[00:00:00]  Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of supremum radio. It's Monday and we're starting off with a really strong show this actually so over the years. I've had people on the show average people in the audience who had remarkable stories to tell. And whenever I did that I noticed that a lot of people in the audience related to this person especially because they're not some they're not some you know, Facebook Guru.

[00:00:56] They're not, you know, putting themselves out there selling an e-book. So they want to [00:01:00] tell their story. They're just average people walking through lives. Like all of us do quite frankly. But remarkable things happen in their lives and I've done these shows over the years and and but I've never really classified it as a series.

[00:01:15] And so now I am at it's called our superheroes and you can meet our superheroes by listening to the show. When we have them on and today we're going to have been errands on in just a moment. We're actually taping this through Zoom. We had intended on doing a Facebook live today, but there was some connectivity problems which happens when you're doing this kind of stuff long distance.

[00:01:36] And so we are doing the audio podcast today, but we are taping it and I will put up whatever is recorded because I've never used Zoom to tell you the truth. So I'm learning as I go here, but I'll put it up on our our YouTube channel and maybe even stream it on Facebook. Live as well, but let's go ahead and bring been into the discussion.

[00:01:56] How you doing Ben? Yeah doing well Carl. Thanks for having me on [00:02:00] so I and anybody listening to the show if you ever remarkable Story, please email me at on are at Super you marito dotnet and tell me your story because I'll bring you on the air.  Which is what happened here, right Ben. I mean you sent me a message on Facebook which was humbling to me because you were talking about the show.

[00:02:21] Not about yourself and then you have to say, you know, when I went through this I listen to these shows and when I went through that I was like, holy crap this guy like you could have been counted down and out by now. How old are you and when did things start going wrong for you? Yes. Oh, I'm 35 and.

[00:02:37] I was in the fitness Arenas. I told you I mentioned on my on my post and everything, you know was always fascinated by health and fitness was got really into bodybuilding and stuff at age 14, like a lot of people as a scrawny kid, you know needing to kind of beef up and change my image a bit Yeah, and yeah and I just fell in love with it and even after college, I worked as a trainer.

[00:02:57] I got all the certifications I got even deeper [00:03:00] into it. I ran a surf camp in Long Island. So every aspect of Health Fitness surfing, you know longevity I was way into it and then as I told you, you know, probably one of the most embarrassing things happen that could happen to any health professional which is I lost my health completely this was around age 24 or so and I had had symptoms for a few years before that.

[00:03:19] I had been diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and things like that that I was trying to manage early early early early signs of autoimmunity showing up. Yeah, which now so why would I want to so you were born out in Long Island? Right? Yeah. So I grew up at least I spent a lot of Summers and I went to school in Montauk and in Sag Harbor, so I was going anybody who doesn't know Montauk Point.

[00:03:40] You don't that mean Montauk Point is like the closest thing you can get to being in a uncivilized pristine area of the this continent. That's where all the shark fishing is done. That is where all the [00:04:00] magical ocean stuff happens. They'll Ambrose light towers out there when I was a kid. We used to go fishing out there.

[00:04:06] Wow. So being that's really an amazing place to grow up. It's beautiful. It's a world away from New York City. I even those two hours away to a half hours, but total different. Yeah, so so long island is well known for being highly sprayed. In fact Long Island holds the prestigious attribute that it is the breast cancer capital of the United States.

[00:04:33] Did you know really I didn't even know that. No. I know there's a lot of you know a lot of farms out there when I grew up it was all potato farms and a lot of crop dusters, but I never knew that. Yeah, and then when you move back when you go towards the burbs, right when you start heading to South you start to get into the everybody's got a big lawn.

[00:04:53] Everybody's got a pool and the the the lawn preparation chemicals and stuff was [00:05:00] slathered. And I mean, there's really good research. That's why I also find that ironic that that Long Island is the deer tick capital of the world. Also. I'm like the deer tick must be a really strong s bug because they killed everything in Long Island at one point or another with chemicals.

[00:05:16] So it's really amazing. Yeah, incredibly strong and you know deer are have no natural Predators out there anymore. There's no wolves or anything anymore. So they're just, you know flourishing. So yeah what basically ended up happening the short of it is that I came down with a really bad case of.

[00:05:32] I'm disease and it took me, you know, like a unfortunately common story for Lyme patients. It took me like three years to get diagnosed properly. I was running around doing all sorts of different things. And then when I was diagnosed it took me another two or three years of that time to be on antibiotics and to give you an indication of like how severe I.

[00:05:48] And actually give a Ted Talk on this where I showed pictures of when I had a central catheter stitched into my upper arm and insert it in my heart to feed me antibiotics on a daily daily basis. [00:06:00] I was bed bound for three years for the better part of three years from what if it what age from 25 is when I really started, you know, degenerating anything Autumn.

[00:06:09] Yeah to about 28 was was the peak of. And so what I want to I don't want to gloss over something. So I think that people who have Lyme disease get a bad rap as being psychosomatic or and I also noticed that people who have Lyme disease either had or develop signs of autoimmunity as well, and I'm wondering because I know you've thought a lot about this and you're very very cerebral.

[00:06:39] I wonder if the early signs of autoimmunity. That you had actually allowed you to be infected by the deer tick where maybe other people get bitten they go through their whole lives and never realize any problems from but do you think that people who already have challenged immune systems to come to Lyme disease more readily?

[00:06:58] Absolutely. Yeah. [00:07:00] So, dr. Thomas Rao who has a clinic the paracelsus clinic in Switzerland sees a lot of lyme patients there. I saw him give a talk in the Marion Institute in Massachusetts, and he said that he has two mates. Up to possibly about 40 percent of people living in certain areas of the Northeast have lime, but not all of them have Lyme disease.

[00:07:20] That means that they don't manifest and actually indeed my stepfather who has spent a long time going out to Long Island. He tests positive for Lyme by all conventional but whoever had assumed. Never had a symptom. Yeah, so that proves my point that yeah, absolutely. So yeah Al I mean they're you know, this is why in conventional medicine everyone is looking for a one-to-one correlation, right?

[00:07:40] They want to be able to correlate One symptom with one cause right and you're never going to find that with something as complex as line because it's so multifaceted. It's so multi-systemic. So when I think about my own situation, I think of it this way that lie maybe the deer tick was the straw that broke the camel's back.

[00:07:57] But the camel's back never would have broken if it wasn't already [00:08:00] carrying this heavy load, which I have been pesticide stress like, you know toxins heavy metals you name it? It's this entire load and then something like a little tick bite can come along which in an otherwise in a healthy person might not cause any problems but in someone who's you know, like who's Barrel is already full you're going to have a host of problems.

[00:08:18] That's when you get symptoms and all these other issues. I mean, I you know, I've never given it much thought but I got to believe there's a really high probability that I have Lyme disease and I'll tell you why I say that I was an avid Hunter Upstate New York. I spent a lot of time out in Long Island.

[00:08:36] My favorite place was the beach 10 over Jones Beach where the where the Tower is. You know, you know, I mean, I've been you I've come in contact me. I spent a lot of time as a kid and up up a green would like New Jersey and shorts I've had ticks taken off of me. I remember my father lighting a match and then blowing out and touching the tick tick back and tick literally pulled its [00:09:00] legs up like this and then he would be picked it off of me yellow.

