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April 11, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:41:04
Joe Rogan Experience #2304 - Gary Brecka
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gary brecka
01:55:03
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joe rogan
42:53
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Good to see you, my friend.
gary brecka
Wow, that was fast.
Good to see you, too, brother.
unidentified
You got notes, dude.
joe rogan
You're organized.
You're a rare guest.
gary brecka
I actually, you know, I normally don't bring notes, but I was talking to Callie Means on the way over here.
And, you know, we're really supporting Bobby Kennedy's whole Maha, you know, movement and trying to officially put a committee together to really give him some great talking points and then bring some of the big influencers together to help him message, you know, around the media.
And I was like, what are some of the wins that we've had in the last week that I don't know about?
And so he just rattled them off.
There's some wins?
joe rogan
What are the wins?
gary brecka
Well, I mean, you know, so Trump formed this Strong Kids Commission.
And if you remember when he first got into office, he actually, by executive order, he authorized Bobby to...
To do a study with, you know, Health and Human Services to look into the genesis of chronic disease.
Because nobody's talking about it.
The National Institute of Health or National Library of Medicine or in our, you know, public health policy.
Nobody's talking about what's causing this pandemic.
joe rogan
Gee, I wonder why they're not talking about it.
gary brecka
Well, I could give you a couple of clues.
joe rogan
Do you think money has anything to do with it?
No. No way.
gary brecka
You're a conspiracy theorist, dude.
You're down the rabbit hole.
joe rogan
That's my problem.
gary brecka
You think that just because people get paid, they do things that are shady.
joe rogan
Yeah, I know.
That's a weird thing to think.
I should stop thinking that way.
gary brecka
Yeah, I mean, we make $110 billion a year on type 2 diabetes.
They're trying to put that out of business for sure, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, they don't want that money.
gary brecka
No, no, no.
They're like, hey, Stan, how do we get this off the balance sheet, bro?
How do we get rid of it?
This is stinking up the place.
joe rogan
So there's a business that relies on people being so disgusting that they get type 2 diabetes.
So bad with their diet, just eating pie and drinking soda until their body just starts to cave in.
gary brecka
Yeah, but don't worry.
joe rogan
That's worth how much a year?
gary brecka
$110 billion.
Type 2 diabetes alone.
unidentified
That's not a lot of money.
joe rogan
It's not like that would change anybody's opinions on things.
gary brecka
Well, I mean, a lot of people could live on that.
unidentified
There's a lot of people that could live on that.
Isn't that funny?
joe rogan
A lot of people could live on what's killing other people.
Yeah. Isn't that funny?
Like, a lot of people are buying yachts on what is killing people.
gary brecka
Yeah, so the interesting thing is, you know, look at our food stamp program, which is...
But, you know, the SNAP program, it's one of the biggest subsidies that we have in the government, $120 billion a year.
$10 billion of that is going to subsidize sodas.
joe rogan
Well, they need soda.
It's an important part of the food pyramid, I think.
Isn't it in there?
gary brecka
It's right up there with Lucky Charms, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, Lucky Charms is right above ground beef.
gary brecka
Yep, and grass-fed steak.
And then you get to the top and you've got soda.
So it's just phenomenal.
And then the American Heart Association just...
Ironically comes out in favor of soda in the Snap Food program.
joe rogan
We went over that and we found out that they're paid by Pepsi and by Coca-Cola.
Wow. It's just so dark.
Yeah. It's so crazy.
unidentified
It is.
joe rogan
The American Heart Association gets money from Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
gary brecka
Yeah, you know, I checked into my Airbnb here in Austin, which, by the way, love Austin, man.
I see why you came here.
We covered it all on my podcast, so I won't go down that rabbit hole.
But it truly is, man.
People are amazing.
Food is amazing.
Went to this little restaurant called The Well, which I love, and they catered all my food.
But there's like a serious wellness vibe here.
A lot of healthy people.
Yeah, a lot of healthy people.
I go into the closet.
Like, the owner's closet wasn't locked.
And I went into the owner's closet.
Of course, it's like all Cheerios and cookies and crackers.
And I pulled a couple of bottles of these seed oils out.
And I did a little post about it because I was like, look at all the heart-healthy labels on this.
And we talked about seed oils last time.
And I get attacked a lot for it for saying that these polyunsaturated fatty acids are bad for you.
But a lot of times, it's actually not the...
The plant itself, it's the distance from the plant to the table, right?
joe rogan
Can you explain, because you were explaining the other day to us the process that it takes to turn rapeseed oil, which is what canola is.
unidentified
They said that rapeseed was problematic, so they changed the canola oil.
joe rogan
I always thought it was corn oil.
Corn's good for you.
Corn oil must be great for you.
Oh, we're using canola oil.
gary brecka
Cool. Ah, peanuts.
joe rogan
Please explain, though, the process, because it's so vile.
gary brecka
It's insane.
So, rapeseed, canola, is a plant.
Essentially, you put it in a commercial press, and it will come out gummy.
And so to degum it, you use something called hexane.
And hexane, if you go to National Institute of Health or National Library of Medicine, you'll see that that is a known neurotoxin.
It's classified as a neurotoxin.
Same as fluoride, right?
Which is actually fluorosilicic acid.
We get to that later.
So we degum it with hexane.
And then you take this degummed oil and you heat it to 405 degrees, which turns it rancid.
I mean, there's no mechanism on Earth for temperatures to reach that much, especially plants to encounter this kind of...
So now it denatures.
It turns rancid.
So now it's putrefied and it smells.
So now you have to deodorize it.
So we deodorize it with sodium hydroxide.
So we de-gum it with a powerful neurotoxin.
We heat it to four to five degrees and turn it rancid.
And then we deodorize it with a very powerful carcinogen.
And then in some cases, we bleach it and bottle it and put it on the shelf.
You ever go to the grocery store and you see the entire...
Grocery aisle.
It's all these, like, Wesson oils or vegetable oils, but they're all exactly the same color.
Like, exactly.
They have that same beautiful, clear hue.
They look super healthy.
You know?
No. Have you squeezed 10,000 watermelons into watermelon juice and put it all on the shelf?
joe rogan
They would vary a little bit.
gary brecka
They would vary a little bit.
Yeah. But there's no variance there.
And so this is a chemically controlled process.
And it's, you know, again, it's not back to the polyunsaturated fatty acids per se.
It's the pro-inflammatory process that they cause, these foam cells and the inflammation in our arterial wall, which actually calls cholesterol to the site of inflammation.
And we blame cholesterol for a lot of the heart disease, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, because it's at the scene of the crime, but it rarely pulls the trigger.
I mean, cholesterol is kind of like a fireman.
It gets called to the fire to put the fire out.
So the theory that if we had fewer firemen, we'd have less fires is kind of absurd.
That's the theory in LDL cholesterol.
It might work in California.
I could see them passing that legislation.
You know what we need?
We need less firemen.
So the theory that if we push down...
The firemen, which was called to the site of inflammation, meaning we reduced the cholesterol, which was called to the site of inflammation to cause the repair, rather than ask what started the fire, that notion is about to be, I think, blown out of the water by big data.
I think you're going to see big data, artificial intelligence, and early detection in the next five years are just going to circumvent the entire system.
joe rogan
Do you think there's a possibility of removing food oils from the market?
gary brecka
I don't think they will ever replace...
joe rogan
I don't want food oils, excuse me.
Seed oils.
gary brecka
I don't think they will ever replace seed oils.
unidentified
Why not?
gary brecka
I think what's really interesting is the chemical processing.
So another really good thing, and I'm helping to author this paper with Kelly Means and a bunch of other folks, to present it to Bobby Kennedy in looking at the genesis of chronic disease.
Because if you just...
And I know lots of people have talked about this on your show, so I won't belabor the point, but...
If you look at the spending of $4.5 trillion a year, right, on healthcare in the United States, and then you say, well, what do we lead the world in?
Well, as of December 6th, we were ranked 66th in the world in life expectancy.
We lead the world in morbid obesity, type 2 diabetes, multiple chronic disease in the single biome, meaning not just our population has multiple different chronic diseases, but multiple chronic diseases in the same.
in the same body, because most people don't just have one autoimmune disease, or they're not just hypertensive and diabetic.
We lead the world in infant mortality, maternal mortality.
And so you've got to ask yourself, how is $4.5 trillion a year in spending leading to these kinds of consequences?
And very often, it's actually not the food.
It's the distance from the food to the table.
So it's not necessarily the plant.
It's what we're doing to process these plants to get them on the table.
And so I think what you're going to see is these GRAS guidelines, generally regarded as safe, which is essentially how the FDA decides whether or not you can micropoison the population.
So we are allowed to micropoison the population, right?
We're allowed to put certain amounts of pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, preservatives.
joe rogan
That is a great way of putting it, too.
It's micropoisoning.
Yeah. So that's really what's happening.
gary brecka
It's exactly what's happening.
And a lot of experts will say that dosage determines the poison.
And that's largely untrue when you talk about cumulative dose toxicity, meaning...
If I give you this sandwich, this piece of tuna fish, and it has a very small, safe amount of lead or mercury, it's probably not going to hurt you, right?
But if you don't methylate that metal out of your body and you keep eating that same kind of fish, I mean, nobody got mercury poisoning from a single piece of tuna fish.
What they got mercury poisoning from was continuing to eat the same thing over and over and over and over again.
And they got a cumulative dose toxicity, which is what a lot of foreign countries use.
So in other words, I can't just say if I put, you know, one drop of arsenic in this glass, is that going to kill you?
It might make you mildly sick, cause an inflammatory process.
Maybe it's not going to kill you.
But if you drink one of those five times a day, seven days a week, now you're toxic.
And that's what's happened to our country.
We didn't get here quickly.
We got here by slowly stacking these micropoisons.
joe rogan
Right, but is it possible to change all of, like, whatever we use seed oil for?
Is it possible to swap that out for olive oil or beef tallow?
Yes. I know there's some companies doing, like, Masa makes these great tortilla chips.
gary brecka
I love Masa.
joe rogan
Organic corn.
Yeah. Organic corn, grass-fed beef tallow.
They taste like it, too.
Like, you feel like you're eating food.
Yeah. You know?
We talked about those Vandry chips, too.
gary brecka
Yeah, Vandy.
joe rogan
Vandy chips.
I love those.
gary brecka
I do, too.
unidentified
I would have actually brought you some.
joe rogan
It's just potatoes and beef tallow with a little salt.
Yeah. And it tastes like food.
Yeah. Like, when I eat them, I don't feel like a piece of shit.
Like, if I eat a bag of Doritos, I feel like a fucking loser.
gary brecka
Yeah. You know?
joe rogan
Even while I'm eating, I'm like, oh, you loser.
unidentified
Shut up.
joe rogan
Shut up.
These are delicious.
gary brecka
You shame yourself.
You're like, Joe, I'm so...
I do.
joe rogan
But isn't it possible to just replace those?
Or would it require?
Is it one of those things like there's an issue with factory farming?
Everybody thinks factory farming is disgusting when it comes to animals.
It's vile, what they do to chickens and pigs.
But is it possible?
To give everyone cheeseburgers in food deserts without factory farming.
Like, have we gotten so far ahead of ourselves that we don't have sustainable regenerative agriculture as an option?
gary brecka
I don't think so at all.
joe rogan
So you think that all the foods, all the salad dressings and all the french fries and all the things that are cooked in food oil, we have enough beef tallow, we have enough olive oil, we have enough avocado oil that we could...
Switch all those things out, and everything would be great.
gary brecka
There is no question that we have the capacity to produce these, and we have the capacity to produce them now.
I mean, a lot of these farms don't use the bones from these cattle.
They don't use the hide from these cattle.
They don't boil on the collagen from these cattle, and they certainly are not making the tallow from the fat from the cattle that are being slaughtered.
joe rogan
So there's a lot of tallow that's going to waste.
gary brecka
A lot of tallow, a lot of bone broth, a lot of bones, a lot of cartilage that's entirely going to waste.
Look at a lot of countries.
They will use the entire animal.
They'll boil down the bones.
They'll use the hide.
They'll use the bone marrow.
joe rogan
It's kind of crazy because there's a big market for bone broth.
There's a big market for beef tallow.
Why wouldn't they?
I mean, they're just wasting money.
gary brecka
I think you have the perception that there's a big market for because you're kind of in the know.
Right, you're probably in the, I hate to use this term, but woke 1%.
Oh, no.
unidentified
He's like, did he call me woke?
joe rogan
It used to be cool.
gary brecka
When I mean woke 1%, I mean, I hate that word, woke.
joe rogan
Well, you're using it the correct way, though.
You're using it the way African Americans used to use it.
Black people used to call woke, like, you're awake.
I'm woke.
You can't sneak that stupid shit by me.
I'm woke.
And then the fucking white people took it over and ruined it.
Like a lot of things.
gary brecka
Exactly. Did we fuck that up, too?
joe rogan
Not us.
Not us, but the ones with blue hair.
gary brecka
Yeah, now it means a whole different ballgame.
joe rogan
Well, now it's essentially a pejorative.
They can't even use it in a positive way.
You know, that's beaten down.
gary brecka
But I like it because it's kind of like you can just be triggered about anything now, so it's so convenient.
Yes. You know, because I can really silence you if you start out, like, out.
I'm intellectualizing me.
I can just be like, dude, you're triggering me.
You're hurting my feelings.
joe rogan
You're triggering me with information.
gary brecka
I kid you not.
I've never talked about this before.
I'm probably going to lose half my audience.
No. I went to Harvard University for this thing, this longevity summit.
A very good friend of mine.
I won't mention his name because then I'll give away the event that I was at.
I called my wife on day two.
And I was like, babe, I feel like I landed on Mars.
I go, I gotta get out of here.
And she goes, what is going on?
I said, I listened to a panel of PhDs for four hours debate about whether or not a microaggression is something that could happen to you that you don't recognize that was causing a microtrauma that the other person didn't realize they were doing,
but it was still...
Creating an unsafe environment.
joe rogan
I think there should be mandatory jujitsu classes for those people.
Mandatory jujitsu.
gary brecka
My head was so twisted.
joe rogan
Here's your microtrauma.
gary brecka
Yeah, when they passed the microphone to me, I got so much trouble.
I won't say his last name, but Daniel, he's still mad at me right now because of this.
They passed the microphone to me and they're like, you know, do you have anything to add to the conversation?
I go, this sounds like a bunch of people.
This whole panel up here, you guys sound like you boarded a spaceship and literally left Mother Earth.
Because I have no idea what you're talking about.
You are talking about trying to identify something that you, by its very nature, say you don't know if you have it or you don't.
So let's just admit that it's a ghost.
So how are we going to...
We can't measure it.
We can't find it.
We can't prove you have it.
We can't prove you don't have it.
So how are we going to treat it?
joe rogan
What's this culture of victimization and the monetization?
It's like there's status in victimization.
That's the thing.
They've essentially made it like a virtue to be a victim.
So you're looking for little things that have possibly...
I believe there's a microaggression.
gary brecka
You know what?
I think I felt it.
joe rogan
Possibly rolled his eyes.
unidentified
Possibly rolled his eyes.
joe rogan
I mean, that is going to haunt me.
I need therapy now.
I think he might have rolled his eyes.
gary brecka
And that's absolutely acceptable.
joe rogan
That is a microaggression.
Like maybe rolling you out.
Like you say something to me and I go, okay.
And then I leave.
Oh my God, that was a microaggression.
What I just did going, okay.
gary brecka
But here's the cool thing.
Is you're kind of off the hook because if you didn't intentionally create the microaggression, I just perceived it as a microaggression.
joe rogan
Depends on who I am.
If I'm a white, heterosexual, cis male, then you're screwed.
I got problems.
gary brecka
Then you're screwed.
So anyway, back to the food supply.
We took a...
You turn there for a second.
What's really interesting is if you just take a very 30,000-foot view and you say, let's just look at the broad strokes in the blue zone research, right?
There's no continuity between diets in these blue zones.
So it's not keto, paleo, pescetarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food, Atkins.
It's whole food, just what you were just saying.
joe rogan
Whole food and a lot of healthy lifestyle.
gary brecka
Whole food, well, the two things that were non-interchangeable were sense of purpose and community and activity until later in life.
So you didn't have any of the blue zones where people didn't feel a sense of purpose and community in life.
In fact, there were no such things as assisted care living facilities.
You know, the assisted care in those countries is mom and dad move back in with the kids until the day that they die.
And there's a lot to be said for that because Maybe grandma's only purpose is to go out and get vegetables for dinner that night, but she has a purpose.
joe rogan
And she's a part of the community.
gary brecka
And she's also part of the community.
joe rogan
She's not locked up in a home with a bunch of people who don't really care about her.
gary brecka
Yeah. You know, we knew something in the mortality space, because I used to study mortality and mortality research, and we knew that if you wanted to cut somebody's life expectancy in half at any age, and I mean at any age, you put them in isolation.
So as soon as you create isolation, you
You dramatically reduce, if not half, the life expectancy.
Now, later in life, we would call this broken heart syndrome, caregiver syndrome.
And these were actually very valid syndromes.
So if we actually were doing the life expectancy on an elderly spouse who was still applying for...
Or we were looking at what's called a second-to-die claim on life insurance policy and one spouse had passed away.
We would dramatically reduce the life expectancy of the second spouse.
And the reason why that's important is I think that people don't realize that we are actually being isolated in plain sight, right?
I mean, we are trying to create connection through our phones.
We're trying to create connection through social media.
And these are not...
Human connections.
