Health coach, author and nutrition entrepreneur, Wendi Michelle discusses optimizing health, nurishing our bodies, healing ourselves, reversing her late stage lyme disease, cryotherapy, neurofeedback training, and the “brain cocktail.” Wendi Michelle is the VP of Operations and Executive Director of Wellness at Next Health, which is one of the premier health and wellness centers in Los Angeles. She is also a nutrition entrepreneur as the founder and creator of food startups Hoola Bars and Hummish. Wendi is also a long-time health coach, biohacker, personal trainer, and author of Effortless Real Foods. Wendi has dedicated her life to giving people tools to master their own nutrition, fitness and health goals. A life altering face to face confrontation with her own health set her on a path to disrupt every system that opposes complete health and wellbeing in order to empower people in truth. Wendi continues to seek out and apply the latest in scientific advancements believing that we have barely scratched the surface of human potential.
Episode Summary
On a recent episode of Head First, I talked with a health coach, author, and nutrition entrepreneur who built her career around giving people more agency over their own health. She runs operations at a Los Angeles wellness center, founded two food companies, wrote a book on real-food eating, and reversed her own late-stage neurological Lyme disease. The conversation kept circling back to one idea I work in every day at Peak Brain: how to give people data and tools without overselling certainty. Here is what we covered, and where the neuroscience actually holds up.
What does it mean to work at the edge of what's known?
My guest and I work in the same uncomfortable space. She runs metabolic panels, genetic tests, and body composition scans. I run QEEG brain maps. Both of us hand people data about their bodies and brains, and both of us have to resist the urge to over-read it.
A QEEG pattern might suggest something. A homocysteine level might suggest something. The honest move is to say "this is interesting, here is one plausible interpretation," and then stop. Cholesterol numbers, cortisol numbers, EEG band ratios all carry conflicting literatures. When you pretend a marker is deterministic, you mislead the person in front of you.
She raised a point I see constantly in the clinic. The placebo effect runs in reverse. If you tell a client their labs look frightening, or you load a brain map with doom, you can trigger a nocebo response that sends them into a negative spiral. The data-sharing itself becomes part of the intervention. I would rather let someone sit with an unknown than hand them a conclusion they will ruminate on at 3am.
Why does cryotherapy seem to improve sleep?
Whole-body cryotherapy exposes you to roughly negative 165 degrees Fahrenheit for a few minutes. The reliable, well-documented effect is reduced pain and inflammation. The interesting clinical observation, and this is observation rather than established mechanism, is that people report some of the deepest sleep they have had in years afterward.
Here is a plausible mechanism. Acute cold triggers vasoconstriction and a systemic stress and immune response. The body gets a strong signal that something needs attention. When the person then gets home and rests, the repair machinery that normally only runs hard when you are fighting a cold or flu gets a window to work. That is extrapolation, not proven causation. The inflammation reduction is real and measurable. The sleep benefit is consistent enough across people to take seriously, even without a clean mechanistic story. If sleep is your target, there are more direct levers worth pulling first, which I cover in biohacking sleep.
Does IV nutrient therapy actually do anything?
IV vitamin therapy delivers high-dose nutrients directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the gut. The case for it is straightforward. Oral supplements and food both go through first-pass metabolism, so the concentration that reaches your cells is a fraction of what you swallowed. Anyone with compromised gut absorption is leaving even more on the table. Bypassing digestion gets serum levels up that you cannot reach by eating.
The standard base is a Myers cocktail: vitamin C, magnesium, calcium, the B vitamins, and trace minerals. The "brain cocktail" she described builds on that base with targeted additions:
- Acetyl-L-carnitine for mitochondrial fuel and energy metabolism
- Glycine, an inhibitory amino acid neurotransmitter
- GABA, the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter
- Glutamine, a precursor to glutamate
- Taurine, which supports inhibitory tone
- Zinc, for immune and enzymatic pathways
The logic is precursor and substrate delivery, getting around rate-limiting conversion steps so the brain has the raw materials it needs. Whether a given person feels anything from an IV is a poor measure of whether it did anything. Most of what these molecules do happens below the threshold of conscious sensation. The honest framing is that this supplies substrate, not that it produces a guaranteed subjective effect.
What did neurofeedback training actually change?
This is where the conversation got specific, because my guest trained at Peak Brain and described her own results in detail. I want to walk through what happened and the circuit logic behind it.
Her early sessions surfaced emotion she had not felt in a long time. She described becoming numb, with her life moving so fast that the ups and downs had flattened out. After one session she felt anger, and realized she could not remember the last time she had felt angry. Flat affect is not health. Recovering access to a normal emotional range is often the first sign that something is shifting.
A few sessions later she had a day she wanted to bottle. Deeply relaxed in the body, no muscle tension, no jitter, and at the same time the most productive day she could remember. She had assumed peak focus required being wound up or chemically driven. The opposite turned out to be true.
That was left-side training. Here is the mechanism. Left-side neurofeedback generally improves the alerting and tonic activation side of attention. It reduces errors of omission, the moments where your attention simply drops offline and you miss things. When that system comes up, sustained attention gets easier without the cost of feeling revved.
Right-side training does something different. It tends to increase self-control and reduce reactivity. You become less likely to fire off impulsively. With most clients, including her, we train both sides and adjust as the maps change. This is closely related to SMR training, which strengthens the same thalamocortical circuits that produce sleep spindles, which is part of why focus training and sleep improvements often travel together.
