Biohacking Beauty with Roberta Whitney

My name is Teemu Arina I'm having a conversation today with Roberta Whitney.

She's an international beauty and wellness consultant over 30 years of

experience on this field, focusing now more and more on woman health,

hormones, and longevity in general.

But if you're a man, you will also learn a lot about.

daily routines and habits, diet, lifestyle, all of that, that

plays into a longevity lifestyle, especially when you're aging.

I'm in my forties now.

And Whitney is in her fifties.

We have different problems but most of the signs of aging, they start when

you are getting older, obviously, like when you're young, you get away with.

A lot of health issues and problems, but as you age, especially when you hit 30s,

40s, 50s, 60s, things start to overlap just to give like a brief overview

of some things, woman going through menopause hormonal issues, changes.

That's a big topic.

We're going to dive into it.

Also chronic diseases linked to inflammation is

something to pay attention to.

And based on statistics 67% of the world population has

one or more chronic disease.

And that's a, quite a large number when you are more than 65 plus years old.

So usually you have two or more overlapping chronic conditions,

basically degenerative diseases that break the body down in different ways.

Like those are linked to the hallmarks of aging.

There used to be nine hallmarks of aging, but now there's 12 based on

the recent paper that was released at the beginning of the year where

they added something like gut issues.

And Whitney, who has been working with Beauty, definitely Beauty is not

just looking good from the outside and covering things up with anti

aging creams, but working from the inside, fixing the gut inflammation

having enough time for recovery.

It's also on the beauty side of things, because in the end, your skin is a

reflection of what's inside and is one of the largest organs in the human body.

So I'm very excited to have a conversation today with you.

This episode will be published.

On both of our podcasts.

It's going to be a two way conversation, not just an interview.

So with that introduction maybe you can start by describing a

little bit about your background and I will do the same as well.

Okay.

So hi everybody.

My name is Roberta Whitney.

I'm a beauty consultant, as Teemu has mentioned.

My background really, I started as a model.

I've worked in beauty manufacturing, beauty tech I'm a beauty therapist,

so I really love all things beauty.

But I've been moving more into wellness because I realized that

having beautiful skin really comes from, as he said, your gut being

healthy you being able to absorb the nutrients that you're eating because...

A lot of times we don't even realize that we have so much mucus

and inflammation that all the good stuff that we're eating is not even

getting absorbed into the body.

And so then that's the first place that you would see it, which would be the skin.

I feel like beauty is actually just a side effect of getting

your health and well being.

in balance.

And so that's what I focus on.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

And I'm Teemu Arina.

I'm one of the coauthors of the Biohacker's Handbook,

which is a reference guide.

Very iconic book in the biohacking field that summarizes some of the

research that done in the last 10 years for optimizing sleep,

exercise, nutrition, mind, and work.

So nutrition is a big cornerstone of that book, but also different lifestyle

things that you can do to optimize your biology and biking is a movement that

has gained popularity in the last decade.

So I've been a decade in the game.

I started organizing the Biohacker Summit, which is a conference, one of

the biggest ones in the world and in Europe, especially in mainland Europe.

That basically gathers people from all around the world.

To discuss these topics.

So we have excellent keynotes and even more excellent attendees.

The next one we have is 1st of September, taking place in London,

where Whitney is also based.

And so if you want to meet her, me come over there in London, it's going

to be under the Waterloo station.

We always have a little bit of character for our events and spaces.

And it's not just the conference about daily biohacks, which is the main

topic by different European experts.

Actually, the lineup is really awesome.

There's people from all around Europe and also UK sharing some of

their top tips on optimizing your day in terms of your daily biohacks.

And we have also an amazing party in the end.

We always do like an non alcoholic.

And the musician is not just the DJ generates all the music.

Why?

We also have a Zen Buddhist monk there from Japan who is a beatboxer.

So that's also pretty cool.

That's a good reason to gather in, in London.

But the main event we do this year is in Amsterdam, 14 and 15 of October.

The Amsterdam event focuses on expanding consciousness.

So on all the different modalities, how humans have done that.

Through meditation, through fasting, through yoga, through heat alteration,

like I'm from Finland, sauna and ice baths is it's definitely

expanding your awareness and experience of that you have a body.

And then there is, of course, like in terms of consciousness expansion.

interest in a lot of spiritual and metaphysical topics.

And also plant medicines, psychedelics different molecules, herbs

that people have used to induce different states of consciousness.

But in the end we go through our day in altered states all the time.

If you think about falling in love, or you're just waking up, or you're

going to sleep, or you just had a huge workout, and you have a rush of

hormones, or you are having a menopause, it's a very different experience.

And so our state of consciousness is changing rapidly.

So we just wanted to gather around this topic.

We have 1, 700 people coming to Amsterdam.

And if you're interested in checking out one of these events,

go to biohackersummit.com.

That's where you can find more information.

And Roberta Whitney her website is robertawhitney.beauty.

And she also has an Instagram account as we do as well.

So check it out, but you started talking about things like gut

health and its connection to beauty and lifestyle in general.

I also think in terms of like harmony and geometry, what do I mean by that?

Is that as a biohacker, I'm looking at the human body as

almost like a biological computer.

So we have, let's say blood values, biomarkers.

We have.

intracellular messengers.

We have molecules in our bloodstream communicating different things.

The gut is communicating to the brain.

The brain is communicating to the gut.

We have different responses in the body in terms of, let's

say, immune system response.

So if you take something like autoimmune diseases, where

Your body is attacking itself.

That's often manifested on the skin.

Also, like you can have rashes or acne or there can be a lot of different

conditions that are actually rooted in gut permeability and leaky gut.

So a lot of biohackers, they start from optimizing the gut.

You can also look at your.

Laboratory values and see you're maybe deficient off like many nutritional

deficiencies are linked to air or skin health or health of your nails.

So you can see it pretty much manifesting on the surface of your tissues.

If you are not.

having all the nutrients.

So as a biohacker nutrient availability and adequate amounts of nutrients is key.

And then there's the whole genetic component as well.

So sometimes some things are linked to epigenetics.

Having certain genes doesn't mean Place your cards in a certain way,

and that's what's going to happen.

You might have a certain gene or you don't have, but the process

that turns those genes on or off are often linked to diet and lifestyle.

So environmental factors, obviously food is a huge component.

So let's take, for example, celiac disease.

Many people are born with it, but you can also have an adult

late onset of celiac disease.

And that can be an epigenetic change that comes from stimulating certain

genetic pathways that are linked to diet.

For example, the intake of grains.

Personally, I've had issues with acne when I was young.

I thought that's like just a normal part.

I had all kinds of gut issues and for a decade ago when I got into biohacking, I

did genetic testing, laboratory testing, I eliminated foods that are inflammatory.

It's not the same for everyone.

And I did bring in foods that would lower inflammation.

And I basically had an anti inflammatory diet that I designed based on my biology.

And then I addressed nutritional deficiencies.

And since then, my skin has been so much better.

I don't really...

Have acne.

I would never imagine that you would have suffered with acne.

You don't even have any acne scarring or anything.

Yeah, I had some, but I think they have also disappeared a little bit.

I attribute that to the amount of collagen that I'm having every day and

like bone broth like for a decade now.

I'm also having a lot of certain things like a lot more anti inflammatory

herbs and nutrients as well.

So I'm definitely making sure I get all the adequate amino acids.

One thing that I do and don't do for my skin health is I don't

use a lot of cosmetics products.

The things that I use are like herbal things that have scientific studies

behind them to improve skin health.

And very good for skin conditions.

I generally speaking, I do avoid chemicals, but I'm not a fundamentalist

who thinks all chemicals are bad.

So I think there is a fine line there.

Like people like to think in terms of what is a natural product and

what is an artificial or like some kind of laboratory chemical.

But in the end, there is a lot of good chemicals.

Also to use for skin health squalene or whatever, if you extract, make extracts of

certain things many things are beneficial even adding something like vitamin D

in the things might be a good idea.

So there's a lot of things there to understand and unpack if you want

to live a healthy lifestyle, but avoiding some things that obviously

based on studies was problems.

means that if it's a really complex name for a molecule like that I don't

recognize I rather go for something else.

And one thing that I do repeatedly is I do red light therapy and sauna and ice baths.

So a lot of things that I do are Living in Finland or coming from Finland,

in our culture, we have really strong sauna and ice swimming culture.

