Gary (00:00.13)
There's nothing more frustrating to a woman than waking up in the morning, having a cup of black coffee, staying fasted, going to an orange theory type club, going hammered down for forty-five or fifty-five minutes, doing this for five days a week for three months, and not losing a single pound.

to start with the midlife woman. She's training, she eats well. Over the last year or so she's been gaining weight, particularly around her middle. There's no question.

And first three things I would investigate would be, we would love it if menopause was a big meeting of all of the female hormones. And then they said, okay, guys, we've had a good run. We're all gonna go home now. But that's not what happens. It is not the level of hormones that matter. It is the ratio of hormones that matters.

In terms of longevity, what do you think is something we're doing that's really a bit overhyped right now?

I think the thought that more is better, and what should I supplement with? Should I be on Coke Utens, Shwaganda, Resferatrol, NAD, and NMN as I see TikTok videos and Instagram videos that tell me that this is the greatest supplement in the world. The secret to diet is not carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food. The secret to extended life from a dietary standpoint is the absence of processed food. But number one, eat whole foods. And secondly,

Angela (01:05.72)
Gary, thank you for coming on. I want to start with the midlife woman listening to this. She's training, she eats well, she takes supplements, she might have a morning coffee or two, and then over the last year or so she's been gaining weight, particularly around her middle, her sleep's getting disrupted, her nervous system is more activated, she feels anxious more often. Her doctor tells her her bloods are normal. What are the first three things you would investigate?

First of all, it's great to be here. I'm not I'm I'm really excited about this podcast. I'm married to a middle aged woman who is going through all of this right now. And so perimenopause, believe it or not, can begin as early as your late thirties. And a lot of women start to dissuade things like brain fog, weight gain, water retention, poor focus, poor concentration, lack of libido. Cardinal sign is difficulty waking in the morning.

And I don't mean difficulty waking in the morning. I mean just like crushing fatigue in the morning, waking up more tired than you went to bed. These are all hallmark signs that you're entering perimenopause. And exactly what you're referring to, I see all the time. There are three root causes, big, big reasons why that occurs, not the only reasons. These are your big three. The the worst endocrine disasters that I have ever had to fix were middle-aged female women that eat in too narrow of a feeding window.

And this gets overlooked very often because we treat men and women the same. So men and women should cold plunge in the same temperatures. They should intermittent fast the same way, and nothing could be further from the truth. When women have low blood sugars, the first thing I would investigate is blood sugar. I would look at your glucose, your fasting insulin, and something called your hemoglobin A1C, your three-month average of your blood sugar. And what you'll find is that if the average of your blood sugar is very low, your hemoglobin A1C is 5.2 or less, you are not.

candidate for intermittent fasting. what happens if you restrict your feeding window is that caloric deficit will be perceived by the pituitary as starvation. And it will begin to throttle back your metabolism. So it will lower what's called thyroid stimulating hormone and it will drop your metabolic rate. The second thing that will happen is your estrogen will begin to rise. And this is called estrogen dominance. And this is the second culprit here is that estrogen

Gary (03:25.098)
Is important as a ratio to other hormones. So I want to emphasize that again. In women, especially middle-aged women, it is not the level of hormones that matters. It is the ratio of hormones that matters. And so perimenopause occurs when hormones are still in the proper range, but you see, progesterone is at the bottom of the range.

Estrogen is at the top of the range. Testosterone is usually floored out in these women, both testosterone and free testosterone, but pregnant alone may be high. And so the quick fix for this is number one, if you have low blood sugar, your hemoglobin A1C is low, widen your feeding window. there's nothing more frustrating to a woman than waking up in the morning, having a cup of black coffee, staying fasted, going to like an orange theory type club, going hammered down for 45 or 55 minutes.

And then doing this for five days a week, three for three months, and not losing a single pound. And in fact, beginning to hold water right below the belly button, moving laterally around to the flanks and then back behind the kidneys. So if you put your hands in the back of your gene pockets and lift them up and your palms cover one of your problem areas, very likely this is water retention from estrogen dominance. So number one is widen your feeding window. And number two is I would do something called a Dutch test. A Dutch test.

Is different than a standard hormone test. A Dutch test is a 24-hour urine test. I would consider it the gold standard of female hormone therapy. And what this will do is it will show your practitioner the ratio of hormones. And what you will notice on this test is that estrogen is beginning beginning to exert a dominant role. And the primary role of estrogen is water retention. And it has a whole

series of of roles and and different estrogens, E1, E2, and E3 play different roles. I can go into that. But the primary role of estrogen is to retain water in what's called the interstitial space. If you look at what happens to a woman when she gets pregnant, estrogen is perfectly normal in the teens. It's perfectly normal in the 400s, depending on where you're you are in your menstrual cycle. Once a a woman gets pregnant, estrogen goes into the 4000s. So it goes from a high of in the low 400s

Gary (05:43.598)
To about 4,4500. And why is that? A large part of that reason is to pad the uterus and retain water to protect the fetus. And so we don't want that when we're not pregnant, obviously. And so estrogen dominance is a culprit. The third culprit, and rarely, if ever talked about, is estrogen clearance. You can be estrogen dominant because you have too much estrogen. You are overproducing the hormone estrogen.

Or you can be estrogen dominant because you are under eliminating estrogen. And this is an often overlooked issue with women is the elimination of estrogen. That is governed by a gene called C O T, COMP T. In fact, talking about middle-aged women, there is my middle-aged wife right there trying to stay out of the camera while she plugs my

I'm also a middle aged woman right in the middle of this, in the thick of it, so

She was crawling around the floor to plug my computer in and she snuck her hand on my hand. So if you see a middle-aged woman crawling around on the floor, reach reach out and help her. but d Sage is amazing. We've been very vocal, very authentic and transparent about her journey through menopause and all of the challenges that you could imagine, including frozen shoulder.