In fact, if you look at the rates of depression, suicide, suicidal ideation, obesity, chronic mental illness, and I think we actually have a chronic lack of mental fitness, not necessarily a mental illness crisis in this country.
And if you look at the skyrocketing rates of these conditions and how they are creeping into younger and younger and younger generations, you've got nine-year-olds being treated for depression now.
So what's happening?
What's happening is isolation in plain sight.
You know, we don't problem solve anymore.
We don't have communities with our friends anymore.
We actually don't build social connections.
We've lost our connection to Mother Nature.
You know, that's why I like going out to my place in Colorado.
It's probably like you like bow hunting.
It's just an old school connection to Mother Nature.
And how freaking good do you feel?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's very, very good.
I really wish I lived in nature.
I'd really like to be living in the woods again.
gary brecka
I'm working on it, man.
Would you say you're trying to get something outside of town?
joe rogan
I think that's the move.
Yeah, I think nature is a vitamin.
I really do.
I think it's a mental health vitamin.
I think there's something about being in nature.
There's a feeling you get, especially when your phone doesn't work, when you get out there and you look at your phone like zero bars.
gary brecka
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
And you're out there in like real woods.
It's just like...
We just feel better.
Yeah. We just feel like more tuned in.
You hear birds and branches snapping, things going on, coyotes, and it's like, god damn, it feels good.
gary brecka
We have this place in Colorado.
My wife and I, she's been going to for 35 years since she was a little, little girl.
When we got together 10 years ago, she started bringing me and my family out there.
Her father's got 10 acres, her uncle's got 10 acres, and then this 50-acre piece came on the market.
We bought it.
We're building these old school, like really authentic log cabins on there.
And I write about this all the time because in Miami I have this really fancy place and I've got all this fancy equipment, you know, red light therapy beds, hyper barracks, hydrogen beds, all that stuff.
But I'll go out to this Colorado home.
Put on a 20-pound rucksack.
I know you do a 150-pound rucksack, so I feel like a complete pussy.
joe rogan
Most of the time I do 45. Okay.
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Sometimes I do it and I carry two 50-pound kettlebells.
gary brecka
Oh, shit.
I'm not even telling the rest of my story.
joe rogan
These are just short bursts.
This is not like long distance.
I just do it to tax my system.
gary brecka
Well, I do farmer's carries.
joe rogan
I do that, too.
gary brecka
Yeah, farmer's carries.
unidentified
I actually like those.
joe rogan
Well, that's what I mean by that.
I think farmer's carries, like suitcase carries, are actually better.
What, closer to?
One hand.
gary brecka
Oh, one hand.
joe rogan
Yeah, because then it makes you balance on the other side, and then you swap it out to the other side.
unidentified
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
It's a stabilization thing.
unidentified
I've heard from a lot of people that it's actually better.
gary brecka
Actually, that makes a lot of sense to me because you're not just load-bearing the spine.
joe rogan
But farmer's carries are amazing, too.
There's nothing wrong with it.
gary brecka
Yeah, and I do a lot of farmer's carries, but I'll put on this 20-pound rucksack, go out by myself, put a sidearm in my vest, and go.
It was just kind of funny.
I took a picture of myself in the woods the other day.
I posted on social media, and I had sidearm people going, bananas.
Because I have a gun.
joe rogan
Yeah, you don't want to get eaten by a mountain lion.
It does happen.
It probably won't happen.
But guess what?
If I have a gun, it's not going to happen.
gary brecka
Yeah, it's never going to happen if I have a gun.
joe rogan
I did a fucking great video of a bow hunter who is being attacked by a mountain lion.
And the mountain lion is like creeping up on him slowly.
unidentified
He's like, hey, get back, get back, get back.
joe rogan
And you see the thing lock on him and start closing in.
It's like 15 feet away.
And then...
Bang! And then you see the thing twitch and it's got a hole in its face.
gary brecka
He was a bow hunter.
Yeah, but he had a pistol on him.
joe rogan
That's why he had a pistol on him.
gary brecka
Yeah, it happens in Colorado.
I mean, bear attacks.
joe rogan
It fucking happens.
Bear attacks are fairly rare in Colorado.
gary brecka
It's only when you cross the...
Apparently, if you just come upon the cubs and the mother.
joe rogan
The real issue is not the bears that are in Colorado, though.
The real issue is the bears in Wyoming and Montana.
Brown bears.
Brown bears are what you have to worry about.
Black bears, not as much.
But occasionally, like a big black bear will go after people.
gary brecka
Yeah. But anyway, I take a sidearm and I'll march around in there.
But when I'm done, I feel like I took a limitless pill.
I totally agree with you.
Something out there.
And I got this little squirrel.
It's so funny.
I mean, I leave my house and start climbing up in the woods.
I have this little four-mile kind of track.
And there's a squirrel.
I don't know if he'll be there this year.
But every year that I go out there, and he barks at me.
And he kind of growls.
It doesn't sound like a squirrel.
It sounds like a little bark.
And then he chews acorns off and grabs them with both hands and throws them down on me.
It's so funny.
And he'll follow me from limb to limb.
I shit you not.
And I look forward to seeing him every day.
I feel like he's pissed off.
Maybe it's a sign of love.
I don't know.
joe rogan
It's definitely pissed off.
He doesn't love you.
Somebody probably hunted one of his family.
People do hunt squirrels.
They eat them.
gary brecka
But in any case.
I feel amazing.
But you're right.
At some point, we have the capacity to replace these oils.
We actually have a way to get back away from industrial farming and get back to local farming.
I have a very good friend named Alfie Oaks, and he owns one of the more profitable grocery stores in America.
It's in Naples, Florida, called Seed to Table.
He took me out by helicopter one time and we hopped around to a bunch of his organic fields.
He's got thousands of acres in the middle of the state of Florida.
And he showed me how he's not only able to grow produce organically for less money than he would grow it if he had to use herbicides and pesticides and chemicals.
He's able to pick it at 9 o'clock in the morning and have it on the grocery store shelf by 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
And I watched the whole process go down.
Thousands and thousands of these acres.
And, you know, white flies are the pest flies they're trying to avoid.
Instead of spraying for these white flies, what they do is they just use this reflective cellophane.
They run it down the rows of crops and it creates this reflection and it scatters them to the woods.
And so now the white flies are not eating the crops.
There's no herbicide.
There's no pesticide sprayed on these.
His team picks this stuff by 9 o'clock in the morning.
It goes into a processing center.
And by processing, I mean it gets washed.
That's it.
And then it's on a truck and it's on the shelf by 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
So you can grab a strawberry in this grocery store and eat it.
And it was growing at 9 a.m. that morning.
And there are mechanisms for us to do that.
Yes, I get some stuff needs to be shipped and stored.
But most regenerative farming practices are not only green and good for the environment, they're economically feasible.
They actually make economic sense.
And, you know, when he talks about the fact that we've been spraying some of these fields for so many decades or so many years with these herbicides and insecticides, that there is not a pest for, in some cases,
hundreds of miles.
But we are still spraying for those pests.
He's like, you've got to start to question what the motivation is.
joe rogan
Yeah. Probably financial.
Probably financial.
Yeah. You know, we were talking about, you said something earlier interesting that you think it's not, what was the term that you used?
It's not a mental health problem.
It's a lack of mental strength.
Mental fitness.
gary brecka
If you think about it...
joe rogan
You got any of those hydrogens?
gary brecka
Come on.
joe rogan
Hook it up.
I love these.
I'm addicted.
gary brecka
I love these too.
joe rogan
Explain to people what these are.
gary brecka
Hydrogen gas, I mean, this is probably my favorite biohack in the world because it'll cost you about a dollar a day.
These are called H2Tab.
You can get them at drinkh2tab.com.
You can actually read the science on it.
I think there's two people in the world now.
I mean, those that have read the science and take hydrogen gas, drink hydrogen water, and those that don't or just haven't read the science because...
Hydrogen gas, first of all, it's the lightest element in the universe.
It's also the most prevalent element in the universe.
10% of your body weight is hydrogen.
I think, in fact, if you took hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, that's 96% of your mass.
Okay, those four elements.
So hydrogen is about 10% of your body weight.
And hydrogen is not just an antioxidant.
It's a selective antioxidant.
So if you look at oxidative stressors like nitric oxide or superoxide or hydrogen peroxide, so all of these oxidative stressors, they can be good in certain amounts.
You need a certain amount of nitric oxide in your body, but too much nitric oxide is bad.
Too much hydrogen peroxide is bad.
Too much superoxide is bad.
So if you were to take an antioxidant like vitamin C, And take very, very high doses of antioxidants.
This can be very bad for you because you're suppressing too much oxidation in the body.
You're actually suppressing these oxidative stressors too much.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, uses the body's homeostatic process to suppress inflammation.
So in other words, it works through something called the NRF2 pathway.
It affects a protein called NRF2, which moves into the DNA.
Binds to the DNA, and then the DNA spits out the instructions for catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione.
So in other words, you're actually using the body's regulatory system to actually control inflammation instead of externally trying to control inflammation.
And the second thing it does is it targets the only oxidative-free radical that I think all of the science points to, which is hydroxyl radical.
So it selectively targets that and regulates the rest of the inflammatory process by using the body's homeostasis.
So I guess a very long-winded way of saying that hydrogen gas can go anywhere in the body.
It reduces inflammation, improves circulation, improves memory.
There's a really interesting study published on the Journal of Experimental Gerontology, and it was published in November of 2021.
And most of these clinical research studies, they'll look at younger populations, like healthier, younger populations.
But this actually looked at a six-month study on hydrogen water versus non-hydrogen water in 70-year-old and older folks.
And they used something called TET2 to measure methylation.
They measured cognitive function, sleep scores, sit-stand ratios, how well they're able to sit and stand, telomere lengths in their chromosomes.
And the really fascinating thing about this study is it was done during COVID.
So these seniors were basically imprisoned.
So they were not mobile.
And the only difference between the groups that they controlled for was the presence of hydrogen water.
At the end of the six-month period, during the lockdown, the control group had lost 11% in their telomeres.
The non-control group had gained.
They had better short-term recall, better cognitive scores, better circulation, improving in cardiac markers, improving in inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein.
I think it's the greatest biohack on earth.
That and some sea salt and some amino acids like a perfect amino.
I mean, just covering your bases.
I think those are your foundational basics for Optimal.
joe rogan
And it's delicious.
It comes in good flavors and it's easy to drink.
It's like a pain-free thing that you can do.
gary brecka
You know, you can bathe in it, too.
Really? You can actually bathe in hydrogen gas.
joe rogan
How many tabs do you put in the water?
gary brecka
You can actually put what's called a hydrogen bomb, which just looks like a big bath bomb.
It just creates hydrogen gas.
It's elemental magnesium.
joe rogan
What does it do for you when you bathe in it?
gary brecka
It goes right transdermal.
It goes right through the skin.
So, remember, hydrogen is the smallest, lightest element that we know of.
So it will go right transdermal.
And these hydrogen gas will form in between water molecules.
So a water molecule is H2O, but hydrogen gas can actually exist outside of the water molecule.
And when you put excess hydrogen gas into the water, it will go right transdermal.
And I have two of these baths at my house.
I never talk about it on social media, so I guess I'm about to talk about it now.
But I have literally put people into these tubs.
I'm kidding you not.
Crippled with arthritis.
And they will skip out of my unit like they won the lottery.
It's incredible.
joe rogan
So transdermal reduction of inflammation in joints from these hydrogen bombs.
How long does it last?
gary brecka
Or from a hydrogen bath.
You can get these machines.
I mean, one for your house is about $7,500, $8,000.
Some that make nanoparticles or nanobubbles, which are about 1 500th the diameter of a human pore.
So if you run these things on your face, it'll actually push all the sebum out of your skin.
It'll get rid of dandruff, psoriasis, eczema.
If you have any kind of inflammatory condition, like knees, hips, shoulder, rotator cuff, arthritis, low back, bathing in hydrogen gas can be one of the most therapeutic things that you do.
joe rogan
Really? Can you add it to a cold plunge?
gary brecka
You can add it to a cold plunge.
And what's interesting about adding it to a cold...
In fact, I use this Cold Life cold plunge.
And I've got these guys trying to see if we can incorporate the hydrogen gas into the cold plunge.
So where the motor pulls the cold water out, it's going to send it into a hydrogen generator and then push it back into the tub.
Because as the temperature drops in water, you can saturate more gas.
So a 48-degree – quote me exactly on this – but a 48-degree cold plunge will hold about twice as much gas as a 102-degree warm tub.
So if you were just taking a warm bath.
So you're going to be cold plunging for three to six minutes every day.
That's what you and I do.
You might as well be in there with hydrogen gas.
And so I'm working with these guys from Gold Life to see if we can plumb these hydrogen generators.
And basically it's – It creates the hydrogen gas by taking distilled water and breaking distilled water apart and then throwing the gas into the water.
And it is noticeably different when you bathe in this gas or not.
Like I had Sean Ryan over to my house for a podcast one time and, you know, he's all banged up from being a Navy SEAL and he's got nips and bibbles all over his body.
And he just thought it was really weird because I was like, dude, you got to get my bathtub.
joe rogan
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gary brecka
He's talked about it before.
Sean, big shout out, brother.
But he was like, he's like, dude, I just met you, man.
I go, no, it's okay.
I'm not going to get in there with you.
I'll sit on the chair outside the tub.
He's like, that freaks me out a little bit.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I said, dude, I gave him a pair of shorts.
Because I was like, does anything on your body hurt?
Your knees, your hips, your shoulders, does anything hurt?
And he's like, dude, fucking everything in my body hurts.
So I was like, get in there, man.
And I put him in there for 25 minutes.
He said it was the first time he had slept eight hours and woken up without pain in probably 15 years.
joe rogan
Wow. Yeah.
gary brecka
John Jones, same thing.
You know, I mean, John Jones has been very public about, you know, working with me.
I've been talking to him in a little while, but right before his last fight, I brought him one of these hydrogen machines to bathe in.
And we just set up the tub at his house.
And we ran hydrogen gas into the tub.
So we would do red light therapy.
He would drink hydrogen water.
And he would bathe in this hydrogen gas.
And it was about 15 or 20 days after I kind of parachuted into his camp and set all this up that he texted me.
He was like, holy shit, brother, I can't believe I'm out of pain.
I'm adding a sixth day to my training routine.
I'm waking up not in pain.
I'm sleeping better.
So it's really incredible what hydrogen gas can do in the body.
And don't take my word for it.
I mean, there actually is a really interesting study published by Dr. LeBaron, Tyler LeBaron.
He's a PhD.
And I think his PhD is in molecular hydrogen.
So I should tease him about where his life went wrong that he got a PhD in hydrogen.
Where did you bang a laugh that you decided I'm going to get a PhD in hydrogen?
But he published a study looking at...
Electrolized alkaline water.
And when they removed the hydrogen gas, all of the benefits of alkaline water went away.
So the benefits from alkaline water are coming from the excess presence of hydrogen gas.
And even when you add hydrogen gas to Regular water, it will drop the ORP.
It will make the oxidative reduction potential negative.
So it has more of a capacity to donate electrons.
So I just think it's a phenomenal discovery, and it's dirt cheap.
joe rogan
When you were telling me that these bottles, water bottles that generate hydrogen, they're great in the beginning, but that over time they deteriorate.
Would the same issue happen with the hydrogen generators that you would use for the cold plunges?
gary brecka
You know, they're a lot more robust.
They're a commercial generator.
So they're not actually working under pressure.
So the water flows through these.
So a lot of the ways that you create high part per million hydrogen gas in these water bottles.
And I actually just won.
I'm about to put a press release out about it.
I actually just won a $16 million civil judgment against a...
A fake hydrogen water bottle company that used my name, image, and likeness to run a bunch of ads and sold tens of millions of dollars in these bottles.
But essentially, at the bottom of these bottles, there's something called a proton exchange membrane.
And this proton exchange membrane comes in contact with the water through electrolysis, and it creates the hydrogen gas.
The problem with these bottles is that this electrolysis process, if you put tap water in there and use chlorine, can actually create...
Chlorine gas.
You can also create something called hypochloric acid.
So what happens is over time, the bottles that I tested, because I used to be a huge fan of these bottles and I carried them everywhere.
And I would notice that it didn't bubble as much, you know, four or five months after I, you know, had this had the bottle.
And so I sent it to be tested.
And lo and behold, it.
You know, these proton exchange membranes break down over time.
So the first time you use the bottle, you're getting very high par per million hydrogen.
But four or five months later, you're getting almost none.
Maybe six months later, you might be getting zero.
joe rogan
Could you just swap out the membrane and continue to use the same bottle?
gary brecka
Yeah, but they don't send you a new proton exchange membrane.
Now, some of them you can screw off the bottom, and they theoretically could send it to you.
But they're expensive.
They're like $250, $300.
An H2 tablet, a hydrogen tablet will cost you a buck a day.
joe rogan
Right. And it gives you more.
gary brecka
And it gives you a higher part per million than almost all those bottles.
And it's consistent.
It's high dose hydrogen gas that's exactly consistent.
So every single time I put one of those tablets in the water, it's a consistent dose of hydrogen gas.
And I used to get a lot of shit online because I was promoting these bottles so heavily because I believed in them tremendously.
The average person's like out-of-pocket $250, $300.
joe rogan
Right. So this is a lot more financially cost-effective.
Yeah. So with the cold plunge thing, you're saying so because it's a commercial unit, it would work differently and it'd be more robust?
gary brecka
Well, it's not using pressure.