It's kind of part of what we do.

So this heat alteration is beneficial for the skin because

the skin is your largest organ.

And what heat alteration does, it expands capillaries, it contracts

capillaries like micro veins.

It improves nutrient delivery you can lower your risk of strokes and all kinds

of things by doing this kind of massage to your veins almost on a daily basis.

I just had an infrared sauna session today.

I also do traditional Finnish sauna.

So most people in Western countries, they live in a kind of a pretty

narrow temperature spectrum.

So something like from 21 to 26 degrees Celsius.

And most of the indoor areas are either you have a radiator or a heater or a, or

an air pump or something that keeps the temperature at a certain level, same for

cars, for shopping malls, everywhere.

So you don't really train that organ in that sense.

I believe in building resilience.

So resilience is challenging your system.

So when you do exercise, your heart rate goes up.

Sauna, by the way, is an exercise mimetic, has similar effects like exercise.

This is a training for your cardiovascular system, so when your

heart rate goes up, let's say you do cardio or heavy lifting the body tends

to compensate to the other direction.

So you have a lower resting heart rate on average and lower resting

heart rate is linked to longevity.

So your heart is like more efficient in pumping the nutrients around and

it doesn't need high heart rate to maintain what's going on because

you do train the extremities.

The same with cold cold therapy, like ice baths the way cold, for example, it

closes your pores and when you heat up your skin it opens up the pores, this

kind of massage on a cellular level, I believe is essential for health and

it's what our bodies are designed for, what our ancestors were designed for.

And, that works for me, like I've just noticed, like with acne, for example,

if I don't go to sauna for one week I need to clean my skin more often

a lot of people use pretty heavy, acids or products to clean their

skin, which is of course important to clear out some of the dead cells.

But I think you can have much more radiant and healthy skin also by just practicing

heat alteration almost on a daily basis.

So your pores don't get clogged up.

So there is a lot to unpack here.

So you're an expert on all of this.

So based on what I just described on heat alteration and so on, how

would you relate to it as an expert?

Yeah.

So I have a, I'm definitely a fan of having the red light therapy.

I actually sell them on my website.

Because I think everybody should have one.

It's so good for you.

In terms of, as stimulating your cells to rejuvenate and renew.

And I also have a sauna in the house because I think being able to do it

regularly, And have that, so when your skin gets red, it's called erythema,

so when the blood rushes to the surface and you have that redness,

that's helping your blood to flush out any toxins and stuff as well.

Helping your body to detoxify is key I feel like what helps my

skin is definitely having regular red light therapy and sauna.

To, as you say, clear out the impurities of the skin on a superficial level,

but it's also pushing it from inside.

And when you shower, you'll then get rid of all the unnecessary oils and dirt

that have been sitting on the surface.

I think it's really important also to mention that there are so many

products at the moment that claim to be.

Natural or organic, and then they're not.

And then what they're doing is really stripping the skin.

So if you have acne, the first thing you might think is, Oh,

I need to clean my skin more.

Because it's inflamed and you feel like that inflammation

needs to be scrubbed away.

But actually when you're doing that, you're stimulating the skin more to

produce the oil because it's then dry.

And then you end up overstimulating the skin and making the acne worse.

So it's really important to use good products that

speak to your skin condition.

So if you have acne, it's probably more important for

you to just hydrate the skin.

rather than flooding it with oils, because that's going to make it worse.

So finding the right product is also part of what I do in my

consultation with my clients to make sure that they're using the right

products for their skin conditions.

One thing to add about red light therapy and make it maybe talking

about sauna for the listeners is that.

Red light is, it's a near infrared light so it's usually a combination of near

infrared and red light, so it's, red light is like barely on the visible spectrum.

It's like the longer wavelengths of light that dominate when the sun goes down.

And infrared is invisible light but it's more like a radiating heat.

You experience the source of heat.

So when you have this kind of red light panel, it usually has both LEDs, one of

them is producing this near infrared, which is a bit more heating experience.

And then you have the red light.

And the spectrums of light, they penetrate the skin at different depths.

So red light leaves a little bit more on the surface.

You think of flashing a flashlight on your hand.

You see a red light coming from the other side out.

It's not just that your blood is red or something like this.

It's the wavelengths of light that do penetrate through the tissue.

So the red light.

And infrared tends to go through tissues and what it does, it stimulate

something called cytochrome C oxidase in the mitochondria and that produces

ATP, which is energy, but it also has an anti inflammatory effect.

So it, it tends to increase the anti inflammatory and reduce the cytokines.

And.

The reduction of inflammation is why this is awesome for skin health.

If you have acne, for example, it can just reduce the like inflammation redness.

And the near infrared, that goes a little bit deeper.

So at close proximity, it even has effects on the muscles and joints.

So if you have any pains or anything like that, it helps to...

Reduce that pain and tension while if you take sauna, like an infrared

sauna, what is an infrared sauna?

It's a far infrared.

So it's Even longer wavelength of light and that tends to penetrate very deeply,

but it's more of a, it has more of like a heating effect from the inside.

So you start to respirate more, so you start to sweat white rapidly and the sweat

itself of infrared sauna helps the body to release some of the toxins, so to say.

What it also does, it stimulates I think it's called lipolysis.

But basically it releases fat from fat storages into the bloodstream.

And fat tissue is one of the biggest.

Things, organs in our body that is storing let's say things

like heavy metals and toxins.

So then you can through sweating and you can maybe have some, herbal

teas that are chelating that help you to extract some of that toxicity

from the body that has been stored.

Also this sauna experience with the heat it increases respiration.

So you start to sweat.

The body is trying to.

balance out the core temperature.

And what I do in my sauna, I also increase humidity.

So I increase, I use like humidifier or something like this in a infrared sauna.

In a traditional Finnish dry sauna, where you throw water on the stones, the

source of heat is fire or electricity.

And It heats up the air through the stones and it's usually quite dry.

That's why it's called dry sauna, but I throw plenty of water on the stones.

You know, Infrared sauna, I'm adding a humidifier.

And as a result, it makes my skin work even harder to respirate.

So you start to sweat even more.

So it clogs the pores, so to say, like a little bit more with the humidity.

And that increases your heart rate even further.

So it makes it a little bit tougher experience.

That's basically every day what I do.

I hydrate my skin through a humidifier, also my lungs.

And I, I usually do 30 minute to one hour sessions.

Doing more than that doesn't really add much benefits.

And a traditional pH sauna is something that I usually use

in combination with ice baths.

I don't use my infrared sauna in combination with ice baths.

And it's a bit more taxing on the nervous system.

So I usually do it more like in an afternoon, early evening while

infrared sauna is something I feel like I can do in the morning before I

start working or something like this.

But this is like a brief overview of.

both red light, infrared and heat alteration and why those

might be beneficial to you.

And you mentioned skin products that are stripping away they're stimulating the

skin to produce, let's say, more oil.

So what is the role the oil on the skin?

Some people don't like that, so they want to get rid of the

like shininess on their face.

But what is the role of the natural oils that the body is producing?

I think that it's important to have both oil and moisture.

So if you have too much oil, then that's when you can have

breakouts and things like that.

But actually.

Oilier skins tend to age slowly, so if you have drier skin, you tend to look

older faster, so you have more fine lines and wrinkles, which the skin's

more dry and seemingly dehydrated.

So you need the oil and the moisture in the skin to really have a

healthy glow, like your skin is beautifully healthy and glowing.

You need a nice balance between the two.

I don't think there's a problem if you have too much moisture and I've never

known anyone and he's got too much moisture in the skin, but definitely

there's always people with too much oil, you either naturally produce too much

oil or the products that you're using are creating too much oil and stimulating

the skin to produce it too much.

And then that could cause adverse reactions which is what you don't want.

What are the best oils to use on the skin?

I've noticed like many products might have something like hemp oil

or olive oil or some other source of oil often in the cleaning products.

Yeah, personally, I feel like there's so many different brands, and I

definitely don't want to get into sort of championing a certain brand on the show.

Things that are just.

Non comedogenic, you don't want them to be blocking the pores, you don't

want them to be clogging your skin.

Natural, healthy, I really like coconut oil.

It's my go to.

As an oil, something hydrating and oily.

That's what I love.

