Intermittent Hypoxia Training and Adaptogens with Karim Chubin

Music.

Hi, this is Teemu Arina from Biohacker's podcast. Today, I'm talking to Karim Chubin.

He's a Swiss naturopath and nutritionist from Geneva.

And he was at the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki.

And one of his main interests and expertise revolves around hypoxia training.

And there's a very specific term for it. It's called hypoxia-hyperoxia training, IHHT.

Key and that's the topic we're going to

dive deeper into what oxygen therapy can

provide what are the science mechanisms

health benefit applications all of

that for anyone interested in improving their

anything from lung capacity to oxygen uptake and we will probably also touch

base with different nutritional supplements and herbs that could be of interest

here because of his background as a naturopath. Welcome to the show.

Hello Teemu, a warm thank you for your warm welcome and for having organized

this really transformative experience for me when I came to Helsinki early July.

It was my first biohacking conference and you really managed to create a unique

experience combining different senses, a mixture of academia with an empirical

sense, bringing people together and it's been really wonderful.

So thank you very much for having created this. Yeah we are always trying our

best to architect the best possible experience and a wide variety of different

topics and speakers that are able to convey and express.

Information in interesting ways with hypoxia training specifically hypoxia hyperoxia

training what is it how does it work like how does one do one and one why would one do.

IHHT. Perhaps, can I just give you maybe a few words about myself and how I

I was working along the lines of functional medicine for almost two decades

And I realized that all the supplements, all the good habits,

all the diet and the lifestyle changes that I made in my early 20s,

all of a sudden met a sort of brick wall.

And I understood that the COVID was sent to me as a messenger to rethink the

way I understood health and the way I practice naturopathic medicine with my patients.

So I'm Swiss, originally from

So what happened was that I was hit really badly. My lungs were hit terribly.

And the West, as we know, was doing watch and see. It wasn't doing anything

really, just waiting for people to either get better or actually to go on to oxygen.

And what happened here was that I started researching the topic of oxygenation.

And I was wondering why I was in such a state.

I thought that I built up my terrain well enough. I was taking all the supplements

that most of us could acquire, high quality ones from Australia and America, had a clean diet.

But I was actually going through a personal ordeal, a breakup in my personal

life. So clearly the emotions were affecting my immune system,

but I had mis-evaluated and underestimated that impact.

To cut a long story short, I started researching it and I saw there was some

research done with hyperbaric chambers in Israel, with people with what is now known as long COVID.

So I went to the hospital here in Geneva, in the long COVID division,

and I asked them, look, could you please welcome me in the HBOT division?

And they said, but you're not a diver. I said, no, I'm not a diver, but look at my state.

And look at the research, I realized I was facing a lot of bureaucracy.

So fast forward, I traveled to Russia, which I have very strong affinities with,

being also fluent in Russian.

I went to Moscow, did a couple of sessions of hyperbaric chamber,

and then I went to a sanatorium in what is now known as a new Sochi city called

Gelendzhik in southern Russia by the Black Sea, absolutely beautiful city.

Went to this stunning clinic, and they told me, young man, we have something

even more effective than that. It's known as IHHT. I said, what is it?

So to answer your question, they told me, look, essentially,

Eventually, you're not lying in a chamber.

We're not giving you excess oxygen. It wasn't 100% oxygen. You're lying down in a lounging position.

You wear a mask. You keep your clothes on. And we take you from sea level up

several thousand meters.

We create a small stress on your cells by starving your cells of oxygen,

so changing the composition of the air, to make it simple.

We keep you up in altitude for a few minutes, surprising your cells.

And then we bring you down to sea level again. And then we take you up again.

End. So we do this several times over 45 minutes.

And by creating this ebb and flow, what I call a cellular surprise.

We, through hormesis, create targeted stress, a small stress,

which is called controlled stress.

We don't use pressure. We use minutes of the time ratio, how many minutes down,

how many minutes up in the mountains, and we change the composition of the air.

And by doing that, something fascinating occurs.

You have a shift inside the cells at the mitochondrial level.

So i was curious i did

a couple of sessions and my partner at the time

my girlfriend tells me you did not snow last night and i

started feeling more energized and i realized hold on a second this is affecting

my sleep and i'm feeling more vital and any naturopath or any functional medicine

practitioner knows that one of our key aims with our patients and with ourselves

is raising that vital force which allows us to go from being suboptimal to being

a better version of ourselves generally, or more optimal version of ourselves.

So my intuition told me I'm onto something here.

I changed my flights, flew to Moscow, went to an extension of that clinic,

clearly it is known as a Lancet clinic founded by the current prime minister

in Russia for his wife, an absolutely beautiful holistic clinic with different health modalities.

And I spent 10 days in a row in brief every day, every morning on an empty stomach.

Went back to Switzerland, flew back to Russia, did another couple of sessions,

so a total of 14 sessions, after which I could swim on the water again butterfly

and it was unbelievable so literally not only my lungs were better but my joie de vivre.

I had normal depression, normal lethargy. But what it really did is it shed

a completely new light on health.

We humans tend to, unfortunately, at times, conceptualize systems,

health systems, vertically, as I say.

So the gut, the brain, the gut, the brain, the skin, the gut,

the brain, the immune system.

So understanding that everything is intimately intertwined.

The mind and emotions are harder to conceptualize, but

we understand conceptually that they can an impact and they

do impact our biology by altering cell signals and

cellular behavior and therefore it's terrain

medicine so it's a very subtle marriage blend between

emotions and of course the garden what starts what's such it's a chicken and

the egg no one truly knows what begins where but all we know is it's like an

eight it's a subtle intertwining so a quick clarification so can you describe

how the technology specifically works do you like like breathe through a tube

or a mask or what's happening?

It goes in the mouth, and you're generally asked to try to fall asleep to rest,

ideally to breathe through the nose, as we know, and to try to relax.

It's a form of siesta or meditation.

That's what we encourage our patients or people to do.

And to relax and to train. So you're training while you rest.

So what's actually extraordinary is that by doing that, that you're creating

a reorganization, as it were,

through cellular surprise of these mitochondria that with age become more and more disgraceful.

As we know, everything becomes hard as we age.

Inflammation gets trapped, inflammation becomes chronic, enzymes go to sleep,

and more and more poor mitochondria take over the good ones.

But the beauty in naturopathic medicine or in terrain that's in,

we actually look at how we can reorganize that cellular behavior.

Now, I was talking about the vertical aspect of axis. Mitochondria is harder

to conceptualize because it's everywhere, in every one of us, in every cell.

And of course, as we know now, from cold plunging, to fasting,

to any form of hormesis is really essentially there to reignite that software

deep within, or maybe even the hard way.

What the Soviets had understood in the early 60s, the Soviet scientists,

the research goes back actually a long way.

What you need to understand is that, of course, Big Pharma did not exist back then.

So what you had is you had researchers working hand in hand,

who are often clinicians or working hand-in-hand with clinicians.

So you didn't have this quite absurd Western divide where you have research

carried out in labs, and then the way that's carried out, of course,

can be discussed separately, and then the implementation with specific guidelines.

So you have, again, the notion of family at your event early July,

the notion of transversality.

So the Soviets think conceptually about the way a tree functions and share and

were applying that. So they worked initially on their pilots.

Most of the research was on astronauts, pilots, and elite military athletes.

So they took, they worked on the pilots, and then they were preparing the athletes

So they took the athletes, took them up to the Caucasus, to the mountains,

and trained them in altitude.