[00:09:03] Do you know who knows how many people actually carry Lyme disease but and see this is the thing that I loved when. Start to look at science in general. Write this pockets of people who respond to things differently just the fact that maybe you bio accumulate and pesticides to a greater degree because of some methylation pathway.

[00:09:21] Have you had 23andMe done or any of that sort of stuff? No. I haven't. I've had a lot of other other tests done that can I can detect a little bit like how your kind of your body's ability to detoxify measuring your levels of you know, liver lymphatic and kidney function stuff like that. And yes certainly for a time, you know.

[00:09:40] I was poor at excreting toxins from my system and a lot of that. You know, it's hard to say. What do you can then ask what causes that how much of that is genetic. How much is epigenetic how much of that is the stress you're going through or or your you know, how your actual stress you've mentioned stress quite a few times in our discussions.

[00:09:57] I want to talk about that up front instead of at the back for a. [00:10:00] Because you know, we look at stress like this innocuous thing like just suck it up, you know like that, you know, that's way life is but it really isn't so much good evidence that we ignore that stress is literally like destroying our bodies when it's this unusual chronic never goes away.

[00:10:23] You're always in fight or flight mode in your brain. You know level of stress. So do you would you think that the stress was one of the things that cause your immune system to tank in the first place and start developing autoimmunity and stuff like that? Put it to you this way. I feel like this stress kind of laid the groundwork for a lot of dysfunctions to accumulate on top of that if you're stressed out if your body is then, you know withholding and not excreting toxins properly then you're going to accumulate a lot more.

[00:10:54] So yeah, I mean there's a lot to talk about here because I've learned so much about about stress and to your point the entire [00:11:00] field of psychoneuroimmunology, which came about in the 70s, you know has a ton of research and good studies that show how stress impacts the immune system and the endocrine system and now basically every system in the body the interesting thing about it is that.

[00:11:15] It's not only stress isn't only related to you know our environment to what we perceive as causing stress in our lives. It's really a lot has to do with our own responses and how we respond to things. So for instance, you know. In New York City for some people you are to really like exciting and invigorating and actually boost their immune system for me.

[00:11:38] It's a little bit more intense and for some people who are even more prone to like let's say wanting to be in the country then being in New York can be immediately stressful and right fight or flight. So it's not just the environment. It's a lot to do with your how you're wired up how you're interacting with that environment and so forth, but absolutely.

[00:11:55] When you are in that fight and flight mode when there is an abundance of stress and cortisol and adrenaline in the [00:12:00] bloodstream. It absolutely is going to have a deleterious effect on you on every level what was some of the diagnosis you received early on so, you know, your you've got you've got signs of autoimmunity they're saying well you may have rheumatoid arthritis you may have this you may have.

[00:12:15] Now all of a sudden you're getting to the point where like you can't function you you you literally can't get out of bed and people some people maybe even questioning like, come on. Are you serious about this? What was some of the early diagnosis that you were given? Yeah. So one of the first diagnosis I was giving given was at NYU langone medical was Ms.

[00:12:37] I was that's a legitimate school if they tell you have MS. You gotta go. Oh my god. I've got multiple sclerosis. Yeah, yeah that was in a phase where it was after my second season of operating a surf camp and I pushed through the early signs of the symptoms fatigue and joint pain stuff like really push through and after the last day, you know September 1st or whatever.

[00:12:57] It was I collapsed into bed [00:13:00] literally like seeing spots and the next morning. I remember waking up after like a 14 hours sleep and trying to like stare at these spots on the floor and it took me about 10 minutes to realize that they were my shoes and then I was like wondering what. For how to put them on my feet like it my God weird thing.

[00:13:15] My brain just was not it was beyond not present. That's amazing. So we did you think. Oh my God, I'm dying. Yeah, I had no idea what was going on. It was it was a scary thing. It's one thing to have your body, you know in a state where you realize that you're in a Perpetual state of fatigue. It kind of feels like overtraining is the best way to describe it.

[00:13:37] But imagine that just instead of getting better with rest it gets worse and worse after months and eventually years. So that's one aspect to it. The other aspect is then when your mind starts to go at age 25, so give me an example. I find it. I find it perplexing how your mind can go but you still have recollection of those [00:14:00] moments.

[00:14:00] Think about that for a sec. It's almost like the brain operates on two completely partitions levels, you know, I mean like that you could reflect back and remember I can't I couldn't do that that because you would when you think about the. The brain failing you think about the brain failing completely.

[00:14:15] So even in inscribing new memories would be challenged but it's not the brain is very very interesting. When you look at the composite ability for it to compartmentalize. It's really really interesting is yeah, so guys so so so, what would what would the outward signs that your mind was? Well, yeah, the cognitive, you know cognitive dysfunction was one just constant brain fog inability to read or see the words on the page, you know constant headaches and then and then you know, objectively I was testing the had high fevers at a time and went into the hospital.

[00:14:52] I had Encephalitis so inflammation of the spinal fluid around the brain. And [00:15:00] yeah, then they at that point they performed the spinal tap and found that I had some of the highest titers in Lyme disease in the spinal fluid, which means that it's basically in the nervous system and in the brain that they had seen according to NYU.

[00:15:13] So there are definitive test now that can identify a person with Lyme disease or with the probability of Lyme disease, or is it a triangulation of several kind of things. How do they diagnose lyme disease? Yeah, it's kind of a triangulation of several different things. There are tests that have gotten better over the years like the Western blot is a very common one.

[00:15:38] Eliza is another one there. There are false negatives and false positives. I think false false. Sorry when you actually have it when it shows up that you have, you know, a certain number of reactive bands. It's unlikely that it's going to be a false test. So. It's a little bit easier to miss it going the other [00:16:00] way.

[00:16:00] It's easy to get a false negative. So it's thing. Yeah, right. Yeah, just to show that a person doesn't have it oftentimes. Keep in mind that and I know you know this girl because you talked a lot about testing and the problems with certain kinds of testing is that whenever you're performing these kinds of you know, biochemical tests, you're testing the body's you're testing antibodies, which means you're testing the body's response or reaction to something right now if you have an autoimmune condition and your immune.

[00:16:26] The response is jacked. You don't get the taco spot. Yeah. Yeah, you don't get a typical response to sometimes your system might not even working enough to respond at all, which could be even worse. But then on the test, you look fine. So it's not very accurate. They do have to triangulate it a really good, you know functional medicine doc.

[00:16:45] We'll we'll look at a lot of different signs and symptoms perform different cognitive tests as well. They'll look at there's a few Vision tests actually that they can perform which. Pretty good indications of that type of of the toxins that are emitted from [00:17:00] spirochetes, which is lime causing bacteria so that it is kind of a triangulation where they have to put together a lot of pieces.

[00:17:05] So so the Lyme disease is its created by a bacteria you're saying. It is it's I mean, it's basically one of the problems with this Lyme disease diagnosis is that it goes Way Beyond just borrelia. So borrelia is the initial infection the spirochete that the ticks carry right there now known to carry, you know host of co-infections like the be xia ehrlichia including, you know, parasites a wide and even viruses So when you say Lyme disease is kind of an umbrella term to mean that by the time someone has lyme disease.

