Ep. 162: JTF2 Secrets to Optimal Wellness: Mastering Longevity, Mindset & Peak Performance

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Recently some friends and Silver Core Clubmembers have reached out to me about doing
a Live Silver Core Podcast Club event.
They asked my thoughts on this, and I'llread you a text message that I sent.
It says, I want the Silver Core Podcastlive event to support the mission of
the Silver Core Club by helping peopledeepen their connection with nature,

(00:35):
build confidence in the outdoorsand in life, and foster a sense of
community among like-minded individuals.
The podcast serves as a platform toshare inspiration, positivity, and real
world experiences centered on growth,resilience, and personal development.
For the live event, I'd like it to berevenue neutral, attract a strong and

(00:57):
diverse audience, and provide meaningfulvalue to attendees through engaging
content and opportunities for connection.
I also want the event to offer clearbenefits to any participating club
partners who align with our values.
While the format of the podcast can bewide ranging, every episode is rooted
in themes of positivity, grit, andgrowth, and I want the live experience

(01:20):
to reflect that same spirit in a waythat it's welcoming and impactful.
So here's my request to you.
Is that something that youwould be interested in attending
or even being involved with?
Let me know on social media, or youcan email me podcast@silvercore.ca.
Another really fun Silver Core Club thingis the Outpost, and that's the Private

(01:43):
Silver Core podcast that comes out everysingle week, and I'm seeing more and
more members taking advantage of that.
If you're not aware of the Outpost andyou're a Silver Core Club member, just log
into your portal and you're gonna have aunique RSS feed that's specific for you.
You can download that, plug it intomost major podcast platforms, and every

(02:06):
single week, you're gonna be gettingshort form key takeaways to deal with
the outdoors, with resilience, with allthe different things that the Silver Core
Podcast talks about, but in condensedways, as well as some behind the scenes
with some of our guests and myself.
Now, without further ado,let's get on with this episode.

(02:27):
The last time we recorded togetherfor the Silver Core Podcast,
it was at his kitchen table.
Since then, he's launched the collectivewith Chance Burs and cranked out hundreds
of episodes, one a day for a year.
Before that, he was a JTF two operator,a world champion, 24 hour solo mountain
bike racer, and a high performance coach.
With over 15 years of experience,his insights on wellness mindset

(02:50):
and pushing limits are hard earned.
And his podcast, the Collective, is averitable goldmine of practical wisdom.
Welcome back to the SilverCorp podcast, Sean Taylor.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
It's always a pleasure to hang out withyou and have deeper conversations on any
subject that, uh, fascinates both of us.

(03:12):
And, um, it has been a little whilesince we did one of these, but it
feels like we spend a fair bit oftime on the collective together.
So I appreciate you comingover and supporting us on
our podcast, uh, chance Burs.
And I always love, uh, having you overfor your, uh, insight and, uh, the way

(03:32):
you view the world, uh, to some degreeis something that I've always treasured.
So, thanks for having me on.
We'll see what, where we go with this
one.
I really appreciate that,and I love the collective.
There's gonna be links in thedescription for anybody who hasn't
heard of the collective or, uh,wants to learn more about it.
You'll see the website whereyou can download it, where
you can watch it on YouTube.

(03:53):
Uh, it, it really is something special.
For this episode, I was really excited.
So it all started essentiallyfrom an Instagram post.
Sean, you were just giving heron your mountain bike and you
filmed yourself just flying up themountainside on your mountain bike.
And people are like, just looking atyou at amazement, like, holy crow,

(04:16):
you got the turbo water, or what?
And, and then you film yourselfafterwards and you're just kind of
talking to yourself through the process.
And what struck me was one of the peoplewho commented on that post, and he says,
serious question with all the new quote,load management around performance.
Have you done anything differentlyfor recovery as you continue

(04:36):
to push hard as you've agedasking for a friend Winky face?
And of, of course, to me, I am 46,turning 47, and I've got a plethora of
injuries from not having properly takencare of myself and my mindset's shifting.
And when I read through what you havehere, and I'll just kind of high note

(04:58):
it, you're saying, you know, top of thelist sleep, not just quantity, but more
correctly, quality, kneeling macros,hydration supplementation, stress
management mindset, routines, beingcomfortable in intensity, et cetera.
And you go on.
And so I thought, holy crow, I mean,somebody with your background and

(05:18):
your both trial and error in yourresearch and seeing what works.
Anybody who's got just half of aninterest in wellness, physical,
mental, emotional, longevity isgonna get a lot out of this podcast.
So, um, I am, I'm stoked.
I'm really excited to getthis conversation rolling.

(05:40):
Right on.
You know what, Mike, what isinteresting is that that video that
you're referring to is a video that.
You know, that's the kind of stuffthat I do on a regular basis.
The how hard I ride or how hard Itrain or how hard I engage in life is
generally speaking, in a daily practice.

(06:02):
And I don't think too much aboutit because I've just been doing
it for so long and, and I, quitefrankly, I'm reluctant to put up
videos that show me like deep,deep, deep into the hurt locker.
Uh, because I don't think everyoneneeds to see that on a regular basis.
But more importantly, I never, ever,ever want anyone to misconstrue

(06:24):
or misunderstand the intent of whyI put any videos up on Instagram.
It's not to, uh, demonstrate how hard Ican go or how deep I can go, um, because
to some degree that makes me feel like,um, uh, I'm flaring out or that I'm trying
to, I'm dressed to impress, as it were.

(06:45):
Um, and I don't carefor that, um, feeling.
Uh, I don't like to have anyonemisunderstand anything that I'm doing
on social media, so I don't put thosekind of videos up on a regular basis.
I. But after I put that video up and Istarted getting the comments, I thought,
man, I should have been doing this sooner.

(07:06):
I should have illustrated to others howfreaking hard I train, or how deep I go,
or how much in the hurt locker, or I putmyself in willingly in order to experience
the growth that I like to see in my life.
And so the video was kind of likealmost a casual, um, effort to
just put something up on my feed.

(07:28):
But then when the comments started rollingin, and I believe, uh, the comment came
in from Sergeant Hazzard, uh, and thenof course you jumped in on that comment
and said, uh, you know what you said?
I thought, man.
I should have done this ages agobecause look at the dialogue that is
going on now, uh, that I could haveaddressed ages ago, because the reply

(07:49):
that I gave to him, I typed that outin like 90 seconds with like mm-hmm.
Almost no thought.
And, and I hit send.
And it was just kinda, uh, classiccase of I'll just try to be a
little bit helpful in this moment.
Tap, tap, tap, and hit send.
And that was it.
And I never thought much moreabout it until you hit me up.
And, and I realized that I havebeen underserving in this area.

(08:13):
I certainly could have addressedthis a long time ago, uh, given a
lot more value, uh, in these matters.
And thanks for picking up on thatcomment and engaging in this.
And now look at where we're at.
So that's well done on your behalf.
So thanks.
Well, I guess it's a fine linebetween, you know, people will look

(08:33):
at social media posts and thinkingsomeone's being braggadocio or
they're, they're just showing off,or are they leading by example?
Are they showing what they do on thedaily and providing a framework that
other people can look at and say,Hey, that, that might work for me too.
And I think you have a frameworkthat could work for a lot of people.

(08:53):
Not everybody, not everyone's gonnahave the mindset or the, um, uh, the
ambition to follow such a framework,but maybe they might modify it.
And, and when I talk about thisframework, so Craig Weller, Jonathan Pope.
W wrote a great book, building the Elite,and it's just this bible of information.

(09:15):
And I was talking with Craig andI'm like, okay, Craig, I don't
know if you heard this one before,Sean, but I I brought you up.
I said, uh, so you, you work with alot of, uh, listen, be good or bad.
Well, we'll find out in a second.
Um, they said, you work with a lot ofhigh performance athletes, a lot of,
um, special forces, both individuals inspecial forces or who are trained to be in

(09:40):
special forces to reach their peak optimalphysical, mental, emotional, uh, value.
And I said, well, you and I, we, we knowSean, what advice would you give Sean if
looking at what he does, if you wantedto make a few tweaks here or there?
And Craig's response was, Iwouldn't be able to make any advice.

(10:03):
I can't, I can't find any areas whereI'd be picking away at what Sean does.
So, so, um, for somebody who does it, some
Craig, but he, he, he could have,
he
could've done
better than that, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, no, I, I ribbed him.
I said, look, you took theeasy way on that one for sure.
But, um, but you do, you've, you'vegot a process that you put in place

(10:27):
and I'm sure it wasn't by accident.
And, uh, I thought maybe if,if we approach it, I sent you
over just 'cause I was having alittle conversation with AI here.
I. And, um, figured if we kind of approachit from, uh, five different points, if
we looked at sleep, the foundation ofwellness, stress management, the invisible

(10:48):
weight, uh, nutrition and macros.
Of course, I learned whatmacros are now, so that's good.
It's more than just macaroni, um, hormonaloptimization, uh, routines and mindset.
So if we looked at sleep, 'causethat was where you started, can you
tell me, uh, what you do for sleep,what role it plays in, in your life?

(11:10):
Sure can.
So before I dive into any further materialthat will, uh, engage in throughout the
pro this podcast, um, I just want to statethe, oh, I, I should state a few things.
Uh, first of all, I am not a medicalprofessional, so anything that I say,
if I make any recommendations or ifI have an any opinion on anything,

(11:34):
it's always worthwhile doing a coldeye review on anything that you
hear, hear with someone else, withyour doctor, or with a naturopath or
whoever you get medical advice from.
Always check in with someone else who hassome form of professional designations.
The second thing is the, um, thingsthat I've learned throughout my

(11:56):
life are an n equals one experiment.
And so I've treated myself like the.
The lab rat as it were, whereI have deeply considered Sean.
And then through that process, learningeverything about me as much as I can.
Uh, I then try to apply it within anyonethat I've worked with in the past.

(12:17):
Uh, either as a high performancecoach with athletes or anyone
that I have any dealings with.
I try to pass on my n equals one tothem, but always with the provision
that this is your n equals one.
Now you need to pay attention,much like I'm going to describe
throughout the rest of this podcast.

(12:38):
So there's a couple of thingsto think about medical.
And, uh, uh, a professionalmedical opinion.
And then of course, you areyour own and equals one.
The next thing I'd like to say is,uh, because I, this, this podcast came
together in, in fairly short orderover a couple of days kind of thing.

(12:58):
Um, I, in preparing for the podcast, infact, I prepared more for this podcast
than I prepare for my own podcast.
So what's going on there?
But, uh, as I was preparing forthis podcast, I thought I would,
um, start capturing some of mythoughts, my opinions, my ideas,
my processes, protocols, as itwere the n equals one of Sean.

(13:19):
Throughout my life, that hastaught me quite a lot in respect
to what works for others as well.
So, uh, as I just mentioned to youbefore we went live or before we
started recording this show, what Idid do is I've got, um, a document
here that is about when you condenseit down into kind of like the size of

(13:43):
a standard issue book that you wouldread, uh, this afternoon kind of thing.
It's about a 70 page book,and so it's pretty solid.
There's a lot of information in therethat I feel would be extremely helpful
to, well, literally anyone who reads it.
And so, um, uh.

(14:03):
I, I, I need to segue into also,currently I'm writing a book or co-writing
a book with my very good friend, afriend of ours, of course, EB Levo.
And, uh, we're several chapters deepinto that, uh, process right now, and
things are going exceedingly well.
I'm really stoked about that book.
So what I've just describedis not that kind of a book.

