The BiOptimizer - Wade Lightheart

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Boom, we're live. Wade, welcome.

Dude, great to be here.

Yeah, really, really good to have you. Uh I've enjoyed all of our conversations and I know your your background is extensive. You got a great story. You're offering great products in the market, and you're really in a very, very uh exciting field, I think, right now, especially, you know, that niche of gut health and science behind it. And and it's just it's just being light, it's just being shown on it now. So uh let's kick it off, man. Let's let's start with your story, Wade. It's it's a great one. Kind of give us some of your background and how you got to where you be.

Yeah, sure. Uh grew up in uh rural Canada on the East Coast in the cold. And uh, like all kids back then, played hockey and kind of lived an ordinary life until I was about 15. And then a couple of things happened, three things happened that all in in the span of a couple of months that transformed my life and set me on this path. So the first thing was my parents moved to ex from a little town into a no-town. Basically, it was five miles to my nearest neighbor. They were the caretakers of a private resort. And that sounds all wonderful, but the reality was I wasn't too happy about being there, being removed from my friends, my community, everything else, and and literally, you know, having to take a snowmobile some days to get out to the bus and then an hour ride to the school. So it was it was what that did is it gave me a lot of time in nature and a lot of time to think and a lot of time to reflect. And that ended up serving me later on in life, but I didn't know it at the time. Second thing, at that same time, my sister was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which is a form of cancer of the lymph nodes, and I watched her go through the medical model for four years before she died at the age of 22. So she was four years my senior. So that had a massive impact. I probably didn't even understand the impact that had for about 10 years. Um, but what it did, what I do know that it impacted me is what, you know what, your health isn't a guarantee and your life isn't a guarantee. And that set the course, I think, for a lot of passions. And I can remember her being sick on the way home from, you know, her treatments and stuff. And I I remember thinking to myself, like, how is it that a treatment is making you sicker? Like that just it and that seems like a naive kind of a natural question, but it was it was a question that drove me literally the rest of my life.

It's a logical question.

Yeah, yeah. And then a third thing that happened is my sister gave me a bodybuilding magazine, which had a picture of Troy Zucklado, who had just won Miss to California, and two really pretty girls on it, and being driven wild with testosterone and not much else to do in the middle of the woods. I was like, okay, maybe I need these muscles and maybe I can get access to some of these girls. So I bought the Joe Weeder Lye and uh built myself a gym a la Rocky style. I had like tractor tires with two wheelers under it and saw horses and pulleys hooked to overhead beams and a little uh York bench press and you know, and started busting it out when uh in in sometimes in a snowmobile suit and 40 below. So I started also listening at that time. I fell in love with kind of the message that Arnold Schwarzenegger was saying at the time. He said, look, with positive attitude, self-discipline, and hard work, you can achieve anything. And that wasn't a message that was kind of spread around where I was. And uh, of course, being a big television star and a super athlete and a wealthy influencer, then I was like, man, this is a message that I don't hear and I'm buying in. And I went all in, and that led me to a career in exercise physiology and competing at the Mr. Universe, representing my country and then cultivating the exercise science. And we were kind of the early biohackers back then because I was competing as a vegetarian and uh drug-free at the world class level. And of course, that's seriously compromised. And so I started developing biohacking technology back in the day, and ultimately digestive health became one of my one of my secret weapons that allowed me to compete with enhanced competitors.

Awesome. Man, I um first of all, I'm sure you've heard this, you know, a million times since you know you're young, but so sorry to hear about your sister. And I can't imagine the influence that would have for you at such a such a young age. And I I you said something that really struck the core because I you know that you your health and your life are not guaranteed, right? And you know, from a personal standpoint, I I always like to explore that a little bit because I think it's one of the great challenges in life is planning for the future, right? And worrying about the future, concerning yourself, but also realizing that hey, it may not come, right? A hundred percent. How how do you what what's your philosophical approach to to that, having that that you know, very impactful, you know, situation early on in your life?