Lo and behold, when the athletes came down, they won almost every gold medal in Mexico.

Most of the research was kept hushed till the early 90s. and then a couple of

Soviet then or Russian doctors came to Germany and introduced the technology

to Germany, translating a lot of the research into German.

So currently IHHT is very widespread in Germany. It spilled into Austria,

in the German part of Switzerland.

And I, after that ordeal, took a challenge to educate practitioners,

doctors, end users, individuals in the French part of Switzerland,

and now in North America.

So how would you compare that to HBOT, which is hyperbaric oxygen and hyperbaric

oxygen chambers, which is also said to affect the mitochondria? Of course it does.

The two are complementary, I believe, again, in a circuit.

And most people searching for HHT, the way I did, first hear about hyperbaric

chamber. How do I compare?

Look, in some ways, they're very similar. And actually, in many ways,

they're very different.

Because HBOT is essentially going to, through increased oxygen,

transform, of course, the mitochondria.

But you need to, A, want to accept to be in a chamber. So that's not for everyone.

Most people who are very anxious have difficulty doing it, even if the chambers have improved.

And also, as we know, oxygen, there's a flip side to it.

Too much oxygen, too many ferraticals.

So HBOT is used a lot with wound healing, with diving accidents.

So they're very specific cases

when delivering that much oxygen yields beautiful therapeutic results.

With IHHT, it's a notion of less is more and a notion of cellular surprise.

So for me, my understanding of it at this stage, at least, is that IHHT.

Fits more within the realm of hormesis. So you're essentially creating that

shock, that up and down, that surprise.

And you're taking someone in real time from sea level or below the sea,

36% hyperoxia, up to a window of 9% to 15% hypoxia.

So you starve the cells a bit of oxygen, you give it normoxa,

21%, what we generally tend to breathe, or hyperoxia, more oxygen.

And it's that shift, that window between high and low based on the subject,

of course, the individual and how healthy that person is.

So it's iteration, repetition, and that fourchette between being up there and

being down there that creates a surprise and a reorganization intracellularly,

allowing for the birth of new healthy mitochondria to appear. here.

We'll do it, but I believe that HBOT should be used more.

I believe both should be used in alternates, but I think that HBOT,

one could overdo with hyperbaric chain therapy.

Whereas with IHHT, if you're gentle, and this is the key, if you're gentle and

ready to give it enough time,

and that's of course the big challenge because we humans tend to want to rush

things, especially when we start feeling initial benefits, then you can do that

more as terrain medicine.

So IHHT is is for me more of a tool that could be deployed both by biohackers

as well as medical practitioners, functional practitioners, integrative doctors.

It can be used to prepare for any aesthetic operation.

It can be used to lower downtime. So the applications are extremely broad.

The challenge is educating people on what is the mitochondria and how it can be used.

So HBOT takes you into pressure by going low altitude in a way, like going deep.

And with IHHT, you're taking the person into high-altitude conditions and then

alterating between hypoxia and hyperoxia. So then this hyperoxygenated state...

Is it actually possible to simulate high altitude?

Is there some benefit that you are getting actually by going into high altitude

hiking instead of doing this with a device like this?

I don't see it this way. Empirically, yes, because the sheer fact of going and

living in the mountains or training in the mountains will be beneficial.

But the beauty here is it's that up and down.

And that's where the discovery is fascinating. Because in real time,

we can't cancel out that time effect and take someone and create that surprise.

We can go and do what you need to do or want to do in the mountains and vice versa by the sea.

But you can't create that surprise, which is essentially the discovery of IJHD, in other words.

There are virtues of naturally going and also training in the mountains.

But again, whenever we enter any one state, be it in food, be it in anything,

it's that flow, it's that surprise.

It's that ebb and flow that creates surprise. It's even, again,

like with food, we're creatures of habits. We tend to repeat good or bad habits.

But we're noticing now that the more we vary, the more we feed different families

of bacteria, and the more we make the immune system more resilient to unwanted guests.

So by strengthening the host, it's the same vision here. Right.

So you mentioned enhancing mitochondrial functions.

I assume this is very good in conditions involving mitochondrial dysfunction.

And I know that it's also used complementary in chronic conditions,

anything from cardiovascular health to enhance vascular function to boosting

immune system function, modulating it.

Making the body more resilient to stressors and maybe even improvements in physical

performance. So can you talk about this a little bit?

In the former Soviet Union right now, they're using it a lot with long COVID

and they're using it with immune dysfunction, but it's used a lot to prepare

athletes to conditions and to help them repair.

In other words, again, we talk a lot about homeostasis.

We don't talk enough about allostasis, which I think is a very beautiful term,

which means how to enhance adaptation in the face of change.

And that's where plants such as adaptogens do the same thing.

They resist the harshest conditions and develop a well-withal,

an intelligence at the cellular level, which is then passed on to our cells. Same thing with IHHT.

IHHT will, through a variety of different mechanisms, act, design certain pathways,

activate other pathways, just to keep it really simple in terms of the language

today, and support the body's ability to cope with stresses.

One of my mentors in Southern Oregon in the US, he's telling me there's very

little that separates an advanced cancer patient from an elite athlete in terms

of inflammation, which is fascinating.

So because you know how too much of a good thing, for example,

and this is the big issue with sports, with Ironman and people who push themselves

to such extremes, the body breaks down faster than it repairs.

And that catabolic state takes over the anabolic state as we get older.

And the beauty here is that with IHHT, we have a truly regenerative approach.

So we're not in a substitutive approach, which also yields benefits,

such as bioidentical hormone replacement therapy used by colleagues of mine,

where you come in and you can slow down the aging process, but you need to constantly continue.

Without IHHT, the beauty is you can cycle the treatments and then take breaks the way I did.

And the results build up. But of course, with wear and tear and with the stresses

that come with life and exogenous of stresses, emotional, physical,

physiological, environmental, the body will need another course.

But again, I warmly recommend to my loved ones, friends, patients,

and including myself, to take breaks and then to come back.

And you were talking about hyperoxia and hypoxia, but there's also another program

there, which is actually normoxia, which is taking the person down to sea level.

So when you have a chronically compromised patient who comes to you,

be it a long COVID, be it someone...

Coming from the mental health environment, because we speak a lot about athletes,

but we don't speak enough about addictions, for example.

And this works really well, IHHT with addictions, because it trumps through

microcirculation and through a variety of pathways, it accelerates and enhances

the production of different neurotransmitters. And as we know,

we're made of molecules.

We're molecules of emotions, to paraphrase Candice Bowe. And we really are that.

And then we generate a certain vibration, and then we're physical beings and energetic beings.

But what's intriguing is that dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline,

catecholamines, you name it, all this interplay, this marriage of molecules

that we know now is produced in a holographic manner, be it here or here,

we can, through IHHT, activate certain pathways,

allowing a person who does not want to change his or her diet,

who might not be able to give up, who might not be able to absorb the various

different supplements and herbs given in various forms, powdered,

liquid, tinctures, you name it.

Capsule form okay so now you've got a trend for

ivs but here you're entering a sphere where

sure ivs will work and ivs um

how can i say directly absorbed you circumnavigate the gut etc but the truth

is i can be included in one's routine or lifestyle with breaks as a support

and as an ability for most of us yet the benefits of that surprise c levels

to come back to initial question.

I still believe like a supplement is only a supplement to high quality food.

It is not going to replace going and spending several hours or several days

or several months up in Zermatt and going for long walks, but it will allow

for that surprise that we might not get if we go and spend too much time in

the mountains or forget about the sea. That's what I'm trying to say.