(14:25):
It is not in competition to that book.
It is not really a book per se,other than it's a really valuable
resource that I should probably makeavailable to the general public.
In fact, maybe as a general offer, I'llthrow this out there to your audience.
Uh, I'm sure Travis, you can find a wayto use this book as a resource, however

(14:48):
you feel, uh, maybe, uh, within yourinner circle or whatever the case is.
We can talk about that, uh,once we're off the recording.
But I'd like to make that available toyou for your general purposes as well.
It sounds amazing.
That sounds amazing.
So with that in place, um, as I said, uh,I created quite a bit of notes and each,

(15:12):
each of the topics that you had suggestedthat we cover, I I dove down pretty
deeply into each of these pillars, if youwill, and the first pillar being sleep.
And so, um, as, as I said in my commenton Instagram, I feel that sleep is
the most important thing a personcan focus on for their overall, not

(15:36):
just longevity, but their physicalperformance, their mental performance,
their sense of ease with who they are.
As a human in this moment, alot of it is driven by sleep.
So with that in place, the importance ofsleep, I'll just throw some context out
there right now to establish how importantsleep is and how I learned this over

(16:00):
multi decades of not getting good sleepand then getting good sleep and realizing
the delta between those two positions.
So of course, as a young man inmy first military career, a lot
of my career trajectory was,um, driven by a lack of sleep.
The, uh, it was a fairly robustpipeline that I was in, and that

(16:25):
pipeline required not a lot of sleep.
And I'm not talking about inselection courses or in, uh, any
form of, uh, testing as it were.
This was just the day-to-day regular.
Tempo typically had you alwayslacking sleep, now lacking
sleep, how much lacking sleep?

(16:47):
Um, that could be anywhere from,uh, only getting five or six hours
a night all the way through to,well, just no sleep for some days.
And if you got an hour or twohere over the period of three or
four days, then that was bonus.
That was gravy.
But back, back then, as a youngman, I simply accepted those terms

(17:08):
and conditions of that lifestyle.
And so there's, there's a cost to that.
Nothing is free in life.
And so that lack of sleep or poor amountof sleep, or poor quality of sleep, which
I'll get into momentarily, really had aimpact on me, has an impact on everyone.

(17:30):
If you're not getting enoughquantity, that's a thing, but if
you're not getting enough quality,that's a whole different thing.
So if you choose to go to bed at whatevertime and you think I'm gonna get seven
hours sleep, you wake up seven hourslater and think, oh, that was great.
I got seven hours sleepoff to have a great day.

(17:53):
That may not be the casebecause those seven hours.
Are determined as to how you'll feelthe next day based on quality of sleep.
And so there are a number of sleep cyclesthat ebb and flow throughout the night.
Uh, I'm not talking about nowa circadian rhythm per se.
I'm talking about the regular ebband flow as you move out of light

(18:18):
sleep to rem sleep, to deep sleep.
These various phases of sleep arecritical for you to be able to, uh,
consolidate memory, consolidate, thought,remove, brain fog, uh, human growth
hormone release, and various hormonalreleases and et cetera, et cetera.

(18:39):
A bunch of science that actuallyhave in the, uh, small book
that, uh, I'm gonna send to you.
Uh, all of these things impactus, uh, while we're sleeping.
And we don't, we don't realize howmuch impact that is until we wake up in
the morning and we throw our leg overthe bed, step onto the floor, stand

(19:01):
up and think, oh, I feel a bit groggy.
Oh, I didn't sleep that well,but I slept seven hours.
Why is, why am I dot, dot dot?
Why am I not 100%?
And so sleep as a whole isquite a complex subject that.
Requires constant tweakingin order to be optimized.

(19:25):
I'm not gonna get into the real deepnessof, uh, the details of the science,
but suffice to say that, um, it, it isa process that is not well understood,
and more importantly it's not focusedon enough in the sense of optimizing it.

(19:45):
Yeah, I can see that.
I mean, when you're looking at optimizingsleep, I've got a Garmin watch and I
was using it to help track my sleep.
I was told that it's notreally the most accurate.
I recently picked up this,uh, aura ring to try and track
sleep a little bit better.
Oh, I see you halfway there too.
And it's, uh, it seems to be a heck ofa lot more accurate than what the, the

(20:09):
Garin Watch is doing, and I'm stilltrying to make heads or tails outta
some of the information in there.
But it's funny, some nights like I'llget four and a half hours of sleep and
it, but it says it's, I did well, I coulddo better on length of time, but it says
all my other metrics I did really well.
So I've got efficient sleep in there.
And I was concerned because somenights I get very little sleep.

(20:31):
Maybe I gotta be doing something.
I'm working hard to get more sleep.
My challenge has been a fouro'clock wake up, it seems.
And I remember about half a year ago,year ago, I mentioned that to you and you
immediately you said, oh, that's liver.
I think that's what you said it was liver.
I'm like, what?
Hold on.
And then we didn't expandtoo much more to that.

(20:52):
So, um, what does that mean whenyou say someone's waking up in the
morning and you say That's liver.
What does that mean?
That's a great question.
So I'll, I'll back it up asec and talk about the a ring.
Uh, because I've been wearing minenow for I think about eight years.
Hmm.
And so, um, this is my third ring.
This is the newest generation Aura ring.

(21:14):
And, um, and I was one of theearly adopters of Aura when
they first came on the scene.
And, uh, prior to the AuraRing, I had other devices.
I've been, um, considering dataas a, generally speaking, a
data scientist to some degree.
Um, I've been thinking aboutthis subject since, oh, I don't

(21:35):
know, maybe 25 years ago when Ibought my first co quote unquote
smartwatch, which was a Polar watch.
They were the very, very firstcom public or uh, retail public
company that provided this.
Incredibly, uh, uh, useful at the time,uh, algorithm called HRV, uh, heart rate

(22:01):
variability and Polar, uh, got the licensefrom another small company that I'd, I'd
started eyeballing on the side lookingfor all the secret sauce, uh, tools,
tips, acts, tricks, um, back in the day.
And, uh, so I bought my first Polar.
And at the time, HRV was pretty muchmisunderstood because the science was

(22:25):
so emerging or evolving that, uh, no onereally had a kind of a generalized opinion
as to whether it was even good or not.
And so I, I engaged with HRV wayback in the day, and like everything
I've done, and I've alreadymentioned, n equals one experiment.

(22:45):
Um, I treat my life like an n equals one.
And so once I bought that polar, itwas less about what the internet said
HRV is, or what polar thought HRV was.
It was precisely for me whatit meant to me, not to them.

(23:07):
And so the, the tools that wehave, the AA ring or the polar.
Watch way back in the day.
They are useless.
In fact, they can be detrimental unlessyou treat them as a tool to learn
about yourself at a deeper level byalmost just isolating yourself from

(23:30):
the rhetoric or the opinion or the,um, what, what, um, aura will tell you.
It means you have to almost read betweenthe lines of what the data is presenting,
but really what's going on inside of you.
How, how you feel that relates to you,how you think that relates to you, how you

(23:53):
see it relate to you as your day unfolds.
And so if I wake up in the morningand, and I, uh, check my aura ring
using the app on my phone, it mighttell me that I got six hours of sleep.
And it might tell me that I got 45minutes of deep sleep and an hour
and 12 minutes of ram and the restwas light and I was interrupted in

(24:17):
my sleep pattern two times for fiveminutes here and 10 minutes there.
I can take a look at that data and think,huh, but then I set it to the side and
I reconsider what it actually means.
I try to synchronize up the datawith my feels as I stand up.
Am I clearheaded as I walk to the bathroomto brush my teeth or whatever the case is?

(24:41):
I. How are things unfolding?
The moment that I wake up until themoment that I come down, grab my glass
of water, pound that stare into thesun as per the huberman and all of
the, the various sequences of eventsthat I'll talk about, of course, as
the podcast unfolds, I am constantlychecking the external world metrics

(25:03):
against my internal world understanding.
And my internal world understanding isa database that I have refined daily
for fricking coming up on 60 years.
And so it isn't justguesswork for me anymore.
When I see my aura data, I know whatit means, not, not what the ring

(25:27):
is telling me, but what I know itmeans to Sean, his n equals one.
And so for you, relatively new to the, um,the, the science data collection game, I
will say for you and anyone it, what youneed to do is establish that relationship

(25:47):
between the metrics of the world and theinternal feelings of your n equals one
life and synchronize those two so thatthey generally kind of align themself
to some degree, if that makes sense.
It does make sense.
So I, I probably know theanswer to this question.

(26:09):
I. But given the fact that you'vebeen tracking these things for so long
through the Ora ring, do you keep somesort of a spreadsheet or some sort of
matrix where you correlate how you feelin the day with what the results of
the, these wearable devices give you?
I do.
So every, every metric that I trackis, uh, established within some sort of

(26:33):
software, uh, where I can discover thedeeper trending or the historical trending
of, um, a, a, a tool like the URA ring.
This ring in and of itself isworthless unless you take the time
to understand how it applies to youspecifically as an n equals one.
Now, the, the trap or the trappingsof these kind of things is, um,

(26:58):
you, you'll buy a tool, whether it'sAura or Garmin or whatever it is.
Whoop, it doesn't much matter whatthe tool is for tracking your sleep.
It, it, it can't tell you who you are.
It can't describe preciselywhat happened in the night.
What it, it can do is track thingslike your body temperature, your

(27:21):
respiratory cycle, your, um, yourheart rate, whether it is in light
sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep.
It can tell you a bunch of things,but then it will interpret.
Those things into, generallyspeaking, sort of a simplistic,

(27:42):
uh, delivery of information.
Uh, something along the linesof, wow, it looks like you didn't
sleep that well last night.
Try and sleep better tomorrow.
And so, um, these, these simplisticsort of overviews are good for
someone who's initially gettinginto the data tracking world.
But what you, what we all haveto do is dig deeper than that

(28:07):
or think deeper than that.
Not just accept the simple,almost casual observance of the
software, but apply these softwareobservations to how you feel.
How it has impacted your life todayin context of what it told you
yesterday and what it told you aweek ago and what it told you a year

(28:28):
ago, and start forming a pattern.
So all these tools, any tool that youuse to metric your life, whether it is
counting pushups, however many pushupsyou did today, if you put that in a
software or in a spreadsheet to kindof evaluate what did you do today?
How did you feel today?

(28:50):
How can you do it better tomorrow?
These kind of things are only valuableif you can gather data for a long
enough period of time that you can nowstart forming a pattern, not just a
data pattern, but an in felt pattern.
So to me, and you've heard me say this,uh, before Travis, that in my life I

(29:14):
like to pattern recognizer, patternrecognition has allowed me to survive
and it has allowed me to thrive.
And so without pattern recognition,um, I feel that there's a huge chunk
of improvement that a person isgiving away by not deeply considering

(29:36):
the long-term patterns of life.
I'm talking a year to two, to five to10 years worth of pattern recognition.
How am I doing now?
Versus me 10 years ago.
These are the kind of patternsthat I'm talking about.
So I'm, as I look at patterns in mylife as they apply to, let's say, sleep

(29:58):
specifically, I know about 17 years ago,I, so building my own business, uh, young
family stress associated with all ofthose things, being ent, an entrepreneur.
And about 17 years ago, a great deal,more stress plopped in my lap, and I
noticed it greatly affected how I slept.
And I would essentially not be sleeping,and I would hear everything that's

(30:24):
happening around me, even when I did havethose, uh, rare times when I was sleeping.
And so I started wearing earplugsto block it out, and I could still
hear everything that's going on.
My senses were a bit heightened,my brain's going crazy.
So I would take, uh, gravelor, uh, diamond ate and,
uh, to try and knock me out.
And yeah, it gives you a bit of a sleep,but you don't feel great the next day.

(30:47):
I mean, sure you were sleeping,but I, it didn't feel like I was
actually properly resting and I wasn'ttracking any of the stuff that these
wearables, uh, do at that point.
And then I started, okay, Ididn't like that because I
don't want to have some sort of.
A, uh, a drug that I haveto take in order to sleep.
And so I thought, well, melatonin,that's supposed to be natural, right?

(31:08):
And now I'm seeing research onmelatonin that it's, uh, bad for you.
It's like a, it messes with your hormones.
So I, I came back, when I look at,uh, these measurables establishing
a baseline and, and tracking wherethese things are different, it comes
down to, um, for me, ensuring thatmy external environment matches kind

(31:32):
of what my internal environment is.
And if I'm living in, quote unquote theconcrete jungle, if we can call latner the
concrete jungle, which if, which it feelslike it to me, but, uh, um, I, I don't
sleep nearly as well as I do if I am outin the bush or if I've in a place where
there's, um, external matches a bit more.