Yeah, I appreciate you asking that because uh one of the things I want to share with people, because you know, the human condition is is pretty precarious. I mean, uh your life is precious and can be taken away at any time. And just the fact that we actually live on this little ball spinning in some part of the galaxy. I mean, it's it's like everything is truly a miracle if you really think about it. It's really far out. And the more you learn, the more you realize that, man, this is really precious. And the other thing about the human condition is nobody gets out alive. Like we're all going to die and we're all going to experience tragedy, we're all gonna experience heartache, and obviously that happens more for some people than others and at different times in life. And the one thing I've noticed, and today I think one of the big, the big challenges that we have in society is we've cultured a we're celebrating victimhood. Essentially, everybody wants to blame somebody and feels that they're entitled to something about s uh perception of the past or perception of the present or so, you know, if you drive through Las Vegas, all you see is borders of are you injured? You know, or you see on TV, you know, like, you know, go after somebody, or the whole lawsuit culture, or these kind of looking through these social lenses into the past and projecting what we know today onto the past and and saying that well, we owe somebody something. And you know, all that mentality doesn't lead to an empowering conversation. It doesn't experience to a joyful life. And the one thing I learned when my sister was dying, I had, you know, profound conversations with someone at an early age about what it was like to be terminal when she finally got the diagnosis of terminal. And I was maybe the only person that was able to have those conversations because I, you know, everybody else wants to sweep that under the rug. And I got insight into man, it's it's it's all the things that you didn't get to do. That's what the regrets were. And that was the regrets for her, and I think that was the regrets for everybody when they go to the grave, regardless of the age. Because whatever it is when you get to that point, it seems like you haven't had enough time. And I determined that I was not going to have regrets. I wasn't gonna buy into the things that a lot of people did. Didn't worry about the cars, didn't worry about the house, didn't worry about the career, lived all over the world, took a lot of chances, made a ton of money, lost a ton of money, um, you know, just became indifferent to a lot of the things. For me, I wanted an experience rich life, not necessarily a bunch of things uh collected around me. And I wanted to be able to build as many relationships as I possibly could and enjoy each moment because every time I see somebody, that's one time closer to the last time I see and may be the last time. And that has, I think, added to me to a culture of connection with humanity. And now I'm doing my piece in the puzzle to help people overcome some of the situations and now work as an advisor to the American Anti-Cancer Institute. And if I was faced with that same situation that my sister was today, I think I would have other options that we could have explored and other people might get attracted to that message, and that's why I continue to do it. So it it as tragic as the event was, it culminated a way of life, a way of living, and now a professional career that supports me and supports, you know, tens of thousands of people around the world have a healthier, happier life.

Yeah. It's it's such powerful messaging. And, you know, I anecdotally at uh when I used at my gym in Santa Barbara when I owned it, at the end of classes when I was coaching, I'd be like, everybody go walk around the block, cool down, and contemplate your own mortality. And people will laugh. I'm like, no, I'm I'm serious. You should contemplate your own mortality every day because by knowing that, hey, these days are limited, we seem to live in this idea that hey, we're gonna we're gonna live forever. And I I recently lost my father a couple months ago, and I feel like, you know, I only the only people who saw it coming were were my dad and me. And he wouldn't say anything, but I knew it. And, you know, I I made sure that for the last year he was around, you know, he could have lived for 10 more years. That was possible, right? But I just knew like I needed to get every phone call in. I needed to get, you know, plan a trip together, I needed to do all this thing. I'm so grateful I did. You know, I have no regrets going back to that. I have a lot of regrets in my life for things I didn't do, but really the way is I I, you know, since leaving Santa Barbara and Sonoma gym and now living in Montana and, you know, traveling more and doing things and not worrying about the material aspects of life, but just living for experience has been, you know, we had a rough, my wife and I had a rough 2016 too, which kind of shook us in that moment. I hope when people have situations like that, like the loss of your sister or loss of someone or you know, some kind of earth-shattering event, that they don't let it go by without honoring it in some way.

Perpetual, not just in the moment. Yeah, we're gonna go through those things and and there's no sense of being bitter. And in most cases, if it was truly a loving relationship, nobody wants you to hang on to the negativity of the past or the tragedy of the past. They want to would rather you take that person's legacy and remember it in a positive way, in an inflexible way, and something that makes a difference in your life because that's how people live on through you. And we are the product of 10,000 generations and are connected to the people that were, you know, scratching out art on caves and facing, you know, death and destruction and uncertainty and you know, dealing with fire, the development of fire and the development of wheels and the hardships that have existed throughout history. We are living in a truly extraordinarily soft time of ever. We we live in an incomp for most of the history, we live in a world that is incomprehensible to even people 50 years ago, let alone a hundred. So we have to put things in perspective, right? Oh, I didn't get the new iPhone this year. Jeez, you still are connected to the internet and can access virtually any question you want in the world in like two seconds. It's not that bad. Oh, my flight was an hour delayed. I flew across the planet in 13 hours. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's just perspective. It's a loss of perspective that creates suffering. And uh perspective can also be the pathway to healing and happiness.