Neurofeedback works through operant conditioning that runs below conscious awareness. The feedback rewards the brain when it produces target patterns and dims when it drifts. The brain learns the pattern the way any skill gets learned, through repetition, without a verbal explanation of the goal. This is also why dosing matters. She noticed that when several busy months kept her out of the chair, she only realized how much the training had been helping once it was gone. We had not done quite enough repetition to make the change fully self-sustaining. You pick a protocol, run enough of it to build a durable effect, and only then shift gears. We also pushed her left-side training a little too far at one point and made her wired, then pulled back. That correction is part of working in a space where you balance what is known against what you intuit. For the broader research picture, see is neurofeedback legitimate and the work on neuroplasticity.
Why is fasting more than a "skip a meal" trick?
When she cannot eat something clean, she fasts rather than reach for processed food. Working in the food industry, she knows what ends up in the ingredients list, and she would rather give the body a window to clean itself up than feed it junk.
The metabolic case for fasting is stronger than most people realize. I mentioned a finding that even a 24-hour fast can prompt non-beta islet cells in the pancreas to convert into insulin-producing beta cells, including in insulin-dependent diabetics. That challenges the assumption that those cells are permanently lost. The broader principle is that fasting triggers cellular cleanup and metabolic flexibility, and I cover the practical structure in strategic fasting.
She also makes a behavioral point worth keeping. The all-or-nothing trap, where one bad meal "ruins the day" so you might as well eat poorly until midnight, is a cognitive distortion that sabotages adherence. Flexibility beats rigid rules you cannot sustain. That maps directly onto how habits actually stick.
How should you think about nootropics and side effects?
I am skeptical of most of the nootropic market, and I helped create a basic, vetted supplement stack years ago precisely because I could not figure out from the marketing what was likely to work, what was smart, and what was safe. By the strict definition, a nootropic improves cognition without side effects, which rules out most products carrying the label.
Modafinil is the clearest example. It carries real risk for people who do not have a clinical indication for it. I took prescribed modafinil years ago, a single morning dose for 21 days. On day 21 I woke covered in hives and spent six weeks fighting a massive histamine response, multiple ER and urgent care visits, skin sloughing, caught just before it crossed into Stevens-Johnson syndrome. Unless you have narcolepsy, shift-work sleep disruption, or another genuine sleep disorder, modafinil belongs near the bottom of a biohacking stack, not the top.
The cost-benefit logic that matters most goes like this. If you are healthy and trying to push performance above baseline, your tolerance for side effects should be zero. A small improvement in an already-healthy system is felt subjectively as a large gain, so there is no reason to accept downside risk to get it. Side effects only earn their place when you are repairing a real deficit or illness, where you may have to tolerate some cost on the way to healing. This is the framing I bring to biohacking intelligence and to anyone chasing flow and peak performance.
The through-line: fitness, not fixing
The unifying idea across the whole conversation is a shift from an illness-and-fix model to a fitness model, where you have control, responsibility, and the ability to change your body and brain. My guest sees this most often as a mindset rather than an age group, though it clusters in people who have watched a family member go through the conventional system and want other options on the table.
Genetic testing, body composition scans, brain maps, metabolic panels all serve the same purpose when done right. They give a person the chance to sit with their own data, draw their own conclusions, and make a decision for themselves. That act, choosing for yourself rather than outsourcing the answer to a search engine, is one of the more powerful things you can hand someone.
If you want a place to start, pick one measurable system and one tool. Train left-side attention if you go offline and miss things. Train right-side control if you are reactive. Use a 24-hour fast to test your metabolic flexibility. Add cryotherapy if pain and sleep are your targets. Track what changes, and resist the urge to over-interpret a single number.
