Amir Khan 00:00
Getting your blood tested because then you accurately contract and that's part of biohacking the part that maybe some people don't fully understand. The quantify quantified self, which is if you can measure and track it, you can change it. So having trackers having lab having a blood test I've heard I think it was Dave Asprey talk about this, that you're you are the CEO of your body and your doctor is a consultant. You can consult him on your health, and use his expertise use his professional advice. But at the end of the day, you're responsible for you.
Bridget Moroney 00:46
Welcome to the Performance Rx podcast where the conversations are about health, nutrition and mindset for anyone who considers themselves an athlete from the most elite competitors to those who are simply seeking to improve their athletic performance. We hope the knowledge shared on this show will empower you to reach your physical potential. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now for today's episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's show. I'm your host Bridget Moroney, and today my guest is Amir Khan. Amir is a human potential coach who partners with overwhelmed executives and entrepreneurs to be unlimited, live up to their highest potential, have more energy, focus and have a high performing mind. Amir is a certified coach with the Human Potential Academy, the International Coaching Federation. He's also a certified business coach and a PMI Project Management Professional. Attending several international events, seminars and workshops in the field of nutrition, health medicine, biohacking, and bioregenesis. I'm here has accumulated a wealth of knowledge, techniques, technologies and equipment to heal, improve and enhance the mind and body. Thank you so much for being on this episode with me. I am so excited to talk about biohacking pain and healing and everything else like that. Because personally, I have experienced quite a few injuries in my life. And I am personally interested in biohacking and I think it's like so cool and amazing some of the things that we can we can use to heal ourselves and, and optimize our health. But um, besides from that, I think a lot of the things that you know, are in that world can can also be of interest in and help to a lot of people so I'm uh, I'm very excited and very happy that you're that you're on the show.
Amir Khan 02:47
Yeah, definitely. You know, sometimes we get interested in when things affect us personally in our life, we become kind of interested in finding solutions. And I think that's why we get attracted to, you know, I think a lot of people get attracted to biohacking or health is because they had some challenge. And you're trying to find some solutions to those challenges. And when you overcome those challenges that other people ask you, well, how did you do that? And you start answering people's questions, and you get more interested and you start diving deep and finding solutions. And then it just keeps building off of that.
Bridget Moroney 03:23
I guess that's just kind of human experience in general, right? Like, we're, we're curious creatures, and we're here to, in my belief, we're here in this in this world, and in this life, whatever you want to kind of put a label on it, but to kind of share these experiences and at the end of the day really help each other because that is like one of the fundamental things that you can do for another person in the world, in my opinion, at least.
Amir Khan 03:50
No absolutely. Yeah, we're here to grow, expand and as human beings, but definitely, we work better, right with groups. And it's the one thing how our species evolved is in communities. I mean, there's some species of animal that can be isolated and live alone. And, but humans, we do need connection, we do need to bond. And together we work together. So sharing information, growing, expanding, and this is how we're evolving. So it's always good to like, you know, learn, share, and help other people to expand. So the, you know, to create expansion for people and to serve people, so it's kind of like really brings purpose to your life too.
Bridget Moroney 04:37
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I couldn't agree more. Before we get started with the topic of biohacking pain and healing. Is there anything else that you would like to share about your background or you know, your life experience that maybe brought you into the world of biohacking? Anything that you want to add to that for the listeners?
Amir Khan 04:57
Yeah, just a quick background. So I spent about maybe about 12 years in information technology. So I was working in IT, I was doing field support and doing a lot of like, technology repair doing Server and Server Administration, network design network administration. So my background was IT, and computers and gadgets I've always interested in, in computer systems all the time. So that's how I kind of discovered Dave Asprey, who, you know, he coined the term bio hacking in computer terms hacking, or you know, in general, it just means, you know, trying to find clever solutions and creative use of tools and resources. And you're trying to create what they call hacks or solutions, and thinking outside the box. And I've always been a person who always thought outside the box, I don't normally go with the standard answers and I'm always looking for is there another way to do this and, and then when Dave Asprey coined the term biohacking in his definition is the art and science to change the environment outside and the inside of you so that you have total control of your biology. And that allows you to like upgrade your life, your body and your mind. To me, that was like, right away, you're speaking my language, it was like the code that I operate on. Then, after I got laid off, back in the 2008, 2009, crash, I started to experiment with different businesses. And largely it was IT related, but then I had a friend that helped that was a chiropractor and pain management clinics. So me and him started a business together, doing electric stimulation devices and durable medical equipment and those kinds of things. That's when I started working with him and partnering with him, I started being in his clinic a lot, and I would just hang out with him and he would show me things about you know how to heal he had all these devices that he had at his clinic that he would use, he would actually have like red light lasers and cold lasers and different devices. As a technology person. I just got fascinated with tech healing people you know, at the time also was doing martial arts and, and martial arts you get injured and get hurt working in this clinic was nice because I go I had access to this tech to repair and heal, you know, heal anything. My back was sore, my shoulder or arm or wrist or whatever. And he was showing me techniques on like manually adjusting body parts and stuff like that on myself. So and then he would adjust me and then he showed me some self adjustments so I can do things to myself and stretches that I can do. So that got me started on the healing journey. At some point when I was doing a lot of business with him. Someone at the clinic was a physical therapist, they told me like you're really interested in this. Why don't you go to massage school and just learn the anatomy just get a basic understanding how anatomy works. I'm in massage school in New Jersey that does sports massage therapy. The teacher was great Mark Carangelo and in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and he has like one of the top schools in New Jersey and sports, massage therapy and medical massage therapy. And from him I learned Sports Therapy and I learned orthopedic massage therapy. And then he introduced me to another person James Waslaski, who's pretty famous around the world for orthopedic massage therapy, and I studied with him. I got really into this whole medical massage part of it. It's beyond the like regular relaxation massage, it's more towards healing and Science Based evidence based ways, techniques to manipulate soft tissue to help you know, recover from injuries and help with chronic conditions. And also at the time, I was studying Dave Asprey's work and he started this thing called the, in the beginning was called bulletproof coaching, which now is the human potential Institute HPI. I went through the process, it was about nine to 10 months and then that became a certified human potential coach through that, and that's where we learned a lot of skills of like how to properly coach people. There was some things in there about biohacking and resources. And so I just got combining all that information of diet health, you know, the massage therapy, and men working in pain management clinics, I work in acupuncture clinics, Chiropractic Clinics. Currently I'm working with with a company that deals with the VA and Veteran Affairs and the VA hospital. Now they support massage therapy as a treatment option for veterans. So I've been doing a lot of work with veterans and I bring my biohacking devices with me to you know, and there's things that you know, they're not familiar with because there are a lot of them from the, you know, Vietnam vets and stuff like that. But yeah, I try to bring whatever I can to try to help heal people.
Bridget Moroney 10:07
That's, that's really awesome that you're doing that and especially,
Amir Khan 10:11
yeah, I definitely appreciate the time and the service they put in and especially with the Vietnam vets that I mean that some of them didn't really have a choice, like, there was no choice they had to go. So you know, it's, it's interesting, like you say that there's more than just the pain, there's emotional trauma, physical trauma, a lot of stuff going on, and not. And then I'm meeting younger vets that are more on the recent places and conflicts. And the same thing, even though they're young, they may be like 40s 50s, but you can still see that it's a lot emotional trauma, physical trauma, whatever people's political beliefs are, whatever it is, like, we all have to help each other at the end and try to find a way to try to heal and love each other, because it's really important. I know when I was younger, it was like, everything is just right or wrong, good or bad and I get older, more mature, I kind of realized that. It's, it's much more complicated. And there's many shades of grey in between and not to get so locked into one side or the other. But to keep an open mind.
Bridget Moroney 11:17
I couldn't agree more, like you said, at the end of the day, we're we're all humans, and I guess to you know, put it simply everyone's doing the best they can with what they have. We could talk about so many different things. But But I but I do want to dive into so talking about the healing right biohacking pain, again, I think, physical, you know, physical, emotional, psychological pain is something that is a shared experience. And so whether you're someone who is a competitive athlete, someone who has, you know, had prior military service, or just the average everyday person at some point, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on maybe your philosophy on how we learn things, but we do experience pain at some point. And so, yeah, let's talk about how people can bring about healing because I liked what you said in your, in your experience. And I think this is something that a lot of people are missing in their lives is we, we we, you know, up to a certain point, but there are certain things that we can do for ourselves to help ourselves instead of always having to rely on you know, whatever it is, maybe it's a therapist or a doctor or just taking a pill for there's certain things that we can do for ourselves to to heal the pain, but also, you know, we could get into preventative pain or just like you said, with with biohacking, just having a better, more optimized life and body there.
