In the second part of this two-part series on anti-aging and bio-hacking, Dr. Bryan Joseph and Dr. Jason Hamed will reveal the final 5 things you can do to start slowing the process of aging and increase your quality of life with these simple biohacking tools.
Table of Contents
- Part 2 of Top 10 Anti-aging & Biohacking Tools
- Quick Recap: First 5 Anti-aging & Biohacking Tools
- Biohacking Tool #6: Oxygenate
- Biohacking Tool #7: Cold Therapy
- Biohacking Tool #8: Grounding
- Biohacking Tool #9: Get More Sleep!
- Biohacking Tool #10: Take Care Of Your Skin
- Clothing Thoughts: Take Your Health To A Whole Another Level
Part 2 of Top 10 Anti-aging & Biohacking Tools
Dr. Bryan: Welcome to The Wellness Connection podcast, giving hope, igniting health and shaping a brighter future. It’s time to get connected. All right, last episode we were going deep into the bio hacks and anti-aging techniques that are out there that we’re getting exposure to. Now we want to just jump off the cliff here and actually continue that conversation. I’m Dr. Brian Joseph with my cohost Dr Jason Hamad.
Dr. Jason: Hello everyone.
Dr. Bryan: This is part two of the 10 anti-aging and bio hacking tools for your toolbox to keep you as healthy as you possibly can be. Why don’t we just real quickly, for those that maybe didn’t hear last episode, can you recap the title or the name of the first five before we expand on the second five?
Quick Recap: First 5 Anti-aging & Biohacking Tools
Dr. Jason: Yeah, sure can. Bio hack number one is drink your vegetables in regards to getting juicing or using a Vitamix and making smoothies. Bio hack number two is exercise daily, specifically steady state cardio, three to seven days a week. Bio hack number three is meditation, but we’re going to use something called binaural beats as the actual hack to stimulate or actually destimulate our brain. Bio hack number four is limit the toxins that we put in, on or around us within our home. Bio hack number five is get more light either naturally or finding artificial sources of that natural wavelengths of light that our body needs.
Dr. Bryan: All right, and if you didn’t hear episode 15 or part one of this conversation, then you might want to actually hear that podcast and in that episode we actually expanded on each of those concepts so you can get a better understanding of what each of those are and maybe some ways and some reasons why we’re recommending that you consider these hacks in your health. On that note, let’s pick up where we left off. We were actually on bio hack number six. What do you got for us?
Biohacking Tool #6: Oxygenate
Dr. Jason: Oxygenate, you got to get more oxygen in your body. This is something that is epidemic in our life and this is something you and I personally have discussed on our own accords, but also helping with patients is we are in a culture that does not breathe correctly. We don’t breathe from our belly, we breathe from our chest and we’re not going to activate our diaphragm which means we’re not oxygenating.
Dr. Jason: If we’re not oxygenating there’s no way we can create energy, we create increased inflammation, we create a decreased energy and our focus and we create increased disease rates like breathe, breathe, breathe, oxygen, oxygen, oxygen. And you are actually the one who turned me on to the Wim Hof method. Instead of me to say you’re the one who showed me and I’ve gone on knew it, but tell the listeners about it.
A fish in a fish tank analogy
Dr. Bryan: Years ago I was thinking of all the different things that we learn about how to stay well between paying attention to our stress levels, our diet and our exercise. It was at a Tony Robbins conference where they were talking about the need or probably the number one need of the human body is actually oxygen. It’s not all these supplements and nutrients that we feel we need to fill ourselves with, it’s usually the one that we’re not taking in that’s already around us. The analogy that popped in my brain at the time was thinking of a fish in a fish tank I was like, gosh, what would happen if you remove that fish from the water?
Dr. Jason: It dies.
Dr. Bryan: Momentarily it’s going to flop around a little bit but if it can’t breathe it’s a matter of moments before it dies. Now, that you take that same thing for us and you say, how long can we go without oxygen?
