Ryan is a former fitness model and gym owner turned writer, speaker, and biohacker. He's a mental and physical performance specialist with a degree in Food Science & Human Nutrition from Clemson University. An avid hunter, you'll often find him in the woods.
Episode Summary
CILTEP and the Science of Cognitive Enhancement: A Deep Dive with Ryan Munsey
The supplement industry is littered with proprietary blends that hide their ingredients behind fancy marketing. But occasionally, you encounter something different—a product built on transparent science and actual mechanisms. That's exactly what happened when I sat down with Ryan Munsey, Chief Optimizer at Natural Stacks, to discuss CILTEP and the broader world of cognitive biohacking.
The Problem with Most "Smart Pills"
Most nootropics are snake oil. They promise cognitive enhancement but deliver nothing more than expensive placebo effects. The industry thrives on proprietary blends—secret formulas where you have no idea what you're actually putting in your body or how much of each ingredient you're getting.
This opacity isn't just annoying; it's scientifically useless. Without knowing exact dosages, you can't replicate results, adjust for individual differences, or understand why something works (or doesn't work). It's the antithesis of evidence-based optimization.
Natural Stacks took a different approach with CILTEP. They published every ingredient and dosage—what they call "open source" formulation. This transparency immediately caught my attention because it suggests they're confident in their science.
The CILTEP Mechanism: Camp and Long-Term Potentiation
CILTEP stands for Chemically Induced Long-Term Potentiation. The name tells you exactly what it's designed to do: artificially trigger the cellular mechanism underlying memory formation and learning.
Here's how it works at the molecular level:
The Camp Pathway The core mechanism revolves around cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), a crucial cellular messenger. CILTEP uses a two-pronged approach to elevate cAMP levels:
- Direct activation via forskolin (4mg)
- Indirect preservation via artichoke extract (900mg) containing luteolin, a PDE4 inhibitor
Phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) is the enzyme that breaks down cAMP. By inhibiting PDE4 while simultaneously activating adenylyl cyclase (forskolin's target), you create a sustained elevation in cellular cAMP.
From cAMP to Memory Elevated cAMP activates protein kinase A, which phosphorylates CREB (cAMP response element-binding protein). Phosphorylated CREB acts as a transcription factor, upregulating genes involved in synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation.
This isn't speculation—this is the well-established molecular cascade underlying long-term potentiation (LTP), first described by Bliss and Lømo (1973) and refined through decades of research (Abel & Nguyen, 2008).
The Supporting Cast: Why the Other Ingredients Matter
CILTEP isn't just forskolin and artichoke extract. The formula includes three additional components that address practical limitations:
Acetyl-L-Carnitine (750mg): Prevents the cognitive fatigue that early users experienced. Without this addition, people were crashing by noon—great memory formation, terrible sustainability.
L-Phenylalanine (300mg): Provides dopamine pathway support for motivation. Memory enhancement without drive to use that memory isn't particularly useful.
Vitamin B6 (5mg): Ensures you're not hitting a rate-limiting factor in neurotransmitter synthesis.
This isn't random ingredient stacking—it's addressing specific physiological bottlenecks identified through user feedback and mechanistic understanding.
The Peak Performance Obsession
What struck me most about Ryan's approach is his systematic pursuit of peak human performance. This wasn't some casual interest in "life hacking"—it was a methodical investigation into the mechanics of excellence.
His background illustrates this perfectly: food science degree, competitive athletics, personal training, then eventually becoming a "human guinea pig" for Natural Stacks. He's constantly experimenting—EEG monitoring, heart rate variability tracking, testing every new biohacking tool.
This obsessive attention to detail matters because optimization isn't intuitive. What works for elite athletes might not work for busy executives. What enhances memory might interfere with sleep. Individual variation is enormous, and you need systematic approaches to navigate it.
The Caffeine Connection
One interesting mechanistic detail: both caffeine and CILTEP work through phosphodiesterase inhibition, but target different subtypes. Caffeine primarily inhibits adenosine receptors (though it also affects phosphodiesterases), while CILTEP specifically targets PDE4.
The practical result? They're synergistic without being redundant. Dave Asprey apparently loves combining CILTEP with his Bulletproof Coffee protocol, and the mechanism supports this combination.
Evidence and Limitations
The mechanistic story for CILTEP is solid, but we need to be honest about the evidence base. The core cAMP→LTP pathway is well-established neuroscience. The specific dosages and combinations? That's based on smaller tests and user reports rather than large randomized controlled trials.
Natural Stacks has tested with memory champions and seen improvements, but these aren't peer-reviewed studies with control groups. This doesn't make CILTEP worthless—it makes it an informed experiment rather than proven medicine.
The Broader Biohacking Context
Ryan's work at Natural Stacks represents something important in the biohacking world: the marriage of mechanistic understanding with practical application. Too much of the supplement industry operates on marketing rather than science. Too much of academic neuroscience operates in isolation from real-world application.
The sweet spot is products designed by people who understand both the cellular mechanisms and the practical constraints of human optimization. Ryan works with Olympic athletes, Hollywood celebrities, and endurance racers—people whose performance demands are extreme and whose results are measurable.
Practical Implementation
If you're considering CILTEP, approach it systematically:
- Establish baseline metrics: Memory tests, cognitive assessments, subjective energy/focus ratings
- Control variables: Don't change multiple things simultaneously
- Track consistently: Daily logs of dose, timing, effects, sleep quality
- Cycle strategically: Chronic cAMP elevation might lead to receptor downregulation
Remember that no supplement works in isolation. CILTEP enhances the encoding of whatever you're learning—but you still need to be learning something worthwhile.
The Future of Cognitive Enhancement
What excites me about companies like Natural Stacks isn't just their current products—it's their approach. Open-source formulations, mechanistic thinking, systematic testing. This is how you advance the field rather than just profiting from it.
The brain is incredibly complex, but it follows biological rules. Understanding those rules—from molecular mechanisms to network dynamics—gives us rational approaches to enhancement rather than random supplementation.
CILTEP represents one small piece of that larger puzzle. It's not a magic pill, but it's a scientifically informed tool for people serious about cognitive optimization.