Amir Khan 12:52
I'm definitely someone who tries to, like avoid the pharmaceutical options. And I'm not against pharmaceuticals, like definitely, you know, I always tell clients that, you know, if you for acute injuries, if you break a leg, get into a car accident, they get to a hospital, get to a doctor, you know, you want to get that type of medical treatment right away. But for chronic pain, chronic conditions, chronic inflammation, it's really better to try to find the source of the problem and try to deal with it rather than just putting a bandaid on it and or sweeping things under the rug. And at some point is going to bubble up and become a big problem. And, you know, prevention is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So if you can prevent a lot of this stuff from happening, really try to find, you know, I can use the word alternative healing without getting too much into the woowoo and we could talk about woowoo stuff later, evidence based stuff that people are hardcore scientists, because I came from tech, so in my school and massage school, I went to my teacher, he was very evidence based and science based. He really didn't get into the stuff that is more controversial, which later, I started to look into. But for the beginning of this conversation, let's talk about things that people can get access to that has some evidence, evidence base, and then we can talk about other treatments. Awesome.
Bridget Moroney 14:27
I guess, let's start with maybe, maybe just the preventative aspect there, like what are some things that people can do on a on a day to day basis? That can you know, help them you know, avoid certain injuries or and I think we've talked about this if they are injured, because in my belief or in my experience is not necessary, especially if you're in sport and fitness. It's not necessarily is a matter of if but when? What can they do where when they do come up against an injury, it's not as severe as it might potentially be, due to the fact that they're taking care of themselves and their bodies a little bit more resilient than, than I, you know, an average person.
Amir Khan 15:21
Yes. So, I would say some things that people can look into is like, self myofascial release, and doing you know, like foam rolling, using little like lacrosse balls. And so fascia is this layer over your muscle. It's almost like this covering like, if anyone who ever like cut a piece of chicken and you see the muscle meat, and you see this white layer on top, and I almost describe to people like almost like a saran wrap over your your muscles. And that's that covering, which is living tissue, and it has a job and a purpose. But when you get injured that tissue sometimes will create adhesions into the muscle, which is known as myofascial adhesions, Myo meaning muscle, fascial, the fascia and adhesions because it got glued and stuck together. And when those myofascial adhesions, there's imagine when you take saran wrap, and you just kind of stretch it up, it gets all like, you know, knots in it. And then smoothing those things out. And doing myofascial release by gliding, pulling foam rolling across company direct pressure on it, or something called myofascial cup gliding I have, let me show you real quick. So this is a silicone cup. So this is different from Chinese cups. Yeah, I used to be a little controversial, like some people believe in and some people don't, I know, I always get into these conversations with people that on both sides of the story, this is a little different, though. And on this one, you would put a little bit of oil, you know, put this in and you would glide it and move it that way is going to actually lift the skin. And then hopefully with a bit of that fascia of the muscle, when you're gliding it, you're stretching the skin and stretching the fascia off the muscle. So if there are any adhesions in the fascia, it will get off the muscle and give it some space and it will also move fluid. So you have you know your blood and you have your lymphatic fluid. So it's going to kind of move everything around. So if any inflammation in that area. So these are really cheap and get them on Amazon, they come in different sizes, and they have like smaller ones. So I can do it on your neck and small ones are here. If you have some help, you know, try to get it across your back with clients, I kind of take this all the way across their back. So when I work with athletes, when I work with people who Crossfit, I do people who are doing triathlons, I usually run this from from up their neck all the way down to their bath. And just like lift is interesting, especially with that we in the beginning, especially if they're very lean the skin is like glued on that muscle. When they get the cup on there. It's kind of hard to like glide it. As I do it for like five minutes, the skin starts to kind of very gently peel off the muscle. And then it just glides like no problem. And my clients told me afterwards that like for a week, they just feel like really loose and they felt like a lot more flexible and they perform better in whatever sport or whatever they were doing.
Bridget Moroney 18:36
And it's interesting you bring up like specifically athletes because I was are you familiar with Dr. Kelly Starrett?
Amir Khan 18:42
Oh, yes, he's Yeah,
Bridget Moroney 18:44
I thought so. But I like to ask. Yeah, I was I was actually using his his ready state app yesterday for my own myofascial release there and just you know, working on some, some foam rolling and everything. So sometimes I practice what I preach I wish I could say I were were a lot better about it, but I'm getting there but when I was I was working on my thoracic spine and he brought up athletes specifically and he was saying you know in the general population it's usually the lumbar spine that's stiffer because people are sitting all day and everything else like that but I'm in the athlete and I know you were specifically talking about maybe more neck so cervical but he mentioned how the thoracic spine is a lot stiffer in in athletes and you know he does work with CrossFit athletes so that's a lot of overhead by just think probably an athlete in general. You think about like the turning and everything that happens in there the rotation.
Amir Khan 19:44
Yeah, yeah, rotation. You know, you want to make sure you have good rotation for the thoracic spine one second. I would definitely recommend getting these things. I don't know if you seen they're called turf wheels. Yeah. I I was working with this chiropractor one time he had it in his office, and I say, Oh, can I try that? Yeah, go ahead. And then, you know, you rolled this on your back and has a little groove in there and will spontaneously adjust the spine. I've had a lot of good luck fixing my thoracic spine, that upper back and lower back areas with that, and also doing myofascial release so that you can roll that on your IT, IT bands, and your quads and your hamstrings. As far as IT bands, my teachers recommended not to foam roll that IT band because they want that fascia to be glued on to the IT band because there's not much muscle there. I know for a very long time people had thought to foam roll the IT band, but like James Waslaski Mark Carangelo that people I studied but they say that it's not a good idea to pull them roll the It band, but you can cup the IT band. So if you myofascial glide and pull the fascia off IT band, they'll loosen your IT band. And then you can foam roll the the quad muscles in the front and the hamstring and the muscles on the bar. And also the TFL muscles. If you want to foam roll those that's okay, you want to foam roll more muscles rather than tissues like IT band, which is not really a muscle.
Bridget Moroney 21:22
That's that's interesting. And that's I'm glad you brought that up because yeah, I've I mean for people who maybe haven't had experience with their own IT band it is tough. It is like such just it's just it's such a just someone described it once is like a like tire like tire rubber. It's so thick and tough. And and yeah, I have attempted. I've attempted to foam roll my IT band. But I've also gotten in there with a lacrosse ball. And it sucks.
Amir Khan 21:53
It's painful. Yeah, yeah. And you will actually have better luck if you worked on your iliacus. So as you're TFL, which are the deep core abdomen muscles, where your pelvis is those two pointy parts and the bone there, then if you just place your hand the abdomen and squeeze into there, you have iliacus psoas. So we have a lot of back pain working in there. And then there's this other thing I'm gonna show you these two things,
Bridget Moroney 22:22
you brought all your toys today.
Amir Khan 22:25
So this one is a psoright. Yeah, this one, you just lay down on top of it and you know, get in there. So in the beginning is not going to feel very good if you have a really tight iliac and psoas it's gonna be very tender and very sore over time, when you build up to it, it's gonna feel really good, it's gonna take like, several weeks for it to feel good. But that will unlock your iliacus and psoas and then this is other things similar ideas, hold a hip hook, and you can do the same thing you can kind of just like put it in there and kind of find your iliac and psoas but working your iliac and psoas there are some people who get such a tight iliac and psoas because you're sitting on the desk all day, just typing those muscles are crunched in locked in one position, it gets so tight that you start to form things in the back. So a lot of pain that's in the back is usually something happening in the in the front, if you're on the desk typing all day, and you have to like that forward leaning neck happening is because these muscles back here are are now elongated, and the muscles the front the pecs are too tight. So you have to stretch the front and then you got to exercise the muscles in the back to try to get that realigned and get it to move your shoulders back. Anyone that has that neck and back pain is is almost always a muscle imbalance where you had they had this area is too tight in this area's too loose, you know,
Bridget Moroney 23:55
I think for people who haven't explored their their tissues or, or their bodies, you know, in the ways that you're describing like with some of these tools and implements, like it's, it's really eye opening to see like, Okay, I'm feeling pain, um, you know, in, you know, my chest or whatever, but it's actually the culprit is is in my, in my in my subscap region, and you know, or wherever it is like our, our bodies are, are kind of amazing and also a little tricky to figure out.