Full Transcript
[Music] welcome to another episode of head first with dr. hill today's guest is Wendy Michelle who is a consummate entrepreneur health professional wellness professional biohacker I'm not sure what Wendy doesn't do so it's a very low-key intro no pressure at all Wendy's one of the founding partners we're funding a members of next health a alternative next generation Wellness Center in West Hollywood and you do all kinds of interesting manipulations on people's bodies most of my staff stand over there I hear but I haven't yet made it over there so we may pick your brain a little bit but when you once you start by telling us who you are how'd you end up in this wellness space what kind of things you're involved with sure so I started in fitness actually I kind of took the the route into where I am now via the fitness bodybuilding supplementation okay industry we rock onstage posing and I did that did you I did that well not bodybuilding I was a fitness competitor so it's a different kind of difficult okay no biceps so I did that I was a personal trainer and nutrition coach right out of high school so gosh I don't really even remember a time in my life where I wasn't doing things like that because even previous to it being a career I was doing in high school and I just always loved to gym I think it's cool to be strong so I was fascinated by that and I easily would say that I've been I guess now what I know is this health hacking biohacking terminology probably way back then okay um I think exercise and diet very much is exactly that you know when you realize that when you incorporate certain foods in certain movement you can you know shape your body a certain way or you can you know be smarter sure um that was just kind of like the bread and butter of my life it was really a passion it wasn't my career full time full time I was a corporate executive Oh for an insurance agency I did risk management and helped people to read their contracts mitigate risk make sure that they weren't taking on any liability that they didn't need to have so I was interpreting you know things like that that was my by day and by night I was doing the fitness stuff so why did you or what precipitated a leap from the corporate world working for somebody else doing your own I mean I know several different entrepreneurial type things you're involved with so right what facilitated I mean that leaps a hard leap going from working for somebody else to working for yourself and and I've seen you launch multiple projects so these are all leaps what what gave you the first push the first push was thanks for the fitness industry and being just overall interested in wellness in the process I got very sick and realized that I really didn't know as much as I thought I did about health and once that was a reality for me and I had to come face to face with that I got furious about a lot of things in the industry I saw a lot of gaps in the in the health industry as a whole also in the fitness industry and the food industry there was things that just infuriated me and I was very insistent upon getting better so that I could spend the rest of my life making sure that people who maybe weren't as I guess devoted and dedicated to getting past an illness like that that I at least was a voice for them so I ended up finding out after years that I had late-stage Lyme disease and it had gone neurological so I was having seizures and I was having I was had paralysis via neuralgia I just couldn't stand for long periods of time so I was on crazy amounts of medication and that was the only medicine that I knew and when my eyes were open to all of the alternatives new science but also things that have been around forever I was just furious that those weren't you know common conversations with people who are very sick yeah I'm we're given that option well I was like here's the one drug that works and suppress the spiral and let's hope it works for you and then thirdly approach yeah well that was down the road first they were just like well we don't know why you can't walk so here's some oxycontin and some percocet and some klonopin and some I mean you name it it was in my it was in my bag and that was the only option that I had and then and when I went into the alternative options then I learned about traditional traditional Chinese medicine and homeopathy and IV therapy and all the other things that you know really weren't that strange and once I once I did get better that's when I kind of made the leap out of the corporate environment and decided that it was time to go make sure that people were educated about this stuff and at least knew that there were other options that weren't necessarily even super expensive so I I literally gave everything I owned away I drove my car back to the bank and I quit my job and I moved to Nashville Tennessee and I grabbed a car off Craigslist and I didn't fit in the car it didn't go oh my goodness yeah I didn't I didn't want anything to prevent the time I was able to give so wherever there was people to talk to wherever there was an ability to to share what I had learned and empower other people I didn't want to have to do it in order to pay my bills I really wanted just to give it away it's a very sort of monastic the the sacrifice of the worldly trappin so you can pursue the calling mm-hmm it was very freeing to is really awesome experience sounds wonderful that you I mean unfortunately you sort of had to be pushed into that but it's wonderful that you got to yeah that is the opportunity not simply a crisis yeah absolutely so what what made the biggest impact on the late stage lime on the neurology and those sorts of things what what actually helped the most do you think ozone ozone via intravenous ozone I did a lot of high-dose vitamin C IV therapy okay those who seemed to really kind of crack the shell I guess of the entire journey neuropeptide shots or interstitial neuropeptide shots one of them was called a vaso immuno peptide and that one actually immediately interrupted the neuralgia mmm I went home and just woke up and I could stand when I was like with a mix of peptides there was a specific one specifically I haven't heard of that one it's very interesting yeah what's the theory behind ozone is it is it killing bad stuff is it decreasing inflammation what is the what doesn't okay yeah all of it I mean it's the list is as pages long of what they've found it to be capable of doing but everything you just mentioned from you know Radek ad and bacteria and parasites even but also decrease in inflammation and just giving the immune system and ability to do what it was created to do interesting now is ozone naturally occurring the body is not is it so it's probably interacting with nitric oxide and those sorts of processes of those those gas signaling molecules exactly okay interesting interesting all right so you sorted yourself out and you have much new calling and you were this itinerant biohacker or lecturing on what people you know might want to do and find ways to improve their health sounds sort of like what we do which is giving you more tools more options and it's about the education and the sort of demystifying a very complicated space yeah what happened then like you obviously didn't travel the world in your little beat-up craigslist car the next 10 years here you are in Los Angeles so what was the next step in the journey so in Nashville I did a lot of health coaching for some of the more difficult demographic so a lot of musicians I did health coaching for because a lot of times we have this idea of fitness of and health overall that if you don't follow all the rules then you're out like she's not going to work and you know for these people their career was not being able to sleep you know normally probably I'm not eating really well probably maybe engaging