Okay. Right?
So it's circulating through this machine and it's creating, you know, using electrolysis and creating the hydrogen gas going back and...
To the tub, because you don't need...
You're not trying to drink a therapeutic dose.
You're trying to bathe in a dose.
You don't need as high par per million, so you don't need the pressure.
But the really cool thing is, because if you do it in a cold plunge, and when I pull this off, I'll send you one.
If you do it in a cold plunge, because as the temperature drops, you can dissolve more gas in that volume of liquid.
So ideally, you would have the...
Hydrogen generator outside of your cold plunge, let your cold plunge run and fill with hydrogen gas, and then you're getting in there for the anti-inflammatory response anyway, a lot of times, plus the brown fat activation and cold shock protein release and peripheral vasoconstriction and all of that.
But you would now be exposing yourself to very high doses of hydrogen gas.
You'd feel amazing getting out of there.
When I bathe in that hydrogen gas, so my wife, Sage, I had a really bad car accident right before we met 10 years ago, and she severely damaged her spine, her L5S1, and ended up having to have a spinal fusion.
And so her L5S1 is fused.
And even though she's thin, she's fit, she gets a lot of low back pain.
And when her back pain flares up, there's no chance she's sleeping.
But when we put her into that hydrogen nanobath, I mean...
25 minutes in there, she sleeps like a little baby.
And it's very calming, too.
It's that shifting you from that sympathetic state, that kind of fight-or-flight to that parasympathetic state of rest and digest.
You can feel the effects of that hydrogen gas when it goes transdermal and starts to relax you.
joe rogan
It seems like the more effective way is to do it in a warm tub, though, because you can stay in there for longer, so you'd get more exposure.
So you would get less hydrogen but more exposure than the three-minute cold plunge?
gary brecka
Yeah, I mean, this is where...
You know, I'd like to see some data, which I don't have.
So I do know that if the water is colder, you're going to dissolve more gas.
So you're going to have a higher part per million in cold water than you are in warm water.
But then you've got to look at what's happening in warm water.
You're probably having your pores are dilated.
You've got a little vasodilation.
You probably have better surface circulation in your skin.
So you might be actually carrying more of the hydrogen through the skin.
I don't know.
Versus when you're in a cold plunge, you're going to have that peripheral vasoconstriction.
You're still going to get hydrogen through the skin.
Because it's a higher dose.
But I don't have any clinical data to say that one is better than the other.
joe rogan
Have you done the cold plunge hydrogen?
gary brecka
Oh yeah, 100%.
joe rogan
You did it with a bath bomb?
gary brecka
I didn't do it with a bath bomb.
I did it with the one in my house that...
I actually have three of these machines.
I did it with the one in my house that recirculates it.
You throw a hose over one side and it sucks the water out of your cold plunge and then you...
Throw a hose over the other side and puts the hydrogen gas back in.
joe rogan
How long does the process take to hydrogenate?
gary brecka
I let it run for like 15 or 20 minutes because I wanted it to be really saturated.
And the water looks kind of milky.
In fact, I did it...
I had Laura Trump over for...
We shot this Fox News...
I did it for us to do this cold plunge shoot.
I added the hydrogen gas to the cold plunge just before we got in there.
It felt amazing getting out of there.
Now I'm trying to actually plummet right into the cold plunge so it's just in line.
So it just runs either all the time or I can turn a valve and turn the hydrogen gas on and have the gas go into the cold plunge.
joe rogan
So that's the next thing.
But right now for people...
You can just go get these hydrogen bath bombs.
gary brecka
You can get these hydrogen bath bombs.
Where would you get one of those?
DrinkH2Tab. DrinkH2Tab.com.
joe rogan
Okay. All right.
gary brecka
Yeah, if you go there, you can get the bath bomb.
I mean, try it.
I mean, just throw one of those bath bombs in there and feel how much different your body feels when you're bathing in hydrogen gas.
It's incredible.
I really feel like it is one of the best.
Hacks that so few people are using.
I mean, so many people aren't anti-inflammatory.
So many people are suffering from inflammation, not just neural inflammation in the brain, but nonspecific markers of inflammation like C-reactive protein, homocysteine, that are causing all kinds of havoc.
I mean, you think about the fact that about 70% of our circulation is not done by our heart.
Our heart circulates about 30% of the blood in our body, but the other 70% of the circulation is an activity called vasomotor or vasomotion.
Think of a snake swallowing a mouse.
And we don't really cater to this part of our circulatory system.
joe rogan
Explain what you're saying, a snake swallowing a mouse?
gary brecka
So think of a snake.
So if the heart doesn't circulate roughly 70% of the blood in our body, How is that circulation occurring?
Because obviously blood is still moving.
You have about 63,000 miles of blood vessel in your body.
And so your heart is not strong enough in a single contraction.
Your left ventricle, your heart that's ejecting that blood, is not strong enough to push the blood through 63,000 miles of vessel.
And so how does the majority of this circulation occur?
Well, the majority of our circulation is microvascular.
So the microvascular circulation does not move blood by pressure.
It moves blood by something called vasomotion or vasomotor.
And the best way I can describe vasomotion or vasomotor is to think of a snake swallowing a mouse.
And the reason why I say that is because there's no pressure coming in the front of the snake, right?
It's not being pushed down the snake's throat.
It's being muscularly...
So it's a wave-like motion, right?
It's this wave-like motion called vasomotor or vasomotion.
And vascular laxity, the laxity that's in your vessels, matters.
Your blood viscosity matters.
And inflammation matters.
This is why when you look at the percentage of high blood pressure diagnoses, for example, if you were to just Google what percentage of...
Hypertension, primary hypertension, essential hypertension, or, you know, high blood pressure is idiopathic, right, of unknown origin.
You'd see that 85% of all high blood pressure, hypertensive diagnosis, are idiopathic.
We don't know the origin.
And so we examine these people's heart, EKG, EEG, heart sounds, lung sounds, maybe a Dicontra study, maybe a CT angiogram, maybe a...
Some other kind of diagnostic heart imaging.
We can't find anything wrong with the heart.
And we medicate the heart anyway, generally for a crime that's not committing, when there's an 85% chance it's actually something other than the heart.
And we never look to the microvascular circulation.
We never look to the 70% of our circulation that's actually not done by our heart.
What are we doing to cater to that 70% of our circulation?
Well, things like resveratrol, hydrogen gas, lowering our homocysteine, which is...
For most people, it's very simple to do.
I use an amino acid called trimethylglycine to help people metabolize homocysteine because those microvasculature is very susceptible to high levels of homocysteine.
And there's so many people that have ailments that are consequences of poor circulation and we're treating something completely different.
So, for example, But we're focused on concentration, lots of autoimmune conditions.
If you look at the circulation in the brain, liver, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, you'll see that the majority of this circulation is microvascular.
You know, I've talked about why you and I both had a positive experience, for example, with red light.
What is red light doing to our eyes?
Is it fixing the rods, the macula, the cones, the retina?
Was there something damaged that red light fixed?
No, it just restored healthy vasomotor activity to the back of your eye, which is why I never...
Wear protection in a red light bed.
Now, am I saying a red light bed is going to cure your eyesight?
No. I get so beat up for that.
But red light therapy is extraordinarily good for vasomotor circulation.
Why do you think it improves your skin, the collagen, the elastin, the fibrin?
Why do you think it reduces fine lines and wrinkles?
Why does it improve?
Why can it improve our eyesight?
Because it restores healthy vasomotor activity.
So much microvasculature in our body that we don't really cater to this entire segment of our circulatory system.
Think about how small a capillary artery has to be to carry a fluid to the edge of the lung, exchange a gas with the inside of the lung, pull that gas into the fluid and not bleed into the lung.
So just think about how tiny that tube has to be and how many of those you have to have.
Because don't forget, right outside of your lungs, you've got fluid.
Those alveoli are grabbing gas and throwing that into a fluid.
Well, at some point, that pipe has to meet a piece of tissue.
How is it not bleeding into that tissue?
It is that small.
It's microvascular.
This is also where hydrogen gas comes into play.
I don't know where I was going with that point, but I just find it fascinating that we've got so many things that we can do to cater to a lot of these ailments that people chalk up to a consequence of aging.
And they can be as simple as catering to that portion of your circulatory system.
joe rogan
It would be so fascinating to run a study, a long-term study on twins, identical twins, and have one person just eat the standard American diet and the other person follow all these protocols.
Hydrogen gas, fitness, healthy food, no seed oil, no drinking, and just see.
Yeah. What do they look like after 20 years?
gary brecka
Yeah, or 20 years.
20 years would be wild.
Wild. Be like sending one of them to space, you know?
And it's so funny because, you know, we're so wrapped around our medical system that's really 50-60.
Years old, 70 years old, and how important a randomized clinical trial is, and placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial that's been peer-reviewed, and all of this.
But we negate the Eastern philosophies that very often have been around for thousands of years.
And I almost have more, lend more validity to something that's actually stood the test of time.
Something that doesn't work is not going to last a thousand years.
You know, by virtue of the fact that it doesn't work.
When we were in the mortality space, we never used randomized clinical trials.
We used big data.
And I think what you're about to see now that I was alluding to before is we built an entire system on, you know, the most rigorous scientific study being the randomized clinical...
You know, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial.
So that is the gold standard.
And if it hasn't been through this process, it is not valid.
Well, we've never done randomized clinical trials on parachutes.
I wouldn't jump out of an airplane without one.
Who wants to be in that?
Who wants to be in the control group?
Okay, Stan.
Yeah. You line up here.
You're getting a knapsack and a prayer book, and we're getting a parachute.
joe rogan
That's a very good point.
It's a very good point.
There's some things you really can't run randomized controlled studies on.
gary brecka
Yeah, I mean, sometimes we just have data, right?
We have really good data.
And one of the things I used to get just absolutely slaughtered for was I spoke out about the simple LDL hypothesis of cholesterol, saying that there is no correlation between elevated levels of LDL cholesterol on its own and cardiovascular disease.
you had to have corresponding increases in triglyceride you had to have inflammatory factors you usually had to have other metabolic factors like hypertriglyceridemia, hyperinsulinemia
I mean, big data is starting to tell us that the The extension of life is near zero,
but the extension of all-cause mortality is near zero.
And then the complications downstream, which we never study.
I mean, you'll never find a randomized clinical trial looking at more than one pharmaceutical compound in the same biome.
Yet almost everybody at the age of 60 is on five or more prescriptions.
But we don't study prescriptions in...
In concert with one another, we study them independently.
We say, okay, if you have high cholesterol, you're on a statin.
That's independent.
If you have, you know, your hemoglobin A1c is over 6.4, you're now insulin dependent.
Okay, so now you're on insulin.
You've been a little sad lately, so now you're on an SSRI.
And your thyroid is hypofunction, so now you're also on a synthroid or levothyroxine or armothyroid.
And, you know, your blood's gotten a little thick because you're...
On hormone therapy, so now you are on a blood thinner.
We've never studied the compounding effect of all of these different pharmaceuticals in the same biome.
We just assumed that the randomized clinical trial in these independent silos is valid, even though we're going to smack all of these things together.
One of the things that we learned in the mortality space was the more pharmaceuticals you were on, The easier it was for us to predict your life expectancy.
It was extraordinarily accurate, for example, if somebody started a corticosteroid, which is very common for rheumatoid arthritis and other forms of joint pain and whatnot.
If you started a corticosteroid, you had, by our data, six years and one day until you were getting a joint replacement.
Jesus. Six years and one day.
joe rogan
That's the average?
gary brecka
That was the average.
So let's say, for example, that...
joe rogan
Why is that?
gary brecka
Because initially, corticosteroids are anti-inflammatory, but then they eat the joint like a termite.
Oh, God.
And, you know, we knew this in professional sports, and a lot of careers were ended early from cortisone injections.
You know, a lot of athletes had their careers actually end early because they got too many cortisone injections.
joe rogan
How many is too many?
gary brecka
You know, it sort of depends on the joint and the location, but I would say...
joe rogan
One of them can be beneficial?
gary brecka
One of them can be very beneficial.
In the acute phase of pain or injury, they can be very beneficial.
But what they used to do is, because these were repetitive use injuries, and very often they would just dose the athlete up before a game.
So, I mean, Joe Theismann.
I mean, not Joe Theismann.
Joe Montana.
You know, he's one of those careers that entered early, very likely, because of cortisone injections.
And you keep injecting the same ligamentous tissue with cortisone, eventually you will weaken that tissue and it will snap.
First, it has an anti-inflammatory reaction, but then it starts to break down the cartilage like a termite.
In fact, it was so accurate that very often what would happen is people would get misdiagnosed with conditions like rheumatoid because they had the same symptomology as rheumatoid,
but what they actually had was a long-term clinical deficiency in vitamin D3.
And you would see that they would have single-digit vitamin D3 for decades.
And then all of a sudden, they would start to present with symptoms that mimicked rheumatoid.
They would say, hey, doc, you know, my soles of my feet and ankles are sore when I got out of bed in the morning to go take my first pee.
I feel like I had a workout the night before when I haven't.
You know, my low back hurts.
My knees and hips and shoulders are stiff.
Now it's spread to my upper back.
And lately, it's kind of hard to make a really tight fist.
Symptoms to the wrong primary care doctor, maybe without doing any confirming diagnosis, without SED rates, without RA factors.
They go, you know what, Joe?
You've got rheumatoid arthritis.
But don't worry.
I'm going to put you on something called a corticosteroid.
You're going to take this pill every morning.
And you're going to be fine.
Methotrexate, whatever it is.
And initially, you feel great because it kills the inflammation.
But then it starts to erode.
The cartilaginous surface.
So if you think about the fact that you had a nutrient deficiency, that you're now being treated with a pharmaceutical, and six years and one day later...
Now, by the way, the methotrexate, for example, will give you a gene mutation.
It will mimic a gene mutation called MTHFR.
joe rogan
Oh, that one.
gary brecka
That one.
The motherfucker gene.
joe rogan
The motherfucker gene.
gary brecka
Yeah, the motherfucker gene.
So even if you don't have MTHFR...
Let's try one of those?
Yeah, I might as well try it.
Even if you don't have MTHFR, if you take methotrexate, you inhibit your folate metabolism.
Cheers, bro.
No hydrogen gas, no coffee.
I actually saw you sniffing something on one of your podcasts.
joe rogan
Smelling salts?
gary brecka
Theo Vaughn.
What was that?
unidentified
Smelling salts.
gary brecka
I don't want to do it, by the way.
joe rogan
You can do it.
gary brecka
No, no, no, no, no.
I brought it up at the wrong time.
joe rogan
Give me a freshie.
gary brecka
I'm not doing it.
joe rogan
Here we go.
gary brecka
I just see all this shit over here.
joe rogan
Oh, this is a fresh one.
So this one hasn't been opened yet.
gary brecka
What is that?
joe rogan
This is, uh, do you know who Juju Mufu is?
gary brecka
Crazy. Juju Mufu?
joe rogan
Yeah, super crazy.
Well, he's an influencer, but he's, like, a very impressive athlete.
Like, super jacked.
gary brecka
Dude, if you've got a name, like, Juju Mufu.
joe rogan
Unbelievably fit.
You gotta be able to beat ass.
Incredibly flexible.
This is the guy.
gary brecka
Oh, yeah, I've seen him.
joe rogan
He's a freak.
Like, a real freak.
I mean, for sure he's not natural.
There's not a fucking chance in hell.
But I don't care.
But he makes this stuff.
We have no affiliation with him.
We buy it.
We're not sponsored.
So people are like, oh, you making money off that, bro?
No. No, I'm not making money.
gary brecka
Dude, I'm scared, dude.
I saw Theo Vaughn almost like...
joe rogan
Bryan Simpson took his headphones off and ran out of the room.
unidentified
No, dude, I'm not getting anywhere near that.
joe rogan
No. This is a good one.
gary brecka
I'm going to sniff it with the top on.
joe rogan
Really? Just the bag.
And it's sealed.
unidentified
Give me the bag.
gary brecka
I'll do the bag.
joe rogan
Just take a sniff of the bag.
gary brecka
This is so wrong.
joe rogan
It is wrong.
gary brecka
I feel so dirty.
Oh, my God!
joe rogan
Dude! That's nothing.
That's nothing.
That's just the bag that the smelling salts have been sitting in.
unidentified
Oh! Oh, my God!
joe rogan
So what powerlifters do is they take a sniff of this shit right before they lift weights.
You ready?
Here we go.
gary brecka
No. There's zero chance of doing that.
unidentified
Oh, Lordy.
Dude, there is zero chance of doing that.
joe rogan
Get on in, bro.
unidentified
Come on.
Reach forward.
joe rogan
Peer pressure.
Get it about six inches from the nose.
Take a haul.
It's good for you.
I can't guarantee it's good work.
No, no, no, that was nothing.
unidentified
No, that got me, dude.
gary brecka
That came in from the biohacker.
joe rogan
Come on, you're a biohacker.
You're a real man.
Get in there.
Take a sniff.
gary brecka
Yeah, I'm a real man.
I don't do this shit.
joe rogan
Get in there, bro.
Get in there.
One, two, three, go.
Sniff. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
gary brecka
Oh, God.
unidentified
That's what I'm talking about.
joe rogan
Let's go.
And that was a freshie.
The fresh ones are the really hard ones.
We have these in the green room at the comedy club.
People get addicted.
