Fashion stylist, transformational coach, public speaker, and entrepreneur Luke Storey joins HeadFirst with Dr. Hill to discuss his journey from fashion styles to life stylist, and how he uses himself as a guinea pig to evaluate different biohacking strategies.
Episode Summary
On a recent episode of my Head First podcast, I sat down with a guest who has spent two decades using himself as a test subject for nearly every health and performance intervention he could find. He runs a popular wellness podcast and built a career bridging esoteric practices and practical lifestyle design. We covered a lot of ground: meditation, cold exposure, neurofeedback, nootropic stacks, and the eternal problem of separating what works from what is sold to you with pretty language.
The interesting work in that conversation was sorting real mechanisms from marketing. That is the line I draw every day as a clinician.
How do you tell biohacking that works from biohacking that's marketing?
My guest put it well: he plays guinea pig, tries everything, and reports back. That is genuinely useful. The trouble starts when the people selling a device explain why it works using claims that are false.
Here is my filter. If someone tells me they have no explanation for why something reliably helps them, I will look at it. Subjective benefit is data. If someone tells me their device works because of "quantum" effects, or because it balances chakras through the third moon of some planet, I have already discredited the technology. Wrong reasoning means the person selling it does not understand what they are doing, and that disqualifies the explanation even if the device occasionally produces something real.
A few words function as marketing tells in this space. "Quantum," used by anyone who is not a theoretical physicist. "Detox," used vaguely. "Nonlinear," used as a selling point with no model behind it. I have a degree in neuroscience and I model nonlinear brain dynamics. When a neurofeedback company markets itself as "nonlinear" and cannot tell me what that means, the word is decoration.
The clearest example of the math failing: some systems claim to train brainwaves at 0.00001 Hz. The Nyquist sampling theorem says you need to sample for at least twice the length of the wave you want to measure. A theta wave at 4 Hz takes 250 milliseconds, so you measure for half a second to capture one cycle. A wave at 0.00001 Hz would take weeks to complete a single cycle. You cannot measure it in a 30-minute session, which means you cannot reward or inhibit it. When the math fails like that, the claim fails with it.
If you want a grounded place to start thinking about this space, I wrote a primer on biohacking intelligence and the broader biohacking topic page collects the rest.
What's the highest-leverage sleep intervention?
My guest had cycled through temperature control, blackout foam in the windows, and a stack of sedating supplements: GABA, tryptophan, kava, passionflower, lemon balm. He blends them into what he calls a knockout drink, which I do not recommend driving after.
The temperature work has real mechanism behind it. Core body temperature drops as you fall asleep, and a cooler sleep surface supports that drop. A water-cooled mattress pad does this without the energy cost of running an air conditioner all night.
The intervention that surprised him most was neurofeedback. When he came into my clinic with disrupted sleep, we ran a sleep protocol, and he reported sleeping straight through the night for the first time in a long while. That tracks with what I see clinically. Sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) training, which rewards 12 to 15 Hz activity over the sensorimotor cortex, improves sleep depth and continuity for many people. I wrote about the mechanism in detail in SMR neurofeedback and covered the broader picture in biohacking sleep.
The order of operations matters. Fix the brain's sleep regulation first, then tune temperature and light around it.
Why does cold exposure feel so good?
My guest does an ice bath or cryotherapy five days a week, sitting in 35 to 40 degree water for ten to twenty minutes. He built his own ice bath out of a chest freezer.
Two things happen here. The first is physiological recovery. Cold exposure after intense training reduces the buildup of inflammation and lactic acid, which is why he recovers faster than his training partners who are sore for days. There is a tradeoff worth knowing: Rhonda Patrick and others have shown that cold immediately after lifting blunts the inflammatory signal that drives hypertrophy. If your goal is recovery and reduced soreness so you can train hard again tomorrow, cold helps. If your goal is muscle growth, time the cold away from your lifting sessions.
The second effect is the one he values most, and it is a nervous system effect. When you get into very cold water, your sympathetic nervous system fires hard. Fight or flight. Your body is telling you to get out. With practice, you can override that response and drop into a parasympathetic state within seconds. That deliberate downshift, repeated daily, is a trainable skill. It teaches you that you have real control over your autonomic state. I unpack the circuitry of that override in biohacking fight or flight.
Cold air cryotherapy at 160 below for three minutes and an ice bath at 35 degrees are different experiences. Cryotherapy is fast and shallow, useful for a quick reset and a serotonin-linked mood lift. The ice bath penetrates to the core and takes longer to recover from, which is part of why it feels more impactful.
Do meditation and yoga actually change the brain?
My guest practices Vedic meditation, a mantra-based style related to Transcendental Meditation, twice a day for 20 minutes, plus Kundalini Yoga with its breathing and chanting. He cannot explain what Kundalini does mechanically, but he walks out changed.
Both produce measurable brain effects, though the styles diverge. Mantra-based concentrative practices and breath-heavy active practices generate different EEG signatures, and individual expertise often matters more than the technique label. Regular meditation produces structural change over time: thickening in prefrontal regions tied to emotional regulation and shifts in default mode network activity. This is well established.
The framing my guest's first yoga teacher gave him is the right one. The physical practice exists to settle the body enough that you can meditate. The poses support the stillness. That maps cleanly onto what we know about how these practices shift attention and self-regulation. I cover the neuroscience in biohacking meditation and the practical side in mindfulness.
He noticed the two practices sit at opposite ends of a spectrum: Kundalini energizes and Vedic meditation sedates. He meditates first to settle, then does the active work. That sequencing instinct is sound.
What does Alpha-Theta neurofeedback have in common with a float tank?
My guest compared his Alpha-Theta neurofeedback sessions with us to a float tank, and the comparison holds. Both produce a hypnagogic state, the liminal zone between waking and sleep where you genuinely cannot tell whether you were dreaming.
Alpha-Theta training rewards a shift toward alpha (roughly 8 to 12 Hz) and theta (roughly 4 to 8 Hz) activity, dropping you into that drowsy, deeply relaxed border state. A float tank, with no light, no sound, skin-temperature water, and the buoyancy of epsom salts, removes sensory input until your brain produces a similar state. Different routes, same destination: a deep, restful, mildly dissociated calm. For someone using these tools to de-stress through a hard stretch of life, that liminal state is the therapeutic target. You can read more about the brain's idle rhythm in decoding alpha waves.
Should you trust nootropic stacks and sleep supplements?
My guest ran an experiment cutting caffeine while testing a multi-ingredient nootropic stack. His genetic testing showed he is a fast caffeine metabolizer, which surprised him because he feels sensitive to coffee. The likely explanation is dose and preparation. A dark-roasted 16-ounce coffee can carry 250 to 300 milligrams of caffeine, against maybe 100 milligrams in a light-roast pour-over. Dark roasts also char off oils and shift acidity, which can drive the jittery feeling independent of total caffeine.
The serious caution from this conversation is about phenibut. Phenibut acts on GABA receptors and produces effects similar to alcohol: relaxation, sociability, sedation. The problem is the speed of dependence. I have seen and heard of people, including experienced users, become physically dependent within days. It behaves like months of heavy drinking compressed into a short window. My guest uses it only occasionally and cycles it deliberately, which is the only safe way to treat it, if you use it at all.
He also described a frightening episode with yohimbe, where he accidentally took far too much and spent four hours convinced he was heading for the emergency room with a racing heart, flushing, and a blood pressure spike. The interaction worth knowing here involves tyramine. Combine tyramine, found in aged cheese, smoked meats, wine, and chocolate, with an MAO inhibitor, and you can trigger a hypertensive crisis severe enough to cause stroke. Yohimbe at the wrong dose plus the wrong food is a genuinely dangerous combination. Small doses of potent compounds, attention to interactions, and respect for the fact that "natural" does not mean "safe" are the operating principles here.
If you are thinking about changing a habit rather than stacking a supplement, biohacking bad habits is a better starting point.
Where do I draw the line on alternative health devices?
My guest described an experience with a device combining pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) technology and a Rife-style frequency system, costing tens of thousands of dollars. He found it subjectively powerful during a high-anxiety day. I told him the honest version of where I stand.