(31:52):
So I've touched on a few things,but, uh, more specifically, I guess,
um, what sort of patterns have yourecognized that lead to, uh, better,
more restful sleep and, um, when itcomes to, let's say supplements, uh,
are there things that a person can take,like, I dunno, magnesium, I think, is

(32:13):
supposed to be good that will assist ina, in a better, more regulated sleep.
Yeah.
So, you know, in order to answer thisquestion like yourself, you were given
context by stating that there was aperiod of time when you weren't getting
much sleep and, and you felt the obviousdownside or the negatives to or sleep.

(32:36):
Hmm.
And so I think that's really importantthat anyone who listens to this
takes a moment to think, okay, I feelthe way I feel right now based on
the kind of sleep that I'm getting.
How would I feel if mysleep was way better?
And until you experience thatway better, this conversation is
almost like a neutral conversation.

(32:57):
It's almost inert.
It almost has no value until a persontakes the time to think about, I
could be 10 times the person I amif I just dialed in my sleep more.
And so I know this to be true becauseI'd stated earlier, the, in my first
career, the tempo was such that sleepwas a luxury to some degree, more so

(33:21):
than, um, you know, an obligated thing.
But as I continued on in my othercareers, um, I had lots of moments
where I still wasn't getting goodsleep because of my career demands.
But.
On top of that, I'd like to throwthis other layer that I was also
dealing with that was reallyimpacting my sleep detrimentally.

(33:46):
And that is I was having a lot ofnightmares and, uh, I didn't realize
the, and, and I was having nightmaresevery night and, and I was getting
terrible sleep because of the, so Iwas working super hard, getting to
bed super late because the work hadto be done then getting up super early
because the work was still there.
And then in the time that I wasin bed, my sleep was disrupted by,

(34:10):
I didn't have good sleep hygiene,which we can talk about shortly.
And I was just dealing with nightmares.
And so the nightmares thatI had are a result of PTSD.
And um, and I had those for over 20years until I mentioned to my family
doctor that I was having nightmares.
Um, uh, I, I just kind ofthought it was a normal thing.

(34:31):
I didn't talk to anyone about it.
And, uh, I just kind of put up with it.
And it's not like I had tonsof conversations with tons of
friends and saying, Hey, do youhave nightmares every night?
How many do you have?
And how, how bad is it?
And this just wasn't a conversationthat I'd ever had until Right.
I talked with my family doctorand it was just a casual mention.
And so, uh, we found a way to sortof reduce those levels of nightmares.

(34:56):
And then I started applyingway more sleep hygiene and way
more focus on quality of sleep.
And so.
The amount of sleep, as I said,is one thing, but the quality of
sleep is a whole different thing.
And so these sleep hygiene protocolsare, you can Google sleep hygiene or

(35:18):
perhaps, um, in the, in the littlebook that I just wrote about, uh,
this subject, you'll find out a lotmore about sleep hygiene protocols
and then supplementation for sleep.
So I'll start with sleep hygiene first.
Certainly one of the things that Itry to control, whether I'm in my own
house or whether I'm traveling, ismake the room as cold as possible.

(35:42):
If you can get your room to, um, likekind of chilly, uh, that's good because
that promotes, um, for, I'm not gonnaget into the biological reasons, but
that promotes a deeper, faster, uh, wayof sleep, uh, slipping into your sleep,
um, noise, distractions, any noisesthat are going on throughout the night.

(36:05):
If you're in the big city and you'reused to all of the train noises and bus
noises and taxi noises, that's okay.
You're used to it.
But that doesn't mean that your bodyisn't recognizing those noises and
responding to them all the time.
And so you may feel like, well, I'mjust used to big city noises, but,
but as, as, as cavemen, we don't.

(36:28):
Uh, we can't just say, oh, that'sa taxi while we're sleeping.
What happens is we're momentarilyawake because of that taxi horn.
And so I wear earplugs every night, uh,whether I'm in my own house or whether I'm
traveling and if I'm traveling overseasin an area that I think is a bit dodgy.
I'll still wear my earplugs,but I'll put other measures into

(36:51):
place to make sure that it's notthat much of a concern for me.
Same thing with an eye mask.
Every night I wear an eye mask, a blackouteye mask, and in our master bedroom
we have, uh, blinds that pull down toreduce the light as well to the degree.
Controlling light to the degree thatif I wasn't wearing an eye mask, a, a

(37:15):
little, uh, maybe a digital, uh, alarmor a digital clock next to the bedside
table, it, it's oriented away from me.
So it's facing away from me because evenwith your eyes closed while you're asleep,
light from these kind of a device can,the short wave can penetrate through.

(37:36):
The eyelids still hit the receptors ofthe eyes as you're sleeping and indicate
that there is it's time to wake up.
Those early signs of light will start topull you out of various sleep patterns.
And so controlling for noise, controllingfor temperature, controlling for light
is critical as far as I'm concerned.

(37:56):
Now, as part of the sleep hygieneprotocol, uh, when it comes to as bedtime
approaches, of course, you can startreducing all forms of electronic devices.
And if you can't control your electronicdevices, then certainly you should
have a blue light filter in place,like on your phone or on your laptop.
If you like to, uh, wind down with alittle bit of a movie or some YouTube

(38:19):
or some Netflix or whatever the caseis, you can reduce the light that
is blasting from your laptop or fromyour TV or whatever the case is.
When, when I'm going to bed at night,um, as I'm heading upstairs, I turn
all the lights off in the house and,and it, this is just a little routine.

(38:39):
And, and believe it or not, all thesetiny little routines add up into a
pattern that helps you believe or helpsyou understand, or literally puts you
in a place where you're ready for sleep.
I kill all the lights in the house,and then from the main floor, I walk
upstairs through two flights of stairsinto the master bedroom in pitch black,

(39:01):
open the door, stealth in like a ninja,stealth right up to my bedside table.
I put my earplugs in.
I put my night mask in, uh, on, and,and I slide into bed, uh, as quietly
as I can, so as not to disturb my wife.
But all of that is stealth.
All of that is in the pitch black.
And so I appreciate the idea ofstealthing up the stairs silently and

(39:27):
flowing in a way that isn't janky orjerky or disconnected from the moment.
And so that simple process of ninjain my way up into bed is a way for me
to like become grounded and aware orpresent in the moment as to what I'm

(39:48):
doing in the moment as I head to bed.
And so this, these tiny littlesubroutines that I have in the way of
sleep hygiene are really important,uh, little protocols that help, um,
sort of build out the infrastructure.
Of preparing to go to sleep or havinga good night's sleep as part of the

(40:11):
sleep hygiene protocol, I supposewe could talk about supplementation.
And so supplementation isn't somethingthat you can, um, a a minute before
you go to bed, reach over, graba little pill, throw it down your
throat, and head off to bed, and bam,you're having the best sleep ever.
These are things that you can dothroughout your day, but certainly

(40:32):
specific to sleep, I feel thatmagnesium is extremely important.
There's a couple of formsof magnesium that I use.
One is magnesium, three innate,and one is magnesium bisg glycinate
or mag magnesium glycinate.
Um, the, the glycinate I canuse on a daily basis throughout
the day for whatever purposes.

(40:54):
And magnesium is a really usefulcompound because there's over 300
biological processes that require,uh, magnesium throughout your day.
Uh, so magnesium glycinate orbis glycinate is something I
will use irrespective of sleep.
But then, uh, for my sleep I might usemagnesium three anate, which is, is.

(41:18):
You know, helps cross overthe blood brain barrier.
Uh, it's also more of acognitive, um, magnesium.
And so without getting into too manydetails, I will say that magnesium,
those two forms are something thatI take, uh, almost every single day.
Um, in respect to melatonin, asyou mentioned, I'm not actually

(41:41):
that much of a fan of melatonin.
And if melatonin is used, it is anacute or is it is used precisely
and temporarily to offset somethinglike jet lag as an example.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and I would say use it as a cautionarybasis because it can, uh, interfere,

(42:02):
interact negatively with your, uh, endogenor with your inbuilt hormonal system that
creates the melatonin for you mm-hmm.
Uh, throughout your life.
And so it's, it is something like a twoto three day melatonin at very small
doses, which the doses I put in thehandbook that I'm gonna send you, um,

(42:27):
this is something that is temporary.
And is only used as a quick fix for aacute problem, as it were, something
like traveling across multipletime zones into another country.
But it's nothing thatanyone should rely on.
Um, there's a, there's a number of otherthings that you can use nutritionally.

(42:48):
Uh, certainly one of them istry not to eat two to three
hours before you go to bed.
Now, there's a whole variety ofreasons for that, uh, to do with how
the gut brain, um, connection worksor the, the mind gut connection.
And of course, how if you've got abig old steak in your belly, uh, that
you ate five minutes before you wentto bed, there's some blood shunting

(43:11):
there and there's some processesthat have to stay busy throughout
the night to work on them, et cetera.
Whereas those processes are better usedto help clear out some metabolic waste
and are better used to blah, blah, blah.
Things that I talk about in thislittle book, um, these, these
choices that we make, um, I willsay this as kind of a universal

(43:35):
statement in respect to this topic.
The choices that we make throughoutour day should be driven by setting
us up for the best sleep ever.
And so at some point in the day,we all have come to that point
where I wouldn't mind a snack.
It's 10 o'clock at night.

(43:55):
I wouldn't mind a bag of Miss Vicky's.
It's 11 o'clock at night.
I wouldn't mind a Twinkie, whatever.
These choices where we have those littlesnacky moments where we have those moments
of, I wouldn't mind a bit of comfort.
I wouldn't mind a bit of calories.
I wouldn't mind a bit of,I'm bored, I need to eat.
Mm-hmm.
These choices are, as far as I'mconcerned, the pivotal moments in

(44:19):
our day where we either capitulateto, I'm bored, I want to eat, or
more correctly, we stand up strongor fortify our position and realize,
no, that isn't gonna serve me well.
I'm gonna make the right choiceand I'm not going to eat that two
to three hours before I go to bed.
Because A, I know, physiologicallyspeaking, that's the right call.

(44:44):
But maybe most importantly ofall, mentally I know that I am
freaking optimizing to the max.
That sense of I'm doing everythingright, goes a long way to understanding
who you are throughout your life.
So these daily little giveawayswhere I'm, I'm just gonna eat a

(45:06):
bag of chips 'cause I'm hungry.
These little giveaway momentsare the things that kind of
make us backslide mentally.
We know it's not right what we're doing,but we'll still do it because to some
degree we're being lazy and it's that I.
Kind of not, not giving up tothe laziness of the moment.

(45:28):
It's being strong in understandingthat what's right for you is something
that is a little bit harder to do, alittle bit of discipline, a little bit
of adversity, if we can call it that.
Hmm.
Those are the right choices becauseeven if you go to bed feeling a little
bit of hunger and a little bit ofboredom, uh, good because you have

(45:50):
set yourself up over the long haul torealize that you're better than that.
Mm-hmm.
It's funny, whenever I go to bed feelinghungry, I don't wake up feeling hungry
and it's, it, it, it's weird how thatworks, but I could, like, let's say
I'm out in the bush and I had verylittle food and I've been pushing hard

(46:11):
and I'm like, man, I'm sure hungry.
I wake up the next day,I'm like, I'm good.
I can go again.
So did I really need that extra food?
Was it really somethingmy body wanted it Sure.
The, the, uh, face mask is interesting.
I use the earplugs, use 'emevery day, have for years.
I could still heareverything that's happening.
Uh, when the kids are young, Icould hear them making noise.

(46:33):
Even with the earplugs in,it's, it's funny how your body
just adapts to these things.
Uh, face mask, I thinkI'll give that a shot.
I, I got blacko blinds in the room.
But, um, uh, I think, I thinkthat makes a big difference.
'cause I, I will notice thatthe second that the light's out,
I'm out in a tent, lights out.
It's time to get up, light goes down,time to go to a time for me to go down.

(46:54):
So I, I gotta imagine that,uh, it would play a big role.
Um,
it is interesting.
Uh, so if you, what we're talking aboutis removing your sensory receptors.
So, you know, hearing'sgone, vision's gone.
Now you're embedding still.
So we're, we're removing oursense senses, as it were.