Yeah. Yeah, man. I I in some point in this this conversation too, I want to get to your work with the uh the cancer institute that you mentioned too. But let's let's talk about you know what you do now, the biooptimizer and the the things you how did this whole thing come about? You kind of give us a little background, but how did you start getting the what you're in 2003?

I had been preparing for the Mr. Universe contest and I was engaged in an extremely restrictive diet for 11 months. And after the Mr. Universe, I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. My body just had a total failure. And uh I remember that, and I mean it was devastating. Keep in mind I had the best coach in the world. I had Spartan discipline, you know, I was training, like I was doing everything at the highest level. I mean, Mr. Universe is the idea of cosmetic perfection, essentially. It's a it's an externalized sport. And I met a doctor and he was in his 70s and he had super bright skin, he was super vibrant, he had all this energy, and he looked amazing, and he was sharp, his attack, and I was like, God damn, I obviously he's doing something like not. And then he was living a lecture, and I went up after lecture and I said, Hey, you know, um, the name was Dr. Michael O'Brien. I said, Michael, uh, what am I doing wrong? What have I missed? And he said something that changed my life. He said, Wade, you've learned to build the body from the outside in. You haven't learned the body build the body from the inside out. Wonderful. Man, that's so true. And so I mentored under him and he put me on an extreme, I went on a completely raw food diet. I took massive amounts of enzymes and probiotics and minerals and vitamins. Nobody was talking about this stuff back then. Rebuilt my health and inside of six months, felt amazing, got my physique back, hit a new level of cognitive performance, uh, new level of uh recovery and capabilities, and it just everything went to turbo. And I was like, wow, you know, this is amazing. And then over the course, uh Matt and I had started a bodybuilding site for natural athletes called Freaky Big Naturally, and we ended up coaching about 15,000 athletes around the world. And that allowed us to gather a lot of data about ways to improve the form and function of people, allowing them to build muscle, get leaner. And one of the things that came up over and over and over and over again was digestive health problems for people. And we understood that there was a trend emerging back then that has led us today, now that 12% of the emergency hospital visits are related to gastrointestinal relief related illnesses.

12%?

12% are going to an in an ambulance in an emergency hospital visit because of something's really wrong with their gut. And that's from mouth to mouth to your bum. It's a single canal all the way through. There's a lot of things that can go on, and a lot of things can go wrong. And, you know, a third of the population is on is having digestive related illness on any given day or symptoms. That's acid reflux, constipation, bloating gas, or they're and there's a quarter of the population that's on prescription medications for one of these things are over the counter. So we have a crisis that is spiraling out of control. And uh we we kind of saw that happening way back, way back then, starting with my own crisis and then seeing it across the board with high performance people. And about five years ago, we actually rebranded our company to buy optimizers because we said, what is the thing that we do better than everything else? We fix people's digestion. And as early biohackers, because we were using all sorts of technology from frequency devices to hot, cold therapy to meditation components, you name it, back there to kind of keep my performance high. Well, now we started educating people about those things. And we don't produce all those things, but we do work with our high-level people on the whole array. But our fundamental focus right now is fixing digestion and optimizing people's health. And and that's what I'm doing today. And I love it, and it's great and making a difference in the world, and that feels great.

Awesome. So my background, I got into CrossFit early, right? Um, I think I started in 08. And one thing that was sure about CrossFit is A, it worked. Like, yeah, we may not have known what we were doing, but we got ripped, we got in really good shape, but we're also, you know, training high intensity, right? High lactate threshold type work, low carb diets. And what does that generally result in? Cortisol issues and gut issues. And it was amazing to me, like how many of the people I talked to and coached and trained with and all the time, you know, were looked physically amazing. Yes, but on the inside, not okay. And I developed, you know, quite as things start piling on in life and I started adding more stress to my, you know, my plate, my my gut function was really bad. It was an interesting thing because every morning I would wake up and then feeling okay, around 10 or 11, you know, I'm sure it's all cortisol related or something like that, right? I went and saw a doctor of natural medicine for a while. My mood switched, right? My my gut started to bother me. My mood went from, you know, happy go lucky Eric to the sour, you know, couldn't deal with people. And no one knew, you can't look at someone and say, oh, you know, it's just it's his gut that's bothering him, you know, give him a break, right? If I was walking around with a cast, people are like, oh, give the guy a break, right? So it's so internal and it's such an interesting thing. And I I, you know, I know what it means to have great gut health because I didn't have it for a long time. And it wasn't easy to get out of. You know, it takes a long time. It's not like just a pill you can take and your gut's gonna heal. It takes months.