Some of what gets lumped into "alternative" has real footing. PEMF, for example, is being combined with neurofeedback in legitimate ways. There are systems that deliver extremely low-voltage PEMF, in the picovolt range, to stimulate sites on the scalp, then measure the resulting EEG in real time and train on it. You push the EEG with stimulation, measure the response, and reward the change. That is mechanistically coherent.
Rife-style claims sit on the far side of my line, because the explanations attached to them do not match how the body works. The way through this is the experiment my guest proposed: get baseline labs, run the protocol for three months, and re-test. He is doing exactly that with his gut biome and with a heavy metal protocol.
That heavy metal protocol is worth a note. He has elevated lead, arsenic, and mercury on challenge urine testing and wants to avoid aggressive IV chelation, a reasonable instinct because chelating agents are hard on the body and can make you ill if mishandled. He is using citrus pectin, modified seaweed extract, and niacin-and-sauna flushes over six months with pre- and post-labs. I suggested adding weight-bearing exercise. The standard story is that lead binds calcium receptors irreversibly and lodges in bone forever, but bone is dynamic tissue, constantly turned over by osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Stressing the bone may increase that turnover and help mobilize what is stored. That is extrapolation on my part, but it is testable, and he has the lab framework to test it.
Measure, intervene, measure again. That is the right way to engage uncertain interventions.
Where does neurofeedback sit on the evidence spectrum?
Neurofeedback is reasonably well evidenced, especially compared to most of what circulates in the wellness world. I am not religious about my tools. I am religious about the science behind them. I use the protocols I use because they work for sleep, anxiety, and self-regulation, and because the mechanisms hold up.
I have tried and set aside other stimulation technologies. Low-energy systems that pulse along scalp sites work well for traumatic brain injury and structural damage, but they underperform for sleep, anxiety, and the regulation problems most of my clients bring me. The tool follows the problem.
If you want the grounded overview, start with is neurofeedback legitimate, and if you are wondering what training actually looks like, QEEG brain mapping explains the assessment that comes first. The neurofeedback topic page collects the rest.
The honest takeaway
My guest and I land in a similar place from opposite directions. He is willing to try almost anything and report the subjective result. I want the mechanism and the data. Both matter. Subjective benefit tells you something is happening. Mechanism and measurement tell you whether you should trust the explanation and spend the money.
If you are going to operate in this space, keep three habits. Get your baseline measured before you start. Treat potent compounds with real caution and watch for interactions. And when someone explains why a device works, check whether the explanation holds mathematically and biologically. If the reasoning fails, walk away regardless of how good the demo felt.
You can find my guest's wellness podcast under the name The Life Stylist. For the brain work, start by getting a map of what your brain is actually doing, then train from there.
Full Transcript
[Music] and welcome to another episode of head first with dr. hill today's guest is Luke storey who's the host of the life stylist podcast and another one of our local entrepreneurs who has got his hands in all kinds of pies so Luke look from the show thanks man good to see you again yeah you too you too so Luke first of all for those listeners who may not have heard the life stylist podcast what is your mission there what are you doing well with the podcast what I'm doing is translating somewhat complex people and ideas in terms of spirituality and health to regular people so that's my mission I see myself as like a bridge from great minds like you or Jack Cruise or you know people within health or even meditation teachers and things like that that have somewhat esoteric ideas that can really benefit your life and it's about extracting the most core principles out of those teachings and from those teachers and using them to build the ultimate lifestyle interesting so life style say more about that yeah so you know what you do with your day to day life from the moment that you wake up in terms of mindset you know are you waking up and you know checking politics on Twitter when you roll out of bed are you waking up and writing a gratitude list and meditating you know what you're eating what you're drinking the water in your home the lighting in your home things that you just do to improve your mindset things like meditation mindfulness for the past 20 years I've basically been trying anything and everything I've heard that improves your life in any way okay and in terms of like mind body or spirit or hopefully a combination of all three and implementing them seeing what works what doesn't and then tracking down the people behind those ideas are the experts in any particular field and then sort of bringing them to the world so I might have an episode that's like on EMS in your bedroom that's just about that or one on cryotherapy or any number of different topics so it's like you know building a life and where I got that sort of concept an idea was not only from just practicing all that stuff myself from all these years but I used to be a fashion stylist hmm and I did that in Hollywood for God 17 years okay which for anyone listening doesn't know what that is means you dress other people so celebrities for red carpet music videos magazine commercial stuff like that so it's like I would take these bits and pieces and put together a composite look for someone oh these shoes go with this necklace in this dress etcetera which is fun and creative but it wasn't like my true true passion as it turned out but all the while I was kind of doing that for my friends but more on an internal basis oh hey try this superfood try this herb try this nootropic try neurofeedback try ice baths infrared saunas you know whatever it is breathing exercises all that stuff so I thought you know what I want to work with people on a deeper level rather than like hey cute shirt and roof you know hey it actually it does though your shirt matches your glasses right now so you got you got to pulled together pretty well but after a while you know living on that level of in terms of work was just you know I didn't find it to be that fulfilling and so on the entrepreneur trip I started something called school of style which is a fashion school to teach people how to do that and that's like my sort of main bread-and-butter now while I'm emerging with the podcast and stuff which been going for about a year some kind of one foot in the Hollywood fashion entertainment scene still and then one foot in the health and wellness and sort of spirituality scene it's great so how long it's just over a year it's under a year you said yeah the podcast has been going a year and milestone yeah it's called the year anniversary we had Neil Strauss on you know world famous author a friend of mine and we had him on for the year anniversary which was June 6 and at that point we're up to about six hundred thousand downloads so you know with no advertising it was kind of word-of-mouth and getting really great guests you know I've been very fortunate and having people like you and many other people so yeah the show so yeah you were on there yeah you're one of my early guest yeah I think it we called it like hacking your brain with neurofeedback or something yeah so you know it's just you may have found this too with your show but what's been really cool is that I noticed immediately I was able to get interviews with people or get on a Skype with someone that either normally would never talk to me or I'd have to pay them enormous amounts of money to like sit down and be therapist and for something you know right right like I reached out to be like yeah I'll do your show I'm like really you know right in the beginning especially you know there's I didn't really have any credibility in this industry say but you know I knew a few good people and once you get like one sort of big-name guests and sure others will follow in stuff but I've been very fortunate it's really hot it's great yeah I actually haven't any trouble yet but the only have dozen shows or something but I'm either picking people that I've been on their shows right or people that are teachers of mind spiritual teachers meditation teachers yoga teachers and people that I've had a direct you know I sort and sort of ask them in the app they feel like they have to say yes right you know because I work with me in other ways yeah that's great so lifestyles podcast is a year old your style schools called it's called school of style school of style yeah and that it's just a totally different industry like when I talk to people that are into the stuff we're into they're like what I don't get it essentially it's like half trade school half art school it's an independent fashion school and we hold classes with between 35 and 50 people a few times a year in LA or New York all right and New York bicoastal yeah and so yeah we just bring people in and it's like a it's sort of like a seminar slash boot camp though the classes run between two or nine days there's like two main classes and essentially what we do is just take usually younger people you know it's probably like average age 25 years old people that have like been to college and didn't learn what they want to do for a living or people that have been you know graduate high school been in the workforce and they're frustrated and doing something they don't love and they want to do something glamorous and creative which is you know very much working within the fashion industry so we're kind of niche down where we just teach you how to become a personal stylist because I mean you dress executives and regular people or you become a fashion stylist which means you dress celebrities and models and things like that so we teach them the art of the business and just kind of how that works as being a freelancer or an entrepreneur depending on which kind of avenue you go and then we help get some jobs so it's very fulfilling in that way because you'll take some kid that's like hey I'm just moved to LA from Idaho and like literally a day after class we'll send them on a Beyonce video oh yeah Vogue shoot so it's it's it's really cool being able to see like people's dreams come true even though it's not particularly my dream anymore because I'm just not involved in the fashion industry I would rather be off like collecting spring water like you know getting some new I Oh hacking gadget going or doing neurofeedback or whatever but uh yeah so I kind of I still do that it's a great way to kind of give back and you know help younger people get into that industry as I sort of phase out of it