(47:17):
And ultimately, what, what we are ashuman beings is we're sensory organisms.
We understand the world around us throughour senses, and we, our consciousness, or
our mind, or our spirit then, you know,interprets that and does what it does.
That's a whole different podcast.
But in respect to the census,once you strip out the hearing

(47:39):
and the vision, what I've found.
Is as I'm laying there in bed, uh, evenwhen I'm asleep, if, if someone gets
up, like my son this morning had toget up really early to go do, uh, work,
um, and to catch a bus to go to work.
I, I felt him moving in the house.

(48:02):
I didn't hear him.
I didn't see him, but I felthim moving in the house.
I felt the vibration ofhim moving in the house.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And so as he walked across thefloor, I could feel the almost
imperceptible motion of him moving.
And if not for that, stripping away ofthe, I'll call them really loud sensory

(48:22):
inputs of vision and hearing, thenmy sense of vibrational feeling would
be duller or wouldn't be as refined.
And so, uh, as I said earlier,and I didn't want to get too deep
into it, um, because there's manyways that you can be in a foreign

(48:42):
country and still wear earplugsand an eye mask and still be okay.
Mm-hmm.
Um, there's a bunch of physicalthings that you can do to sort
of control that environment.
But one of the things that I haveand at my available, uh, as one of my
tools that I've developed over yearsis my sense of things when I'm asleep.

(49:03):
Is quite refined.
And so it's not that I can feel thebutterfly flapping through the air, you
know, 12 blocks away, but what I cando is I can feel when someone walks up
to the door in a hotel and, and likejust pushes against the door handle.
It's hard to describe andI don't always feel it.

(49:26):
It's not like it's magic, but itis, it is a sensory tool that has
developed over decades based onstripping out all of the other, uh,
extraneous, uh, stimulus as it were.
I, I know what you're talking about.
I, I feel it as well.
It's, um, and I think it, a lot ofit comes down to trusting your gut

(49:49):
feeling and then, and then checkingafterwards was my gut feeling correct?
And then you build that baseline of,okay, uh, what I felt actually was
something and you, and you move forward.
I, I use that as a technique to,uh, be present and to calm down.
Mm-hmm.
And I've used it, I'vetalked about it before.

(50:10):
I use it with my kids, uh,when they're growing up and
they're, something's happening.
They're completely overwhelmed andthey're feeling really activated.
I'm like, okay, just take a deep breath.
Right.
Just sit here for a moment.
Tell me what do you hear?
Well, I don't, I don't hear anything.
Okay.
Keep listening.
What do you hear?
Oh, I heard, I heard a car outside.

(50:30):
Okay, good.
Now keep listening.
Do you hear the fridge?
No.
Well listen until you do.
Oh, there it is.
I can hear the fridge.
And as they start minutely looking atthese little things, it calms them down.
And it's a trick that I use with myself.
And when I'm, and I don't know, it'sprobably as old as anything, uh, but it
never sunk in to me to use it for sleep.

(50:53):
People talk about counting sheep as ameans to be able to, uh, fall asleep,
and that's an age old sort of thingthat they talk about in cartoons.
And everyone's, everyone's seen that one.
For me, I don't learn things normally.
It's like trying to hit the baseball.
I couldn't hit the damn baseball.
Keep your eye on the ballwhile I'm watching it.

(51:13):
I'm keeping my, until somebody said,watch that baseball until it impacts the
bat and leaves, oh, now I can hit it.
Right?
I thought I was doing it, butsomehow somebody says, or I learned.
Um, if you're having a hardtime falling asleep, uh,
concentrate on very minute things.
For example, if you're, uh, walking outthe front door, imagine yourself what

(51:38):
it feels like when you grip the handle,if you're barefoot, what uh, what the
concrete feels like, what the stonesfeel like, what the green of the wood
looks like, and try and concentrateon these tiny, tiny little things.
And I found that to be auseful tool for me anyways.
If I'm in a state where I justcan't fall asleep, that's what I
have to do to shut my brain downand, and move into sleep state.

(52:01):
So I'm gonna jump into that, but I, Iwanna make sure that before I jump into
that, that proceeding it, the thingsthat will cause these kind of issues in
bed where someone is just laying thereand can't go to sleep or is just laying
there ruminating or is just layingthere and, you know, just fidgeting.

(52:25):
Before that happens, make sure that anystimulants that you've got in your life.
As an example, if, if you drink coffee,like I'm drinking world class coffee
right now, um, the half-life of caffeineis five to six-ish hours, depending
on your own unique physiology, uh, howyou process caffeine as a molecule.

(52:50):
So if you're having caffeine later intothe day, well congratulations, you're
gonna have a disturbed sleep cycle.
Uh, for myself as an example,my rule of thumb is I cut
coffee off from noon onwards.
I try not to drink coffee after12 o'clock in the afternoon.
And my coffee consumption, whichI have limitless ability to, I,

(53:14):
I, if I need coffee, I'll justgo and roast some more coffee.
Mm-hmm.
And it's not for lack of coffee.
My issue is I love coffee.
I love the taste of coffee.
I'm less focused on the stimulantaspect, the stimulant properties.
I'm more interested in thebeautiful notes of coffee.
And so I still.
Limit myself to just twocups of coffee every day.

(53:37):
And by two cups, I mean two smallcups or one large, the collective mug.
So that's all I have for coffee in my day.
And if I was to drink coffee in theafternoon, again, that half life of
caffeine molecule is problematic Alsofrom a stimulant basis, um, I'd like

(53:58):
to shift into, you know, it's not astimulant, but it is sometimes used to
help with sleep, and that is alcohol.
And alcohol is problematic, uh,when it comes to sleep quality.
Um, as an example, uh, early on,uh, when I was first got my earing,
I started analyzing all of theaspects in my life as to the upside

(54:21):
downside in respect to the data.
And over a very short period of time,it was easy to see that alcohol had an
extremely negative impact on sleep cycle.
And so bam, there goes alcohol.
And I don't touch alcohol at allhardly ever anymore since then.
And so, uh, same for my wife.

(54:43):
Uh, she wasn't much of a drinker either.
Maybe a glass of wine from timeto time, but she was tracking her
sleep with the neural ring and bam.
Cut out alcohol completely because of thedownside or the negative impact on sleep.
Just sleep alone, nevermindall the other factors.
That was enough to cut alcohol out of.

(55:03):
Uh.
Our lives.
And so stimulants or, or these substancesthat we put into our bodies all have
impact and not all of them are upside.
So you have to consider thesekind of things, uh, for sure.
Further to that, since I'm talking aboutstimulants, as it were, I'd mentioned

(55:25):
magnesium, we talked about melatonin, butthere's many other, uh, things that people
will use to help support their sleep.
And that may be altheine or, or sourcherry juice or, um, there's a variety
of different things that I mentioned inthe book, but, um, certainly one of the

(55:45):
things that gets tossed around is, um,herbal, uh, ergogenic such as ashwagandha.
And so, um, you know,or, or reishi mushroom.
Now reishi as a whole, I'm, I'm kindof positive on, but ashwagandha as
a whole, I'm not that positive on.
And the reason for that is becauseashwagandha is quite a unique, um, uh,

(56:12):
compound or is, is quite a unique impactorbecause not everyone responds the same.
And so again, if, if you hearme mention ashwagandha and you
think, oh, that, that might helpwith my sleep, be cautious because
ashwagandha as the example can have.
Problematic, um, outcomes for individualswho are on other medications or who

(56:39):
are, uh, have some sort of mental,um, not instabilities, but have some
sort of mental struggles that, uh,negatively interact with ashwagandha.
There's a whole list of things thatI mentioned just using ashwagandha as
the only example of how you've gotta becareful with these kind of, almost, um,

(57:02):
almost safe feeling herbs that aren'tthat safe depending on who you are.
So, as an n equals one experiment,you have to pay attention to
how these things may impact you.
So if someone's casuallythrowing out advice, like, yeah,
just take ashwagandha, bro.

(57:22):
That's the moment that you pause andgo and do some research or talk to a
naturopath or to a doctor, or to friendswho have experience in that area and, and,
and value those other opinions before youstart pounding ashwagandha carelessly.
I think what you're touching on herewill naturally segue into the next

(57:44):
one, which is stress management, theinvisible weight, because alcohol
like you, I, it doesn't have much.
Place in my life.
And I found that the day after drinkingalcohol two days after, three days
after, it was still affecting me as itaffected my outlook, my mood, my stress.
Like I'd find I'd be more irritablethan I would if I hadn't had any.

(58:08):
And that's even just a couple of drinks.
And I'm not gonna say no oneshould ever have alcohol.
It's terrible.
I've, I've heard people say that Ido think there is something to be
said for a social aspect of going outand, uh, perhaps letting loose with
friends that it, at certain timesthat they might not otherwise be able

(58:29):
to experience that social aspect.
But by and large, I really don'tsee positives to drinking alcohol.
And if you could find thatsame social, uh, aspect without
the alcohol even better.
Um, but the idea that, um,these different supplements like
ashwagandha, like you say, well,it's is some natural occurring thing.

(58:52):
Well, so's so's hemlock.
So's nightshade, right?
There's a lot of things out therethat are naturally occurring that
really, really are bad for you.
But they're marketed.
I think ashwagandha is marketed as a, uh,a stress management thing too, as well.
That's right.
Yeah.
What do you, what do you do to, uh,anti, anti-anxiety to some degree, that's

(59:14):
a, it's a, it's a stress management,uh, herb, or that's how it's marketed.
Right.
As, as all things are marketed,all things are labeled.
Mm-hmm.
Alcohol is labeled, and so, you know,I, I believe this to be true, that no
matter what's standing in front of you,even you as an example, Trav, when,

(59:36):
and, and we've had lots of conversationsin the past on podcast, the moment
that I'm in this podcast today, Ikind of tear the label off of Travis.
Hmm.
Like, I don't, I don't care forlabels like this, so I'm, I'm not
reevaluating you as a person, I'm simplyobserving you as the new person today

(59:56):
in front of me that is called Travis.
That is quite, probably not muchdifferent than the last Travis I talked
to, but it's still a new Travis becauseyou've learned things since then.
You, you probably haven'tgotten any, any taller, because
that's probably not possible.
But the, the, the idea beingthat when it comes to herbs like

(01:00:20):
ashwagandha, the moment that someoneraises that up in a conversation,
I'll look at the person differently.
I'll tear the label right off themand think, Hmm, uh, what I thought
this person knew before they saidAshwagandha is now different.
I'm viewing the person differently inthis moment because if they come across

(01:00:40):
as a, basically an ill educated laymanwho's throwing out advice as if they're
a medical doctor, well, guess what?
I, I, I will categorize you in adifferent way in that moment then
perhaps last time we talked, so.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, knowledge is power, as theysay, but knowledge is, is, um, also

(01:01:02):
a potent disruptor to some degree.
Um, if, if someone gets super excitedabout their health journey, they're now
on their own personal crusade to becomethe best version of themself, but this
is day two of that journey, and theyjust walked into a naturopathic store and
picked up a bottle of ashwagandha and,and the clerk says, Hey, good choice.

(01:01:27):
That's gonna solve your life'sproblems when you walk out
the door with that bottle.
If you start regurgitating in your,in your honeymoon phase of excitement
of now you're on your path to glory.
If you start talking about ashwagandhaas the holy grail of supplements to
anyone who will listen, you effectivelyalmost become like an ambassador for

(01:01:50):
the thing that you don't understand.
It's pretty typical for,it happens in everything.
Uh, Brazilian jujitsu as anexample, as a new white belt.
If, if someone's been on the matsfor like a week or two weeks and
they, like BJJ, all of a sudden theyare the biggest proponent of BJJ.

(01:02:12):
They will tell anyone about the,the upside of BJJ, but they don't
understand the downside yet.
Mm-hmm.
They don't understandanything yet, really.
And so these, these labels that get putin front of us that try to tear them off
and re-understand them for myself withan n equals one sort of perspective.