So I dampen my hands, put a bit of coconut oil and then massage that into

the face because it absorbs really quickly and it seems to do what I need it to

do, which is just to balance the skin hydrated and moisturize it all in one.

I don't really have a product that I could say, this is the one that you should use

because if you see in my bedroom, there are 50 million things on my counter and

depending on how my skin feels, I will go and use that particular product.

Because it's different all the time.

If I'm traveling, if it's sunny or hot, London gets very cold,

but it also is very damp and wet.

My skin goes through lots of changes because of the heating in the house and

then you go outside and it's very hot Or very cold and your skin is constantly

adjusting So I think finding a nice balance of things that really work with

your skin type would be key one thing that I use is beeswax after ice baths and

when I put my skin under extreme stress

Straight onto your face?

Yeah, beeswax, yeah.

That's one of the, one of the things that I do use.

It tends to maintain the skin moisture better.

You can get dry skin by...

Putting it through, stress of heat alteration, also like ice baths and

sauna and all that heavy sessions like that can sometimes leave it a little

bit dehydrated, so you lose a lot of water when you do stuff like that so of

course hydrating yourself well and using electrolytes is one of those key things

to restore the hydration internally.

Then I use beeswax also, personally, and or do you have a difference

for body oil and face oil?

Because I like to use something like hemp oil on on the body, as a massage

oil or something, but then for the face.

I prefer not to use it because I've noticed that tends to clog up

things a little bit more easily.

I've never used hemp oil.

The ones that I've always found tend to have a smell to them that I don't like.

That's just a personal choice.

And I don't know.

I just, I love shea butter.

For the body super hydrating, really nice and thick.

I have very dry skin, just very naturally I have dry skin.

So I like to have a bath oil in the water when I'm bathing.

So I feel like that really gets into the skin and hydrates my body

but I don't do that on my face.

So that would be a shea butter for me on the body, something.

Really nice and , moisturizing and hydrating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have some list of things here.

Grape seed oil, almond oil and hemp oil.

Those ab absorb quite quickly, but of course can have like

odor, so maybe as a body oil.

oil.

Oil Oil, argon oil.

They ab absorb moderately and then avocado and coconut oil

are a bit more slowly absorbing.

great seed and almond I use.

And also if I'm doing facials, It's really nice to do an almond oil sort

of massage into the skin because it's really light and it hydrates.

It makes your skin feel really nice and soft and supple and it's super

inexpensive considering all the things that you could spend so much money on

that don't give you the same results.

Yeah, like one reason why I use also beeswax after sauna is because beeswax

and bee products have been used for centuries for all kinds of things,

both internally and externally.

Of course, like something like honey has a lot of anti

inflammatory benefits also as well.

I actually do use honey in scrubs.

So if you make like a coffee scrub or like a.

Even a sugar scrub, like I like to use honey in it but beeswax on its own.

It's very good for burns and wounds.

So it has beneficial properties for those.

I also like to use a plant called yarrow or any kind of scratches on the skin.

So it could be even need a lip balm or something like that.

Beeswax is also great for lip balms, personally I like that yeah, because

some of the other ones have so much stuff in it that your lips get addicted

to it and you have to keep reapplying because it just gets absorbed so quickly

and then they get dry and then you feel like you're putting more and more on.

Yeah.

Some other things that are good for lip balm is meadowsweet

as an anti inflammatory.

It's a plant that grows here in the North.

It's actually the first plant from which they discovered

salicylic acid . So salicylic acid, which is basically aspirin.

So it's a blood thinner as well and then horsetail.

That's one thing.

While some other plants that I like for skin is selendin.

It soothes the skin and reduces redness in addition to being anti

inflammatory and antibacterial.

I do like also peppermint just for the cooling effect, not much because

many essential oils can actually be quite irritating on the skin.

If you're doing a foot soak, I like to use peppermint for that.

Cause like you say, it's really.

It tingles and it , feels like the blood's flowing and it's getting things

moving because your feet can become so tired, . Like I'm tired thinking

about my feet being tired and they get, just like red and sore and you've been

standing or walking all day and you feel like, Oh, I just want to soak them.

So I think a little bit of tea tree and peppermint just do the trick.

I think oregano might also work It's also a skin rejuvenator.

And I would think like these probably work also very well for fungal

infections or anything like this.

So if you have like problems with that on the feet side of things.

But definitely yarrow.

Meadows with those are like some of the superheroes of

nature that I like for skin.

I would like a minute to reverse a little bit if we can.

Teemu, you're A professional biohacker, best selling author, and

award winning professional speaker, you're one of the forefront thinkers

on the digital transformation of work, health, and society in the

intersection of man and machine, which I just think is incredible, but I

want to know who is Teemu before this?

How did you get into being this biohacker that you are today?

So I basically became an entrepreneur at a very young age.

And also I got interested in technology as my bio describes.

I learned programming when I was 13, when I was 16, I founded my first company.

I was teaching in high school when I was 17.

And I was preparing students for university course when I was 18.

I don't know, maybe some people that like described me as a child

prodigy so you're just very low achieving then . Yeah, indeed.

Like I became a bit too productive I guess at a young age and that led to

not just like , becoming a teacher and professional speaker, but.

Also building technologies for companies and organizations.

I even build an educational system.

And basically I've always been interested in the introduction of.

Technology and humans, but I'm always being like very

connected to nature as well.

I guess it's also because in Finland we have like just 5.

5 million people living on the land area, the size of UK.

So you can imagine how much forest and we also have like tens of thousands of lakes.

Islands, so nature is very present and we have something called every man's rights.

What it means is that you can collect herbs mushrooms, even from a private land.

So no one can stop you.

You just can't go let's say 10 meters close to someone's apartment, but you can.

Go on a privately owned forest and you can pick up mushrooms and herbs.

You can't damage trees or disrupt the ecosystem in other ways, but

you can use these wonders of nature.

And this is what I've been doing from young age, like collecting things

like stinging nettles and dandelions and whatnot, learning to use them.

Herbalism on its own is not super common nowadays you know, industrialized

world we live in, but I like to keep one of my legs in dirt, in a sense,

like as much as I spend time in front of computers, my form of relaxation

is nature and nature connection.

And I, nowadays I know a hundred different plants that I use from my

ecosystem personally for different things, mainly food, making

wild salads and stuff like that.

And so when I was building my businesses and all that, and the world was demanding

a lot from me Every time I did something like there was more and more clients

coming in, I didn't know how to say no.

So that got me into health issues, like not sleeping enough, too

much stress, too much stimulation.

I was eating, okay food, not like fast food or stuff like that.

I was cooking myself.

I've always been cooking things, but I didn't know about nutrition

as much as I know nowadays.

Or I had not done the testing to see what I'm deficient in.

And so when I got stress related illness, my way out was fixing

those things, like first studying it because I'm a systems thinker.

So I started looking at okay, how does the body work?

And naturally I geared towards using not pills.

But nutrition and food and also including wild herbs and

wild mushrooms to heal myself.

So medicinal mushrooms, for example, are a big thing nowadays.

Like people do something like Reishi or Chaga or Lion's Mane for

performance or immunity reasons.

But these kind of things for example, chaga mushrooms, they

just grow in our forests here.

So I can go there and pick them up myself.

I can make chaga tea myself.

But about learning about these ingredients, what they do is important.

The forests here are full of wheelberries, which is like...

A kick ass upgrade version of blueberry, like most Western food is agriculturally

produced, like mass produced.

If you take blueberries that are considered, antioxidant

foods, and it's healthy for you.

The blueberries that are in supermarkets are not food for me.

They are very high in sugar, actually, compared to bilberries that are the

wild counterparts that need to produce more protective plant phytochemicals.

So called anthocyanins that give it the blue color.

There's like exponentially more in one berry or blueberry in the

forest than there is in a blueberry from a supermarket where it's

more on the skin side of things.

Yeah, basically what I want to say is that as technological and methodological and

systems oriented, I am in understanding things as computers like in then.

I have this connection to the natural world that has always been part of me.

So I take all of that into the work that I do.

my conference is evidence of that.

It's always connecting nature and technology and human things

and more metaphysical things.

but it's very much rooted in logic and science.

Can you explain to us the fundamental principles and techniques?

Behind biohacking for those people who don't know.

Yeah, so biohacking is a term, if we define that first, is it can like,

the first impression someone might have is like someone is hacking

into something, it sounds dangerous.