it's wonderful so you have this on just this fashion history and now you're moving more personally into the biohacking if you will space and you're becoming an influencer in that space you said earlier you were trying all these things of a personal basis and with your friends thanks the question you know what did you find mess with this way what is the first thing where you were like oh okay this makes a change like what was a big first impact well you know the impetus for my getting into all this stuff was totally destroying my life when I was a teenager in my early 20s I was like a really really bad drug addict okay and just you know into all kinds of gnarly stuff you know criminal activity and below that you know so I essentially like burned my life to the ground and then I started you know I cleaned up I went to a treatment center and I got sober thank God when I was 26 that's 20 years ago and almost it'll be 21 and a little bit so that was like you know hitting that rock-bottom classic case I just had nothing I dropped out of high school I used to play music so I played in a band and I just was totally unemployed well and just had a just horrendous life and so when I got sober I started learning how to meditate and I went to India to a place called oneness University and learned how to do this trippy thing called deeksha like these energy transfers and started reading all these spiritual books and studying all these gurus and and getting into like early this would be those late I guess mid-90s version of health food stores and smoothies and stuff like that you know back then the health food stores like bulk bin of oats and right it was like you didn't have the advanced stuff we have now reishi mushroom extract spores and you know all this kind of stuff but I think the first needle mover for me was really learning about meditation and starting to study spiritual truths just studying spiritual principles learning how to apply them to my life that was like when things started profoundly changing because I started to become less selfish and self-centered which I had just become like completely narcissus sticking it was just I was in survival mode for those years I mean when you're a drug addict it's just like you don't care about anything except getting well you know right so I started learning about being of service to other people and in a meaningful way not not just to get attention for it and like brag about it but actually helping people when no one's looking that kind of stuff and just you know learning about just prayer and not in for me in a religious sense but just some of those basic principles just willingness acceptance surrender attitude gratitude mindfulness you know just learning how to be present in my body so I was first psychological but then I was also very toxic physically so I started doing a lot of crazy fasting and stuff I would do like 20 days 30-day fast on just vegetable juice Wow and and you know making my own kombucha and just you know all kinds of weird stuff back then it was like all about juicing and then colonics a little bit of stuff so I remember once I went to a place called Angel farms on the Big Island of Hawaii and they do something called a gravity fed or Colima type colonic and essentially lay on this table for two hours a day and they just have this tiny little like bic pen that goes inside you I mean it doesn't sound it sounds uncomfortable in a way but it's not as awkward as it might seem zero if you've ever had a colonic sometimes it's a bigger tube but it's like this little tube that goes in you'll be you later for 2 hours and 20 gallons of water go in and out of you so that was one of the and I did that for 12 days oh my gosh and so that was like it was actually a really pivotal point in my house because I just was able to detox god-knows-what you know I mean you see these like creatures coming out of you you know after that two hours and a little like you know toy cars you ate when you're kids it's like when you've got a shark and there's like a there's a shopping cart in the item you know it's just crazy random old stuff coming out so that was like the base was fasting colonics just detoxing in a hardcore way and then it was like a the course of building up but I would say like spiritually and mentally you know therapy support groups all that kind of stuff in the mind and then just a lot of cleansing and then sort of have been building from there ever since and all these practices describing these contemplative practices meditation mindfulness excetera still they'll stick with you are you still yeah absolutely man absolutely yeah I I mean I've gone through different phases where I'll practice different techniques and things like that what's really working for me right now is I practice Vedic meditation okay which is um it's kind of an offshoot of TM Transcendental Meditation some mantra based meditation twice a day for 20 minutes on a good day I'll make my two 20-minute sessions you know on a normal day usually just the one so that's been really profound for me because it's the first meditation where there was an actual technique to follow their showroom to do yeah instead of just like hey just sit there and pay attention to your breath or you know have body awareness or things like that which is all good yeah but I find the mantra meditation really works for me because it's like you know I know there's a set time period I'm going to do it for and it's very ceremonial it's not like because I'll just meditate throughout the day to randomly in my car to stop and breathe and just kind of get in my body and get present but this is like a time set aside where I turn everything off and it's very devoted to that and I find the mantras really useful and actually taking me into that in that transcendental place where you know my mind and ego aren't necessarily running the show I kind of have an awareness of them from a different point of view so that's been huge but um you know I'm always learning more the other thing I think that's for the past five years it's been a big needle mover is doing Kundalini Yoga okay that's like really really moved I don't know it's just like I did it this morning for an hour and a half and it moves the energy in ways that you just can't explain it it's really goofy if you watch it there's all sorts of chanting and breathing exercises like stuff if you would have told me 20 years ago I was going to be doing this I would like punch myself in the face it's like so lame I sense you know just everyone wears white and turbans and it's just it's from the onlookers point of view it's kind of weird yeah but dude there's something to it there's wait there's mudras there's ways you hold your hands there's way you move move your arms you move your body combined with the breathing and the chanting on a scientific level I have no idea what's going on but I know I walk in there and my consciousness and my mind are working one way and when I walk out something's changed sure for the better you know kind of like wim HOF breathing it's like what you just sit there for 20 minutes and breathe in and out what the hell is that going to do if you try it a few times you'll notice a profound change so Kundalini Yoga is sort of like that like you not only know what the hell is going on but the way I look at it sort of four you know five six thousand years you got these goofball gurus up in the Himalayas in a cave gone home I wonder what happens if I tap here fifty five times and breathe this way or that way with that nostril it is not astral and that feels good you know I don't know they're getting it downloaded from the gods who knows what with these strange sort of postures and techniques have been handed down and then put together in a system and by practicing that it just works for me mm-hmm you know I it but I'm like the kind of guy like I want to know how stuff works because I'm not totally analytical and skeptical it's more about like if it works I don't really care but I would love to know like put me in a laboratory or something like study what's going on in my brain or doing you know neuro you know like you're what's the EEG yeah Jay and like what happens to you when you do Kundalini Yoga I don't know we could find out but it feels really good nice yeah I get a similar transformation from I do Ashtanga Yoga we don't chant as much but they still have some of the esoteric the other limbs that are there not just the asanas the poses and you know when I first started in yoga it was like I'm doing a bunch of poses to get in shape right and then after doing it for a few years it's like yeah you do the poses but it's really about something else Patanjali the orderly arrangement of your limbs to order your mind Wow yeah yeah well you know I think when I when I first started yoga it was like at 24-hour fitness or something it was like power yoga yeah that's cool it's a good workout like stretching but then I started doing just I guess it was hatha yoga with a guy named mas Fidel and he still teaches you who's been on my show actually but he always described yoga from the point of view that the whole purpose of the physical part of it is just to get you your body settled enough so you can meditate yeah it's like to support the meditation exactly and I was like oh that's what it's for so you know I kind of keep that framework and sometimes even in Kundalini there's just things that are they're difficult but in a weird way it's not like you know holding a pose per se where like it takes a lot of muscular strength and you know just determination in that way but it takes mental determination believe it or not to like hold your arms in front of you and make a you know a zigzag shape for 20 minutes without letting your arms down while you're doing some weird breathing thing it's like I don't know it requires a different type of discipline and determination there's something in that too but again you're just doing that so that when you get to the meditation part you can really sink into it and has that yoga affected your you're contemplating like outside of the yoga studio you know I'm not sure it not in a quantifiable way because they're so different you know Kundalini Yoga is all about like moving the energy and you walk out of there just like you're on ecstasy or something sometimes I mean you can get super spaced out I mean there's things you can do to bring yourself back down to earth but it's very much like moving the energy in your body and I'm sure you're getting really oxygenated from all that crazy breathing and stuff so it's more energizing whereas the Vedic meditation is like puts you in a super sedated state so I'm sure they help one another but they seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum twisting like I've never gone to Kundalini Yoga and got like really awakened and then went home and tried to meditate I'll meditate first kind of really be calm and then going to cannellini and sort of get everything stirred up it's interesting yeah all right so kundalini yoga meditation medical annotation yeah what other tools do you have in your your current biohacker