(01:02:35):
I like that.
You know the saying, no manenters the same river twice
because he is not the same net.
He's not the same man andit's not the same river.
And I'm also reminded of, uh, do youremember that old show with Patrick
McGuin called The Prisoner Magan?
McGuin
Mcgon?
Didn't he do, uh, whatother movie did he do?

(01:02:56):
Um, art movie, uh, series.
Back in the day.
That's right.
Um, the, oh my goodness,it'll come to me anyway.
I know him from,
from, and I always remember as he'sdriving in at the very beginning,
there's this sign, or as they gointo, um, wherever the colony is, I

(01:03:19):
think it's supposed to be Australia,but wherever that colony is, that
they're all held prisoner on, theyhave this sign there that says, uh,
questions are a burden unto others.
Answers are Aris under oneself.
And, uh, when you, when youstart looking at removing labels,
yeah, the more questions we ask,we're burdening somebody else.
But the more, the more we acceptthe answer is true, the less that

(01:03:41):
it opens our mind up to what otherpossibilities there might be.
So I, I like that idea ofremoving that label each time.
And I think that's really strongadvice for anyone looking at any
of these supplements to dig deep,remove that label and say, why,
where, where's it coming from?
And is this gonna workfor me in my situation?
But I continue.

(01:04:01):
Wasn't he also in theSaint way back in the day?
Wasn't he in that series as well?
The Saint, anyway, that's, hemay, I'll figure that out later.
Yeah.
The good old saint.
So the, uh, when it comes to stressas an example, yes, of course there,
there's many biological processes.
There's the HPA axis, uh, the, thehormonal interaction, uh, throughout our

(01:04:27):
day, throughout our sleep, throughout ourlives, uh, all of these things are well
understood from a science perspective.
But what they aren't well understood isthrough the n equals one perspective.
And so you can, you can spend the restof today picking up a, um, a, a, a
biology book and better understandinghow humans work at a biological level.

(01:04:50):
But that doesn't mean that it directlyapplies to you what it does mean.
It's, it's a looseframework of how you work.
But now it's for you to understandthe details of the n equals
one experiment called you.
And so these general rules of thumb,I'll call them these s science-based

(01:05:10):
rules of thumb of how the body works.
They've been established a longtime, but you have to understand
how you work with the science.
And so there's no escaping.
There's no ignoring, there's nopretending that the HPA axis, uh,
won't have a downside if you don'tunderstand it and don't control for it.

(01:05:34):
And so, as an example, if you wantto, if you wanna leave your house
right now and start running and, andnot stop running for another four
and a half weeks, not eat, not sleep,not drink, there's downside to that.
The HPA axis will get involved, yourhormonal panel will get involved.
Lots of things will getinvolved at a biological level.

(01:05:55):
But how it impacts you Trav andhow it impacts me and how it
impacts any of the listeners isunique to them, to us to, to me.
And so I understand how I work atthese biological levels because I
understand the broad science, but I alsounderstand the experimenting with Sean

(01:06:16):
aspect, the n equals one experiences.
And so, uh, I'm just gonna throw outsome terms right now that will help
with this subject of stress resilience.
So stress resilience is an example.
How you become resilient tostress is you face stress and then
you learn how to manage stress.

(01:06:37):
Your body learns how to manage thestress, your mind, your emotions.
You learn to deal with stress,but it is not a. Free ride.
It is not a no cost aspect.
As you're learning to build your stressresilience, there is cost to that.
And unless you're managing thecost by applying some recovery

(01:07:01):
protocols and other things that willget into the, you're, you're now
backsliding rather than growing.
And so, as an example, cortisol is aproblem for anyone who is deeply engaged
in stress, uh, resilience building oris facing a lot of adversity on their

(01:07:23):
regular, in order to improve theirstress resilience, cortisol will start
slowly impacting your physiologicaloptimization to a degree where you may
not understand while you feel so bad.
But it is the hormones that your hormonalpanel, this hormonal soup within you that

(01:07:45):
is constantly running every millisecond ofyour life to try to create homeostasis or
try to create a balance within your life.
Every, every aspect, every littlevariable, every little impactor
that that hits you from all the 360degree angles, they all have cost.

(01:08:06):
If you are out there driving hardin whatever you're doing, whether
it's your work life or your personallife or your hobby life, if you're
working really, really hard, pushingthe pace, there's a cost to that.
And so that cost will come in the senseof your HPA axis, or to offset that

(01:08:28):
cost, you could improve your sleep.
So now here's the, here, here'swhere we put things together.
So if your stressors in life are notwell managed or you can't manage them
and your sleep is terrible, now justthose two things alone have almost a

(01:08:48):
inflationary or have a double dip badsort of impact that both though both
things are were controllable by you,you haven't controlled for them, and
now it's not just like twice as bad.
What it is is a bunch of things badbecause those two, stress and poor
sleep exacerbate themselves to adegree where it should start to be

(01:09:13):
notable, but it doesn't become notable.
If you're not forming apattern, you just act.
Simply accept that every dayyou wake up feeling worn out.
No energy, no spark in life.
You feel like drudgery day afterday life shouldn't feel that way.

(01:09:34):
And there's reasons why it shouldn't feelthat way, and they are all controllable.
Do you, do you meditate?
Do you have a process for, um, sortof emotional, mental regulation
for, for stress management?
For sure.

(01:09:54):
Uh, so I maybe now's a good time toseparate the two worlds that I, uh,
I like to think of that I operate in.
There's the external world andthere's the internal world.
And I truly believe that our internalworlds, my internal world that I
have is not just the foundation ofhow to live a good life, but it is

(01:10:16):
literally my life, the internal world.
If I am a peace, if I'm stable, ifI'm functioning well internally, then
the external world is quite easy.
But if my internal world is not settled,if I am not applying all of my inner work,
then my external world doesn't fall apart.

(01:10:38):
But it shows signs ofcracks, of fractures, of not
going as well as it should.
And so my inner world,when it's good to go.
Assures me that the externalworld is gonna be good to go.
And so how do I maintain a,a, a, a good inner world?
Mm-hmm.
Well, first of all, I'm, I'mliterally doing it right now.

(01:11:00):
I am very present in this moment.
I, I don't know what I said asecond ago, and I don't know what,
I'll say a second from now becauseI'm not concerned about that.
I am comfortable with podcasting enoughnow after hundreds of them, that I just
simply slip into this moment that we'resharing together, this conscious sharing
moment that I don't have to sweat thedetails of what's gonna happen next.

(01:11:25):
'cause I'm so centered and groundedright now, and I know that sounds like
maybe boastful or whatever, but I'm socentered and grounded right now that I
feel very at peace inside, which reflectsexternally to the world as I'm doing okay.
And it's all very manageable.

(01:11:47):
And I quite like my external world.
That's how I feel about thingswhen my inner world is good.
And so how do I get my inner world?
That good?
Well, I couldn't, when I first startedpodcasting, and as you know, you,
you saw it yourself when, when peoplestarted asking me to begin podcasting.

(01:12:07):
Oh my goodness.
I was so reluctant.
Mm-hmm.
And of course you were in my kitchen when,uh, when you came out to Roslyn, and that
was one of the first sort of, I wouldsay, big podcasting moments that I had.
And I was sweating bullets.
I had no idea what Iwas getting myself into.
And maybe, maybe externally it lookedokay, but internally I was in turmoil.

(01:12:32):
And, uh, I, I didn't knowhow podcasting worked.
I didn't know what I was supposedto even be doing in the moment.
I didn't know what Iwas supposed to deliver.
There was a lot of, not just unknowns,but there was a lot of personal doubts.
Like I, I, you know, how bad myimposter syndrome is, but like, it was
warp factor three bad in that moment.

(01:12:54):
And so I just wasn't settled.
I wasn't grounded, I wasn't centered.
Hmm.
And so, though, I though, beforepodcasting, I understood mindfulness.
And before podcasting,I understood meditation.
And before podcasting, I understooda lot of things academically, and I
was applying a lot of them in my life.
But podcasting as a. Um, we'll callit a crucible, for lack of a better

(01:13:19):
term, has obligated me to refinethings several hundred podcasts later,
so that this, this moment that we'rein together right now just feels
like a normal extension of my life.
That is a normalization or a patternstructure that I've created for me

(01:13:41):
to be able to offload all of the,um, mechanics of things, offload all
of the details of things, and simplytrust myself to exist in this moment
peacefully and calmly, and let it unfold.
That's mindfulness to me now, and themindfulness that I understand today

(01:14:04):
is different than the mindfulness Iunderstood two years ago, as an example.
So yes, mindfulness is a hugepart of my life right now.
I said this to someone just the otherday, the I, I'm seeking a existence in
life where I only exist now, not, not10 minutes ago, not 10 minutes from now.

(01:14:30):
Those things are inconsequential to me.
That's what I'm trying to seek is wayless about if this than that, and more
about the right now, of the moment,man, it makes things way easier for me.
But that took a long, long,long, long time, and I had
to baby step my way into it.
Like grabbing 10 seconds of mindfulnesshere and 15 seconds of mindfulness

(01:14:54):
there over a period of years until now.
Uh, I don't always manage to do it,be present all the time, but when
I'm in my flow state, like now,this flow state is not only good for
me, but it is actually appealing.
Like it's, it's, it'ssomething that I really love.

(01:15:16):
I love the flow state.
Mm-hmm.
I, I love it on my mountain bike.
I love it on the bj j mats, but I loveit in these moments where I can simply
almost drop out of my ego existenceas, as weird as that may sound to some
listeners, and simply be with you inthis moment without sweating the details.

(01:15:36):
So mindfulness is very important to me.
Meditation is also important.
I do it every day.
Typically first thing in the morning,uh, I'll get out of bed, drink my
water, stare at the sun, sit down inmy chair, take a moment and drop into
some meditation from, from an externalperspective, from the outside world.

(01:15:57):
Uh, an outside observer looking at me.
They might just see me chillaxingin a chair and maybe doing whatever.
But what I am engaged in in that momentis a deep practice called meditation.
Meditation is what I would define as thefunctional structure or the discipline

(01:16:18):
of a framework, discipline of applying aprocess to get closer to being mindful or
being present and grounded in the moment.
So again, meditation is notnecessarily mindfulness.
Meditation is the practice tomove you more towards mindfulness.
That's a loose framing of the subject.

(01:16:41):
So, to your point or your question,a hundred percent meditation is
a part of my life, and it doesn'trequire like statues and candles
and, and someone dinging bells.
It doesn't require any of that.
I can meditate.
I can go for a ride, uh, later today,flow across the planet in a mindful

(01:17:02):
state, get off my bike, sit on a tree,log and drop into some meditation out in
nature, or standing on a log on one leg.
I. Meditate.
The meditation is the formal structureto get me back into the moment of being
mindfully present as I stand on the log.
And so those two thingsplay together well.

(01:17:24):
But ultimately I believe thatthe, the overarching theme should
be seeking to be more mindful.
I hope that answers your question.
It does.
And one of the big takeaways that I seein that, that I like how you, uh, touched
on how the internal affects the external.
So you have stress that's happening.

(01:17:46):
Is that an external stressis at an internal stress?
Well, prob probably.
It might be both, but probably thebiggest portion of it's gonna be
an internal mindset or perspective.
And some people are really smart and theycan learn from other people's mistakes
or they can listen to a podcast like thisand they can just leapfrog ahead years

(01:18:06):
in their journey of becoming mindfuland being present and shifting their
perspective on what might be ailingthem or stressing them in the moment.
Other people like myself, not so much,they have to learn through the school
of hard knocks, and they actually haveto go in and, um, experience things
over and over until you start figuringa better way, a better way through it.

(01:18:27):
But the, um, and I've alwayswondered, you know, people
say you manifest your destiny.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I get it right.
I've heard this a lot andwhat a man thinks he will do.
Okay, sure.
Uh, but there is some sortof secret sauce to that.
There is a reality to that, to whatyou think and what's going on in
your head will actually manifestitself physically around you.