Amir Khan 24:31
Yeah, whenever whenever I'm working with clients and I, if I've got athletes or something and they tell me to have a lot of team, especially when you say like a subscap or back there like a pinpoint team. I always ask them, like, when was the last time you did push up? And they're like, Oh, I just worked on chest yesterday. I did did a bunch of push ups a couple of days ago, because when you do push ups and then I asked him the second question is, alright, if you did your push ups, when did you work your back? And they're like, Well, I didn't work my I can do any rows. I'm like, that's why you have that pain. And I learned that a long time ago, which is why I stopped doing push ups, because I would always get that pain. So I do other type of chest exercises, I just start and I do a lot of back exercises, um, but that pain and then just test it out myself. I don't know why I did this. But about a month ago, I started doing push ups again. And almost two days later, I got a deep, deep pain back there. And since I know this stuff, what I worked on was my chest, I just don't like really, really stretched it out. And I use all these tools to try to get his chest back there. Like the next day, it was a lot better. You feel the pain in the wrong spot. If you can, you know, relax the area, that's the problem, the pain will like kind of shut off and go away. If you're having neck pain is probably the muscles up here that SCM Sternocleidomastoid . So this is something you just do on your own. So if you're having a lot of neck pain issues, just going in there just kind of loosening that up and traction, doing things on your own. The other thing I should mention, and I'm sure you're familiar with this is, you know, red light therapy. Yeah, so red lights can definitely help reduce inflammation, pain. So yeah, I'm sure you're familiar with that one. Yeah, anytime I thrown out my back, I wouldn't put that red light on my back. And especially with the pulse on because that one is from like, that's one of Dave Asprey's, portfolio companies. And the pulse seems to shut off things if you keep it steady. It will help, I guess heal the area and help push that information, you know, help the mitochondria and all that stuff. So facilitates healing faster. So I actually threw out my back three weeks ago doing like deadlifts and stuff like that, A, I use a bunch of these tools. And then I use a red light every day. And like within within a few days, I think within three days I was doing deadlifts again, I also sold four and then within 10 days, it was like gone. So your body has a natural ability to heal. If you give it the tools, resources, or just the mindfulness like you want you your intention to heal.
Bridget Moroney 25:56
Oh my gosh, um, intention is such an important thing I was. So I've recently had my own unfortunate injury in my knee with a grade two. So partial tear of the ACL and my MCL. And luckily, right now I'm I'm able to avoid surgery for it. And I'm going through physical therapy, and of course, you know, also using some of these, these bio hacks here, especially with the inflammation. But really quick that what you said about intention, I was looking at the physical therapist notes, and they have the whole assessment and everything and then it has prognosis, and and my prognosis was good, but the comment under it is or was patient is motivated, you know, to work, you know, to work towards healing or whatever. That's not exactly what it said. But basically, it was that it was like you said intention, motivation and things like that, like, yes, absolutely. Our bodies are again, like these amazing organisms that have its own ability to heal, especially if you can give it the raw materials it needs or is lacking. But it doesn't just and I think that's where like people criticize biohacking, because they don't understand. They're like, Oh, bio hackers, they're just, you know, looking for a shortcut or they're not, you know, whatever, trying to do things, the, you know, whatever, like through consistency, and that's not it at all. You know, like you said, it's it's, I don't know, in my in my opinion, I think it's it's more of just like you mentioned in the beginning, like finding alternative ways and things like that and having this open mind of like, okay, well, what if I try this, you know, what if, you know, what about that there's, and again, like people point to evidence, they're like, well, there's not enough evidence, or there's not enough evidence to make it clinically significant. And it's like, but there is some evidence and not all black and white, like you could find a clinical study on anything that says the opposite of what you're so that's my rant.
Amir Khan 29:34
For the research it depends on what the biases are. And, yeah, you have to be kind of careful. But yeah, yeah, I mean, to be fair, when people say biohacking might be a shortcut, and, you know, that's kind of how I got into it myself. And then you know, I guess as you get more interested in deeper you start to learn like, you know, more long term and more sustainable ways. I don't think there's anything wrong for shortcuts like If you're ready human beings, we learned how to do things efficiently. There's a reason you drive a car. Yeah, exactly. It's a shortcut. Yeah, we're humans, we look for the efficient way. There's this quote, it's attributed to Bill Gates. I don't know if he actually said this, but it's like, you would hire the laziest person because they would find a way to do the job the fastest. Totally. I don't know if you ever heard that.
Bridget Moroney 30:24
I've never heard that. But I'm gonna use that. In my, in my marriage there because my wife likes to pick on me. She's like, you always take the path of least resistance. I'm like, No, I'm just finding the most efficient way to do things. Right. Yeah, I have I have other things I want to do with my time. Um, exactly. Yeah. Um, well, getting back into into inflammation, you brought the red light therapy. And I mentioned, you know, kind of briefly like, inflammation, especially when you do have that acute injury.
Amir Khan 30:58
I guess related to inflammation on if you just hold that one thought I want to bring up you brought right before evolution was the prognosis that you saw on your doctor's notes? Oh, yes. Yeah. So this idea. So we all know the placebo effect, right? We actually placebo effect is a very real effect. And I know again, with biohacking, people think, Oh, you're just doing this a placebo effect. Placebo Effect is used in evidence based medicines, how the test tested against the placebo. So whether it's placebo or not, placebo is not fully understood yet. But this is the opposite of placebo called the nocebo. So in the placebo effect, you're looking for a positive result, in the nocebo effect is the negative result. So a doctor can put a negative thought in your head, for example, if a doctor is a diagnosis and says you have cancer, you have 10 days to live. If you took that to heart, and you really believed into in that, oh, I have 10 days, all of a sudden, you know, many cancer outcomes is because of what the doctor said. So he put the negative thought in your head. So I have a really good example in a story. I recently met a patient that was in a really bad motorcycle accident, and they put pins in his neck, and they're cutting off the circulation down his left side. So his left side is becoming atrophied. And what he told me was when he woke up in the hospital, and he couldn't feel anything below his neck. And after some time, he was getting very anxious, and he'd want to go home. And he kept requesting, the doctor complained to the doctor, that I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to leave here, I want to get out of here. And the doctor was a little bit arrogant. And when he said his words was, uh, he'd been a little bit of a jerk. So the doctor said, I'll tell you what, if you can get out of that bed and walk through the door, I'll let you go home. And with all his will and intent, we talked about intent. He may manage managed to get get out of bed and walk to the door, like, you know, like, just kind of stumbled to the door. And the doctor was shocked. The nurses didn't know what to do. So the doctor said go get him a walker they got a walker and he walkde out of the hospital. When he got home, they told him, we're not sure how you walk, because you're not technically supposed to be able to walk right now. And, you know, that happened like two or three years ago. So he still has weakness and atrophy. But he's still walking to his day. And it's even he told me he's like, I'm not sure what I would have done if the doctor told me that I would never walk again. Because then I would have never tried. That's the power of placebo and nocebo that's it. And he told me that when he woke up nobody the doctors in nursing didn't say to him, you will never walk again. He never heard those words. But he's like, if I heard those words, I don't know if I will be walking today.
Bridget Moroney 31:13
Wow. It's so fascinating. I guess you can call it mind body connection or mind over matter or whatever. I don't know. I'm sure there's there's a better way to describe it. But
Amir Khan 33:52
um, well that's where you get into a little bit of the woowoo into quantoum field and bio energetic light. And I mean, now we're getting better scientific instruments that can measure these things like you might have heard like mitochondria that signal each other to bio photonic light. They don't have instruments that can detect at a really small scale, what's happening in the body. And only in recent years, we discovered that mitochondria are speaking to each other, and they've discovered mitochondria. So anyone who doesn't know mitochondria, mitochondria are little organelles that are inside every single cell of your body. They basically are the power plants or the battery cells. They produce electricity. They produce energy for the cell to live. And the more mitochondria you have, the more energy you have healthy mitochondria and you have more youth and more energy, when they discovered these little tiny organelles that exists in the cells in the mitochondria, that they are able to communicate to each other, and they are able to sense your environment. They're sensing the temperature, the sensing, light, sensing everything that's happening around you, and the signal signaling to each other. And this is going beyond your brain, brain stuff like this, before your brain gets the information, the mitochondria have already communicated to each other. So your tissues are adapting to the environment faster than the brain can process.