For more insights on brain optimization and neurofeedback, visit Peak Brain Institute or check out my other articles on evidence-based cognitive enhancement.
Full Transcript
[Music] welcome to another episode of head first with dr. hill this is your vodcast on all things brain and I'd lean into it and get some science get some inspiration about what is happening inside that 3 pounds of jelly sitting on top of your shoulders today's guest is Ryan Muncie Ryan is a personal trainer and nutritionist he's also the chief optimizer at natural stacks and works with a wide variety of clients including athletes from around the world have them optimize their brains Ryan's the heads to the optimal performance podcast but actually I was a guest on not too long ago and he is a two-time best-selling author has two books to nutrition blueprint and abs for athletes that's kind of exciting so Ryan wants to tell us a little more about you what you're doing what you keep your days busy with as a biohacker yeah so I guess for the longest time or for as long as I can remember I've just been obsessed with a weak human performance whether it's in the mental or physical realm and I think anybody who has seen it or experienced that you know it when you see it and it's almost a mesmerizing thing and I got to witness it firsthand in college and it's just been a pursuit ever since then too you know optimize it for myself but to figure out the mechanics behind it how do we achieve it how do we get there and how do I help other people do the same thing and it is evolved over the course of 10 or 12 years I started with weightlifting and bodybuilding and that became sitting this model moved to New York did that that wasn't really where I wanted to be I thought that that would give me a platform I knew I needed some sort of platform for people to listen to me yeah but it turned out you know that that was a little bit more of a superficial world to live in and I wanted to modeling I can't imagine yeah right who would know so I moved back home to Roanoke was a personal trainer started my gym house of strength in 2012 where house style performance-based training and from there got really heavily involved in biohacking was listening to Dave Asprey Joe Rosen and that's where I was introduced to natural stacks and things just started snowballing with them I knew I wanted to get out of the gym to be able to help more people on a daily basis and reach a wider variety of people instead of just the people who lived in Roanoke Virginia sure sure so it's just kind of everything timed perfectly got married my wife finished residency she's a physician animal we knew that we were going to be moving so we moved to Virginia Beach recently and so she's internal medicine hospitalist and I get to be the chief optimizer for natural stacks and so what is that what is the chief optimizer it's a really cool title and an uncool question to answer because no two days are the same for me you know right now I'm we're in LA I'm traveling out here to get my brain hooked up that pea brain in the cerumen site we're doing some EEG s looking at you know how my brain works based basically being a human guinea pig testing all realms of biohacking and and and performance optimization whether it's you know things like heart rate training or heart rate variability whether it's Fitness related whether it's mindfulness or anything that can help us that we can use as a tool I'm learning it I'm experiencing it you know I get to take advantage of being that curious person by nature mm-hmm we accumulate that information and then we're sharing it with our audience and helping as many people as we can put these tools in their toolbox is about curating information out there as well as producing products yes so with natural stacks you know our our mission is to provide all of those tools and all that information you know we do have supplements we do have the things that people can can take on a daily basis to help but we also realize that you know that stuff doesn't work unless you're living the lifestyle that supports your the results that you want to get so we're putting that information out there we're educating people so for me it's it's the podcast it's blogs it's emails okay you know helping all of our customers who write in you know you mentioned in the intro helping people all around the world we've got endurance athletes who are out there doing 100-mile races we've got Olympic athletes we've got Hollywood celebrities movie stars the the spectrum of people that we get to help is so cool so varied it's just it's a it's a blessing to be able to do this so do you still have time to keep yourself healthy and fit and moving forward in that peak performance biohacking realm or you still are you working more on helping other people this point it's definitely been a challenge yeah it was something that you know with given my background in I had a degree in food science and human nutrition I have you know the string Coast background used to own a gym so you would think that those would be things that I could put on autopilot sure and I sort of made that mistake over the last few months when things got really busy and and that's not to say that there was this huge dip mm-hmm but it was noticeable to me and and for make sure so it's definitely something that I still even ten twelve years into it you know being as I don't want to call myself advanced but you know I know what I'm doing sure but I still have to focus on it in order to get the results I'll have to actually execute you can't just be my momentum with physical fitness yeah yeah so so that has been a little bit of a challenge but fortunately you know I have people around me who you know kind of give you that check I call it a check I don't know if you can say that on here carbon gut check but you know they give you that check and make sure that that you move forward and you're doing what you're supposed to be I mean it to me that's part of accountability and surrounding yourself with people that you know will hold you accountable and keep you moving forward that's wonderful say let's let's dig into into natural stacks a little bit so you know I of course helped design a product called true brain natural stacks main product is called silt silt app I'm somewhat familiar but actually not thoroughly familiar so top is a blend or a stack right yeah that'll things yeah so so for us the the stack is several ingredients included in one formula formulation to provide a synergistic effect of that is greater than you know the individual component sure so with silt up we've got five ingredients all natural it is patented but part of what we do at natural stacks is that we're trying to avoid well not we're not trying to we do avoid proprietary balloons but we go we hate the industry standard of hiding behind proprietary because that's do I good nice well well done I'm highly approve of actually disclosing ingredient amounts yes that's nice yes and we call that open source if people are familiar with like coding you have open source code it's the open source initiative and you know we want to know exactly what we're putting in our body we want to know the ingredients we want to know the amounts and we think that the consumers have that right to know as well absolutely so we make sure that that's you know for fun on all of our labeling but with natural stat or with silt up specifically we've got artichoke extract and forskolin okay those are the kind of heavy hitters in that now what is forskolin so it's an herb it so it's a plant and it's been used in bodybuilding circles for a long time to promote fat loss and muscle gain okay but that daily dose is typically somewhere around 20 milligrams okay insult up I think it's a lot closer to four milligrams but with the artichoke extract that's actually a PDE for inhibitor Casa de ester is mmm and so by inhibiting that that that enzyme P de for down regulates cyclic AMP a sure so by preventing that we get an indirect boost in cyclic a.m. pica and then with forskolin that is a direct increase or of cyclic AMP II so we get elevated levels of cyclic AMP EA or camp and what you experience when you're on set up is this increased engagement or increased focus desire to be engaged in whatever it is that you're doing okay and then because we have elevated camp that leads to