Well, I think that's that that's you pointing out a good thing because I think a lot of people just want the symptom to go away and think that the problem has gone away. And oftentimes the treatment of the symptoms, whether that's an over-the-counter or a prescribed medication, actually is going to complicate the gut, the person's gut health significantly over time. And that's that's why I'm so big on education, on letting people understand that your microbiome is a dynamic component, your digestive system is very dynamic, it's changing all the time. And you've got to be able to set a course if you've got gut health issues. You know, for most people, 90 days on a restricted eating program in a concentrated use of digestive health aids to rebuild the digestive system, the HCl levels, the enzymatic levels, the probiotics inside the body to clean out the waste doing uh with herbs or wipe out the parasites that uh may be sucking the life out of you that you're not aware of. It's a good 90-day course, and there's going to be a maintenance level, and then there's going to be periods maybe once or twice a year, like I do twice a year where I I go at it right. Like right now, I think I'm on I'm on day three of a water fast. And then as of tomorrow, I'll start kicking in, you know, the antiparasiticals, the and some of the other uh probiotics and stuff that we get. If I go three days for me now, because I've been doing a long time, I go three days completely off, get my body into a good state of ketosis, and then I start tweaking and I'll I'll go for, you know, anywhere from five days to ten, depending on where my biofeedback is. And and uh it's easy, you know. I just switch over, it's easy. I I don't get hungry, I don't get any of those things that are associated with the early days of fen uh fasting or cleansing.

So how did you um how long did it take for you to kind of get used to that that switch?

Yes, I would say probably it took me about a year when I first did it. So I started off just doing day fasts, one day fast, and then I would put them into a 48-hour fast. And that was over the course of maybe six months, and then I incorporated a three-day fast after that with pretty good ease. And then after that first year, I kicked in my first 10-day fasts, and then I did that routinely for a number of years, and then I found as I started adding enzymes and probiotics to accelerate the results in my testing, I found that I only needed a fast of around five days typically. I was able to double the results in half the time. But you know, now I'm so dialed in after, I mean, it's been 20 years, so I'm so dialed in now. I mean, I can just switch off the tap for for eating with I might get hungry for 15 minutes and I'm so used to it that I just uh yeah, okay. I know I know oh, I know what this is. This will go by in about 15 minutes, no big deal. Yeah. And then that's it. And so like I think the this time, 15 minutes, uh that's what I've been hungry for over three days, and I haven't eaten for three days. I'm doing my work, I'm hitting the gym, I'm doing all the things that I would normally do, and my body's fine. You know, I I I don't push myself in my weight training workouts per se, but I'm still way above energy levels and functionality than from maybe most people are walking around on a day-to-day basis. So your food isn't always what makes you have energy like calories.

Yeah, I it it took me a while to figure that out. I did a um uh a seven-day juice fast years ago, back when juicing was really popular. I thought I might as well try it and report it back to my clients and see what I would I find. And you know, first day or two were tough, right? And even though I was still drinking juice, I was taking in some kind of calories. But day three, I felt amazing, man. Like my mental clarity was spot on. Uh people are like, you shouldn't be training. I'm like, you know, I feel great. I'm just gonna kind of continue training. I didn't push it too hard, right? And it was really great. And now I've adopted, you know, every day I do intermittent fasting and you know, try to keep my feeding window in between, you know, six to seven hours. And it's not hard. It's really easy. It's really easy, you know. It just takes a little bit of time.

It's extremely empowering fasting. And I I think it's becoming popular right now. And I do believe that's actually uh contra to the digestive health world, but fasting is becoming popular and and more common, I think, more necessary. But the empowerment you get once you've done it uh, you know, a few times, it completely transforms your relationship around food, around hunger, and around the awareness of how food makes you feel. Yeah.

Yeah, it would be interesting. I I noticed too, I had a lot more time when I was fasting. It's crazy, right? You don't have to worry about meals, right? You're not cooking anything. And I was like in the even in the evenings, I'm like, what should I be doing right now? I have no idea. This is normally when I cook or prepino and sit down. Like, what do you what do you do with all your extra time?

You become aware of how obsessed we are about food. Yeah. We're as a culture, we're extremely obsessed about our next meal.

Yeah. Yeah. I have always I joke with my wife all the time. I'm like, by the time I'm finishing breakfast, I'm thinking about what I'm what I'm gonna have for dinner. And that's what it's it's always been. I just, you know, as an athlete too, most of my life, I was always hungry, right? Yeah. It's interesting. So, you know, when you look at obviously, you know, the stack of supplements and and enzymes and probiotics and everything that that you guys put out there of of the highest quality and and very beneficial to this whole system. With that complemented with what type of lifestyle factors do you see are the biggest problems for people when it comes to gut health?