Bridget Moroney 35:36
Yeah, I think you said it perfectly. Like there's, there's so much about our world, our bodies, like even, you know, even just like someone made a comment the other day about, like, there's a lot we don't know about, or there's a lot we don't know about connective tissue, or there's a lot that we thought about connective tissue that maybe we were wrong about. But even all the way down to, like you said, like, the the microscopic, you know, cellular cellular level, they're like, Yeah, mitochondria has been, you know, the, they're definitely an aspect of, of our biology, that's, that's fascinated me in the past couple of years, and really focusing on that. And I would add to what you said, because, um, you know, being active in sports and everything I've, I had learned a while ago, you know, endurance runners have tons of mitochondria, that's why they have so much energy to go. But I would say, on top of being able to create a lot of mitochondria, having them work efficiently to right because I think that and I think you've learned this, or I'm assuming you've probably learned this as well, but it's like, you can have a lot of mitochondria, but if they're dysfunctional, that's, that's not, you know, productive are useful. So like really having them be efficient.
Amir Khan 36:54
And that's a great segue into inflammation, because when your mitochondria are not working properly, then you have inflammation. And then it's, it's a chicken in the egg. It's like this functioning mitochondria creating inflammation, or you have inflammation that makes your mitochondria dysfunctional. Yeah,
Bridget Moroney 37:11
totally. You know, and I think you, you brought up a great point of the chicken in the egg, right. So, and kind of going back to what we said in the beginning of, you know, in my opinion, when an injury strikes, what can people do to be already pretty resilient, so that that injury is is less catastrophic, or, you know, doesn't take as much time and I think inflammation plays into that. Because if, like, you were saying, if you're already inflamed, if your body's already inflamed, and then you have this injury, well, now there's even more inflammation. And I guess something to also just kind of point out there for a minute inflammation. Everything in our body is, is there for a reason, right? It's it's part of our evolution, it has a purpose. And so inflammation, and maybe you can, you know, describe a little bit more detail, but inflammation does have like a purpose as far as healing. When it comes to this injury, yeah,
Amir Khan 38:15
there's good inflammation, this bad inflammation, like when you work out, and you're, you know, you're you're creating a good inflammation. So like, I know, some people work out really heavy, and they'll take an anti inflammatory, like an aspirin or an NSAID. And you don't want to do that you want that good inflammation from exercise, because that's a signal to the body to, you know, make you feel the muscles and make the muscles grow. And so that's good inflammation. And they call it hormetic stress, rather than bad inflammation, which is, you know, maybe you have a gut inflammation or there's inflammation that's going to lead to a bad outcome.
Bridget Moroney 38:51
So I guess, regardless of whether it's, you know, good or bad inflammation, or if it's chronic or acute there, when people are injured or experiencing pain or in need of healing, what are some things we mentioned the red light therapy, what other sorts of I guess modalities or biohack, could we we speak in there
Amir Khan 39:15
For inflammation and healing. One thing I definitely recommend, everybody's like, watch what you eat, I know a lot of people want to get onto the detox program and they buy these green juices and cleanses and liver cleanses first start eating clean as much as you can. Stop putting the toxins in to begin with. Your liver is designed to detox on its own. So you can give it things to help it like you know you can take glutathione as a supplement that helps the liver detox some things. But people get so caught up in bind detox programs, they don't first look at a let's try to like stop the detox from the toxin from getting in first. So I always work from there first, like Okay, let's try to see what we can remove So, clean air, clean water, clean food as best as you can. People really take for granted. You know, if you look at survival, the first thing you need to survive is air. Because if you don't breathe like this, the first thing that's gonna kill you, right? The second thing is water because you could like not eat for days and survive. But if you don't have water for more than, I don't know, it was like seven to 10 days, like could be fatal. So water, clean water, and then food, right. So those are the three basic things to be able to bare minimum to survive. So having an air purifier, making sure I know I'm here in Los Angeles, so they are really bad. So we have like two or three air filters in the house and water purification that get a reverse osmosis system, but make sure you re mineralize the water because reverse osmosis kind of sucks everything out. But you have to put some electrolytes back in before you drink it. So there's a few out there in the market can take a look at I use a Berkey water, which is a gravity water filtration, just pour water on top, wait an hour and the water comes down. It drips down to as charcoal and fluoride filters so it can really clean so Berkey it's a pretty affordable system that anyone can get Berkey was designed by a British military officer, and he made it for the troops. So when they're traveling, they can just take rainwater or water from the lake, pour it into the top tank and when it comes out from the bottom, it's 99.99% Pure, something like that. Clean out your water and then the food you know, making sure you eat foods that are won't cause inflammation. So those are things like dairy, glutens, breads, pastas, vegetable oil, seed oils, you know, your corn oil, soil, you know, soybeans, have some sugars. You have anything that
Bridget Moroney 42:09
I was gonna say just like anything that's highly highly processed or ultra processed there, which I you know, when we talk about Ultra processed foods, it's they're usually foods that contain like high amounts of refined sugar, all of those those industrial seed oils there. Yeah, it was interesting. We know someone who's getting ready to move and so they're, they're sending us, they're like cleaning out their pantry. And they're like, you want some spices? And we're like, yeah, sure, whatever. And they gave us corn oil. And my wife's looking at, she's like, What is corn oil even used for? And I was like, you don't want to know, and she looked it up. And she's like, Oh, my God, like, whatever, like, just just throw it away.
Amir Khan 42:47
You know, it's funny how many people I meet, and I tell them, you know, they asked me if no lawyer was okay, I'm like, do you know that history of canola oil and what canola and all that oil is Canadian oil. And it was originally Wow, fuel. And they took a I guess it's a grape seed. And they mark genetically modified it. And they made Canadian oil, canola. That's what it stands for. And somehow they figured out it's not immediately toxic to humans. But when you when you heat it, you know it's going to oxidize, and those are very high levels of omega six PUFA, P-U-F-A polyunsaturated fatty acids, and they damage the mitochondria, they clog up the whole system. So and and the corn soy oil, all the seed oils are processed oils, they is a type of fat, and your all your cells in your body are made from fat. So what ends up happening is it starts the cellular membrane, which is made of a fat, it starts to use those processed, corn and stuff like that become the membrane of yourself over time, because your body needs fats to build new cells. And if that's the only fat you're eating, then that's the only choice it has to use. The problem is those oxidize damaged fats then kind of damaged the cell membranes of those cells. I've heard and read it I heard in one of Dave Asprey's books he said it took about two and a half years to try to like change out those membranes. And you have to be clean for like two and a half years. And I think in some book, different dr. he was talking about it could take up to seven years to try the completely get rid of those seed oils out of your body.
Bridget Moroney 44:36
I would have to go back and read I guess you're probably referencing Headstrong because that was the one that are one of the ones I read from Dave. Oh, yes, it I love that book. Um, on that note, they're not necessarily something to avoid for but that's one of the like, even in a basic nutrition protocol, like balancing out your fats and making Sure. So you mentioned the Omega sixes. And I think a lot of people are familiar with Omega three. But that's the reason why people advocate so highly for omega three fatty acids is because they're, you know better for that they create a healthier cell membrane there, but they also have those anti inflammatory properties there. So
Amir Khan 45:20
You have to have a balance, because some people will overdo it on omega threes. And you have to be careful with a quality of Omega three, I try to tell people, if they can eat fresh fish, and make sure it's a good quality and try to eat the whole food. There's some controversy currently, I just saw recently in the past year or two about the quality of Omega three oils sold on the market, and some of them are oxidized and damaged. And what they're saying is, the way you're extracting these PUFAs, from seed oils, you're extracting Omega three from from seafoods is going to oxidize, as soon as you extract it out. If you ate corn, or if you ate a vegetable, without it extracted, you're getting some benefit from eating that vegetable. But when you take a vegetable oil, you extracted it from that thing. And now it oxidizes and creates damage in your system. So in the last year or two I've been reading is a similar situation with omega threes, where if you're extracting it from a source, unless the company you trusted, really, and they have a good process. But there's so many companies out there and you don't know what they're doing, what their extraction process, and what's the extracted, how are they making sure it's not oxidizing, they have a system where they can make sure it's not oxidized, that's great. And you need to have an Omega three to omega six ratio, there are some people who are just way too much Omega three, and that's causing problems. So always having a balance, like your body has this thing called homeostasis, it likes to be out of balance, you know, your blood pH, your body temperature, you know, your heart rate, all this stuff is regulated, it needs to be in certain limits. So you don't want to go you want to supplement with somethings, but just, you know, just know your limits and know where you're supposed to be at.