And then also what's beautiful here, and this then opens up a new area,

which is binding IHHT with different health modalities, such as vibrational medicine or music.

And this is what I've done in Geneva. And I'm exporting this concept now to

medical practice in Belgium next month.

And then in a spa context in Lisbon by the end of the year to reach different demographics.

What I noticed after Moscow is I went to Germany. I was introduced to a German

doctor, originally Russian, took a device, brought it home, and spent about

nine months breathing at home and experimenting on myself first,

and then introducing it to a few friends and loved ones.

And what I did is I started using classical music, which I adore,

and looking for synergies and noticing that actually I got enhanced.

Benefits by combining music with the breathing.

And then that led me to think about how can I integrate and create a multi-sensorial

or what I call a Swiss immersion,

an immersion at a sensorial level where a person could breathe,

listen to specific music, which will then enhance that relaxation mode,

which will enable the person to switch off, to train whilst resting.

So in other words, you repair, rejuvenate whilst you rest. It's actually quite intriguing.

And now we're including also some red light therapy.

I just really, to ignite the mitochondria, but without overdoing it,

because some practitioners are going to use a massage chair.

I think that when you're overly stimulated, then it actually has a counter effect.

So my idea is really to get people in that lounging position to disconnect from

their stresses, to reconnect to the music of their soul.

And it's intriguing because through homeostasis or

allostasis each person will tell me look

first a person might not feel any differences for three

to four sessions and all of a sudden say you know what my my sleep

has changed or i have less appetite or i don't want to eat foods

anymore so it's working so it goes where it needs to

go first in my case it went and fixed the lungs in someone else's

case it's going to work on a metabolic level so the

weight it works with weight management for someone else it's

going to work on joint health and for someone else it's going to work on addictions to

sugar to gaming to to different forms

of substances and that's where we realize that where we need

to become one's own detective and we can actually learn to

decipher the language the signs the signals that

our body's yearning to express and when we become

cleaner i said her the body speaks in a different.

Language to us and we actually can trust those messages it

sounds like it will enhance microcirculation so

it probably makes synergistically more effective

the actual treatment by involving this vibrational

therapy frequency therapy so I would imagine that now

what are the kind of clinical applications

of IHHT you said you went to Russia to get this treatment in the first place so

what is this like traditionally used in terms of different conditions and then

to move into more performance enhancement territory with someone who doesn't

have an existing condition why would someone.

Do I, specifically? So it was discovered in Russia. It was, as I mentioned, developed in Germany.

So these are the two countries that are really at the forefront of it right now.

In Russia, it's still not that well known, believe it or not,

because what happened is a lot of the funding stopped for a few decades.

And now there's a new interest that's appeared because more and more people

are realizing that the world has clearly changed, at least this reality.

And many are looking for a way to get back the quality of life that they have.

They've had or to improve the quality of life or generally or to repair or to

get better post-vaccine connected to the COVID or post-COVID.

To answer you, in Russia, for example, autism is understood as a mitochondrial

disease, which is not something that we perceive the same way in the Western world of an actualist.

So what happens is that in Russia, you have clinics, at least I know of one,

that uses IHHT synergistically with other therapies to support at the mitochondrial

level people suffering from autism.

It's used mainly right now in specific clinics for long COVID.

And as we know, long COVID is essentially an umbrella word for people having

been affected at the mitochondrial level.

That's why some people were hit urologically, others were hit in terms of energy

levels. So in other words, each person was hit in a different way.

Some people don't even notice it, and then it's cardiovascular.

It's silent, and they're hit with a stroke.

So what's fascinating is that people now who realize, let's say,

because they understand and they feel that they're suboptimal,

they realize that they're not as good as their conventional lab work would tell

them that they are with a conventional medical doctor.

They realize, whom do I trust, that sheet of paper or my body that's sending

signals that something's off?

In Russia, it's still used medically. It hasn't entered the wellness sphere.

In Germany, the story is different.

It's mostly used by naturopaths. It's used by now more and more clinics.

It's used by medical doctors. It's used, I believe, in Berlin,

if I'm not mistaken, at the Frey Hospital with long COVID.

the three Nobel Prizes of Medicine demonstrated the scientific principles that undergird hypoxia.

Now, the West, once again, confirms with its tools and language what not even

the ancients here, but let's say their Soviet counterpart, colleagues,

scientists, three or four decades earlier had already understood and published about.

So there are more articles on PubMed coming out on the application.

So it's used, and now certain clinics, there's one in Zurich using it as an agent for addictions.

Currently, the applications are mostly to prepare athletes in Germany.

I think soccer teams are using it, or people who've been affected.

My aim is, with this Million Minds mission that I've created,

I don't know if you're familiar with this, So the idea is to educate a million

people across the globe and to whisper health treasures from the East,

namely from Siberia to Western Europe, and vice versa from the West to the East.

I want information to travel freely without any geographical boundaries or frontiers.

And my aim here is to really bring it into a wellness sphere,

and it can be really deployed as a standalone, the way people go and have IVs in the lounge.

But it can also be integrated by different health professionals, medical alternatives.

So let's say integrative practitioners prior to operation to help, because remember,

our ability to recuperate from any form of operation or intervention depends

on our, again, ability to lower chronic inflammation.

And the ability of the body has eventually an anabolic state,

shifting back into the middle.

It's never one or the other. It's a constant dance. It's an ebb and flow.

And by supporting mitochondrial health, we generally have a better reservoir.

A better ability to come back to the middle, to the center, to find one center faster.

So my aim is to offer it as a plug-in, plug-and-play, let's say,

in different medical clinical clinics, to show them, to show clinicians the

importance of thinking along the lines of mitochondria, but to do it in a fun

and dynamic way. Not because this is very important.

It's changing very recently right now in Russia, but three years ago when I

did it, I was actually lying down horizontally.

It's in Germany that I was taught, no, you shouldn't lie down because if you

fall asleep and your tongue goes back, and some people suffer from sleep apnea,

which is actually my case, people have that issue happen. and you can't actually enter that state.

The effects can be negative. So you need to be in a lounging position.

Now the Russians actually learned from the Germans. So the information is traveling

back to Russia from Germany where we're understanding the importance of being

in a relaxed manner, in a relaxed form.

So to answer you, the research on ITH in the mitochondria is there.

It's growing every year. The clinical applications have not yet been,

It hasn't been yet fully endorsed by the West and by the Russians and deployed

the way I'd like it to be deployed across the board.

Because regenerative medicine is, as we know, not about disease management,

but it's about building health and celebrating vitality.

So one has to convince the practitioners that, you know, first and foremost,

what counts is that patient's health and health care.

The patient is at the epicenter of the journey. So if you would take something

that doesn't require a device, like a chamber or a mask with massive machinery next to it to run it.

If you would use a method like the Wim Hof method that also claims to work on

this hypoxia-hyperoxia.

How would you compare the effects of something like Wim Hof method with breathing

alterations and its comparison to this technique?

I believe there are similarities. I must admit that I need to jump into the Wim Hof method.

I believe that it will be a great add-on. I'm already sleeping with a mask at

night, taping my mouth because of my sleep apnea and using IHHC during the day.

And I've been reading and listening to Wim Hof and it's going to be the next discovery of mine.

But to answer you, I believe that they're crossovers, but I might answer this

in a non-academic way here.

I really believe in, it all depends on what the person believes in.

And I see many friends, people I know who jumped into the Wim Hof method and

it's changed their lives.