It's like applying the hacker ethic.

On biology.

What is hacker ethic?

It's not about computer hacking.

Hacking as a term originally didn't mean computer intrusion.

That word has existed long before computers.

Someone who is a hacker is interested in the way how things work.

So they are deeply enthusiastic about the topic.

So you can be an astronomy hacker.

You can be a growth hacker in a startup company.

You can be Geology hacker, whatever, but you can also be a biohacker.

So combining biology and the hacker ethic and there's this deep enthusiasm

of understanding how things work and just like a computer hacker

is looking at a computer system.

How does that work?

How can I improve it?

How can I stress test it?

A biohacker is doing the same for the human body.

Now, biohacking can be also seen as optimizing systems that are inside of

you, like your biomarkers, gut health, gut microbiome, whatnot, even skin biome.

And also external sources so your environment, your home, the food that

you eat, the air that you breathe.

The lighting that you're exposed to.

And so it's understanding that you're not separate from your environment or nature,

but you're a part of this whole ecosystem.

There's a ecosystem living inside of you that can be seen as you are

a superorganism in a way you are integrating a lot of different lives.

So all the microorganisms bacteria yeasts, funguses viruses,

whatever you are, inhabited by.

It's an ecosystem and also there's a ecosystem outside of you that

you're connected to and imbalance in, let's say, gut microbiome or in how

you're connected to your environment or your environmental balance,

often imbalance leads to imbalance.

Okay.

disease or some kind of disruption in the ecosystem that is not

healthy for the ecosystem.

So restoring that balance is key.

So as much as biohacking for some is about taking, smart drugs and stimulants.

And maybe if you biohacking.

Or your brain function or whatnot, or your skin function to me, it's also a

lot about understanding what is good balance of things and restoring that.

So resilience to me is elemental for health and wellbeing, building

up resilience so that your cells are functioning better.

Their intracellular communications are functioning better.

The organs are functioning better, your nervous system is functioning better,

your gut is functioning better, it's able to digest all the food, absorb all

the nutrients so there is many different things that you can do when you're a

biohacker, so one way to see it is health optimization, so optimizing your health

but it's not really What about health?

It's lifestyle.

So it's it can be seen as a, kind of a longevity lifestyle almost that

many biohackers are generally healthy.

So if they go to a lab, they do like a typical laboratory test, which is

mainly seeking sickness or disease.

Like the result might be that, yeah, everything is within reference range.

There is nothing wrong.

Maybe, one marker was a bit elevated or something was a little bit deficient,

but it's, there's like nothing to worry.

That is enough in a traditional healthcare system.

But for a biohacker in a preventive healthcare system there is an

optimal, let's say a hormonal value, like testosterone for a man.

It's not only within reference range, but you want to look for something that is

optimal for All the other benefits you get from testosterone, which is the vigor,

the drive, the sexual function all that energy, and being within reference range,

meaning on the lower end, for example, is not necessarily optimal for someone your

age, so then you would optimize that.

Women might do the same for estrogen or other sex hormones.

So there is this deep understanding of the systemic nature of your body

and how that can be understood.

And it's all unique for everyone.

There is, that's why there is no single diet that's going

to be perfect for everyone.

Even though we try to find things like longevity diets, like

maybe it's the Mediterranean.

Maybe it's something that they centurion areas.

where people tend to live long.

So we try to emulate people who live long, like what are they eating?

What are they doing?

But like a big key component to a lot of them studying the blue

sauce is that They don't live a stressful lifestyle like we do.

So they are not like running from one meeting to another living

in a noisy city environment.

So the diet might change a little bit.

Usually it's full of colors a lot of phytochemicals, but it's not about

reducing, let's say, meat intake.

Many of them have fish, for example.

Maybe they are the islands of Greece or Okinawa, a lot of seafood.

Some of them like.

Drink and sometimes even smoke regularly, like maybe red wine.

But there is a lot of social interaction, so they have interaction

with other people, they walk a lot.

Like they're not like driving a car everywhere or elevator.

And there's this slow life and often if we want to live long, the question

is like, how do you do that in a busy city environment where there's a lot of

stressors that our ancestors didn't have?

And how do you make your biology function better in such an environment?

That's where biohacking comes into play.

So when I use a red light panel or a sauna, those are technological

interventions that I use to emulate what our ancestors went through.

I don't need a grounding mat in a forest.

I just sleep on the ground.

It's sucking in all the negative ions.

Or I'm sucking in all the negative ions from the earth.

So I don't need air filter because I'm outside.

So all of the technologies that we use in biohacking or healthy

lifestyle is just to mitigate the disconnect we have from nature.

why do we avoid all the chemicals?

You don't need to avoid any chemicals when you're out there.

So in the wilderness I definitely do sleep better Also when I sleep in nature for

some reason I get deeper sounder sleep.

The stats are always much better than in a city environment So there's something

about living the moral lifestyle that we need to be aware of that our bodies and

our biology, our DNA has not adapted to.

Maybe it will take a couple of generations and it's okay to live in a

polluted city and you just like chill.

But I don't have time to wait for that.

That's why I'm doing biohacking.

So that's pretty much it.

So for people who...

are new to biohacking and it's something that they've been considering and they

just, they don't know where to start.

What would you say is like the first steps for someone to take

on their new wellness journey?

Yeah for many people like that, I ask, what are you struggling with?

Is it exercise?

Is it skin health?

Is it diet?

Is it stress?

Is it sleep?

And that's probably where you will get most of the benefit if you correct that.

What is your imbalance in a sense?

Ask that question from you.

Like, where are you not balanced enough?

And probably you can find biohacking techniques, interventions, biological

tests, variables that help you with that.

If you don't exercise enough, like maybe you want to start tracking steps.

If you don't sleep well, like maybe you want to get a sleep tracker.

If you stress too much, get like some kind of heart rate variability

monitor to measure your stress levels.

What the data provides to you is awareness of that.

It doesn't change anything.

It just gives you awareness.

And when it gives you awareness, it gives you questions and it gives you hypotheses.

It gives you like all kinds of basically the act of paying attention to

something, you're already changing it.

Like you're already thinking about it.

So if you see every evening that you're not getting enough restful

sleep because of the data, doesn't show that, like that anxiety helps

you to change that potentially.

Then the question is like, what should I do?

And that's usually like diet and lifestyle and sometimes medical interventions,

sometimes technological interventions how you can like hack things like

get shortcuts and get results faster.

Maybe do some treatments or maybe do an IV therapy, or maybe you go for a specialist.

There's so many ways how we can biohack ourselves then.

Yeah.

But generally speaking, the most leverage that a lot of people would

get is from, I would say, two things.

One of them is optimizing their sleep, because statistically speaking,

most people don't sleep enough, or if they don't sleep soundly.

Or maybe they use sleeping medication where their sleep architecture doesn't

look very good because of the drugs.

Fixing sleep is essential.

It helps a lot of things, like my skin health is better if I sleep enough, right?

Your organ health will be better, like your blood sugar regulation

will be better, your cardiovascular system will perform better.

There is no pill that you can take that will somehow reverse...

the problems of not sleeping enough.

Even if someone is telling you, take this stimulant, it's not gonna help.

Even modafinil and all these things that are promoted as lacking drugs

for sleep deprivation that you can somehow perform as if you didn't, you're

gonna pay the bill, doing something like that repeatedly over time.

So in the end, fixing your sleep is the first step.

Now the second thing is gut health to me.

And why gut health?

Why not nutrition?

Is that many people have gut issues.

They might have, the older you become more likely to have some gut permeability.

Nutrients so your body is breaking down, let's say some protein into peptides and

so those fragments, they end up in the bloodstream and if there is leaky gut,

like there's leaky junctions through which certain nutrients or food or molecules

get into the bloodstream that don't belong there, the body will react to it.

So you have a stimulation of the immune system in that case.

So fixing the gut lining is often beneficial and the other

thing is nutrient absorption.

So your small intestine, large intestine, the bacterial environment is

helping you to ferment and digest food.

And depending on what bacteria you have there, like it also improves your

ability to absorb things like B vitamins.

B vitamins are essential for stress management.

For example, B6, B12.

If you drink a lot of alcohol, you're going to need more B!

As an example niacin is an important B3.

So there is many vitamins that the most important source is actually

the gut bacteria that is converting.

Whatever it is eating into B vitamins.