in you know oh no I thought well I mean but musicians aren't early to bed early to rise eating perfectly body's a temple I'm shocked I know I was - I was - that's what happens when you move to Nashville you learn all kinds of things so no but I I just was so passionate about giving people just the truth but I'm like all walked about side of the street you know they're they're not going to come to my side because that means end of their career so no matter what advice I'd give them they're not going to be able to to do it for a lot they're not gonna be able to sustain it full adherence yeah so I was like all the other side of the street I'll meet them where they're at and let's see what happens and that's really where all of the best stuff the coolest things happen because I was able to bring to them opportunities to kind of manage their environment they can't change it because it's their career but we can manage the environment around them which is I think the funnest stuff about biohacking is bringing the environment to the extent at which you can control it you know plug in little things in here and there so that turned into somebody heard me speak someplace and that turned into a published book and that's what's the what's the book let's let's give you a plug it's it's called effortless real food effortless real food yes Graham and and then some of the food I was making for my clients on the road they or like this is really awesome one do but we can't find it except for when we're hanging out with you so I decided to make them into nutrition bars not like we need any more nutrition bars on the market I think I've had some of your nutrition bars yeah and then they're super yummy they're super yummy so what do they call it I'm blanking the name of them the company called hula-hula H oh la la and they're the names of the bars are go be happy oh that's great I seen one of them I didn't know it was yeah go be happy so yeah go has energy and energy element and as green tea extract and B has lemon balm extract and happy has cacao because you know PA I've had to be it's delightful it's light it's not too heavy it's not too much of a bar it's also and doesn't leave you we know with a crash so yeah right please buy it so I was make thank you I appreciate that I was making those for people on the road and they wanted them often so I was in Arizona where my family is and my business partner and I there we kind of rounded it up turned it into something and that brought me out to LA where I met up with a group of people about the bar specifically and in the process of that other food products became kind of like a vision and now they are a reality so you have more Houla products or just a flutist of ours who is just the barber and then I have a new type of dip coming out it's a snack dip called hummus hummus yeah it's not quite hummus its Hamish okay yeah what is it is it chickpea bass what is it okay it's actually almond bass oh and I don't use tahini or chickpeas avoid the legumes and therefore it's safe for primal and paleo and okay and it's less of a carb hit less of a deity and less of inflammatory marker booster yep exactly and it's minimally processed and there's very few ingredients so people can't believe the ingredients when they taste it like I don't understand how that happened that's great that's great the secret sauce literally in this case exactly alright so you've established starting your food Empire and what's the next step in the Wendy journey um so next health is you know a huge passion project of mine I absolutely love the opportunities that I have there to develop and bring in new technology which is a lot of how actually you and I met is me doing research on bringing stuff to people that maybe someone might think is only available to like the upper echelon and going to like if this stuff was available to me and I just had to go looking for it then let me do the footwork for other people go find the best of the best and now I have a place to house it and bring it all in and so I plan to do that forever I want to always have the opportunity to find the best of the best and and bring it into a retail location where people are doing you know walking by going to the store and oh look at that where does he have an IV in his arm that's weird and you it really does prompt conversation and it allows us to educate people but also give them a safe environment to explore other options besides what they grew up with so I mean you're on this at next health I can say more about what the company is what kind of things you guys do their clients you have sure so the demographic is all over the board it we see all different age ranges we do cryotherapy so whole body cryotherapy we do there which is a lot of fun that's kind of like the like the gateway show where people do experience for sure it helps with pain and inflammation which you know that drives everything from how you're able to think how you feel then bringing down that in inflammation is key and then in addition to that people who have like anxiety and depression and are struggling with sleep they find that to be some of the brighter yeah interesting internet one thing I've heard across the board from almost everybody who's done it is that they have not slept that good in in years oh that's interesting yeah well why that is to have a sense of what's what's happening and sleep is reducing just inflammatory markers and so you're going to deeper sleep or it's all theory I have I have theories but because of the profound real reduction in inflammatory markers it's a systemic response as well so it also stimulates the immune system so I feel like what it does in the vasoconstriction is it kind of wakes everything up and so if there's been like some bacteria like hanging out maybe a little virus here or there or maybe just chronic stress that they are have just been ignoring for a while suddenly the body's like hey we actually see that you're not taking care of yourself anymore now like it's time to sleep because that's typically what happens when you have a cold or a flu all you want to do is close your eyes and go to sleep because that's when the body can repair well I feel like in cryotherapy the body wakes up and then once they get home and they actually can rest Isak oh good now we can actually do what we need to do uh-huh that's interesting so the Gateway is cryotherapy what other sort of things to folks engage in IV therapy okay IV therapy is high-dose vitamins delivered intravenously so Wallow people are like I'm so afraid of needles or they did it's still something that people aren't really sure of but as soon as they try it they realize it's it's so worth it it's so effective at just delivering more of the nutrients bypassing the gut which we all know is an issue you're just about everybody so it's not something that you have to do forever but it sure does boost the body's ability to kind of get those nutrients into the cell and on bypass like the supplementation and even our food doesn't have enough nutrients in it to to get us to levels that we need to be of course foods going through first pass metabolism so it's not even if you had you know if you're eating nothing but honeycomb or other you know Heidi things are still not getting the same concentration at you what if you bypass the gut wedding so exactly so and then some fun things I just you know pass the blood-brain barrier so of course I have to throw those in so we have different cocktails for different goals which is pretty fun it helps to introduce the idea that medicine or proactive wellness can be very unique it doesn't have to be you know a box treatment let go I always have to take this one antibiotic you know what most people are used to they come in and they realize there's an opportunity to really individualize their care which is very