I met recently in Florida, Sarasota, where I was giving a talk at one of my

colleagues and Friends conferences, Dr.

Lloras, actually, who you know, John Lloras, who was, I believe,

who was actually in Helsinki, whom I met in Helsinki, who asked me to introduce

to a circle of practitioners and friends of his and patients of his.

I met a gentleman who does, who offers this activation breath work.

And what's fascinating is I believe that on one's life journey,

we have hooks and moments where we're ready to absorb and take on new health modalities.

Some people will tell you, look, I can do it without a mask.

I can just start you. I believe that the Wim Hof method through hormesis will

do something similar to IHHT, the way activation breathwork does,

which is from a holotropic breathing, but will it.

Will it again, it depends on the belief system, I believe, of the person,

what they really want to do. Some people don't want to have tools and artifacts.

Other people would rather lie down and offer themselves that parenthesis,

that ritual, where they breathe.

And in the way we've devised longevity, which is the name of the concept,

we then marry it with music and with red light now to create this triad.

So I believe it's HBOT. There are different ways of skinning the cat.

I don't think, and we're working on microcirculation, oxygenation,

and on the mitocondria. We're just doing it from different angles.

And again, I think that neither IHHT alone, H alone, Wim Hof methods alone,

holotropic breathing alone holds all the secrets.

So it's really about varying. I really believe in varying it.

So ideally, we'd have centers where people would come in and experience different circuits.

And then you also have to listen to what they're drawn

towards because i can present what i believe in

but you might actually say thank you very much but i don't need any masks i

can do it by breathing and if i'm trying to convince you through a rational

prison i'm failing a priori i have to respect your belief system when you're

coming from that's at least the way i've always been that's the way i think

as a practitioner as a person so to me it sounds like when it comes to

IHHT let's say compared to Wim

Hof method both have effects on mental

health feeling of vitality energy mitochondrial function the ability of the

lungs to utilize oxygen and also resist co2 I think the co2 resistance is also

another effect and I would consider that this is an adaptogen in a way.

I remember this is the beauty of it. This is an embryonic process that occurs when we're in the womb.

So we have hypoxic states, as Dr. Arkady Prokopov mentioned recently in an interview

with Joseph McCullough.

And it's really fascinating because we actually reignite, we're essentially

reactivating a process known to us in utero.

So in other words, this hypoxic stake is something known to us that we're rediscovering.

So we're going back to, it's a bit like Watsu, but used with autists, it's a shiatsu in the water.

I don't know if you're familiar with this, where you go back and you make certain

sounds, and you go back and you essentially go back into the mother's womb.

And it's fascinating because always when I'm lying on these floating boats now,

these are sensations that we once knew that we're rediscovering.

So IHHT will then activate also the production of CO2.

There's a variety of hitherto unknown chains of molecular reactions that occur

through IHHT and similarly with Wim Hof's method and other methods.

But again, these are crossovers because this is very complex.

Mitochondria are mysterious ancient bacterias that have co-evolved with us and

that actually in many ways precede us.

So who's the host and who's the guest? That's also the topic for another podcast.

Are we the guests? Are we the wanted or unwanted guests welcomed by the mitochondria?

And this is really the vision in that shop that was fascinating me.

Instead of going after the bad guys in the gut, why not support our friends

and allies? By supporting them, we change the intelligence of that microbiome,

as we call it now, but we have different biomes, as we know.

So we support families of allies that then keep the unwanted guests in check.

So we don't need to resort to power. And this could actually be used in world

affairs, I imagine, and apply to top politicians' philosophy,

if only they could deploy a naturopathic outlook, where you look at that whole thing, as you said.

And that's the beauty of it. The adaptogens speak directly to the hypothalamus.

They go straight up there. And then there is the chain of effects.

They're not organ-specific.

So let's define adaptogen.

Adaptogens, in a short way to think about it, is your body's ability to adapt

Nikolai Lazarev. He introduced this term to describe substances that enhance

the state of nonspecific resistance to stress.

Later, his definition was, I would say, recognized, but also more accurately

defined through research in the Soviet Union by people like Dr.

Israel Breckham. And one way to think about it, it's nonspecific,

so it increases body's resistance to a wide range of stressors.

Then there's a normalizing effect it stabilizes the influence on bodily systems

and it is non-toxic so it shouldn't disturb normal body functions even in long-term use for example.

Great changes in blood pressure or heart rate and so on and i've used adaptogens for a long time,

different types of substances and many bikers do like the like like some of

the most common adaptogens in terms of herbal products,

what people use is rhodiola rosea, which is, I think also sometimes called as rose root.

It's the northern version or Siberian version of something like ginseng.

It's not really a ginseng, but just like ginseng, which is another of these

adaptogenic plants that have effect on energy metabolism and oxygen utilization.

That's a really interesting one. In India, they use ashwagandha or vitania somnifera,

which also has effects on oxygen utilization.

And then there's a specific mushroom that a lot of people use for energy.

It's called cordyceps that also improves oxygen uptake.

Personally, I've received a lot of benefits from all of these.

If I just summarize some of my own experiences, I like to use ginseng,

especially for its blood sugar stabilizing effects.

So in a way, like if I want to have good focus, often it's not about stimulating

myself, like many people do caffeine or other substances and stimulants.

To me, something like ginseng with its blood sugar regulating effects is quite great.

Ashwagandha on the other hand, its effect on the reduction of stress hormones,

especially morning cortisol is one of the reasons why I use it.

And rhodiola, I've noticed that if I do something like a physical exercise,

like a gym workout, it feels less painful. For example, I would be like...

If i do a set of weight lifting like

the last set feels less straining on

my system in some way and cordyceps on

the other hand it works very similarly to

caffeine on the on the adenosine receptors the cordyceps specifically in it

and i've noticed with cordyceps that it's a pretty good alternative to caffeine

if one wants to reduce caffeine intake cordyceps can give similar effects.

It also does disturb sleep through similar mechanisms.

But there's interesting studies and effects on it on VO2 max.

And I think anyone who is trying to improve oxygen utilization,

VO2 max, which is also one of those things that from a longevity standpoint.

Is actually one of the most proven methods.

If you improve your VO2 max, you will have higher likelihood of having a longer

health span, and so that's where oxygen utilization comes into play for me specifically.

And there's many other adaptogens that are often categorized like shisandra or holy basil or tulsi.

To me, adaptogens are like, if you think of stimulants are like spiking and

then there's some kind of crash, while adaptogens are giving this resistance.

So if you're understimulated, it will stimulate you enough.

And if you're overstimulated, it will regulate that. So that's my kind of refined understanding of it.

And we wrote quite extensively about adaptogens, for example,

in the Biohacker's Handbook that we published back in the day. It's available from biohackercenter.com.

But yeah, can you speak a little bit about adaptogens?

Actually, first of all, I'd like to thank you for having compared IHHT,

or actually coined IHHT and adaptogen, or at least raised the possibility of

understanding IHHT. And it really is.

I just want to go back one second to IHHT and then make the link with it.

So what my patients are telling me, and when I exchange with colleagues,

they all tell me that we want to eat less.

We feel more zen. Our perception of a situation shifts.

So there's a very interesting interesting internal reorganization of our inner,

what I call this mosaic of happiness or inner architecture that we have.

And it's interesting because one's perception of situations and of people change

when, and one doesn't need as much food because you actually are fed at the

mitochondrial level differently.

