[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: I am Matt Bennett.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: I'm going to try a new format with you today.
I've tried every year to bring in different approaches to this podcast as we we start to look at about our 200th episode trying to bring in students. Last year we had some great episodes this year trying to get how researchers, clinicians have integrated their expertise in HRV and HRV biofeedback into their own personal practices. I think that's a fascinating lens to explore. We already had the episode with Dr. Gewurtz and I got some other great past guests lined up to talk about this today. I just want to try one person format. There's several podcasts that seem that people like this format. Do I have anything valuable to say that you should just not delete this podcast right now? I don't know, we'll see. But I would love to get your feedback. Email me directly matimalhrv.com we're on so many different platforms, I don't always catch every comment or on every platform. So mattptimalhrv.com, love to get your feedback on this. So this was inspired by a little bit of my television watching lately. I've seen a few really powerful documentaries and examples of different ways in which HRV is utilized in several different fields and so I thought it'd be a good chance to bring this up and I believe I'm in a unique to talk about this because my work at Optimal hrv I get to talk to people from the leading researchers in the field to clinicians to coaches to biohackers.
You know, a well rounded realm of individuals from medical doctors to a mom that wants to regulate her stress and their children's stress with this and it's just a great mix and kind of everybody on all aspects of those angles. And so I thought I'd bring a little bit of my insight in here because a lot of my guests are firmly in what I'm going to call the peer reviewed journal circle. I really believe our podcast has lived and thrived in this space. We talked to Some of the leading researchers in the field. A lot of my guests come out, I read the AAPB journal every time it comes out, reach out to the authors, try to get them on, meet authors at conferences. I've got so many relationships built that a lot of people will even reach out to me if they got new research because, you know, not everybody reads journal articles and hopefully this is a good way to get their research out to a broader audience. So I live most of my mental life in the peer reviewed journal arena as well. Whether it's my work at optimal hrv, whether it's this podcast really trying to hold tight to what the research is telling us. Now we can ask questions beyond the research if you're not new for this podcast. I often give my researcher guests the ability to speculate without holding them accountable for that. But if what do they think they're seeing here? And you know, whenever I do that too, I want to make sure like, hey, the research says resonance frequency breathing allows us to say this, but why are we maybe seeing this? And that is where the next step in our understanding about heart rate variability I think really lies is the ability to ask these questions and then having just amazing researchers out there helping to fill in those blanks and expand our knowledge on this. And so one of those circles being peer review, the next circle I'm going to represent by a documentary that I've recently watched called Don't Die the Man who Wants to Live Forever, a documentary about Brian Johnson, a tech billionaire who basically is using all his money. I'm not going to say to try to live forever, but I think he really wants to live forever. That would be my guess if you were made him, hooked him up to a lie detector. That's what it was said and it just follows what he does for himself, his family to try to maximize his health and his life.
You know, he's obviously an extreme in this, but kind of being a biohacker to some extent is being on that extreme with this.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Even though I know there are degrees.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: In a lot of times, I think if you take your own HRV every morning, you're you're doing biohacking. I've shared on the show I don't drink anymore. I don't drink alcohol anymore. Unless you go and buy me really, really high shelf, I'll splurge. If you're going to spend that kind of money on me, I'm not going to pay it myself.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: But if you are, yeah, I can't.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Be rude, but you know that that rarely ever happens. So I basically have given up drinking altogether.
And you know why? Is because I saw that after I drank my HRV tanked. You know, I could see biohack what it did to my nervous system. And I think optimal or HRV biofeedback, resonance frequency breathing is a great way to hack into your autonomic nervous system to strengthen the vagal brain, strengthen the parasympathetic and you know, the calming executive functioning aspects is aspects of your nervous system. So while I think biohacking might make some folks listen to this cringe, I bet if we step back and say, hey, have I used, you know, hrv, have I used apps to understand my nervous system and craft my behavior around that understanding or and have I used HRV biofeedback or other methods to help strengthen my nervous system? Because we're getting that biofeedback during the practice. It's one thing to just breathe. So the thing to see that you're breathing is active, you know, getting you into low frequency. So again, that's Don't Die. The man who wants to live forever.