Dr. Jason: Not long.
Dr. Bryan: Right. I mean, how long can we go without water?
Dr. Jason: Good question doc, I don’t know. I know it’s not long.
Dr. Bryan: And how long can we go without food? Where I’m going with this is if you look at those things and we prioritize and say, gosh, we can go quite a while without food, we can go a shorter time without water, we can go the shortest time without oxygen. To me that struck a chord and said, man, that must be a vital ingredient because without that my body dies, I die. You’re talking about Wim Hof.
Breathe like Wim Hof
Dr. Bryan: I was searching for some techniques to help get a better amount of oxygen into my system and there’s a guy by with the nickname The Iceman, Wim Hof, who teaches techniques specifically on how to get a rich level of oxygen into your body and your bloodstream so that your body can perform at its highest level. And it starts to push off different threats that your body takes on as a stress when you actually incorporate these breathing techniques and it also boosts your immune system.
Dr. Bryan: Really what it is, is there’s a lot of deep breathing just to fully oxygenate your body and it feels funny. You’d be surprised when you actually start trying to actually breathe at a deeper level how hard it really is for you because most of us don’t spend most of our time doing it.
Dr. Jason: And when you first start doing it, you start to recognize the muscles that are weak. You don’t have ’cause you haven’t breathed right. I know when I first started doing this I started getting tension in my neck because I wasn’t breathing correct. I literally had loss of strength in my neck muscles that are attached to the breathing response.
“Learn how to get high on your own supply.”
Dr. Bryan: Here’s what I’ll say to you, rather than me explain the full technique, maybe we could drop a link to his website. He even has an app that you might be interested in considering. He has a line that says, “Learn how to get high on your own supply.” All I can tell you is if you put a little energy and effort into breathing and making breathing a part of your routine, you will feel your stress levels dissipate fast.
Dr. Jason: As part of a bio hack that ends up being I do the Wim Hof method in the morning just to help to stimulate. Openly I’m still didn’t drinking coffee but I do it before my coffee because there’s a cycle. You do 30 cycles of breathing three times. It takes a few minutes but you’re right, you will really feel that buzz. The other aspect of oxygenation goes back to exercise. When you exercise with steady state cardio, you will actually increase the oxygen delivery system within the human body.
Use PowerLung for better breathing
Dr. Jason: And then again another hack you can do is something I bought you for Christmas several years ago which was the power lung. It’s a device that you put in your mouth and it’s hard to take it in oxygen and the concept is you breathe like you’re doing sets in a gym but you’re building up all the respiratory muscles. When you do take this device, it’s like a mouth guard, take the mouth guard out and you start to breathe, you can actually inhale more because you’ve developed those respiratory muscles.
Dr. Bryan: I’m getting another Rocky reference.
Dr. Bryan: Creed is when I first got exposure to what is the elevation mass where people are also running on the treadmill where it looks like they have a mask across their mouth.
Dr. Jason: Even Bane from Batman.
Dr. Bryan: But it ultimately restricts your breathing to a certain extent because that’s also a bio hack to help get your body acclimated to the need for more oxygen.
Dr. Jason: 100%, and that’s something that I’ve used in my training is to also shorten my exercise time ’cause as a busy dad I didn’t have a ton of time. I was training for these events, I would use that mask and because it’s intense and it’s forcing me to breathe harder, I could get a higher intensity workout in a shorter time. That’s a great tool.
Dr. Bryan: Maybe if you’re not keen with the Wim Hof breathing technique, then look into some of the anti-aging tools that are out there as a bio hack for oxygenating your body a little bit more powerfully such as an elevation mask.
Biohacking Tool #7: Cold Therapy
Dr. Jason: Bio hack number seven, interesting that we just talked about Mr Wim Hof who is known as The Iceman because of his cold water plunges. He’s climbed Mount Everest in shorts I think multiple times and this is nuts. This guy has adapted his body to cold temperatures, but also not only that, he along with a number of pioneers are demonstrating the importance and the beauty of cold therapy. Bio hack number seven is cold therapy. Go ahead.