[00:17:40] They have all these different symptoms. They usually have. These co-infections some of it and really and really the medical off the docks he gets this wrong because they feel that if the spirochetes are gone. Then you no longer have Lyme disease, but these people present with such horrific. I mean, you can't [00:18:00] fake that stuff.

[00:18:00] You just can't find out you wouldn't want to you know, I know no because you could see it in their bodies. They become shriveled-up. They become they become skeletons they become weak. They lose any motor coordination. Some of them have horrible horrible Tremor like just their bodies. Just Anjali.

[00:18:20] The nervous systems are being attacked. It's just it's really it's really sad and at the same time.  A lot of them are discounted a lot of doctors because they don't know what to do with it. They just go, you know. You're playing, you know the and there's a lot of doctors out there to this day.

[00:18:39] That's still don't believe that Lyme disease actually exists. Right? Right, and I think that's really a shortcoming of our you know, scientific testing and and of our conventional medical ways of trying to delineate the exact Pathways between a specific pathogen and its effects on the body which you can never do because we're dealing with a complex system here, which is the human being [00:19:00] right.

[00:19:00] We're also dealing with a host of pathogens infections triggers causes. That will probably never be able to detect, you know, every day. They discover a whole new strain of virus every year. There's like 10 new flu viruses influenzas and so forth. So we'll never really get to the bottom of it. I think we have to be able to look at the person as a collective human being and you know treat them accordingly one thing I like and I also think that.

[00:19:24] Nomenclature shouldn't stand in the way of treatment. So if I don't care if doctors don't believe it's Lyme disease. This patient has a series of symptoms that need to be treated. You don't want to call it Lyme disease. Don't call it Lyme disease, but do something about it. Don't just say to. You know, I don't know what's wrong with you.

[00:19:42] I'm done treating you, you know, yeah. Yeah, one thing I really like about the approach to treatment in, you know, something like European biological medicine, which is I think far more advanced than what we have here in the states is that they take the approach of we're not going to treat the condition.

[00:19:56] We're not going to treat the the problem. We're going to treat the patient with the. [00:20:00] And that kind of takes a lot of the onus off of having to go after and Target and find these precise pathogens and saying, you know, what like obviously this person is having real problems at the end of the day.

[00:20:11] Maybe it doesn't even matter exactly what's causing it. We can still move forward with a lot of different treatments and improve the person's conditions internal milieu improve their immune system such that they might become one of those people like my stepfather who maybe they even still have some of the pathogen but it's just not causing the problems that it would be causing now.

[00:20:29] Yeah, I want to take a quick commercial break because this is this is really an interesting discussion because it's also it's kind of evidentiary of the whole medical Orthodoxy approach to treating patients, too. But yeah, this is really intriguing. We're going to get more into your story now to and talk about how you change.

[00:20:50] Oh, we have no commercials today. This is great. Okay, this works out there. Yeah. Today is the day everything's going to go wrong. That's just the way it is. I actually I actually can [00:21:00] probably fix it real quick, but I'm not going to worry about it. Anyway, so let's talk about how you actually ended up.

[00:21:08] Wow. We're definitely recording this right hola. What? Yeah, okay. Thank God. I got something right today and hear you telling me about what a great show this is and I am having a complete technological failure today. So talk about talk about the symptoms So you you're in bed. You can't get up. You have brain fog.

[00:21:27] What y'all were you working at the time? Did you have to give up your job? What ended up happening in that area? Yes. I was in the in the summer. First I was trying this this surf camp for two months out of the year, you know, July August the rest of the time I was working as a personal trainer.

[00:21:44] Because I had started to have symptoms the year prior and I still continue to push through I had limited or I'd cut back my client base my PC client base for about fifty percent at this point that I'm explaining now, when I arrived at that point in bed, you know not being able to know what my shoes were for [00:22:00] at that point.

[00:22:01] I couldn't get back to work. So yeah, I ended up I was living in a basement apartment in Eastern, Long Island. Probably had mold, right but I had the moving moving back in with my mother in Manhattan and where it was just kind of a full-time, you know job to go to doctors and get a diagnosis and play that whole fun game.

[00:22:23] It's very very sad, very very sad situation. And so what so what changed the outcome so you're being treated by these doctors they're telling you, you know, you've got Lyme disease. What's the stand? Protocol to treat Lyme disease nowadays through the medical office docks. What do they normally do?

[00:22:40] Well standard protocol is three weeks of antibiotics, which doesn't do much if you've been if you've been suffering it for a long time if it's in the bloodstream, or I'm sorry, if it's out of the bloodstream and in the central nervous system. Antibiotics aren't going to reach these places in aren't really going to do much.

[00:22:56] Then when you go a little bit further into kind of functional medicine. A lot of [00:23:00] them will put you on more and higher doses of antibiotics, which was unfortunately the route that I took and I say unfortunately because I spent about two years going down that rabbit hole. Getting higher doses of antibiotics which caused a whole, you know host of problems wiping out the bacteria in your gut giving you candida.

[00:23:15] Then you got to go off antibiotics get treated for candida. Go on parasite medications. Then the lime comes back. You got to treat it again with stronger antibiotics and it's like every time the body is, you know, getting flooded with these toxins getting flooded with a stress. So I spent about two years going from that point.

[00:23:34] You know in September at age 25 further downhill. I got to a point Carl where you know I said, all right, I can see how this is going to go either. I'm going to I'm going to kick the bucket doing this stuff or I've got to make a complete change. You know at that point because I already had an interest in health and fitness and all this kind of stuff.

[00:23:54] Of course. I had looked at what I call now like the low-hanging fruit, right, which is I looked at [00:24:00] my diet. I looked at what I could do with my body, which at that point wasn't really much but I could do some breathing exercises. I could do it maybe a little bit of stretching things like that. At that point though.

[00:24:11] I made the decision to leave conventional medicine approaches completely. I stopped taking antibiotics. I went to a clinic that I had heard about through word-of-mouth in Manhattan where they were doing a lot of the kind of stuff that they're doing in Europe at paracelsus is European biological approach which is which is wholly aimed at, you know, strengthening the own the body's own ability to heal itself strengthening the immune system a lot of detoxification a lot of chelation things like that where they do go after the pathogen.

[00:24:40] Almost an afterthought. The real purpose is like let's get the body as strong as possible. You know, right so I started I actually started to feel better it gave my body a little bit of a chance to start to rebound as I started doing some of these some of these therapies at that point. I also really want on a strict.

[00:25:00] [00:25:00] European biological kind of medicine diet. I studied at this point. Also, you know, I went through about a year or so where I couldn't even read. I was that neurologically impaired but I could listen and this is where I started listening to your podcast girl, huh? Yeah, and I was also I think Berkeley and MIT started putting a lot of their one and 200 level courses online.

[00:25:23] So I was like listening up, you know virtually attending courses, right? And Immunology and biochemistry and nutritional medicine and things like that and learning and implementing all the while. So, you know my diet at that point consisted of a lot of plants a lot of steamed vegetables and salads a lot of liquids soups bone broths things like that.

