with kind of a somato, you know,
psychossematic, you know, label or
whatever that is, there's always kind of
precipitating conditions. Uh sometimes
it's in response to medical
interventions like immunization.
Sometimes it's in response to uh you
know an infection or like a parasite
>> mold and stuff like that. I know some
people have like mold poisoning or
whatever and they get
>> yeah very often there's like a trigger.
There's like sometimes a lingering kind
of condition and then sometimes there's
an acute trigger and the body is never
able to fully recover. So what do we
take from that you know story of a of a
summer fling?
>> Well I I take from it hope.
>> Yeah. that you know even when the cards
seem to be stacked against you and it
feels like you might have to live with
this thing for a long time that in many
cases miraculous things happen that defy
the odds and hope itself I think can
keep us in an optimistic mind mindset
>> I've seen this in patients with
mitochondrial diseases as well you know
these people are diagnosed with the
genetically defined mitochondrial
disease their mitochondria can't flow
energy properly so every day they live
probably with this kind of discomfort of
you know holding your breath for too
long
>> and Everything's difficult about life.
Many of them lose hope. And and when you
see them losing hope, they start to go
downhill physically and many of them die
very early. The people who do the best
like their mitochondria don't work the
way they should, but they they're able
to find something that they love.
They're able to, you know, find an
expression for for themselves. And
they're have supportive family. Almost a
universal theme for people who do well
is they have a supportive, you know,
environment. And cultivating this is is
so precious. And that brings us back
maybe to social connections. You know,
you energetic process, me energetic
process. When we interact, you know,
through um through sounds and and you
know, physically shaking hands and uh
and I feel your energy, I feel your
excitement, you feel mine. And then, you
know, we we might vibe and resonate and
and then maybe you know, you find
someone and you feel love for that
person. I think love is the experience
of resonance, right? And and when you
feel that with someone, it feels so
special.
>> Which goes back to the affair point.
>> Yeah. Maybe
>> maybe
>> on this point of exercise which we
talked about earlier, if someone wants
to maximize mitochondrial biogenesis,
what is the sweet spot for training? Is
it strictly zone 2 cardio or
highintensity interval training or
resistance training or something else?
Is there like an optimal type of
training?
>> Yeah, I think the key principle here is
anything that will make you breathe
harder.
>> Yeah.
>> Means that your mitochondria are working
harder.
>> Okay. But you don't want to do it too
long
>> if you're not trained, right? Like
you're regular guy. I'm not trained now.
I I I I run for like 20 minutes every
other day. That's my, you know, routine.
That's what I I have enough time to do.
And I feel like it moves energy through
my body in the right way. But if I go
and I try to run a marathon, I'm going
to injure myself. You know, I'm going to
hurt myself. So that would be too much
for me. And so I think that comes back
to the point of like feeling into your
energy. We call this mitoception right
feeling into your mitochondria and
what's sustainable. So I think there's
an individualized you know stance that
we need to take towards this. And the
last question from the audience was
right now mitochondrial health feels a
bit invisible. Are there any accessible
reliable tests like ATP blood tests or
specific biomarkers that a normal person
can use to accurately measure their
mitochondrial function.
>> Working on it.
>> You're working on it.
>> Yeah. So our team is working on it. Uh
and so we're building uh a platform, a
technology platform that would allow
people to tune into their mitochondria
to mito, right? So do you feel your
energy through your mitochondria? Uh and
then you can make better decisions like
ketogenic diet, is this helping you? Is
this not helping you? Uh this new
relationship, is this sucking away your
energy or is this giving you energy?
This new job, this new, you know,
direction in life. Um there's so much I
mean all of the important decisions we
make really you know we make what how we
feel like you wake up in the morning and
either you feel great and you can change
things or you wake up and and you don't
want to be here. Uh that's an experience
and before you get there you know on the
dark side there's all of these decision
points that that we face and the power
of discernment right and what we talked
about like with Steve Jobs like this is
the way and then you know you feel
strong about this discerning what's
right for you what's not right for you
what's the right direction is it the
right time or not those are decisions we
make you know with our guts and there
are many people who who swear that this
is the only way they make decisions and
if they make decisions rational
definitely that ends up biting them in
the butt because I think the this thing
and this energetic system is the most
sensitive instrument that we have to
know whether
the content of our lives is aligned with
who we are as individuals
and that requires that we feel into this
movement and into our sensations and
into um the experiences we have. So
that's the the barometer that really
guides us through life like a GPS, an
energetic GPS.
>> Dr. Martin, we have a closing tradition
on this podcast where the last guest
leaves a question for the next guest,
not knowing who they're leaving it for.
And the question that has been left for
you is, what is the most difficult thing
you ever overcame and how did it make
you the person you are today?
So, I just felt my energy change.
>> I saw it change.
>> I felt like this sinking feeling
about a year ago. Um, my fiance and I
were expecting a baby
and we were about 3 months into the
pregnancy and it was great. We were
excited. Um we were calling this new
life new life and we talked you know
affectionately about it and we said like
you know when new life comes this and we
both have a child and
um and she was in Canada she came back
and then uh and that evening in in bed
she had this like crazy pain that
started and
uh and we were about super scared. there
was a bit of bleeding and then and then
the contraction started to come really
fast. Not supposed to happen at 3
months. Um and then I was like, "Oh,
maybe this is just like a bump in the
road and and you know, things are going
to be fine."