empowering to them sure you know one of the things that you may have noticed at where I work at peak brain is that we're trying to switch the perspective from illness or even a fix to more to fitness where you have control and responsibility and ability to change your body your brain and so why not engage with those resources I imagine in Excel if you have a lot of this people not simply trying to use traditional medicine to fix a specific problem but are trying to you know biohack trying to take control have more agency over their health over their trajectories is that true across all ages you know you're seeing elders young people Millennials is it really across the board in terms of who wants to engage with these next generation health modifiers or yes it's I would say it's more of a mindset that it is an age okay for sure there's a larger collection of that mindset in the Millennial age group where they're kind of they've they've already seen family members go through something then and they feel like there's other options or at least if there are any other options they want to explore them they don't really want to just follow suit and I think that's kind of the mentality overall whether they're not really interested in following suit with you know how we do just about anything and I love that I love the idea that all of what's been just oh that's just the way it is is being challenged now and that's how I've always lived so I love it when people come in and and are just excited about trying something different and empowering themselves to to be optimized and beyond just so some of them actually do have some things that they're dealing with regardless of age but they're really just curious feeling good feels like and and I always tell them you know I don't think that we've even scratched the surface of human potential and we're not it's not really far-fetched so if we can just get to like the next level then I think we're going to be in a place where we can see like the sky is the limit and that's really exciting too to that particular demographic so we see you know even people in there that are retired coming in and wanting to try cryo and to try the IV's and and to experience all the different things that we have there to offer that's wonderful so you've done a lot of things you're pretty far field in terms of your your by hacking on yourself you're grating products and businesses around essentially empowered choice around maximizing your health what is your daily routine like do you are you are you practicing what you preach I mean I'm definitely guilty of never quite taking as much care of my own brain as I help my clients do you know who shaves the barber kind of thing but what is your routine like are you are you running from the moment get up in some um you collapse do you have a good life fork like found something you made some structural changes when you left the more corporate world yeah has that intention carried through yes and it's just a challenge you know especially with you know being an entrepreneur and having way too many projects and having especially way too many ideas it's a challenge to maintain some kind of structure or any structure at all so what I've had to learn how to do is to maintain flexibility mmm and that just promising or green with myself but there will be a moment of you know meditation in the day and it doesn't matter when I just need to always be very present and aware to know this is the time to step away I'm going to do that I would love it if it was first thing in the morning but sometimes I'm not even going to bed until four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock in the morning just because that's just Adam you know that's just the nature of the beast sometimes you just I'm not not recommending that that's in a sense right but it's just it is the nature to be so on that day I can't get up and follow suit and I think one of the traps we get into is that oh well if I if I eat bad now then at the whole rest today is blown I'm just going to have to eat all the things that are not doing or mean and we do that across the board we're all things in life so oh it's a cheat day because I had sugar at night I am I guess I could have sugar all day long exactly so instead of saying I'm going to get up and do these things every day regardless and then feeling like I've let myself down before the date has even started I just don't that's for me is not mentally healthy what's mentally healthy for me is to make sure that I get in exercise every day some form of it whether it's just a walk around the block or a quick like Tabata sprint on the treadmill or it's the Bata whatever Tabata is a way of doing endurance training so it's 20 seconds of full-on like basically just sprinting and then ten seconds of nothing oh and going back and forth between the two I remind him what we used to do in in cross-country or track training in high school would sprint between telephone poles we walk between telephone poles right walk sprint walk sprint walk and it was much more vigorous than simply running straight out yeah your mitochondria really like that yeah the push is is really key pushing the body like that and then and then showing it or or confirming for that you're going to let it rest that push and rest and push and rest done over the course of 10 minutes 12 minutes or so I can do that every day at least some point so I make sure exercise make sure that I have some meditation for your time make sure that I eat really really well okay I think that's probably the most important thing that I do have the most control over and if I can't eat something awesome I'll just it's fasting day mmm okay because I think it's better to to to spend that time fasting and letting the body kind of clean itself up sure will do yeah awesome but then to choose an alternate source of who knows what I'm in the food industry I know what they're putting in this is yeah and what is what nonsense ends up in there exactly yeah I read a study a couple of weeks ago that suggests even a 24-hour fast causes pancreatic cells in diabetics who are insulin dependent 24-hour fast causes non beta islet cells to convert into beta islet cells and start producing insulin even folks that are purely insulated you know injecting insulin every single day they think they're you know full-blown diabetics those folks fasting for a day seems to trigger new cell growth in insulin producing cells so yeah that's a fairly profess that a violates our idea about what these things are in that I think is something sense of space you and I are both working which is on that edge of what might be known and what is not really known you know I mean we end up working I joke sometimes that we're in the space of what it's plausible they're not necessary deterministic oh here's some data about your body your brain okay um that's interesting it might mean this and I always pull back about over-interpreting it's really you know there's lots of conflicting information about what a question it means or what cholesterol means or anything else yeah and so I'm always oh that's interesting but let's avoid drawing too many conclusions about what we're seeing even in the space I work which is qejy and brain mapping it's always like okay this pattern might mean this leisure I mean you're doing a lot of I imagine metabolic assessments and markers and things as well so and those are probably get informative but not necessarily deterministic is that the space you're working in as well yes for sure because one thing that I was thinking as you were talking about kind of how your approach is and I notice this first couple of times that we work together is you know the placebo effect works in Reverse as well hmm so when you want it to be somebody to go oh yeah I do I actually do feel better imagine that it