Bridget Moroney 47:12
No, absolutely. Um, and again, I think that's probably where people kind of cast a critical eye on on biohacking, or just anyone who's into supplementing because there are people who take it too far like looking at like, for example, minerals, you know, magnesium, selenium, you know, copper and things like that. These are all great things to have, and the body needs them. But it's very easy to I guess you could say overdose on them. And and so one thing in my opinion, I think is important for people to do is go get bloodwork first of all just to see if you're because like just don't take, you know, like, you know, and I guess that's something just to kind of keep in mind in general. Like we're throwing a couple of ideas out there. But at the end of the day, and I think this is the art of or this is the heart of biohacking is it we're all individual, right? Like, you know, we all have different biological needs and, and, and everything else like that. And so trying to figure out what your biology needs to, you know, work as optimally as possible is really, you know, I guess the root of of all of it, so I'm just because, yeah, omega threes, like to your point omega three is, is a is a good fat quote, you know, good fat to have in general. Like you mentioned, a lot of people get out of balance with it or whatever given you know, whatever their lifestyle and environment is, um, yeah,
Amir Khan 48:47
Cuz people discover supplements and they just tend to overdo it sometimes. I know I did in the past, just overdo things. And you brought a very good point about blood testing. So people ask me about supplements all the time. And it's like, okay, I'm in supplements is a controversial area where some people like, oh, just eat whole foods. And a lot of doctors will say, you don't need vitamins, you're just you know, you're just expensive urine. But Dave Asprey makes this point that if we lived 1000 years ago, where there was no pollution that air quality, water quality food quality, we didn't have as many toxins we're exposed to. So back then maybe the food quality was higher, and then you know, you don't need so many vitamins back then. But today, we're exposed to so many toxins, we're overloaded with things. So we do need supplementation, because we're, we're getting bombarded with plus food quality is really really poor. With the GMO mono cropping. The soil is not healthy anymore. It doesn't have vitamins and minerals. You've been using fertilizer for the last like 100 years or so. It's really just just destroyed the quality of the soil. And right now there's this whole research into like, you know, rebuilding the soil quality. I was having a conversation with a client the other day. I was like I remember as a kid when it rained. And I grew up in Jersey City in New Jersey. And when it rained, we saw worms come up from the ground, up over the sidewalk. Now it rains, I've not seen a worm in like 30 years. That's a good point. Yeah. So those worms were part of the soil quality of the, I guess the biome of the soil a that no longer exists to be used so much pesticides, fertilizers, and chemicals industrial south that our soil is dead, there's no life in the soil. So the fruits and vegetables don't really have the right vitamins and minerals. So But going back to the blood testing, getting your blood tested, because then you accurately can track. And that's part of biohacking the part maybe some people don't fully understand. The quantify quantified self, which is if you can measure and track it, you can change it. So having trackers having lab having a blood test, I've heard I think it was Dave Asprey first talk about this, that you're you are the CEO of your body and your doctor is a consultant, you can consult him on your health, and use his expertise, use his professional advice. But at the end of the day, you're responsible for you, and you got to make your decisions. And you can you know, follow the plan that doctor says, or you might look for a second opinion, a third opinion, you can do you know, read some books, do your own research, but you can definitely go as deep as you want. But you're ultimately in charge, but you need to be somewhat responsible in measuring and tracking your biology. So getting the lab tests, taking a look at them. You can get trackers now. So this one is a what is this, this is a bio strap. So you know Heart Rate Monitor HRV think this says SPO two and that has something on my ankle that tracks the steps. So then it gives you data. And then you can see what your sleep quality that which are exercises that you probably heard of the Oura ring that's really, really popular and it's very accurate. So the Oura ring is you wear the ring and it will do the same thing all tracks lead quality is going to track your SpO2 be able to maximize the track exercise, you can do all those things. And if you track and measure it, then you know where you're at. And it gives you really useful data. So just very, very recently, like three days ago, I was listening to a podcast. It was an interview with Dave Asprey. He talked about taking 10 milligrams of melatonin time release, I have not been doing that I take a micro dose of melatonin, I take point three grams. So normally you go to the drugstore, you'll see anywhere from one grams, three grams. But I read a study where the minimum effective dose was point three. So I've been just doing point three, and it's been working fine. But when he said 10 grams, I said, Alright, I have one bottle, that's three grams. So I took the three grams in for two nights and not simple at all, like my normal. So this all these devices track my sleep, it shows, okay, I slept, let's say seven or eight hours. And of that an hour to hour and a half is deep sleep. That's the restorative regenerative sleep that your body starts healing. But when I took three milligrams, it was showing my deep sleep went down to like, the first night, 30 minutes. The second night, the 15 minutes after eight hours. And I didn't feel so good the next day anyway. And then I knew right away. I'm not doing that again. So I stopped taking that supplement. And I went back to the point three milligrams supplement. And my deep sleep last night was back to hour and a half, one hour and 23 minutes deep sleep. How would I know that I took a supplement. I didn't know how it was going to change my biology. But that's evidence based data and N equals one thing.
Bridget Moroney 54:16
I was literally about to say that yeah. But there's value in that. I mean, absolutely. You know, I think I made a comment in the beginning like people like to point at, you know, studies or whatever that it's like, not clinically significant, but it's like okay, what is what could be more clinically significant in the context of one's own life but your own like you said N equals one experiment there. Yeah. Especially like Yeah, it's interesting about the melatonin again, that's like another supplement that it's generally recognized as safe and has all this evidence linked to helping people sleep and yeah, you mentioned people like Dave Asprey. Take 10 milligrams. I think the supplement that I take is like yours like it's like, point three And then there's some other things in there, like valerian root and five HTP, and everything else like that, that work for me to help calm my anxiety, but my wife will take it and she's just all out of sorts. And unfortunately, she doesn't track her sleep the way I do. But even just I think waking up, I like what you said, I think there is value in like having the specifics there. Because then you can pinpoint, like, Oh, I didn't sleep well, last night. And here's the reason why I was only in 15 minutes of deep sleep. But even just simply being like, I don't feel good doing this, like Well, that's, that's enough of a that's enough feedback to realize that you need to change, you know, change whatever it is that you're doing. And yeah, it's it's not all, you know, one size fits all here. I wanted to bring up so still, it's still talk talking about the inflammation, and you brought up the whole idea of so there's, there's good information, I want to I want to talk about cryotherapy. And here's the reason why because cryotherapy, I think is very popular, a lot of people do it biohackers non biohack. Like it's you know, there's, it's kind of gotten very popular over the past, I don't know, five, eight years here, like everything from like people going into the chambers to just people having buckets or barrels at their house and they just sit in cold water. And I know people do it for various reasons. But um, and one of them is for for pain management and inflammation reduction. But there was, there was one podcast I was listening to with a coach. He's a crossfit coach Ben Bergeron, and, and he's really the only one that I've I've heard make a case against, um, cryotherapy or cold therapy. But he was saying that in terms of athletic recovery or recovery from training and sport, it's not a good idea because of that, you know, good inflammation, and that when you see athletes in ice baths and things, it's not really helping their performance, or it's not improving their performance outside of the fact that they're just not feeling sore or like you're at a competition for the day, and it's really hot outside. So you're bringing your core temperature down. But his argument was, and again, this was just one person. And I think that's, you know, going back to the idea of people are going to disagree, but his whole argument was as far as recovery, from training and everything else like that to to not do ice baths and everything. So I was
Amir Khan 57:41