When I discovered adaptogens, we're going back 17 years, I was mentored by a

wonderful gentleman, and I hope he hears this, this podcast,

Donnie Yance in Southern Oregon, in a beautiful city called Ashland in Southern

Oregon, very close to Porton in San Francisco.

And I discovered in Southern Oregon the virtues of Siberian adaptogen.

So I want to just go back a second on the historical development of that and

then talk about why and how they work and the beauty.

And then we can maybe discuss this together in a further chat because it's a minefield.

ITH conference about the role of Siberian adaptogens. in stress mitigation.

And I'd love to be able to talk about that more. During the Cold War,

there were these two blocks.

Americans were taking elite athletes, elite military, and astronauts and boosting them.

So it was all about, as you talk about the caffeine, it was all about boosting performance.

Again, it's a philosophical outlook. The Soviets, thanks to Lazarev,

Breckman, exactly, and then their teams, were working on the same groups during the Cold War.

And they thought, hold on a second, is it really about boosting or is it about enhancing adaptation?

So when astronauts come back, how are they going to adapt to being back?

Elite athletes, same thing.

And again, this is where the whole IHHT thing came up about 10, 15 years later.

It's a philosophy. It's a Weltanschauung. It's an outlook on life,

which is completely different.

So Lazarev started noticing there was a family of herbs growing in the pristine

Siberian highlands, which he then coined adaptogens.

Then he broke it down in different groups, primary, secondary, companion adaptogens.

But that we can discuss maybe in a separate show. And what's beautiful is that

he realized that these herbs had a unique ability in the plant kingdom of resisting

Siberian winters of that period.

Now, Siberian winters in the late 40s and 50s were not today's winters,

as we know. So they were able to survive the harshest conditions.

And then he posited that, hold on, if they have the intelligence,

the ability, the capacity to resist our winters, what happens if we give them

to the astronauts, to the military, to the athletes?

Could they maybe pass on pharmacokinetic properties, so properties,

molecules, principles, to our cells and then help with the way we humans or

these groups would adapt to different stresses?

Because again, it's not stress per se that kills us, and Hans Selye talks about it.

It's stress when stress shifts into distress, when the brain perceives stress

as a threat versus one's ability to perceive a situation.

Again, it's all about perception, I imagine. And here, Lazarev realized that

these herbs were also growing in China.

Why am I talking about this extensively? Because pharmacokinetically.

The herbs are identical, some of them. But from a therapeutic standpoint,

the results are completely different.

So then we realized, and Lazarov realized actually and his team,

that maybe we're talking about something beyond tangible, measurable molecules.

We're talking about the energetics of the herbs, what Claude Bernap called the

milieu, but also the environment of where these plants grow.

The Chinese counterparts do not grow where they don't have the same environment.

So epigenetics here. So to what extent the conditions affect the intelligence

of the herbs through hormesis and stress and a struggle for survival, they end up thriving.

The strongest survive, thrive, and then that intelligence, that wisdom.

Alongside the measurable, tangible pharmacokinetic properties are passed on

to those humans or to us as humans.

And there's a transfer of intelligence, which then creates a shift in our internal

terrain as we know ourselves speak to one another, the way two musical notes do.

The same here, God expresses himself or herself through Mother Nature and the plant kingdom.

And when these plants are passed on, they create that change in our environment,

making our terrain more resistant, more resilient.

So this is terrain medicine. Again, it enhances allostasis, how to adapt in

the face of change, and of course, homeostasis.

This is where IHHT works exactly the same way. When I discovered this,

I noticed that my appetite, my patient's appetite would shift.

And one of my, let's say, one of the keys to the successful results that I had

initially in my practice was rather than change someone's diet,

because most people don't want to change their diet, as we know,

is actually helping them organically change taste buds.

So if you can actually create a shift in that internal milieu,

a person will perceive sweet things or carbs or whatever happens they have in

a different light. They might not even want them anymore.

And all of a sudden they go, hold on a second, what's happening?

I'm changing at a very deep and subtle level.

And that's generally done when you get the help from a regenerative standpoint,

things such as HHT, which I recently discovered, or adaptogens.

So all this work was, again, kept us shut until in the early 90s.

And then a gentleman by the name of Tabashnik, originally from Azerbaijan,

from Baku, who was working in Moscow with a team of scientists and again,

preparing the athletes for the 19,

88 Korea-Seoul Olympic Games.

And one of the methods used was introducing adaptogens in that preparation,

yellow terracoccus, which is what we call the cyborg ginseng.

There's also a fantastic herb that we hear much less about in Europe,

and again, DonnieDonnie Yance introduced us to it, and I'll share with you the line

of supplements device which is done, we know, with beautiful ethics,

and actually he receives the herbs even today.

Despite the political situation in the world, I found out he continues to,

he's found a way to receive them from the Far East, from Vladivostok.

to this master herbalist and clinical nutritionist who works in the field of

integrative ecology or collaborative ecology in Oregon.

Donnie, so, yeah, this is his name, Y-A-N-C-E. So Tabashnik started supplying

Donnie, with these herbs.

And Donnie, when he was mentoring us, was teaching us something really beautiful,

which is that many people jump into these heroic detoxifications,

which has been trendy for so many decades now, etc.

But as we know, some people go and fast and collapse when they start fasting

too quickly, too intensively. Others do much better.

So there is the notion of metabolic or biochemical individuality,

to paraphrase Williams, and also emotional individuality. People have different

terrains, but they also have different life forces.

And this is what's interesting. If we actually start by approaching not only

ourselves, our loved ones, or for clinicians, our patients, by supporting the

vital force, we start by raising a person's vitality.

And that's where adaptogens work. And that's where HHT works beautifully.

By supporting the vital force, we change the terrain.

And then we have a cellular detoxification that occurs, but it isn't a heroic

or as Donnie calls it, a honeymoon effect, where we get a wow effect,

which then becomes the counter response.

So the idea is we do something more gradual, but something more intelligent, because it's constant.

Coming back to what you mentioned in your brief introduction,

Teemu, adaptogens speak straight to the head, to the conductor.

So some people will call the thyroid the conductor, others will call it the hypothalamus.

There are different schools of thought here, but what we know is that we have an axis,

which is unlike the mitochondria, which is diffused in every way,

which is vertical here, which goes from the brain, from the hypothalamus,

speaks to the pituitary, speaks to the thyroid, and speaks to the adrenals. It's a concerto.

When we send a signal, if it's not a wrong-headed one, if it's an honest and

noble one, the hypothalamus will send different signals or healthy signals downstream.

As it speaks to each gland, the ability of us producing different hormones changes.

And as we know, we're made of molecules. It's a subtle synergy.

Among minerals, vitamins, bacteria, fungus, viruses, and of course,

hormones. Hormones give orders to the cell.

So if you look at hormone therapy through the prism of allostasis or the prism of adaptogenic.

If we look at it through the prism of adaptogenic remedies, we actually have

a very gentle form of hormone balancing therapy, which takes you up to a certain

point. Then, of course, it's a question of positioning.

We regard aging as a disease, or do we regard aging as something that occurs,

but can occur in a graceful manner, that can occur in a graceful manner,

in which case you might want to continue with the adaptogens and the regenerative

approaches versus taking other forms of treatment.

Then it's very much a personal positioning vis-a-vis life, death,

aging, and one's philosophical stance.

So adaptogens, yes, have the ability to speak to the hypothalamus in a non-specific

manner, and therefore in a very subtle but also integrated way of going to the root.

Because if the brain gets the right signal downstream, it will help balance

hormones naturally and of course have an effect on brain chemistry and naturally

on taste buds and therefore on self-perception and therefore on happiness and

therefore on mind over body.