They're all taking snakes before they go on stage.
gary brecka
I think I lost sight in my left eye.
joe rogan
Yeah, it'll come back better.
unidentified
Come back stronger.
I have no data to support that, by the way.
gary brecka
Now I'm going to go down the rabbit hole of that.
joe rogan
You're going to want another one in about five minutes.
About five minutes.
unidentified
Give me round two.
gary brecka
Where were we, dude?
We were actually something important.
MTHFR, I think.
joe rogan
I did want to ask you about cholesterol before I forget.
Where did the narrative come from that there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, and that HDL's good, LDL's bad, you want to lower your LDL, and you want to take a statin?
Where did all this...
gary brecka
So, you know, high-density lipoprotein and low-density lipoprotein, you know, the HDL, the high-density lipoprotein, is generally considered the good.
And the LDL, the low density or VLDL, very low density lipoprotein, are considered the bad cholesterol because they're softer, right?
But what we know now is that the size of the cholesterol molecule matters a lot.
In other words, the smaller the particulate size of cholesterol, the easier it is to cross into the arterial wall.
It gets eaten by macrophage and it forms something called a foam cell, which is essentially this foam cell process of oxidized cholesterol is what is the genesis of narrowing of the arteries, right?
But again, we have to remember that cholesterol is called to the site of inflammation.
So if you had two people, one with cholesterol of 100 and LDL cholesterol and another one with cholesterol of 129, does the person with 129 have a higher Incidents of cardiovascular disease?
No. Does the person of 129 have a greater risk of a cardiovascular event?
No, just because they have elevated LDL cholesterol.
Now, if you start to look at other markers like C-reactive protein, which is a great marker for cardiovascular risk, if you look at triglyceride cholesterol ratio, because remember, fat, triglyceride, is largely transported around the body on the surface of cholesterol.
So if cholesterol was a tennis ball, The fuzzy yellow surface would be a fat triglyceride.
And if you remember from high school geometry, as the size of a sphere gets smaller, its surface area to volume ratio goes up.
So what that means is if I had two baskets...
Dude, I can still...
That thing is...
I gotta seal this thing, dude.
It's like...
I'm gonna go blind in my left eye.
I'm trying to be smart and I can't see out of my left eye.
Dude, what is it?
joe rogan
That's a good question.
unidentified
Ammonia? Ah, it's no joke, man.
gary brecka
I remember my clinic when Dr. Sardi used to tape these things to the wall because she would do these shoulder injections on people and they would get woozy and she would just crack one of those smelling salts and they'd come right back.
joe rogan
Yeah, they used to use them for boxers when they got knocked out.
When they got rocked and they'd get into the corner, they'd give them smelling salts and wake right up.
Not really, but...
gary brecka
So let's say you had two basketballs of cholesterol.
This is an oversimplified version for the audience, but you have two basketballs of cholesterol, and they're covered in fat, a triglyceride.
And let's say I add more triglyceride to the bloodstream, which happens when you eat high sugar, high glycemic carbohydrate.
Why? Because part of insulin's role is to block forms of energy metabolism that would allow you to burn fat.
Or at least slow those pathways down.
So essentially you have two basketballs of cholesterol.
And now I want to add more fat to the table.
Those two basketballs become four softballs.
If I add more triglyceride to the table, they become eight baseballs.
If I add more triglyceride, they become 16 golf balls.
And if I continue to raise triglyceride, they'll become 32 little BBs.
So the point is, the amount of cholesterol stayed stable.
The amount of triglyceride went up.
As the amount of triglyceride went up, the size of the cholesterol molecule got smaller.
So the two basketballs and the 32 BBs are the same volume of cholesterol, same nanogram per deciliter of cholesterol, just vastly different sizes.
Those 32 BBs, very dangerous.
Those two basketballs, very little danger.
One is actually a marker for longevity.
One is a marker for cardiovascular disease, and it is the same amount of cholesterol.
Just different sizes.
So different sizes.
joe rogan
I got my blood drawn a couple years ago, and the doctor asked me if I was on cholesterol medication.
He said, your cholesterol is really low.
He goes, are you on medication?
I said, no.
But I eat mostly meat.
gary brecka
Yeah. Triglycerides would usually go down.
Your LDL cholesterol will go up if you're on a ketogenic diet.
Dr., I think it's Nadir Singh is his name, did an unbelievable, he's a cardiologist, did an unbelievable YouTube video on this.
I actually did a podcast with Dr. Asim Malhotra, who is a cardiologist.
Has he been here too?
Yeah. Unbelievable guy.
joe rogan
Love that guy.
gary brecka
Shout out to Asim.
He's an incredible, incredible guy.
And Asim would tell you the same thing, that he fought the British Medical Journal and got publications that he was trying to have published, pulled because he was fighting the narrative on statins, one of the biggest drugs in the world.
We knew in the mortality space that the centenarians that we were processing death claims on, I don't recall a time during my career when we had...
A death claim on a centenarian, somebody over the age of 100, that did not have elevated levels of LDL cholesterol at the time of their death, because very often these people would die either in hospitals or assisted care living facilities, and we'd process the death claim, and in order to get the death claim processed, you'd have to know day,
date, time, location, cause of death, and we'd have to get a death certificate.
And these people were dying with elevated levels of LDL cholesterol, which you would think, well...
When they have died a lot younger of cardiovascular disease, and now the data is starting to come out to support these other metabolic issues like hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia, high blood sugar, that these are villains that precede cholesterol attaching to the arterial wall.
And so when we talk about metabolic health, we really...
We shouldn't just isolate LDL cholesterol.
We should be looking at our blood pressure, you know, our abdominal obesity, our sugars mainly, whether or not, you know, what our fasting blood glucose is, what the three-month average of our blood sugar is, our hemoglobin A1c,
making sure that's below.
Preferably 5.4.
Looking at our insulin because insulin resistance develops a long time before a lot of these things show up.
And looking at other inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein and just generalized markers of inflammation.
Because most people are eating a very pro-inflammatory diet.
And this is why you can't isolate one thing and say seed oils are what's killing.
You know, vaccines are what's killing Americans.
Aluminum vaccines or, you know, fluoride in drinking water.
It's the cumulative dose toxicity of all of these things.
You know, our water is toxic.
And we have fluoride, we have chlorines, we have PFAs, polyfluoroalkyls, we have microplastics, we have bisphenols.
You know, I actually did a test on myself and my entire family called a vibrant wellness test.
And you...
It's a blood and urine test, and essentially it tells you whether you've got mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, all of these different things.
The amount of BPAs in my blood, and I would consider myself pretty on top of my diet game.
The amount of BPAs, there are traces of jet fuel, there are aflatoxins.
unidentified
Jet fuel?
gary brecka
There are traces of jet fuel.
From while you're flying?
Accelerants. Like, aerosol accelerants, maybe from flying.
I fly a lot.
My daughter had it in her blood, too, and so did my wife.
And then we all had very similar species of mold, which we got rid of, and I felt a lot better.
joe rogan
And it was in your home?
gary brecka
It was actually in my daughter's apartment.
We actually ended up having our doctor write a letter and break her lease, and we moved her into an apartment right next to us in Coconut Grove in Florida.
But she was starting to have, and she's a nurse, and she was starting to have these strange symptoms, just brain fog.
Her joints were just killing her in the morning.
By the end of the day, her ankles were swollen.
Her mood started to collapse, like the peaks and valleys of her mood kind of went away.
I was bringing her over to the house, and obviously as a biohacker, I'm trying to solve everything.
So I was like, we've got to do this vibrant wellness test medicine.
We've got to figure out what's going on.
And then, boom, the mold just jumped off the chart.
Our youngest daughter, too, is suffering from recurrent sore throats.
And you know that viruses and, I mean, bacteria and mold have been...
Mortal enemies for years.
I mean, think penicillin and bacteria, right?
And so we live in the mold capital of the world, and very often when you get mold toxicity, it's not just a constant infection.
It has a latent phase, a dormant phase, and then a sporulating phase.
And so these mold infections, which a lot of doctors will tell you are complete nonsense.
Are absolutely valid.
I mean, there are people that right now that have severe brain fog.
They have joint pain.
They have really poor focus and concentration and short-term memory issues.
They've got hormone imbalance.
They've got water retention.
And they got swollen ankles.
And they cannot really figure it out.
And they'll do a standard blood test.
And you don't see this on a standard blood test.
And when you do something like a Vibrant and you look at these, This mold toxicity, you get rid of it, and you see the entire blood panel comes back into optimal ranges, and they feel amazing.
Just like my daughter, we did EBO2, we did sauna, we did gut binders, activated charcoal binders, high-dose glutathione, and over the next few weeks, we slowly walked this mold right out of her.
But people suffer from this all the time.
In fact, I've been deep down the rabbit hole of a lot of the foundations of these autoimmune diseases.
Because in my previous clinic, we had 150,000, 160,000 patients come through our clinic system.
And nearly everyone that we saw that had an autoimmune disease was told by their doctor, You just woke up one day and your immune system went haywire.
So you have Crohn's disease because one day you woke up and your immune system is manufacturing antibodies to your colon.
Or you have hypothyroid because you woke up one morning and your immune system is manufacturing antibodies to your thyroid.
So now you have Hashimoto's or the lacrimal gland in your eye and you have chagrins or your blood, you have lupus.
And we immediately just assume that God made a mistake, that the immune system is malfunctioning.
Taking a step back and saying, you know, what if actually the immune system is acting properly?
What if God didn't make a mistake?
What if it's attacking the colon for a reason?
We just have to figure it out.
And if you just eliminated four things, mold mycotoxin, heavy metals, viruses, and parasites, just those four categories, I believe you would get to the majority of the genesis of.
of autoimmune diseases.
Some of these autopsy studies on multiple sclerosis, for example, were 100% positive for certain colonies of helminths.
Helminths, which are parasites.
And these helminth colonies or the larvae from these were actually in the myelin sheath of 10 of 10 autopsies that they did on multiple sclerosis patients.
I'm not by any way...
It means saying that everybody that has multiple sclerosis has parasitic infection.
But there are healthy parasites.
There's categories of helminths that are very, very healthy.
And some of the underdeveloped countries in the world where actually they have these healthy parasites, which we've wiped out for the large part here, they don't get multiple sclerosis or they have very, very low incidence of multiple sclerosis.
And one of the theories is that because we have...
We have disrupted the balance of not only bacteria but parasites in our gut, specifically TSO parasites, which are healthy parasites, that the pathogenic parasites proliferate and their larvae burrow into the myelin sheath and they're part of the genesis of multiple sclerosis.
My whole point in saying that is if you take any pathogen, let's just take this one right here.
I don't know what this is.
It looks like a Donald Trump coin.
So I don't know if the audience could see this, but let's say this was a mold spore or mycotoxin or this was a heavy metal or even a virus.
And this was a healthy cell.
You see that they don't hide like this, right?
Metals, mycotoxins, mold, viruses, even in some cases parasites, they don't hide outside of the cell like this.
They hide like this.
joe rogan
Inside the cell.
gary brecka
Inside the cell.
I mean, but when a virus, when the nucleocapsid protein of a virus attaches to a cell and injects its DNA, that's the way that it takes over that cell.
It's kind of like being bitten by the zombie, right?
I mean, a virus is not a living thing.
It's an envelope that's wrapped around DNA.
But when that envelope attaches to the cell wall and it squirts the DNA inside, now the virus has taken over the host cell, right?
So it's inside the cell.
The immune system is not after this.
It's not after the cell.
It's after this.
So how does it get to this?
It has to kick down this wall.
It has to break through this cell wall.
And very often, in order to do that, it needs to manufacture an antibody to this cell.
If you look, for example, for Hashimoto's, which a lot of people have, These people have Hashimoto's and they're told, okay, well, you woke up one day and your immune system decided to attack the thyroid.
You know, you're manufacturing antibodies to your thyroid.
And so, well, why is it attacking my thyroid?
Well, we don't know.
Let's look at your family history.
Oh, your mom's sister had it and your dad's brother had it.
Oh, you have familial Hashimoto's.
Even though there is no gene.
For Hashimoto's, so you couldn't have inherited it from your ancestor.
Because it now runs in your family, you're told that you have a genetically inherited disease, and now you have to subscribe to a lifetime of medication.
Instead of taking a step back and saying, well, what would have called my immune system to that site?
And look at the incidence of heavy metal toxicity, mercury poisoning in Hashimoto's.
Look at the amount of lead and mercury poisoning in Hashimoto's because the thyroid has an affinity for heavy metals and very often when they retreat into the thyroid, the immune system will chase them there.
And look at the genesis of a lot of Crohn's disease.
I mean, a lot of Crohn's disease has to do with the disruption of the single cell layer in your gut that allows bacteria and other pathogenic contents that should stay inside.
The luminal wall of your gut, they leak out and they're in an area that they don't belong and the immune system is attacking them there.
And then we want to hold the immune system responsible for the crime and say, hey, we're going to arrest the police officer for what this criminal did.
Those contents are in areas of the body where they don't belong.
We're going to put you on an immunosuppressant or we're going to put you on an anti-inflammatory.
And we're actually going to stop the immune system from protecting you.
Instead of saying, what contents could be leaking from my gut that are causing the immune system to light up?
And you could just keep going through lots of autoimmune diseases like this, you know, multiple sclerosis, a lot of these conditions.
But mold, mycotoxins, metals, parasites.
I mean, if I was ever told that I had an autoimmune disease, I would not accept it until I'd done those kinds of...
joe rogan
Interesting. So back to the narrative of HDL and LDL.
How did it get formed that LDL is the bad cholesterol?
gary brecka
Because the majority of people that had high LDL cholesterol also had high other factors going on in their body.
And just like a lot of these randomized clinical trials, we look at things in isolation.
We study one thing in isolation.
One of the worst things we do, in my opinion, in modern science is study.
Human anatomy or human physiology or biochemistry in isolation.
So we say we're going to take a cell out of the body.
We're going to put it in a lab.
We're going to look how it behaves in a Petri dish.
And then we're going to assume that when I put that cell back into the body, it's going to behave the same way.
And so we didn't solve for all of these other factors.
Well, what was the person's...
Insulin level.
What was their fasting glucose?
What was their hemoglobin A1c?
What were their other inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, creatine phosphokinase?
What were the other lifestyle factors that were going on?
And what you'll find is correlation between high levels of cholesterol and people that have cardiovascular disease, but not because of the cholesterol, because of all of the diet and lifestyle risk factors that go around it.
But we can build a multi-billion dollar, in fact, a trillion dollar industry by just lowering this one biomarker.
And when we lower this biomarker, if that biomarker were directly linked to all-cause mortality, if it were directly linked to the incidence of cardiovascular disease, then we would see in the population where we lowered this biomarker, we would see an extension of mortality,
right? Because we said this biomarker was high, LDL.
So if we lower it...
With statin.
Then we're going to see an extension of mortality.
And lo and behold, we see no extension of mortality.
joe rogan
So how does it continue to be used?
gary brecka
Because it's continued to be marketed that way.
You have to understand that there's a box that is called the standard of care.
And I don't subscribe to the fact that physicians are trying to harm you.
In fact, I have the deepest respect for people that are licensed to practice medicine because I'm not one of them.
And, you know, they...
They go through a schooling to learn to practice within something called the standard of care.
If you're outside of the standard of care, your malpractice is at risk, your reimbursement is at risk, your career is at risk.
So you may very well be doing something that is in your scope of practice, but it is outside the standard of care.
So most physicians will migrate back into the standard of care.
Go around to a bunch of allopathic doctors and get multiple opinions.
They'll all be within this box.
When you jump outside of that box, you've got to be talking to somebody who's willing to say, okay, you probably have to pay me cash.
You probably have put my malpractice at risk.
I don't have malpractice coverage for this type of treatment.
Not because they're breaking the law, but because they're not within the standard of care.
It's just like when physicians started to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID when it wasn't the standard of care, even though there were millions and millions and millions of scripts written for these pharmaceuticals that were proven to be extraordinarily safe.
I mean, our doctor used to have to write it for joint pain during COVID so she wouldn't potentially risk her license.
What happens is you develop a herd mentality because the system for reimbursement, how they get paid, the system for coverage, how they get malpractice coverage, and the system for their career is all dependent on things being inside of a certain box.
And the standard of care for someone with elevated LDL cholesterol is to put them on a statin.
If you don't do that, you could be risking your license.
And why is that the standard of care?
Because pharma dictates that that's the standard of care.
They also dictate the reimbursement rates.
And so if you look at the study that was done in 2016 by Harvard, which determined that medical error was the third leading cause of death.
I think it was repeated by Hopkins in 2019.
But the Harvard study in 2016 is very clear that the third leading cause of death in America is medical error.
And when you look into the study for why, you know, were doctors just killing people?
No. What happened was they looked at ICD-9, ICD-10, ICD-11 codes, how they're coding, you know, the diagnosis of what's happened to you.
I have to, as a doctor, I've got to sort of slot you into a diagnostic code so I can get reimbursed and you can get medication and we can all get paid.
But if I don't have a diagnosis to slot you into, I got to pick sort of the next nearest one.
And there is no diagnosis or way for me to be reimbursed or to make a living if I go, look, Joe, your hemoglobin A1c is like 5.7.
You're early stage pre-diabetic.
You know, you've got a little abdominal obesity going on.
Your blood pressure is creeping towards the high side.
Your fasting glucose is really high.
Some diet and lifestyle choices.
Tell me what's going on in your life.
What's a typical day of your diet look like?
You know, can I put you on a treadmill for 25 or 30 minutes?