Yeah. Right. You should come out and join us.

Gary (07:15.48)
lack of libido, brain fog, mood destabilization, you know, all of this happened to Sage at one time. And we fixed it all in a three-week period following the Dutch test. That's why I really believe that, you know, women that can't find the answers in a blood test, blood tests can be very misleading because they're simply a snapshot in time. You know, should really investigate this this Dutch test. And you can get it in in the UK. Very easy to do. It's a 24-hour urine test. And it just gives you so much more information than a standard blood test. We talked about

Eating in too narrow of feeding window. We talked about estrogen dominance, you know, coming from the perimenopausal range. And let's talk about estrogen clearance for a moment. So estrogen is cleared. That governance of estrogen clearance is governed by a gene called COMT, catecholomethyltransferase. Women that have this gene mutation are especially vulnerable to high estrogen, secondary to pore elimination.

So you can have too much trash because you're creating too much trash, or you can have too much trash building up because you're not taking the trash out. Right. So this is a take the trash out problem. And this is generally very easy to fix. These women are usually deficient in the complex of B vitamins. so a really good B complex is essential. Pyridoxine, riboflavin, thiamine, niacin, panathenic acid, good B complex. A specific form of B12.

called hydroxycobalamin. This is a very specific form of B12 that is germane to people with that genetic mutation. And for women who feel like their mood is also a little off, I really recommend they investigate SAM E first thing in the morning, acidosylmethionine. So when the body doesn't have the resources to eliminate estrogen, it piles up.

And this gene mutation is much more common than you think. About 42% of women have the gene mutation Comp T. The Comp T gene mutation is actually measured on the Dutch test. And most practitioners are not trained to treat that portion of estrogen elimination. So these are easily fixable. You're not going crazy. You're not gaining weight. You're not getting fat. You're getting water retentive, especially if you're doing all the other things, right?

Angela (09:30.094)
So I want to run over this, right? So someone has an HPA1C of less than 5.2 and they're doing extended fasting, that would kind of contribute to this. Then if their est if their estrogen is too high in relation to progesterone, so they've got estrogen dominance, or they're not clearing it properly. What have you found in relation to the first point when you're talking there about fasting, about carbohydrates as well being important in terms of supporting?

women's adrenals and nervous system. Have you found that to help?

There's no question. you know, carbohydrates, first of all, carbohydrates are not essential for life, right? I mean, they're you have nine essential amino acids. These are essential, means they're essential for life. We cannot manufacture them in our bodies. We have to get them from diet or supplementation. There are two essential fatty acids. These are critical and often overlooked. They are EPA and DHA fatt fatty acids. A good omega-3 fatty acid is essential for women, especially perimenopausal women. You'll find that they're

HDL cholesterol has a tendency to go down. And some of their other cholesterol numbers, like VLDL cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, tend to rise. So a really good omega-3 fatty acid is critical at this stage, too. But when you when you have this narrow feeding window and you spend most of your day hypoglycemic, and I'll give you the exact characteristics of what this is like. So most of these women have this exact profile. they go to sleep tired.

And they wake up in the morning, they have a very difficult time getting the motor going. They usually go straight from the bed to the bathroom, go from the bathroom straight to the coffee maker in an effort to kind of get the motor going. And what happens is because your blood sugar is so low, the last thing you feel like doing is eating. They actually sometimes the thought of having a big protein shake or eating, you know, a three egg omelette is d it makes them gag because their blood sugar is so low. And it's important to understand that when blood sugar is falling.

Gary (11:28.748)
You get very hungry. Once blood sugar has fallen, you are no longer hungry. So even though you are in the lowest glycemic state, lowest blood sugar state, your hunger satiation is shut off. These are the women that are really important for them to get protein first thing in the morning. And there's there's a supplement called perfect amino, which is all nine of the essential amino acids. It's equivalent to 29 grams of whey protein, and it does not even break a fast.

You can take it in a tablet or a liquid form. Really helps these women that don't like to eat first thing in the morning. They're not reaching their protein equivalent because they don't want to go over their macros. And this is an easy way to get the equivalent of 29 grams of whey protein first thing in the morning. And it won't solicit that gag reflex from thinking that you have to have a steak and omelet to get the equivalent amount of protein down.

I love that. It's good for women like me who like to get up and train early at sort of five thirty is to have some essential aminos on board and then refuel once I get home.

Yeah, a good mineral salt, like a Baja gold mineral salt, put a hydrogen water tablet in there and off to the gym you go and you have not even broken a fast. You've decreased your inflammation, you've given your body all nine of the essential amino acids that you desperately need to protect muscle tissue. Because if you stay in that prolonged fasted state for too long, the body will create energy from muscle tissue, not from fat. We'd love to think that anytime that we are deprived of energy, that the first resource the body would use would be fat, but that's actually not true.

You know, fatty acid metabolism is not the body's first choice. Fat has his, you know, ancestrally is something that's meant to protect us. It's something that's meant to allow us for survival during periods of not eating for prolonged periods of time. It's very easy for us to metabolize lean muscle. And so I I I see this all the time in the tendency tends to be more towards younger menstruating women, but they'll come to me and say, Gary, I don't get it. I wake up in the morning, I have a cup of black coffee.

Gary (13:29.132)
I go to this orange theory class. I go hammered down for 55 minutes. I've been doing that five days a week for three months. I haven't lost a single pound. Like, what's going on? I'm not even eating. And I go, well, you're not eating, but your body is. It's just eating you. And so what happens is if you get into a caloric deficit, your body needs energy. It can mobilize and metabolize lean muscle tissue to put the amino acids back into the blood that it needs to function. And so by getting the essential amino acids, you're protecting that.

mm muscle, which is what we're after. And then in a state of low intensity exercise, you'll metabolize the fat.