increase long-term potentiation 30 Peter sure so when we say focus and memory on the label that's how we're achieving it and you know if you're better able to catalogue the information that you take in while you're on it you know then you're better able to recall it later so much more Feder encoding therefore better consolidation exactly and better recall later so we've done some some short small tests with memory champions who improve their recall after using silt up the other ingredients in the stack are acetyl l-carnitine which provide brain fatigue yep in the early iterations of silt'e people were crashing like noon without the alcohol interesting that prevented brain fatigue and then there's phenylalanine for a slight kick down that dopamine pathway so you get a little bit of motivation shore and then b6 just to keep everything you know from you're not missing out on that rate limiting factor yes absolutely so it's wonderful so i'm kersten me uh phosphodiester is being manipulated or suppressing it caffeine also is broken down essentially by phosphodiesterase do you get a potentiation of coffee or caffeine when there's silt up in your system they certainly work synergistically I don't notice feeling profound yeah I wouldn't say that I feel more caffeinated about taking silt'e okay but they definitely work together so you know we Dave Asprey and bulletproof you know that's that's a strong relationship that we have he loves sill tab were the only non bulletproof product that they sell on their website he's a big fan of salt up so it definitely worked synergistically if you want to even either drink black coffee or add butter to it and do a butter called a ninja so when you make your own bulletproof are you butter in and MCTS or what's your IM recipe I actually use ghee instead of butter okay I'm I don't respond well to dairy okay so about the dairy proteins the ghee is the fat is that is that true I'm not yes but totally formula mean I cook with ghee but I don't know what it is beyond refined or a clarified butter clarified butter so you can make a at home and basically what you do is you boil it until you get these solids at the top and skim them off and those solids are small amounts of dairy proteins okay like if you look at the ingredient label of butter it would say zero protein but if you cook it you will see some studies about so there is some in there and so for me I don't get that inflammatory response from those dairy proteins with ghee but I do get that from butter got it for me that manifests as like bloating filmy skin I actually get like a psoriasis or eczema type rash on my foot okay and that's that I'm O'Leary that's always an indicator for me like if I have certain whey proteins or any kind of dairy protein that always flares up not interesting okay okay cool see I used to do some coconut oil and butter but honestly I like coffees flavor way too much and I'm a huge fan as I'm sure you are of minimizing starches and sugars and maximizing fats in your diet but I've gotten away from the bulletproof approach to coffee because I like coffee too much I like the flavor and if I actually had enough fat to make it quote-unquote bulletproof it masks the flavor too much so I have intended to get my fat and other sources like you know avocados and bacon and yeah yeah like that I've actually gravitated more towards that recently um you know when we were in your your office this morning at peak brain you guys were making coffee and it smelled so good I like I've got a had some of that and I actually I'm drinking it black today but but normally I would do I do a French press at home so for a full French press I do about 20 grams of ghee and 1 tablespoon ok Thrain octane ok so it's not the full heavy low and a half of like David suggests yet it's enough to get you know my vitamin k2 and all the good stuff yet on the ghee and those fats but not enough to make it taste like butter and less like coffee because I'm a huge fan of coffee I just love coffee yeah me too I wake up in the morning with way too much blood in my caffeine stream so tell me what else you do to biohack personally I mean I'm assuming you're taking this tilt up you're doing you know doctored coffee to get the good fats and to have stable blood sugar and good you know MCT sort of brain metabolism being supported what else you doing day-to-day as a bio hacking intervention beyond just living in a momentum sort of lifestyle yeah I think there's there's so many things we could talk about in in a sense of like daily practices or habit uh-huh um that I don't know people would necessarily consider biohack ok like what do you mean yeah what other things are just lifestyle versus so I think you know I have a morning routine ok and and for me you know I I try to I try to make my day my own I try to dictate my day as opposed to so many people wake up and the first thing they do is they check their email and to me that automatically puts you in a reactive Ursula yeah you know scenario so you know I'm not checking my email on my smartphone while I'm still laying in bed ok good good you know I don't do that I actually won't check email until I do until I accomplish the first thing the one thing that's all my to-do list for that okay so to me biohacking is is less about how many things can I add on to like what I do as much as it is about how can I achieve maximal happiness productivity efficiency motivation whatever so life hacking not just body and biohacking yeah I'm not I'm not bio hacking to collect things to do yeah now every once in a while I will do some experiments and currently for the sake of our podcast I'm experimenting with a pea EMF post electromagnetic field Delta sleeper okay so that's a little like a two inch by five inch square that I put below my cloud paulownia and and I use that to induce delta waves and fall asleep faster okay to work on the chest because it's hitting the vagus nerve or what the reason is supposed to be the break you okay I kept this show him and so I'm doing that I played with the ketones for podcast that we did with Dominic Yaga steno let's see I'm testing some some heart rate variability measurements to assess recovery and readiness okay which I think is phenomenal I have not found the hardware yet that I like yep yeah it's a big issue with HIV and I understand problem I played with quite a few the chest strap for me is a pain in the butt because you have to get it wet I'm not going to sleep with it on right so that means I have to wake up get it wet slap it on somehow I'm not a huge fan of that I'm playing with a finger sensor right now that hooks up just like in the hospital when you have a shirt or some get rolling up and it looks straight into the it was the most reliable but they're necessarily easy to manage it's actually not it takes me anywhere from right now five to twenty minutes every morning to get a solid reading or really okay which that's not sustainable for me I will do it temporarily but you know the data is invaluable but it's kind of a pain in the butt to deal with that right now yeah you tried the either the aura ring or the beddit strip that's the aura ring is next on my list yep I actually had not heard about that until recently yeah then then greenfield interests me the RS seems like an interesting device yeah that's how that's how I was into it and if then introduces a lot of things to people yeah is all about being the ambassador so yeah yeah so I think those would be kind of like little hacks that I'm doing but I think going back to like what I was saying about practices and habits and you're so so I'm a big you know to me productivity is a big thing um in some of the productivity hacks that I employ you know I don't check email often I try not to okay I'm not as good at that how many times a day do you plan at least to check email to deal with you know the plan is like three to five okay sometimes it's like late morning midday mid-afternoon and then don't be stressed about reacting yeah so I'm a yellow legal pad guy oh wow I cannot live without that I write everything down on that every single day I have a to-do list written on there okay and then on the right side I have my one thing that if nothing else gets done I do this thing because I had a mentor coach early on and and he used the analogy of football and three point four yards per play his name