You know, it's out there. But I enjoyed the documentary. I thought, you know, hey, if you're a nerd, it's good to see what other nerds out there are doing. The other one is I'm on call the influencer wellness space. And if you, if you're watching me on YouTube, you can see I cringe at this. I don't know if that's the right piece of this, but this, this came about through two things on Netflix recently. Also Don't Die is on Netflix as well. If I didn't mention that the apple cider vinegar and Instagram's worst con artist. So Instagram's worst con artist is the documentary. Apple cider vinegar is more the limited drama, you know, episode where they, they say, yeah, we've made up some of these characters. There seem to be a lot of overlap between the, the drama and the documentary. So I, you know, which makes me think they probably did a pretty good job, you know, when they, when they took some liberties and you know, crafted that more entertainment product. These are both about an influencer from Australia, Bell Gibson, who kind of use science, I guess, and worked against mainstream medicine and we exist in this space as well.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: You know, I don't believe we've had a guest that would be this. But I see this in the work that I do here in the United States. The anti vaccination movement is in full fling you know, there's, there's skepticism, which I think is healthy against the medical profession.
You know, remember when we were told alcohol is good for you? I'm old enough to remember that. A lot of the stuff we were told, I remember like coconut oil. You were, was good for you then, it wasn't good for you now.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: So if I don't know, I'll just stick with the olive oil. But some people tell you to drink a liter of olive oil every week. Well, I. Other people are like, I'm not sure you should really do that. So there's a hesitation towards mainstream medicine and I will just own myself. I believe I've shared on the show a practitioner of Q Gong.
I've done Tai Chi in the past Wing Chun, very chi oriented practices. I integrate resonance frequency breathing into my Wing Chun sets and also some Q Gong into that. It's a real matte sort of practice.
I love it. And so if some would say, well, show me QI on a brain scan, it's all electricity. So I think there is energy showing up. But, you know, I'm taking a step there, which I don't do as much in this podcast, but in my personal life, yeah, I've gone to Reiki. I think it's, it's freaky. Like, why are piece things of my body heating up? It's like. And then I open my eyes and the practitioner's hand is around that part of the body. It's pretty cool. Like I've done that side of things as well. So I don't think skepticism of mainstream medicine dominates this category. And I think there's degrees of this. And this is where the Venn diagram, if you can think about the peer reviewed, the influencer wellness and the biohacker. And again, there's overlap between all of those. The thing where maybe you're stuck with me in the peer reviewed, as far as things that aren't in journal articles. Right. I don't think there's not a ton of documentaries out there on digging deep into the science of heart rate variability. I think there should be Netflix. Give me a call, I'm available. But you know, there's, it's not as sexy, so to speak, as maybe the other two. There's more out there sort of things in those realms. Even though some of the folks in those realms are way closer to, let's say the peer reviewed than the Brian Johnson or the Bell Gibson areas of their circles. So let's talk a little bit about the biofeedback or the biohacker, you know, aspect of all of this. Again, you know, when you look at the man who wants to live forever, basically every moment of his existence seemingly is measured.
And some of you listening to this may have Apple watches, whoop straps, garments, our rings on, where you're kind of doing a portion of that. He's wearing a whoop strap in there. He's doing some vagal stimulation, which I don't know. I don't think I saw any breathing practices in there, which kind of surprised me with this, you know, at one point went as far as he got his son's blood, and then he gave his son to his blood to his dad. So his blood boy, I'm not sure if that's a technical term, is his son, which is interesting, you know, and at the same time, I watch this and I see one of my. I don't take a ton of supplements, but one of them was that I do take an NAD plus supplement was on his counter. And I got a little bit excited that another nerd thought that was worth the investment.