Very interesting. That really dovetails actually with an interview I did recently with Doctor Abby Smith Wine, where she was looking at imaging that you can't see on a DEXA, looking at the quality of muscle. And she was describing just how important it is for women in midlife to have protein around the workouts to actually support muscle quality. Yeah, exactly.

I would wholly agree.

When you're talking about the water retention, because this is a big thing that my audience talk about a lot in terms of the bloating from this estrogen dominance, you were describing. So it goes on around the abdominal area and around the back. Once you've got the estrogen balance right and you're detoxifying effectively, do you see that water tend to release and go?

Gary (14:46.434)
no question. 10 to 21 days, it's all gone. Because again, you're not fat. You're water retentive. And they even call this the estrogen band. It's it's right below the belly button. You'll see women that are, you know, very fit and they're they're they're doing all the right things, they're going to the gym, they're eating right, they're getting regular sleep, and they'll they'll have a a a very fit-defined midsection, but right below the belly button, you know, it sort of balloons out right there, moving laterally around to the flanks and then back behind the kidneys. That

band right there is called the estrogen band for a reason, because that's where water tends to be with withheld and bound in what's called the interstitial space, which is the space between our cells. So estrogen, like like I said, that, you know, one of the primary roles of estrogen, amongst other things, skin elasticity, what have you, is to retain water in that interstitial space. And estrogen is very good at doing that.

Because this is commonly confused then. I think women often feel that when they're advised to have creatine, they feel like the creatine is causing the bloating. When in reality, in perimenopause, right, estrogen's going on such a wild ride that there are going to be periods of dominance and then it's falling and then it's coming up again, which is why you can have this sort of varied bloating from one day to the next. You were talking about elimin proper elimination in the morning and why how we should eliminate within the first forty five minutes. And if we don't, we're deficient in some

Minerals including zinc. Could you go into that please? Yeah.

So one of the most overlooked things in all of bariatric medicine, so gut medicine, is not the gut microbiome and it's not food sensitivity, it's not food allergies. It is the pace of the gut. So think about your intestinal tract as a 30-foot-long conveyor belt. This the small and the large intestine is about 30 feet long if you unwound it all. We drop contents on it at one end when they exit the stomach. 30 feet later, they exit the rectum. So imagine this is operating like a conveyor belt.

Gary (16:36.916)
If you were to go into any factory in the world that works on a conveyor belt system, and you were to just double the speed of the conveyor belt, the entire factory would break down. There's nothing wrong with the conveyor belt. There's nothing wrong with the product on the conveyor belt. All you did was change the speed. If you paused it, same issue. If you reversed it, same issue. If you paused it and started it again, same issue. The intestinal tract works the same way. So you'll pee see people that suffer from gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation.

irritability, cramping. And they've done every food allergy and food sensitivity test known to man. They've done every gut microbiome test. They're taking the probiotics and they can't seem to figure out why they have these intermittent gut symptoms. It's because of the pace of the gut. And this is the most overlooked thing in my opinion in all of bariatric medicine. Because we do these mediator release tests and we do these food allergies and we do these food sensitivity tests. And we always try to link our gut symptoms

Back to what we last ate, because that's the only reference point we have. And it gets very confusing because some of these women will eat the same thing on Monday, they're fine. And they eat the exact same thing on Wednesday and they blow up like a tick. Right there, that tells you that's not an allergy. Allergies are not transient. Allergies are consistent. So you're not allergic to milk on Monday morning, unallergic on Wednesday afternoon, and re-allergic on Saturday morning. If you are allergic to lactose,

Every time you have lactose, you will have a reaction. If you're allergic to bee stings, you can't sometimes get stung by a bee. So this wipes out the food allergy and food sensitivity argument. And next comes the gut microbiome. Usually these women that are eating a healthy diet are taking a probiotic, their gut microbiome is fine. It's the pace of the gut. The pace of the gut is governed highly by a genetic mutation called MTHFR. Now, MTHFR.

Is the most prevalent gene mutation in the world. And when you have this gene mutation, especially if you are what's called homozygous, if you have a copy from both parents, which 46% of the population has, number one, you cannot process folic acid. And number two, you have intermittent gut issues, and you very likely suffer from anxiety. I have never once in my entire career met a single person that suffers from rampant anxiety that.

Gary (19:01.282)
did not also have gut issues. They go hand in hand because the same deficiency that leads to anxiety is the same deficiency that impairs the motility of the gut. So you will not talk to a single guest of yours, female guest of yours, that reports suffering from chronic anxiety, especially crippling anxiety, that does not also have gut issues. This is not dietary or food sensitivity or food allergy related. This is related to the pace of the gut. And that deficiency is in a

In a nutrient called methylfolate. Very easy to get, very inexpensive, over-the-counter. You can get it in a methylated multivitamin. I have a line of vitamins in the UK called Ultimate Wellness that has this form of methylfolate, but tons of supplement manufacturers make good methylated multivitamins. It's critical for these women that they take these methylated multivitamins because what you'll find is their anxiety and their gut issues go hand in hand. And then they have three other

highly prevalent symptoms. If you ask them how they sleep, what they'll tell you is when they lay down to go to sleep at night, as their environment quiets, their mind wakes up. And they're body tired, but their mind awake. So they lay in bed and they ruminate. And they ruminate on the most innocuous things. Did I get everything on my grocery list? Did my belt match my shoes? You know, did I return that Instagram post or that email? Like nothing that couldn't wait until the next morning, right? They're not solving critical life issues. And this robs them

Of critical hours of deep sleep, right? And then the deep sleep, which is where we eliminate waste from the brain through something called the lymphatic system. And then the deep sleep allows these inflammatory proteins to build up in the brain. So they wake up sluggish in the mornings and they have noticeable brain fog. And the brain fog doesn't clear until midday, and then they get most of their energy later in the evening. So if that's the profile of one of your guests that's listening, this is very easily solved in most cases.

by taking a methylated multiple.