Dr. Bryan: I know you’re about to, so I didn’t mean to cut you off. But cold therapy might be defined in a lot of different ways. Talk to us about what cold therapy means.
Dr. Jason: Well, for me when I say cold therapy is how do I use cold temperature to actually improve my body function?
Dr. Bryan: Like going out on a cold day, being in a cold shower, swimming in a cold pool, all of the above?
Dr. Jason: Yes, 100%.
Dr. Bryan: And then it’s got taken to another level recently when the introduction of cryotherapy yeah has become prevalent in communities where you can go to a cryotherapy center.
Dr. Jason: Right. Here’s the deal, why would you do this? Just recently we were driving to school and at the time of our recording right now it’s in the Winter months. One of my kids made a reference to hey, he can get sick if he doesn’t want to. My daughter was arguing with my son and say, “Hey, he didn’t bring a coat, he’s gonna get sick.” And I said, “Well actually that’s not totally true. In fact, it’s the opposite.”
Benefits of Cold Therapy
Dr. Jason: We actually have this dialogue in our car, it’s just kind of how we roll in our house. I was like, “Actually honey, cold has been shown to actually improve the immune system.” Cold therapy when done correctly will actually improve the immune system. It can decrease inflammation. If you’re training for an event or activity or you’re hurting, your joints are sore, it will decrease that pain, but also improve your recovery.
Dr. Jason: The last the cold therapy does and one of the reasons I got into doing it years ago was actually because it actually improves your ability to handle stress and I’ll explain. Think about this, if I just toss you into some cold water, you get really freaked out, right? But if you got to the point where you are continuing to put yourself into cold water, you would start to recognize you can control your stress response with your breathing.
Dr. Bryan: The amazing part about what you’re saying is that reflects back to a couple of other earlier bio hacks which when you slow down you’re being more mindful, which we talked about with meditation. And also when you slow down, you’re not going into a state of hyper ventilation so you’re still actually oxygenating yourself on a deeper level. And when you’re in that mode of peacefulness or centeredness or control, then the threats of life don’t feel like threats anymore.
Two ways to do cold therapy
Dr. Jason: Totally. Let’s talk about how you could actually do cold therapy both at home and outside of the home. First and foremost, the easiest thing you can do is just take cold showers. Actually a patient of ours years ago introduced me to this and we’re just in conversation he mentioned and I was like, really? And I started doing it and I really liked it. It doesn’t mean you have to take the entire shower being cold.
Dr. Jason: You have a warm shower, that’s fine, but at the very end, end with a couple minutes over that cold water just hitting you. Go ice cold, as cold as you can tolerate. The other way you can do it is just by feeling an ice bath. Fill a cold tub, put some ice in it, and again, getting a spot where you can even get in there for a couple of minutes or up to 10, 15 minutes depending on your toleration.
Dr. Jason: And then outside the home as you alluded to, really caught on trends is some great anecdotal research and I’ve seen that demonstrates improved recovery, decreased pain with something called cryotherapy, which again they have cryotherapy centers throughout the most cities these days.
Dr. Bryan: You go sit in a nitrogen gas chamber for literally two minutes, three minutes, and it basically puts subzero temperatures around your joints to help reduce inflammation and let your tissue heal.
Biohacking Tool #8: Grounding
Dr. Jason: We both done it. You’ve done a cryotherapy. That’s pretty cool, cool experience. No pun intended. I did not mean that actually. Bio hack number eight is something that is primitive in nature but it’s called grounding.
Dr. Jason: Grounding or otherwise known as earthing is what I’ve heard others refer to this as. The concept goes back to this, and what I’m going to say might be a far fetched for some of you out there and I understand if it is, but we are essentially magnets. We are walking energy. We are energy but I get in a magnet there’s two poles of energy. There’s a north and a south. There’s different repulsion.