also works reversal when you make suggestions or even if the labs are diagnostic and it's like Claudia my goodness like you have to be very careful about how how you share that information because that placebo effect can let me take that into a whole other yeah negative spiral the nocebo effect exactly so so yeah I think that it's really important to not draw specific conclusions and and more so I'm really passionate about helping people stop googling things and listening to themselves yeah and go back to what just our innate intelligence and go and sitting in sitting either in the discomfort or sitting in that not knowing for a minute for you know crazy skills like problem-solving you know I know series awesome I love her too but it does disrupt our our natural ability to draw conclusion and say you know actually that I know everybody else is doing that but that isn't really still good for me so from metabolic from a metabolic standpoint we do genetic testing so we look at the genetic tests that we get from a lab in San Diego specifically looking at genetics for you know how best to eat for the way they're designed and how to exercise for health they're designed and I love that stuff because it gives them an opportunity to have to sit in an unknown and make a decision for themselves which is probably one of the most powerful things you can give to a human being salutely yeah so so we really do work in the same space but here's some data let us try to demystify it for you as much as possible and then this presents some opportunities maybe for going after things and manipulating them I really forget how we first talked about your brain what did I was I very cautious about interpreting gangs okay good and I totally noticed because that's actually how when I was really sick and I was being treated by a naturopathic Center that I went to they would never tell me about how I might feel or what I should expect they just said have a great night and then I would go home and have fevers and all this crazy stuff as my body was fighting off this bacteria and it never really frightened me I obviously had questions the next day but I loved how they let me sit in that and that was really a gift and I and I will never forget that and so I I definitely noticed you doing the same thing and probably for the first time in maybe ten years going to peak brain is the one time I didn't intentionally didn't research anything or trying to understand it I just wanted to go and just experience it interesting without the study which I still feel super dumb when I'm there because I'm like why is it why is it happening like this and I do want to hear all the text talk to me about different brain no want to understand it but the same time there's really something sweet about going someplace and and just I guess I know it's not magic it's not magic but it feels like it okay it just seems too easy yeah you aren't doing anything right I mean it's just looking yeah yeah sitting there enjoying it yeah yeah so awesome that's correct it also must be nice for you too I mean look at your history you have been sort of in charge if you will to some extent of providing services or expanding you know resources it must be kind of nice to not have to be in charge and not have to assess intellectually everything you're engaging with yeah I mean I appreciate the trust I think that that you that you're giving me and giving peak brain but my guess is part of the benefit for you as being the person who's receiving care and support and not having to you know be the person on the cutting edge of figuring everything else out yourself right then yeah so well that's there's a lesson in that even from for me I'm it's really important for me when I'm giving advice to somebody else to at least have experienced at myself or to be currently practicing like we were just talking about my daily routines what does that look like and do I practice what I preach in that sense for me I am constantly telling I would say primarily women who are you know powerful and intelligent and and they can take care of things about how to be a girl and how important it is to be taken care of and how important it is to trust people and let people come in create a village a community that stuff is just so important and so if I don't ever do that in my own life if I don't intentionally engage that way then I really have no grounds to speak that over anybody else so I try to find spots where I feel like it's safe to do that and and it's always truly nice when I can just go okay good I'm safe here I don't have to know I want to know but I'm not even going to look and so it is it is as much a learning experience for me as as it is therapy because it's group gives me a voice and be like no I know it's hard but I do it all the time and I would hope I mean as you know we map your brain every 20 or so session and so we've shown you more data about your brain as you go through the process and as you change I imagine even without being a neuroscientist that feels like you're getting valid data and thinking you know it's illuminating without even the sort of deep knowledge that may be required to choose what we do to your brain we always provide data back to clients so you probably Speight drink up the data yeah I love it and I feel like at some point I really do want to just come hang out and just watch everything because that it's just so the brain is a passion of mine right now I just am fascinated by it and when I have the mental wherewithal like wrap my you know mind around it that is what I want to spend some time on especially like the the nootropics and stuff we've talked about and and how some people are doing it they're kind of dabbling in some scary stuff and then some of it is just like wow that really just that like amino acid is going to drive crazy when that peptide or that precursor to some enzyme or some neurotransmitter absolutely yeah I'm with you I find the nootropic space a little frightening it's one of the reasons I helped Chris Thompson create true brain initially is because this is over four years ago now as I looked at the nootropic space and I was writing my dissertation and I couldn't figure out and I had taken courses in psychopharmacology and pharmacokinetics and dynamics everything else and I could not figure out of all the marketed nootropics what was likely to work why they worked what was what was smart what was safe and so I ended up doing that research to find like a basic stack but even now I I cringe at 90% of the marketing the bizdev the the messaging around these these substances called nootropics for folks that haven't heard the term before nootropics are things that statically the strict definition improved brain health without side effect which really does rule out most of the things that are labeled nootropics for a marketing sense things like caffeine things like modafinil which is absolutely not a nootropic i don't I tell you I took modafinil just over four years ago for a half years ago right for prescribed 21 days single dose every morning and on the 21st day I woke up with head-to-toe hives and for the next six weeks I had pressure to carry abs in the ER three times urgent care three times massive histamine immune response they basically barely caught it before it turned into Steven Johnson syndrome and I had you know skin sloughing so I had a massive histamine problem because of this you know what is considered by Silicon Valley types anyways a nootropic not a nootropic but it you know it's it's gonna get a lot of press these days through folks like Dave Asprey and other you know prolific publishing biohackers they're really hot on modafinil and I'm very much an isolated voice in the field or the the space about hacking saying look the decimal is the last thing you want to try because it's unless you have