Angela (21:01.388)
And this the B vitamins are also supporting the COMP gene that you mentioned earlier in relation to the estrogen detoxification.

No question. They're resp they're responsible for helping to eliminate estrogen, send estrogen down what's called the E2 pathway, which is one of the elimination pathways. And and as estrogen begins to fluctuate in perimenopause, you know, we would love it if menopause was a big meeting in a conference room of all of the female hormones, and they all sat down and they said, Okay, guys, we've had a good run. We're all gonna go go home now.

But that's not what happens. They meet and progesterone says, no, I'm gonna stick around and cycle normally. And estrogen says, I'm leaving the the building. Pregnenolone decides that it no longer wants to participate and and it starts to fall. DHEA drops, testosterone and pr free testosterone drop, cortisol rises. So it's not as though all of these hormones meet, and menopause is this thing where all of the hormones agree to do the same thing. Perimenopause is defined.

By these fluctuations in hormones. Some of the hormones are still in the normal menstrual cycle, and some are returning to a lower baseline. And is that it's that disparity in ratios that causes the symptoms? And the sad thing is that most of these symptoms are symptoms that women can live with. So they're not things that drive you to the ER or get you out of bed and take you to the urgent care. They're they're symptoms that they can live with. So they just push through them.

They just think they're losing their libido because of age. Maybe they're not attracted to their spouse, which is not true. Or they think that brain fog is a normal part of having a job or having kids or, you know, having a career or just having so much on their mind. Or they think that weight gain or water retention is just something that goes along with their their biological or their chronological age. And none of that is true. All of those are are solvable if you get the right data.

Angela (22:57.036)
Very interesting. So what I'm hearing from you is that for the woman who is experiencing weight gain, bloating, and we need to separate how much of that is abdominal fat versus this bloating from estrogen dominance, anxiety and poor sleep, actually looking at these two genes, the comp gene and MTHFR, can give her a lot of information. And the Dutch test can show how it's being expressed. And as you were saying, a lot of people focus upstream of that and they look at the pathways to see is it coming down.

the two pathway and solve for that, but they don't look at the compt, which is actually kind of the catch at the bottom, right? Because even if it's causing some DNA damage, the if you're properly methylating, it's gonna help resolve some of that.

That is exactly right. Here's the fascinating thing about human beings, men and women, is that rarely do multiple systems fail at the same time. Usually what happens is one thing goes wrong that causes everything. Something as simple as a single nutrient deficiency has a whole consequence, sequence of consequences. If I was only to track one biomarker, it would be your blood sugar, your glycemic profile. Because insulin resistance is the first domino to fall.

In such a series of consequential reactions, right? I mean, we we we're we we now call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes, insulin resistance in the brain, a seven to ninefold increase of getting Alzheimer's if you are type 2 diabetic, for example. So, how's blood sugar related to neurocognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer's, and all forms of neurocognitive decline? Because insulin resistance in the brain. The same is true with these genetic mutations.

When you have these gene mutations, it doesn't mean you're going to have these symptoms. It means you have a higher propensity to have these symptoms. And very often, supplementing for the deficiency, not the sake of supplementing, is the answer. So there is a genetic test. I offer this test in the UK. There are other places that offer it in the UK, called a genetic methylation test. If you go to health, h-e-a-l-f dot com, you can take one of these tests and

Gary (25:03.116)
It's a test you do once in your lifetime. It's a cheek swab. You put a cheek swab, they they send it to you in the mail, you swab your cheek, you drop it in an envelope, you send it back to the lab, the results come back to you electronically, and it will tell you exactly what your body can process and what it can't. And then you supplement for that deficiency. You see, the vast majority of people are supplementing for the sake of supplementing. They are not supplementing for deficiency. And this is why they haven't seen the magic happen yet.

You know what, you we we believe this in plant physiology, right? If you had a a leaf rotting in a palm tree and you called a true arborist, like a true botanist out to look at that leaf, they wouldn't even touch the leaf. They would cortez the soil and they would say, you know what, Angela, there's no nitrogen in this soil. And they would add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would heal. Human beings are no different. When you have certain nutrient deficiencies in the human body.

You get the expression of disease. And so it's not the disease, it's the deficiency. And so when you really want to see magic happen in human beings, and especially in women, you give their body the raw material it needs to do its job. And that raw material is generally certain methylated nutrients, things like vitamin D3 with K2, minerals. So many women are critically mineral deficient.

Which is why you see skyrocketing rates of osteopenia, osteoporosis. This, by the way, has nothing to do with calcium deficiency. You can go to assisted care living facilities all over the world. You will find elderly men and women all throughout these facilities that have osteopenia and osteoporosis that have been on calcium supplements for 15, 20 years. Our bones are actually not calcium, contrary to popular belief. Our bones are calcium combined with something called phosphorus. These form something called hydroxyapatite.

So your bones are hydroxyapatite. And in order for phosphorus and calcium to form hydroxyapatite, you need 12 minerals. And if you're deficient in any one of these 12 minerals, iron, manganese, molybdenum, silica, saline, magnesium, zinc, boron, if you're deficient in any one of these 12 minerals, the bones don't ossify. And then they put you on calcium supplements, which doesn't help. What you need is to apply a load, strength training, and to be properly mineralized.