toolbox well it's something that's been really useful for me is really optimizing sleep and this is a big you know kind of buzzword in the podcast Wilshire's world now so I'm always looking to fine-tune that something that has moved the needle for me a lot is really working with the temperature getting the temperature down but if I run my AC all night I have like a decent-sized two-bedroom apartment it's really expensive and it's just I just don't like wasting energy even if I have the money to burn it just doesn't make sense to me so I got this thing called a chilli pad which is like essentially like imagine electric blanket but it just has veins of water inside of rather than wires so there's no like EMS or anything like that but it's like a pad that has freezing water running through it and so your mattress you put it underneath your fitted sheet in your mattress is really cold so that's like something I use and then you know I put like foam cord things in my windows to really like block out all the light and it's amazing like how much benefit I get if I just get real sleep for eight hours you know I'm an eight-hour guy never do I mean usually I get seven and a half on average but if I'm lucky enough to sleep eight even you know randomly I might get eight and a half hours it's like I'm in a new universe it's just crazy so I've really worked on sleep and supplementation with that - mm-hmm I'm just you know taking GABA and tryptophan and kava kava and passionflower and lemon balm and any herb I ever hear about that knocks you out has a trippy dreams yeah I do yeah just any herb that I ever hear like will knock you on your ass I basically put them all in a blender and just drink the whole thing and so what happens you know it's guy actually I made up this drink it's called the knockout punch and I've given it to a few people and they tried to drive afterward and it didn't go so well oh so sleeves been really big neurofeedback dude peak brain LA I mean shout out obligatory but but legitimate we were together for a little while though yeah so actually you have it's funny speaking of sleep when I came in and did the sleep protocol yeah that helped my sleep more than any of that other put together I forgot about that that was like the fat that was actually the foundation of it and then you know I'd been tweaking the temperature and the light and stuff like that for a while but I remember coming in going on my sleeps like a little wonky and whatever you guys did to me it was like all sleeping gasps straight through the night which is incredible so that's been huge and then you know honestly the past years been really challenging in terms of interpersonal relationships and it's like I think the spiritual lessons that I'm supposed to learn right now involve how to have intimate relationships in a healthy way at forty six you know that that's kind of what's been going on and it's been really stressful to learn some of the lessons that I've been learning and so coming in and doing like the Alpha Theta oh yeah you know those deep plunges that are what are they like 2030 minutes the alpha theta the way we do with you I think we're wanting you for 36 or 39 okay yeah I mean that's I liken that to like a float a dry float tank that's like which is another thing at a click on that hypnagogic state halfway between asleep and awake which and so I've never done floats in spite of everyone talking to me about floats I've never done a float but my perspective is that Alpha Theta neurofeedback and a float tank can produce a similar sort of liminal in-between state is that absolutely yeah absolutely it's the state where you're you really don't know if you're awake or asleep because you're dreaming like I did a float the other day at a place called just float in Pasadena there's another one I do in Westwood called float lab if anyone's interested both of them are fantastic but I did it float the other day and I'm in there for two hours there's for those of you that don't know what that is there's no light there's no sound and you're floating in you know a bath of epsom salts so there's no gravity and an air temperature and the water temperature the same temperatures your skin so the idea is that you disassociate from your body and it just kind of sets your mind or consciousness or whatever it is free to do its thing so it is very much the same the other day I did a float and I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or not if I was like because you do fall asleep which is weird you're laying in water but you sleep there's no chance you can drown because you can't flip over you know yeah because you're so buoyant you're perfectly buoyant so just your face pokes out you know so I'm in there and I'm dreaming I always have the same dream when I'm in a float and it's like I think someone's knocking on the door or the alarms going off telling me that it's over and I'm always like damn and I don't want it to end yet and then I open my eyes and it's totally dark in there and you can't hear anything I go oh wait now I think I was asleep and similar kind of things happens in the Alpha Theta where I'll hear you guys out there in the office but then I'll kind of come to for a second I realize I was just dreaming about hearing you guys out of my office or whatever it's a really trippy play so that's one of my favorite ways to de-stress would be both of those things interesting in fact I want to come to Alpha then go directly to the float tank and see what happened oh well uh that could be really deep yeah so I think it's like the old drug addict in me you know I really I was never into the I was into the slow jams let's just put it that way up there I really liked the state of like not being awake but not mean asleep I don't like to be stimulated I like to be kind of knocked out which sort of explains why I like Vedic meditation when my former partners is company that closed recently called alternatives addiction treatment in Beverly Hills and we use did a lot of moderation focused work and one of the principles there dr. mark Kern is known as the habit doc in Beverly Hills dr. Kern talks a lot about the magic elixir you choose and what that means about how you deal with your desires your stressors your coping strategies and seem it seems to be that when you pick a specific drug you tend to do other things in your life that give you the same kind of experience you know it's not like you're doing coke out in the parties and then you're sitting meditating all day long like there's the tens of congruence of what makes you feel that's you know support that's very very interesting and true yeah because I noticed there was like back in the drug days you were either like a Tweaker I did like crystal meth or you did opiates oh and we're a STONER you know and it's like those two cliques never really mesh you know I didn't running out with tweakers they were too hyper and weird you know so I agree with that another weird thing about the drugs is that like when I did Downers even like really you know smoking weed or whatever it was things that would normally knock someone there as it would make me very vivacious and talkative and kind of hyper even opiates you know I wasn't listening I wasn't laying there on the couch even if I did enough I would but it made me like jovial and if I did stimulants like cocaine crack crystal meth I would just sit in the corner and couldn't say a word oh wow there's like most people that do those stimulants like you know solve the world's problems high on coach and all the day just keeping each other yeah they can't shut up so it's weird but I I know people that have the opposite effect to you know but yeah Downers make me like come out of my shell and kind of get you know buoyant and and in the opposite stru with those so yeah you're right I like things now that really calm me down so neurofeedback has been huge float tanks have been huge I am also just on the way over here I stopped and did an ice bath mm-hmm and that my brother I live really close to the studio and my brother has a gym called story Fitness right on Pico it's like six minutes from here and we fashioned an ice bath out of one of those like you know horizontal freezers you get from Sears and I see you put your I always think my dad used to have like venison in the garage like his hunting meat was like frozen one of those things in the garage and I saw someone on like wim Hof's Instagram or something that made a nice path out of that I was like oh there's actually not ice in it it's just like water that's 35 degrees and you just plugged it in so a little bit of water and you have like a $500 beautifully functioning ice bath so I have come to love the cold so I do cryotherapy or an ice bath sometimes both I'd say five days a week oh my goodness yeah and I'll sit in there for 10 to 20 minutes I'm 35 40 degrees and most people put their their calf in there and they're like ran down the street screaming yeah yeah but I've been doing cold showers for 20 years so when I found out about wim HOF and all the stuff okay there's something to this that's why you can't put me by a body of water without me jumping in I mean I don't care if it's January in Colorado I'm like jumping in that water love hot springs and things like that so I really believe in kind of the hydrotherapy hot and cold alternating and then I do a lot of infrared saunas - what kind of effects do you think you get from the cold baths well one thing for sure with the cold baths is it definitely stops the production of lactic acid okay and inflammation because I can go work out like crazy man which for me isn't that hard compared like a jock like a super physical guy but we do like high you know high intensity interval training at story fitness and it's pretty hardcore you're swinging around club bells and kettle bells and doing a lot of bodyweight stuff and it's pretty intense and and I went from like no working out maybe it's like two years ago I basically didn't do a lot except yoga and hiking and swimming and stuff like that very gentle to those hardcore workouts and I was at the same time also doing the ice bath right after I worked out and I had a girlfriend at the time and she was like a total gym rat and after every workout with my brother coach oh my god I'm so sore for three days she'd be sore and I was like huh for from what what are you talking about it's literally like I've never and sore from working out from the eyes fast so that's one but there is another theory like dr. Ron droop at runt Rhonda Patrick has done some research and determined that if your goal is to build muscle that doing an ice bath right after lifting weights is not good because the inflammation is what builds muscle and if you shut down the inflammation right away you're kind of screwing yourself yeah but I'm an ectomorph I'm never going to have muscles anyway so when I give a I just want no soreness and the inflammation because it allows me to work out harder the subsequent days because I recover so fast so the inflammation the lactic acid all that stuff from being sore but mainly what it does is it just totally resets my