(01:18:51):
And whether that's because you thoughtof something you vibed, you got
on a frequency and things unfoldedin that fashion, or whether it's
because our brains are really goodat kind of piecing things together.
If afterwards you look at it andyou say, oh, it's because I vibed
that this ended up happening.
I think the end result of how youfeel and how your external world feels

(01:19:13):
around you, it's gonna be the same.
So doesn't matter how you want toascribe to that thought process.
Really addressing mindfulness,uh, shifting that perspective.
Like, okay, I'm doing somethinghard right now, but what's hard for
me today isn't gonna be the sameof what was hard for me yesterday.

(01:19:33):
What's hard for meyesterday is no longer hard.
That's easy.
It's like that Homer Simpson quotewhen Bart got caught out naked
and everyone's laughing at him.
He's like, this is theworst day of my life.
He's like, Uhuh, it's theworst day of your life so far.
Right?
Um, I, I like how you separate that.
'cause I, I think, uh, havinga perspective shift will really

(01:19:54):
help people When it comes downto the stress management, what
is it that's stressing me?
What control can I have or is it thatI have no control and I shouldn't
be stressing about this thing,the universal unfold as it should.
So,
you know, let me throw out an example.
Uh, we were talking about sleepearlier and the rumination of, or

(01:20:15):
maybe someone's laying in bed, theywanna go to sleep, they can't go to
sleep 'cause they're thinking so muchabout going to sleep, whatever the case
is, half an hour later they're stilllaying there staring at the ceiling.
Or if they've got an eye mask on, they've,they're just laying there thinking about
the same thoughts over and over again.
I wish I could go to sleep,uh, a thousand times.

(01:20:37):
And so, pattern interrupt the what,whatever your routine is being,
whatever your pattern has been uptill now, if it isn't working for
you, gotta do it a different way.
And so, as you said, the ideabeing what you ascribe to or what
you, what you believe to be right.

(01:20:57):
How the world works, how yourlife works, how this all works.
If you believe the, that's how it'sworks, but it isn't working for you, then
find a different way to make it work.
Mm-hmm.
And I would ask anyone right now tojust for the moment, put aside your
disbelief about what I'm gonna say.
I'm not suggesting that this is right orwrong, I'm just saying put aside your,

(01:21:21):
your disbeliefs and just hear me outand then maybe you can use it later.
Tonight or in your own life years fromnow, when you lay down in bed, there
is one way to think about things.
And, and, and it's this, the, if, if weall exist in a field of consciousness
that is in real time, so you can'tcontrol the past or the future.

(01:21:44):
We simply all exist.
Now, as you climb into bed, you lay downyou, you can't shape the future and you
can't shape the past that's gone by.
You only have the momentas you lay there in bed.
And if you kind of think of itabstractly as you, you have personal
agency, but you have no control ofthis moment, this moment that we're in,

(01:22:06):
it is simply the universe unfolding.
And if you accept that theuniverse is unfolding and you
can't control the way the universeunfolds, it's just gonna unfold.
It takes sort of the pressure off youof thinking that you can control this
game all around you, which you can't.
You are simply a participant in a gamethat you have certain personal agency in,

(01:22:30):
but you can't make the impossible happen.
What you can do is you cangive up to what's happening.
Mm-hmm.
You just simply have to accept that thingsare going to unfold the way they unfold.
So with that in place, as you lay therein bed, you know that you can't solve.

(01:22:51):
Tomorrow's problems as you lay there inbed that night, you've just gotta simply
accept that you need some sleep so thatyou can deal with the day tomorrow.
You can't deal with it now.
You'll be dealing with it tomorrow.
So give up tomorrow and simply be inthe moment that night and chillax,

(01:23:14):
because you can't control tomorrow.
Just let it unfold.
Let your sleep cycle initiate.
Don't keep asking yourself the samequestions or working on the same
problems that won't be solved that night.
They'll be solved tomorrow.
Don't worry about all the pastmistakes that you made throughout the

(01:23:35):
day or the day before they are gone.
Just simply accept thatyou're existing right now.
The universe is unfolding.
You're a witness tothe universe unfolding.
And just be okay with that.
Now you find a way to just drop intosleep and do better the following day.
That's your job.
Get some sleep, do better tomorrow.

(01:23:57):
I like that.
I, uh, had a, uh, so when I got married,people are writing in the registry a bunch
of well wishes and, uh, different ideas.
And one person, a number of people, putthe tried and true, never go to bed angry.
And one person wrote in.
Don't be afraid to go to bed angry.
Sometimes things lookbetter in the light of day.

(01:24:19):
And sort of like with your, uh,what problems are we gonna solve
right now in the dead of the night?
Maybe it's okay to, maybe we'lljust go to sleep right now.
Don't try and control this one.
It might look better tomorrow.
And you know, by the way, I'm going to,I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you.
Just like you throw the curve ballon, uh, the collective podcast from

(01:24:40):
time to time, you, you're a personwho likes to quote Viktor Frankl.
Yes.
And so, um, you know,that's all about context.
So as you climb into bed with your tinylittle problem of your car has some
sort, has a flat tire that needs to bechanged tomorrow, you know, now you don't
get any sleep because you know you'vegotta change the flat tire tomorrow in

(01:25:04):
context of how big of life's problemscan be in context of Viktor Frankl's
problems in a concentration camp, likeour problems to some degree are minor.
When we contextualize them against.
Really, truly big problems.
And so these things as we climb intobed can be exacerbated into, you

(01:25:29):
know, the car won't start, is nowthe new Mount Everest of the night.
And you're trying to climb MountEverest in your mind when really
all it is is just a flat tire.
Mm-hmm.
And so how we build things up in ourlives, or more correctly, how we crush
them down into non-important factors,that's kind of a secret sauce, as it were.

(01:25:56):
Well, what about, uh, nutrition?
We, uh, touched a little bit abouton it with, uh, not eating before
sleep, but, uh, nutrition for yourdaily life, for longevity for, um,
uh, operating at your, your optimal.
How do you approach that?
Well, I'll give it in the simple terms.
You know, when we're talking aboutmacros, really what we're talking

(01:26:18):
about is protein, fats, and carbs.
And so first point ofimportance is protein.
So I always try to hit my dailyprotein intake, fats and carbs.
I can screw those up, butI cannot screw up protein.
Mm-hmm.
Now, of course, I don't screw upfats and carbs because I've been

(01:26:41):
at this game a long time and Iunderstand how important they are.
But first, in order of priority,much like sleep within our
lives is super high priority.
Protein is super high priority.
Now, I'll talk about two things.
The amount of protein andthe timing of protein.
So the amount, generally speaking,I try to get two grams to 2.5 grams

(01:27:05):
of protein per lean body mass.
So as an example, I weigh, um, I'lldo it in pounds for anyone in pounds.
So I weigh 170 pounds.
Right now, my lean body mass isabout 160 pounds, so I'm stripping
out any additional fat, as it were.

(01:27:26):
And the reason I say lean body mass,it's important because if I had an extra
200 pounds of fat on me, that sort ofisn't, isn't really a great equation
to run your protein needs off of.
So lean body mass, now I'vegot 160 grams of protein.
I need one gram of proteinper pound of lean body mass.

(01:27:49):
If it's in kilos, then it's twoto 2.5 grams per lean body mass.
Now that's an amount of gramsof protein I need each day.
That can shift depending on howmuch output I have in a day.
So my bare minimum.
Is that if I go out and I do a reallydestructive workout that really tears

(01:28:12):
up my muscles or really creates alot of hurt locker on me, then I'm
gonna increase my protein for thatday for a couple of days, by the way.
But generally speaking, my baselineas suggested, I always hit it.
Now, timing with protein, I believeyou need to get about 30 grams

(01:28:33):
of protein per meal, per feeding.
And so let's say you only eatthree meals a day, now you're
at about 90 grams of protein.
Where does all thatother protein come from?
As an example, Sean needs about 160grams of protein, 150 grams depending,
so I'm short on protein, so I'll haveto supplement throughout the day, either

(01:28:55):
through protein powder or supplementthrough snacking that is protein driven.
And so there's many ways to do that.
I'm not gonna describe all the variousfoods or the combinations of beans
and rice and all of that good stuffthat's for you to, uh, take into
consideration based on how you've.

(01:29:15):
Normally eat and what your budget is,but I've found invariably that I have
to take on some form of protein powder.
Now, the protein part powder that I wouldtake on, I'm not gonna mention any brands,
but there's many ways to slice that down.
It could be whey protein isolate, it couldbe whey concentrate, it could be caffeine,

(01:29:37):
it could be vegan protein powder.
There's many forms of it, and it'squite a science to being specific
about which one works best when, butforget about all of that for right now.
Just understand that nearlyevery single person I talk to
doesn't get enough protein.
And I mean like line a hundred peopleup against a wall and maybe only one of

(01:30:01):
them is getting enough protein that day.
And if you're running aprotein deficient life.
It is negatively impactingyour entire lifestyle.
And so protein is critical.
Next fats, there's manyforms of healthy fats.
In the book that I'm gonna sendyou, it talks about how you can get

(01:30:22):
those from food sources such as likeavocados or olive oil or coconut
oil, or these various types ofthings, nuts, seeds, and et cetera.
But, uh, you can also supplementthat with things like Omega-3
fish oil or et cetera, et cetera.
So you can get it from natural sourcesor you can get it from supplementation.
Either way.

(01:30:42):
Fats are important, not just forhow your body works physiologically,
but for your freaking brain.
Uh, and again, that'sdiscussed in the book.
And then finally, the,the last piece is carbs.
Carbs are important of course, as a, as anathlete, as as a ultra endurance athlete.
Or someone who, who rides longperiod of time or anyone who

(01:31:04):
has any sort of long term.
You know, when you go out huntingTrav, uh, if you're out multi hours,
well that is a car preferential.
Uh, activity.
And so there's a number of reasons,biologically or physiologically,
why carbs are important inthese kind of, uh, endeavors.
But again, that'll be discussedin, in the little handout

(01:31:26):
that I'm gonna shoot your way.
Carbs are also important, um, to takeinto account your hormonal profile.
So, as an example, when I wascoaching athletes, uh, around
the world for my male athletes, Iwould have them do carb refeeds at
least once a week and buy refeed.

(01:31:46):
I mean, like really push their carb intakethat day in order to offset some of the,
excuse me, hormonal damage that may haveoccurred through all of the stressors.
But for my female athletes, I would askthem to do two refeeds per week simply
because of the specifics of the femalehormonal pattern, how important it is,

(01:32:08):
or how negatively impactful it can be.
If a female athlete who's pushingreally hard isn't getting enough carbs,
and so protein is, is non-negotiable.
You gotta, you gottahit your bare minimums.
Fats are something that you injectthroughout your day, and then carbs is

(01:32:28):
something that you use, like a lever ora modulator all the way up to a 10, all
the way back to a three on a scale of10, depending on how your day has gone,
what you are gonna do later that day.
And.
How to set yourself upfor the following day.
That may be like a bighunt or a big effort.

(01:32:50):
And so carbs are modulated depending onthe day's needs and the days upcoming.
I hope that makes
sense.
It does make sense.
So, uh, I've, I've heard people talkabout cutting carbs out altogether because
they're trying to lose weight or someketogenic diet, and I've also heard people

(01:33:10):
say that protein shakes and these mixesaren't really the best way to be able to
get protein into the body, like maybe Ithink amino acids, I, from my layman's
perspective, and I have done very little,uh, research on there, but do amino
acids somehow convert into a protein?
I, I've heard chatter about both of these.

(01:33:33):
Well, so, you know, I'll, I'll refer backto generally what I said at the start, and
that is I'm an n equals one experimenter.
And so, um, you know, when Istarted getting into ultra endurance
racing, like that was back in2007, my wife will attest to this.
She came in one day and she said theonly thing I was missing was a white lab

(01:33:54):
coat because I had a variety of differentpowders all over the kitchen counter.
And I was like on a scale, mixingthem into little capsules, my
own little specific boutique, uh,supplementations that I was creating.
And based on my own curious mindand my, um, my desire to better

(01:34:15):
understand context on my n equals one.
And so what I had done is I had purchaseda bunch of isolated amino acids where
I was, you know, of course your branchchain amino acids are critical, but
then some of the other essential,uh, aminos, I was taking amino acids,
isolating them, and combining twoor three aminos into a cap, and then

(01:34:39):
playing around with those to see if itwould improve my vision, imp improve my
hearing, improve my all kinds of things.
And so I played around withsupplementation and with food for so
long, the, I have dialed in Sean, butfor anyone who's listening to this right
now, you could do the exact same thing.