Dr. Jason: There’s different attraction levels within our cells. Every single cell that you and I, everyone has, there’s a negative charge and a positive charge in every single one of ourselves. We also know from research that sick and diseased cells have a different type of charge on them than healthy vibrant cells. That’s where we are individually. Now collectively, the earth is one big magnet as evidenced why you can look at a compass and you always know where north is.
Dr. Jason: What we’re doing is we’re actually taking the electromagnetic activity of mother earth and making sure that we can actually feed or heal our tissues correctly. Here’s why, we have gotten to a place where we no longer are going barefoot. We’re not walking in the woods anymore. We’re not walking on the beaches. We are in shoes that are grounded. We are walking on cement, on wood, on concrete.
How grounding works
Dr. Jason: Whatever the case may be, we’re not getting that connection to Earth. But on top of that we’ve also added a ton of electromagnetic frequencies all around us in the form of cell phones, the lights in an office, our computer screens, you name it. Our outlets all have electric medic radiation coming off of them. Basically our body doesn’t have a chance to detoxify or you mentioned a moment ago, create space mentally.
Well, we’ve got to be able to create space in an electromagnetic way within our cellular structure and we do that through grounding.
Dr. Jason: An easy way to do that, just from a standpoint of what we can do naturally, is just go barefoot in the grass. Spend time being barefoot, having your physical skin touch the earth.
Dr. Bryan: I’ve always likened the grounding or earthing to when your cell phone or your iPad actually as low on batteries and it needs to be recharged. This is kind of the vision that I’ve always had of this is you know at that point you’ve got to plug into a wall or a source to be able to bring power back to it and that’s when it gets recharged and it’s ready for another usage. The further we disconnect ourselves from Earth or nature, the more we lose our power.
Reconnecting with Earth
Dr. Bryan: It’s kind off how I’m seeing it. When we reconnect without any filters or constraints, meaning that there’s no rubber soul between us and the earth or there’s no 12 layers of clothing while we’re swimming in the ocean. When we really get connected back to the source, that it basically is our power source that actually fuels us back up, charges our body energetically, magnetically, however you want to look at it.
Dr. Bryan: And that’s the exact reason that for years Jay patients would come in and say it’s amazing how I have all these aches and pains when I’m actually here and I’m working and I’m in my regular environment. Then I went on a cruise and spent three days walking on the beach in a serene environment which I got recharged and I didn’t have one ounce of pain. It is not a surprising thing when that happens to me because what they don’t know that they’re actually doing as they’re replenishing themselves.
Dr. Bryan: They’re energetically putting themselves in an environment that lets them reconnect to the earth and all of us are meant to have that. I think this is probably my favorite bio hack of all of them is to make sure that we find ways to reconnect with the Earth.
Dr. Jason: I 100% agree with everything you just said. There’s ways that you don’t have to necessarily be in a cruise either. Again, non Winter months obviously, you can put your physical skin on the grass in Spring and Summer and fall, dig getting your hands in the dirt. Getting connected again to literally the earth.
Use Earthing mats for grounding
Dr. Jason: That would go back to one of our other bio hacks of getting out of toxins or reducing toxins. But here’s the deal, for our city dwellers out there who may not have access to a great deal of nature for whatever reason, there is now things called earthing mats. Earthing mats still utilize the grounding principle. Within an outlet, as I’m looking at ours and our office right now, you’ve got three prongs.
Dr. Jason: You’ve got the two ones there and the two vertical ones and there’s that one single one on the bottom. That’s where we are grounding is. A grounding mat literally would be a mat that you could do yoga on, you could stand on if you’re at work, you could put it underneath your mattress and literally have contact with it and you plug the small little wire plugs right into the grounding aspect of our outlets.
Dr. Jason: And it literally has been shown with a volt meter to decrease the electromagnetic “noise” in the human body while you’re making contact with this. If you can’t get into the woods, if he can’t get to a beach and walk on the beach and get in the ocean for whatever reason, then you’ve got these anti-aging tools now that’s literally bio hack. But nothing does beat mother nature in getting a vacation or getting out of town or getting into the woods is the best earthing or grounding we can do.