So if you have destroyed your gut with antibiotics and you

don't have enough beneficial bacteria, fixing that is essential.

And in the end, I believe there is a smarter way of doing these

things, not just taking vitamin D because you think it's good for you.

Because most people are deficient in it.

Most likely it won't hurt, but if you measure how much you

have vitamin D, is it absorbed?

Adjusting your intake, you might be surprised that even if you take something

per recommendation you're not getting enough or you're getting too much.

So depending on your biology, gut bacteria, genetics, a lot

of things like some things that most people are deficient of.

are stress related molecules.

I mentioned B vitamins, but there's things like magnesium.

There's things like zinc.

Very important for both physical and mental resilience and

stress response and recovery.

So magnesium levels tend to be deficient in general population.

Also, actually selenium that has been linked to lower amounts in soil through

decades, through Commercial farming.

We have reduced a lot of the nutrients in the earth and we're not

just getting enough certain things.

So making sure that you get it off and those are absorbed.

And if you leave a stressful lifestyle, more likely you will

over consume some nutrients.

And when you don't have enough certain nutrients, you can think

of it as a rate limiting thing.

So your biology needs nutrients to operate.

If it doesn't have it, where is it going to get it?

Like for a woman, for example, iron deficiency is one of the biggest issues.

Women menstruate.

Iron levels tend to be lower.

Now iron is also important for exercise, performance stress management as well.

If you're deficient of iron, you don't have energy.

You don't feel like doing anything.

If you have high iron, which is very typical in men, it increases

inflammation oxidative stress.

So you don't want to have too much iron either.

Men don't menstruate, so we tend to more iron.

There can be genetic reasons also for it.

That your body is accumulating more iron or it's deficient of iron.

So in pointing where you have rate limiting things, what is the reason?

And then fixing that there's interventions that you can do as a result, your

body will function like a well oiled machinery and that well oiled machinery

doesn't mean you need to add more.

You're just restoring the balance that you lacked in the first place.

So if someone had no choice and had to take antibiotics, how

could they then try to fix the gut after they've had to do this?

Because obviously the antibiotics will kill everything good,

but also everything bad.

What can we do?

There's a lot of marketing around probiotics

if you want to get, Good probiotics you want to make sure that it has high enough

amounts like a lot of probiotics don't have high Enough amounts you can also

go and use something called synbiotics.

What is a synbiotic?

It's a combination of a probiotic Supplement like lactobacillus and then a

prebiotic so something it uses for food So it doesn't get destroyed immediately

Or maybe there's a delivery mechanism that makes sure that it gets delivered

into the intestine like doesn't get fully destroyed in the gut acids and

then it needs to have food so it grows.

So prebiotics is another thing.

You can also get prebiotics separately.

So those are unfermented fibers best source in the end for prebiotics is food.

Basically fibers, vegetables it's a good source.

If you are on a carnivore diet or something, a lot of people

use those to fix inflammation.

Or blood sugar or metabolic issues.

You want to supplement on prebiotics so that your gut bacteria doesn't get off.

Bacterial diversity is another thing.

You don't want to overdo something.

Even a probiotic can turn problematic if you get too much of one thing.

So having different strains of bacteria, having those in balance is key.

So that's why testing is kind of important.

We have developed an online course that goes into everything related to gut.

It's a biohackercenter.Com.

goes really deep.

My co author, Dr.

Olli Sovjarvi is specialist on gut health and fixing gut issues.

So that's one place where we have all the detailed information.

that's our company that organized Biohacker Summit and publishes

the Biohacker's Handbook.

So you get actually access to all of these things from that website as well.

Now, what I want to ask you is in terms of longevity.

So you are now moving from just beauty and skin health.

To more on understanding longevity health, what are the essential things

that you are taking into account in your practice today when you work with

your clients, what are the problems that you see what are the issues and what

are the like beneficial interventions?

most of my clients are at the very early stages of their wellness journey.

Sometimes because of an illness.

I have a client who is now in remission from cancer.

She had a bone and blood cancer and just wants to be overall

healthy and is interested in.

The products and stuff that I've been recommending.

So I work with a couple of different companies that have really good products.

And I've basically, what I've done is become the guinea

pig so that I try them first.

And then I recommend them to my clients.

If I can see that I've had really good results.

Three, six and nine, really good omega 3 oil, I think is important a really

good probiotic because like we've been saying, if your gut is not balanced,

even if you were eating the healthiest diet, it's not going to get absorbed.

If you have lots of mucus because you eat a lot of dairy or, mucus and inflammation

is also the cause of a lot of disease.

So being able to get rid of that is really important.

So I personally have a little routine that I do in the morning, which is my Omega 3

oil, which I just mix in a little bit of juice because I'm not a fan of the taste.

And it seems like all the good things don't really taste that good.

Even the...

Chaga and all these things that I've tried, they're good for

you, but they don't taste good.

So now I understand if it's bitter, it's better.

Yeah, bitter is definitely better.

And you can get used to it.

If you do chaga every day for a decade, like it's going to be second nature.

I put it in my coffee.

Actually, it's super nice in coffee, like the bitterness of coffee,

the bitterness of chaga, perfect together, like instead of water.

You just brew your coffee with chaga and you get to go.

Try that one.

Try that.

Cause I want to be able to eat more of it.

So I'm on my learning journey.

And as I'm learning, I'm sharing what I'm learning with my clients.

And the whole premise of doing the beauty show is to just open up to a new audience.

How they can start their own journey, right?

So I'm sharing everything that I'm learning from professionals and

experts like yourself with the people that are in my network, because.

Not everybody is on your level, like you've been studying it for a long

time all the jargon and the words that people use, sometimes if you're new

to it, could be a little overwhelming.

When they come to me, it's the baby steps of how they can get started

and in a language that they can understand because I haven't done...

The 10 years of, studying of whatever, I'm literally also learning as I go along.

Something I'm curious about because you're a professional and

understand the nutrition part of it.

Do you think that it's better to be a vegan or vegetarian?

Because so many people are now stopping eating meat.

In terms of what the body needs and what's good for us, is it better to be vegan?

Good question.

If I give a little overview on that.

First, people often think that healthy means eating more vegetables.

And it definitely is true.

Adding more vegetables is probably going to be good for you.

Especially if it's not the sugary type, but it's more of the fibrous type.

So I mentioned already gut health is one thing.

The other thing is phytochemicals.

So you get all these phytonutrients and these anti inflammatory nutrients.

So there's a lot of things in herbs and spices and vegetables and

fruits that are not on the label.

It's not about the vitamins.

It's not about the minerals.

It's not about the fat, sugar, protein stuff, which is usually in food labels.

It's all the chemicals, phytochemicals, that naturally produce protective agents

in these plants that are beneficial, that you don't necessarily get from

meat in such form and quantity.

Now, plants also do produce...

protective chemicals.

So we can call those anti nutrients.

So things like saponins or lectins or coitrogens.

There's a bunch of different protective agents that the plants

do produce to make sure that they are not being eaten in a sense.

Seeds for example have This thing in their outer layer of them that

are protecting the seed from not being eaten Not to be digested.

It's if you want to have like certain things well digested from plant kingdom

You have to process them somehow so often there is this idea that raw food

is somehow better But I know so many people went on a raw diet and then they

got all kinds of gut issues because they were getting so many Antinutrients and

they didn't know how to process the food properly There's a lot of things where

you don't want to process the food.

So in terms of plants, so you want to use them in as original form as possible.

Like for example, if you have some kind of salad or lettuce The optimal way to use

that is actually to use some vinaigrette or some kind of oil that actually

absorbs the nutrients and delivers them.

So that's why having like a salad with vinaigrette is a good idea.

Apple cider vinegar that is often added in salad dressings is actually

helping with blood sugar regulation.

So it's a good idea to have a salad in the beginning with some vinaigrette.

You don't want to have some crazy creamy thing necessarily.

Like it's...

We don't need to go into the details of dairy and like all kinds

of additives, but to stick still to plants let's take tomatoes.

Tomatoes have lycopene, which is excellent.

It gives it its color and like many of the benefits, the flavor.

Most of it is bioavailable, so available to your body only when it heated up.

So you need to actually process it a little bit, like actually a heated tomato.

Is more nutritionally available than a raw tomato.

So that's an example of a plant where you actually do want to do some processing.