(01:35:02):
But what it does require is some curiosityand it requires some intentionality as to.
Your n equals one experimentation.
These things were, you're dabblingwith this and dabbling with that
and not really paying attention toits impact or its long-term sort
of pattern that's worthless to me.

(01:35:22):
These are little band-aids that you'respending money on and never learn anything
from the moment that you take on anything.
Like, if you start playing around with,uh, amino acids, they're expensive and
they should be treated like, um, oh, it'stime to start paying attention now and
developing the pattern on this stuff.
Hmm.
Stepping back from the specifics of that,I'd say that in my opinion, this is just a

(01:35:48):
general opinion for any general listener.
Unless they have really specific needsfor certain amino acids, I'd stay
away from that particular trajectory.
You're better served to buy a highquality, uh, whey protein isolate,
preferably something like a New Zealandwhey protein isolate because the New

(01:36:12):
Zealand, uh, cattle or milk is, doesn'treally have a lot of growth hormone
and it's, it's really clean grass.
It's really yada, yada yada.
So get yourself a high quality wheyprotein isolate that has a really
good amino acid profile on any jugof amino acid that you buy, or,
sorry, uh, protein that you buy.

(01:36:32):
You'll see an amino acidprofile on the label now.
Interesting side note, you can buyreally good, uh, protein, and then
that protein manufacturer can dowhat is called amino acid spiking.
So they will insert aminos into thejug in order to bump up the profile.

(01:36:56):
So it looks really appealingto the, um, the purchaser.
And so like anything, when you're outthere at a, if you're buying a car, you
should never just walk onto a car lot andsay, I'll take the first car that I see.
What you should do is be in a, in whateverstore, looking at the supplementation

(01:37:17):
with your smartphone and just checkingout is this generally suited to my needs?
And how I've done it in the past is, um,something that is certified for sports.
So as an a competitive athlete, Inever wanted any product in my body
that was spiked or was adulteratedwith some trace elements of

(01:37:41):
steroids or whatever the case is.
I wanted super clean food thatwas reliably certified so that
it wasn't negative to my body.
It didn't make me feellike I was cheating.
Mm-hmm.
So there are ways that you can do that.
There are brands, there are standards herein Canada and North America around the

(01:38:02):
world that meet a competitive athletes.
Needs to stay clean.
And if you are buying that kind ofa product, then generally speaking,
it's a high quality product.
It's where you start getting intorelabeled brands that may be coming
from other countries that aren'tquite as tight on, uh, standards that

(01:38:25):
you're ingesting things that quitefrankly you don't know anything about.
It's, uh, it's a good point you'rebringing on about, um, competitive
athletes needing to stay clean.
And there's a lot of,uh, negative chatter.
In the past I've seen about, um,testosterone replacement therapy

(01:38:46):
or testosterone supplementation.
Years ago I worked in a, uh, in agym and you could, you could see the
people who were abusing the, uh, thesteroids and the te testosterone.
But recently there's been a lotof, um, I've, I've noticed a shift
in the way that's approached.
And even in your response in thatInstagram post you mentioned as you're

(01:39:08):
getting older, you had blood workdone and there's some TRT at a very
mild dose that you're looking at.
That's interesting to me, just from themindset shift of so much negativity,
always growing up, testosterone's bad.
You never want it to, this new way ofthinking of, well, hold on a second May.

(01:39:29):
Maybe it's not as bad as we're saying, andmaybe there's a way to be able to use it
in an effective format so people can live.
A, well, a well-rounded, fulfilling life.
So this is a great subject that weshould probably just take a few minutes
to dive into a little bit based on myown personal experience, of course,
all of my research, uh, over the yearsand having dealt with athletes who are

(01:39:54):
sensitive to these kind of subjects.
So my stance on, um, steroids or anyartificial or an endogenous aid or
anything that is, um, I'll, I'll callit not natural, for lack of a better
term, um, I was never a fan of it.
Um, as a competitor, I always wantedto be standing on a start line, looking

(01:40:19):
to my left and right, and knowingthat everyone's competing cleanly or
more correctly, I will say competingon a level playing field, Hmm.
That's really important to me.
Fairness is a central tenant of my life.
Things have to be fair in order toevaluate myself against someone else.

(01:40:39):
And so if I step up on a start lineand I'm clean and I'm stepping next
to someone who isn't clean, as long asI feel like I'm, I'm doing it right.
Mm, it's now on them that they have todeal with their own nonsense rather than
me have to worry about their nonsense.

(01:41:00):
So, as a competitive athlete, likecompeting at world championship levels.
I always wanted to make surethat I didn't feel like I was
cheating, for lack of a better term.
Mm-hmm.
However, I'm not competing anymorein anything, uh, at a high level.
And so I switched to TRTwhen I was 59 and a half.

(01:41:23):
Now, interestingly enough,that number is important.
59 and a half, because right about thetime I was 56, 57, my family doctor
was telling me, Sean, you're your, yourtestosterone levels are concerningly low.
And I just looked at her and Isaid, Andrea, I wanna make it to 60.
I'd set this arbitrary numberin my head where I thought,

(01:41:45):
I'm just gonna make it to 60.
I'm gonna stay clean till I'm 60.
I just wanna earn it myself.
Mm-hmm.
I had this number that I'd putin my head many, many years ago,
and at 59 and a half, my familydoctor finally said, that's it.
You know, you gotta get on it.
And I said, okay.
And so the moment that I did, I justshook my silly head and thought, man,

(01:42:08):
I should have done this ages ago.
Not because all of a sudden I realizedthat, uh, I turned into like Captain
America or anything like that.
What I was doing was gaining accessto the amount of testosterone that I
need for my lifestyle that supports myneeds, the way I like to live my life.

(01:42:30):
And so my levels were super low.
I. The moment that I jumped on TRTI amnow on, I don't mind giving my values for
anyone who's listening right now as sortof context, I self-inject subcutaneously
twice a week and uh, I try to do one onTuesday and I try to do one on Saturday.

(01:42:53):
And so I self-inject 0.35 millilitersof testosterone recipient eight, so
0.35 ml, so a total of 0.7 ml per week,which if anyone knows anything about
anything, that's a really low dose.
Mm-hmm.
And so I wanted to use the variousvery lowest dose I could in order to

(01:43:20):
feel the way I wanna feel and performthe way I wanna perform and recover
the way I need to recover and sleepthe way I wanna sleep, and have the
libido that I want to have, havethe energy that I feel is important.
Certainly as a man, testosteroneis effectively fuel energy.
Mm. And so I wanted to haveall of the things that I wanted

(01:43:42):
that I had kind of forgotten.
That is normal.
Um, I wanted all of thatback, but I didn't want.
An extra milliliter of testosteronethat would make me feel like now
I'm taking advantage of the system.
Mm-hmm.
Now I'm into an area where I'mfocused on taking more testosterone

(01:44:06):
to have bigger muscles or et cetera.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I'm not interested inthe aesthetics of my body.
What I am interested in isthe performance of my body.
And it just so happens that my lifestyle,uh, as, as some, some dudes who track
me on ig, friends of mine, people whopay attention, they, they've said, dude,

(01:44:31):
you're looking like kind of jacked.
You've got some muscles.
You're doing that whole thing that'sgot nothing to do with testosterone.
That's got everything todo with every single day.
I'm freaking hammering on things.
And so mm-hmm.
What I do in this, in the shadows, in thebackground that is out of sight of the
internet, is fricking pushing the pace.
Like I am pushing my body hard andthe resulting outcome is I've got

(01:44:56):
muscles, but it's not because I'min front of the mirror flexing.
I'm not, I'm not lifting orI'm not functionally training
to be aesthetically pleasing.
My life is all about performancerather than aesthetics.
And so the muscles that show upare just a result of my lifestyle.
Um, not a result of allthe bicep curls that I do.

(01:45:19):
So when you started the, the TRT, howlong did it take to start noticing
positive results, uh, that week?
What really and what, what were thepositives and are there cons to it?
There
are, so the positives for mewere, bam, sleep was improved.
Uh, attitude.
My sense of, um, like my positivedrive, uh, positive outlook on life

(01:45:46):
was improved My sense of, um, beinga man, as crazy as that sounds Hmm.
Was improved.
My libido increased.
My wife is thankful for that.
And so just saying, I mean, it'sa, it would be wrong if I didn't
mention it because I mean, itis thing for sure, for sure.

(01:46:08):
Yeah.
And so, um, within the first week, rightaway I was like, oh, I had forgotten.
That's what Testone feels like.
'cause I had been somedically, chronically low.
I. For, for so long that I'd forgottenwhat like that little feels like.

(01:46:28):
Mm. Now when I do this, that could bemisconstrued as all of a sudden because
I'm taking a little bit of testosterone.
Now all of a sudden, I'm all agro.
I'm all voiding, raging out.
That is so not the case.
'cause again, the amountthat I'm taking is quite low.
It gives me enough drive thatmy, my testosterone supports my

(01:46:54):
lifestyle that I've had all my life.
That sort of sense of aggressivepurpose, that drive that will to win,
that will to create an outcome that,as you mentioned, Trav, that you know,
manifestation of the life that youwant while testosterone is actually a

(01:47:16):
manifestor of the life in front of you.
If I see something now that I wanna makehappen to some degree, and I mean a small
degree, like all things, the sleep, thefood, the this, the that, and the, the
TRT, all of these things are synergistic.
It's not just one thingmakes it all happen.

(01:47:36):
It is all things make it happen.
And TRT is just that extra littlenudge for me to target, lock
something and think, oh, that's done.
That's already done.
And that could be somethingin the future weeks from now.
But I, I know that when Itarget lock it, it's done.
So that had kind of started toslip a little bit as I entered

(01:47:59):
into my fifties, late fifties.
And it's not that I wasn't producingoutcomes, it's that I didn't have
that same target lock on things.
And so I'll even go so far as to saythat to some degree TRT reduced some
brain fog that I had going a littlebit of, um, lack of clarity as it were.

(01:48:24):
So it did many thingswithin that first week.
Now looking back at it, I guess I'vebeen on almost like two years now.
Over that period of time, I havebetter refined my understanding of it.
I, like I said, I've dialed in mydosing so that it's the absolute
minimum that I, I want to use.
Uh, I haven't explored anything more.

(01:48:46):
I, I never entered into TRT asan experi experiment to see how
much can I take per week versushow little can I take per week.
I always started with low and slowand as I low and slowed my way up,
I settled in at 0.7 ml per week.
And that works for me.
It works.
Hmm.

(01:49:07):
Physiologically, but perhapsmore importantly, Trav.
It works psychologically becauseI, I know that like my performance
is to some degree natural.
My T levels are just out of the lowrange now, and I feel like that's
what I deserve, and then my outcomesare a result of my performances.

(01:49:33):
Why do you, why do you think they're low?
Just an age thing.
Declined genetic.
You put used it all upwhen you were younger.
I used it all in my first career.
Uh, I think that, uh, there'smany things that, uh, impacted
my testosterone level for sure.
Age is a thing.
I mean, as, certainly as men,uh, as we get older, these

(01:49:55):
things start, uh, dissipating.
But without a doubt, I'vebeen super hard on my body.
I've been super hard on my life.
Um, and even in my casual timein my sports or in my hobbies,
not career wise, but just simplysports or hobbies, like I go hard.
I mean, I did 30, 24 hour solo mountainbike races at a world championship level

(01:50:18):
to, you know, I just, I had a hard hobby.
And that hard hobby is like, there's,there's collateral damage, there's
cellular damage, there is longlasting damage to all of these things.
I'm not just talking about freeradicals, I'm talking about like.
Just ironic injuries that you pick upalong the way that over a period of time

(01:50:42):
start impacting your hormonal profile.
And so there's many things in my lifethat have, uh, diminished testosterone,
not least of which was sleep, ofwhich I was getting terrible sleep.
So all of these things add up over time.
And as a man in my fifties, I just foundmyself at a point where I couldn't deny

(01:51:08):
the blood panels that I was gettingfrom my doctor, and I couldn't deny her
medical advice, and I couldn't deny theresearch that supported the decision
that I chose to engage in with TRT.
So on that note, for TRT, it's superimportant, I think, not just as an

(01:51:31):
athlete but as a human, that at leastonce a year you're doing a full blood
panel and preferably a, a full bloodpanel with a hormonal panel attached to
it so you can better understand your freetestosterone, your total testosterone,
your estrogen, your blah, blah, blah.
All of the things that areimportant for you as a human
being to be optimally set up.