Gary (27:26.188)
And your bones will harden right away. And so very often, what we think is pathology and disease is mineral or nutrient deficiencies masquerading in plain sight.

What would you have women think about then in terms of supplements? What would be the three to five things that women should think about in terms of supporting their energy, lowering their anxiety, and getting their energy back?

So if it's energy, anxiety, sleep, ruminating thoughts, weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor focus or poor concentration, they should do once in their lifetime, they should do a genetic methylation test. You take this test, and what it does, it's very specific to you. It's only looking at 13 genes, right? Because there's no sense in looking at genes that are not actionable. It's great data, but it doesn't help with your emission profile. and what you will find

Is that women that suffer consistently from anxiety also suffer from gut issues. They generally suffer from ruminating thoughts at night. And as a consequence of that, those ruminating thoughts will be worst-case scenario thoughts. When they consider scenarios at night, they will take those scenarios to the worst case. Right? There's a knock on the door, must be a murderer. It's taking each scenario to its to its worst case. And why is that? You know, and and the truth is it.

You know, rarely, if ever, do do I hear the explanation for what these things are. So, for example, if you suffer from anxiety, what is anxiety? If you ask a dozen functional health practitioners and a dozen therapists, and a dozen patients, what is anxiety? The vast majority of them will describe the characteristics of anxiety. They will tell you anxiety is a rapid heart rate.

Gary (29:11.84)
It's a sensation of anxiousness. It's the feeling of impending doom. It's the sensation of the presence of a fear without the presence of a fear. All of that is true, but all of those are the characteristics of anxiety. Very specifically, what is it? So anxiety, and if your listeners have it, they may want to write this down, is very specifically this. Anxiety is a rise in four neurotransmitters. They are called catecholamines.

Patecholamines are fight or flight neurotransmitters. There are four of them: norepinephrine, epinephrine, ephedrone, dopamine. You don't necessarily need to know that, but when those four neurotransmitters arise, you will feel the sensation of fear. So I always use the example that if you walked out of your house and as soon as you opened the door, somebody was standing in front of you with a knife. Okay, very real threat. Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood.

Your hearing would get more acute, you would begin to have a fight or flight response in response to the presence of a fear, right? Very normal response. So what caused that? You didn't eat anything, you didn't drink anything. How did your pupils dilate? How did your heart rate increase? Why did you begin to sweat? How did your extremities flood with blood? Catecholamines got dumped into the bloodstream in the brain. So we know that if catecholamines get dumped into the bloodstream and especially into the brain,

You're going to begin to have a fight or flight response. So let's say that you're laying in your house at night, in your bed, and you start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. You could reason to yourself that a shark getting out of the ocean and biting you in your bedroom are pretty much zero, but you could have the exact same response. The same response to the presence of a real fear as to an entirely imagined fear. And why is that? Because

This neurophysiologically, they're the same thing. So what this defines is that if catecholamines rise, you feel fear. So if you have a COMT gene mutation that does not allow you to metabolize these catecholamines and you walk around in an elevated catecholamine state, we call this anxiousness and anxiety. So we call high catecholamines anxiety. We should just call it.

Gary (31:36.982)
Elevated catecholamines, because then we would treat it like the condition that it is. Modern medicine will say, well, if catecholamines are rising, let's give medication to blunt your response to them. That's desolopium nitrate, diazepam, you know, lunesta, Xanex, you know, Valium. These are things that they don't stop the catecholamines from rising. They stop you from responding to that catecholamine rise. But

If the issue is rising catecholamines, the solution should be to lower these catecholamines. And how do you do that? You supplement specifically for the deficiency in your genetic profile. Once you do that and you start to normally metabolize catecholamines, a lifetime sufferer from anxiety can permanently put this in their rearview mirror. And they will notice that at the same time that their incidence of anxiety begins to take a back seat, their gut issues.

seemingly appear to resolve. They haven't changed their diet, they haven't changed their probiotic, they haven't changed their food intake, their sensitivities, their allergies, but their gut goes back to normal the same time that their anxiety resolves, because these are all related to the same

Issue. It's the same gene I think I read some years ago that was studied in relation to the military and they were looking at like how much that gets dialed up. And if you had one variant of each, then like as a general or something in the army, you would actually have really good focus, but your adrenaline would be dialed up enough that you can kind of go out and fight and be really switched on. But if it was too much, you were a warrior, right? And it's it's that same gene, isn't it?

And then the Comte gene has two definitions. It's called Warriors, worry all the time. And warriors. Warriors don't worry. I I I'll trip it over my words here,

Angela (33:23.85)
It's the warrior with an A versus the one with an O. Yeah. I was the one with an A, which is why my husband tells me I don't care about almost missing the play. It just doesn't dial up enough.

This is Yeah, we don't feel fear. Right? We exactly it takes a very high rise of catecholamines to impact us. Whereas someone who is a worrier will start to feel fear the night before a flight. They're not even late for the flight. They won't sleep in anticipation of missing the flight. That's a worrier. That is someone who is comp T positive. Someone who's comp T negative will sleep like a bear that night.

Wake up late, rush to the airport, barely make the flight, and they're calm as a cucumber. And this is in your genes. This is why you s you hear things like, you worry just like your mother does. You have a temper like your father had. Temper doesn't run in families. There's no gene for temper. There's no gene for worry, but there is a gene for catecholamines. The rise and fall of catecholamines determines our personality characteristics, which is why you'll often hear you worry like your mother did. You have a temper like your father had.