You know, it's funny. I think one of the great things that people can do is they can uh I've got right here, and uh there's another podcast that I have with uh Dr. Paul Maximus and the the five tests, particularly every dude needs to do this. Guys were notorious for not getting test results, but I would say do a hormone test. It's a Dutch test, it's one of the best ones. You want to do a HOMO IR, which is a blood sugar or glucose relation, it's a combination of insulin response and uh glucose, a pulse test, which will test uh damage to the heart uh and things like that. And then you can get a spectra cell analysis, uh, which is looking at the key nutrients and stuff that you may be deficient in from your current diet, which can have huge impact. And then a DEXA scan, which is a lean body mass, uh bone mass and body fat, as well as the distribution of that. And you take those five tests, and then if you want to lay over maybe a genetics test with like genos and ancestry or whatever, you are going to have a world-class picture of where you're at at this moment and what things are gonna influence you. If you get a, you know, a coach or a naturopath, a doctor, or someone like that to kind of take a look at this, and it first off, the data that you're getting is incredible in the things that you learn about yourself. And this will help you select the foods that are gonna be best for you in your diet. You can do a biome test as well to see what kind of bacteria you got going on as well. But the bottom line is you're going to know an incredible amount of like 20 years ago, this would have cost you millions of dollars, right? Millions. And you can get a whole style, that whole what I've just told you, maybe 2,000 bucks would be the tops. You've literally got millions of dollars worth of research down on your body. And you can start selecting the foods, the exercise type. You know, you could see the things that take off your blood sugar, you know, like it's and and you could see if what you're doing is damaging to your. Heart and these are very good preventative markers that you can start planning now going back to hey, contemplating your death. Because you can look at that and say, hey, look, I got a risk for heart disease, or my blood sugar is all over the place and left unchecked, or I have genetic markers that says that I have much more bigger propensity for lung cancer or heart disease or whatever. And I can start tweaking my diet around that. So that's where I think today, more than ever, we have a proactive approach outside of going to our GP to get this stuff. We can go to an ND who's schooled in long-term care because it's not just about living longer, it's about living stronger and not relying on medications, but actually getting into these things. And that's the great steps. And then uh doing a 90-day uh wellness reset, I think is, you know, I haven't seen anybody that's done that that hasn't gone, wow, I feel like I turned back the clock. I can eat foods that don't make me feel bad anymore. I don't crave foods that I know that I shouldn't be eating. And I've got my weight and my energy levels back under control. And that's I mean, that's super powerful. It affects your confidence, it affects uh your energy, your ability. You talked about, you know, that, you know, kind of being that negative Nelly, and you said that that's a good indicator that you're blown out. I've been there, I know what it's like, and you know, I have a company in this area, so it's not like can happen to anybody and you know, it's not to take that for granted. Like we're none of us are perfect, none of us have it figured out. You need these checkpoint charlies, especially as dudes, because we just kind of ignore everything. Yeah, yeah, just push it down, right? Push it right. Yeah.

Pack that down.

Emotions, physical. We'll push that down later. We'll deal with it later. I'm just gonna pack down my emotions so I can make room for the pizza today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's funny is that um, you know, it's if you if you can kind of figure out like some simple guidelines that you can live by that are unique to you. For me, I found that, you know, once again, that intermittent fasting has been a lifesaver because I just my gut just needs more time to heal, right? And I don't need that food. And and just by doing that, you know, I'm 43 now, my gut is much better. I can eat a lot of things that I couldn't have four years ago, and I I give myself time to recover. Like I can't eat pizza, you know what I mean? That's that's cool. I can do it. I don't I can't do it all the time.

Yeah, but with Saturday night with the kids and a family or a social media. That's right. Have pizza and there's no guilt, there's no bad, there's no must, and there's no waking up in the morning feeling like, I feel like I'm gonna die.

Yeah, and I just don't need that many calories. That's the other thing I figured out is I just don't need that many calories to feel good. And that's that's you know a huge component. And there's two people listening too, there's two great episodes that I've done in the past here with Dr. Drobot and Dr. Ace, both are doctors of natural medicine, and we get into one was hormone optization, the other one was you know a little bit of gut health and and what tests to go for. And even then, over the last like year and a half to two years, the technology has advanced and the tests are getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And uh it's just such a wonderful time to know things about yourself. You know, it really is. It really is. Tell us about what you're doing with the Cancer Institute. What are you working on now?