(01:51:53):
You again, like the aura ring.
If you don't have an aura ring, nowyou're guessing as to what your sleep.
Quality and quantity was samewith when you wake up in the
morning and you're tired.
If someone says, if you take a blood paneland hormonal panel, you'll have metrics.
Why wouldn't you do that?
That's creating a baselineunderstanding of who you are today

(01:52:16):
versus who you were 37 years ago.
And so these things need to be testedand, and, and patronized throughout life.
So w with the TRT, once you're onit, you gotta stay on it because
your body stops producing its owntestosterone, from my understanding.
Similar.
So when I was late teens, early twenties,I started getting a receding hairline

(01:52:40):
and I'm like, oh no, this is terrible.
I would, I thought it was supposedto happen when I get really old.
And, and so I, I go to the doctor,I'm like, what can I do about this?
I'm like, well, we could put you on this.
I forget what it was.
There's some expensive medicationand, but they, you can also buy
this other medication, which isbasically the same thing, but
it's marketed for something else.
You can cut 'em up into fours.
And I said, okay.

(01:53:00):
Um, but how long do I have to take it for?
Well, for the rest of your life.
Okay, well what happensif I stop taking it?
Oh, well all the hair that you would'velost up to that point will just fall out.
I'm like, I'm not taking thisstuff for me, it didn't make sense.
I'm gonna lose my hair.
I gotta suck it up and figure it outnow, uh, while I was young and, um,

(01:53:20):
because I just knew I'm gonna findmyself in my later years in a situation
where I'm not gonna have this stuffand I'd have to deal with it then.
Is it similar with testosterone?
So you gotta keep taking it.
Uh, and if you stop taking it, is theregonna be like a massive, um, issue?
So, um, I, my understanding is, and thisis based on research, based on Tonga,

(01:53:44):
lots of people, my my belief is that onceyou're on it, that's it, you're on it.
Hmm.
Uh, certainly at my age anyway, over aperiod of time, the testosterone that
I'm injecting, um, basically derails,for lack of a better term, derails the
natural production within your body.
And, uh, effectively you're now relianton injecting testosterone, uh, every

(01:54:10):
week, which I accepted when I startedthe process, I, I thought about it and
I was like, okay, well, you know, Iguess I'm gonna be self-injecting for
the rest of my life until, you know,someone invents the nano robots that,
you know, get injected into my body,and then they take care of everything.
Mm-hmm.
But until then, I'mgonna be self-injecting.

(01:54:30):
Now it's a bummer.
Like, I don't likesticking needles in myself.
It's, it's no bueno.
But I'll say this, the, the, theoption is either do it or don't.
And if I don't, then myquality of life is diminished.
And so I want an optimal life,particularly for anyone who's listening

(01:54:53):
right now, once you're in your sixties.
You can see the horizon whenyou're in your thirties.
Yeah.
Don't see the horizon.
You don't see the, uh, light atthe end of the tunnel, as it were.
But in your sixties, you do, you,you've had enough time to look
backwards and, and gain wisdom.
The clarity of wisdom, but you alsorealize that you're now in a phase

(01:55:17):
of life where the end is approaching.
And so what, how, how much of a qualityof life do you want in that last phase?
Well, I want maximum quality.
I want to be always optimal.
I wanna be doing spinning backkicks on a tree log after hammering
on my bike for four hours.

(01:55:39):
That's what I want to do.
'cause that pleases Sean.
And that is kind of critical tothis conversation over decades.
I've put myself in a position whereI'm used to performing and I'm not
talking about performing little things.
I'm talking about performingbig things for me.
And so these big things don't just,they don't just appear magically.

(01:56:02):
They are things that I'vespent decades building up to.
Now that I'm in the position that Iam where I have certain expectations
of myself, but more importantly, Ilove the life that I've created and
I love doing the things that I do.
If, if someone says to me, allthat stuff you love doing, I. We're

(01:56:25):
gonna take that all away from youjust because you're freaking old.
Or you can take two shots per week.
Where's the shots?
I'll take it.
Yeah.
Because I'm too deep into lovinglife to not do something like that.
I mean, you're almost giving up theopportunity to live, not just the

(01:56:45):
life you love, but maybe even deeperlove for the life that you don't even
understand yet until you take some TRT.
So all that to say that thereis upside downside to TRT.
It should be something discussedwith your medical doctor.
It should be something thatyou do some self-research on.
Talk to some friends, and if you'relistening to me right now, understand

(01:57:07):
that it, it can be a significantgame changer if you fall within the
category of it's a good idea for you.
So
give
it some thought.
What about peptides?
I've heard people talk about them.
Are they?
Um mm-hmm.
I, I think in Canada, they're kind ofa gray sort of thing in the states.

(01:57:29):
They're, um, I, I think they're,uh, regulated and accepted.
Um, I, it's just come on my radarwhen I started researching all
of this stuff for the podcast.
Hmm.
So, um, you know, about seven-ishyears ago, I, I, I banged myself
up pretty good on the BJJ mats.

(01:57:49):
Uh, it was a, almost a chronic injury.
Uh, some muscle issues andwhatever, some tearing and, um, and
I wasn't sure how to address it.
And so I started looking atpeptides, which were kind of
a emerging trend at the time.
Uh, I learned about something called BPC1 57, and, uh, for anyone who is new to

(01:58:11):
peptides, BPC 1 57 is fairly well known.
There's a number of different peptidesout there that can, um, create a, a number
of different responses within the body.
So I'm not gonna say I did self-injectBPC 1 57 for a period of a couple of
months, because that may or may notbe appropriate, but I do understand

(01:58:32):
BPC 1 57 for a couple of months.
And what I will say is I foundthat it didn't provide the, um,
outcomes that I was hoping for.
Um, and in context of something like, youknow, TRT as the example, I found TRT to

(01:58:52):
be a way more efficacious or, or a muchmore, um, impactful modality or, or, uh.
Inject into my life.
So all of this kind of boils downinto the last one I have here,
which is routines and mindset, theglue that holds it all together.
Um, can you talk a little bitabout your routine and the mindset

(01:59:16):
that you have that's been employedthroughout your life for the
special forces for elite performingathlete to where you are right now?
Sure.
I, I think that it's important for meto, first of all establish the, my life
Before, when, when I was in high school,I was a skinny, underperforming kid.

(01:59:40):
I weighed 135 pounds.
Uh, before I joined the military,I didn't think I amounted much.
And, uh, throughout my military career,I, I learned that that was completely
untrue, that I could amount to anythingthat I wanted to amount to, because the
process that the military taught me, orwhat I learned in my military career was

(02:00:03):
it's for me to use the tools that I'vegot, this body, this mind, this spirit.
It's for me to use it inways that produce outcomes.
And so the militarytaught me how to do that.
And, and then once I left the militarytree, not as a skinny underperforming
kid anymore, I had certain expectationsof myself, we'll call them tier one

(02:00:25):
expectations, for lack of a better term.
I was introduced to the awareness.
That I am capable of nearly anything.
Now, that sounds a, like a boldclaim, and it sounds braggadocious,
and I would never have believedit when I was in my twenties.
But as I moved into my thirties, Istarted adopting that tier one mindset.

(02:00:48):
I came to the realization that if Iwant it to happen, it's freaking done.
It's just whether it'simportant enough to me.
If my why is strong enough, if,if for the following reasons, dot,
dot, dot, I have to save the planet,consider me saving the planet.
Hmm.
And so, um, I was taught how to do it.

(02:01:10):
I came to believe in howI'm capable of doing it.
And then from that point on, it wassimply a matter of me learning how to
do it through supporting structures,through better sleep, through better
nutrition, through better et cetera,things that we've talked about.
And so, to some degree, um, all ofthis stuff doesn't amount to anything.

(02:01:34):
NN none of the stuff that we've talkedabout amounts to anything unless
you start believing in yourself.
Unless you create a why withinyourself, a reason for existence, a
reason for listening to this podcast.
If you're at this point in the podcastwhere you're starting to think about
some of the things that we've beensaying, all of it is easily engageable.

(02:02:00):
Once you accept the idea that you're onthis planet for a purpose, you ain't just
here to exist, you're here for a reason.
And that reason is for youto start understanding.
And also, it's important thatthat understanding isn't fixed.
So what you think you're here forlistening to this podcast right now

(02:02:24):
is right now, but a year from now, youcan be a completely different person.
You can apply some of these thingsthat we've been talking about, and
you can be, again, comparative to now.
You could be twice the person thatyou are and that twice the person
that you are will have new goals, newideas, new reasons for your existence.

(02:02:48):
And so that has been myway over the decades.
It has been a daily refining processthat looks at life holistically or
synergistically as all of these variouselements that I can control are all
being controlled by me for a purpose.

(02:03:09):
And without a purpose, youdon't control anything.
You simply accept rather than control.
And so my why is strong, myunderstanding of the things
that I appreciate are strong.
Why I'm here is strong.
And so that makes me want I. To controlall of the variables, to optimize all

(02:03:33):
of the variables so that when I do this,it's freaking with velocity, it's with
intentionality, it's with intensity.
And if I was getting poor sleep or Iwas eating poorly, or I was thinking
poorly, or if I didn't understand what boxbreathing is, or if I didn't understand
what psychological or physiologicalsize are and all the little tips and

(02:03:55):
tricks and tools that I picked up alongthe years, if I didn't have a strong
why, none of those things would matter.
I'd simply just be existingin life and then I would die.
And that isn't enough for me.
And so to kind of conclude allof that commentary, I'd say
that, as I said earlier, my innerworld drives the external world.

(02:04:22):
And the more peaceful you can be in yourinner world, the more you can understand
your reason for being in this world.
The sooner that you can ize your outcomes,the the sooner you can like start shaping
the fabric of the world around you.
If you think that you're a prisonerof the world, you just haven't

(02:04:46):
learned how to be the be the jail.
Yeah.
The orchestrator, the, yes.
That's right.
I love it.
Sean, is there anything that we haven'ttalked about that we should talk about?
Yeah, there sure is, but I know thatwe've gone long on this because, you know,
because of my way, uh, I, I probably dovea little bit too deep into some things

(02:05:09):
and not deeply enough into other things.
And so there's quite a list of thingsthat I would love to talk about.
But I know this isprobably been a bit long.
So what I will say is, um, thissubject, longevity fitness in,
in your later phases of your lifeor how to be a better performing

(02:05:29):
human being overall holistically,is a massive subject that we have.
Covered some of it, but notall of it, that's for sure.
I think it's probably best if we don'tdive into all the other things that I
have in mind, and I'll simply rely onthe crutch, as it were, of hopefully

(02:05:50):
the book that I'll deliver to you.
Like, uh, at the momentthis podcast is done.
You'll have it in your hot littlehands, then you can choose what
to do with it, uh, within yourown, uh, sphere of influence.
That sounds amazing.
So there's gonna be links to thecollective in the description here.
They'll have links where peoplecan find you on social media.

(02:06:11):
If people listen to this,have questions, by all means,
throw it up into the comments.
And we still have one morething to record for the outpost.
Just a very short, kind of deeper, morepersonal, a bit more intimate that's
not shared with the general public andthe outpost is something that's there
for the Silver Court Club members.
Sean, thank you very much forbeing on the Silver Core Podcast.

(02:06:36):
I always appreciate hanging out with you.

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