Yeah, that's actually found very recently did a study that doing cryotherapy immediately after strength training, anabolic type exercises negatively impacts recovery. So there is something to what he's saying likely point in other I've heard other doctors talk about it like Dr. Andrew Huberman. And it was another doctor that I heard it from. So what they're saying, we have to wait a little while, like a few hours after you've done your training, because you want that good inflammation. So cryotherapy, like you said, either an ice bath or a chamber which fills cools the air to like minus, you know, 200 300 degrees, something like that. And so it's very, very, very cold, which is very interesting, because I grew up in New York and New Jersey, you know, we have long winters and it really didn't like it, I actually left that area to come to Los Angeles because I didn't want to deal with the snow, ice and everything. And then I heard about this cryo stuff. And I'm like, I was not interested for many, many years. I was like not interested. But um, but I just just checked it kept coming up. I've seen it and you've probably heard of Wim Hof Wim Hof Method. But yeah, it's about the breathing in the cold therapy. Last year, it's like, alright, you know, and we tried it. And then I started with cold showers. So are you take a shower, your regular warm shower at the end, you turn off hot water is that the cold hit you in the face and chest for like, you know, a couple of seconds, and then you're done. So and then you work your way up. So I remember the first time I because I really am the person that like stayed under the sheet that they wanted to get out of bed. I'm always I was I used to be always cold. But since I started doing that it really radically changed the way my body reacts to heat and cold. So when I first time, I shut the hot water off. And I like already tense I knew I was gonna hit me and as soon as I hit needed, it just like walked out. I couldn't breathe. I was just like, shocked. And I was just like right away, you know, just shut off the water. I was like, and what that is your body or somebody that thinks is dying and is a fear and you know it's a unconscious fear and It's body's trying to protect itself. So So yeah, the subconscious routines, we talked about mitochondria being sensors, they're sensing the environment the whole time. So they can detect change in temperature, you know, all these signaling is happening. And you're, there's all sorts of biochemical neurochemical things that are happening. So when I repeated this thing over again, the next day, I added a kind of like, talk to myself self talk, like, I'm not going to die, I'm not going to die, I'm going to live, I'm going to live, it's okay. You won't die, just you know, it's okay. And then did it again, was a bit longer. And I just kept doing it. Now, I don't even bother turning the hot water on, I just turned cold, and it goes straight in cold, and no problems now, which is really crazy that I could do that. So something that happens, I train the brain, I'm not going to die, you're only in there for a couple of minutes with a cold shower, and exposure to cold on your face, especially your frontal lobe here and you're making the mitochondria increase, they will actually grow, there'll be more mitochondria, it will convert white fat to brown fat. And it's brown because there's more mitochondria in it. And the more mitochondria you have, the more energy you have. So I definitely felt that I'm definitely less inflammation and pain. But again, you don't want to do this right after exercise event, because you have that what's known as a hormetic stress, which is like a good stress to make you stronger. And that inflammation you need, so that other signals in your body like human growth hormone, and you know, the other body needs to react to start strong, your body needs to grow. But if you cut off the inflammation, then you're not gonna, you're dampening the healing effect. And so they're saying that it's not a good idea after exercise to do cryotherapy. And the cold shower thing is one thing that's like step one, then you got ice baths, right? For ice baths are really key, I think the cold chambers number two, because you only like a minute or two minutes. And then three is the ice baths where it is a tub full of ice. And I have not done that yet. But I did do an ICE chamber, or you walk in if you felt nitrogen gas, and the cool the air temperature down to minus 200 or 300, something like that. You're only in there for a minute or two. But that extreme cold exposure. It's interesting again, your brain can't figure out what's going on in the mitochondria are sensing that this is a strange kind of cold because it's not a normal cold, like outside walking in the snow without a jacket. Like let's say it was 10 degrees outside, I've done that, you know, even the car ran to my car, get something run back in and it's cold, but minus 200 minus 300. Your brain has no sense of what is happening literally thinks you're going to die. It pulls all the blood away from your skin towards the internal organs to try to save you, all these neuro chemicals are being dumped endorphins and everything. And again, it's like a minute or two some people can stay a little bit longer, but you know, not too long. You come out you just feel high, you feel great. Kind of all those endorphins energize into the whole day you feel like, just amazing. I do like cryotherapy for those reasons.
Bridget Moroney 1:03:30
Where it was you said that was like an ice chamber like was that in LA? Or is that like are their
Amir Khan 1:03:37
Upgrade labs? That's one of the Dave Asprey's companies, man, they have a full head to toe. So I think the older ones, it was like below your neck. Yes. And they use a nitrogen gas. I think the nitrogen gas kind of surrounded you, because you don't want to touch nitrogen gas. You know, you don't want frost bite. And you have to wear gloves and you have to wear socks or something like that. In the old ones. The new ones what they do they still using nitrogen, but they're cooling the air. So it's, it's like, almost like you're walking into a sauna type of thing. And you close the door and you're completely inside of this box. And then they cool the air down to like minus 200 300. Wherever it gets into. You're in there for like a minute or two.
Bridget Moroney 1:04:23
Speaking of upgrade labs and Dave Asprey, have you checked out his or the was it 40 years of Zen,
Amir Khan 1:04:31
So I've not personally been to 40 years of Zen, but it's definitely on my bucket list to do lists that I want to go in. I have a lot of friends who have been there and done it. And basically it was the life changing experience. For those who are not familiar with 40 years of Zen. It's basically what he did was he studied a Zen monk, and they I guess took brainwaves and they kind of measure when he's in a meditative state, and then they can replicate that state that into a person within like five days or a week and I can give you the Zen meditation of a monk who has been studying for 40 years in like a week. And people who come back from 40 years of Zen that one week because they had to go, I think somewhere in Seattle had to go like stay there to get for you, to give you like supplements, they give you everything, to optimize that experience to really kind of reboot the brain and get everything functioning properly. So this is all biofeedback, neurofeedback, it's neuroscientists hear that there's a doctors and nurses, they hook up the electrodes to your head, and then there's a computer monitoring, and then they make you go through these different exercises, and they're testing how you react, you can then control what you're feeling or doing or thinking. And then after that one week, it's like your whole neurology has been rebooted and reset. And then what people say when they come out of there, they're like, ultra focused, that that little voice in their head that just never shuts off. It's like silence, we talk in meditation, or in coaching a lot about being present. And part of that is just, you know, that quiet mind, which is very difficult because we have this thing called the The all ready always thinking mind, there's always going to anxiousness. You know what happened in the past, what's happening in the future, and this just doesn't stop. And if that can just put silence, and you become present and aware. And from aware presence, then you act. It is a totally different, you know, mode of like, how you work, how you deal with your family, how you speak. And, you know, it's, and when I talk to people who came back from there, they are very, very conscious that I knew them before, where they were extremely kinda, you know, anxious and everything and busy. Yeah, they just like kind of like, just calm. It's like, oh, wow, I'm like, that's, I see a difference. Physical and mental difference.
Bridget Moroney 1:07:15
Yeah. It's like being more responsive than than reactive. Yeah. And yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, I love hearing that like, No, I've it's definitely 40 years of Zen is definitely on my bucket list, too. And I think even more so now, just hearing you talk about like those testimonies, testimonials from your friends. They're like, I knew about it before. But yeah, it's, I don't know.
Amir Khan 1:07:44
Yeah, the cost is very high. But you know, you have to go there, you have to stay there. They have room and board to feed you and everything. Yep. That's everything you can do now. And you're probably familiar with this, like the HeartMath Institute. It has a little device that you can check your HRV and do some breathing meditation techniques, that can also put you in that calm, relaxed state. They call it a cohesiveness. Are you familiar with the Heart Institute?
Bridget Moroney 1:08:14
I have I have the app and and, and use it. Yeah. So
Amir Khan 1:08:19
Inner balance is a device. And it's it's cheap. I think that under $100. And you can connect it to an iPhone or Android phone and just follow following along, you clip something into your ear or your finger. And it's detecting your HRV heart rate variability. So you have your heart beat. So if it's 60 beats per minute, and then you have HRV heart rate variability, which is the timing in between the beats, the more variation between the timing between the beats, the healthier you are, if you're completely in focus, and you're in flow state, you're your chart, your heart waves match up with your brainwaves. They're both in sync. And that's when you're in flow, that's optimally when you're working or doing something in presence. That's where you want to be at. And then there are times you want to be out of flow. I don't want to go in and out. And
Bridget Moroney 1:09:11
I want to do more with Heart Math. Just you know, I guess this is kind of like a little tangent there, like my own personal certifications, because HRV is definitely something that a lot of people like you're talking about wearables I don't know if you've ever heard of the Whoop, bracelets. Yeah, so that's something that's you know, it's very popular, especially in the like the CrossFit well they were a sponsor at one point. So I think people are becoming more aware of of HRV and
Amir Khan 1:09:44
Athletes HRV for athletes is very, very important because it didn't tell them the exactly how they're recovering. Because then you will know try to hit it really, really hard today or if I just kind of take it a little bit easier on my workout today because the HRV As part of your, so you have your autonomic nervous system and then the world sorry, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, when you're in sympathetic, you're in fight and flight. And when you're parasympathetic, you're in rest and recovery. So HRV is a good indication that if your HRV is not doing well, then you're in fight and flight, your body is activated, and you want to take it easy that day. And if your body's in parasympathetic, then your body then is in rest and digest and you know, relax mode, and so it's recovering. So you kind of get an idea, like where you should be at. And you know, this is interesting as a massage therapist, I noticed this a lot. So massage helps people who are high strung and in sympathetic fight and flight mode, almost instantly after that one hour session drop into parasympathetic, what happens is you start hearing the clients or customers are stomach started growling, and I'm so sorry, you know, that's my stomach or whatever. I'm like, That's okay. Because that's your digestion kicking in now. Because you're so relaxed. And when they get off the table, they're kinda like a little like woozy, a little like kind of sleepy headed, because their body went into parasympathetic. Their digestion started up they're feeling a little bit sleepy. They're a little lightheaded. Because we got them from that high strung down to a rest mode.