Um so we ended up having a miscarriage
and na didn't want to go to the
hospital. So we did this at home and it
was terrible. It was really, really sad,
really, you know, gut-wrenching.
So, we were were both devastated when,
you know, New Life us and and then I had
this moment of like, why me?
Like, why the this has happened to
me? Like, I'm I think I'm a good person.
I'm doing my best to bring good in the
world. I try to be a good partner, good
um, you know, leader. I try to Yeah. Why
is this happening to me? So, this was
like this victim, you know, mentality,
mindset. And I've learned through my 40
or so years that I think a a useful
stance to take in life is to assume that
there's something to learn from
everything you go through.
>> I don't know this for sure. It's not a a
scientific fact. It's more of a of an
experience turned into kind of a way of
of living, more of a belief.
So I was like, but how could there be
something to learn from something so
terrible?
Um, and I had to sit with this and two
days later after the baby had gone and N
Rosha and I had sat in the shower and
cried and the smell was horrible and
just it would death like death was
around us around me and I felt angry and
I felt sad.
Um, and I just sat down and wrote I I
just and that's my way now of letting
things flow. Different people have
different ways and and I was writing
about my experience and why now and and
I asked what is there to learn from this
and a very clear answer came up slowing
down
and that hit really hard because
throughout my whole life I've moved
pretty quickly through life. I had a
very short, you know, PhD. Then I became
a professor very quickly and uh and grew
a team and um and like moving fast is
kind of something that's like a
personality trait that I I do. And uh
and I think sometimes it's served me.
It's allowed me to do some things that
it would not have been possible
otherwise. But at other times I think
it's hurt me. And it's like this drive,
this inner drive like things must happen
now, must move fast. I think has hurt
other people around and has impaired my
ability to be an effective leader
because I then maybe I lacked sensit
sensitivity to other people who don't
move at my pace. Uh so slowing down
really kind of um hit home. Things were
like clear. It was like looking at a
canvas and
there was more contrast.
>> Like the things that really mattered
were like sharper, right? and all of
this other like these obligations
and these things that I had said yes to
or like you know the contrast was so
much sharper. Um and this lesson I I
took this as a lesson slowing down I
think has allowed me to be a better
listener to be a better you know more
compassionate father and uh scientist
uh I think it's changed me and I don't
know that I would have learned that
lesson
in another way we are the this energetic
process that's shaped by the sum of our
experiences and the people we meet like
I'll never be the same after today from
having sat with you at this table and
you opening the door not just to
scientific inquiry but to human
experience
yeah the we we change all the time we
transform and what shapes us is those
kind of energetic interactions and um
yeah everything we go through
>> well I'll never be the same either for
for I think all the best reasons. I'm
you know I have to say that I'm I'm
>> I'm I'm hesitating my words here because
of the gratitude that you've taken from
the wisdom that it's given you. But I'm
terribly sorry that that hap you had to
go through that. I can only I just can't
imagine. It's one of my honestly it's
like one of my like worst nightmares
especially at the season of life I'm in
when me and my partner and my fiance are
trying to have a kid. It's just like I
think I think I'm thinking about
>> those things now and how I would I'm
like preempting how I would handle those
kinds of things. So to hear that it
happened to you is just it's um it's
really it's really difficult to hear. Um
>> it happens to about 20 million people a
year.
>> Most people don't talk about it either,
do they? Cuz
>> people don't talk about it.
>> Yeah. Cuz it's shrouded in mixed
emotions and
>> Yeah, I can understand that.
>> Y
>> but I am better off for having this
conversation with you. And I think you
know I speak on behalf of my audience
for sure this time when I say that I
think my audience are as well. I've
learned so much. which has actually kind
of like completely rechanged how I think
about life itself, which is a weird
thing.
>> And I hope I can just sit in this moment
a little bit and think about how I am
energy and how
>> how that's determining everything um
around me and others and
and it's um it's really really
wonderful. I think what you know what
you're doing people might think of you
as like a mitochondrial scientist, but
actually it's much more deeper and much
more philosophical than that. When we
think about what energy is to us, it's
it is everything. M and that's really
the lens that you've given me today is
you've completely changed my mind on
like how I think about life which is
such a wonderful thing to get from a
podcast. I don't say this like I don't
kiss people people's asses like this
like I genuinely my mind is like
hell.
>> It's also changed how I think about
business which is really weird and
unexpected.
Um,
>> business is is an extension of of us of,
you know, energetic
>> like everything is what I've learned
today
>> quite literally.
>> And it's also made me think a lot about
how I preserve, conserve, aim my energy.
Um,
so Dr. Martin Picard, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for your generosity
and your wisdom. It's not very often
that I have conversations that actually
like instantly cause the shift in me,
but this is one of them today. If people
want to learn more about you and the
work you're doing, where do we channel
that energy,
>> where do they go?
>> The best place for people to go is a
website martinpicard.energy.
>> Okay.
>> And then from this website, you'll see
information about the book. You'll see
information about the research core
energetic principles that cover what
we've covered today. There are little
animations and there's information about
the institute.
>> Okay. Thank you so much.
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