So this is where you're realizing that by borrowing molecules from the plant

kingdom them and the energetics from them, you can actually create,

and also borrowing from their life struggle, their struggle with death.

So in other words, through their struggle with hormesis, as it were,

we actually go back and create that ebb and flow, that eight,

and then likewise, we produce new emotions, new thought patterns,

which then speak down to the biology.

And that's when it's a dance. And that's what's really beautiful.

So adaptogens, yes. But the question is, which ones? How are they administered? harvested?

Are we using the schisandra leaves or the berries? And then you have different traditions.

And I'd love to be able to discuss this more with you and share more with you

and with the audience, because there are different qualities that we know,

supplements out there and herbs.

And also there's the ethics of how they've been harvested, how they've been

passed on and how they've been compounded.

And that's the intention in the supplement line. And that's really,

I think, quite beautiful. I use tinctures as well, but I rotate.

And I noticed something very similar. Thank you for having actually opened my

eyes on that. I hadn't thought about IHHT as an adaptogen. I was using the other word.

No, thank you for that, because you actually crystallized it beautifully.

But the fact of being able to go off food for long periods of sometimes hours

and sometimes a day or two without having sugar imbalances, without having dips,

without feeling jittery, and realizing that you're fed by the plant kingdom

or by what I call cellular surprise.

I like the notion of cellular surprise because it's gentle and it's really what HHC is all about.

Yeah, so if we go back into the different practical applications of adaptogens,

and thank you very much for acknowledging the fact that IHHT can be also considered as an adaptogen.

And rhodiola rosa or i mentioned rose root

also another term is golden root the soviets actually used

that especially with athletes soldiers and astronauts

there is some literature on the use of

astronauts to be able to sustain radiation in

space and also like recover faster once they come back from

their space missions also the russians

used elweth or the siberian ginseng and

that's pretty powerful substance as

well and it was used in athletes and workers

also in demanding environments and then schisandra sinensis

which is the schisandra which i love the i the

i think the chinese name is translates to

something like five five tastes because it has

like everything from all the different taste

components um savory salty

sweet it's just like a beautiful taste i think it's one of the best tasting

of all of these adaptogens because most of them taste horrible and then there's

of course the asian ginseng which in chinese medicine is a big thing which is

panax ginseng and there's different forms but a lot of these are roots also.

The the root of uh of of wheat honey or somniflora or ashwagandha is as well

so many of these plants they produce these protective compounds when they are attacked in nature.

So that's where most of these beneficial compounds come from.

So it's like their natural immune system, partly these compounds that they produce.

And then when we take them in, they also have a response in the body and often

by its immune system that leads to these positive adaptations.

Now, those are some of the most well-known and of course, functional mushrooms

or medicinal mushrooms like someone some like to call them although the modern

medicine doesn't want to acknowledge them as medicine they will that's why functional

mushrooms is maybe a bit more neutral term also have many of them have these

effects like i mentioned cordyceps but there are also

some more rare and lesser known especially soviet or or russian um adaptogens

that are not on the market as visible.

One of them is the Maral Root, for example.

The Maral Root, there's a period, if I'm not mistaken, it's in June,

where you could actually, now for all those of us listening,

for all those of you listening to us today, this might sound a little bit surprising to Western ear.

But there's a tradition in Russia of going, namely in Siberia,

remember a lot of it comes from Siberia, that's really the hotbed for most of

the science, be it in the quantum field, what the Germans call,

or the Westerners called bioresonance, or even the Hubble-Metson-Kingdom field as well,

or let's say regenerative medicine. There's a period of three weeks.

In tune where you can go and take baths with the big moose, the Maral,

Maral's horns to the blood.

Now I experienced this in Kazakhstan more than a decade ago.

A friend of mine was traveling there and actually we had the dried powder of

the horns used and it had a huge effect on blood pressure.

Actually a different effect than when you actually take, it's known as pantocrime

is the word, which you find which is used as a libido enhancer or stimulant

when you take it orally, then when you take it transdermally and about,

it has effects on blood pressure.

So it's, again, the results all come from the dose.

The Maral is fascinating because it has really effects on, noticeable effects

on microcirculation and some call it the sort of natural viagra,

which by the way, HHT is also coined the natural viagra.

Because when you improve microcirculation, blood flows to the extremities.

So the brain cells function differently and so do other parts of the body.

I would imagine a lot of these adaptogens, they work synergistically with IHHT

during the session also, because it's a form of stress, right?

So it probably helps to adapt to that a little bit and maybe also recover from

if there's any fatigue from those kind of therapy sessions.

The way I conceived longevity here was really trying to bring it down to the

simple bare bones of mitochondrial support with IHHT, the red light,

and of course the music together.

As a triad. But the idea is that when people breathe and stop,

you maintain them generally with adaptogens.

And that's what I've started doing here. Rather than doing it synergistically,

but it's a great idea to actually bring it into the circuit.

There's another plant that I want to talk about, a herb also known in Russia

and poorly known in the West, known as Ruponticum.

This is the Latin name, Cartomoides.

Ruponticum cartomoides contains a fascinating molecule known known as phyto

or phyto, which from a structural perspective, it's quasi identical to cortisol.

So when you take it, I'll send you after this talk some more information about it.

The brain, when absorbing, when we absorb the phytoactive steroids present in

the ruponticum, the brain will manage stress differently because it's essentially a.

Producing cortisol differently. In other words, it's really, and it works on VO2 max.

So we generally take it for 20 days, take a 10 day break.

And we notice be it a physiological stress, workouts, be it travel as I do and

jet lags and adapting, be it the radiation from planes, be it toxic people we

know interact with if we're sensitive or not.

So in other words, the body is able to, once again, we're fed differently.

In other words, we take new decisions, and we're able to recover.

Again, the anabolic phase improves.

And so you were talking about the varieties, positive effects of adaptogens.

They work on microcirculation.

They work on COX-2, LOX-5.

So they work on different, on cell signaling. So they reduce specific pathways.

They work on so many, I don't want to get too technical here,

pathways, but in short, they reduce the inflammation.

They improve the ability of finding one center faster, shifting back into an anabolic state.

So they are enhancing, but what they also do, and this is what I think really

maybe at the epicenter of what I want to say, we borrow from the plant kingdom

what we need to find one center.

And each person has a different way of finding that balance.

In other words, the brain and body are extremely well designed.

They're going to borrow exactly what they need and flush out what they don't.

In other words, the same. And I often had this from Middle Eastern or Russian

patrons tell me, but Karim, you have a person-specific, a personalized way,

a boutique way of approaching the health journeys.

But why am I getting the same tincture with the same herbs as my cousin or my

brother or my relative? We're different. And I say, yes.

But let's understand individuality in a different way. Your body and your cousins,

your friends, your relatives will borrow in that tincture and the synergy of

different herbs, what it needs to balance, what it needs to balance,

which in your case will be very different to your neighbors or relatives.

So in other words, the notion of individuality also has to be taken into perspective

because the body being a beautiful self-regulating organism,

it knows what to borrow in rhodiola, water boron, shisandra, waterola and chaga,

water boron, the pantocrine.

And again, the same dose, the same herb alone, single herb, mono herb,

versus the same synergy will work differently in different people.

But what we're noticing is that people are less hungry.

People are noticing the way exactly. So food can come from a different source.

And I think that's really what we can understand even philosophically.

There's this appetite suppressing effect. And I would say it's like probably

because of the blood sugar regulating aspects of this.