mind so interested yeah so I did it on the way over here because I was just grinding working today with my school prepping for a trip in New York I was all hot and I used up a lot of mental energy and I knew I needed to have some acuity coming in or to have this talk with you so I said okay I went and jumped in the ice bath for 10 minutes I meditated in there and there's just something so centering about getting in that water because your nervous system wants to go into fight or flight it's just like what are we doing in here it's your nervous systems telling you you're about to die and you need to jump out but when you can sort of override your nervous system that first moment when I get in it's kind of like and I just I breathe it probably takes me ten seconds to go into parasympathetic and just surrender to the cold which took you know years of doing that most you'll get in like you know they just freak out right and it's incredible like how much control you actually have over your nervous system if you know that you can do it yeah yeah so I really like that same with cryo you know I get in there and it's like go for a second yeah that's a little freaky and then I just breathe and then I'm totally relaxed and it's almost like in the ice bath it feels almost like my skin is hot doesn't even the only thing that bothers me is my hands if the water is like 3540 degrees my hands hurt like hell that's the only thing I can't seem to acclimate but the rest of my body just feels so relaxed in there and I'll just Center my breathing and I just go into this really really centered place it's like a different type of meditation do you find the experience of nice bath versus cryotherapy that's cold air is a different experience in some specific way yeah the cryotherapy is good because I go to what I think stood the best place I've ever been to it's called next health it's on low end is yes yes actually less I love windy justice really for sure she was on my show and she's like I mean she's not famous that I'm aware of or anything but she's like my third or fourth most popular downloads Oh interesting yeah Wendy Michelle yeah amazing we did like a two-hour just shoot the kind of episode so yeah next house but what they do with their crowd that's cool is it's cold air rather than liquid nitrogen which most of the vapor to burn use yeah so it really feels like you just stepped out of like a helicopter in the tundra of Alaska or something like you know you go from like LA heat you walk in it's like it feels like a snowstorm right 160 below for three and a half minutes Wow what I like about that is it's quick hmm and I'm sure there's other benefits scientifically that I'm unaware of versus an ice bath but it doesn't penetrate a deep you go in ice baths for five or ten minutes that's like 3540 degrees like it rocks you to your core I mean you have to get out and do some Tai Chi and the Sun and like it's back up its going to take you a minute to warm back up cryo I mean five minutes later I feel totally normal but I do get the I think it's like a serotonin kind of rush in the cryo so you do get like the happy feeling that you get from the ice bath and it you can get it in three and a half minutes so if you're stressed out or something like that it's a really good reset but I think the ice bath is just much more impactful interesting yeah because it just goes to your bones right little your core reacts and get you sit in there and it's like dude I usually have like a fatty coffee or an elixir it was you know grass-fed butter bulletproof coffee something like that I'm off caffeine right at the moment as an experiment to Mable to tell you about but you have like a hot fatty drink and then get into ice baths and then get out and get in the Sun I mean you can't be depressed Oh interesting it's like everything yeah it's the best antidepressant in the world well anti-anxiety just totally resets your whole world because you just overrode your whole nervous system that wants to die and you're like nope I've got this you can overcome that then like the business partner problem you're having or the relationship thing or whatever kind of like you doesn't solve it but it shrinks it down to size a little bit puts it into perspective that's interesting so caffeine here's the thing I got my genetic test done and from Wendy actually had next health and I always thought that I was really sensitive to caffeine yep because as I said stimulants like get me too stimulated but I love the taste of coffee so much like you you have the best coffee - I don't know where you get your coffee at at peak Franklin ohms a deliberately dated you have really good coffee every time I come in there if it's like 5:00 and afternoon or something like I really shouldn't but I got to do it so I love coffee but I've always thought it was really sensitive but I did the genetic testing it turns out I'm a really fast metabolizer of caffeine so you know I don't know if it's just because I sometimes drink black coffee and it kind of hits me too fast if it's not mixed with fat or maybe some of the coffee is moldy I know we've had discussions about the existence of moldy coffee and if it's just a bulletproof marketing scheme or if that's really true I can definitely say if I go into Starbucks and have like a tall black coffee I'm going to feel like jumping off a bridge like something in it that's not agreeing with several times the caffeine of a nice women we make you a pour-over at peak it's you know probably got a hundred milligrams of caffeine or something in it and when you get like a 16-ounce coffee at Starbucks its problem with the numbers are like 250 300 milligrams okay so and also they typically do very dark heavy roasts okay which means a lot more char a lot more of the sort of burned off oils we can reduce that darker flavor alright so it might be more acidic that way you might be more sensitive those sort of things we always use just FYI super light roasts right here he always is very light roast grind very very fine another trick we have in white coffee so good is it's usually roasted about two days before you're having it oh really yeah we get most of our coffee from place up in Portland called seven virtues oh cool and the relationship with those guys they have a relationship with all the farms they get their coffee from and so they like do their you know roaster selection on a Sunday ship it to us on a Monday we have it on a Tuesday or Wednesday and then for the next few days we're using like incredibly fresh small batch coffee okay so I'm it's not just in my mind it actually is really really good cuz cuz I don't know violation like maybe when it's psychosomatic when I come into peak brain I just crave coffee because I know my brain is going to get a work out of it I'm doing like a focus centered I'm training but I'm like hi this is so good like the taste of it so so now just as an experiment to see how I do without caffeine because I'm pretty dependent on it for energy yeah I mean like I got to have it but I just got involved with this company called neuro hacker collective oh yeah sure Daniel Daniel our collective work was on the show comes oh that's great yeah awesome I've strapped in it's a little hard to keep up Daniel on a podcast good an army listen to your episode in in preparation but so I've been on something called qualia the product it's like a nootropic stack is just dude it's insane yeah very stimulating it is so good yeah like I've it's been three days you take like three pills in the morning then later on you eat something you take six more the the six you take after it's called step 2 kind of more of a multivitamin kind of thing that's supportive of the yep nootropic stack in the ones you take before but I don't know it's stimulating but in a different I guy don't get nervous yet like I do sometimes with caffeine but I gotta say like my brain is turned on and I've tried all the rasa Tam's I mean anything I've ever heard of that is good for memory focused cognition any that I've tried and this one is like insane so that's why I'm doing the no caffeine experiment cuz I want to really isolate it today I cheated I put a little bit of phenibut HCL in there ooh okay just because I just you know I like that gaba yeah feeling down it's like being drunk without but still being a focused there's there's all Fenian I think in quality right or you know I'm not sure it's there's a lot a lot of it yeah there's phenol you can be you know dangerous for listeners who have heard about Fenton boot Fenna beulah HCl it's basically alcohol in a pill in terms of its effects and if you use it once you're like oh my god I felt so relaxed or the best night's sleep ever I was mister social to party yeah but if you use the next day and the day after that suddenly you're addicted to it like you've been drinking a bottle of alcohol for like six months yeah it's incredibly rapid and I know people who are you know shall we say experienced Psychonauts who've done everything under the sun including lots of crazy things that you probably shouldn't do and a few days into trying fun of you they're profoundly addicted yeah so it's one of these things that maybe it's an individual about chemistry but you can get very quickly in trouble with some of these some of these things hi Larry in front of you I agree yeah phenibut I I had a friend that was not for recreational purposes but physically just had really bad back and she was addicted to oxycontin so she was like addicted to opiates for real and and she was out here on a trip from New York and she was running out of her opiates and so we're like oh man her doctors not out here right you're going to get really sick you can't just quit taking a great cotton you know she had like a really injured back and so I don't know is doing some research and there's like low and behold scent of it it's like a substitute for it's a it treats withdrawals opiate withdrawal so yeah great so I gave her like the real dose one day she's like oh my god I feel amazing this is perfect I'll be able to make it a few more days and then the next day she's like I don't know give me more I like that stuff I was like okay so probably put like half a teaspoon or something in a drink for her and she got so sick did she really like bummed like like like dizzy yeah dizzy really not feeling well at all so I was like oh you really need to pay attention with the phen of it you're right with today you know if it has a tiny little scoop and you're like what's that going to do try something like I've od'd on I've od'd on on yohimbe - oh that can be - oh yeah dude I almost drove myself to Cedars and I was and it was right before I recorded a podcast the guest shows up and I was like I might die at any moment so if you see me Sud over but a cent of it for me I've what I do is I just cycle it like there's no way I'll take it days in a row ticket a couple times a week because I can tell when it's not doing anything I haven't noticed any adverse effects but I can tell when I don't get that nice thing so I save it for special occasions like I did it today because I knew I was going to come record