Bridget Moroney 1:11:28
It's interesting. I think a lot of people are familiar with the the phrase fight or flight there with the the sympathetic Fight, fight fight or flight. I think I said fright. Yeah, it could Yeah, exactly. Well, there's there's like, what there's there's four, right? There's like freeze fight. Yeah, freeze fight flight. And I feel I forget what the fourth one is. Maybe it's like, I'll have to go back and look what
Amir Khan 1:11:56
It is interesting, you talked about fright, which is fear. And when you're in sympathetic, fight, flight, freeze, fear mode, your immune system shuts down for several hours, and you are more likely to catch something in that time. So there's a virus, bug, whatever is going around, your immune system is not prepared to fight against it's super important to understand sympathetic, parasympathetic, it's interesting with fear. Because, you know, last couple of years, there was a lot of fear mongering, but you know, that fear and the fear porn that was being thrown out there in the media, you put everyone in a heightened state of fear, you took the sympathetic nervous system, skyrocketed it up. And it really lowered people's immune system. So people have to kind of understand like, learn how to, like, you know, take precautions, but learn how to like, relax, also, because the more you're in fear mode, you're shutting off your immune system. And do you know Dr. Bruce Lipton? I don't believe so. So Dr. Bruce Lipton is one of the early proponents of epigenetics. And he was doing a lot of research with stem cells. And he discovered that if you take identical cells, you can clone cells, they're all identical and put them in different environments, the cells on different properties, depending on what environment they put him in, there were clothes that were identical cells of each other, if so, his idea was that your environment influences the cell and it changes with the cell becomes. So if you're in this stress response, your cells are reacting to environment. So you have to be very protective in your environment.
Bridget Moroney 1:13:41
You mentioned epigenetics, but that's, you know, like, what when people talk about, like, their, their genes and everything, it's like, oh, well, you know, I have like, whatever, certain genes for disease or certain genes for what I like, yes, but you know, as you're saying, like, those genes need to express themselves and given depending on what the environment is, they can either be turned on or turned off there. So I guess kind of the the case in point like yeah, really focusing on that parasympathetic state is is so important for just just health in general. Like we said, you know, athlete recovery, like, you know, your immune system, like I was talking to someone the other day and like athletes are always ill because, you know, just training alone, you know, forget about just, like don't even like, you know, not not to mention just the stress or the psychological stress of competition, but just physically physiologically the stress that they put themselves through through training does deplete that but I was gonna say really quick, you were talking about people on your on the massage table and their stomach start growling. And it's so true because like, like, like you said, your example their, their their their digestion tract. You You know, their digestive processes start to kind of come back online and but you even see this, you know, when people are highly stressed, this is why they maybe have gastrointestinal issues there. Or if you've ever seen people who are going through periods of chronic high stress, they may lose a lot of weight because they're not eating because again, that that rest and digest is turned off for them. And so you know, they're not either either it's malabsorption, through, you know, gastrointestinal distress, or they're just simply not eating because that part of their body is just not activated. So,
Amir Khan 1:15:42
Yeah, absolutely. Like, you hear terms like butterflies in your stomach or your stomach's in knots, you're, you're in a sympathetic state, because your parasympathetic, the rest and digest digestion is shut off. Because you're in a heightened state of, you know, anxiety, nervousness your body, when the body's preparing is, it's a flight flight, hide freeze, you know, you're trying to just run away and try to protect yourself. It was a evolutionary system designed because, you know, when our ancient ancestors were living, we were in those heightened states, because we had to be careful of like, lions and tigers and bears living in the forest, right? And then wars and things that were happening. So now, in modern society, we don't really worry about those things from nature attacking us. So we replaced it with work or family. And so those systems are still in us, and they're just reacting to different things. So it's like, when you're at that heightened state of fear, it's the same fear like a tiger is going to eat you. So that's what I'd be, you know, aware of that, are you really in danger of becoming fully present and aware, and it was like the thing with a cold shower. So these are the nice things about doing things that are uncomfortable, but you're in control of that. I made a choice to do that cold shower thing. And it was doing something uncomfortable. It was a reason why I did it. Because I was doing a course in transformation coaching. It was Jim Fortin's transformation coaching program. And Jim Fortin says you have to get comfortable doing the uncomfortable. The other thing he said was transformation does not tolerate mediocrity. So the bigger the transformation you're looking for, like you gotta like, actually choose to do things differently. So that was my challenge, because I hated the cold so much. And I was like, I'm going to do things differently. And I'm gonna choose to do something that's uncomfortable, but I can control the discomfort, right? And it was very uncomfortable, like, but I knew I was not going to die. That's I kept thinking, I'm not gonna die. You know, it's not that cold. And it's only for a couple of seconds. It's not like the, you know, we're not talking about you know, going into an ice lake in submerging yourself for like, 20 minutes. Some people do that. Yes, some people do that once you get build up to it and get to it. And you want to have enough mitochondria in your body and have enough ah, you know, gradually get up there. Like Wim Hof was famous. He has a world record in being able to do that. But he's been working on it for years.
Bridget Moroney 1:18:12
Yeah, please don't do that like your first try. Anyone listening.
Amir Khan 1:18:16
Yeah disclaimer. Yeah, that's a good disclaimer for all biohacking. Don't jump into things too fast, too soon. And they, you know, when you're doing N equals one experiments, you want to take it easy and see how you react to it and then gradually go up. You're probably very familiar this. You remember the first time you took MCT oil. So MCT oil, for those who don't know, is an extract from coconut oil, and it's a medium chain, medium chain triglycerides. And if you're not used to eating fat, if you take too much, what Dave Asprey calls disaster pain, yeah, you can have a lot of digestive problems because your body just not used to those fats. Maybe you don't have enough enzymes there you have some gut issues, always recommended to take less like take up half a teaspoon just to test it out and gradually go up. So cool therapy, whatever you're doing any biohacking that you're doing anything that you're going to test, you know, even I showed you some of these things, you know, don't put your whole body weight onto this. If you've never did it before.
Bridget Moroney 1:19:21
Especially you're psoas that's yeah.
Amir Khan 1:19:24
On your psoas. So as so it's, in general, good disclaimer, start slow and easy, and then gradually work up your tolerance. One way with supplementation that we were taught in the HPI human potential Institute, was when you're doing a supplement, like let's say vitamin C, start with the recommended dose, it says one or two, and then the next couple of days try a little bit more try add another one, right three. And then if you do fine then the next day, try four and if you feel fine, no issues, no problems, then the next say try five, and then still have no digestive issue then try six. But if you tried six and you now you're having digestion problems and you're feeling like something's wrong, then go back to five. That's one way you can find what you're tolerance is to that vitamin. So you could do that with vitamin C, magnesium. So there's some vitamins you can do that with, there's some vitamins you should not do that way. There's some vitamins that like maybe vitamin A's and other vitamins that are not that great. Vitamin A is fat soluble, vitamin C, water soluble, so kind of flush right out. So the vitamins that are fat soluble, like vitamin A vitamin D, you have to be a little bit more careful with those vitamins because they kind of stay with you. Um, so yeah, in biohacking in general take it slow and easy to really look into it. Or find a coach, like go to the human potential Institute and find someone that you're you resonate with, and or another health coach doesn't have to be human potential Institute, and work with a professional work with a functional medicine doctor, there's another thing I tell people, you have your medical doctor, who is basically just a clinician, a technician, you went to medical school, graduated, working for some hospital, and he's making a salary, I don't want to blame them too much, because they're so busy, they have such crazy caseload, they don't have the time they drowning in patients, they don't really have the time. But then you have a functional medicine doctor, that after medical school, he continued education and really went into systems thinking and tried to look into prevention and looking for the root and source of the problem. Typically, functional medicine doctors are not going to take medical insurance, they might provide you a super bill that you can submit to the insurance company and maybe get something back. But working with a functional medicine doctor, for prevention and for finding the root cause of a problem is I say super important. Go down that road, so that you can solve these issues working with a doctor specializes in that type of medicine.