And so, yeah, it's quite amazing. If you want to focus long periods of time

on something and do it resiliently, these adaptogens can help for sure.

I'd like also to regard or consider the Bacopa monieri. I don't know how familiar

you are with this. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

The Brahmi plant used in Ayurvedic medicine. Most of the studies are in India.

That's a blood flow plant. Yeah.

Exactly. It's a mind flow, and it works on a variety of different molecules.

And some even argue that it has many of the positive effects of stimulants such

as Ritalin and stuff, which I, of course, don't regard highly.

But we can actually work on a variety, on that whole rainbow of brain chemicals,

which are also gut chemicals, and each person will need his or her dosage.

We generally notice when our ability to adapt is enhanced, that everything is

done, there's a finesse through IJC, a finesse through the plant kingdom that

we don't have with pharmaceuticals, which have their role to play in it.

But again, in the philosophy of let's boost, whereas here let's enhance adaptation,

let's improve the response.

It's a very different way of thinking. Yeah, for sure. There's a couple of lesser

known plants that I discovered recently.

So one of them is called Sagan Dalya. This is a plant that grows in Siberia,

especially around Lake Altai.

So I met some Russian travelers on my travels and they offered me this tea and

it's quite powerful, especially in terms of enhancing mental alertness and physical stamina.

So it's more, I think it looks like more like these kind of needles or leaves.

Can you say the name again with me or maybe afterwards? Sagan Dalya.

The Latin name is Rhododendron Adamsii.

If you haven't heard about it, I recommend checking it out.

It's a Siberian or Mongolian tea that is often used to promote energy and vitality and well-being.

And it's definitely a nootropic in in some

way in my experience and it's very

stimulating so like often yeah like

the russians that i've met like they recommend to be take it easy with it like

that you don't take much like just it can lead to overstimulation so it's that's

one thing and another plant that i've found very interesting also comes from

siberian mongolia it's called the Siberian tea or Mongolian tea.

Specifically, the Latin name of this plant is Bergenia crassifolia.

And this particular plant is very comparable to rhodiola or Siberian ginseng

or aloe vera in its effects. In my experience, it's a leaf.

And funnily enough, when we were writing the Biohacker's Handbook back in the days,

like a decade ago, we realized this plant was growing on the yard of the summer cottage we were in.

And so we just made some tea out of it. And it's pretty strong adaptogen as

well. Do you take them in the form of teas?

Both of them are teas.

So many of the adaptogens we spoke about are more like you use it internally and you eat it.

But specifically with these two, you make a tea out of it.

So if you rather drink a tea, these two plants, Sagan Dalya and Bergenia Grassifolia, is great.

In Finnish, I know the name. It's called Buorenkilpi. I don't know what it is

in English language, but yeah, there's so many adaptogens that have not been

marketed or popularized that kind of have very interesting effects.

On my next show, I'm going back actually, I'm going to Siberia in October,

and I'll try to discover new herbs and plants, which I'd be really ready to share.

Because it's, as you said, what's also fascinating is how culturally these plants

are part of people's childhood.

Childhood they grew up with their grandparents serving that to

them when they're sick etc so a lot of many russians have

grown intertwined with the flora and

the fauna much more than at least in the west i don't know about

finland but where we're much more detached we have to go and study the fauna

and the flora but we grew up most of us we know with a western pharmacodea yeah

yeah very few people have seen these plants like they might buy them as supplements

but i have actually collected rhodiola rosea myself and even grown it in these

regions like it requires a little bit.

Colder regions so we live in Finland in

the same kind of latitude or

longitude of siberia so many of

these plants do grow here if we want to specifically this

siberian tea bergenia crassifolia by

the way i checked the name in english is often called

just bergenia or leather bergenia and

the reason why it's called leather because the leaves are

distinctive thick and very leathery so

it looks like leather that just grows on ground and so

it's already like when you look at the leaf it has some serious

power like it's not

a fragile plant at all and it's

it has this darker color as well so it looks like

super potent yeah i can attest using

it as tea that it does work for sure with these teas when you've around as well

as a full companion and yeah last time when i'm when i came across a gondelia

that was actually in thailand so i met these russian travelers and they had

some so i got it and i actually did combine.

Sagan Dalya with blue lotus which is another i

don't know if it's an adaptogen but it has hypnotic effects

sometimes one could say it's a psychedelic as well so blue lotus tea which is

often made from from the blue lotus flower and I combined that with sagandalia

and the effect was incredible and I had some friends we tried that out and it

was like somehow very very beautiful like.

Stable effect and it had mood lifting properties also so yeah and blue lotus

is not very well known for a lot of people either but that's not an interesting

plant that I've come across.

I'll collect some when I'm in Siberia, send some to you, or bring them over

next time because it's true that I receive them in tinctures.

When I'm in Russia, I drink them in the form of teas and when I come back,

I fall into the Western trap of getting it as an end product,

when in fact I should start using more of them in the form.

I have Bokopa tea, which I find fascinating. Yeah. Blue lotus is...

I wouldn't consider that one an adaptogen, but it actually comes from ancient

Egypt, and it had medical-spiritual applications.

It's very kind of euphoric, calming, increases sensuality, and has effects on dreams as well.

So you could say that it's a dream herb in some form.

But there's also fascinating research with the alchemical schools of Petra in

your laser and the work on Paganu Haramala.

Yeah, Haramala, yes. That's more of metacarbolines, a harmine and pyloline.

That's a Mayo inhibitor, right?

Some Mayo inhibitors are quite interesting as well.

Of course, that's one of the combinations to enhance some other compounds like

DMT-containing plants. Exactly.

It's fascinating to see plants like that one to contain 5-MeO-DMT to work on

activating the pyloglan,

and we can actually reach these states by meditating

in total darkness so that means we can endemically produce

molecules which we do when we sleep one dream by boring them in finding them

in certain plants in the plant kingdom which which is intriguing i actually

checked blue lotus the active ingredients are apomorphine and luciferin and

that might explain why blue lotus is controlled in some countries Finland,

you can get them easily in Finland or you grow them?

In Finland, it's not, I think it's on the medicine list.

So in a way you can't really like order it or bring it over the border.

But in Baltics, it is absolutely allowed.

For example, in Estonia, I've seen that also often used in cacao ceremonies around the world.

Often in cacao ceremonies, they like to combine theobromine or cacao with blue lotus.

It's a very interesting. thing if you look at like apomore it's

just from a medical standpoint it

has this relaxing effect so it can

definitely work on mood related things but also some nervous system issues like

parkinson's i know that in modern medicine they use this specifically in purified

form that's why it probably is like controlled because pharmaceutical industry

is making money out of its one of its ingredients.

But of course, the addiction potentials and all of that should be considered.

Personally, I haven't noticed. It's super mild. But yeah, it's an interesting compound.

But with Sagan Dalya, I noticed in small quantities, it was actually a pretty

wonderful, relaxing tea that enhanced mood and focus on stamina.

Very interesting that I made through this Belgian physician who's going to be integrating Dr.

Résime, a very interesting gentleman

in Brussels, who's going to be incorporating ICH in his practice.

I've known Kudzu for people wanting to get off alcohol addictions,

but what I found quite interesting was Dr.

Résime introduced me to the effects of Kudzu on other forms of addictions.

For example, when you're going through a breakup, if you're addicted to someone

who's toxic in your life, et cetera, et cetera. In other words,

it works on a plethora of addictions.

I think this term, it sounds very, I think it's probably from East Asia or something like Japan.