and if I'm doing public speaking or like you said something where I'm going to have to be really social it is a nice sort of social lubricant but you don't feel intoxicated right I mean I can't do stuff that makes me feel intoxicated or I could go off the wagon and end up in LA County Jail in about two hours you know so I would say when people ask me like why don't you drink if I'm allergic they say what happens oh well I break out in handcuffs I've heard other people say I break out in track marks now that I wouldn't go that far but yeah I definitely I have to be careful you know in terms of taking stuff that gets you high and also mean interactions right I mean if you had fun a bit and had a glass of alcohol on top of it you might be in you know dangerous yeah I agree of interactions yeah and the yohimbe you mentioned the interaction there is with tyramine you know about this so tyramine is what you don't take if you're on MAOI inhibitors Oh smoked meats fish cheese wine coffee all those deep savory smoky kind of things have tyramine in them and if you are on my inhibitor you take tyramine you can have a hypertensive crisis that spikes your blood pressure so quickly that you have strokes and heart attacks and die holy crap so it sounds like if you were shaky and having like a heart pounding thing you probably had some chocolate with your yohimbe you know or nuts I think I I don't remember what I had but if you wanting to just die it when okay when you take I got yohimbe because I was experimenting with the aphrodisiacs rx-8 that's why those people take it but this was one morning I was just really tired and I know that it's also really strong stimulant to I wasn't you know there was no partner around to practice with so I was like oh I'll just you know I'll take a little bit in my smoothie whatever wake me up you know but the the dose for the yohimbe is like a match head mmm that's how big was like a wooden match head like a tiniest little coke spoon and so that's the only thing I've ever done is that much and it you get the desired effect that you're looking for but I what happened was I had a tiny little bottle and I went to like scoop some out and I spilled the whole jar in my smoothie and I was like oh I didn't want to waste it and it was all floating on the top so I just scooped the yohimbe out of my smoothie I was like I'm good but apparently there was probably a lot up in there yeah and dude within 15 minutes my heart started beating out of my chest I turn red I mean I will yield a hypertensive crisis oh dude I was not feeling good I took two saunas I took like three cold showers I took a bunch of activated charcoal I got a gum I took a calcium bentonite clay like zeolites I mean I was just like trying to flush it out and still it went on for about four hours oh I live really close to Cedars it's important so I was like any moment I'm driving myself for calling an ambulance ISM it was that close I've never felt that weird like yeah my guess is a reverse there was some tire means in your smoothie or something else you had to get a lot in your system chocolately before a lot of nuts something because that sounds like what happens when you don't pay attention and have tire means with mu lies in your system Wow I was gnarly in it you know just really sucked too because I was trying to record I'm like the host of the show that wedding is yeah and I was just like you know breathing really fast weird and my heart was beating yeah but this is what's good you know that's why I'm the life stylist I'm you know I'm sort of like the johnny Knoxville of the health world you know I'm willing to willing to take a hit you know for the team to let people know like hey this is a cool thing to play with but be careful you know like Tim Ferriss does a lot of that stuff too I wouldn't do a lot of stuff Tim Ferriss does but I'm glad he does so I don't have to do right right exactly you know go fight a judo master injure your arm snapped in half or something like I'm good yeah with you now is he doing it is it fighting he's doing though I don't know if there's also sort of hardcore training here you know he in boxing gym well he's always bandaged up you know so I'm like whatever he's doing I'm not I'm not doing anything that requires getting bandaged up yeah neurofeedback painless totally bad yeah that's great all right so something have a lot of things that you're trying what are some things that you're either just starting to get into or you're curious about getting biohack wishlist items or interesting yeah there is actually a device that I just tried the other day that's called the amp coil and I've played around with PMF technology under in there and I've also played around with what is it not PMS no the little light tubes they use for cancer oh man I can't think of it right now not enough qualia dismal a its Tesla Technic no it's not Tesla technology it's PMF with oh my god is it a light stimulation thing or now dude it's the thing we used for cancer here hang on I'll tell you what it is right here the amp coil is this device that uses two of these different technologies and I'll tell you what it is drumroll please nice I can't believe I'm not thinking of it okay I haven't yet tried okay so it's Tesla based P EMF okay and there's a Tesla coil not yet Yulin musk yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly and then oh right right right techno so over the course of all my wacky alternative healing stuff that I've tried I've used rifle machines the one that I've used is it's like a little laptop computer and it essentially reads by rhythms within your body and then sends frequencies into your body to break up parasites and things like that so it can say like oh you have h pylori and it sends a frequency in your body that cracks the h pylori in theory okay sort of like an opera singer breaking a wineglass you know that kind of thing like if there's a certain frequency for all of these organisms so in the RAI few you hold these little glass tubes and they have noble gases and then it's really trippy but you hold those things and again it's one of those kind of alpha-theta things you just go into some trippy land and you come out like feeling really good so the amp coil combines both of those technologies and it's really interesting because it's got this big magnet a big copper magnet like a giant doughnut and you either set that on your head or on your abdomen depending on what the protocol is and so it sends this crazy Tesla coil pmf signal to you according to whatever it's trying to treat in conjunction with the other technology so with the rife so how it determines what it is that you need is through voice recognition so it's got like an iPad sort of interface and you go AEIOU whatever you just say ran that it tells you to say and it listens for it has these very advanced algorithms that determines in discrepancies in your nervous system or whatever it is according to your voice it's really trippy so I went on it for one day for like three hours then again same kind of experience just in and out of all these things I walked in there was having terrible anxiety that day because of some relationship stuff and did like a number of different sessions for maybe three two or three hours or some and it was incredible but I got the whole spiel from them and I'm going to be working with that some more because the woman that turned me on to it had like all of these gut infections and digestive problems for years and she tried her below madhi's and functional medicine and she done everything that I would normally do myself or send someone to do and she's like dude I did a three-month protocol I followed all you know everything in the app and I just did everything by the book according this thing and she got rid of everything by doing that instead her God in her digestion her just like absolutely cured like she never had a problem in her life hmm so interesting yeah so those kind of things I really like it's like you never know how much of its woowoo and how much of yeah I add something toughen the biohacking and in the the health and medicine space that's not traditional health and medicine this is a this is something I struggle with all the time I work in neurofeedback which is you know which of course is fairly well evidence-based from the point of view of most of the things in the alt world incredibly well validated that's the point of view of most the things an additional world it's not all that well validated and so you know for me as a scientist I have to sort of draw a line in the sand okay this is over that line therefore I'm not going to engage with it this is within that you know relative line rife has been one of those things it's one of the far side of the line for me for a long time but DMF is not I mean there's a lot of neurofeedback being done with in conjunction with pea EMF oh really yeah it's incredibly low voltage pmf like you know Piko volts or something it's not the same kind of EMF you would use a PMF when those coils it's in credit you know it's one one thousandth of that but it uses something called neuro field next we make the cue EEG amps that we use the brain assessment amps that we use but they also make a P EMF device that can stimulate at different frequencies sites on your head and then you can do neurofeedback on the resulting EEG that shows up so you can measure the G do real time there are feedback but then push the EEG around with PMF and then do more neurofeedback to sort of cement the process that's amazing it's exciting technology I haven't gotten into it yet mostly because I have pretty good results with the way we work yeah you know and I tend to fall there's another stimulation technology neurofeedback but I don't use anymore called lens low energy neurofeedback and there's a similar one called hpn high-performance never feed back and these are essentially essentially series of stimulations along you know areas and scalp and everything work very well for damage for traumatic brain injuries and things because I work with all brains about just working with damage I find that things like that don't work as well for sleep issues or anxiety or stuff like that interesting and so I tend to use the tools I use because they work pretty well I'm not really religious about the tools but I am religious about the science that's coming say well that that's the thing with me too is like I want to know if like there's the placebo and there's a subjective effect like I went on the amp coil I was like this is amazing there's something going on here just intuitively I don't know if it's the right it's the devil what if what would really be cool is to like which I just actually got my whole gut biome tested and there was nothing you know crazy never there's a little bacteria little Candida so let me look at my labs then go use the amp coil for three months then get my labs done do together that's what I know so right now in another experiment with I have really like almost lead poisoning I have a lot of lead in my body but good and pretty decent amount of arsenic and Mercury it's really sucks so I found that