is Paul Reddick and if you play football if you're familiar with the game then you know that it takes ten yards to get a first down and as long as you don't get to fourth down you never have to punt and if they never stop you you know you're scoring a touchdown right you know the goal of the game is to score points team with most points wins sure sure so if you average three point four yards of play you win essentially or you clear all data field always moving the ball down the field you're always getting first downs and that's you know to me life and whether it's business or whether it's working on neurofeedback you know if I'm a client of yours and I'm working neurofeedback the thing that you want to see from me is progress that I'm writing I'm doing the work I'm focusing on the actions not the outcomes to get there yeah and so for me it's like that one thing that I write down on my to-do list that's my three point four yards if nothing else happens on this day I got that done and I do it first thing in the morning so you still you're still moving the ball every single day you're still making progress yeah and then everything that I get accomplished after that so the rest of the day is gravy right right right you know so I won't check email until after that I do that one thing so I kind of out of order here but I wake up I actually drink a morning detox drink every morning okay we can talk about that in a minute but as I'm drinking that I'm drinking that as my coffee is brewing sure and I go outside and I said I've got a front porch swing and I sit there if it's nice if it's not I'll sit down quietly inside do breath work going to set my intentions for the day sometimes it's gratitude journaling sometimes it's you know I've got this thing where I randomly if I'm in a bad mood I feel better when I check on other people or send encouragement to other people you know so send a text to like five people and say you know hey you got this or like hey you crossed my mind thinking about you whatever you want to say to the people who you know are in your life so I do that that takes about five minutes go inside get my coffee go to my desk knock out that one thing yep and typically it's you know all that's accomplished by 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning and like at my days I it's done is that it's not done but I've had a productive day and it's really only just starting and you know you build momentum your focus you and then you just roll from there that's wonderful so that's that's the first hour hour and a half two hours a day and I'm guessing that you aren't sitting out back and resting your laurels rest of the day no it's I have call it like the entrepreneur verse employee mindset okay where a lot of employees they look at how can I make time pass right like right if you work an 8 to 5 you go into the office and it's like okay how little can I do between 8 & 5 and and make that time pass and get out no that's not everybody but some jobs sure so you're marking time versus accomplishing tasks right and for me it's completely opposite it's okay how much can I possibly get done and I think that's why I gravitated towards the whole biohacking movement when it first you know kind of exploded onto the scene was wow there's other people out there that think like me that want to get as much done as possible you want to move forward that want to do you know be involved with as many amazing projects as possible I mean you've got a lot going on you have a lot of different and a lot of plates spinning so to speak right yeah and it was it was cool to realize that there were other people like that and that there are people optimizing that and learning how to be better and more efficient at all that so nice very cool all right switch to diet for a second that we should always talk about diet and these kind of you know podcasts I'm guessing you're pretty congruent with the way that I tend to eat which is essentially leaning minimizing all starches and sugars maximizing fats but beyond that general rule which I'm guessing is not a big surprise to most people who are in this space what sorts of things do you adhere to as have you found is really effective for cognitive supporting good out the continued effort and cognitive output and what have you found can like throw you you know what are your big like oh I did this today and I'm going to have two days of fog or yeah whatever actually that's a good question so background on me my degree is actually food science and human nutrition okay if I done an internship after college I would be an RD okay but I had that chance to become a model and it was you know do I want to be an intern and pay to learn things that I already know that I don't agree with right or do I want to try to get paid to lift weights and you know alright well tell myself and Aubry yeah yeah so you know in school right away you know the curriculum was was split into two different sides one side was the nutrition and the the programming the community type stuff how do you teach what are you are you telling people to do the other side was the science-based stuff okay so in the science-based classes you know we took them all microbiology biochemistry organic chemistry you name it I took it and in those classes you learn how the body works and as a scientist you've been there you know and if you understand systems then you know how you can manipulate them and bend them to achieve whatever you want to achieve so I'm sitting in these classes and that's just kind of how my brain works anyways I'm always thinking about it like that and then I go into the you know the nutrition classes and we've got you know an overweight unhealthy looking teacher saying avoid fat well at all foods fit you know it's okay to drink a can of Pepsi you know blah blah blah and I'm like no like yeah I know you wouldn't be saying this if craft or Nabisco or General Mills was not paying for you know the programming right No so right away I saw the influence of big food in you know everything that was going on but you know I am a minimal effective dose for carbohydrates okay proponent what is that what does that mean for you effectively I mean women effective does I say it that way because I want to try to clearly communicate that I'm not no I'm not no carb I'm not anti carbs I realized that like the ketogenic diet has a ton of amazing benefits and and I follow it myself most of the time I do intermittent fasting and a majority of the time ketogenic I will have carbs I guess you could call it a cyclical ketogenic I don't get caught up on you know labeling it or when it has to join I am also a strength athlete right and when I talk to dominate D'Agostino and Mike Nelson on our show you know they were in agreement with me that the more often and this is this is how I define minimal effective dose as well the more often you're training at a high intensity the higher the intensity and the more frequently you do it the greater your need physiologically for Carla absolutely absolutely and and so it's impossible for me to say how many carbs or how frequently you need carbs without knowing that yep so as to me that's the determining factor okay so it's all about the glycogen Reserve and muscles essentially that you're stripping away with intense exercise essentially and and if we can have so so Mike Nelson is a big proponent of what he calls metabolic flexibility ability to go back and forth between your carbohydrates or fats as a fuel source and with Dom that was the same thing you know he doesn't necessarily call it that but you know if we are healthy and not dysfunctional then we can do that right and if you are generally fat adapted you know that's kind of where we want to stay that's where we want to live but for somebody like me or for somebody who maybe even more frequently you know I'm certainly not a competitive CrossFit athlete but if I was doing crossfit five or six times a week I'm going to need carbs more often than once or twice a week yep but the idea is that we want to keep so for me I look at it as a time under the insulin curve oh great that's what we want to that's what we want to minimize yep not only in an acute like daily weekly monthly setting mm-hmm but over our lifetime so how interesting I know as soon as I say that you you can visualize it sure yeah but if somebody's not