Bridget Moroney 1:22:08
There's there's there's a lot of value to be had from that. I like how we came full circle to as you mentioned systems here kind of going back to your background. Is there any other sort of we talked about the kind of the the self therapies, we talked a little bit about inflammation, and we got into we didn't say this explicitly, but when we were talking about sympathetic versus parasympathetic, that was basically stress response, which, you know, again, can go into that, that pain management. I mean, there's quite literally a mindfulness based stress reduction course out there were people who are in like actual physical pain, it's not just the emotional pain. And I know that's a topic for another day. But stress does play a role into pain and processing in the body. But I guess with all of that said, Is there is there any other sort of last minute kind of burning pieces of advice or bio hacks that that you feel like would be a value or something that we should bring up? So let's,
Amir Khan 1:23:11
I have a little list here. So let's go really fast. Maybe you just go like, you know, really quick what we can help with. So let's do you like improved sleep. So we talked about a little bit about melatonin, we didn't get too much into it, but like getting some I got three of them here, right? You have these glasses that you can wear an hour or two before bedtime. This was like the most extreme version. So that will help your body get into parasympathetic and rest mode because it's blocking the blue lights that are turning the signals on to keep you awake. If you want deep sleep, and you don't want to take melatonin, you can just wear this an hour before bed and block all the bad light. Those are the True Dark glasses. Yeah, this particular brand. And this particular brand with this extreme red when you put these on, look like a superhero. The only issue with this is that it really blocks a lot of light. So there's anything like if you're looking at your your cell phone and there's anything red on your screen, you're not going to see it something could become invisible, because if they're color red, you're not going to be able to see it. So it's interesting. But yeah, you don't wear these all day you wear them about a half hour or an hour or two before going to bed. Let's see this go the next thing. So for some people like you were talking about stress, hypnotherapy, some people don't know this. It is and hypnotherapy was something that was recommended by the American Medical Association in the 19. I don't know what it was a long time ago. I don't know what the 60s or 70s. But at some point, there was some political thing and they stopped recommending it. And there was actually a point where they wanted every medical doctor to learn hypnotherapy to work with and then I don't know what happened again, maybe it was political or whatever and they removed it. Mmm hypnotherapy, subconscious reprogramming, there's a doctor Dr. Sarno, who talks about healing back pain, and he had a lot of great results doing a type of meditation that deals with chronic pain. And that was very a stand up desk people who work a lot. So this one I'm using right now is a stand up desk, you want to, you know, something that goes up and down. Yes, I got you're always sitting sitting down. Intention setting we talked about that. You really have to believe that you can heal and you have a purpose to heal. So that one client I had that that was with the left side atrophy and they told him he would. They didn't know how he was walking, he told me a similar story where he was driving a manual clutch transmission. So getting the shifting gears and left foot has to clutch. And he decided that recently to switch it to an automatic car, because he thought by pressing with his left leg and clutching that maybe it was hurting his back or something like that. He wasn't sure. So he just switched. He told me now his left leg is getting weaker. And I told him, Well, you're not you're using that left leg to clutch. So you gave it a reason to do something. Now it has nothing to do. So now it's getting weaker. So if you want to heal something, you have to have a reason and a purpose. And let me tell you another story, a personal story, I was working out I was doing a push with resistance bands and a steel bar, that's the bar, and the bar slipped, and it caught my thumb. And my thumb swelled up, it was like double the size of the other other thumb, and I couldn't touch my fingers. And I had to got to work three days later and had a full day. Clients all day. And I'm like, you know, I didn't know if I broke it or not and I couldn't really move it and I'm like, I need to heal. I put an intention out there like I need to heal in three days because I'm not canceling appointments. And then you know, I have all these things, I put a red light on it and no PMF and all these things I was putting on there, put CBD and intention and went to sleep at night. And I'd said you know, just whatever you believe in whatever your spirituality is, I'm not religious, but you know, I believe in some higher consciousness, divine mind, internet Spirit, God, whatever you want to call some higher thing or your heart, your Higher Self, your soul, whatever you want to call upon. Say I said, I need this to heal. And I was just imagining, visualizing and feeling like healing elements going in there. Like your body can produce human growth hormone your body can produce stem cells and like just send it send everything there, fix it in three days. And the next day, I felt better. And then two days later, I was able to touch my finger. And then on the third day, when I had to work, I was able to move, move it enough where I can work. And then within a week, it was like 80% better. And within two weeks, it was like 100% better. And there's no swelling, full function. As a matter of fact, if you're better than before I heard it, because you know, now that your intention is to heal. Your body's just kept sending stuff to it. And yeah, I actually feel better than before I heard it. So intention setting. And let's see. Ah, I think we can save some of this for later we covered a lot. Yeah, I think that's that's about all I wanted to cover today.
Bridget Moroney 1:28:26
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for for being here today. Amir. Um really quick. So um, so a couple of things I we talked about a lot of things and I will do my best to put as many links in the show notes as possible for people who are looking for some of the stuff we've talked about. But more importantly, one of the most important links I'll put in my my show notes is how to connect with Amir so um, what as far as like your website, social media
Amir Khan 1:28:59
So my website is you XPlife.com And Q is quantify X is expand and P is performance. So you want to quantify when expand and want to perform, and so QXPlife.com They can go there, they can sign up for the newsletter, and I am going to be launching a course to teach the basics of health and biohacking so that things if you're really busy, just don't have time, because I really like to work with busy people, like executives, entrepreneurs, CEOs, or just professionals and managers that they're working like 60 plus hours per week. They don't have time. And they're trying to find what we call hack bio hacks. How can I get into better health? Because they need a solution now, like we talked about a lot of different things, and there's so much you can do. And there's so much organization of this stuff and there's so much time and there's only so much time you have so we'll be leading this four week course that will kind of simplify things, take things a step down, give you a result, at the end of four weeks, have more energy, possibly weight loss if that's one of your goals. But my focus is getting you towards the trending in better health and quantifying it. That's why have a QXP, you want to quantify it and measure it somehow, that there was you before and the you now right the one that your desired results. So you have your current reality and a desired reality. So you want to move into this more optimal self. And once you achieve that optimal self, and you feel better, and you're like, oh, that made a difference. And then it will really get you motivated and enthusiastic and doing more. And there's, there's so much. You know, if we had another two hours, we can go really deep. We're gonna cut this off today. That's why there's a course try to like simplify things and break it down and make it more accessible. And some of these technologies because you can go crazy with it, there are things out there that are like 50,000 100,000. It's like, well, what about the rest of us? Things you can do now, that's acceptable, that might be free couple of bucks that you can afford, and doesn't take your time, two biggest thing I hear is I don't have time, and I don't have energy. So the two biggest things I hear, so I was like, Alright, how can we show you with the least amount of time while increasing your energy? And, you know, your you know, the minimum effective dose that gives you results? So yeah, you can just go to QXPlife.com. And find me there. And I my name isyou Amir Khan, and you can say Amir hook me up.
Bridget Moroney 1:31:46
Awesome. Yeah, that's so exciting. And I'll just kind of say really quickly, like, I love the fact that you're just looking at, like, you mentioned, minimal effective dose, because I think what people don't realize is that it can be just like, just like, the very simplest hacks, you know, very simply, implemented with the most efficiency can have, like the most profound effect on people's lives. So I'm, I'm so excited that you're you're launching this program, and you're gonna be sharing it with so many people who really do need it.
Amir Khan 1:32:20
Yeah. If you Yeah, awesome.
Bridget Moroney 1:32:23
Awesome. Well, anything else to say before we sign off for today, or
Amir Khan 1:32:28
I'm just wishing everyone peace and love and just remember, you know, we're all here to grow and expand together. And there's a lot of stuff that's going on the outside right now, in the external world, and you want to just be part of the solution. And really try to be present and aware. And you can't really control other people do, the only thing you can do is control what you do. So be mindful of the choices you're making, starting from now.
Bridget Moroney 1:33:05
And I could not have said that better myself. So thank you so much again, Amir. It's truly been a pleasure. And it's been so much fun. And I'm sending you so much gratitude and appreciation. And we'll speak soon.
Amir Khan 1:33:22
Oh, thank you, Bridget it was a real pleasure. Thank you.
Bridget Moroney 1:33:24
Thank you. Alright, that's all for today's show. Thank you so much again, for listening. And be sure to head over to aspiretocoaching.com/podcast, check out the show notes for today's episode. There, you'll find some of the links we've mentioned on today's podcast, as well as some of the previous episodes we've done. And while you're there, please make sure you sign up for our show updates. I am always updating the show and bringing in bonus content. So you do not want to miss out on any of that. One last thing. If you loved this episode, and you think a friend would really enjoy it as well. Grab the link and share it out for me please. It truly does help spread the word of this podcast and the topics that we discussed on our episodes. And at the end of the day, my goal is to empower as many people on their performance journey as possible. Thank you all so much again, and we'll see you next time.