You know, obviously has a lot more money than I do. I think supplements are questionable, and yet I was one of the ones I do think is worth the investment he also had on his counter. So I think a lot of people that are. I talk to kind of from the individual user perspective, that they have a foot in that biohacker community. I do too. And I don't think biohacker is a bad word. Now, if you're draining your son's blood to put in your body, you know, that's. I'm not gonna go that far with that because I don't see the science being graded. He goes to, I think it's an island in Honduras where all this medical stuff is allowed that legally would get, you know, the position, you know, probably put in jail if they did in the United States, you know, but, you know, all this stuff is he's pushing the envelope and it's his body, right? It's his money. I think one of the best quotes of the movie, which I really wish the documentary folks would have asked Brian this question, is a researcher who Brian blocked on Twitter, you know, was challenging him. Hey, use these billions of dollars not just on yourself, but why don't you fund some double blind study to see if these approaches really work? You do them, you get a little bit of data you suggest, then you tweet about it as if it works. Why not use some of that money to fund some double blind research studies and you know that there wasn't the documentary, did not ask him that question, which I thought was a real, a missed opportunity for somebody who spends a lot of time in the peer reviewed journal space. So, so this, this, this I think desire now that the technology there and I think the desire was there, you know, before some of the technology. It just exists more to really track what's going on in our body. And again my example of giving up alcohol is totally because of heart rate variability, seeing the impact that it had. And I know I'm not the only one. This probably the most number one thing, the importance of sleep and alcohol use that people really see. And so to get in there it gives us insight. Now I think some folks that insight then dominates their life. I'll be honest with you, my wife sort of thinks I may be more in this arena than I think I am and I take any objective feedback. Okay. I wanted her to give me the nickname of meta study match because I believe the things I implement into my lifestyle, you know, now that I'm older I want to see the meta studies. I don't want to just see one study, maybe two or three studies that reinforce each other. Okay, I'll go there.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: But I really, if I'm going to.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Change something big, would love to see it backed up by a meta study.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: And if you're not familiar with that.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Term, that, that is somebody who studies all the other studies on the topic and really makes a conclusion from, from looking at all the best practice research that's out there. But she has put up with me, she has put up with me just eating a plant based diet, having a very small eating window. Why do I do all this stuff? One, because there's meta studies out there. Two, because I see its impact on my heart rate variability. And while I don't think I'm gonna live forever, there are some people that argue that that's more and more a possibility. The singularity is near, if you're familiar with that work. Another don't die sort of thing out there that we believe that between nanotechnology, supercomputers, quantum computers that we will be able to repair through nanobots, you know, dying parts of our body. So you don't have to replace the heart, you just have nanobots act like, you know, cardiac cells and they can rebuild the heart through an injection.
Yeah, and it's a convincing argument. I don't know, does consciousness exist forever? Really interesting things to come up there. But you know, my wife Will would put me more firmly in the biohacker space. Then there is the Bell Gibson's of the world.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: Now a Bell Gibson is an extreme.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: I want to be careful of this because there's a lot of really good work now being done in the wellness space.
You know, most of the people that we interview on this podcast have advanced degrees. Not everybody. You don't need an advanced degree to be smart. Yet there is this whole thing going on on social media, and I'm not the best to speak to that because I'll be honest with you, I cannot stand social media.
I know we advertise the podcast. We advertise the optimal HRV app. It's where people are at.
I get updates on my nephew's basketball games, family's health conditions. I really check it once a day for work. And I don't even check everything anymore because some of it I just can't stomach going on, you know, it's so. But there is this in some ways, folks who put themselves out as experts who I think there needs to be a question mark there and they can get very influential if they approach their social media right. So the story of Mel Gibson, a great example that both apple cider vinegar and Instagram's worst con artists I believe are worth your time to watch. If you're looking for something that along with don't die. I'm not saying these are bad. I actually enjoyed watching both of them. When I watched the. I watched the drama version of Bell Gibson and I was really excited to see the documentary with it as well.
So I mentioned already, you know, we're on the extreme of this is sort of this wellness approach against modern medicine. And that's what Bell Gibson. She lied about having.
I believe it was brain cancer. And I say I believe it was brain cancer because she had a lot of other diagnosis, including other cancers that she also lied about throughout the story of her documentary or the drama version. And so she lies about this.
She starts giving advice. Two folks including. And again, she was not the only one doing this. The dramatization of this does a very interesting job of kind of a community of folks who are treating themselves, dropping out of mainstream medicine to go on their own wellness journey. Coffee enemas play an extreme role in this. Not just something you do once a month, but five times a day. I'll just throw that spoiler alert out there. But that's. That's the world we're stepping in, you know, a world of extreme wellness approaches and a real.
As an alternative with an angst against the mainstream medicine community.
And I believe that's the extreme of wellness. But there's a lot of great people that are way more towards the peer reviewed side of this and would never question a medical doctor's may get a second opinion but would not step out of life saving treatment with that. So on this other end of the wellness spectrum are people doing some great work. People talking about things like sleep hygiene, you know, anti inflammatory foods, the importance of movement. You don't need a PhD to be informed in this world. I think one of the people, you know that we've had some coaches on this episode, Sasha Harper is one of the ones that comes first and foremost in mind. Her background is not in wellness but she I think does a great job. Her focus is a lot on anxiety but does just a great job and a great job being on Instagram. I wish I was her on Instagram yet. You know the things that I see that she does, you know, I agree with now she makes memes and a lot of really cool educational things and some things just I think she would say too for, for humor but, but they're to me they're aligned her. She's got that one foot in that peer reviewed step and again she using HRV to really bring herself into there.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: And a little bit of that biohacker.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Piece of well again a Venn diagram. All three are going to overlap in certain ways. And so a lot of really good work in the wellness space when you get to that influencer. It's a range of different folks as well. Some of the best known folks.