Dr. Bryan: Was that number eight?
Biohacking Tool #9: Get More Sleep!
Dr. Jason: Yeah, now we’re in number nine. Bio hack number nine is sleep. Again, not to be doctor obvious here, but that is a huge bio hack. We’ve got to make sure that we are getting minimally seven, seven half quality hours of sleep just based on a large cohort study looking at all different types of people, ranges of sleep. You get the guy’s like, oh, I sleep two hours and this guy sleeps an hour or whatever. The bottom line is we’re looking at seven to eight hours, some people more, but that’s the range. Seven to eight hours of deep quality sleep.
Dr. Bryan: Because sleep just like the recharging of our body in the grounding experience or example I was just referencing, sleep is another way that we charge our body back up and when we neglect sleep or when we’re overstimulated and we’re not getting quality of sleep, then we run into situations where we wake up with a huge sense of fatigue and fatigue is overwhelmingly evident in our culture right now.
Dr. Jason: And you use a great word there when you said over stimulated. One of the ways that we talk about hacking our sleep is how can you now decrease the stimulation before sleep? If you want to have deep, restful sleep, what can you do to actually hack your way in your body naturally to get into that state? Well, the first thing is, ironically a few of the hacks ago I talked about how important light is.
Decrease your light exposure
Dr. Jason: That when we’re getting our body ready for bed, we don’t want light. We want to limit as much light as exposure as you possibly can. I mean exposure to our skin, to our retinas, to our eyes. Decrease your light exposure. One of the ways as well that I have done, I’ve showed others and I’ve got introduced to was using blue blocking glasses. A yellow frame on the outside really designed to block the blue light waves of some of our technology. Also when I wear them if there’s a lamp on, it softens up the lamp. Doctor Bryan just shut off the lights in our office.
Dr. Bryan: I’m not letting any of those stimulants come at us.
Dr. Jason: It’ll literally dampen the lamp light as well. Really my brain it’s amazing. I encourage you as listeners get some blue blocking glasses and try them. They may not look the coolest thing, but they are amazing and they literally will put yourself into a relaxed, wonderful state that’s before the bed.
Get rid of the blue light
Dr. Bryan: For people that probably don’t have a lot of familiarity with those, my understanding and you can correct me if I’m wrong is that if you’re staring at blue light or if you looking at back screens like computers or phones all day long, which most of us are, those things are sending and emitting a light that’s not the same as the blue light that we’re referencing that we want you to get.
Dr. Jason: Blue lights a bad.
Dr. Bryan: I’m sorry, blue light’s the bad light. But you’re getting bad light thrown at you where if you wear these blue glasses, there’s actually different colors, it can reduce the effects of that stimulant coming at Ya and it puts you in a better mood sometimes. Actually helps to relax your body and then can transition you into a world where you’re ready to become more restful and get some sleep.
Dr. Jason: 100%. That’s a wearable that you can do. Now, just off of one doctor Myan said though, there are no filters and different apps that you can get for cell phones, for your computer screens. I strongly encourage the listeners to look into those, especially work permitting, that’ll actually decrease some of those blue light wavelengths coming off of your technology so you’re not exposed to them all day long.
Make your room as dark as possible
Dr. Jason: That’s before. While I’m going into bed, do everything you can to make your room as dark as possible. Limit as much of any type of ambient light that you have coming into your area that you’re sleeping in. And that includes your alarm clock, that includes moonlight and starlight. Doing anything you can to turn the alarm clock away so you’re not getting that light.
Dr. Jason: The last thing is decrease the temperature of where you’re sleeping. Now, I’m constantly cold which is something I’ve thought for a while. And so when I learned this, to Dr. Whitney I was like, ‘All right honey, you got me on this one.” ”cause she likes it freezing cold. That is something that also will help to get a deeper, more recuperative sleep is when you decrease the temperature in your room.