a scientist if you look going from left to right you know as time goes as time elapses you're moving left to right on a graph insulin will increase or spike following the ingestion of carbohydrates because they're always no matter how good quote-unquote good the carbs are they're always broken down into glucose is the usable form of energy with glucose we get an insulin spike that's how it clears through your blood and that as that spike is up the longer it's up then you have what we would call like area under that curve on the graph so that's actually time under the insulin curve we want to minimize that on um like I said on a daily weekly monthly and lifetime basis so you know as Mark Sisson says that you want you want to burn as much burn as little sugar over your lifetime as possible you know and I say you know minimum effective dose so if you're if you're so so you do some people do need carbohydrates and if we have them if we eat them you know we want to we want to get that window up and then close it as quickly as we can and get back to you know fats for a fuel source minimizing that time under the insulin curve so so for me it's it's almost like the default setting is being fat adapted or ketogenic or whatever and then you know having carbs when you need them you know as needed sure now from my perspective I would sort of conceptualize that as remaining insulin sensitive and keeping yourself sent it to the oscillatory signal of insulin and the signal that goes up when you have sugars and goes down when you don't and so for you it's about not pegging insulin keeping it up from my perspective the lack of variability of signaling molecules in the brain and body means that the system's receiving that signal become less sensitive to signal and that's one of the things that leads to degradation in cortisol and insulin everything else yeah but the way that I typically manage that is just minimizing carbs unless I maximizing carbs I sort of have a you know I'm perfect eighty percent of the time yeah and then you know we have ice cream on those other days but for you it sounds more like you're thinking about the the length of exposure if you will to the sugar signal when do you do your carbs is it right after you work out hard you have empty muscles and your refeeding that 50 gram mikage in that you can take in or are you doing it before sleep for GH Bert Boote bursts or when I do it personally is it different than when I recommend it for most people and that's only because like I said I do intermittent fasting and what does that mean for you is that a window eating or I typically eat one meal a day okay mid midday kinda thing midday somewhere between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. okay so so that's why I say what I do like I'm not going to recommend that to other people now if other people do it great okay here's how we can do it but I realized that most people will hear that and they're like oh that's weird yeah so for me it's just if it's going to be a carb day then I have them in that meal okay so it's really easy for me to figure out when to have them right because I like eating more like yeah no that's not to say like you know there are anomalies or there's days where our travel like today we may have a small lunch and then a small dinner and I'll just basically have two meals can I take what I would normally have I'd it into two but but yes I think for me I think about it as a window and it's if I had to put a time on it it's probably a 20 hour fast and a 4 hour feeding window but if it's one meal it's usually like an hour feeding windows or um so you know I would have my carbs then and you know for other people I think later in the day we know we're better able to handle carbohydrates later in the day I'm a big proponent of not having carbs with breakfast okay we know what the hormonal profile of our body looks like early in the day when we wait no recorders all should be peaking yes if we don't mess with that then you know we get the growth hormone we get glucagon we get ghrelin and that cascade promotes fat loss it promotes mental clarity and it is actually muscle preserving the growth or them so the other thing that we can do to really screw up our mornings that way is to introduce carbohydrates because as we said earlier you're going to have insulin then you're going to have insulin present when cortisol is at its high and those two things don't play nice right now those are the two storage hormones one stress one storage and they don't play nice that leads to cloudiness in your brain brain fog as well as fat storage so like the two things that basically define optimal performance you're going to screw up right right so so just so I understand I'm actually not a biochemist so when you spike insulin through dietary sugars you suppress cortisol that direction goes in no you wouldn't suppress it because so the cortisol peeking in the morning is what helps you get out of bed and that's basically our circadian rhythm sure or your biological clock so cortisol should actually be at its lowest around like 6 7 8 p.m. and then it Peaks around 4 a.m. or something a little bit after that actually but it starts to rise at that time and it will actually peak around 6 7 8 a.m. okay and it's different for everybody sure but basically it should kind of follow like you know the Sun and you know dark schedule yet but it Peaks and then as long as we don't do anything to disrupt that cortisol pathway it's going to slowly trend down from first thing in the morning until later in the evening now anybody who has driven in LA traffic or works a desk job or basically lives the typical 2016 lifestyle there's so many things that disrupt cortisol sure but when cortisol and insulin are both you know present they don't play nicely and you know it does lead to that fat storage so it's not that it disrupts the cortisol pathway as much as just you just don't want them both elevated it so then some more disrupting secondary things cortisol we producing I mean I know this in relationships between growth hormone for both cortisol and for insulin yeah so if if you do introduce insulin at that time in the morning you're going to prevent well first of all you would definitely prevent glucagon because glucagon insulin or inverse yeah and then you would not get the growth hormone release you would not get ghrelin because you're having the carbohydrates you're having insulin secretion yeah interesting hey let's go back to a second to the education thing you're talking about so you have a degree in food science yes I've been seeing a lot of this you know of course we're both in this sort of biohacking world we're both focused on ways of eating which to a large extent fly in the face of conventional wisdom for the past 50 years now I think both you and I would agree the conventional wisdom is with regards to diet and nutrition and I feel that it was bad marketing in the 70s and 80s that really on this really bad path for obesity diabetes cancer and even Alzheimer's which is really driven by blood Sugar's regulation to some extent so I mean you're preaching to the choir here but I I come across people who are interested in doing dietician or nutritionist programs or studying you know biochemistry and food science and they often get to meet people who I often interact with are believers of this paleo primal keto approach and they get very frustrated when they try to find an actual education program that has that mean there is science out there showing that keto is pretty good for your brain right there's no science out there that's actually good science that shows that fat is bad for your brain at least not recently and all the studies in the 70s that showed fat was bad didn't control for sugar so it's fat and sugar is very very bad but sugar is kind of bad in the absence of fat and fats not bad at all in the absence of sugar so I'm wondering if you as a sort of lean of food scientist guy have discovered that there are there's a shift or not towards embracing you know some of the science around these high-fat low-carbohydrate low starch based dietary seeing the the field of food science shifted all did still stuck 20-30 years ago you know I was so disenchanted with okay academic world that I haven't visited it or seen it since I left college what was that when I was a 2008 okay so still