Yeah, so I was honored a number of years ago where they requested that I could uh work with them and particularly as I help cultivate programs for the institute for people who are actually going through cancer or recovering from cancer. If you go through whatever treatment model, I mean that's an extremely challenging metabolic condition and oftentimes really wrecks gut health as well. And so uh they brought me on board and we do a regular donation to that institute. Part of my legacy with my sister's illness, and it's it's really great. And it's been wonderful to be working with them and to, you know, just have a have a relationship with people that I can make a difference in because I do understand intimately not just what they're going through, but what the family's going through. And uh it's great to be supportive on that. And of course, if you do a little research, um we got featured years ago on the truth about cancer and and a number of different I've done a lot of interviews with cancer-related sites. And I don't say that you are we clear, we can't say that we treat or you're not giving medical advice or anything else. What we do is we help people, we provide support in the in the digestive health and in the recovery process of that, uh, either during or post.

Yeah. It's it's a tough process that you go through. I mean, it's just, you know, like you said, it seems to counter counter the logic of, you know, if you want to get rid of this thing, you gotta completely deplete the rest of your system. And uh, you know, I for a while I was I wanted to be a firefighter, right? So I had to go get my uh my paramedic by my EMT license. And part of that was you had to ride in an ambulance for a while. And the ambulance I was in was the one that took people from oncology and back and and seeing people, you know, going to, you know, get the radiation, right, essentially. Super great, you know, Peppy, pick them up on the way back. It was a really impactful couple days when I was, I was like, wow, this is not the same person that I just talked to. And, you know, they're it it was it's just a really, really brutal if people haven't been close to that, you know, find a way to maybe be close to that for a little bit because I think it'll it'll open your eyes into what may be in store for you and your loved ones. It's it's crushing.

You know, I always recommend people go, what's the one thing that you could do to impact your life the most? I said, you know, go go spend one day in a palliative care hospital and interview half a dozen people. Change your life. It's one day out of your life, and you will come out of that experience transformed in ways, and you'll look at your life and you'll look at the people in your life, and just it's it's remarkable. And that sounds all kind of dark, but we're all gonna be there. We are there is we are all going to be there. And so acting like it's not gonna happen, I think the sooner that you embrace your own death, um, the sooner that you can achieve true freedom.

Yeah, there's a great book too, and you know, I don't want to dive too much into death, but the uh the five regrets of the dying, I believe is what it's called.

Yeah, yeah. Wasn't he interviewed on Tim Ferris's podcast?

Maybe, yeah, maybe I haven't I haven't caught up on Tim Ferris in a while. It's an outstanding book. I think every human should read it, you know. So, you know, the title of this show is obviously The Future and Fitness. I'm very much focused on where things are going. And you know, you'll you'll like this analogy. We want people skating to where the puck is going, right? Yes, where it is right now. Yeah, Wayne Gretzky.

Yeah.

And so where do you think, I mean, this this research in gut health and the testing and the information we're getting and the supplementation that's now available, you know, 10 years from now, where where do you think all this is heading?

We are actually entering into the early stages of the golden ages of digestive health. And I know with biotimizers we're on the cutting edge of that, but here's where I think we're going to get even better. The cultivation, for example, we've got a product coming out this year, which is a combination of Chinese medicine, herbs, and probiotics, which develop neurotransmitters in the brain, depression, anxiety, things like that, which are plaguing the population, oftentimes are related to not being able to digest and absorb proteins, turn them into amino acids, and then have the probiotic cultures inside your body to actually manufacture the neurotransmitter with 95% of your brains. That's coming. Um, the specific probiotics that are relative to that person's diet, we can kind of we're starting on that one. It's only getting better about cultivating that. I think the development of new enzymatic formulations and pathways that will cultivate into uh responses that we never imagined before. I think that that's where we're headed in the short term. In the long term, um, and we're on the forefront of that, is that is actually cultivating and developing super strains of probiotics. In other words, we know of the super bad bacteria because they subject it to environmental conditions. But what we've done is we've created environmental conditions to turn regular bacteria into superbacterias. And I think that is only gonna proliferate and get more as we've got more data and artificial intelligence able to computate and do just an incredible amount of tests to impact. And I I think it's gonna open up an incredible array of doors and opportunities for people. And then beyond that, now we're getting into peptides. The development of peptides is looking very promising still early, but it's looking good. Gene editing. Um, people can now access that right now, really scary low prices, which which is a I'm not recommending that right now, but I as like CRISPR technology. Yeah, people are they're genetically altering themselves in their houses right now, which is it's still the incredibly wild west. Um it's totally, it's total madness in a lot of ways. But madness will give rise to experimentation and scientific validation, and then you know, 10, 20 years from now, we'll go in, we'll we'll look at our genome, we'll see what's not, what's becoming damaged, we'll snip those out, we'll input the new ones. Also, along with like what we're doing as well, we do brain optimization using neural feedback and technology to connect aspects of our brain that wasn't working before. Then of course you've got the rise of bioidentical hormones and these types of things, which are now wide, widespread. I think we'll get even better at those things, and I think we'll develop compounds that are less toxic and uh and prolong our health and vitality far longer than we ever imagined. So I think for us and people who are embracing this and want to spend the money, ex uh uh you know, adding another 20, 30 years of of productive years, I think is already in reach, and that may go to 40, 50, and even beyond uh with some of the breakthroughs that are coming.