[00:25:46] No, no me no me. At that point I had to cut out meat which was the right call for me because my body was it couldn't really handle any further acidity. It also has, you know takes a certain amount of energy to break down those proteins. [00:26:00] So I did incorporate meet back later, but I also wasn't active at all at the time.

[00:26:05] So I didn't really require that much, you know, rebuilding that being said I lost about 40 or 50 pounds of lean mass during during that whole experience, of course. Um, but that wasn't my main concern right getting healthy with your main concern exactly. You can worry about building muscle later.

[00:26:23] So throughout all this process. Did you donate blood at all? No, I wouldn't have been allowed to donate blood. Oh, wow, because of the antibiotics that just cause of the illness because of the because of the LIE. Yeah, I mean you your doctor could have ordered he could have ordered prescribed phlebotomy where you would they you donate the blood you don't donate if you throw it away they bet they incinerated and yeah, did you have gut problems early on in your life?

[00:26:51] Did you have did you notice that you have got problems at all? Not to my knowledge. My sister was the one with gut problems and she actually is recovering from [00:27:00] Lyme disease. Now, you know, we both grew up in Montauk pulling ticks off each other. So right my symptoms were joint pain. I had a lot of you know, really stiff neck stiff joints as a kid.

[00:27:10] Yeah, really even yacht when you were young. Yes. I'm sure I had it, you know in my system for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. So yeah you change the way you eat for a while you sounds to me like you went kind of quasi. For a while. Yeah. How long did you do that for about a year and a half?

[00:27:30] That's a long time. And yeah, and do you feel that in retrospect? Did you have to do it that way? Could you have eaten eggs or fish and still been? Okay, if. I did start to add in eggs and fish. And yes in that order. I think it was like eggs fish and then I had it in chicken poultry and red meat so for you know, so for you, it was just a matter of being kind of like a low residue diet.

[00:27:56] I don't even know that that wouldn't be a little residue diet because you'd have fiber but for [00:28:00] you you felt your feelings worry was easier on on your digestive system to process that stuff instead of heavy thick, you know. Meat and stuff like that. So that's yeah and I tried to you know Steam and cooker like kind of predigest this much for Yas a lot of sweet potatoes a lot of oils olive oil avocado.

[00:28:17] So I was getting plenty of calories. If you ate meat at that point in time would it show up is GI distress. Would you feel heavy and lethargic like the food just not moving. I would feel heavy I would feel even even less energy and you know, when you have like the symptoms of chronic fatigue and everything and then you add something else to the body that.

[00:28:37] As to work Additionally you really feel it. You really you really feel it or at least I did and then and then you know as I started to recover as my gut started to heal and become more able to process things and digest I was also able to move around a little bit more. I did add more meat and beans and things like that my diet took on more of a [00:29:00] Paleo right, you know kind of style.

[00:29:03] Did you have cravings when you were younger? You know in your when you when you were a surf coach, did you crave sweets? Did you crave sugars and stuff like that?  I had yeah, I had massive Cravings. Why do you ask him curious? Well, okay. So do you have those same Cravings today? No, absolutely gone.

[00:29:23] Yeah. So the reason I ask this is because there's something interesting going I have you heard the shows I've done on LL 3 7. No, I don't think so. Well. I really am at the point of where I think that most people could use a round of LL 3 7 and 2 in today's modern culture LL 3/7 is a Catholic citizen.

[00:29:42] It's produced Naturally by the body. It's the body's own antimicrobial Army, but it's also antifungal and your body produces it in response to an assault on the immune system by pathogens or molds or [00:30:00] fungi. That are not healthy that that hurt the body and knows this because it's part of our innate immune system LL 3 7 and so.

[00:30:15] when you take LL 3/7, it it obliterates.  All of the bad microbes in your gut and your small intestine for people have sibo. It also gets rid of fungi and molds. And I've had so many people use LL 3/7 from the two shows. I've done on it and they message me.  And I've had one guy tell me that he has Tourette's and he notices a change in his tics since he's been using it and also the LL 3/7.

[00:30:52] Crushes him when he tell you know, when you use a product like LL 3 7 because it really does work. You really do experience herxheimer. [00:31:00] If you truly have an accumulation of bad gut microbes when they die, they literally empty their sacks of all those crappy toxins that they make from eating your food before you get to eat.

[00:31:16] Hmm and they crap those toxins into your blood a little at a time. And that's why you feel aches and pains in your joints. You feel brain fog and a lots of stuff and so it all that literally like just rushes into your body and it overwhelms you and usually people who have really messed up guts when they start LL 3 7 4 like the first week, they'll feel feverish.

[00:31:35] They'll feel horrible, but then it goes away.  And and so, you know, I hear people telling me that. They did a You by Omen you buy them said they have got was perfect. It's like the awesomest gut in the world, you know, you've got all the best by microbes and all none of the bad ones and and and like three days into L.

[00:31:54] 370 like man. I got a fever. I don't feel well. I'm like, that's the die off but you biome said my gut was [00:32:00] perfect. Well, I guess you buy them doesn't know what they're talking about. If you're feeling that die off if you feel sick from running that stuff it's because the bad bugs are dying in like.

[00:32:10] Record numbers in your body being overwhelmed by them. Hmm so it but the reason I ask that is that had a guy come on the show anonymously and say he was worried. He was becoming an alcoholic because the past five or six years every night. He would polish off two three, you know Big Stiff Bourbons.

[00:32:28] And he would crave it when he finished work in a high-stress job when he finished work and he was looking for that bourbon and he just chalked it up to I guess I'm becoming an alcoholic but I can still keep my job on function here an LL three seven and three weeks into it. He had no desire for alcohol.

[00:32:42] He just stopped working. Wow. And so when I'm starting to learn is that Cravings are caused by the microbes that live in the gut. Telling the brain through chemical [00:33:00] signals eat some of this we're hungry.  And so those are the raving those are cravings when you have a craving. It's your brain want you to eat that not your body.

[00:33:12] I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, I mean, we are a collection of everything inside of us all of our cells and all of our microbes and a lot of the signals that we get. You know hunger and satiety don't necessarily come from us, but they come from these these microbes which are starving for what to them is nutrients with high sugar sugar, basically, right?

[00:33:34] Right, and that's why a lot of people who have gut based problems all seem to Crave certain things. And that sugar is one of the key one. I mean you talk to women who have. They'll like if they're gonna be honest with you like the you don't you if you could go like a priest and and then the confessional you can't see who you're talking to.

[00:33:56] They'll be like II I go to [00:34:00] the store and I buy those dollar 99 bags of sugar candy, you know like Christmas candy and I ate that stuff by the bagful. They'll tell you yeah. Yeah, and that's exactly why you know, if you go to a really good like functional medicine doc or Chinese medicine doctor one of the questions they always ask you is.

[00:34:16] What are your Cravings or like do you you know, do you have a taste for or craving for sweet food or salty food or bitter food or you know these kinds of questions that they're using to determine what your kind of gut microbial profile is like right? So let's talk about deeper into your recovery so we can paint the picture.