Spinach has a lot of oxalates and oxalates are one of the

contributing things to kidney stones.

So having too much spinach in raw form where you don't extract the oxalates

out by blanching it or heating it up.

It's not going to be good for you.

So with spinach, it's a great thing.

I sometimes use it raw, but you don't want to have like too much

of it every single day, unless kidney stones is what you want.

Then let's take seeds.

A lot of seeds, like I mentioned, have protective chemicals.

Sprouting them usually makes them release some of those things.

Actually sprouting increases some of the nutritional value of a lot of seeds.

Soaking them sometimes, like soaking nuts soaking quinoa, soaking certain beans

does help to release some of the anti nutrients, because then the plant is

okay, now it's time to germinate, so it's going to drop all the protective things.

into the liquid.

So then you just throw the liquid away and you extracted

some of the anti nutrients out.

Now, meat, especially organ meats, are the highest source of

nutrients, actually, on our plate.

Something like liver has excellent amounts of minerals iron zinc, selenium it has B

vitamins, it has vitamin D, by the way, it has all kinds of things and protein, of

course, but plant kingdom is challenging because it doesn't have all the essential

amino acids, easily available, you have to really know what you're doing.

It doesn't have all the minerals.

In essential amounts that human body needs, things like iron you have iron in a

lot of plants, it gives it the green color often dark leafy greens have of iron,

but heme iron from meat is superior in absorption compared to iron from plants.

There is so many things where it's much more efficient.

to get the nutrients by eating, let's say, an organ than eating

like kilograms of plants.

Now, the challenge with meat is of course in the industrial production of it.

People eat only, let's say, muscles.

If you want to eat a healthy animal based diet, you eat the whole animal.

Like all the organs like basically from head to tail from nose to tail because

then you're getting the things that the animal is Concentrating on certain

organs from the food that is eating.

So most of the animals we eat are actually so they do consume mainly

plant based diet and they concentrate those nutrients into their tissues and

you can eat those tissues to get all the nutrients in a concentrated form.

So if for ethical reasons you decide not to eat meat, that's fine.

If you're ready to eat shellfish don't have central nervous system.

If you want to have cruelty free food, whatever, you don't want to cause pain.

Shellfish don't have a nervous system.

They don't feel pain.

You do get the zinc the selenium, you get all the minerals that are very

hard to get, and you get all the B vitamins like B12 in a bioavailable

form, which is not very easy to get folate, not very easy to get a lot of

these things from a plant rich diet.

So shellfish is superior source fish, if you want to get the omega 3 stuff

but omega 3 is also in shellfish.

So based on my analysis like shellfish plus plant based

diet is a pretty good diet.

Fish and shellfish and plants is a really good diet as well.

Meat, you have to add more phytochemicals in it and fiber to make it work.

Also to reduce the carcinogenic side of things, because often when you produce

meat, most people don't do like slow cooking and crock pots and all that.

The like frying of meat is of course, a source of carcinogenic compounds.

All the aromatic compounds you get from a nice steak those are carcinogens.

what is the best way to cook, for instance, a liver?

And you just mentioned slow cooking, slow cooking is, then you are not

like, it's like the chefs, like great chefs know that you wanna, you

don't want to destroy the ingredient.

You have a high quality ingredient.

First, you start from that locally grown, nutrient dense feed ethical

like no antibiotics, all of that.

You want to start with good quality meat.

In the cooking process, you don't want to destroy it by overheating it, overcooking

it to destroy and denaturate the fats and destroy the proteins and , cause

like carcinogenic compounds in it.

Although it might be delicious, the aromatic compounds are delicious.

It is not good for you in large quantities.

Then in the cooking process, you want to use herbs like rosemary something

like thyme are good examples in the fat that you're cooking it in,

if you want to fry it, because the antioxidants in the herbs are protecting

the oxidization of the fatty acids also and using lower temperatures

helps and making stews is good.

So like cooking, like the whole animal in a crock pot is a much better way

to also extract some of the minerals from the bones, from the connective

tissues and all that cartilage is a great source of glycine.

Glycine is anti inflammatory amino acid And it balances out

methionine, which is very high in it.

There's also like in muscle meats and frying them and all that.

Like it, it affects something called TMAO enzyme.

So that can produce carcinogenic compounds.

In the digestion, so basically what I'm saying is that if you eat a diverse

diet, it's having like as many different forms of ingredients as possible, so

not eating the same chicken breast every day is a good idea, like you just

alterate the sources of protein, the sources, the types of food, you go organ

meats occasionally, you sometimes go plant based, and if you're gonna eat a

plant based diet, if you're gonna be a vegan, You better know what you're doing

because you might cause gut issues.

You might cause nutrient deficiencies you might cause blood sugar issues

because a lot of plants are very high in Carbohydrates, so the thing nowadays

is like you maybe if you are a vegan , Everything is oats, you have an oat

milk latte for breakfast, you have some oatmeal, for lunch, you have some salad

with some kind of meat replacement that is actually also has oats, either can be

soy based, it can be corn based, like you can actually, Instead of increasing and

source of nutrients, you are eating the same thing over or again, you get too

much wheat, you get too much corn, you get too much soy, you get too much oat.

And so in the end, you didn't increase the diversity of your food.

You actually narrowed it down in terms of nutrient sources

and nutrient availability.

And that's a problem.

And you get often way too many.

things that also affect the hormonal system, like too many

soy products do affect estrogen.

So what I'm saying is that I'm not like like some people are like,

yeah, you should go carnivore and keto stuff is the only way to go.

But yeah, it's good short term.

Based on my analysis, if you want to live long, you actually do want to include

phytochemicals as much as you can.

I mentioned Chaga, Chaga has 10 times more antioxidants than anything else in

the Western diet, a lot of dark pigments, a lot of immune system regulators,

things that stimulate production of macrophages, you get things like beta

glucans, for example, which are good for gut health a lot of bitter things tend

to be, have like interesting effects on the system, but yeah, like there is

silver bullet Genetically speaking, some people do very well with high fat diet.

Some people don't some people do very well with saturated fats

like butter and coconut oil.

Some people don't.

Some people need more olive oil.

They need more long chain fatty acids.

So there is individual differences.

There's some generalizations we can draw from these.

And we have a lot of those things in our book, The Biohacker's Handbook.

We also developed a ebook recently or optimizing your nutrition.

So that's a new Biohacker's Guide to Optimal Nutrition.

There is stuff like that, where we go through source of food and ingredients,

and what is the best source for something?

What is the absorption?

What is the laboratory values want to look for?

So we have developed a lot of content for people who want to do things this way.

There is a longevity athlete, self proclaimed his name is Brian Johnson.

He's a vegan.

So he eats a vegan diet.

He seems to do well on his laboratory test on that, but

he's taking 120 pills every day.

So if you want to, if you don't want to take 120 pills you better know

what you're doing if you're a vegan.

That's my basically my take on this.

What this conversation has just.

Highlighted for me is as a South African, we really love doing barbecues and it

suddenly dawned on me that the barbecue meat is probably really carcinogenic

then because we're cooking it.

On the fire, indeed it's very delicious.

The aromatic compounds in barbecues it's otherworldly.

And the gravies the caramelization of things there's nothing better

like that in terms of flavor, right?

So the caramelization process of like heating up something on a pan or fire

with meat it's just like mind blowing what you're producing is heterocyclic amines

and those are aromatic compounds, really delicious produce things like acrylamide

so that's basically like a plastic thing.

It's not.

healthy, but it's delicious.

So I'm not like someone who is like fully avoiding things like this.

One of my favorite restaurants close by they make excellent barbecue

and I do eat it occasionally.

It's just, That the quantity and the repetition of basically the frequency

of use is what is problem here.

Our bodies are pretty good at dealing with stressors.

It's like alcohol, like our livers can process small amounts of alcohol.

Every time you're having a fermented thing, cabbage, that's

good for probiotics et cetera.

Like sauerkraut, or maybe you're having a yogurt or something like this.

You are actually having...

Small amounts of acetaldehyde some fermentation byproducts so your liver is

pretty good at processing small amounts.

The problem is higher amounts, like having a binge evening and drinking a lot.

like a small glass of wine is probably not going to kill you, especially if

you eat at the same time, but if you drink a bottle every second day, of

course it's going to have its effects.