Yeah. Interesting reading um David Sinclair's book on lifespan. You know, the interesting thing is the concept of going from you know lifespan to health span is like, you know, yeah, people are living longer, but the productive years are not that impressive, right?

No, uh disability adjusted life expectancy in America is at 60 years old. That was the New England Journal of Medicine's vote uh almost a decade ago. And of course, the the cultivation of disease for the kids, it was the first time ever that the life expectancy dropped in the United States. And they and the Bush administration actually prevented him from pr presenting the information as he felt because he it was so damning to the cult to um America. And of course, the US military released a report that said that chronic obesity amongst youth is actually a national security threat because they couldn't get enough people that were physically fit in order to defend the nation in the idea of an attack. And so, I mean that's that's how severe things have gotten. Um, I talked about the gastrointestinal thing. So I think what you're gonna see ultimately is we're seeing actually a splitting that is happening in the species. And so if you go to Yuval Noah Harari's book, uh Sapiens, and then his next one, Homo Deus or Homo Deuce, and then 21 Lessons for the 21st century, those three books indicate a real the history of how we got there. There was five competing species that we're now a kind of amalgamation of those, with Homo sapien being the dominant group out of that. And I think right now we're splitting the the species that we're gonna have the sick and the obese and the dying, uh young, and then the people who are radically expanding their health span and their lifespan on the other side of the equation and and accessing a level of capacity that never dreamed of before in in human condition. So essentially we're we're we're going into two species. And so you look at Charles Darwin, he didn't say it was survival of the most fittest, he said it was survival of the most adaptable. And it's up to us to adapt to the new digital world we're in, the new biological enhancement world, and to get educated and start embracing that now and learning about it now because the what's coming, the wave that's coming, it's already started, and you definitely don't want to be behind that wave because uh you're just not gonna compete in the new world with AI and digital infotech and all that sort of stuff. It's just not gonna happen. Oh yeah, man, man, I love all that.

I could talk about this for days. So here's the big question, and you know, for the audience really is you know, okay, I'm I'm I'm hearing what you're saying, right? I'm buying in. What do I do to be part of that movement, right? I want to be on that side of things. I want to be on the longevity side of things. As a fitness health professional, how do I start positioning myself there?

Well, first thing and first, I think you go want to go out in those tests I talked about, the uh the genetic test, their your hormones tests, the that's the HOMO IR, the pulse test, spectral cell malice, and the dex scan. Start right there. Next thing you need to get a naturopathic doctor or a nutritional coach and a fitness coach in your life as soon as possible. I have a on one of my videos, I I have uh assembling your Jedi Council, the people that you want, because essentially that's what you need. You need the experts to give you the feedback. So as you get the data, you can actually learn from them, ask questions, find out, and start tweaking your own life. Because no one's going to take responsibility for your life like you. And then it becomes exciting because now, as you start adding elements into your diet, uh, into your auxiliary health program, all of a sudden you start to see the changes and you start to see the benefits, and those benefits become verifiable with research. And that is then then you just unleash the horses out of the barn because there's nothing that can motivate and activate, and you start seeing these changes, not just physical changes on the outside, but like real cognitive changes, real physiological changes and just a higher quality of life and the power to make those changes. And so those are the starts. Second thing, clean up your gut. You know, regardless of any of these things, you're gonna have to fix your gut first. That is the source of building energy units and building blocks. And you have to digest, absorb, and assimilate your food. And everybody, virtually everybody listening to this podcast right now, I can tell you right now that your digestive health is compromised. To what degree, I don't know, but I can tell you it's it's probably not as good as you might think it is. And that's a great place to start. The other thing is simple stuff, regular physical exercise, lots of water and breathing. And those sounds so mundane and so boring, but without those basics, forget it. You you know, there's no sense worrying about your hormone test if you're not drinking enough water.

Yeah.