Dr. Bryan: Number nine?
Biohacking Tool #10: Take Care Of Your Skin
Dr. Jason: No, that was nine and we’re on number 10. Number 10 is you have to take care of your skin. Skin’s the largest organ in the human body and as we alluded to in the toxin bio hack, the skin you have to recognize what you’re putting on it. But also what can you do to actually improve its function? We already alluded to not putting things on the skin such as deodorants that are laden with chemicals that can cause disease like aluminum but also perfumes.
Dr. Jason: Many of the perfumes and colognes that women and men will use actually can infiltrate the pores and really can lead to negative side effects and negative health consequences inflammation being one of them or allergic reaction, acne, skin conditions as well.
Dr. Bryan: Sunscreen is another one too. Anything that can be absorbed into your skin. There’s two things that you tend to hear a lot in healthcare is healthy people have healthy skin and they have healthy digestion. Those are two must haves in order to remain healthy throughout the course of your life. Anything that’s really has a chance to be absorbed through your skin in any way has an opportunity to affect how your skin’s health will be. Do you have a reference on exfoliating?
What is Body Brushing?
Dr. Jason: This is crazy. Body brushing? What’s the concept? I don’t understand it. And again, it’s something that we tried and the more and more I learned about like, all right, this makes sense. What body brushing is really as the name implies, it’s like a big brush that you just brush over your skin. It’s like a loofa thing, but it’s actually on a brush. It’s like a hairbrush but instead of the columns that come out with a little tentacles that come out, you basically got this device that’s got abrasiveness to it.
Dr. Jason: Yes, that’s one of the aspects. So will help to slough off the dead skin and it’ll exfoliate you, which is important because when we get the dead skin off, not only is it fluffing off toxins, but new skin can actually absorb light. The second thing it does actually is it helps to stimulate lymphatic activity or even blood flow to and from and around the skin. Again, go back to the toxin conversation.
Dr. Jason: We want to move toxins out of our body and the lymph tissue, the capillaries, the arteries, the blood supply, that’s where some of that’s at. Again, by using the body brushing every day before I get into the shower, then what you’ll do or anyone can do it’s stimulating sloughing off of dead skin tissue but also activating lymphatic activity or even blood flow.
Dr. Bryan: Awesome. That takes us through 10.
Clothing Thoughts: Take Your Health To A Whole Another Level
Dr. Bryan: Power packed episodes. There’s actually episode one and episode two that actually we walked it through 10 different bio hacks or anti-aging tools or techniques that you should be considering to make sure you’re aware of, to make sure you’re staying as well as possible. Very, very, very packed content. Thank you for sharing all those. And I know there’s a ton more things that people can do in terms of bio hacking, but just trying to hit some of the basics to try to get somebody to start realizing that there’s things they can do to take their health to a whole another level.
Dr. Jason: Health and just feelings of well-being. We talked about a lot of great stuff and it can be daunting to look at this, but I’m telling you take it one step at a time. Look at where you can implement some of these strategies wherever you are, city dweller or if you’re in the country. What can you do with what you have around you or what can you can get access to and I can stand behind this in that if you start to implement these things, you’re going to feel different in a good way. More energy, less discomfort, less just overall pain. These things were work.
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Dr. Bryan: Thank you again for joining us again at The Wellness Connection Show. This wraps up episode 16. If you’re liking what you’re hearing, if you’re finding this valuable in any capacity, if you think that somebody else would benefit from this, please share. You can find us on Spotify. You can find us on iTunes. You can go to our website thewellnessconnection.com/episode16 or E16.
Dr. Bryan: There’s a lot of different ways in which this content is being disseminated but it’s people like you that are hearing it, sharing it, and giving feedback that keeps us excited about being able to make it better and better for you. Until next time, stay well. Visit us at thewellnessconnection.com/podcast to subscribe to our show and get connected.
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