So that's the way how I think about a lot of things, like with bread, there

is this whole movement against gluten and when people have food sensitivities,

like the gluten, often it's not gluten, they're actually sensitive

to gliadin, another protein in it.

Even like gluten free things, can cause like gut issues in some because

of some other amino acids there.

So in the end it's, if someone has made like sourdough bread

themselves, I can have a piece.

If I go to a restaurant and they made the bread themselves, I'm

going to taste small amount.

It's not that I buy bread and I eat it every single day at home like that.

It to me is I'm not like particularly gluten insensitive, but I have

some genetic variants that might risk adult onset of celiac disease.

So I don't want to trigger those pathways too often.

And the other thing is that with wheat I tend to like, just, my body

starts to hold on to more water and you just get more bloated and it's not

nice, but I'm not going to say no to.

Like occasionally to a piece or a slice of pizza, which is like high quality

and made like it's, it is what it is, it's you have to understand that when

people get to nutrition and health, they often become fundamentalist

in the beginning there is like bad foods and then there's good foods.

It's all black and white.

It's all light and darkness, but even your spinach can be problematic.

Like even your tomatoes can be problematic.

Even your meat can be problematic.

Your wheat and some of them can have, beneficial effects in certain

amounts in certain situations.

So in the end, It's a fine balance and the problem we have is the excess intake

of certain things, like 60% of the world calorie intake comes from 20 plants.

So you have potato, rice, manioc wheat, soy et cetera.

So these monocrops are selectively bred to have less nutrients

and more calories, more energy.

And On their own, they're not evil.

It's the quantities we are having each.

It's just if you have corn in all kinds of forms all the time,

of course that's not healthy.

And then we do concentrates out of them, like high fructose corn syrup.

It's a completely different thing from eating a corn.

So we have this food processing and extraction and concentration of certain

things that is not so healthy, like the vegans, for example, they sometimes have

something called seitan and like the name almost tells you, it's like basically

like concentrated gluten, if you want to avoid gluten oh my goodness, like

that's, and gluten in food processing is often used as a preservative.

So a lot of things might have gluten in there like sausages,

not because You need gluten there it's often used as a preservative.

Like when you study nutrition and start to like unravel and understand these

things, it's really in our book, for example, it boils down to quality.

Diversity and yeah, quality, that's one thing, there's a difference between

a cucumber and another cucumber.

It's just how it was grown, what soil was used, what variety it is.

Even if the onions like red onion or white onion go with red,

you get more nutrients in it.

So it's you can select things.

So having a salad doesn't mean it's nutrient dense.

Like you can have a nutrient salad or a nutrient void salad.

It depends what's in it.

And diversity is important because our body is , they like to cycle things

like you can have too much of a good thing also, like you can have too much.

Carrots, even.

In the end you want to cycle things in and out so your body

doesn't become also tolerant to it.

So food intolerances are a good example.

Not allergies, but intolerances.

If you get too much of one thing, your body can start disliking it.

So eggs are good for me, but like you can also develop sensitivity to eggs

by just having eight every single day.

Bodybuilders have a lot of problems like this when they eat the same

diet all over again, is that they just get too much of one thing

and the body starts to reject it.

Yeah.

I think it's important to know your body and to know what you should be

eating because I've seen Vegans and vegetarians that are overweight can

you be overweight when you're eating vegetables and you're supposed to

be healthier than the meat eaters?

There's a couple of things about vegans.

One of them is skin health.

So you often, they have like fragile skin and thin skin.

I've noticed and skin issues, there is many reasons, one of

them could be hormonal, one of them can be nutrient deficiencies.

They're not getting like cartilage and collagen and all that , their

body needs to produce more of it on their own, and it's capable for it,

but it's not like fully optimized.

And then the next thing is fragility of bones.

They're more easily to get like broken bones and all that and joint issues.

because they're not having enough of the things that the body needs

for building connective tissue.

And then they have gut issues because of like too much raw

things and anti nutrients.

And then sugar.

They just get too much carbohydrates.

I love vegan food.

I eat it occasionally.

Go to places like Bali and so on.

You can get really excellent plant based food.

But it makes me also very tired often.

So I prefer not to have it too often because it's very hard to have fat, more

primarily fat and fiber based plants.

Like a wild salad, fine.

Like with olive oil, avocados.

Yeah, cool.

Vealberries.

If you are ready to include some animal products, I mentioned

shellfish that's a pretty good source.

Some aged cheese can be better as a source of dairy because the way how

cheese is produced, like the older it is it's basically literally

lactose free, it breaks down the lactose, a lot of things it increases.

Nutrients actually in it you can maybe tolerate that better.

It also depends on the source of dairy there's A1 and A2 milk.

And then there's goat milk and also lamb milk.

It depends, like maybe some of these will be more tolerable for you.

But cheese also has its problem, like too much of it.

Also, it has histamine, so it increases histamine content.

So if you have already Inflammation and allergic reactions and all that like

having a Mediterranean diet with cheese salami and red wine and tomatoes That's

basically a combination of different sort and chocolate if you want to add something

else These are sources of histamine.

So histamine on its own like a histamine reaction is like allergic reaction Like,

if you already have an allergic reaction going on that's just gonna make it worse.

If you don't it's fine eating these things.

It's it's all understanding bio individuality and differences and

what works for someone doesn't necessarily work for someone else.

And...

That's why I don't believe in any kind of diet fads or any kind of

diet gurus saying that this thing is good and this thing is bad.

The more you know, the more you realize that it's not the

black and white world out there.

We are living in harmony with the ecosystems around us and we can

like, win that whole balance by just going too extreme on certain,

let's say, personal belief systems.

And I've seen.

Females who got too crazy with keto diets and shut down their

hormone production completely.

I've seen men who get got into massive gut issues by doing too much of that

carnivore stuff I've seen vegans being overweight and inflamed and tired and

neurologically Damaged that's also one thing you don't get the FB vitamins

and suddenly you feel fine for two three years Then you get depression

like there is so many things Take into account But in the end we all gonna die.

So We can try at least be more intelligent in how we die.

And that's what I do with biohacking is to be a little bit more informed in

some decisions, but not turning into a fundamentalist or the party blooper

who is always saying, I can't eat that.

It's it depends, right?

I agree with you.

I think life is about balance.

So I would like to know if you can share like a personal story on something

that you've done in your biohacking journey that has had a profound

impact on your health and well being.

One of the biggest things for me was to optimize my sleep and

recovery and stress management.

And I would say like most of the important biohacks are.

More related to how I bounce back from things that I do than how I do things.

So it's more about, it's not about performance.

It's not about workouts.

It's not about, the way I what I drink when I work.

It's more about how, what do I do when I have a break?

Like nature connection, heat alteration red light therapy, meditation,

breath work and sleep optimization.

Those are key, but sometimes I can't do all of these things, but

if I dial those in occasionally, it's it's beneficial for me.

I learned.

And the other thing is, I would say it's not only a physical

balance, it's also a mental balance.

If you are a high achiever type, you are a perfectionist, like you are often on

the way of your own, health and wellbeing by being like too, driven in a sense.

And so shutting down the monkey mind is one thing.

I would say meditation would help almost anyone, if you're able to

do it, if you can do it because you have ADHD and the monkey mind

doesn't shut up, there's different techniques, how you can do it better.

I find bread work works better for those kinds of people.

I find certain technologies work better for those people, like neurofeedback.

You can also use light as a feedback mechanism.

Then there is.

Personal inquiry and psychology that I've spoken a lot, and there's a whole section

in our next book on psychological health and resilience and social resilience.

So it's about working on your traumas and your issues you keep on repeating

sometimes subconsciously that is causing all your problems in the end, like how

you sabotage your own life in a sense.

And high achievers often have some issues, they're running away from

not feeling enough, always needing to top their own achievements.

So I think there is a deeper connection with the body and the mind, which

goes beyond just brain health.

It's a deeper construct, but when you do fix things going on in terms of

your body and health, it increase your.

Alertness, you become more efficient, you have more physical resources to do things.

What one thing that often happens to people is that their obsessive

compulsive things or neurotic patterns or whatever, they relax a little bit.

And so a sick person is often in a vicious cycle of damaging themselves

further, like through addictions different shooting mechanisms they

have neurotic patterns poor self image.

So in the end confidence is also one thing, of course, like if you

fix your gut, your skin is more radiant, like you feel better.