You know there I. There's interesting stuff out there. I think we take medical advice from people we probably should not be taking medical advice from. If you're a longtime listener of this show, I don't think you would have caught me probably giving a lot of this. I think I can encourage people to hey, find out your residence frequency rate, integrate that into your daily wellness routine. You know, avoiding most and I think that's the problem.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: A lot of people do not all.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Highly processed food is absolutely horrible for you but being cautious of that, especially inflammatory foods and so you know, while giving a little bit of that advice. Boy, if you wanted me to give a bibliography for why I believe you should, you know, decrease or minimize your intake of inflammatory foods, I can send you probably a book full of just references on that. The benefits of resonance frequency, breathing, mindfulness practice. Obviously there's a lot of crossover into the wellness space but a lot of.
[00:22:56] Speaker C: Peer reviewed journal articles.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: The thing that this circle where I think it Gets scary. People like Bill Gibson and others, some of which may be medical doctors, they may not have a medical expertise in the area that they're talking about, but that they're really motivated as much by money and influence than helping people. And this gets to a tricky thing.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: With heart rate variability that I think.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Brings it up because I have felt a pull to make jumps from the absolute science to something more that people can grasp.
You know, that there's. In the HRV world, I've been on a lot of apps, I tested a lot of apps out before going on optimal hrv. There may be a ton of science behind these.
These, the folks that ran these apps would not share those with me. Not that I wanted to steal anything, but if you're going to give a readiness score or a productivity score, an energy score, you know, and I'm not just talking about one app, I'm getting this from a lot of different ones. What's behind that score? Because, you know, for me to wake up, who's doing fairly well in life, mental health, physical health, you know, giving me a productivity score.
Okay, like, I'm not sure what it really means now that I might be considered an expert in heart rate variability. I have no idea how you can put HRV metrics together to get a productivity score, but if you're not going to tell me how you do it, how can I recommend this, your app, to, you know, somebody who might be, you know, having suicidal thoughts or could be at a risk for relapse? And I'm not saying that's what their app is dedicated to, but I think there's something very suspicious, if you would, about putting a real useful label. I love the label. I would love to give a productivity score on the optimal HRV app. I will promise you, if I ever do, I will tell you exactly the metrics we are using to produce that score. And there better be at least one or two peer reviewed journal articles that justify me in doing so. Other words, we may have unqualified people, maybe do it, try and say, hey, we can call this productivity, but if you won't share how you get that score, how can we trust it? I think readiness scores are a little bit more transparent with some of the apps. Others won't tell you how you get the readiness score, and if you can't tell me how you're getting the score, how can I trust the score? And this is where HRV falls into wellness is okay, you, you, you create your own metrics and you won't tell me what's behind that metric and you want people to make decisions on this metric. And I, I, that just doesn't feel right to me. I'm not going to use any other labels on that. You know, some of these apps I think are really, really great in what they do. I just think if you're going to put your own metric out there, you gotta back it up by the science. So for example, with optimohrb we give you a URMSSD score.
Would a readiness score be better for a lot of our users? Yeah, we could call just heart rate variability in and of itself. We could create a number out of that, like a six, which could be easy, but there's not a great science to allow us to do that. And so, but again, it's really easy and I understand the pull for us to go there because it does make your app more marketable. Other things too that I see out there is like, you know, and I'll use residence frequency. We don't do this. But it's like, oh, you can get in residence with, you know, your workplace or your pet or, or the world. Right. That there seems to be this mystical thing behind heart rate variability.
You know, I've outed myself as a practitioner of QI based energy based work. It's something I do and probably will do for the rest of my life. I find it very useful. I find that it increases my heart rate variability. However, I know that if I give you a chi score in the app, I don't have anything to back that up.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: I don't like, oh, we'll go and compile RMSSD and high frequency and max min and give you a chi score. Bleh. Right. It'd be cool. I bet I could go to Tai Chi practitioners across the world and sell a lot of apps, but it'd be a bunch of bs. And that's the thing I think we really, really want to be careful of when we look at this concept.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: So again, two things I see that we need to be careful of in the HRV realm is one, pulling in, you know, HRV science but then not backing up your work. I think again, not going to put terms on it, but I don't feel good when I see, hey, we're going to give you this score but we're not going to tell you how you did. We're not going to give you an article to support how we did that. I think we should be very cautious of that sort of approach to just being careful of what does something like resonance mean. And right now residents is the, your breathing rate that promotes low frequency. I mean that's what it is. Now is low frequency connected to ventral vagal activation?