Can I talk to you about intermittent fasting?
You know, can I talk to you about things like a whole food diet?
No. None of that.
All of that is outside the standard of care.
If something happens to you and I haven't practiced within the standard of care, I'm at risk.
And so I think a lot of that is what's really exciting about Maha's.
I think a lot of that is going to begin to change.
You're going to see Bobby Kennedy and his team, again, in my opinion, you're going to see Bobby Kennedy and his team, which have been empowered to make real change, not just getting poison out of our food supply and having the generally regarded as safe guidelines look at food safety before we put it into the public domain.
But you're really going to see him go after.
Corruption in our nutritional research, corruption in our governmental oversight bodies.
How is it that we can have people that sit in the Food and Drug Administration and regulate private industry and at the end of that regulatory career go in to work for the same industry that they purported to regulate?
And sometimes for 10 times what they would make as a regulator.
joe rogan
Kind of kooky.
gary brecka
It seems to me like you would get arrested for that in another industry, right?
I mean, if you did that in the securities industry, the banking industry, you wouldn't get away with it.
And, you know, north of 70%, I think the number 74% of our nutritional research is funded by private industry.
You know, we privatize the profit, but we socialize the expense.
And by this, I mean, like, we socialize through the tax.
Subsidized medical system, Medicaid, Medicare, the expenses, right?
So the expenses go on to the taxpayer, but the payments go to private industry.
So we privatize the profit and we socialize the risk.
And then the private industry that benefits from this doesn't even have a fiduciary to the patients that they serve.
They actually have a fiduciary to the investor.
And they can go to prison for not actually performing for their investor.
They can't go to prison for not performing for their...
For their patients.
So if I make a pharmaceutical that goes into your body, but somebody invested in my company to make that pharmaceutical, my responsibility is to them, not to you.
So now you get harmed.
You get harmed.
I'm held harmless.
But if I harm him by not selling it to you for the right margin, he gets to put me in prison.
I mean, it's mind-numbing.
It's so ass-backwards.
joe rogan
It's so ass-backwards, and it's such an uphill sludge.
I mean, what the current administration has to do, what Bobby Kennedy has to do, is sort of restructure decades and decades of what's essentially corruption.
gary brecka
And there's a lot of people fighting him on it, man.
joe rogan
Wow. I could only imagine because the amount of profit, you know, when you're talking about these industries, the amount of money they generate is astronomical.
And they're responsible for...
So much of the advertising revenue of mainstream media that mainstream media not only will not cover the negative aspects of their drugs but will heavily criticize anyone who tries to go outside the narrative.
gary brecka
Very true.
And I mean, you know, look at this, you know, this strong kids commission.
You know, it's the idea is to
to.
Go to schools, put physical education back into schools, get highly processed foods out of the schools, and actually not to fat-chain kids, but to pro-bodymorphic.
Encourage them.
Like, yes, it's okay to not want to be sloppy and out of shape and to call that out and to actually be physically fit and healthy.
It's not that you have to be there to gain status, but it's okay to not want to be fat.
joe rogan
Well, there's also...
Look, I don't think you should shame people and be cruel to them.
However, if someone pulls you aside and says, hey, Bobby...
You're overweight and it's fucking up your health and, you know, it's really bad for you.
If that makes you feel bad and that feeling bad inspires a change in your lifestyle, in your diet, in exercise routines and what you do, that's positive.
And sometimes you have to feel bad.
Like someone has to give you an F for you to realize, oh my God, I'm going to fail in this class unless I study harder.
Yeah. Like, that's part of life.
And you can't just coddle people and expect success.
That's not how it works.
gary brecka
I totally agree.
joe rogan
It's one of the most important aspects of athletics.
Because athletics are a very clear, it's a very clear formula.
That the more work you put in, the harder you train, the more results you'll get.
As long as you're not overtraining and, you know, you do it correctly.
It's the ultimate sieve.
Yeah. You work hard, you will get results.
It's a vehicle for the rest of your life.
If you can learn that at a young age, that's why I think athletics are so important for young people.
If you can learn that at an early age, that the discomfort is necessary for growth, like being tired, pushing yourself, working out when you don't want to, pushing yourself to the point where your body has to adapt and grow and become stronger.
is a part of this process and it's beneficial and through doing that you will actually feel better it is actually a medicine if you could get the way if you get the way I feel after I have a heart if I cold plunge have a hard workout get in the sauna stretch out and then Go about my day.
If you could put that in a pill, people are like, oh my god, my new anti-anxiety medications is so incredible.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
gary brecka
I take it every day.
joe rogan
It's so incredible.
I'm so happy that I went to this doctor because he put me on the right stuff.
Yeah. That pill, especially if it did all the things that exercise did without exercise, it would be the most valuable pill in the world.
But getting people to...
To feel discomfort voluntarily is so difficult when people have this sedentary lifestyle and this lazy mind and this entitlement that so many people have where they feel like the world owes them something.
Instead of,"I've owed myself.
I've got to work for myself.
I've got to put off these feelings.
Delay these feelings of, you know, relaxation and comfort and delay it and give myself some voluntary discomfort so that I can feel true peace.
gary brecka
Yeah, I actually trademarked the statement, aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.
By the way, if you want to use that, just use it.
I won't sue you.
joe rogan
Well, also, actually aging.
That's part of it, too.
gary brecka
Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.
And if you think about that for a minute, It truly is.
The more aggressively we seek comfort, the faster we age.
It's like we really got to stop telling grandma not to go outside.
It's too hot.
Not to go outside.
It's too cold.
joe rogan
It's not even really aging, right?
It's deterioration.
gary brecka
It's deterioration.
joe rogan
Yeah. Your muscles will atrophy.
Your bone density will decrease.
Your ligaments and your tendons will lose.
gary brecka
Because we seek comfort.
Yeah. I mean, when has a cold plunge not sucked?
joe rogan
Every day.
gary brecka
For me, it sucks every time.
joe rogan
I don't want to do it.
Every day, while I'm doing it, there's my little inner bitch that's trying to talk me out of it.
My little inner bitch has a little whispery voice, though.
It's like...
You don't really want to do this.
unidentified
You don't need to, Joe.
joe rogan
Oh, this is going to suck.
Maybe you could just go eat cake.
unidentified
You're rich and successful.
joe rogan
Yeah, you don't have to do this.
But thankfully, the general, the general is what I call the one part of my brain that I try to keep the most dominant, where I tell myself, shut the fuck up.
Shut up, stupid.
Get in there.
This is not, this is unavoidable.
Get in there.
gary brecka
I hear David Goggins in my...
In my head, like, you know, like, shut up, you pussy.
Get in that cold punch.
He's like, what does he say?
Don't negotiate with yourself.
My son and I went on this race called the Great World Race, which is seven marathons, seven continents in seven days.
And I did a couple of half marathons and one full marathon, but he did all seven marathons on all seven continents in seven days.
joe rogan
How banged up was he by the end of seven days?
gary brecka
Yeah, this was in November, so he's 24 now.
He's 23 at the time, so it was like five months ago.
And I guess at 23, you kind of feel like you can't be killed by a bullet.
Turns out by Cartagena, he was feeling it.
But we took the David Goggins book with us and we read like, I was reading like a chapter out of it every day.
But it was a crazy experience because, so my son Cole and myself and my cameraman, my production guy, went with us.
And initially I'm like, this is so awesome.
We're going to see all seven continents in seven days.
We're going to see Antarctica.
Due by the third marathon, I was in just, I was so exhausted and in so much pain.
And I had only done like half marathons when we got off the flight in Antarctica.
All the racers go out and start running.
I had these big Timberland boots on and this big puffy jacket.
And I was just sitting at the start line, just was going to wait for my son.
And I asked the race director, I'm like, how long are these loops?
He's like, well...
They're six point whatever miles and there's four of them.
And I was like, I could easily do one of these.
So I just started running.
joe rogan
In the Timberlands?
gary brecka
In these size 14 Timberlands.
Which I immediately regretted because then the snow starts caking to the bottom of my Timberlands.
So I ended up actually marching and not really running.
And it was so funny because my...
My son has these spikes on.
So, of course, he laps me.
He comes by.
unidentified
He's like, Dad, what the fuck are you doing out here?
gary brecka
I thought I'd give it a whirl.
So I actually made three loops.
So I got 18 miles.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
gary brecka
He ran the whole 26.3.
Then you get on the plane.
And then you fly five and a half hours in economy sitting up like this.
You fly five and a half hours and you land in Cape Town, South Africa.
And you get off the plane and immediately run another marathon.
And it's balls hot.
And then we packed up from that marathon.
So now these marathons were only like five and a half hours, six hours apart.
So now you've done two marathons in 24 hours.
One in Antarctica, one in the heat in South Africa.
And then it was like 11 hours to Perth, Australia.
And I ran another half there.
He ran a full marathon there.
And then you're done in Perth, Australia, and you pack up and we flew to Istanbul.
And the cool thing about Istanbul is you could run on the Asian side and then run on the European side.
So this was like the only night we got to stay in a hotel room and actually take a shower.
And so we get to Istanbul, and the marathon was supposed to be along this wharf.
It's pitch black at night.
The dock is all broken apart.
There's these big, huge cracks in the sidewalk.
And it was 26.3 miles along this wharf.
Only the thing was, we were told that they were going to get all the fishermen off the wall.
And so it was lines and lines and lines of these guys fishing at night.
And they would snap their hooks forward.
So we get there and we're like, this is way too freaking dangerous.
And I guess the company that they had hired to clear all these fishermen just took their money and said the whole course was going to be lit.
Found out the course wasn't lit, so then you had to wear the headlamps.
And so it took them like an hour, hour and 20 minutes to clear all these fishermen.
But then we started running and we ran with those headlights on.
And if you've ever been in pitch black and you've just watched that light bounce in front of your eyes, I don't know how my son did it.
Because I ran for like an hour and a half and I was like, fuck this, I have nothing to prove.
I'm 53. I'm going to be 54. I've already run a few half marathons.
I feel really good.
So he ran the entire thing, and I joined him for a bunch of laps, but finally he just ripped the thing off his head because that light's shaking in front of your eyes for Four hours at a time.
Pretty soon you just start to go batty.
And then you go to sleep.
The next day you run on the Asian side.
Then it was 19 hours to Cartagena.
And about a third of the athletes drank the water with the ice or ate the salad that was washed in the water from...
joe rogan
Oh no.
gary brecka
And the worst Montezuma's Revenge, Joe, you could ever imagine.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
gary brecka
Like a third of the plane wakes up six or seven hours into this 19-hour flight, just puking both ends.
joe rogan
Oh, boy.
Lines outside the bathroom.
gary brecka
Lines outside the bathroom.
joe rogan
Squeezing your butthole shut, trying to get in there.
gary brecka
People laying in the galleys, just throwing up into the trash cans.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
gary brecka
And I swear by the time we had landed, my son had lost so much weight.
And then we get to the hotel room, which you actually didn't get to spend the night.
We got to the hotel room just to change, and he's in there just puking, you know, crapping.
And he finally gets his race gear on, and we go downstairs, and like half of the athletes are...
Like, look like they're on their deathbed.
And because we were late to Cartagena, the race goes off at like 12.30 in the afternoon, 12 o'clock in the afternoon.
It's freaking 98 degrees, maybe 100 degrees, 90% humidity.
It is the hottest, flattest, most unforgiving course.
I remember turning to my production, head of my production team, Max, and...
And I was like, Max, there's zero chance he's finishing this marathon.
Because he'd already started at about 208, 210 pounds, and he was probably 190 by this time.
And so I pull up next to my son, and I was like, look, man, if you don't give up on this race, I won't give up on you.
And I sincerely regretted that at mile 16 or 18, saying that I would run the whole race with him because everything...
I've never run a marathon except for that day.
Everything in my entire body hurt, Joe.
Like, I was in so much pain from the waist down that I think I was just completely numb.
And he was just going from port-a-potty to port-a-potty, puking and shitting, puking and shitting, puking and shitting.
And I was having these sentimental moments where I was like, man, I'm so...
So happy to be out here with you, dude.
We're going to look back on this one day and wish we were back here.
unidentified
He would look at me and go, Dad, shut the fuck up.
gary brecka
That would quiet down for another 30 or 40 minutes and then I'd get sentimental again and he'd tell me to shut the fuck up again.
We ended up finishing the race, though.
I don't know how he did it.
He sipped little ounces of coconut water for that entire Cartagena race.
And then we had to get on the plane and fly to Miami to run the...
Seventh one, which I didn't do.
He did.
I don't even know why I brought that up, but it was a crazy, crazy moment.
There were these women that were running this race, I kid you not, that they had Montezuma's revenge so bad that they would leave the race course and run into the bay that we were running beside and just shit themselves in the bay and then get back out and keep running the race.
And the guy that set the world record in Antarctica...
Left the course in an ambulance in Cartagena.
Wow. It was insane, man.
joe rogan
My friend Cam Haynes, when he was preparing for one of those ultra runs, when you run for three days, like 240 miles, he was running a marathon a day while he was working an eight-hour job.
gary brecka
He was running a marathon a day?
joe rogan
A marathon a day, yeah.
Wow. Yeah.
gary brecka
There's a guy right now in Bahrain staying with Sheikh Nasser, who's one of the sons of the king of Bahrain.
And he is running 150 full-distance triathlons in 150 days.
When I was there, he was on 59. I kid you not.
joe rogan
It's amazing the body's potential if you just continue to push it.
The thing about Cam is Cam had been running for so long, for so many years, that he had this incredible base, his base of cardio.
He was used to doing 10 miles every day.
170, 160?
gary brecka
That's kind of big for that.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's not.
Well, his son is even fucking crazier.
His son just broke the world record in pull-ups in 24 hours.
gary brecka
In pull-ups?
joe rogan
Yeah, I think he did.
10,001 in 24 hours.
gary brecka
10,001 in 24 hours?
joe rogan
So Goggins had a record.
He broke Goggins' record.
And then some cat in Australia.
He's young.
He's like 25. Wow.
He's an animal, too.
That's him.
And he runs with jeans on, by the way.
Why? Just for a fucking goof, he runs with Origin jeans.
Have you ever used those stretchy jeans that Origin makes?
I think I have.
unidentified
They're fucking great.
joe rogan
They're basically sweatpants.
gary brecka
I don't know if I'd run a marathon in them.
joe rogan
They're basically sweatpants.
They give you no resistance.
You can kick somebody in the head with them easy.
gary brecka
He's gifted, though.
You can tell that stride.
He's just coordinated.
joe rogan
Well, he's been living with a fucking animal his whole life.
So he came in seventh place in the Austin Marathon, and he is not built like a marathon guy.
He's jacked.
gary brecka
Yeah, he definitely is.
joe rogan
I mean, obviously, he won the World Pull-Up Championship or World Pull-Up Record.
He is where I got one of the ideas to carry a lot of weight for, like, when I do 150 pounds.
gary brecka
Oh, is that what he does?
joe rogan
So he did this thing where I think it's a mile.
See if you can find it.
So he's carrying a sandbag, and I believe he has a weight vest on as well.
And I think the overall weight is over 200 pounds, and he goes over a mile with over 200 pounds.
gary brecka
Oh, just...
joe rogan
And he timed it.
See if you can find that.
gary brecka
Just walking like on a track.
joe rogan
I'm going short distances when I'm carrying heavy weight, but what I'm trying to do is...
You know, Peter Attia talked about this too, like the importance of the ability to carry weight and walk with it.
And then there's this guy, Tom.
gary brecka
He talks about the centenarian decathlon.
joe rogan
Yes. And then there's this guy in Australia who's like an incredible freak.
His name is Tom Haviland, and he's an enormous guy.
He's like 6'7", close to 300 pounds, just close to 400, right?
Isn't he like closing in on 400 pounds?
gary brecka
And he's musking?
joe rogan
Jacked! Jacked!
And one of the things that he does is a part of his...
He does, like, very unusual workout routines.
But see if you can find some videos on it.
That's what he looks like.
I mean, just a fucking complete freak.
But he does...
gary brecka
A white dude?
joe rogan
Yes. Enormous guy, too.
I mean, he's a huge guy.
But he does a lot of his workouts are not just, like, normal deadlifts, bench press, all that kind of shit.
Some of his workouts he does, uh, carries things.
Like, he carries things, like, off one side or another side.
Go to his Instagram so I can pick one.
A lot of these are just, mostly you see just his back.
Why? I don't know, he's a psychopath.
He has to be out of his fucking mind just to be doing this because he's literally one of the strongest guys in the world.
gary brecka
Really? Yeah.
Does he participate in like strongman competitions?
I don't think he does.
joe rogan
I think he just does all this shit on his own and I don't even understand why.
So what does he weigh now?
302 pounds.
unidentified
Wow. He eats 6,570 calories a day.
joe rogan
Yeah, and 329 grams of protein, 814 grams of carbs, 222 grams of fat.
gary brecka
And that's the current phase, which is a deficit.
joe rogan
Yeah, this was him on his way to...
So go back to that.
Yeah, so he's at 340 pounds.
I think he was trying to get to 400 pounds at one point in time.
But one of the things he does a lot is carry stuff.
And so I started looking into this idea, like, what's the big deal about carrying and walking with stuff?
So he does this, like, how much weight is that motherfucker guy carrying around with him?
gary brecka
How many plates is that?
joe rogan
I mean, 500 pounds?
What is that?
gary brecka
One, two, three, four, five.
Ten plates.
joe rogan
So it's somewhere around...
gary brecka
So that's 450 pounds.
joe rogan
Yeah. And so he's just walking short distances with this.