pretty reason and and like I said earlier in our talk you know when I was in school we were taught one thing in the science classes and then the nutrition curriculum was completely opposite of that and that's you see this as you put it conventional wisdom but it was clearly paid for by big food then which it was you know as we know there was that New York Times article that came out a few weeks ago you know where the Harvard scientists were paid by the sugar industry to fudge and say that you know it was fat there was the enemy not sugar you know and and that set the precedent in the late 60s that formed the last half a century of what was taught what was promoted you know big food the all the government regulations it's all opposite what we here in yeah paleo keto you know new science worlds so you know academia will always lag behind yes cutting-edge research it just it has to use and marketing gets in the way gets stuck I mean we you know we think that fat is bad culturally in Western size because we're told that on TV with every commercial for the past you know 30 years right by the same token I'm of course a brain guy this feels very similar to this idea that we have a chemical imbalance in our brain the chemical imbalance doing mental illness is utter bunk there's there's been no ever not one bit of shred of an evidence that you can have a chemical imbalance chemical imbalance in the brain or what happened right before you died right like the only time you have a chemical imbalance is before you die or when you have a seizure otherwise it's a regulatory domain that's very complicated but the absolute level of a neurotransmitter isn't really meaningless unless you know everything else about the circuit receptor density phosphorylation and even then it's very imperfect this strikes me as that where it's sort of thought to be true but it's really sort of secondary to what's probably real well and it's really frustrating because you know you you can't fight the government right you can't fight big food we're doing a great job of you know getting the whole grass fed the pasture raised that all of that is growing but the if you still have that I think it's a generational thing to like sure people my age and younger are very inclined to you know seek out their own information seek out alternative sources you know they're their main source of information input is not you know the local news at 6:00 p.m. where my parents generation sure and older you know that's whatever whatever is said there or whatever my doctor says that's gospel sure that's that's an interesting thing and it's very hard to fight conventional wisdom in those demographics yeah yeah but but the younger generations and people who are more inclined to seek out information on their own yep that information we're getting it out there and and I think we're definitely making that change and you're seeing so many signs of that I mean you see you know Whole Foods are everywhere now you see things that are grocery stores and markets that are even you know on a higher level than the sheriff for sure heroin exposes us of a lower-end whole foods that is you know more selection assume that so we see that we see you know there's there's so many podcasts like this there's alternative education you know outlets we're getting it out there people are interested in it they want it but but in academia that will always lag research because you have to have follow-up studies you know nobody's going to teach anything until they're sure of it but also you have to remember that those those programs are funded by the people that were basically trying to out poorhouse you know with this new research so I don't see that changing without some kind of you know cataclysmic you might be right although I will say my mom who is president says I think she's 68 eat paleo exercise three hours a day and calls me for piracetam refills every three months oh where did she get that information she got it because she we have live Alzheimer's and Parkinson's in the family and she's very concerned and I'm a neuroscientist and so you know she's someone appointed she got I got a preemie she didn't get it home I know the one that knew that door right so so I think it's up to us to continue to you know be relentless and tireless with what we're doing sure you try to get that information out there because you're certainly not going to come from mainstream so let's speak more about sort of misinformation earlier and not to jump on you earlier you mentioned the word detox and for me that's a hot-button term what did you mean by you say she doing a detox drink every morning tell me more about so what you're doing there I call it a detox drink I'm not into detox as a sore point as I hate that stuff thank you but it needed a name and morning detox drink is what I call it because really all it is so originally I've been doing this every morning for like seven eight years and Louise gentleman first lady of nutrition she is big on like fat flush and detoxification she was a big proponent of warm water first thing in the morning guy with organic lemon juice that one water opens up the digestive system you don't want to wake up and drink ice-cold water because everything will clench up and sure that's not a good way to start the day tonight but lemon has a compound in it the moon which is highly researched it has even anti-cancer properties but it also supports liver function yeah which you know the liver is the body's filtration system so it can have detoxification properties but it also helps with bile production yeah the lemon and the D Lamoni which for those of us following a high-fat diet is incredibly important yeah because if we can't metabolize the fat that you're eating you're not really loans and I'll try the exact call them exactly so so the drink is warm water with a tablespoon of organic lemon juice a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar I do a teaspoon of sea salt okay some people can do a little bit less it depends on your size and then I do a dash of cayenne so that's my drink I didn't have a name right when I did it myself so so that's where morning detox drink came from I certainly don't see it as like a cleanse yeah yeah but you know the benefits of apple cider vinegar are you know they're wide spread they're huge the salt helps up regulate blood pressure every morning is Monica pulling that water into your cells get the salt and that actually protects the adrenals which you know in our life again anything we can do to protect adrenal function sure helps and the Cayenne has metabolic enhancing properties and you know so I just I drink that and it wakes me up it's wonderful it's not caffeine there's nothing wrong with caffeine but yeah yeah it has a whole lot of health promoting well I'm glad you didn't follow down on the side of actually saying was detoxing cells I mean of course as you probably know there is no way to you cannot put toxins in your body to clear out you know things but you can't accelerate the natural process of removing toxins from cells it's just happening all the time and if you drink you know special drinks or do special diets you're not going to actually clear things out of your system it sort of falls into that category things like quantum or 10% your brain or other sort of urban legends of biohacking that just aren't remotely true and so well I'll enlist your help to help me come up with a new name all right there we go there we go cool so um you're flying around the world you're doing all kinds of things I'm just curious I mean you're here in LA it's a Friday morning what did the past week or so look like in terms we're what you know who have you seen where have you been what kind of ventures have you had I mean how many different directions are you moving in this you know sort of evangelist biohacker kind of chief visionary kind of perspective you have yeah so it's been crazy let's see last weekend was actually a weekend at home so I'm trying to go back to last Friday that was probably my first weekend at home with my wife in a long time something we both enjoyed that tremendous area the weekend before that I was in Austin Texas at an event called the vanguard okay and one of our natural Stax co-founder and I Ben were there and that was a 48-hour basically the ultimate man camp okay but there were