out with a challenge urine test which is where you do a post and a pre urine test to determine how much is just in your body versus if you ate some tuna or something right and I had test in the past three years of functional medicine always really high Inlet I'm like I don't want to do the IV chelation I just don't want to do it it is intuitively my body's like no it's also quite stressful for your body and and the key letting agents are pretty extreme and you know if not done properly you can actually get pretty profoundly ill from those and yeah Keeley and also Keeley there's some question is it doesn't make more sense to leave the let alone versus stir it on outside your body so okay so here's my latest experiment is I'm doing this citrus pectin oh okay yeah which they use you know at Chernobyl and stuff at radiation out of people and then I'm also using something called bio filum bio filum which is a brown seaweed extract okay which they've also used to get metals and radiation out of people they use it like in Gulf War Syndrome and stuff like that I'm it's pretty hardcore and so I'm doing both of those and then I'm also doing niacin flushes of the sauna yep so I'm going to go for I just got my labs done I'm going to go six months with those three modalities like religiously think of my labs done and see if I moved the needle yeah on the metals you know because I have a feeling I will now LED they say gets into your bones and like what are you going to do it's just in there but yeah let X like calcium basically and not just in your bones but like in your neurons you know a physiological science professor of mine used to joke that life is a battle against calcium ions you're always trying to shuttle calcium out of the cell essentially and then it comes back in as a signaling molecule and life is about balancing that that shuttle and calcium back and forth but lead looks like calcium to cells and binds the calcium receptors usually doesn't find the way that's reversible it sticks or sceptre and that's it there's no longer usable by calcium ever again and so that's probably snapping the bones is it's being corporated the way calcium would be that being said bone is not static tissue it's dynamic tissue of osteoclasts and osteoblasts that consume and build bones of a dynamic process so I bet if you add weight-bearing exercise things to stress your bones you'll cause more dynamic turnover a bone tissue just a honey interesting I wonder if vibration therapy would maybe also do the same you know i vibration therapy sounds really exciting to me and I got excited about when I first heard about it and I fail to find one shred of actual science and we're looking at but I like building bone density yeah yeah mean nothing I I've looked and found nothing about it real effect isn't that funny like in the health world there's these memes like I just hear one person say like well they use it on astronauts when they come back in the atmosphere to build bone density lost in space ago okay that's what it does yeah I mean it seems like an interesting but I have to believe that challenging the bone tissue while doing things to strip out crap that's in your bone tissue would do something even though the conventional wisdom is that lead gets in and stays in I bet that's got like that probably is not completely true that's interesting so you may want to add a protocol in to do that I can do that yeah so that so I you know I like the woowoo stuff and I like just out there for technology but I also just love to see if there's an actual quantifiable result you know I do have a little bit of that scientific mine room I yeah I don't want it to all be wishful thinking right I want to see an a/b test and show me that something's going on yeah and you know don't get me wrong not that I have to understand everything about what I do and I wouldn't do neurofeedback if I do I joked that it's a phenomena we manage half the time not some oh yeah sure let's go in and fix your brain actually joke that I'm sort of half between a personal trainer and a mechanic but that's giving the mechanic perspective way too much benefit we really don't understand the machine to that degree but that being said if there's a technology that I don't understand it's fine if it's a technology that people are saying works for X Y & Z reasons and I know X Y & Z is utter nonsense that's when I like wait a minute that no that's not how reality works the thing you're saying your reasons for justifying it if those are wrong I've discredited what you know your technology I don't have if you give me I don't know why it works but it works I'm much more likely to say oh yeah let's check it out versus it works because it helps the third moon of Chiron when your ascendant in Jupiter treats your chakras better it's like really come on well that's you just described Kundalini Yoga you know it's like Yogi Bhajan says that this does this to your kidneys and this heals your past lives and this sets your grandpa free in heaven you're like I don't you know can you prove it no but after class I feel really good right exactly really I have a hard time with some of that stuff too as out there and Sedona vie it also it also can be damaging I mean you know there there's a lot of damage going on these days with the anti-vaxxer event you know there's zero zero not one shred of evidence that vaccines encourage autism not one shred of evidence and a bad study 20 years ago and a lot of fear-mongering has meant that a lot of parents have pulled kids off of vaccines they don't get vaccinated early on and they get life-threatening illnesses if you get the measles vaccine at two years old whatever it is for the next twenty years your health status is dramatically improved compared to if you don't get the music vaccine because measles is an opportunistic virus if you get it it degrade your immune system long-term and you're subject to all these other infections and then of course you know we had in Disneyland here a couple years ago massive measles outbreaks because of unvaccinated individuals and you know there's no reason for us to have this polio outbreaks happening in the world not because of this there's no reason for us to have measles rubella polio diseases we understand extremely well and have been treating effectively for like a hundred years maybe 50 years but the it's it's this adherence to a bit of a misinformation that's faith right that's and I think that we need some faith thinking about we believe our science but if you adhere to the the bad information strongly without the ability to examine it that I think causes you know can cause a lot of problems yeah that's interesting with the vaccine someone was asking me about that the other day and yeah I'm by no means a expert but I said you know from a layman's point of view just being interested in this and read everything I can I'm like seems like some of them are valid but we probably do too many ya know this probably probably too many in terms of stress in the body out right now they can probably spread out a little bit right but like the form of mercury that's used in large batch of vaccines well hey that's not really used in this country anymore but B it's not the same form of mercury that just gets absorbed by the body it's a damsel versus methyl or something so it's a form that passes straight through with no grab how interesting it has zero impact and so people hold up these arsenic mercury and well that's not really true it's it's sexy it's inflammatory it's a big attention getter but there's zero evidence there I mean yes there are vaccines that occasionally cause trouble but by and large we don't have any evidence of any of that funny that's so many people yeah it's interesting the way that we kind of just go along with with information like that well information that fits our worldview we can absorb information that doesn't set a worldview we tend to not even perceive yeah well the you know the trip the other side of that though Andrew is like I mean not in terms of the vaccines that I really don't know about all of it I just have like an inherent distrust for every part of the big establishment sure I'm not sure gotta be bad for you if they're doing it but the in terms of empirical evidence you know it's in the woowoo thing and I like talking you about this because you're you know you're into metaphysics and spirituality but you're also very scientific so that's that's a good balance to have but what's trippy is there's so many things that have an effect on us they just can't be proven it's like how do you prove the effect of love yeah you know like when you walk in a room and a puppy's wagging its tail like the one in the other room they're how to prove to me that that's not making me feel good right that it is why I don't know because I like puppies because I watch cartoons know there's something going on between our energies or our consciousness out something that transmits a feeling of love to me and it makes me feel elevated algorithm proof isn't needed I mean subjectively you're getting the benefits right it's when the proof you're claiming or Disko or just believing it's when other people believing and just believing that affects their health negatively like if you went and said everyone must have a puppy it probably wouldn't affect very many people's health negatively right but I said nobody can exercise ever again it's bad for you would have massive we already do but would have increased heart disease and everything else so it's really this de strict adherence to these ideas blindly be it science or be it spirituality or be it unproven you know health intervention it's the blind adherence that tends to make me go awake hold on a second you know right and if you're a buzzword compliant this one neurofeedback system out there we're all they're like cadre of you know marketers are saying nonlinear nonlinear nonlinear and I asked somebody what do you mean by that nonlinear I have a degree in neuroscience two nonlinear modeling of the brain you know down the model of different equations and things what are you talking about when you say your system is nonlinear and they can't answer that because it's a buzzword that they figured out and other buzzwords in the health and medicine and wellness and by hacking space that really drive me nuts include things like detox or quantum I'm sorry if use the word quantum and you're not a theoretical physicist get out of my face yeah like yeah yeah this is this there's marketing and there's sexy language that's people believe and I think you need to be oh that's one of those words that if you're saying that you don't know what you're saying right that don't want a the quantum thing yeah yeah there's a lot of that in the new agey sort of medicine you know yeah I mean that's the in terms of like the amp coil and all these different kinds of gadgets it's like I like the idea of experimenting with that stuff and testing it but the thing is with all that is everything's like five ten fifteen twenty thousand dollars you know so it's like specially the first rice suitcases yeah twenty-five thirty thousand you