[00:34:36] So you're in bed a couple years. You're not moving you decide to take matters into your own hand, which is a common. That's that's a common trait in this audience. We all arrived here because we decided that we didn't agree with that and we're going to find out more information on our own and so you start eating differently how fast after you start eating differently.

[00:34:57] Do you notice while I have energy I can get out of bed now. [00:35:00] I say about you know within within about three to six weeks I'd say when I started feeling some relief. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't just the food. It was also that I had stopped, you know, intravenous antibiotics at that point which are crushing me on every level I had also this was actually before but a little bit further down the line.

[00:35:20] I started some of this biological medicine treatment which was kind of, you know, doing some intravenous detoxification therapy some some oxidative. But I just want to highlight that it was definitely not a linear process. So for anyone who's expecting to make a change and feel better right away, or if they're you know, if they get disappointed when they don't feel better right away, it's recovery is a you know, it's not a linear process where again we're dealing with a complex system, which is the human being here.

[00:35:49] And sometimes you make a change you have to wait and you have to be consistent and one of the things that you know, it took me a while but I really think is important to develop is kind of a sense of. I'll say [00:36:00] like faith in your decision or your choice to move forward in a certain reaction at least for a little while, you know, give it you know, a couple months or something, you know and see how you feel get that feedback.

[00:36:12] So. I kind of yeah with diet one other thing. I want to highlight their curl because you know, a lot of people ask me specific questions about what supplements what diet what, you know medicine all this kind of stuff. That's the diet that I came to through a lot of experimentation that work for me and it isn't my like my special diet.

[00:36:31] It was the diet that was special for me at that one time. It's changed a lot since then it was you know period of time it did take on different forms and everything but. I would never Rob someone and say you should go on a vegan diet or you should go on a Paleo diet. You should do this. You should experiment and you should really, you know hone in what works for you and keep in mind that it's not going to work through forever.

[00:36:54] Maybe not even very long. So. Learning to kind of get rid of [00:37:00] these external voices and influences and and you know overload of information and learn to kind of be able to be your own assessor to get in touch with your intuition your feedback mechanisms. Get in touch with your body. Basically your body is this I view the body as an instrument really not as a temple, but as an instrument and a vehicle to get us somewhere and as this instrument.

[00:37:22] You know, it gives us remarkable feedback from the environment from the foods we eat from the people that we were that we work so hard to ignore. Oh, yeah, it's and it's getting it's getting easier and easier to ignore it these days with all the distractions we have but it couldn't be more important to get in touch with that to be connected to it and to listen to what it's telling you.

[00:37:44] So that was the diet that I came to you know, largely will say plant-based. I then added in some some proteins as I started to be able to move a little bit more started to do some light exercises. I got into Tai Chi at this time, and I learned a [00:38:00] pretty valuable thing. Previously like so many of us, you know Fitness people.

[00:38:04] We love working out. We love we love exercise. We love the feeling that you get from it and we love you know, the feeling of exertion. And I'll say in my in my late teens early 20s. I was addicted to exertion. You know, when I was running the surf camp in Long Island. I would sometimes train clients before and after I would give a surf lesson after and then I would train in Muay Thai I was into martial arts and stuff like that.

[00:38:26] And this was after a full 8-hour day of running around on the beach with kids and to push them into waves right up. So I was like, you know, I thought I was Unstoppable really I was I was grinding the gears a little bit too hard and that's kind of what before I was alluding to with the. The presence of a little bit of excessive stress.

[00:38:44] So let's say let's stay with that for a second. Right? So we have a culture today that loves that word grind right? We have people out there telling other people, you know, and I blamed I've said this before on the show and people know but I blame it on the movie Wall Street when [00:39:00] blood Fox is talking to Gordon Gekko and Gordon have been up all night long trading in the China stock market and he says, You know to Bud Fox, you know, nobody makes money while they're sleeping but right hand it's like and everybody went.

[00:39:14] Oh so sleep is bad. Oh, I got it. I just have to grind harder and harder and now we got people like talking all they talk about is grinding and grinding and grinding. So where does that get you eventually? Well, yeah, you grind too much you you grind your gears down. Yeah. So yeah, you know, it's it's.

[00:39:37] We're very action oriented Society. We like to take action. We think that's kind of the way for everything but when it comes to making progress, especially with something like healing and recovery action is not the tool for the job. We need recovery. We need we need to find a way to you know, replenish the energy that we extend if you think about it, even from a fitness standpoint from a bodybuilding standpoint [00:40:00] anything your workouts, you're only as good.

[00:40:03] As your ability to recover, you know that I mean you've talked about that along for a long time and. So, you know part of part of my thinking about this and I was I remember learning a lot, you know during this time reading a lot of philosophy and just learning kind of universal principles of health and well-being and nature and I started to wonder, you know, if if all my training up until this point has been exertion oriented.

[00:40:27] Is there a way that you can actually train your recovery mechanisms because obviously. You know, I'm struggling with recovery. I need to find a way to recover my body quicker better faster. And of course in my mind are there was that part that I never lost it always wanted to. Get back into fitness back into you know, weight training and performance aspects of things.

[00:40:48] And and so I was really kind of doing it from still a little bit of a selfish and egoistic perspective. Like well, maybe this if I study this, you know recovery mechanisms that it'll I'll be able to perform even better when I get [00:41:00] well enough to do so, so I took a deep dive into the internal martial arts, you know before that.

[00:41:05] I just did hard Styles external and I learned about Tai Chi and Qi Gong and meditation. Breathing techniques and you know, I learned that there's this fundamental difference that they even discovered thousands of years ago with the with the monks in the Shaolin Temple that by the age of 30. These guys were completely.

[00:41:24] Wearing out because they were only focused on these exertion, you know strikes and when they do something like like strike a you know, stone or break a board with their hand they have to pull energy from somewhere in order to you know, create this for such that the bone doesn't mend and The Rock does that's not a natural phenomenon.

[00:41:43] That's something that it's almost Supernatural drill that a human can do. Through route through practice and through intention but it has a cost. It has a price and that price is that it draws energy from the organs and systems that are deeper in the body and there comes a time when you have to replenish that and that's why they came up with these restorative [00:42:00] internal martial arts as a way of putting that energy back into the system.

[00:42:04] So I went down that road. I took, you know taichi classes and these things and I learned how to, you know, put energy back into the system. I learned how to meditate I went on some meditation silent retreats. And yeah, I really tried to figure out how this exertion system or sorry this recovery system works and how to write.

[00:42:26] Thank you. So so when you hone your skills at those type of that, you know Tai Chi is kind of like meditation in motion and meditation in and of itself is is amazing. I'm actually halfway through a book called The Mind illuminated which is all about meditation. I started meditating when I was a young man.

[00:42:44] But I've stopped and I need to start again. And so the reality is that the more you meditate the faster you recover to it's just like working out right the faster you can get into that deep level the faster the [00:43:00] magic starts happening. It's incredible and it's just like training strength or trying to improve your flexibility.

[00:43:07] Of course at the beginning. There's going to be you know, it's going to take a lot more effort. But once you get to this level where it's almost like maintenance, it's like now I can you know where I used to meditate for 45 minutes in the morning and another hour or so in the evening and that was that was hard work.