So I started doing that in my yard.
So I started doing it with farmer's carries.
And, you know, when I ruck...
I just use the 45-pound plate when I go a couple miles with the dog.
gary brecka
What's with the back?
I mean, why isn't he?
joe rogan
He's just a fucking psychopath.
Why does he have all clothes on, too?
Because if he takes the clothes off, he's super impressive.
Really? Yeah, he's fucking ripped.
I mean, the guy's enormous.
gary brecka
I forget his background.
joe rogan
That's him?
Yeah, that's him.
That's what he looks like.
gary brecka
Dude. Holy shit.
joe rogan
And again, he's like 6'7 or something crazy like that.
Built that way.
Wow. But he does a lot of carrying stuff and walking stuff.
Yeah. He feels like it's very important for your overall strength.
I would agree with that.
Not just to be able to sit there and push stuff and do squats in place, but to move with things where you're balancing and counterbalancing, moving left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.
Yeah. And I think there's a real benefit to that.
gary brecka
I like the single arm.
You know, farmer carry.
Yes. It makes a lot of sense, especially just trying to stabilize your spine.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'll do that with, like, a 70-pound kettlebell, and I'll just, like, walk up a hill with a 70-pound kettlebell.
And I can't get very far before I have to put it down because my grip gives out.
But I won't use straps because I think I really want to...
Like, I've been doing a lot of...
I carry this fucker around with me, too.
Because we have this thing in the comedy club where it's, like, one of those...
Strength things where you squeeze it.
gary brecka
Oh, it counts and it has a counter?
joe rogan
Yeah, and I got to 161 pounds of how strong you can squeeze.
That's the hardest I've ever gotten.
So I want to get to 180.
So I've been squeezing.
gary brecka
Oh, just grip strength.
joe rogan
Just holding that motherfucker all the time.
gary brecka
You got some meaty paws there, bro.
joe rogan
Yeah, it gets big hands.
Yeah, just hold that motherfucker.
I feel like hand strength...
gary brecka
Do you have to get angry?
joe rogan
No, I do.
unidentified
I like to get angry.
joe rogan
I just like to get angry, if I can.
But hand strength, I think, is very important.
Most of my workout...
gary brecka
Peter Tia talks about grip strength, and it's...
joe rogan
It's very important.
I do a lot of hanging, too.
I do a lot of hanging from my back and my shoulders, too.
I just hang from a chin-up bar.
gary brecka
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
That's good.
gary brecka
How long can you dead hang?
joe rogan
Two minutes.
gary brecka
Okay. I'm just about there myself.
Yeah. Just around two minutes.
I put those weighted vests on and...
joe rogan
That's a good way to do it.
Yeah. Weighted vests for short bursts.
gary brecka
Yeah. I'll take like a 12-pound weighted Aeon vest and I don't think you could do it with a rock, but I do those 12-pound Aeon vests and I just hang.
Like this is one of them too.
This one's about...
12 pounds.
joe rogan
Yeah, I do one series of all bodyweight workouts where I do chin-ups, push-ups, and then L chin-ups.
L, I guess you would be pull-ups, where it's a tight grip.
And by L meaning, I lift my legs up and I hold them in position.
gary brecka
Paul Saladino's got me doing that now.
joe rogan
So I do that most of the time with no extra weight.
But like...
Two times a month, I'll do it with 25 pounds.
So I'll put a 25-pound vest on and do my entire routine with long breaks.
gary brecka
Like a ruck vest?
joe rogan
Yes. Yeah.
I think it's actually from GoRuck.
It's 25-pound.
It's like a...
You know, just strap it in, Velcro it down.
And so I'll do my series of 10 chin-ups, my series of 20 dips, and then 10 L pull-ups.
And I'll do that.
gary brecka
But you're talking like the L sits where you're holding the bars and you just put your feet straight out.
Those are tougher than they look.
joe rogan
I'm not holding the bar down here.
I'm doing chin-ups.
gary brecka
Oh, chin-ups, okay.
joe rogan
So I'm doing the L like this, and then I'm doing these with my foot straight out.
So it's the abs.
I've had a problem with my lower back, and I think...
A lot of it came from...
I know where it came from.
It came from archery, where I was spending too much time pulling one side only.
And then, also, I was getting a little bit of tendonitis, and I was just saying, fuck it.
Just working through it.
gary brecka
Do you try to shoot both sides with your bow now?
joe rogan
No, but what I do now is, because my bow is pretty heavy, it's 85 pounds to pull it back, but I'm doing it like, when I'm really training hard, like it's getting close to September, I'm probably shooting 100 times a day.
So I'm 100 times, I'm pulling back 85 pounds.
So now what I do, and I learned this from Cam, I take a 10-pound dumbbell, and I hold it with my right, because I pull my bow with my right arm, so I put a 10-pound dumbbell.
with my right arm and hold it out.
And then with my left arm, I have a cable, like a cable machine.
And I'm pulling back the same, I'm mimicking the exact same.
Oh, I see.
gary brecka
So you're doing this in a gym?
joe rogan
Yes. So I'm holding it like that, and then I'm using the pulley.
And I'm pulling the cables back and I'm holding it for a count of two and then bringing it back.
Holding it for a count of two and bringing it back.
So I'm balancing out my back.
gary brecka
Are you a lefty or a righty?
Righty. So your righty is, that's where you're holding your bow.
joe rogan
So my right arm, I'm pulling back.
I'm holding the bow with my left arm to stabilize it, and I'm pulling it back with my right arm.
So now, to counter that, I immediately go to the gym right after.
So one of the things I'm noticing is like, boy, I get fucking so sore on my left side now.
Because this is fairly recent.
I've only been doing this for a couple months.
The left side to stabilize it.
But I think I should have been doing it the entire time.
Because I was getting really bad lower back pain last hunting season.
And it was...
Just because of tendons.
I was just overusing, because you're stabilizing, right?
So you're pulling back the bow, and you're holding it in place, and you're stabilizing on your right side.
And after your form kind of breaks down, because you get a little tired, now I just, when I feel my form breaking down, I stop.
I just stop shooting.
So instead of shooting 100 times a day now, maybe I'll shoot 30 or 40 and I just stop.
I won't push.
Because it's a meathead mentality that my stupid brain won't abandon.
Even though I know it's like injuring me.
It actually became a problem and it was hurting me when I was playing pool.
I did a bunch of things to deal with it.
One of the things I did is this thing called New Fit, which helped a lot, where they put electrodes on your muscles and then you go through a series of core routines while you're doing that.
That helped a lot.
gary brecka
That's cool.
joe rogan
And then incorporating rotational exercises helped a lot.
I have, like, a bar.
gary brecka
Like a golf-looking thing?
joe rogan
No, I have a bar, like a straight bar, and I'll put, like, my right leg forward, and so I've got the bar back on the right side, and I'm twisting forward.
So I'm doing that.
So a lot of rotational exercises, and I'm also twisting up, you know, and I'm doing a bunch of different things to twist.
Another thing I do is I sit on a pad with my legs elevated, and I have a kettlebell, and I'll...
Twisted to the side with my legs up in the air.
So I'm getting all this rotational exercises into my system now that I didn't used to do before, but I really should have been doing from the beginning.
I always did abs.
I always did the hip glute thing where you lean all the way back.
gary brecka
Yeah, GHD sit-ups.
joe rogan
Yeah, so I used to do a lot.
gary brecka
Yeah, those are good.
joe rogan
I still do a lot of those.
Yeah. And then back extensions.
But I wasn't doing rotational stuff.
And I think that's the difference.
gary brecka
When is hunting season for you?
December? September.
Oh, September.
Yeah. And where do you go?
Like Utah or Wyoming?
joe rogan
Yeah, the photo that you were asking about out front, that's Utah.
gary brecka
Oh, that's Utah.
That's beautiful.
And you go off for like a week and you just...
joe rogan
Gorgeous. Love it.
gary brecka
Stay at somebody's ranch out there.
joe rogan
It's just so lovely.
Everything about it is great.
It's just I look forward to it so much.
gary brecka
That's why I love the mountains.
Honestly, I think our long-term plan is to, we've got a beautiful place in Miami, is to sell that place and get a spot.
I mean, continue to develop our spot in Colorado because there's something about these authentic log cabins, glacier-fed spring water, will and septic.
You know, solar-fed electricity.
Yeah. Like, just old school.
Old school.
And it makes you so happy.
And I totally agree with you.
I wish that people could feel what that...
Feeling is like and they wouldn't chase a lot of other...
joe rogan
Well, I think there's also some intangible input that you're getting from society that you're not thinking about, but that affects you, that's absent when you're in the woods and you feel refreshed because of that.
gary brecka
It's a connection to Mother Nature.
I mean, it's a connection to life.
unidentified
It is.
joe rogan
But I also think the absence of society is a thing.
I think...
I mean, this is going to sound super kooky, but I think even Wi-Fi and cell phone signals, I think they have an effect on you.
I don't know how much of an effect.
gary brecka
I'll tell you a story, a true story about...
So, my house, we have this...
My wife and I sleep in an EMF-free tent.
And I went a little nuts with the biohacking here.
joe rogan
You sleep in a tent?
gary brecka
Yeah, so...
joe rogan
Every night?
gary brecka
We have these...
Every night that we're home in Miami.
So, it's a PVC frame.
You know, it's like...
Five and a half feet tall, six foot tall, a little frame.
It's just PVC.
It's dirt cheap.
And then draped over top of it is pure woven silver fabric.
So it looks like a mosquito net that's over our king sauce bed.
And in the back of our bed, it clips into this grounding mattress, which plugs into the wall.
So the whole cage is grounded.
And there's no 5G, no Wi-Fi.
joe rogan
That's it right there.
Jamie's got a photo of it.
gary brecka
Oh, that's exactly it.
That is literally exactly it.
I wonder if they're...
joe rogan
So that protects you from EMF?
gary brecka
I wonder if you pushed Gary Brecka's bed in there, if it would show it, because I put it on Instagram.
joe rogan
Is that what you did?
gary brecka
That's exactly what we sleep in.
Exactly that.
joe rogan
EMF shielding canopy.
See, this is like kooky.
This is where you and I separate.
gary brecka
I know.
joe rogan
If I tried to bring that up, my wife would smack me.
gary brecka
Dude, I also have a hyperbaric chamber in our bedroom.
joe rogan
I have a hyperbaric chamber.
gary brecka
In the bedroom?
joe rogan
No, in my house.
gary brecka
Oh, okay.
I've got my podcast studio inside of one now.
joe rogan
Inside of a hyperbaric chamber?
gary brecka
Inside of a hyperbaric chamber.
joe rogan
How big is your hyperbaric chamber?
gary brecka
Huge. It's got two Maybach seats in it.
It's got like a 52-inch or 54-inch TV.
It's got three AI-powered cameras.
My gym is in the Hyperbaric, too.
joe rogan
So here's the thing.
gary brecka
I have a rower and weights, like a whole set of weights inside there.
joe rogan
There's a risk of using electronics in a high-oxygen environment, isn't there?
gary brecka
You don't use a high-oxygen environment.
I don't think there's any reason to go in a 100% O2 chamber.
I mean, none of my chambers will go to 100% O2, so none of them are flammable.
You could have a candle inside of there, theoretically.
Suggestive, but you could.
joe rogan
They would tell you to not even wear certain kinds of clothes in the hyperbaric chamber.
gary brecka
Yeah, because if you have 100% O2, you can have static electricity and you can light a spark and it could explode.
joe rogan
So what is 100% O2 versus what you're doing?
gary brecka
So you have to actually put medical grade oxygen into the chamber, which I don't do.
joe rogan
You don't.
So the one that I used to go to, they would give you a mask and you would wear the mask and oxygen would get pumped into your mask while you're in the hyperbaric chamber.
gary brecka
Yeah, so that's also not flammable.
That's probably 92, 93%.
100% O2.
Pure oxygen, 100% oxygen is flammable.
It's just like pure hydrogen gas is flammable.
So 100% O2 is flammable.
I mean, that terrible accident that happened to that young boy in the Midwest here recently where the hyperbaric chamber actually exploded.
What happened?
Yeah, I mean, this young, I think it was five and a half year old little boy was in a hyperbaric chamber and very sadly, the technician left him in there, didn't ground him.
And he had a blanket in there with him, and he moved the blanket, and the static electricity caught 100% O2.
Oh, exploded.
His mother was injured, too.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
gary brecka
I want to say that both of the nurse and doctor in the clinic have been charged with manslaughter.
Oh, my God.
Terrible. But those are 100% O2 chambers.
It's clear.
I mean, it's important to make the distinction that these 100% oxygen chambers, I mean, these are...
joe rogan
And why would you have a 100% O2 chamber versus what you're talking about?
gary brecka
So if you look at some of the therapeutic benefits for things like diabetic ulcers, burns, things like that, where, you know, necrosis, tissue necrosis, those make sense in a supervised hospital environment with,
you know, someone standing right outside the chamber the entire time.
I've been in one one time in a place called BioAccelerator.
Medellin, Colombia.
But the home-use chamber is where you get a prescription from your doctor and you actually get probably what you have.
Is yours a soft shell?
joe rogan
No. Chamber?
gary brecka
It's a hard shell?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
gary brecka
Oh, okay.
So that'll probably go to two atmospheres of pressure.
That's really good.
So Dr. Jason Saunders, who wrote the book Hyperbaric Medicine.
Dr. Dimitri will tell you there's a lot of benefits at low pressures, like 1.3 atmospheres, which you can get in a soft chamber.
And there are a lot of benefits at higher pressures, like two atmospheres.
So I never go above two atmospheres, twice the atmospheric pressure.
If you think about what's happening at twice the atmospheric pressure, you're taking the oxygen from the air, which is about 21% sea level, what we're breathing right now, and you're doubling that.
Because you're doubling the pressure.
So every 33 feet you go below sea level, you double the atmospheric pressure.
So when you get to two atmospheres of pressure, you're essentially taking in twice as much oxygen.
The oxygen concentration hasn't increased, but the size of the gas has gotten smaller.
So now you're perfusing tissues with oxygen that normally wouldn't...
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Diabetic ulcers.
When you have anaerobic bacterial infections, meaning bacterial infections that do not thrive on oxygen, you have to be careful with aerobic bacteria because there are bacteria that actually feed on oxygen as well.
And so you don't want to put somebody who has an aerobic infection into a hyperbaric chamber.
You want to put somebody who has an anaerobic infection.
But what's really interesting is some of the research that's coming out of Israel, especially, on cognitive function, using 60 days at two atmospheres of pressure and then reducing the pressure over time, the improvement in mitochondrial density,
the improvement in blood flow, cognitive scoring, reduction of neural inflammation.
You can't say treat or cure, but they use these to modulate autism, all kinds of neuroinflammatory conditions, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, which is really linked to type 3 diabetes, which is insulin resistance in the brain.
But the byproduct of that is this neuroinflammatory cascade.
So reducing neuroinflammation.
There are a lot of benefits to hyperbaric tissue recovery, post-surgical wound repair, post-surgical recovery.
These things have pretty profound...
joe rogan
There's also a study out of Israel that showed the lengthening of telomeres when they did a protocol of 60 sessions, 90-minute sessions over 90 days.
gary brecka
Yes, 60 days or...
joe rogan
60 sessions in 90 days.
gary brecka
60 sessions in 90 days.
90-minute sessions in 90 days.
You're right.
Dr. Saunders talked about that a lot, too.
joe rogan
And they showed telomere lengthening, which was the biological equivalent of a decrease of age of 20 years.
gary brecka
Yeah, it's a chromosomal end cap.
And if you think about it, I have a saying that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.
And I truly believe that because if you look at the breakdown in mitochondrial respiration, which occurs when you deprive the...
Mitochondria of all kinds of things, but mainly of oxygen, which is our fuel source, you know, which is not our fuel source as humans.
Our fuel source is ATP.
But the fuel source for the mitochondria is mainly oxygen.
And when you feed it oxygen, you have a 16-fold step up in cellular energy.
When you deprive it of oxygen, you have a 16-fold step down in cellular energy.
I mean, the difference between aerobic and anaerobic respiration or the Krebs cycle having the presence of oxygen or not having the presence of oxygen is a pretty substantial number.
And so hyperbarics, because they allow for compressed oxygen, even if you don't increase the percentage of O2, right?
You keep it at 21% like we're breathing right now, but you just double the atmospheric pressure.
I mean, the effects are pretty...
Pretty profound.
And I believe the risks are low.
If you have a physician, you understand how to operate the chamber, and you have safety procedures, and you're not using 100% O2, and you're at shallow depths, you can ascend quickly without being in trouble.
If you're a diver, you understand dive tables.
You have to ascend at certain rates and pause at certain levels.
So the one that I built, I was like, man, how do I just compress time?
I'm like, well, I'm going to work out.
So what if I was able to put the gym in there?
And I'm doing podcasts.
unidentified
I remember the guy thought I was out of my freaking body.
joe rogan
It does sound crazy.
gary brecka
But it's got a Nord Track rower in there.
How big is it?
joe rogan
Like the size of this room?
gary brecka
It's pretty big.
Let me see if I can show you a picture of it.
joe rogan
That would be a great way to compress time.
unidentified
Because you can get more than one thing done at the same time.
gary brecka
You feel...
joe rogan
I feel amazing getting out of mind.
gary brecka
That's actually my son working in it.
joe rogan
Wow. That's crazy.
gary brecka
That's my son, Dylan.