I mean, come on. The basics are still the basics air, water, and exercise. Um, deep breathing, reg lots of water and regular exercise. Those are the foundational points. And then this testing kind of leads you in the direction that will get you really on top of this curve.

As far as a um, you know, I I hear all this and I'm I'm I I I've worked with, you know, doctors of natural medicine before and and they're great, you know, especially Dr. Ace, who I work with in in Santa Barbara. But it doesn't, it's not cheap. You know, what what do you think on like a monthly budget, you know, maintain like optimal health? What do you think people are looking at? You know, between supplementation and the right doctors and the consistent testing.

Yeah, great question. It really you start off where you can afford. What can it scale up to? A lot. Tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, I have we work with a few elite individuals who don't have financial restrictions around this. And some of those folks are spending anywhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars a year on their health. And you know, the ironic part of it is they're glad to do it because they feel that the ROI on that is five to ten X in the short term, and who knows what the long term is. So I think though, before you get into like stem cells, for example, is with doing the test that I just allocated, the whole cost of that's gonna be a couple thousand bucks. Okay. Now you've got a snapshot that's gonna carry you for five years. Here's the thing that it that it does. This gives you hard, concrete data of where you're at. And you might find some things in there that you're not happy about. These are the things that you've pushed down, you're not thinking about, or you feel maybe my sex drive is not that great, or maybe my cognitive functions are starting to forget things, or maybe I'm I'm getting heart palpitations or I'm not feeling good and I'm pushing it down. You get this data, there it is, there's what needs to happen, and you've got that professional in your life to say, hey, you know what? Here's the pathway out of this. So when you look at what is the cost, your cost is your life if you don't do it. So you have to compare that. Uh, I think most people realistically should allocate somewhere between, and this is gonna seem high for some people, 500 to a thousand bucks a month if they can do it. Like, I haven't bought a new car in my life, right? But I can tell you I've spent, you know, Ferrari and Lamborghini type expenses on my body. I can always get a new car. I can't get a new body. And I think on and and like I said, I had the advantage of having that situation with my sister early on that impacted me and realized, hey, you know what? I gotta take care of this thing, or I don't get to experience three-dimensional reality anymore. I'm gone. I'm out, it's over. Yeah. And so um, I've lived a great life. And yes, I've gotten to drive the Lamborghinis and Mercedes and all those things, and I enjoy it in the VM. Like I've done all those things as well. I'm just not as attached to them as some people might be about identification.

Yeah, and you nailed it, man. For literally, there's a lot of people listening right now who have a $500 a month car payment, right? Oh, yeah. And uh, you know, that could be put in towards a different account, an account that'll last you a lot longer.

Yeah, so if you got two cars and you're spending $500 for each one, sell one of them, take that $500, put it in your health account, buy yourself a $5,000 car that you you know, you and away you go. Yeah. Your personal vehicle is going to take you further.

Yeah, I agree. Wait, uh tell people, you know, where where they can get a hold of you, where they can find out more about you, if there's any particular offers you like to produce to the audience as well.

Yeah, I'd love to. So if you go to www.byoptimizers.com slash blitz radio, you will get a and put in podcast ten, you'll get a discount on any products and services. By the way, every product we sell is a 365-day guarantee and we'll fix your digestion promise. So if you buy a product, think it's the right for you, it doesn't work, call our number uh or email us or text us or Facebook us or whatever you need to do. And one of our agents will get back to you, suggest the product that's right for it. We'll send that to you. If that doesn't work, you still get your money back. But uh nine times out of the 10, it fixes. We have an extremely low refund rate. So, but we take away all the risk. I would suggest for people to check out one of our digestive health kits to get started, 30-day or a 90-day kickstart, and give us your feedback. Um, we'll be happy to hear from we've got a lot of great courses. Uh, we got the awesome health course on there, five to 15 minute videos talking about like that one, assembling your Jedi Council. They got our podcast, looking at the five tests that you need, all that sort of stuff. Great stuff, great technology, um, and we give a lot of it away. All the education's free. Um it's a real pleasure and an honor to be here and to serve the community and my what I call my dharma in the world. This is my passion, my what I was meant to do, and I love doing it. And whether they purchase our products or not, that's irrelevant. It's it's get the information and get those tests and make a difference in your life.

Awesome. Wayne, thank you so much, man. Your open honesty, authenticity, it's something I value very much. Appreciate you coming on and educating our audience. It's been a lot of fun, man. My pleasure. Thanks so much, and uh hope to see you soon. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, we lightheart. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. Website is futurofitness.co. Again, that's futurofitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.