narcolepsy or you know you work third shift or some other sleep problem then it's you know indicated but may not for attention so yes yeah well and I always appreciate hearing that stuff because we do get a lot of those questions over our next health where I'll sit down with somebody just for general consultation and they're coming in looking to optimize performance and they came in because they heard about our brain ivy and they want to experience that and what like what else do you have like what else can you tell me and I always tell them if there's side effects it is not it is not something that's beneficial to you no matter what the instant gratification result is if you're here to optimize then my advice is that's not going to optimize you right and also you know folks that are trying to boost their performance above baseline it's a different cost-benefit analysis then if somebody's trying to fix an illness or fix an infirmity or some deficit then you may need to tolerate some side effects on the way to healing on the way to shoring up the deficit that's costing you something but if you're already healthy be it young or old and trying to boost that health that performance I think the threshold for tolerating side effect for downsides should be zero you only go after things that are going to slightly boost and move because a small performance improvement if you're already healthy is massively subjectively felt I mean you get a big big push yeah so which I experienced a peak brain by the way oh thank you thank you and I I almost we tell everybody that it's so true and I I got things from it that I wasn't anticipating I think that's what's things I didn't tell you about things you intentionally did not tell me to expect or to know it also happened the first month achieving it for a while now but I forget what what your first experience was so initially I was just primarily come in to optimize also to understand it because it's something that I'd love to have four people at next health and down the road and I didn't I I think the first or second time I actually had a little bit of like emotion which I'm I'm carefully speaking about this because it's not to be negative it actually was a great experience because everything in my life moves so fast that I just kind of became numb okay so there really wasn't any I mean it started short so you think it'd be great to have no ups and downs but it's not yeah it's not it's not healthy to be numb right and so first I was mad I had like anger after one at one session and that and while that should have been frustrating or to me was like oh yeah I don't I it occurred to me I didn't remember the last time I really felt angry and then we did made some adjustments and stuff which I also loved how you and your staff are so up on the feedback and it's not just like oh here's another person it's really very individualized and so that's super helpful but then then I would say six sessions into it there was one day where I didn't I didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't want to experience anything else but how I felt that day and I wanted I wanted to bottle that I thought if I could put this in the package I would be a billionaire like this is incredible and how I always thought you have to be very candid and like very heightened up to be you know laser focus but was the strangest thing is like I was I had the most productive day I've to this day that I've ever had yeah and I was like on the beach you know just like I was like oh this is like my body was just like so relaxed and there was no tension and you know how like I liked that jogging and I had none of that going on my body was like so relaxing I was on vacation but my mind was like oh I thought I'd have to use drugs for honestly oh and I have never experienced something like that before and from that moment on how do I get that all the time we deliver that and you have it in quite a dramatic results and so it happened sometimes where the first time you product a really hit it's like oh my god because it feels so different and then it's a little less dramatic because your brains adjusting to the experience and learning to reproduce it yeah that was left-side training for you and generally left-side training and their feedback produces fewer errors of omission for attention you grasp the alerting of your attention it's just on we're right side training tends to make you more self-controlled so you're less reactive uh-huh so we actually a lot of both with you of course we often you know do a lot of tweaking here tweaking there and gradually building you up over time so it's wonderful one thing I did notice is when I went the last couple months have just been crazy and I didn't get to come in for private too early that I felt so even though I may not feel like that extent of oh my gosh I need this all the time I want this in a bottle I did notice on the flip side whereas I I didn't realize how much it was helping me until I wasn't utilizing it right right yeah we didn't have been quite enough training I think to make everything stick that was neurofeedback depends to be this value to the process where we tried protocols yet works you do a bunch of it to really build an effect and then I well we often shift gears based when people want but if you stick with a protocol for enough time then the resource becomes lying I think we did do some more left side training with you but it actually made you a little too wired we may have gone a little far at one point and pulled back which can happen you know it's not ideal um but you know it's again we're working in a space where we have to balance what is known what is unknown what is possible what is you know intuited which is not a very comfortable place for a scientist to be so I have to you know for me I have to put down the linear mind sometimes and you know sit there and be a good listener I joke these days that well I'm not a therapist the the role that I play therapeutically is like a bartender you know I'm good listener I have some good stories I might have some good advice but don't rely on me for your psychological well-being right you know I mean I have specific skills you know they're not making a nice strength or of course you look at your brain map or something but you know when you're working with these deep almost intimate things and people's resources their experiences it's an interesting you know vulnerability your clients may not sense is true for you as well the clients have to you as somebody who's looking at their you know data there their secrets and sometimes I mean I probably did this with you I can look at a brain map and go oh I see this and this and this that's true Han you're like wait how did you know that and I imagine the same is true when you're looking at homocysteine and estrogen testosterone and all these other you know biomarkers you can probably sketch a picture of the person from their data yeah which is a fairly intimate experience with a health coach to have that to have that awareness oh wait you know what's going on inside my body my brain that's a little strange yeah it's strange and it's also very comforting even we have an in-body scanner which is a scale okay essentially but it measures the composition of the body so whatever the total weight is we can also tell within that way whatever is mass fat mass and what is muscle mass and water momentum and just that moment is a very vulnerable moment and being able to help them understand things that they haven't been able to figure out before to make such a simple thing they'll kind of learn and stand on the scale but when you look at it like that I think that's why people feel brushed aside but when you when you approach that knowing that this is an opportunity to really help somebody get in tune with their body it looks very simple