We went in there the other day.
joe rogan
Working out in a hyperbaric chamber.
And you could kind of watch Netflix in there, too.
Yeah. You got a screen in there and everything.
gary brecka
Wow. And it's got...
Yeah, we're just jamming some music.
unidentified
Wow. So I was playing some rap music.
gary brecka
I got a soundbar in there.
joe rogan
That's pretty dope.
gary brecka
Yeah, it was pretty cool.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
Yeah, I just lay down in mine and listen to books.
gary brecka
Well, the other one you can lay down in, it's got these seats that recline.
It's got a television in it, too, so I go in there and watch the news sometimes.
joe rogan
Oh, that's great.
gary brecka
Yeah, my wife.
Daughter goes in there and they just take a nap.
joe rogan
I was talking to Dana about it, like how beneficial it is.
Like, how much time does it take?
I'm like, it's about two hours.
And he's like, I don't have that fucking time.
gary brecka
I know.
joe rogan
Everything, you got to do something.
You're doing the red light.
gary brecka
Yeah, that's why I'm trying to compress time.
Yeah. Just like if you could get the hydrogen into the cold tub.
I mean, he's going to be at my house tomorrow, so we're going to try the hyperbarics.
joe rogan
How much are those little bombs for the bath, the hydrogen bombs?
gary brecka
I know they're about to come out with them.
I don't know if you can order them on the site yet.
I think they're probably going to be, if it's $30 for 30 of those H2 tabs, then I would imagine they're going to be around $5 or $10.
$10 for a hydrogen bomb to drop into the bathtub.
I mean, the machine is, you know, I was actually originally going to order this electrolysis system called a Cocoon.
It's spelled Cakewin, like the facility out in Las Vegas, which makes oxygen water.
That system is like $110,000.
And then a buddy of mine, Tyler LeBaron, who's the PhD in the space, told me about this machine I could order from Korea for $7,500, which is the one that I have now.
And now I've added a nanobubble machine.
And that one's...
Just incredible, I mean, for this transdermal inflammation.
And I think for people that have, like, you know, chronic injuries, especially like chronic repetitive use injuries, or they have real severe low back pain, or they've got parents or something that are deconditioned, you know, that have a hard time exercising,
You know, these are, these are, you know, great things to do to lower their inflammatory cascade.
You know, that and there's something called EWOD exercise with oxygen therapy, which is kind of based on Otto Warburg's research where, and I do this with my parents because both of my parents are deconditioned.
My mom has dual knee replacements and my dad is handicapped from a boating accident years ago.
He has no cognitive impairment, but he has some motor coordination difficulties.
So it's hard for him to really exercise.
I bought them a sauna and I put them both in a sauna.
For 20 minutes, three times a week, and they just breathe, I bored a hole, and they just breathe through a nasal cannulus, the 92, 93% O2, which is a version of EWOT, the exercise with oxygen therapy, or the multi-step oxygen therapy, because if you just can raise their heart rate just,
you know, a little bit with the heat, then that extra perfusion pressure really drives oxygen into the tissues.
And I'll tell you, it's a noticeable change in them.
Just like when you get out of a cold plunge, you've had a really good workout.
Well, imagine, you know, you're elderly and you're deconditioned.
You know, you really don't get your heart rate up.
You really don't get your good sweat on.
But you go into a sauna, raise your heart rate, and breathe some of that 92%, 93% of it too.
They feel amazing getting out of there.
joe rogan
This is a kind of important thing to talk about because there was a study that was released recently that showed that when people use the cold plunge after workout, you see a decrease in hypertrophy.
gary brecka
Yeah, of course you do.
That's a terrible study.
I was so pissed off to see that.
joe rogan
Because people are like, yeah, I told you it doesn't work.
All these pussies that don't want to get in that cold water.
Folks, you do the cold before.
This is the way to do it.
I know it sucks.
Do the cold before you work out or...
Wait several hours after you work out, and then you cold plunge.
gary brecka
Right. I totally agree.
I mean, if you think about what you get from cold plunching, let's not overblow it or underblow it.
Well, first of all, if you exercised intensely, let's just say you did a big squat workout and you tore a bunch of quad muscle, what's going to happen?
Inflammation. What's the body going to do?
Yeah, the body's going to send more blood flow, more amino acids, more oxygen to those muscles.
It's going to pull...
Inflammatory factors like creatinine, you know, the breakdown of muscle, the byproduct of the muscle breakdown.
It's going to pull that out.
So why would you want to stop?
unidentified
How do you say it?
joe rogan
It's creatinine?
gary brecka
Creatinine. Okay.
Creatine is what you take for...
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
I never knew how to say that word, though.
I've seen it.
gary brecka
Yeah, which is actually very good for...
joe rogan
Creatinine. Yeah.
Because I know there was a fighter that was actually pulled from a fight once because he had high creatinine levels.
gary brecka
Yeah, that's a kidney issue.
It's actually a sign of rhabdomyelitis, right, of overtraining.
joe rogan
Yes. That makes sense because he was a psycho.
gary brecka
Yeah, you start to break down.
So creatinine is a byproduct of muscle breakdown.
It's perfectly normal to have creatinine in the blood, but when it gets very high, so there's usually three markers they look at for kidney health.
One is called blood urea nitrogen, BUN.
One is called creatinine, this breakdown of muscle byproduct.
And rhabdo is when your muscles...
Start to break down at a rate that your kidneys can't clear it.
joe rogan
A lot of people that go too hard when they're not in shape, like they did too many CrossFit classes, they get rhabdo.
gary brecka
Yes, they get rhabdo.
And what's interesting is, you know, a lot of athletes, really conditioned athletes get it too because they have a tendency to be mentally a lot stronger than their bodies.
joe rogan
That's the problem.
That meathead mentality that I was talking about that led to me having this tendon issue in my lower back.
Yeah. Because I was worried that it was a disc issue.
But it's not in the disc.
It's like right here on the right hip area where it's like the stabilizing muscle.
gary brecka
So you think about it.
Okay, so the...
And then there's something on EGFR, which is your kidney filtration rate, which is your glomerular filtration rate.
It's how quickly is the blood moving through your kidneys.
Because about 15 times every day, the full volume of your blood goes through your kidneys.
But if you think about what happens when you get into a cold plunge, so first you get this peripheral vasoconstriction.
And then you get a release of...
Something called cold shock proteins.
And if you ever really want to have some fun, just Google around about cold shock proteins.
Look at LIN28A and LIN28B.
These are cold shock proteins that are being actually researched for their impact on insulin sensitivity, improving insulin sensitivity.
And then, you know, you activate a very special type of fat called brown fat, which essentially exchanges a calorie for a measure of heat.
So it takes a calorie and turns it into heat.
That's a very good thing.
If I'm taking calories and turning them into heat, you know, there's a cost to raising your thermostat.
And you think if you're in, let's say, 50 degree water and you get out of 50 degree water and you're standing in a 70 degree room, how's your body go to 98.6?
Right. How do you actually not only, how do you exceed the temperature of the room you're in?
Well, your metabolism is raised largely because of the activation of brown fat.
And there's a cost to that.
The cost is calories.
So anybody tells you that cold plunging is not good for burning fat, I think, is missing the breadth of the science.
And then the final thing you get is you get this spike of dopamine, which lasts hours.
Yes. And that's where you get that, like, laser focus.
I feel freaking amazing.
joe rogan
You feel so good.
gary brecka
Dude, you're never in a bad mood getting out of a cold punch.
joe rogan
Right. That's another thing that if you could give that to people in a pill, they'd be like, oh my God, I found the best antidepressant.
gary brecka
Yeah, yeah.
That's a cold punch.
So true.
joe rogan
Well, one thing is beneficial, though, post-workout is sauna, right?
Beneficial for muscle growth.
gary brecka
Getting hyperthermic, yes.
joe rogan
Yes, and also as a static cardio, correct?
Because your heart rate's already elevated.
I like to go in, literally the moment I put the weights down.
I get right into that 196 degrees sauna.
gary brecka
That 20th minute's tough, though, bro.
joe rogan
Ooh, the 25th minute's even tougher.
gary brecka
Oh, you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the last five.
I used to get to the 20, and I'd be like, okay, finally.
And then the fucking general started talking.
No. Yeah, come on, pussy.
Five more minutes.
unidentified
Come on, pussy.
Oh, no.
joe rogan
And the thing is, too, when I'm in the sauna, I'm not just sitting there.
I'm... Hard stretching.
I do deep stretches, which is exhausting, too, because it's hard to do.
I'm holding deep, static stretches.
gary brecka
You're pretty flexible, though, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm pretty flexible.
gary brecka
That's so good.
joe rogan
That's because I keep it.
I mean, I'm 57. I keep my flexibility.
gary brecka
Yeah, yeah.
Going into the sauna post.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people, as they get older, they lose that flexibility.
And I think that's another thing that I actually, if I'm criticizing myself, I didn't do enough of before I started fucking my lower back up.
Lower back's pretty solid now, though.
It still, like, irritates me sometimes when I wake up in the morning, but it's nothing that stops me from doing anything.
I can still kick the bag, which is, that was the big one.
Like, because there's so much torque involved in the waist when you're kicking the bag, and I hate not being able to do that.
So the fact that I can still get those workouts in is really huge for me.
That is the absolute best stress reliever in the history of Mother Earth.
Yeah, hitting a bag.
Put some 16-ounce gloves on, set a timer, and start doing rounds on the bag.
Start slow, and you know...
gary brecka
We start at like 30 seconds a minute.
joe rogan
No, I do three minute rounds.
I do three minute rounds, and then one minute rest, three minute rounds.
But the first few rounds while I'm warming up, I'm just kind of tapping.
I'm like, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap.
I'm just...
I'm not...
Full blast in it, but then around round four when I'm really sweating, then I start to dig in.
And then what I do is I have two different timers, and one of them I have this ringside timer that will give you these 30-second dings.
So it'll give you three minutes, but it gives a different sound that goes off at 30 seconds.
So you know you're halfway through the minute?
No, so you know when to sprint.
So you have sprinting times, and then you have other times where you're sort of coasting, and then the number goes off, and you sprint.
And then I'll also do Tabatas.
And so Tabatas, that protocol is 20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest.
So I do that protocol.
My favorite way to do that one is actually on the Airdyne.
gary brecka
Oh, that Airdyne, too.
joe rogan
The Rogue machine is the best.
It's called the Echo Bike.
The Rogue is like, they make the, it's such a sturdy...
Fucking rock-solid piece of equipment.
gary brecka
You mean it's a rogue aerodyne?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a rogue one, though.
They call it the Echo Bike.
Get a picture of the rogue one.
It's much sturdier than the other ones that I've seen.
And it has Tabata built into the system.
gary brecka
Oh, dude, that's so brutal.
joe rogan
Yeah, so it's eight reps of this.
So 20-second sprint, 10-second rest, 20-second sprint, 10-second rest.
You do that for eight...
Series of eight.
So that's the rogue one.
It's real thick and robust and you go fucking ham on that thing.
gary brecka
It's called the echo bike.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's for me The best way to increase my cardio that Tabata protocol.
I don't know some guy named Tabata invented that protocol But what is that treadmill with the weight?
Yeah, oh the hit treadmill.
Yeah, that's great, too Yeah, I ordered one of those.
gary brecka
Oh, you walk in with weights?
Yes. Oh, so it's like a farmer's carry.
joe rogan
Exactly, but you're going uphill on a treadmill.
unidentified
Fuck, yeah.
joe rogan
Fuck, yeah.
Let's go.
gary brecka
Come on, dawg.
joe rogan
Let's go.
It's all about work.
You know, getting your body to slowly build up to more and more work.
gary brecka
Make sure you're taking mineral salts when you're doing that.
joe rogan
Oh, I take a lot of shit.
Yeah. What do you take?
Well, I use element.
LMNT. Yeah, LMNT.
I take that stuff.
Stuff's good.
I'm addicted to that chili mango flavor.
Oh, it's so good.
gary brecka
Oh, LMNT?
joe rogan
Oh, it's so delicious.
gary brecka
Is it spicy?
joe rogan
A little bit.
unidentified
Really? Just a touch.
joe rogan
Just a touch of spice.
I really like it.
gary brecka
Just a touch of spice.
joe rogan
So I'll have like a 64-ounce water with four of those poured into it.
gary brecka
Ah, 64 ounces.
joe rogan
Yeah, and so I'm just hammering it.
But that's made a giant impact in cramps.
I don't get cramps anymore.
gary brecka
Yeah, a lot of people think that...
You know, sodium is...
It's funny how many people think sodium is the enemy.
There's a really interesting study.
joe rogan
More bullshit like the cholesterol bullshit.
Like, there's so many people.
Oh, your sodium?
You're going to have a high blood pressure.
unidentified
You're going to die.
joe rogan
All your cholesterol from your carnivore diet?
You're going to die.
Like, bitch, come work out with me.
You'll die.
gary brecka
Yeah, you'll die, bitch.
unidentified
Come work out with me.
I'll kill you.
gary brecka
Just one leg kick.
joe rogan
No, I mean, with the workout, it's fun.
I take people through my workout.
I love taking people through it.
Because I've done it for so long that it's so hard, but I've built my system up to be able to tolerate it.
So when I bring people, and even people that work out, they're like, Jesus Christ, this is a lot of shit.
Like, yeah.
gary brecka
Yeah. How long do you work out?
90 minutes?
joe rogan
It's at least 90 minutes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because I do what's called, I mean, when I'm not doing endurance training, I do the strong first protocol.
So Pavel Tatsalin, he developed this kettlebell protocol where...
So, a lot of people like to work to failure.
I don't work to failure, ever.
But I do the same amount of reps.
So, like, say if I have a 70-pound kettlebell, right?
And I'm doing cleans and presses.
If I can do...
I could probably do 20 reps to failure with 70 pounds.
gary brecka
So, by cleans, are you pulling it just to your chin?
No, no, no.
One arm.
joe rogan
One arm.
gary brecka
A one-arm kettlebell swing.
joe rogan
Yeah. Down, clean press.
If I go to failure, I don't know, I probably could do like 20 reps with 70 pounds.
But I don't do 20 reps.
I do 10. And then I put it down, and then I wait like several minutes.
And then I'll do my left side.
And then I wait several minutes more, and then I'll do my right side again.
So I am completely rested by the time I do my second set.
So I'm getting those 20 reps in, but I'm doing it in two sets rather than in one set.
And so then I'll just do...
Multiple sets to get the same amount of work in.
gary brecka
I think I heard him describing this to you.
It's the amount of work.
Yes. So he's outworked you.
Yes. Because he's done more.
joe rogan
But you have to have time.
And you will feel like a lazy bitch.
Because you're doing your set, but then your heart rate's completely dropped down before you do it again.
Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I take a long time.
I watch TV.
I'll get on my phone.
I fuck off.
I sit down.
And you feel like a lazy bitch, but...
I'm doing it over two plus hours.
Wow. So when it's all over, I'm getting a lot of reps, but I'm not getting the same breakdown of form.
So the way he says it is, he says that strength is a skill, and that you shouldn't be doing skills when you're exhausted.
He doesn't believe in CrossFit and all these workouts where you're going to extreme repetitions, where you're breaking down, and your body's failing.
People get injured that way.
gary brecka
Yeah, they do.
joe rogan
And some people don't, but these are elite athletes, and you build yourself up to it, and I understand.
gary brecka
I'm not against CrossFit.
Have you noticed that you've gotten a lot stronger?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
gary brecka
By doing it this way?
joe rogan
Well, this is the thing.
I don't bench press, but one time we were doing this podcast, and we were drinking, and we were drunk, and we all went to sea.
I don't bench press, but I bench press 225, 13 times, and I don't do it.
I don't do it.
I was like, let's see.
And I was like, yep.
But that's no bench pressing.
I don't bench press.
gary brecka
What do you do for your chest?
joe rogan
I do push-ups.
I do 100 push-ups a day.
And I do dips.
That's it.
gary brecka
Yeah, dips are great.
joe rogan
Yeah, so I don't have a big chest.
gary brecka
So what else do you...
joe rogan
Creatine every day.
gary brecka
Creatine is amazing.
joe rogan
Every day.
gary brecka
I think, you know, especially for women, by the way, I think if you're a female and you're 40 years or older, you need to be taken.
joe rogan
I think it's great for your mind, too.
gary brecka
It's great for cognitive function.
joe rogan
Cognitive function and also cognitive function if you're sleep impaired.
It's one of the few things that's shown that can completely diminish the effects of sleep deprivation.
True. You should most certainly make up for that sleep.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying you don't need sleep, just take creatine.
You definitely need sleep.
We were talking about this the other day.
I think it's one of the most important things that people neglect.
gary brecka
I think so too.
joe rogan
So I take creatine every day.
I take all the supplements that you recommended to me, TMG, methylfolate.
I take lots of vitamin D, K2, all that jazz.
gary brecka
Do you take that 10X Optimized?
Do you take the multivitamin or do you take them separately?
joe rogan
I take everything separately.
I use Pure Encapsulations vitamin packs.
Yeah. So they have a pack that has like...
Basically all your shit.
And then on top of that, I pile on.
You know, one other thing that I've started taking, that I've been taking actually for a while, that I was having a decrease in my eyesight.
And it was pretty noticeable as, you know, age-related macular degeneration.
So I started taking macular support by pure encapsulations.
That seems to have had an effect.
But really what's had an effect is the red light bed.
gary brecka
I know.
joe rogan
The red light bed has had a big effect.
gary brecka
I've told people, like, you text me and you're like, bro, my eyesight is totally improved.