[00:43:22] Now I can kind of drop in within five minutes. I'm there and that's maybe all I need for the day right? Maybe I don't I don't even need it every day so you can. Quicker and quicker. What about organic food? How important was what was eating organic for you? Or did it not really matter? Yeah, man.

[00:43:38] I'm glad that you brought that up because I almost somehow missed over that and I think that is one of the most important things, you know, there's there's so much emphasis today on on different diets on Macros on keto on this and that and all of this is. As far as I'm concerned, it's pissin in the wind.

[00:43:55] If you don't consider your food quality, somebody probably I'm going to I'm going to play [00:44:00] devil's advocate for a second right there. There are people with huge followings out there right now, you'd followings who's named everybody in the audience would recognize who basically say, you know this whole thing about Organics.

[00:44:11] It's just baloney your you know, your what Your there's nothing to it now me from a critical thinking standpoint I go let me think. Food with chemicals on it, you know petrochemicals designed to kill mold kill bugs kill kill kill kill on it and food without that stuff on it. I gotta believe the food without it is probably even a smidgen better than the food with it.

[00:44:35] I mean I'm being facetious, right? Why do I want to eat petrochemicals, but there are people out there who say it doesn't matter. Does it really matter in the end at least for you when you started eating clean was that part of it? Like I'm not eating chemicals anymore. Yeah, I approached it the same way that you just described car, which is really from.

[00:44:54] A logistical standpoint just logic, you know, I really believe and I read this recently when I was [00:45:00] going back and reading anti fragile great book. Yeah that when what's his name Talib? Nothing nothing. Yeah. He makes the good point that when you're when you're looking at scientific studies, the onus is on the synthetic to make their case that is healthy.

[00:45:16] It's not the onus should not be on nature. It's a prove that this is the best way right, you know, so when they came out with you. When cigarettes were healthy way back, you know way back in the day. Yeah, they have a group they improve focus. Yeah, right. The onus should should have been on them to prove that it's you know, not harmful or that as healthy as they claimed.

[00:45:35] It shouldn't be on on, you know, the rest of society to prove that, you know, we're not through here through metal death through Mass. Death Bertram asked. Yeah, look at the toll it takes if you want to play that game you're going to pay huge. That's why that's why you like I hear people talking about gun control.

[00:45:51] I hit people talk about this, you know, so every year. Four million people directly and indirectly died because of tobacco use and if [00:46:00] government was really interested about umin lives and not about politicizing issues. They would start with tobacco. They say, you know, what we've done this long enough.

[00:46:08] We don't want new kids and you know, here's what we're going to do. No, new smokers cigarettes aren't available and you can get them through a dish the dispensary. Just like you can weed you go in you show your prescription you pick up your cigarettes. We're Not Gonna overcharge for him. So we're not going to create a black market.

[00:46:24] We're going to charge you what you pay now. We're just not going to make access. Wide scale then I would believe that the government really cares about, you know, the 18,000 people had died from this and the 30,000 people have died from that when they start caring about the four million people that die every year from direct or indirect tobacco use.

[00:46:44] Hmm. That's like now you're talking now. Yeah, you know, yeah God no, okay, if you haven't. Yep, I think I think the approach to this kind of stuff whether it's eating organic or. Yeah or anything of this nature. We have to go back to know what they call [00:47:00] First principles thinking Elon Musk talks about this a lot.

[00:47:02] It's basically where you look at things with a clean slate you look at it and you just apply your own logic to it, you know you because otherwise there's so many different voices and so many different the various kind of incentives that are putting the word out there. And then the problem is once you have that voice in your head, you can always kind of look around and find something to justify the alternative.

[00:47:23] So if you want to make an argument against. You know eating organic. Everyone's got an uncle Johnny that lived till he was 90 and drank and smoked and womanized and yeah, but he doesn't he's an outlaw. He's an outlier, you know, there's so many people like that and then people go. Oh, look at that guy.

[00:47:39] He smoked and he didn't die until he's 94. Yeah, but for every one of him, there's 16 million of you. That are going to die from cigarette smoking, you know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you want to play that game like by all means go try it, but I'm not here to convince anyone. I'm just sharing, you know my experience here and I would hope [00:48:00] that I would hope that that people can also just regain access to clearer Thinking by taking that first principles perspective and and stepping back from the different voices of incentives out there do supplements even have a place in recovery like to do.

[00:48:15] You what you basically did was you eliminated a lot of stuff from your diet. In fact, Ron Penna taught me years ago the founder of quest that people seem miraculous changes in their health from going from the normal diet to the Paleo the normal diode to keto the normal diet to vegan. Did you name it?

[00:48:35] They go they go eating vegan or eating keto or eating paleo and it's not about what you're eating. It's about what you stopped eating. This is a greater impact on your health and your outcome. So you basically really eliminated a lot of stuff and said okay, I feel good now. I'll try this. I'll reintroduce that and that's the really the only way you can do this and people don't have the patience for let's be honest yet.

[00:48:58] The reality is [00:49:00] do supplements even have a place or is it like no got to get rid of substitute because they could be causing problems. Everything's got to go. I think it depends what you mean by supplements and it depends what you mean by recovery because obviously supplements is a huge umbrella that encompasses, you know, so many different things and there was yeah certainly a time when I got rid of everything but I mean then I, you know added back in like vitamin C and fish oil, right?

[00:49:23] So there are these kinds of things that are just that can give a little bit of a benefit without without having a huge cost. You know, yeah vitamin D things like that. So I really I would say my Approach was a minimalist approach. I kept it very very simple and you know, what will get here a little bit a few minutes I guess but now that I'm fully recovered.

[00:49:45] I'm back into physical activity. You know, I'm working out a lot and everything. I take amino acids and some different things there. So I. I would never say that I'm against any particular thing and again to say like, you know supplements good or bad. It's like these articles I see in the New [00:50:00] York Times Like You Know stretching good or bad?

[00:50:01] It's you're dealing with a topic. That's way too big to generalize like that. I would say yeah just for again from my own experience for my Approach. I kept it simple. I started with an elimination tactic to my diet and to myself element regimen and I slowly added things back in to the extent that I found them useful, right?

[00:50:23] What about Sun? Where do you stand on sun exposure?  I'm a huge proponent of sun exposure and all things nature is you know, one of my favorite philosophers, you know his. Thing was basically that the goal of life is living an agreement with nature which means basically to me that the more we can align ourselves with the natural environment the healthier all of ourselves and systems and functions will be right.

[00:50:47] So but people say that to the average person they think oh no you that I'm not giving in to the environment the environment is going to fold and kneel at my feet. I'm not I'm really that's where people come from today when you [00:51:00] think yeah when you talk to her about stuff. Like no just don't do that anymore.

[00:51:04] No, I'm gonna do that. I'm going to take a pill so I can do that because the heck with the environment the heck with the world. I it's got to work for me. I don't have to work for it. Oh, no, that's actually not the way it works. Yeah, you know, we're living in an age of biohacker e and a lot of egocentricity and ideas that we can outsmart mother nature and.