so it's non-threatening but it can really provide the drastic benefits for them and all it was a skill that's interesting so let me swing is you mentioned earlier your brain cocktail I'm still curious I know we've mentioned it we talked about a fair couple times but I've never heard what is in it at least in the things you won't share I'm curious what kind of brain things you're you're doing yeah so the covet it is our most popular IV it's been changing I have used it several times and I know it's not I know placebo effect and it's I didn't plan feel anything from it because it's not really designed to free to feel something I always joke with patients when I say why don't feel anything like what do you feel yourselves right now yeah okay feeling because if you can't fill yourselves and that doesn't mean that there's not things happening there it just means that they haven't reached the extent at which you know it's you can feel it in the moment so anyway I definitely get tremendous benefits from it it starts out with a Myers cocktail which is kind of a standard in IV therapy put in a bag yes but it well has vitamin C magnesium calcium all the B vitamins and multi tre so trace minerals okay and then in that we add acidic carnitine oh nice for energy from mitochondrial sort of fuel okay some glycine okay as amino acid Reese's gaba other neurotransmitters yeah awesome glutamine okay so Bruce and glutamate muscle fibers some taurine great be vitamin substrate beautiful yep and throwing all those in together another just dosed in a very specific way and and some zinc as well that for immune or brain implication there it helped it so it's about the pathways and being a precursor and helping with this okay so avoiding sort of rate limiting conversion steps exactly look at that I won't give on your secrets away but yes it's all like there is a method to all of my madness that's reassuring but methodological madness is the kind of I think madness task yes that's great so huge amount of information so far Wendy I'm curious as an entrepreneur we're sort of like sharks we can't hold still or we die mm-hmm what are you aiming towards what are the next projects you mentioned Hamish I seem to have a few other products in production maybe more books maybe I don't know what you're doing these days you know yeah so I have multiple food projects happening right now Amish is like the big deal that's kind of that is I'm leaving here and heading off to a manufacturing so that's that is like the on the forefront I also have another line of snack type things kind of bars of sorts that are I'm working on as well working on some private labeling projects so people who already have a brand and they just want to expand on their brand and bring in quality food because it it really runs alongside everything else that somebody's doing something with health and wellness if they haven't brought in food right or talked about food or offering some kind of good food product in addition to whatever they're doing it's time to do it through I formulate for larger corporations people who already on the Shelf and have a presence I go in and reformulate or formulate for them so that their products is so sharply yeah or even products that are just not doing as well as they would like them to or they want to truly make it health because right now it's not so healthy I've been really if it has the word natural the package doesn't mean it's not good for you no I know I'm learning so many things and the s that is true so and then also just as science as we learn more things about some foods I mean look at what happened with butter you know right it's hot that's just one example of hundreds where we are realizing that that's probably not the best choice so if you want to stay on the market and you want to stay ahead of the game you might have to reformulate and make sure that you're putting product into your food or putting ingredients into your product that are in line with what it is that you're teaching people so there's lots of that on in the works and then I'm working on another book I'm writing a book on on fitness and just overall balance and and really what Fitness is from like a mobilities and and I guess to sum it up it's more about your brain and your frame okay and making sure that and how they work together and also how some people are all about intellect and that's awesome but and they're neglecting their body sure and vice versa know how to make sure that they all come together and why but making it very digestible so it's not like a tough read but something very quick where people can apply it right it right you know right away and then daily opportunities but like one new thing a day and it is the second 365 day so within a year owners you've literally either adopted or at least tried 265 new ways oh it's great practical action-based next action steps great wonderful not a biohacking in there I can't imagine why yeah yeah some of those things in there too very cool so books food do you have a do you have any time for anything besides business yes the beach the beach yeah okay I love the beach I always make sure to get outside and just do you know fun things in fresh air so I just want to be out in nature as much as pops like barefoot as much as possible in nature I play guitar I love to like learn languages I love to read so yeah those are all like the ways that I kind of unplug from the craziness of business you should come to peek brains Friday night West African drumming instruction will teach you how to do some malinka rhythms if you are I'm in Nice not not tomorrow we're going to be in Tampa looking at a new location but next week okay good to know great yeah so Wendy where can folks find more about you uh you know where can I track you down where's neck next health where is how much going to be where are the hula bars so the probably though easiest spot would be Wendy Michelle calm so windy with an eye okay Wendy Michelle calm had me all if you scroll down the bottom it literally has every project that I'm working on and clickable links great next health so if somebody is in Los Angeles or is visiting and wants to see like the coolest cryo chamber ever which it really is you know come come check it out and have a cryo session on me you know try it out for yourself and see if you don't sleep better experience the endorphins you know after putting yourself in you know negative 165 degrees Fahrenheit still a normal yeah that's great yeah I can't wait for you to come try it yeah I will I want to try the cry out there ever you want to try the brain cocktail yes I have some other other cute cool things that I've heard about over it next up I'm interested in trying yeah so that we're on Sunset Boulevard in Crescent Heights okay I'm right next to Trader Joe's and under the Grunch gym the website for that if you want to learn you know somebody wanted to learn more about what we do there is next - health.com I think next time okay well we'll put the links on the show down so you'll have that under the show so yeah I'm there and I'm you know so in you know the factory making magical foods with uber Loompas within balloon rescue to try to like like willy wonka t rescue him bloopers from slavery to make to enslave them that was the yeah i didn't even start the food products until i knew i would have a staff like great that's great well when he thanks so much for coming on the show today it's been great to talk to you in a different setting yeah and I've learned a few things about about you your products and your your your vision which i think is important so folks thanks for listening this has been another episode of head first with dr. Hill my guest today is Wendy Michelle and you can check out at Wendy Michelle calm it's Wendy with an eye and folks take care of your brains and we'll food [Music]