And very often, and you know, we've been lied to about what runs in families. Because something is familial, meaning it runs in your family, does not mean it's genetic. So if you went to your doctor tomorrow and your blood pressure was high and they did a full cardiac workup, EKG, EEG, heart sounds, lung sounds, dye contrast study, cardiac cathy, did all of these, this entire cardiothoracic workup. Everything's normal, but your blood pressure is still high.

You know what they're gonna do? They're gonna look at your family history and they're gonna say, look at that. Your father and your mom's brother had high blood pressure. You have familial hypertension. You have genetically inherited hypertension. But nobody takes that just one step further and says, Okay, if I inherited this from my ancestor, what gene did I inherit that caused this condition to exist? That's when their face would go blank because that gene.

Gary (35:29.922)
very often does not exist, which means that condition does not exist. We have accepted so many of these fallacies in modern medicine that because it runs in families, it's genetic. That's not true. What runs in families very often is the deficiency, not the disease. Because if I can get you to believe that you have a genetically inherited disease, I can easily get you to subscribe to a lifetime of medication. And this is true with hypothyroid, depression and anxiety,

Drug and alcohol addiction, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, these things runs in run in families. They are not genetic.

Such a simple thing to fix, but it's never tested. I want to ask you about something that went pretty viral that you do. The 3030-30 protocol. What is it? And can women benefit from it?

Very true.

Gary (36:18.488)
There's no question women can benefit from this. So 303030 protocol was coined by an author named Tim Ferris. I have to give him credit. He wrote a book called The Four Hour Body, one of the early OGs of biohacking. He thanks me all the time for putting his book back on the New York Times bestseller list, but it deserves to be there. And 303030 is 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, followed by 30 minutes of steady state cardiovascular exercise. So if you want to strip fat from the body.

That is an excellent formula to do that. So what this means is within 30 minutes of waking, you get 30 grams of protein. And I just explained how you can get 30 grams of protein without the equivalent of 30 grams of protein without even breaking a fast. So those women that are listening to this that are like, hey, I'm not eating a half a dozen eggs first thing in the morning. And I'm certainly not waking up and drinking down, you know, a half a liter of protein shake because I it would make me gag. Just take the perfect amino hydrogen tablet.

sea salt like a Baja gold mineral salt, and then go to the gym. And when you get to the gym, you do 30 minutes of steady state cardio. This is hard cardio for people to do because it's not the high intensity cardio where you really feel like you're working. This is low heart rate cardio, 125, 130, maybe 135 beats per minute for your heart. For me, this is walking at a pace of three and a half on a treadmill at a 5% incline.

I can hold a conversation. I could read a tablet. I could watch a podcast. So you you could you could, you know, like I said, you could hold a conversation. It's not the kind of cart cardio that makes you pant and then start your exercise. Nothing will strip fat off your body faster than doing that.

So you're gonna do that before you lift weights? You li you do it before you lift weights, the cardio, the moderate cardio first?

Gary (38:07.158)
You do it before you lift weights or you do it a minimum of three days a week if you want to do it on alternate days that you strength train.

I have to really this is the one that I have to really discipline myself. I've probably because I'm always looking for those like dopamine and adrenaline hits. But I have to really discipline myself to do this. And I do it the same as you. One one way I've found actually that helps me get it my heart rate high enough is I'll put a an incline of around, I don't think we have percentages of around twelve, and then I'll put it on it might be the equivalent of of three miles an hour. It's around five K, five kilometers an hour.

And then I do one minute on and one minute off with kettlebells because they fit neatly in the like holes of the handles. So I put those on and then that elevates my heart rate and then it will sort of stay vaguely high enough for then the next bit. Do you know what I mean? And it makes it more interesting because every minute I've got to do something new. I'm either putting it on or taking it back. It also makes

The time pass faster. You can also, there's an incredible women's weighted vest called an ion vest, A-I-O-N. And this is a weighted vest made for women that looks like a sports bra. It's actually very fashionable. My wife wears it all the time. And you put this ion vest on and it adds between four and seven pounds, which doesn't sound like a big deal, until you walk 30 minutes with an additional seven pounds. And this not only builds muscle while you're doing that and increases your resistance, it

raises your metabolic rate and you you get more benefit out of the same exercise period. and it's very safe because the weight is snug to the body. So it's not just hanging on your shoulders like most rucksacks. So it doesn't give you the low back strain that a lot of these do or the cervical strain that a lot of these do. And you zip that vest on, get on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and it will strip fat off of your body.

Angela (39:51.222)
I am going to try that. Thank you, Gary. Creatine. It's being talked about now, not just in relation to supporting recovery and muscle health and power-based training, but also the conversation's moving towards bone and brain. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. What are your thoughts on creatine and how much should we be taking a day?

Huge fan of creatine. I take a form of creatine called there's creatine monohydrate, there's creatine HCl. Probably more studies on monohydrate than HCl, but creatine hydrochloride, if you mix it with something called biopurine or with a black pepper extract, it's 40% more water soluble than monohydrate. And

The issue with a lot of women is the bloating from creatine. If you notice, if you put creatine into a bottle of water very often, you see the clumps down in the bottom. So there are creatine stick packs you can dump into water that completely dissolve into water before you consume them. Those are the creatines that do very, very well in the gut. They don't bind water in the gut, so they they don't cause the bloating. So a good creatine HCl, with a black pepper extract. There are some monohydrate versions that also don't cause bloating. Symbiotica makes a great one. Tastes amazing and and

Women don't bloat on. But I would insist that any woman over 40 years old is on a minimum of five milligrams of creatine daily. If you are sleep deprived, you can use creatine to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation, which is the lit lack of lymphatic drainage that comes from those glymphatic channels in your brain not opening during the deep wave of sleep. So during intense periods of travel, periods of high stress, periods where you actually don't get a good night's sleep.

up to twenty milligrams of creatine on those days. So you can make megadose creatine on a cyclical basis.