females there as well so I think the ultimate men camp includes women will set you know but that's an event run by some special forces guys okay and some of their friends and it's a really cool thing that they have it's basically their circle of friends and what they've done is they have it's I have not been lucky enough to be introduced to the xpt oh sure yeah but it aside Sun similar it's a very similar thing there where you have this group of high performers and edge one has their own skill set that I bring to the group and as a collective group they're getting better by focusing you know you're becoming a more well-rounded individual by attacking and learning where you're weak and bringing the things up to the strengths so you know we did 90 minute instructional blocks on some survival skills land navigation butchery so we actually butchered our own chickens on Friday and then we had them for dinner on Saturday so you know you really get to see where your food comes from it's a very intimate relationship with your food and I mean as a hunter I've had that experience before but a lot of people don't have the reference of where their meats coming from exactly they're able to ignore lots of things political health-wise yeah you know around this thing I'm eating so yeah so back to your question I mean that was that was a really cool experience to be around people who are they're high performers in their own right but they're also um they're not getting complacent and they're they're always pushing to try to get better so to get to be around people like that is phenomenal they also own too those guys who run that on a gym called atomic athlete in Austin Texas okay amazing Jim so that's where I lift when I'm in Austin one of the cool things about traveling like I do is I get to create these relationships almost in every major city so I know people that run amazing facilities in every city so I know I know where I float when I'm in Austin I know where I float when I'm in LA I know you know which gym I go to so so just on this la trip we got out here Tuesday night saw you Wednesday morning we got the baseline readings on the EEG went from there to a gym here called deuce gym which was actually the epicenter of the butter coffee a really a bulletproof stuff that's their story so I can introduce you maybe about a little bit that's a guy yeah and so we did that we did something else we were we were at erawan which is one of those stores where we were doing staff training so that they're better able to educate the customers we did a demo I got to run into a bunch of people who are other influencers at erawan you know we were back with you meeting with some other champions and ambassadors this afternoon we'll be a bulletproof coffee shop there's a home show tomorrow where I'm meeting with Klaus a guy from tsamina beds with the world's healthiest bed it's just everybody who's into some aspect of health and wellness and fitness optimization you know we're lucky enough to have interactions with them and every time we travel I'm like okay who's out there yeah that have a relationship with and everybody's less what's touch base women let's stay in contact and you know foster those relations great yeah I mean I was on your we recorded an audio podcast two weeks ago or something and then I could see twice this week when you're in LA should we talk about if you pull back the covers a little on your on your brain for our listeners let's do it all right nice so for folks that have either seen the show or are familiar with quantitative EEG this is an assessment process we do which compares one person's brain to a normative database essentially and you end up with heat maps you know statistics that say how unusual your brain is we did yours a couple days ago totally clean no caffeine no silt up and your brain looked a little bit inattentive essentially it was really healthy overall I haven't seen many many more things if you see been she'll you'll see that this was pretty horrible to start but but your brain Ryan was actually really quite intact performant no anxiety markers no sleep issues no head injuries really pretty clean except you made about two to three standard deviations higher amounts of alpha waves eyes open and eyes closed than the average person who's your age or gender etc now what that probably translates to functionally is a little bit of in attention getting stuck in being Spacey you know you might even have been called something like a DD you know twenty thirty years ago we don't use that label anymore for that problem but inattentive essentially in it's had some issues with shifting attention being stuck in neutral a little Spacey my wife would agree with what she okay she listened is laughing as we speak probably and then today you came in and we did exactly the same thing another qejy resting baselines nothing fancy but you had silt up in your system and the difference was all of the Alpha X s is dropped by about a standard deviation now to put that in context when we actually make changes in brains with neurofeedback which is one of few things in permanently change the brain we get about one to two standard deviations in about three months of aggressive training and with one dose of silt'e probably not a permanent change obviously but you've got a baseline shift of equivalent to a month or two of hardcore work on your brain so I think that you know it's an end of one of course we should may talk about doing a little bit larger and but yeah this is how you do research is your first see what happens on the individual level your brain waves are you know essentially self blinding because you can't control them and we saw a statistically significant change dropping excess alpha meaning that you which you should I would assume feel more crisp more alert more engaged and that's sort of what you described the effects of silts up in general anyways pretty semantic sense of engagement versus maybe checking out a little bit yeah and I mean I was hoping that that's what we would see so we do it you don't know and and right I was really really excited to see those results and you know the interesting thing to me is I only take one pill and then the dose vers lo does ya the dose for silt up is three pills and I've just seen over experimentation over the years that I actually do best with one pill so it'd be interesting to see like you said with a larger and then one so we'll definitely talk about that I think that's something that has a company we want to pursue you know research and quantification and all of that stuff so we are actually underway with some clinical trials now but as you know those take a long time it's complicated they're expensive they're they're they're they're so time-consuming and then your data is never quite what you wanted to be when you're done yeah and for us it's going to be 18 months to two years before we have that result which is a fast study I thought that is a fast human study we actually the guy reading it is the world's leading researcher on PDE 400 then because that's perfectionism interaction sure yeah that's that's the way we went with that but I think that's probably all I can say on the study for now but we want something that's you know a faster to get the results out and I think with with some EEG readings that would be amazing but you know it's funny that you mentioned you know the I guess seeing the original brain scan one the one without sill temp was was I guess not I don't say valuable but validating sure me yeah because it's like that's I know you know might I tend to be very fast thinking I tend to definitely see things kind of big picture and I'm very you know it's very hard to hold my attention there for a long time I'm just curious I want to know as much as I can I want to move quickly and that's pretty much what the brain scans showed it did and you know sometimes seeing these patterns in brain it goes oh this is not a function of my willpower I'm not just being lazy my brain is oriented or tuned to do specific things better and some other things not as well I think that the qejy process can also often be very validating it's like oh oh great there's my strength here's weaknesses it's real it's not a function of willpower or failure or you know we suppose in a broken leg you don't go why aren't you running down the block but if somebody