know yeah massive exactly the log divided out you know and I've been on all of that kind of stuff but it is kind of difficult from that perspective because a lot of the languaging is like was that really even a thing when it makes a guy you know like the quantum where that's so try to thought about that but it's like it works on a quantum level I'm like oh okay here's a grand right exactly what you said quantum where's my credit card exactly and that's and to me you don't have to believe what you're doing and you don't have to understand it fully but if you if things feel the sniff test because they're using because they're actually saying things that aren't true to justify why this thing works I'm not saying it doesn't work but the reason you has given me has turned me off completely to what it is you're talking about yeah so that's the that's the line of try to walk is to go is what you're saying plausible and does it fit with roughly with my idea about how reality and physics works you know there's an inner feedback system out there that trains below one Hertz point zero zero zero zero one Hertz which means that one waves happening will cover you like three weeks or something in EEG that in physics is a the Nyquist theorem for sampling eg you need to sample twice as long as the way if you want to measure when I measure a fadeaway which happens four Hertz four times per second it's 250 milliseconds got a measure for half a second to get one theta wave to get signal processing theory at point zero zero zero zero one Hertz you can't measure long enough in half an hour of training to get any effect to measure the wave you're supposedly you know rewarding or inhibiting so it's things like that it's when the language and the explanations the science starts to break down by people that should know better that's what I'm like all right you're just going you know well that's the that's the advantage you have of being highly educated and the disadvantage of people like me that have fallen for a lot of snake oil you know maybe I mean although I just got back last night from a five-day workshop retreat basically I was an amount of Sufi mountain top in upstate New York and we released the center out for the week and we do you know ecstatic work and shamanic work and drumming and tattooing a nothing all night long and is there any you know scientific rigor in my understanding we do not at all I understand it from an ecstatic you know traumatic point of view about the ordeal and Mercedes Audi pushing your mind and changing your consciousness and from a ecstatic point of view I understand what's happening to my consciousness I'm shifting the shape of my perspective from a neuroscience point of view it's a non-starter I have no idea what consciousness is in fact I don't actually believe in consciousness from both a neuroscience and a Buddhist perspective I'm not sure consciousness really exists I remember you telling back to me before and I was like how but then who's the one watching when you meditate like who's the one that sees your yeah emotions flare up you see a little wave of anger and then you you see a repetitive thought like who's the one observing observing that a nama nod you know I would suggest it's a moment of consciousness little see without a who without an I capital C consciousness that persists across moments of consciousness I think moments of consciousness are an emergent property and I was being it away from the maybe to the soul maybe there's not made as a mind whatever it's an emergent property I think that's pretty valid but the overarching connection of those moments of emerging consciousness into the capital C or the capital I self not sure I have any belief in that and you know I sort of take a ship of theseus old-school view on this you're placed one plank of the ship in a wooden ship with a tin plank is it the same ship yeah it's another plank on the ship with a tin ship with a tin plank is it the same ship yeah at what point does the does the entity the identity of the entity different and in consciousness it from my perspective it's different than immediately and even the the meatsuit you know we replace every molecule in all of our selves every what seven years or so not a result gets the divides but every cell repairs and replaces molecules and you don't have any of the molecules you had a decade ago so none of what you were carrying around 20 years ago when you had some of those out-of-control dysregulated behavior is with you now all right got a sight of having memory you guys are having a memories and experience you're learning yeah but is that learning necessarily identity right that's where it all breaks down for me that's interesting so it's almost from that perspective then there's just one giant consistent consciousness and we tap into that for moments is that I would say there's no consistent consciousness is only the consequence of action and dependent origination from a Buddhist perspective things exist and they exist because of things that happen before them but I I mean I'm a terawatt a sort of Buddhist basic technique no cosmology and for me the question about what happens beyond the physical realm or the cosmology the creation the universe stuff is not only to some extent not knowable but it's the wrong question you know what's what what is it what it's very possible for us to reduce suffering improve how etc etc etc now and we aren't doing that so do that and worry about if you have a self or soul or consciousness outside of the momentary experience well will that change how you behave we'd be nicer if you have a soul do you think you have a soul all right maybe I think for me I'll just worry about my problems less okay I mean it's like I know that this is temporary whatever it is that I'm going through but if there's no self then your problems don't really matter that true you know yeah that's true so I wonder what happens then I have this book called I think it's called the big book of near-death experiences mm-hmm it's like this big tome of the book and in the book all these people describe essentially what happens when their physical body dies they'll say they're being operated on in the emergency room and they you know flatline and then they are floating up in the corner of the room and watch all the doctors maybe everything that's said and then grow they bring them back you can say resuscitate them and then they come back like yeah dr. Smith you just said this to dr. Gale or whatever you know and it's like what that F just happened and that those things are so sort of universal they are not to poke a stick my pin the balloon again no I love it because this is the kind of that I love to talk about and just trip on because we really don't know a we really don't know and keeping that perspective is the first healthy thing we have to do is go we don't know yeah but we can we can think about what might be true and from a scientific point of view neuroscience to point of view there's a company that produced a device a friend of mine who recently died helped do all the algorithm for it and the device is called the by spectral index by a SPECT medical and what the by spectral index does measures the coupling of theta to gamma waves the timing coupling in the brain turns out that timing coupling is precise and if you break that coupling you lose consciousness and if you have that coupling you are conscious you can look unconscious but be conscious and the amount of conscious under anesthesia experiences that happen in surgical centers was very very high I think for most of surgery and then in the 80s or 90s part late 90s maybe even like 2050 one aspect medical came in suddenly there was almost no anesthetic sort of you know mistake where you're you think the person is unconscious but they're actually perceiving so I'd be really curious to see if out-of-body experiences near-death experiences in surgical context have gone away with the implementation of this by special index device in almost every hospital in the Western world interesting so I'm not sure what the answer is there but I have a data point that some grad student could get a dissertation either cool that's cool yeah what about what about the unified field or the unified mind where you know I'm thinking of my friend Jeff and my comment got to call Jeff and then Jeff calls you know those type of things and I found with certain relationships it is uncanny it's nonstop or where you complete someone sentencer yeah you know you're like hey have you ever thought about you know skipping a rock across a lake and they're like dude I was just about to say do you want to go skip rocks across a lake like some bread I don't know you know yes in a movie you know there's no like other context for it that would like spring both of your memories at the same time it's just totally random that or or there is something that you didn't perceive at a contract level a where level and it's more unconscious and alright like when you hear when you hear a pop song on the radio and then like five hours later you find yourself singing or like that's weird why did that pop into my head and it's like no you just heard it like in Kenny oh maybe you want to bus and you saw sign and then they think what the thing on the side are so right so I don't know is a short answer but unified consciousness positing something we have no evidence of versus a queueing theory of memory that we have lots of evidence for you may have a sense of which died on coming down in the sand and so so I love it dude I'll stop being a Lulu Scrooge here for a second and it's been a great hour Luke so much thank you so much for coming on the show before we let you go where can folks track you down find more information about the things you're working on where can they check out your school of fashion where can they check out the podcast sure well I think most people listening to your show probably aren't that interested in becoming a fashion stylist that visit is called school of style but you know that's just that's how I buy vitamins you know but my podcast is called the life stylist and you can find it on iTunes and then most of my stuff happens on my website which is Luke story com great and I work with people in a coaching capacity and stuff like that people that are interested in things that I've been talking about I'm pretty good at lifestyle design and often someone kind of put all this stuff together for themselves and then I'm also really big on Instagram too so I'm always on Instagram at Luke's story that's sto re why and I do a lot of Instagram stories and crazy stuff you know like everything that we just talked about I'll document it all the time when I'm doing the things like that so that's a great place to connect as well alright folks Elizabet another episode of head first a dr. hill today's guest Luke's story who is a consummate life stylist will help you dial in all kinds of health wellness and performance benefits if you're curious about operating in the somewhat Wild West space of biohacking look them up and folks take care of your brains and we'll see you next week [Music]