Angela (41:38.72)
Yeah, it's really good when you're traveling, isn't it? Or as you say, if you're just generally sleep deprived. It doesn't replace sleep, but it really helps. Yeah, I've noticed that.

So my my wife and I just we we just completed fourteen city tour in in eight in sixteen days. And some of these cities were on opposite sides of the world. You know, we went Miami, London, Milan, Dubai, Sydney, Perth, Dubai, Washington, DC. so we we were shifting time zones and we were traveling very intensely. And during that time, she and I both increased our creatine. So I was on twenty milligrams a day, she was on twenty milligrams a day. It helps

mitigate the impact of sleep deprivation. I also, just while we're talking about intense travel, rarely hear people talk about what I think is the r real secret to adjusting to time zones or to mitigating the impact of travel. And that is keeping your digestion on the same clock. So the entire time that I circumnavigated the globe, I ate at the same time. So I ate in the same feeding window. So in other words, I I usually go to bed when I'm I I live in Miami. So I'm on the east coast of the US.

So I usually go to bed at 10 p.m. Miami time and I wake up around 5:30, 6 a.m. So I'd never fed myself during the hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Eastern time. The moment you do that and throw your digestive zeit burger, a zeitberger is something that influences your circadian rhythm. You throw that clock off, there is no chance of you adjusting to that time zone. People talk about sunlight in the morning. I think that's critically important. Movement first thing in the morning, also critically important.

But the timing of your meals is the single most important thing in your control to mitigate the effects of travel. So if I just travel from the East Coast to the West Coast and shift time zones three hours, I still keep my digestion on the same clock. So I just shift my eating schedule three hours.

Angela (43:29.288)
So you'll move you'll be you move your awake time because you have to, right? Because you're like doing but you just change the eating. So you're eating on your normal schedule of Miami time. And that helps with the jet lag. So if you went on a two week holiday, would you do that? So

Yeah, you can control when the sun rises and

Gary (43:43.994)
and just maybe.

Let's just say that I go from Miami to London. Okay, so I I my time zone shifts by five hours. So I'm normally waking at six o'clock in the morning, which is 11 a.m. London time. I will not feed myself solid food before 11 a.m. UK time because that would be the equivalent to feeding myself in the middle of the night. Now, if you're gonna be in a location for more than four days, then shift to that schedule. Just go through the damage of shifting your circadian clock onto that schedule.

But if you are a road warrior or you or you regularly change time zones, you go from Miami to London for a three-day event, like the last time I was there for the health summit. I was only there for three days. I didn't get on the UK time zone from an eating perspective. I slept obviously on UK time because that's when I go to bed and that's when I wake up. And I would get fr sunlight first thing in the morning. I would gently move my body first thing in the morning. I would hydrate, take amino acids, take mineral salts, take hydrogen tablets.

and that that helps you mitigate the effects of the travel and and get onto that time zone. But don't change your eating window unless you're gonna be in a location for more than four or five days.

That's such great advice. Especially for people doing business trips, right? They just

Gary (44:59.854)
For a business traveler, absolute game changer. An absolute game changer. And the other travel tip that I would never violate is I wouldn't eat on any flight less than five hours. So I just don't eat in the air. And hydrate for sure. Take mineral salts, take hydrogen tablets. That will mitigate the effects of air travel, which is low barometric pressure, high static electricity, dry air, high radiation, and close proximity to

You know, lots of lots of other people. So certainly hydrate, mineralize, take amino acids, take hydrogen tablets. But in terms of eating in the air, unless the flight is longer than five hours, I always fast on airplanes. Those two things alone, keeping your digestion on the same clock and fasting on flights less than five hours, w will make a world of difference in how travel impacts you not only your sleep, but your energy and your immune system.

I found that not eating really helpful on flights. So last question, what would you say in terms of longevity, what do you think is something we're doing that's really a bit overhyped right now?

Well, I think the, you know, the thought that more is better, you know, I think for a lot of people, biohacking is becoming its own stressor. You know, because, you know, what should I supplement with? Should I be CoQ ten, Sun St. John's order, Ashwagon? Should I be taking, you know, risk veritrol, NAD, NMN, nicotine myrobicide? Because I see TikTok videos and Instagram videos that tell me that this is the greatest supplement in the world. So number one, if you want to filter out the noise, do a genetic methylation test once in your life and supplement for deficiency.

Not the sake of supplementing. This will not leave you vulnerable to every shifting trend in the biohacking space. The second thing is, if you want to go to the next level, first master the basics. And this is what all the data says. If you look at the meta-analyses, the big data studies, blue zone studies, it does not favor things like dogmatic dieting. So there's no areas of the world where dogmatic dieting is extending life. So the secret to diet is not carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food. The secret to

Gary (47:05.056)
Extended life from a dietary standpoint is the absence of processed food. So you don't have any areas in the world where you have extended lifespan where you have the presence of processed food. So, number one, eat whole foods. And secondly, focus on your sleep. Stop bullying sleep around in your schedule, like the stepchild. Meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. Make those the priority, and everything else will fall into line. Sleep is our human superpower. We assemble memory during REM sleep.

We eliminate waste during deep sleep. Do not treat sleep like something that you can push around in your schedules. Treat it with the importance that it deserves. And the final thing is, you know, making mobility non-negotiable. We know now that exercise is just non-negotiable. And finally, examine the quality of your relationships. The largest longitudinal study ever done in in the longevity space, the Harvard longevity study, put the quality and the depth of your relationships at the highest.

caliber for longevity, both health span and lifespan. And this is corroborated by the data that I researched when I was a mortality scientist. We knew that the single most detrimental thing to a human being was isolation. And most of us are familiar with this, right? Because we've had a grandparent or great grandparent that passed away of broken heart syndrome. Right. You show me a couple that's been married for 40 or 50 or 60 years and one couple passes, you know, what happens to the other spouse?