Exactly. And the results have been quite surprising. Again, one needs to find the right dose.

And I've seen people perceive situations again, differently, once again, working.

So we're not just working through the prism of let's give amino acids,

let's build up neurotransmitters and stuff, but we're also working through that

slow, the microcirculation.

So this interview has been very comprehensive, holistic in a way,

like looking at breathing,

looking at altitude, going deep into the ocean briefly with HBOT discussions,

looking at the benefits of this alternate training where you go up and down

in a way, pressure or altitude simulation in a sense.

The effects on mitochondria, the effects on adaptation capability,

ability to resist stress.

Basically improving adaptability there's also these adaptogenic herbs and so external,

supplementation that one can do to enhance these effects

so there's both natural through breeding or actually doing altitude training

to technological that we have discussed less here and also natural herbal and

molecules that can enhance these pathways in the human body And this podcast is sponsored by TUR,

which produces medical electronics.

They have 100 years of history. They also do offer solutions for IHHT.

And also people have probably heard about intermittent hypoxic therapy or IHT specifically.

So they have products and brands under that, for example, CellOxy,

CellAirOne. They also produce shockwave therapy devices that are powerful for

sending these powerful therapeutic waves affecting tissues.

They have electrotherapy, ultrasound therapy devices, isosynetic therapy devices

for rehabilitation, cryotherapy devices, high-frequency devices.

Over 100 years of producing these medical electronics.

Great company. And so these are also, if someone listening is running a clinic,

planning to open one, they offer these.

And of course, Karim Chubin is very happy to assist you here.

He's pioneered combination of vibrational therapy, sound therapy with these

kinds of technologies and also synergistic combination of certain adaptogenic

herbs even in these protocols.

It's very exciting And it's cool to hear that you have had a personal kind of

hero's journey of trying to

fix your own issues with mitochondrial dysfunction and succeeding with it.

Combining that with your long interest as a natural path and bring that into

the market in Switzerland.

And TUR is a German company. You mentioned Germany has quite extensive uses of this,

and there's a lot of countries out there that still need this for sure,

that have no clue or idea that this can be used as well in the treatment of

a wide variety of conditions or just to enhance performance.

Thank you, Teemu. I just wanted to add one thing here. It's very

very important as you said so TUR is a manufacturer

of different medical devices including IHHT the

reason I chose and again I'm not an affiliate of TUR's, I'm

not employed by TUR. I'm an independent healthcare provider who after having

discovered the results on myself not from an intellectual pursuit but from an

experiential having experienced it and seen the transformation decided to really

jump in to dive into this I chose to for several reasons the ethics of the the

people behind the company,

I discovered and went, visited several times the manufacturing plots.

And also because many of us are sensitive, we're becoming increasingly sensitive

to electromagnetic pollution and all the variety, this invisible pollution,

which is unfortunately not invisible to ourselves, but very detrimental to them.

And what TUR has done is it's chosen to remain not only ethical,

but not to become too technological in the sense that the results also not cloud-based.

All the data is in the device. There is no Bluetooth. There is no Wi-Fi.

It's also very intuitive.

And I used to work, I used to try, when I tried and had another device initially

at home, which I won't mention the name of right now, it was a good enough device,

but the ebbs and flows were harder.

The breathing was much harder. This is very important.

Much harder for a person, be that person compromised, whose health was compromised

or not, to relax impacts when you feel that change at the mask.

With TUR, it's a very smooth breath, and that's very, very important to mention.

And again, I say this because some of us might know, for those of you who don't

know, the field of CPAPs and people who have CPAPs, such as myself,

Philips, a very big company, had to recall its CPAPs a few years ago.

And other companies, such as ResMed, a very big Australian player,

had to compensate for the shortage of devices on the market.

One of the reasons why Philips had to recall the CPAPs was due to certain constituents

inside the CPAP that were very toxic and that created a whole heap of side effects

in medical, unfortunately. Why am I saying this?

Many of us don't know what foods we put into our bodies or supplements we swallow,

let alone what are in the devices that we use and breathe.

And what's very important is that, like with everything, it's all about who's

at the beginning of the chain and the ethics of the people, the founders and

philosophy and their honesty in choosing and assembling devices that are made

with the most noble components.

So for me, that was one of the reasons being quite sort of difficult and strict

with what I put into my body.

And when I introduced to my patients, I wanted a company that had very strong ethics.

And I found that in TUR's. So

I'm very happy to be introducing that to the French part of Switzerland.

Also in North America now, it's a big challenge with my business partner to

really get more and more practitioners and people to understand that this could

be used at home. It's very safe.

And for those of you who out there would think what happens if my saturation

drops when I breathe well, the devices have been conceptualized in a way where

they bring you back to sea levels and beyond.

In other words, These are tools that are now becoming more and more affordable

and more and more accessible, both price-wise and in terms of user-friendliness.

And they could be used at home. And I'm ready to answer any question to help

you at home and if you're a clinician in your practice to help your patients thrive.

So if anyone's interested in these devices, tourweb.com, so tour and line and web.com.

There's CellOxy as well. Well, there's a new device that we had actually,

the tour had at the stand when I came in Helsinki called the Cellit,

which is really exciting.

So it's, which is a medical device, mainly destined to practitioners where you

can keep an entire database in it.

January, if I'm not mistaken, meant to reach out B2C, reach out to people.

So people can understand that A, it's much more affordable than the CellOxy.

The functionality is quasi the same and the beauty of it is one button. Super easy.

And the website for Cellit is https://www.ihht-cellit.com

so that's where people can find more

information so https://www.ihht-cellit.com

sounds like something one could buy at home actually looking

at the marketing it's that's the consumer product and

so that's what they exhibited at the Biohacker Summit so please check it out as

well and if you run a clinic they also have the company has more or clinical

equipment available a wide variety of them and if people want to know more about

you Karim Chubin and want to work with you I know many biohackers have come to you.

Where can they learn more about your work?

On my website, Karim Chubin, which is my name, and on a new website called Loungevity.

That's my brand, my Swiss brand, which is essentially a brick and mortar concept.

Loungevity, which is a play on words between longevity and lounge.

Loungevity, https://www.loungevity.ch, which is now growing to Brussels and

So the idea is to give people the possibility to breathe in different centers

and eventually to then offer that in people's homes as well.

We started doing this in the US. So if people can't come, we can come to you as well.

I really want to get the message out and to reach out to at least a million lives.

So a lounge like a business lounge, but longevity and CH, that's where.

Do you like the name, Teemu?

I think it's awesome, yeah. Yeah, that's something I would love to spend my

time on instead of a business lounge that usually has crappy food anyways and drinks.

Well, have you actually breathed or not? We should get you a device for you to try.

Have you tried HHC or not? I haven't had it at home. I have tried it,

yes, but I haven't done extensive training on it. So it would be very interesting

to try out, yeah, for sure.

Great. And I know if you come out to Geneva, it's not the most exciting of places.

You're welcome anytime to come and try and see what I curated here.

I actually do come quite often. And I like to, I have some friends over there

and I often spend some time. So maybe I come visit you next time.

Awesome. So thank you so much for this interview and I learned a lot and I think our audience as well,

and some, there was some rare up and coming information shared as well of new

products and like combinations as well as even some lesser known adaptogenic

herbs to compliment your typical of adaptogens that have.

Become increasingly popular among hackers and health optimizers.

So thank you very much, Karim. This was awesome.

And for the rest of you, have the best life ever. Thank you.

Music.