There is less chronic pain as a signal is it can't be like a nice person sometimes

to be around if you have chronic pain constantly., or you're depressed.

And depression is not I'm not saying it's bad.

It's you shouldn't be depressed.

It's a natural mechanism of the brain sometimes to like

basically make you chill out.

It's like the body telling that I don't want to be this person anymore.

And it might be linked to your lifestyle.

It might be linked to your relationships.

It might be linked to your work.

Something needs to change.

It's a signal, do something.

And I find biohacking.

can help with that.

And from that place, it's easier than to contribute to the

world in a more beneficial way.

So it's easier for you.

It's easier for everyone else around you.

So if you want to leave a legacy, if you want to do good work, get things

done, be a nice person, it is so much more, it's the way you conduct yourself

internally and externally where, a lot of that comes from in the end.

So literally the diet that you eat is changing your

consciousness and your behavior.

And, I've noticed like personality is changing when the gut microbiome

changes and it's understandable because the gut is also producing

a lot of the neurotransmitters that are utilized in the brain.

That's why the gut is called the second brain.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, like maybe this is a good summary of some of these things we started

from a lot of like skin related things we ended up with building more resilience and

purpose in life and be more impactful and meaningful yourself and others around you.

And you think of your body as a temple in a sense it's good to take care of it

in a way like, you have only one body, so you believe in incarnation or not,

it doesn't matter in this lifetime.

It's important to take care of what you have been given.

And often people like learn it the hard way, so they get health

issues and then they fix things.

It's a wake up call especially when you get older.

So in the end it's never too late and we all will have issues.

We all have issues and it's okay.

That's also important to remember.

Like it's, it's just what it is.

A super healthy person can, just one thing goes wrong and like things can be lost.

So in the end, we have to be grateful also what we have.

And in any context, there's always room for improvement.

My philosophy is very stoic, like life is difficult and painful,

but you better, enjoy it.

It's what it is.

That surprises me that would be your thought on life being difficult because

you come across as just very calm and gentle and just everything with ease.

In my mind, I don't see.

You believing that life is difficult because life seems to be easy for you.

Yeah, I'm an optimist for sure, like that helps, optimists tend to live longer.

I'm more keen to believe in like positive things and have

optimism when it comes to future.

Like I'm not driven by fear that much, but all of us are to a certain extent,

like deep down, like there is some kind of survival mechanism going on.

But for me, it's in the end, when I spoke about resilience, you are

basically exposing yourself to stress in a controlled manner.

It can be heat alteration, it can be fasting, it can be, anything,

you name it, like exercise.

All of these things are, when you are in a conscious and controlled manner

you're introducing stress to the system and you're pushing the envelope.

Even when you do your work.

You don't want to be apathic and lethargic and disconnected and bored from things,

you want to be engaged and you want to, get things done and you want to put your

heart and mind into something and your body sometimes in it, maybe you don't

sleep enough on some weeks or days or decades, but like in the end that's

what is important is that you do play with your boundaries and you push those

boundaries and make yourself harder to kill in that sense, you're more

prepared, that's what parking and do it can prepare you when things go wrong.

When you get a sickness or illness, it helps that you are

already in a good fit state.

It helps in recovery.

It helps in everything.

And it's never too late.

That's important to understand.

Also, sometimes you just have to start from a place of misery.

And it's fine.

So like deep down I'm a philosophist.

So that's how I think about it.

And yeah, there is no simple answers or solutions.

Like one thing about longevity and living forever is we're all going to die, the

pessimist outlook, why not enjoy it?

And the way I think about enjoyment is that these tools do enable

you also to enjoy more things that you want to do actually.

We're talking about breadth work and I recently met the The

person that created SomaBreath.

So is that a breathwork modality that you've been using?

Yeah, I know Jirash, it's his brand, but there's so many different

modalities of breathwork many bloggers use beam off method.

Some of them use like some yogic techniques, like Pranayama

like I use different breathing techniques that I've learned.

I do a lot of Sudarshan Kriya also that I learned from Art of Living Foundation.

So there's like a lot of different techniques.

And in the end, that's just another way to exercise your most important,

one of your most important organs, which is your respiratory system.

So just like I explained heat alteration.

It's your lymphatic system and your cardiovascular system, nervous

system and thermoregulation.

Breathwork does help you to play with oxygen and carbon

dioxide and lung capacity.

And it turns out like most of us are completely under

utilizing our lung capacity.

So like learning breathwork will help you with everything.

Your work, stress management, exercise.

And breath is, although it's most of our breathing is based

on the autonomic nervous system.

So it's automatic it's still under conscious control to a certain extent.

So you can like through modulating your breath, you can lower your heart

rate or improve your stress resilience or lower your stress hormones.

All of that.

And it's a essential component of what I do as well.

Do you think that it's a, makes a difference whether you're a shallow

breather or not a shallow breather in terms of how healthy you really are?

If you're a shallow breather, like.

Most likely you have a lot of stress in your life anyway there is a reason why

the body is like a person who just came out of sauna or an A2 trip is not going

to be a shallow breeder, like naturally, it's just going to, you're going to take a

deep breath and you're going to enjoy it.

It tends to be if you're super tense, like that you are reading more

shallow, and and you are not utilizing.

oxygen or secreting carbon dioxide efficiently enough, like

learning a couple of reading techniques will probably help you.

It's important that it has also anti inflammatory effects

and all kinds of things.

So it's one of our most important organs.

And most people never had a manual for it.

They don't know what they're doing.

So it's good to learn some of it.

And the Wim Hof Method for me, which is just another branded technique of

tummo breathing is very good for if you have depression or something

like this, something is overwhelming.

Doing a couple of sessions like that, it really connects you to your body.

And it produces a ton of beneficial hormones that make you feel great.

The release of dopamine from that is like beyond anything you can get from

any kind of legal drug you can have it's more effective than nicotine.

For example in stimulating dopamine.

So yeah, maybe that's what people need.

Instead of smoking.

Yeah, a very funny question if you don't mind, because

I like funny questions.

So if you are allowed to develop a superpower, what would it

be and how would you use it?

I'm actually developing right now an app that is almost like a superpower.

So it takes your biomarkers and data and based on that it identifies

the bottlenecks in your life.

And it helps you then to implement the lifestyle changes or all these modalities

that will be beneficial for you.

So I think.

If I can teach what I know at scale to people, that's going to be beneficial.

So that's, that would be a superpower.

It's just a technological implementation of it.

So that's what I'm building right now.

But otherwise even though I sound like a super optimized person, we all have

struggles and challenges and all that.

And learning to delegate things, knowing what are your battles, what you

should get yourself into and whatnot.

I think we all, a lot of us are struggling with things like that.

Like maybe spending too much time on their work and not enough time

on enjoying, that you're alive.

And that doesn't mean like having a drinking night outside, but

like just seeing the natural world sometimes might be it.

So I think it's important to have a like healthy balance in many ways.

And if I could like sometimes stop time and enjoy infinity, that would

be an awesome superpower for sure.

Brilliant.

Well, I'm excited about this app.

So when is it going to be released?

When are you going to?

Yeah hopefully at Biohacker Summit in Amsterdam.

We might have something cool to reveal, so yeah, if anyone is interested in checking

out our events learn more about daily biohacks with me and Roberta Whitney

also come to London 1st of September.

Otherwise to Amsterdam, 14-15 October, and you can learn a ton more about biohacking.

And if you can't wait, you can also go to biohackercenter.

com and check out what kind of content books and things we have out there.

And if you want to learn about beauty and how to optimize that work with

Roberta Whitney, go to robertawhitney.

beauty.

She's available there also on Instagram at @robertawhitneybeauty

and for us, it is @biohackersummit or personally for me, it's @teemuarina.

My name is my Instagram account as well.

And if they want the beauty show they can go to @thebeautyshow.tv and the link

will be there on that Instagram page.

Awesome.

And our podcast is Biohacker's Podcast.

You can find us on Spotify, also YouTube and most other popular

platforms on iPhone and Android.

Thank you very much Roberta for this.

This was enjoyable talking about wide variety of topics with you

and looking forward to meet you.

Amazing.

So I'm looking forward to September.

I will see you at the summit and let us biohack the way we should be

healthy and happy and beautiful always.

Indeed.

Yeah.

There is nothing better in life than to live long and die boots on.