Mine too.
joe rogan
Stop deteriorating and stop.
It improved slightly.
It's definitely the point where I can look at my phone and I don't need glasses.
Because I was using reading glasses all the time when I was looking at my phone.
And now I don't need them at all anymore.
gary brecka
Yeah. I would definitely...
Red light therapy.
I would add, when I gave you the other day, those perfect aminos, which is just essentially the nine essential amino acids.
You know, we talk about how most people are trying to dose protein so they can get to the amino acid equivalent, or they're taking imperfect proteins like, or incomplete proteins like collagen, which can't build, which is a great protein, but it won't build muscle.
joe rogan
But this is an important point, too.
You were talking about the other day that collagen does not build collagen.
gary brecka
Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea that we can target direct proteins is a fallacy.
You know, I use the analogy that we don't eat our nails to grow our nails, and we don't eat our hair to grow our hair, but we think that we can eat collagen to grow collagen, and that's actually not true.
I'm not anti-collagen.
I'm just saying if you eat collagen or put collagen in your coffee, it doesn't show up as collagen in your skin.
My preference would be you take something that is a It has all of the nine essential amino acids.
I take one called Perfect Aminos, but there's other products out there that are all nine essential amino acids.
joe rogan
Can I pour that into the water with the electrolytes in it?
100%. It's not going to have any diminished effects?
gary brecka
I think the best morning cocktail is to take a mineral salt, like a Baja gold salt or a Celtic salt, add that to your drinking water.
Drop a hydrogen tablet in there, take a scoop of Perfect Aminos, put that in there, hydrate, mineralize, and get the amino acids.
joe rogan
Can I ask you another question about creatine?
Is there any decreased benefit in taking creatine gummies versus creatine powder?
gary brecka
You know, I haven't looked at the bioavailability.
I mean, there's...
Two types of creatine, which, you know, monohydrate and HCL.
Monohydrate is where all of the research is.
There's a lot more research on creatine monohydrate.
But creatine also comes in the HCL, the hydrochloride form.
And I tell people that if they take creatine monohydrate and they have bloating, which some women do, they'll have a little water retention or some bloating, then just take the creatine HCL.
joe rogan
What about HMG with creatine?
gary brecka
No issues with that at all.
joe rogan
Is that a good thing?
Because I know that a lot of companies, they combine creatine and HMG for some reason.
Yes. What is the benefit of that, combining the two of them together?
gary brecka
So myofibril uptake or cellular uptake.
Right, so bioavailability is...
A lot of things that we pair together for bioavailability, like D3 with K2.
joe rogan
Right, and magnesium as well, right?
gary brecka
Yeah, and magnesium is one of the critical deficiencies.
joe rogan
I always take that with D3 and K2.
gary brecka
That's good.
You take magnesium with D3 and K2, that's perfect.
joe rogan
Can you take too much magnesium?
gary brecka
You can take too much magnesium.
It's a little hard.
I mean, it's a really essential light metal.
I mean, you have to really oversupplement with that.
I take a nighttime...
I take this thing by BioOptimizers called Magnesium Breakthrough, which has seven forms of magnesium in it.
I'm a big fan of that.
You can also isolate the magnesiums if you have trouble sleeping.
Magnesium 3 and 8 is really good.
Magnesium citrate and glycinate are good for intestinal motility.
So if you're not somebody that has regular bowel movements, magnesium deficiency is highly linked to poor intestinal motility.
So if you're not somebody that wakes up within 45 minutes of the day and has a bowel movement...
You may want to look to magnesium supplementation the night prior and see if that fixes your bowel movement.
Also, people that ruminate at night, they lay down to go to sleep and they're body tired, but they're mind awake.
This is generally a rise in something called catecholamines, these neurotransmitters in the brain that create a waking state.
They're also the same neurotransmitters that create anxiety and trigger our fight-or-flight response.
A lot of times, magnesium.
Methylfolate and a simple B-complex will quiet those squirrels.
Very, very simple methylated nutrients to actually break down those catecholamines.
Because, you know, I talk about this all the time.
A lot of people that suffer from anxiety are never really told what it is.
Like, nobody sits them down and tells them, what is anxiety?
Like, why do I feel...
Why... Sometimes I feel like I'm in a heightened state of awareness.
And then I move from a heightened state of awareness to being anxious.
And then I move from being anxious to full-blown anxiety.
Like I actually feel the presence of a fear.
And then, you know, sometimes that presence of a fear goes into like a rapid heart rate or acute hearing.
Pupils dilate.
And then that goes into a full-blown panic attack.
And if catecholamines continue to rise, you can even have a full-blown paranoia.
It's this rise in this category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines.
So if we identified anxiety as that, and I'm not saying it's always that, but the majority of people have that form where they have metabolism issues because of a gene mutation called CompT.
And they are worriers.
Not warriors.
So they lay down to go to sleep at night, their mind wakes up.
They start ruminating thoughts at night.
If they think about anything at night, they'll take it straight to worst case scenario.
So every scenario that they ruminate on at night, they take it to worst case scenario.
joe rogan
That's crazy that that could be nutritionally related.
gary brecka
It's absolutely nutritionally related because when you talk about what do catecholamines do in the body?
They're a fight or flight response.
So if you walked out of this door right here.
Somebody was standing in front of you with a knife right in that hallway.
Your side's kicking their ass.
Your pupils would dilate.
Your heart rate would increase.
Your extremities would flood with blood.
Your hearing would get acute.
You would instantly start having a fight-or-flight response.
Well, what happened, right?
I mean, that person didn't do anything to you yet.
What happened inside of your body that caused that response?
You received a dump of catecholamines.
Norepinephrine, epinephrine, fedrone, and dopamine.
One of those we call adrenaline.
So you're in this hyper-acute state.
So that's like we dump those to an eight, full-blown fight-or-flight response.
Well, what happens if we dump them to a three?
Well, if that happens at night, you're body tired, but your mind awake.
And so you lay there just ruminating because your mind is in awakened state, even though your body is tired.
And so if you look at the pathways that actually break down catecholamines, how do we downregulate catecholamines?
A complex of B vitamins, a form of B12 called methylcobalamin, which you can get anywhere, guys.
Something called methylfolate.
And every once in a while, CME has adenosyl methionine.
It is astounding what you can do to human beings by putting those raw materials back.
joe rogan
Has anybody ever done a study on people with paranoid schizophrenia to find out if they're lacking in all this?
gary brecka
No doubt.
Paranoid schizophrenia are the next level.
You know, what's really interesting is I interviewed a Harvard physician on my podcast, and he was treating drug-resistant mental illness with diet, mainly keto diets.
And he found that the beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the ketone body, the main ketone body in this, and basic supplementation, fixing their methylation pathways, meaning supplementing for methylation,
poor conversion of certain chemicals, led to better behavioral changes than they were having in the drug-resistant...
And it's really fascinating because we don't like to think that nutrient deficiencies could lead to serious mental illness.
Could you just Google methylation chart?
Can I just show you a chart of methylation?
The reason why I want to put it up here is because...
And just click on any one of them once you put it up there.
It's going to look like this complicated myriad.
Just click on that one.
So this is something I've committed to memory.
But the reason why I show a lot of people this chart is for what's not on here.
So this is what we call methylation.
This is the process that's going on 300 billion times a day inside of all of your cells.
And you'll see tryptophan and tyrosine and phenylalanine and quinoa gas and lactic acid, cholesterol.
You see all of this stuff on this chart.
The reason why I show people this chart...
It's because this is going on 300 billion times a day inside of your body, every minute, every hour of every day.
What you do not see on this chart is a single synthetic, a single chemical, or a single pharmaceutical.
So why is it that we think synthetics, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals could be the answer to deficiencies in this chart?
They're not.
So what happens if I just start wandering around this chart and I find something like serotonin?
I go, wow, let me just, let me just, serotonin is the main driver of mood.
I wonder how serotonin is made.
Oh, I actually, in fact, there's serotonin right there.
What is it made from?
Just follow that arrow up.
Oh, it's made from tryptophan.
And what do I need in order to convert tryptophan to serotonin?
I need...
5-HTP.
I need thiamine.
I need a complex of B vitamins.
Could it be possible that a complex of B vitamins is stopping me from converting tryptophan into serotonin?
Yes. And what happens if I can't convert tryptophan into serotonin?
Serotonin drops.
And if serotonin drops, I cannot assemble moods that require serotonin.
So now I've been told I have a mood disorder and I have a nutrient deficiency.
Look at this.
Anxiety, ADD, ADHD.
See that on there?
Okay. Well, what do we make dopamine from?
Phenylalanine and tyrosine.
What if I had a deficiency in phenylalanine or tyrosine?
Oh, I couldn't make the neurotransmitter dopamine.
What is dopamine?
Dopamine is the main driver of behavior.
Well, what happens if dopamine is low?
Now I have an addiction.
Why? Because the...
Absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction.
So could I have addictive behavior because I'm low in dopamine and not actually just addicted to nicotine, alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, gambling?
Absolutely. And why is it that most addictions have a tendency to shift and never really go away?
If you've ever really been an addict or ever known a true addict, why is it that their addiction has a tendency to shift and not go away?
joe rogan
Yeah, like some of them find a healthy thing to get addicted to, like running.
gary brecka
Alcoholics become workaholics.
Workaholics become workout-aholics.
When I used to compete amateur in long-distance triathlons, most of the guys that I raced with were recovering addicts of some kind.
joe rogan
Some of the scariest guys I've ever trained with were former drug addicts.
gary brecka
Because this is their new...
joe rogan
They're fucking driven in a weird kind of crazy way.
gary brecka
Why are they driven so hard?
joe rogan
Well, some of them actually almost died.
They've been to death's door and come back.
gary brecka
The absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction.
And we never treat the dopamine deficiency.
We only treat the physical addiction.
So we get you off alcohol and now you're on, you know, Suboxone.
You get you off Suboxone and now you're gambling.
You're off gambling and smoking cigarettes and you're done smoking cigarettes.
joe rogan
So a lot of the Alcoholics Anonymous people are smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee constantly.
gary brecka
Now, why is that?
Because they're chasing the dopamine deficiency.
Rarely, if ever, did a true addict wake up one day and just say, I want to get really banged up.
The majority of addicts woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal.
And it was the search for normalcy that developed the addiction.
They smoked a cigarette, they felt normal.
They took a drink and they could socialize.
They were promiscuous and they kind of felt normal.
They jumped off a fucking mountain in a squirrel suit and the rush of dopamine actually brought their dopamine level to normal.
They actually felt calm 15 inches away from death.
And so the deficiency in dopamine very often drives this.
And we label these people with mental illnesses.
We label them with mood disorders.
But serotonin is a...
Part of the recipe of mood.
So if you said to me, what is a mood?
What is an emotional state?
I would say it's a collection of neurotransmitters bound to oxygen.
So let's say that you said, okay, what's happiness?
Okay, there's so much serotonin, so much dopamine, so much norepinephrine, so much epinephrine.
Boom, you put these together, you have the emotion of happiness.
Well, what if I just took serotonin out?
Right? Like, what if I went to a bakery chef and said, hey, chef, you can bake whatever you want.
You just can't use butter.
And so I took butter out.
And it doesn't sound like a big deal.
It's only one component.
But think of how many recipes that would affect.
Cookies, pastries, pies, brownies.
Well, moods are no different.
I say, Joe, you can be in whatever mood you want.
You just can't use serotonin.
So now any mood that you go to assemble that requires serotonin, you can't manufacture.
So now you have a mood disorder.
Instead of taking a step back and saying, well...
Why doesn't he have serotonin?
Where's serotonin made?
Well, serotonin is made in the gut.
90% of it's right here.
So if you don't have it here, you can't have it here.
And so then why don't we go to the factory in the gut that makes serotonin?
Where is the factory that turns tryptophan into the neurotransmitter serotonin?
Well, it's in the gut.
What is that done through?
A process called methylation.
Do you mean if I'm deficient in certain vitamins or nutrients?
That methylation cycle is not working.
I might not produce serotonin and therefore I might have a mood disorder.
Yes. Am I saying that all mood disorders come from that?
No. But there are so many things that come from this methylation cycle that are so potentially easy to fix with basic supplementation.
You know, for two years in our initial clinic, my wife and I and our doctor, we pulled blood work.
I think it was about 1,600 pounds.
We pulled blood work and we pulled these basic biomarkers, CBC, CMP, lipid panel, hormone panel, and nutrient deficiencies.
And then we also pulled this methylation test, looking at five genes of methylation.
And you can get these methylation tests done anywhere.
And we looked at these five genes.
And then what we would do is we would solve with supplementation for the genetic deficiency and watch what happened to the blood biomarkers.
You would see kidney filtration rates improve.
You would see waste elimination, like people become more regular.
You would see C-reactive protein, these nonspecific markers of inflammation drop.
You would certainly see things like homocysteine drop.
People have very, very high levels of homocysteine.
You supplement them with the right nutrients, a B-complex, something called trimethylglycine, and they start to break down homocysteine.
And then all of a sudden they're reporting that their blood pressure is returning to normal and have...
Less frequent headaches.
It is astounding to me how many people are just nutrient deficient and don't accept that basic supplementation or, oh, we can get everything from diet bullshit.
If you look at a soil lineage study from 1945 and a soil lineage study right now, you would be astounded to see how depleted our food supply is or our soil is.
Add processed food and all this other stuff to it, you don't stand a chance.
You need basic supplementation.
All human beings need the same.
We need two essential fatty acids.
Essential means they're essential for life.
You need nine essential amino acids.
So you can supplement with the nine essential amino acids in the morning.
You can supplement with the two essential fatty acids.
So make a three fatty acids like black seed oil or good mega fish oil.
You can supplement with the minerals.
So many of us are mineral deficient and we don't realize the expression of mineral deficiency.
joe rogan
Now, what is the best kind of minerals to take?
Is it like chelated minerals?
Is it colloidal minerals?
gary brecka
I take one called Baja Gold Sea Salt.
It's probably one of my other favorite biohacks because a bag of Baja Gold Sea Salt, like a Celtic salt, will have all these trace minerals in it.
A $15 bag will last you five years.
It's dirt cheap.
And you can take a quarter to a half teaspoon of this, put it in...
You're drinking water.
I'll throw a hydrogen tablet in there and some amino acids.
Take that with a methylated multivitamin and take that with an omega-3 fatty acid.
And you have all the bases covered first thing in the morning.
joe rogan
And you don't have to take that with the vitamins with food?
gary brecka
I would take the vitamin D3 with food.
I would actually take all of that.
I would take the amino acids and the hydrogen and the sea salt.
On an empty stomach is fine.
Whenever you're going to take your multivitamin and your D3, which is fat-soluble, I would take those with food.
So first thing in the morning, you just hydrate it and mineralize the body, just with a basic sea salt.
Just hydrate and mineralize it.
And there's a lot of good mineral compounds.
joe rogan
And the amino acids you take on an empty stomach?
gary brecka
Amino acids you take on an empty stomach.
And those amino acids, those perfect amino acids, won't break a fast.
They're non-caloric, or they have, I think, one calorie.
But they won't break it fast.
And now you have all nine of the essential amino acids.
You've got the majority of the essential minerals.
You've hydrated yourself, and you put hydrogen gas into your blood.
You will feel the difference, right?
You'll just feel cleaner.
joe rogan
And it's a simple thing to do.
gary brecka
And it's such a simple thing to do.
And I get so much flack for telling people to do that.
I'm like, this is just getting us back to the basic.
Dude, it's crazy.
It's just too many crazy people.
Yeah, I'm going to have to start shutting it all off.
joe rogan
Yeah, you have to.
It'll make your life a lot better.
You know what you're doing.
gary brecka
Yeah, thank you.
joe rogan
And people are listening.
And it's working.
There's just too many people out there that are crying for attention.
And one of the ways they get attention is by attacking people who are getting positive attention.
Yeah. Yeah.
gary brecka
It's a shame.
joe rogan
Fuck those people.
gary brecka
Fuck those people.
joe rogan
Anything else we should talk about before we wrap this up?
I think we covered a lot.
People are going to have to review this and go back and forth.
gary brecka
I love coming out here and chopping it up with you, man.
joe rogan
I love having you on, man.
gary brecka
I'll see you at the fights tomorrow, too.
joe rogan
Yes, sir.
I'm excited.
Yeah, tomorrow's the weigh-ins, and then Saturday night's the fights.
I'm pumped.
gary brecka
And by the way, dude, Joe Rogan on the Ultimate Human podcast.
joe rogan
Yes, I did your podcast as well.
Yes, thank you.
gary brecka
That was cool, because we went down some rabbit holes, man.
It was fun.
The pyramids.
joe rogan
Yeah, we talked about a lot of cool shit.
gary brecka
Yeah, a lot of cool shit on there.
joe rogan
Well, thank you, Gary.
Thank you very much for everything.
I really appreciate you.
Tell everybody your website, how they can get a hold of you.
gary brecka
Sure. You can go to theultimatehuman.com.
I have a VIP community there where all I do is just teach.
I try to educate to inspire so that people will make a change.
So you can join my VIP community there.
I'll give you a...
Discount on joining the VIP community.
I'll send you a free box of each two tabs for joining up.
Theultimatehuman.com.
The podcast is The Ultimate Human.
And just my name, Gary Barca.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Gary, you're the man.
Thank you, brother.
Appreciate you.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Bye, everybody.
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