[00:51:29] I don't believe in biohacking. I'll be the first to say I will probably not the first to say but I'll definitely say it now. I believe in aligning with the natural forces of nature and obvious things like clean water Sunshine going for walks, you know rising and falling with the with the natural cycles of the earth.

[00:51:49] These are things that will. Plus the Vitality in the energy that we need to get through life hell in a healthy way [00:52:00] to try and take some Shortcut again. There can be things that can make an incremental difference. But again, I see this kind of pissing in the wind almost if you're doing these things at the expense of doing the the fundamental simple things that really make a big difference.

[00:52:14] Right? Right. No II agree with you but biohacking has a place. There are things that are involved in living in a modern world. Like you so I did a show back in 2007 and it was called lights out and it's about the book lights out. Have you ever heard of the book? Yes, I have with TS Wiley, right? I remember that after she and she actually went on to Pioneer a unique mode of hormone replacement therapy that uses a cyclical dose for a woman.

[00:52:45] Most people don't want to do it because it's complicated but it works better. But anyway, You know, she told people in my audience.  Turn the lights out leave your lights out in your house when it starts getting dark [00:53:00] out and it's getting dark in the house. That's when you start preparing to go to bed.

[00:53:05] And I've had people over the years tell me that just doing that reverse their type 2 diabetes, but it takes a lot people like, oh, I'll do that. No you. You won't go to bed at 8 o'clock when it gets dark out in the wintertime, you know, you won't you and you and you want to turn a light on so that you can read something or you'll want to work on your computer or you want to watch TV before you go to bed and that Jax the whole thing up and there are ways to compensate for that using blue blocking glasses.

[00:53:35] I'm a huge proponent of blocking glasses for modernity. Because people are going to watch television at night. They are going to work on their computer. And so instead of saying to them know you're going to have to lose your job because you can't work at night. Just put these on so there is a place for biohacking but I get what you're saying like.

[00:53:54] Biohacking by taking a Nexium because the food you love [00:54:00] doesn't love you. Like like Larry the Cable Guy says that's stupid biohacking. That's actually. That's actually biohacking that masks what you don't like about what you're doing. But what you're doing still erodes your health, right? That's the wrong by hacking exactly right?

[00:54:21] And and you know, I get it like we're living in a modern world some of us work at night. You know where I live in New York City, there's tons of ambient light and sound and all sorts of things anything that can that can help us out. To kind of realign with with those those you know with the ways of nature is beneficial so long as we're not using it as a crutch and so long as we're not using it to avoid doing the work or making the changes that are really important and you know with blue box blocking glasses.

[00:54:49] I'm also a proponent I use them. It's also important however to realize which a lot of people don't that there's more photo receptors on the surface of your skin than there are in the retina and it's not just about the [00:55:00] light that comes in through your eyes. It's also about the light exposure. Whole body and we spend a lot of time under, you know, fluorescent lights and offices and even will if you're wearing blue block and glasses your skin is still picking up a lot of these frequencies that are not necessarily beneficial for us as humans.

[00:55:17] So I'm not saying we can Safeguard against all of these things. I'm just saying if you're wearing blue blockers, you know to enable you to stay up later and watch that episode thinking that you're doing yourself a favor chances are you're doing yourself a bigger favor if you just. Turn off Dancing With the Stars and get some sleep.

[00:55:33] You just gave me an idea for a new product. What's that blue blocking pajamas? Well, golly pajamas right block the blood from getting to your skin that I could just buy I could buy a surplus pajamas for 67 cents a pair and I sell them for $35 a pair because they're blue blocking. Yeah, that's right.

[00:55:54] We just got to promote this problem a little bit more. Yeah, so the solution yeah, we better by covering your [00:56:00] whole body with blocking pajamas. What have we missed what we missed anything and the discussion about your journey back to health. Obviously, you're very healthy now very active. Now you're leading it.

[00:56:09] So in the back of your mind, do you ever worry like man? I know what that feels like and I like. I'll just kill myself if that ever happens again, and I hope if I ever happen again. I used to worry I used to worry and you know when I was still recovering I would sometimes you know get a cold and I would get flare backs of some of those symptoms the body still had those cellular memory.

[00:56:31] It's just like we have muscle memory has the cellular memories of symptoms as well. And those things would flare up under certain, you know, stressful conditions or colds and things like that and it used to yeah, of course I would worry, but that's. Now I'm you know, I'm 35. I've been I'd say fully recovered for at least five years.

[00:56:49] And yeah, I actually don't worry at all. And and of course now you feel like no, you know, you feel like you know better what caused it so you [00:57:00] can control it now. That and I feel like I have the recipe for health, you know, it's like what's even better than getting your health back. How about having the recipe so you can get it back if it's ever lost again, right?

[00:57:12] And so I have kind of a newfound confidence also an important. Kind of level of non-attachment to my body that I didn't have when I was in my 20s. I was very attached to the physical body as my you know, as my identity and as the source of a lot of my joy and life and everything and when I had that completely removed I had to.

[00:57:34] Go to deeper places, you know and get in touch with parts of myself that I had neglected for a long time or forever. Did you become a more spiritual person or are you talking about your Journeys with meditation and and because meditation kind of make you feel quite often out of your own body people have certain awareness has that they develop when they meditate for long periods of time is it that or was it more spiritual for?

[00:58:00] [00:58:00] I did I think I think both of those it was experiences that were very spiritual and I actually wrote about one of those in a recent Facebook post. I just put up where I showed this kind of picture of like transformation and I talked a little bit about it, you know, very deep experience. I had in meditation which just to sum up very briefly.

[00:58:19] It was probably on my worst day of symptoms. I was like 27 or something. I was in absolute pain just burning sensation throughout my body. I had been really struggling. Till that time and I just reached this point where I had learned a little bit of meditation and I decided that I was going to do the opposite of what I was doing which was resisting struggling.

[00:58:37] I was going to let go completely and it took me about 45 minutes of just letting go of these what felt like waves of symptoms waves of pain coming up through me and as I let go more and more I found that the physical sensation started to get lighter and lighter and then it was more like emotional pain, you know, emotional ideas of like what this experience meant to me.

[00:58:59] The experience I [00:59:00] mean being sick. Yeah the meaning of like, oh, this means I'm not going to be able to walk again to work again to Surf again to be a fitting, you know to do all the things that I associated with being me, but then even letting those stories go letting those emotions go and it was just like, you know, one wave after the other deeper and deeper until I reach the point again after about 45 minutes where my body literally dissolved I was it was like I was suspended in a float tank is what it felt.

[00:59:24] Like there was no division between me and the floor I that I sat on. And the room I was in or anything else and the interesting thing. What I noted in that Facebook post is when I came back from that which felt like I was there for like an infinite amount of time. It was really just probably a few seconds that I was in that really, you know pie State when I got back from that the what I now believe to be anti-inflammatory effects of being in that state where so profound that I had zero symptoms in my body for about three days.

[00:59:57] Yeah. I got up and walked around the room. I went [01:00:00] outside I went for a walk. I had energy I had no symptoms. I was like, I'm here that mean you have to be like, oh my God, you probably didn't want to even believe that yourself because that is so that is just so amazing. The word is overused, but it's appropriate for this.