has inattention it's like why aren't you paying attention we don't see the invisible brain things as valid physical things until we actually look at brain activity and say oh well here's your inattention or here's your impulsivity here sleep issue I think we very you know grounding in terms of thinking about what your how you performance levels can be conveyor yeah and I think you said of something really valuable for for listeners is that you know it back to what we were saying in the beginning you know we're looking at like life hacks and long-term hacks habits practices you know that's definitely where neurofeedback would fall in your you're doing something that changes your brain you know beyond just short-term or transient Noah topics give you that short-term that yep that transient okay we changed it today that's a state not a trait absolutely and yeah it's it's amazing to see that silt up can can produce that that states yet stay yeah then we want on a single day with a single dose even a single pill yep but combining that with something like neurofeedback to where you're getting that long-term shift of you know not a state but a trait that could be really really powerful and there might be something where the PD for actually enhancing I mean learner feedback is learning it's just basic learning right I mean we're doing some fancy things to tell the brain what to learn but it's not tapping it as a magical technique it's really is tapping into long-term potentiation PD for so there may be something where we get accelerated gains you know there's a there's a strong a yoga studio right next to mine neurofeedback Center and I find when people do both hard Quivers exercise and brain training they seem to have faster changes in the brain well I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you as a neuroscientist you know that that exercise can increase BDNF passively yeah brain derived neurotrophic factors and rage elseís you get brain you know basically new brain cells and you know they're studies that show just walking for 20 minutes increased brain activity which potentiates you know learning or absolutely yeah you know Thomas Edison I love a quote from him that says the main function of the body is to carry the brain around and you know movement and optimal brain health are not independent things yep absolutely you you very rarely I'm sure there are exceptions but very rarely will you see people that are operating on a high level that are ignoring one or the other right I mean if you are sedentary or not physically active I'm gerontologist and we often think about minimum level of physical activity to avoid risk factors merging and for cardiovascular risk which of course is involved heavily in aging as well as young sort of health I think the current guesstimate is less than 7000 steps per day is a health risk to the cardiovascular system equivalent to a 2 pack of cigarette happen a day I have not heard that that's crazy so if you're sitting on your butt watching TV you know if you're you know using your mind using your attention and staying effortfully engage mentally if your body is not the cardiovascular system isn't being stretched and challenged by your your your activity then it's actually a cardiovascular risk I'm looking at my fit right now now it's what your her well I'm looking at my steps I've only taken 1,900 step oh I know I need about 5,000 more steps but it's interesting my wife got one of these recently and I was so like jealous of her having that data all the times right I could get one of those but I will probably get that or a ring instead because that will give me the same stuff but also the HRV which to me that's the more valuable information but it is kind of fun to look at steps and you know it's interesting that you know I would consider myself fairly active I know that when I ran the gym and I was on my feet and moving I was a lot more active than I am now you know I'm you know standing at a desk most of the time I do my best to stand up I know that that doesn't do a whole lot but at least I'm standing instead of sitting ok but for me to get 7,000 steps I probably average between 5 and 7 thousand a day 5,000 used to the old number to avoid the decline with age so it's just interesting north of 5 definitely yeah but but to me like looking at my data I know for me that that's close to like 3 to 4 miles a day but if you think evolutionary humans are supposed to walk at least 3 to 4 miles a day I mean we we have we've done that for you know how many thousands of years only until the last hundred years and yep you know that for a hundred thousand years we've been walking everywhere and for our hundred years been sitting on butts yeah and to scale that's you know such an insignificant portion of the I'm and it's not enough time for our bodies to adapt evolution has not occurred in the past 100 years now on humans we haven't evolved too generations didn't change anything not at all well never yeah actually they did not not fundamental things in expression like you know you are experiencing metabolic species of chemicals based on the stress or was your parents experienced in your grandparents experience turning on certain genes right but grossly there has not been a change in the human creature for tens of thousands right years right right so yeah and that's I guess to me that was kind of like the eye-opener words like wow you know three or four miles you know we should should be doing that yeah very very easily all right let's let's uh let's go we're coming into our hour here but let's first ask you do you have any general advice or takeaways for people when you're you're talking in this biohacking brain health body health performance space what are some of the bits of wisdom you love to drop or a single piece of advice that you think is important to a prospective shift actual item whatever it is but what it makes you always ought to make sure to tell people this I think to me it would be on the on the perspective shift side okay I just I just want every single person to take control of their own life to realize like for me we get we get one go with this thing and my biggest fear is getting to the end of it and not having experienced something okay I don't want to have I hate that like no regrets or you only live once although right but you know it's so true I mean I want my life to be filled with as many amazing experiences as possible I want to learn as much as possible I want to share that with you know the greatest people you know that I can possibly surround myself with and so I guess my advice or the one thing that I would want people to know is just you know you are in control you know you captain your own ship make this life as great as you can um and I think adopting that or or living that mindset for me makes biohacking something that I want to do because it helps me optimize that experience absolutely um so that's that's what's great well thanks so much Ryan can you tell our listeners where they can find you where they can get involved and and figure out the different projects you're working on and project products you're working on yeah where can they hunt you down so personally on Instagram is Ryan Muncie underscore I'm on Facebook but most of what I'm working on you will find through the optimal performance podcast and that is here that's pretty good yeah we have some great high-profile guests on there but optimal performance podcast and then natural stacks is the company and at natural stacks on all social media all the cool stuff that we're working on you'll hear about through there either on the newsletter on the podcast so Ryan Muncie underscore and Instagram or at natural stacks and all social media you can check Ryan out ask them questions I'm sure he'd love to hear from you about your own individual brain journey and if you're using silt'e or if you're doing different you know physical things I'm sure like you're sort of a scientist the way I am and you're always want to find what individuals are doing that's really working because yeah everyone's their own little testbeds yeah absolutely okay well Ryan thanks so much for coming on the show today and I'm sure we'll be working in the future together folks this has been another episode of head first with dr. hill take care of those brains and we'll talk to you soon [Music]