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Did a book I really like called the ventral vagal nerve. The soul nerve. Yes. Do I feel comfortable using the term soul nerve? No. But maybe I'm just coward there, I don't know.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: So, so there, there is this connection and on our app we have meta.
[00:29:13] Speaker C: Loving kindness meditation that you can do over it now, ton of research. I can send you a book of peer reviewed journal articles on this. They exist out there. Thank you Kabat Zinn and others for doing that. However, if you look at where Kabat Zinn got sort of inspired to do the meta movement with this, it's in Buddhist meditation right there. And so brings it over Western lens on it. Research based, it works. There's some things in the trauma world right now that I never thought things like ketamine therapy put that western lens of research on. But really promising practices. Things like family system stuff where you're talking to different parts of your personality.
Wouldn't expect we'd be doing that, but there's the research to support it. So you know, I would just ask when you hear these things, when you hear these claims or see these labels about heart rate variability, ask can you, can you send me the research to back this up? We did this, I think hopefully set a good model for this is we use in our resonance frequency breathing optimal zone. That is a, that is a term that we made up obviously optimal HRV optimal zone. But you go to our data definitions and it tells you that in the last 60 seconds, 80% of your time to hit optimal zone was spent with in low frequency. So that's it, right. You know, it's just a way to put a label on and simplify. And at the end of your, you know, practice we give you your raw low frequency score if you want to see it as well. But right there in the science, I don't think anybody in the HRV world would argue that we're do, we're taking a step, even a small sway outside where research allows us to be in a very backed way, scientific way. Now we put a label on it, we define our work it, you know, as you go further and further towards somebody like Bill Gibson, you get further and further away of having that foot in that peer reviewed piece. You know this woman got on the app, she was the first I think nutritional app on the Apple phone.
You know she published a book with major publisher question marks can be Asked about this stuff, but that, you know, it can get you rich and famous and I think so I think there's a pull there. And luckily, as long as I got two feet in this podcast, in the peer review journal article, I don't have to worry about this.
You know, thank goodness. But the more I think that the next step away. I find this, as a student of history, very interesting. I see this manifest, you know, at a smaller level with these sometimes influencers is okay, I do start out pretty good, but I went maybe a little bit speculative and I got a lot.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Of really good feedback.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: So maybe I told a little bit of a lie. And that got me attention, that got me likes, that got me retweets. So gives me motivation and reinforcement to take another step. And for most of these folks, what I've seen as I've watched probably dozens of these documentaries over time is lie after lie after lie after lie. They're probably just confronted with the immediate one, not realizing then that by the time they get caught, there's a web of lies around them and people get really hurt.
That that is the key thing is that, hey, if your chemotherapy is making you feel like hell and there's somebody over there to say, hey, you know, the doctor that's giving you this would never do it himself or herself, you.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Should get away from this and eat.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: It all plant based, take coffee enemas.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Whatever it might be that may seem.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: Like a good alternative.
And so giving hope to people. This is where I think it's really scary, where modern medicine might give them a chance, but it's going to be a rough road. Oh, this beautiful influencer is telling me if I just juice and do coffee enemas, the world is going to be, I'm going to be cancer free.
You know, you can watch the apple cider vinegar to see how that all can work out. So it's this interesting world that we live in and I think just to talk about it, because I think there's great things in the biohacker community, like I said I would, I'm in that community. I may not be a Brian Johnson, I can't afford to be a Brian Johnson. But my wife would say, yeah, this is you, right? You read an article, you talk to a podcast guest, and now we can't ever eat this thing again. By the way, she continues to eat.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: It, but I don't eat it.
[00:34:14] Speaker C: So, yeah, so there is. I take the research and I integrate it into my own life. Now it's a lifestyle, it's a Habit. And if you listen to my like 50th birth birthday podcast, having done these things now for decades, some of them, thank God I did them and I'm really happy. Doesn't mean I couldn't get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, but I'm really happy that I've done this.