[01:00:15] That is so amazing. I would be like, wait a minute. Is this the secret like is this the secret to everything in life? It's just start. Your representation and and making your mind take grasp of that. Yeah, and I think that you know, that was a missing component for me. It's not everything after after that experience admittedly.

[01:00:36] I thought it was everything. I thought. Oh my God all this physical stuff, you know everything I've been doing is just it's Garba. Like what's really important is is the the Mind State being in this state of absolute, you know surrender and accept it. That I believe is very powerful anti-inflammatory and healing and it has you know, very real physiologic effects on the body [01:01:00] that have been studied, you know in countless places.

[01:01:04] There's a lot to that but of course, you know, we're also living in the physical world. We're also living in these physical bodies and after about three days the. The reminders that I had around my apartment, I had an IV pole. I had these different treatments. I had all these they suck things out in again.

[01:01:19] They suck me back. Yeah, they went into my mind symptoms began to creep in and along with the symptoms came the reminder that I'm still at it that in itself is powerful. It's like, oh my God, these visual cues reminded me that wait a minute. You're sick. You know what? I mean? It's like, okay. A lot of people talk about letting things go.

[01:01:41] What is your methodology to let something go when you were taught thinking about your pain your physical manifestation of your pain and you let it go. Do you have a method to letting go of do you just say to yourself? I'm not going to feel that anymore. What did you mean by letting go specifically?

[01:01:59] yeah, I'm glad you [01:02:00] asked this is that. I've thought about a lot and basically what I've found to be the best mechanism for letting go is starts with the physical body. That's that's one of the most direct things that we can control we can control the contraction and relaxation of our muscles. So for me, it's really a process of relaxing my muscles finding tension and sometimes you know, there's this law of polarity.

[01:02:27] Sometimes in order to bring our attention to something so that we can relax it. We first have to contract it a little bit. We always have to do the opposite. So I found that to be very helpful. If you're you know, I would say to anyone who wants to try this. I would encourage everyone to try it.

[01:02:39] You don't have to be even, you know, feeling bad symptoms but feeling anything at all to get into a comfortable position, you know meditation position would be best because your spine is aligned your head is is upright. So you have you have kind of talked about Lotus you throw about Lotus sitting on the floor.

[01:02:54] I mean, it doesn't have to be full Lotus you can sit on. Christian said I'll block or something. You know, I think if that if it's [01:03:00] really uncomfortable lay down just just the bottom line or going to float tank, you know, getting the most comfortable position that requires the least amount of effort to maintain as possible and then go through different parts of your body like start with big pot parts like your quads your glutes and just contract them for a few seconds followed by a release.

[01:03:18] So if you think of Contracting and then Contracting as hard as you can. What does it feel like to release to let go as hard as you can there is very much as you can, you know, it's almost like our brain at first doesn't have the vocabulary to comprehend that so we have to experience it. So to sum it up I think you know letting go is best done experientially through the body by Contracting and then relaxing the muscles and I would say, you know to add one more kind of Q2 that is with every exhalation.

[01:03:50] Relax deeper and deeper when you inhale you can tense up a little bit and this is a lot like, you know PNF stretching Advocates this kind of approach as well to get deeper into into a [01:04:00] relaxed State stretch the muscles out further It's very effective. So when you inhale you can bring a little bit of tension into the system and when you exhale you can relax completely and keep doing it more and more and what you'll find is that as you do this process, you'll actually be able to relax deeper and deeper and deeper to levels where you didn't even know you were.

[01:04:20] Holding back the attention you didn't even know you were sending neural drive to the muscles, but you still were so if you can really shut down that neural drive and and facilitate a full relaxation type of response that has a huge impact on you physiologically, which then goes, you know affects the parasympathetic nervous system affects the brain and.

[01:04:41] Affects what I would call a spiritual change in that by spiritual, you know by spirituality what I really just mean for me, it just means awareness that you're connected awareness of your connection or even connection to your own body. So by mindfully bring your attention to all of these, you know muscles and relaxing them further.

[01:04:58] You just feel fully at [01:05:00] least for me. I feel fully, you know connected in my own body. And that to me is kind of like opens the opened The Floodgate for more of these spiritual type experience when we talk about spirituality. A lot of people have a hard time disconnecting that from religion. I did it spirituality is actually the sense that the physical form and the life force or two separate things.

[01:05:26] That's all it is the life force, whatever you want to call it. Some people call it a spirit. So hence the word spirituality. But there is more to us than just the makeup of ourselves and we can see that when we see a cadaver we go. Like wow that doesn't look like a person because like there's more that there's it's a one plus one equals much more than two relationship.

[01:05:47] So don't get hung up on the word spirituality. Whatever you want to call it you call it but recognize that there is something more magical than just that ends at our ourselves. And that's what we're talking about there. Number two. The other thing I [01:06:00] wanted to point out was that. Well, you know what I said enough about the spirituality part.

[01:06:08] So let's let's so let I want to talk about how you talk described letting go for a second because it's very interesting.  For you letting go was disconnecting the the thought of what pain is and the physical manifest manifestation of what that pain is you disconnected them. So for you letting go. I envisioned when he was when someone says letting something go I imagine.

[01:06:36] They're letting something go away.  But in your case here, what you were doing was you were saying? Okay. This is what the pain feels like. I'm going to relax even under the condition of this pain. That means that my body will not manifest the normal response to the pain that my brain is telling me is happening and you're disconnecting them.

[01:06:54] Would that be a fair and accurate assessment of what you meant when you said [01:07:00] disconnect from the pain?

[01:07:05] Yeah, exactly, right I think in order to let something go you first have to let it pass through you and if your normal reaction or I'll say common reaction is to clamp down around something is to is to resist it create tension, you're creating a restriction in the body. You're not allowing it to pass through you and the thing about paying there's this great Zen proverb, you know pain is it never is inevitable suffering is optional is that they say, you know suffering is the.

[01:07:30] Resistance to pain so pain is going to be their pain is going to happen. But our resisting the pain are resisting. What is is really a choice? That's an option we have and there's a different option. We can choose not to do that. And when you when you stop resisting it you enable it to essentially run out and it does like anything else in the physical Universe.

[01:07:50] It runs out it diffuses. Do you have a website? So you did it you did a TED Talk. They're in New York. Do you have a website? Yeah, if people can just go to [01:08:00] Ben Aaron's.com. I've got some interesting blog posts up there. And yeah, I'm getting way back into the health and fitness stuff. Now my own training is gone great.

[01:08:10] It's really exciting. So definitely check that out. Aah re and s.com been Aaron's.com. That's right, and they can find your Ted Talk on that website. Yeah, or you can just Google been errands Ted talk and it'll pop right up. I don't think I have any music to play since the server is not cooperating.

[01:08:30] So we're just going to end the show they're bent. Thanks a lot for reaching out to me. Thanks for listening for like the past 10 years to the show and my pleasure girl. At least I feel like I'm not talking to myself and thanks for coming on and sharing your story. It's really inspiring. It really really is.

[01:08:46] Thanks for having me Carl. It's been a pleasure. Take care. And that's all we got for today. So no music takes us out. Enjoy the show. We'll see you tomorrow with the blueprint [01:09:00] power.