And and usually very quickly. Well, what changed for them? Nothing happened to them. Well, it was the the first time they were put in isolation in maybe half a century, right? You you read some of the most horrific crimes in the news. Well, who were they committed by very often? The most isolated. That was the kid that never came out of his bedroom, didn't have a friend circle. We he's kept to himself. We didn't see or hear much from them. So isolation is very detrimental to us. Community and connection is medicine.

If you look at the what's happening with the data now, which I'm very bullish on, I'm very excited about. You see, look at the Gen Z generation, for example, alcohol consumption is down 34%. But you know what's up more almost 400%? Run clubs. And and you don't need a run club to run a 5K. 5Ks are not scaling. Five Ks are been around forever. You don't need a run club to run a five K. You put your shoes on and go run a five K right now. The reason why run clubs are scaling is for the 30 minutes that happens before the run and the 60 minutes that happens after the run, social wellness is scaling.

Gary (49:31.99)
You know, I launched a social wellness franchise seven months ago. It's the fastest growing franchise in the world right now, fastest growing wellness franchise in the world. Community and connection around things where you have shared mission, vision, and values. So maybe maybe it's run clubs, maybe it's a social wellness membership. But examining the depth of your community and your connections is important too. You know, removing toxic relationships from your life, becoming less isolated is medicine.

It is, it's so important and just not talked about enough. I see my son, he's seventeen coming on eighteen, and he's very much into fitness, socializes with friends in fitness. He loves, by the way, your sleep supplement. Absolutely loves your sleep.

there are years to formulate that. Yeah, because waking center of the brain. So it doesn't tranquilize you to sleep. So those people listening to this that have issues with ruminating thoughts at night, and that will end the rumination at night and just allow your body to fall asleep. Because the fallacy about sleep is that falling asleep is about being tired. That's not true. Falling asleep is about your body feeling safe to shut off. If your body doesn't feel safe to shut off, you don't sleep, no matter how tired you are.

And this affects women especially. In fact, you know, we talked before the podcast started about why is 82% of all autoimmune disease found in females? Well, autoimmune disease is not selective by sex, but it is selective by weakness. And very often women do not feel safe in their own bodies. And by safe, I don't mean they think something's going to threaten them, somebody's going to harm them. Safe means I've completed all my tasks for the day. my children are safe, my work is done, I can go to sleep.

I had a full day, I checked off everything on my list. You know, most women do not feel safe until all of that is done, right? And that burden causes the ruminating thoughts at night, keeps them up at night, compromises the immune system, and allows the immune system to fall victim to things like autoimmune, amongst other things. And so simple practices like getting into a good routine, morning routine especially, sunlight in the eyes, grounding, breath work, the timing of meals, regular exercise routine.

Gary (51:42.274)
These breath work at night before bed, these are things that your body begins to clue into, key into it in its circadian cycle. They cost you nothing, but they make your body feel safe to shut down. So they're important.

The simple things are so, so important. And also I just I love what you've said. I think that go back for everyone watching or listening to this, go back and just listen to the beginning because all of the things that you've shared along the way during this episode have been so helpful and things that are new to me as well, around some of the things around bloating and the link with these genes and things like that that I hear so many women struggling with. And they are this sort of complex of symptoms, right? In terms of the bloating, the weight gain, the brain fog, the anxiety, the poor sleep and

fixable with a small amount of information that is personalized to you. Gary, you've been so, so generous with your time and also with everything you've shared. I I know that you just I really feel in you just how much you want to help people and that's just such a shared value of mine. And it really comes through. And I just want to say just massive gratitude to you for everything you do, everything you put out. Thank you so much. Because it's it's making such a difference and just when I feel that energy it really is truly incredible.

And very often a little intervention can go a long way to fixing what seems unfixable.

And for our audience that is kind of across the world, we've quite a few, quite a lot actually in the US, Australia, Canada and across Europe, can they also access your tests and supplements?

Gary (53:11.212)
Yes, you just go to the ultimate human dot com.

Amazing. We will link to all of that in the description. Thank you so much. This has just been so much fun speaking to you. And yeah, I I really love everything you share. Thanks for coming on. If you're getting value from this show, the single best thing you can do to help us keep bringing you the highest caliber guests is to subscribe or follow wherever you listen or watch. It takes 10 seconds, but it genuinely makes a difference to the quality of the guests we bring you week after week.

You Angela, this was such a pleasure.

Gary Brecka and I get into intermittent fasting, estrogen dominance, belly bloat and anxiety in perimenopause, and how the right test can show you exactly what your body is missing.

Ever feel like you're doing everything right, yet your lower belly won't shift and your mind won't switch off at night? So many women tell me this, and Gary gave me answers I hadn't heard from any other guest. I share how I found out I carry the MTHFR variant, something no one mentioned to me when I was pregnant. Gary explains why fasting can backfire when your HbA1c is already low, why the pace of your gut may matter more than food sensitivity tests, and how anxiety and gut issues can share one root. It's not about trying harder. It's about getting the right data.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

- Why the band around your lower belly, flanks and lower back can be estrogen-driven water retention, not fat, and how it can clear in 10 to 21 days

- What happens when a narrow eating window reads as starvation, from a lower thyroid signal to a slower metabolism

- How a 24-hour urine DUTCH test shows the estrogen to progesterone ratio a single blood test can miss

- Why lying awake ruminating, brain fog until midday and gut issues can share one root, and why Gary looks at methylfolate first