So I know if you're listening to this podcast and you've been with us for a while, I'm preaching to the.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Choir in some ways.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: However, I think if you work with clients, you may see different versions of this. I think one of the interesting thing is elite athletes, right?
You know, I see a lot of them, a lot of professional athletes, special forces, some sports psychologists and others we work with. You know, there's a firm foot in the peer reviewed and the biohacking, right that there we're looking for data, we're looking analytics to, to get feedback on this while we're keeping that foot grounded in the peer review. We're always looking to push the envelope a little further with this, but we're staying locked in there. I think the Brian Johnson example is he is pushing beyond where the research really strongly suggests he should go. That's where I think he's probably putting himself at danger. But he may make a breakthrough. Again, it's going to be a study of one person, so I'm not sure how useful it is going to be for society, but he may find something and I kind of hope he does that. That would be great because having somebody who is rich enough to experiment on himself with the knowledge of where research might be going but before it's determined to be safe, you know, if he wants to do that, he may find out something very useful and I hope he does. Right. I hope it all ends up really good for him in that way, you know, and yet most of us, I would never encourage anybody to go there.
I always like to say as being around long enough is like I said, things we were told to do, you know, are now, you know, seem to be unhealthy. The food pyramid I grew up with, you know, the, the, I always used the, the complete breakfast was sugary cereal, usually like whole milk toast with butter, maybe jelly on it, orange juice like and maybe bacon or sausage. None of that you should really consume as a human being, right. And so, you know, you can see I may go a little far with some of those, but really that, that no child at least should be eating that in the morning, right. And so we've been sold this thing is capitalism, but you know, some for profit. You know, I should have done more research. Who funded those studies that said alcohol was good? Wine was a superfood, Right? And questioning that, that's why that keeps me being old. And if you're younger, let me give you a little advice. Look for the at least two or three studies before you dive into something and if it seems too good to be true, like drinking two beers a day and it was alcohol at a time, thin the blood, it was good, you know, less chance for a heart attack. I started drinking on a daily basis because of that research. Here's a little funny story I did. I was running groups on drugs and alcohol use, teenagers. The Internet was new, so I was like, oh, I'll just go. I don't have to go to the library anymore. I can do this on the Internet. Found these articles seemingly well respected. I was coming out in grad school at the time, so I knew what I was looking for. That a drink for if you identify basically female, two for male, was healthy for you. So I started drinking, and it was a great way to handle stress as well. You know, I started drinking Coors Light. I wasn't really drinking occasionally, but not much at all with that. Luckily for me, it didn't become a problem with that. Got a really good taste for, you know, good beer. Eventually, I've got the Coors Light plant literally two blocks from my house. So I got to be quiet when I say that. But, you know, now I'm, like, appalled that I thought that that was healthy for me. And so, you know, you can think about things. Like here in Colorado, we're doing this longer than anybody. You know, our experiment with legalization of marijuana.
Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? What about cbd? How's it processed? You know, I think that there's questions out there when you're taking your health into question. I just think we have to be careful. So, again, the good thing is we always in these podcasts, for the most part, we come back to things like healthy sleep. We come back to things like movement. We come back to things like nutrition. We come back to things like simple mindfulness practices that you don't have to buy. You know, my favorite thing is somebody in Price still out there, they were selling a fasting program. Think about that for a second, right? If you want to buy, right? So you can. This helps you fast.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Guess what?
[00:39:37] Speaker C: Fasting is not eating right. So, you know, they would sell you supplements to fast. Just don't. Just don't eat right. Be careful with that. I'M not suggesting that it's good for everybody, but that's where we've gone with this, right? You can spend hundreds of dollars too fast, and when we've gotten to that point, we need to take a step back and say, what are we doing here? Right? And so I think a lot of people have a lot of money to spend on wellness. Some people don't have enough money to get any kind of healthy produce or real food into their homes, which is a tragedy. But just to be careful on that. So I've enjoyed putting this episode together, made me think deeper about these documentaries I've been watching, and I appreciate you giving me a space to share this again. I would just love to get your information or your feedback on this. Again. My email is matptimalhrv.com do you like it? Do you want my deep thoughts on stuff? It's sort of a change of pace from time to time. Are you like, yeah, you gave it a shot. But yeah, let's not do this again. Hey, I'm doing this for you. So please reach out and just appreciate you all for giving me a platform to experiment on. As always, you can find show notes, everything
[email protected] and I will talk to you next week.
