Coming up next on PassionStruck.

When you solve the problem, where are you going to get food from? The whole keto-calorie phenomenon is gone. You and I don't need to hunt for our food. You can go to McDonald's and for 6, 7, 8 bucks, you can get 3,800 calories in one meal. That trigger to keep eating, now it's going full circle. Now it's fully triggered. And so the mechanism to actually keep eating is now working to keep eating. So you have an obese culture. And you and I both know that being over in this country is epidemic. Type 2 diabetes is epidemic. The rise of cancer among younger people now is baffling. The weak immune systems that people have, the high amount of neuroinflammatory problems that we suffer from. And a lot of it is the overconsumption of really crappy food all day long.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turned their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 454 of Passion struck, consistently ranked as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and most importantly, to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.

We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient playlist that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to spotify or passion struck. Com/starterpacks to get started. I want to take a moment to honor someone very special to me, my sister, Caroleyn Miles. Many of you have heard me talk about Caroleyn brave battle with pancreatic cancer. Caroleyn was not only a tremendous source of inspiration and strength for everyone who knew her, but she also taught us the profound importance of living each day with courage and intention, even in the face of life's toughest challenges. Today, as we dive into our discussion, let's carry forward her indomitable spirit and remember the lasting impact she has left on our lives. I have another announcement. I'm so excited to announce that PassionStruck won the gold medal at the Non-Fiction Book Awards and is also on the shortlist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. Additionally, this past week, we also launched the audiobook version. You can find it on the passion struck website, Amazon, or wherever you purchase books.

In case you missed them, we had three phenomenal interviews from last week. The first was with Paul Rabel, known as the Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretsky of Lacrosse, and the co founder of the Premier Lacrosse League. In this episode, Paul dives into his new book, The Way of the Champion, where he shares the essential philosophies and practices that helped him reach the pinnacle of his sport and beyond. He'll discuss the wisdom glean from icons like Bill Belichick and Steph Curry, and how these lessons can be applied not just in sports, but in every walk of life. A second interview with Dr. Jim Dottie, a renowned neurosurgeon and best-selling author, explored the intersection of neuroscience and compassion, and we discussed how our brains and hearts can be trained to heal not only ourselves, but the world around us. Lastly, I interviewed Mimi Bouchard, a Trailblazer in the wellness industry and the visionary behind the innovative Superhuman app. In this episode, Mimi shares her secrets on transforming your life through mindfulness, self-discipline, and embracing a lifestyle that aligns with your deepest desires. If you liked any of those previous episodes or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review.

They go such a long way in strengthening the passion-struct community where we can help more people create intentional lives. And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today, we are diving deep into the realms of health, longevity, and the art of aging gracefully with none other than my friend, Oz Garcia, a trailblazer in nutritional science and revered authority on healthy aging. Oz has spent decades advising celebrities, Fortune 100 CEOs, and the elite on wellness strategies that not only prolong life, but enhance its quality. From his early days in photography to becoming a leading advocate for proactive health management, Oz's journey is a testament to the transformative power of nutrition and lifestyle. In today's conversation, we'll explore a range of fascinating topics. Oz's personal health challenges that inspired his journey into nutrition. Insights from his recent trip to Costa Rica, where he led a men's retreat focused on digital detox and reconnecting with nature. The critical role of dietary and lifestyle choices in preventing metabolic dysfunction and chronic illness. The future of health care, emphasizing behavior change over reactive treatments. Practical strategies for enhancing metabolic performance, including the role of fasting and the benefits of other therapies.

Oz will also share his thoughts on how modern lifestyles contribute to chronic stress and overall health degradation. And he'll provide actionable tips for listeners looking to optimize their health and longevity starting today. So whether you're a longtime health enthusiast or just starting your wellness journey, this episode is packed with invaluable insights that could change the way you think about aging, health, and living a life full of vitality. Stay tuned as we unravel the secrets to a healthier, more vibrant life with Oz Garcia. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored passion struck community to bring to you my friend, Oz Garcia. Welcome, Oz.

Jon, I'm delighted. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks, man.

Oz, I'm going to start out. You and I met in Miami at Jim Kwik's book launch. I know on this show, we have a lot of fans of Jim Kwik. How did you first meet Jim?

Jim and I were both on a lecture tour for Mindvalley in, I think it was 2016 or 2017, we were both on the main stage in Sardinia for a big Mind Valley event. Him and I just struck up a great friendship there. And to this day, we love each other. Jimmy turned out to be one of the more remarkable people that spoke at Mind Valley, just very much lammed on to me, like what I was talking about. So it blossomed into this friendship.

When I was interviewing Jim and we were talking about his backstory about the boy with the broken brain, I said, Jim, I can actually relate exactly to what you went through, because when I was five years old, I got pushed from behind playing tag and was thrust into our basement window and also had a traumatic brain injury that caused a whole bunch of things. And he said, Do you ever talk about it publicly? And up until that point, I had never talked about it. And he goes, You should incorporate it. So he and I have that in common. An unfortunate event. Yes.

But obviously in your lifetime, as you're going on, how did you deal with it? I'm curious.

Initially, it was really tough. I don't really remember the incident too much. What I remember are the ramifications from it, especially the teasing and bullying that I had from kids because it actually caused everything from migraines to speech impediments to cognitive issues. I developed an auditory processing disorder, and probably the most weird complication was it caused ampliopia in my one eye as a result of it. So here I am, wearing a patch, can't speak the way I used to, can't understand the way people are thinking, can't understand how the teacher teaching me. And so it caused me to just go into this shell of who I was, and kids just started teasing. Working through that over time really taught me that we do have free choice, and we can either sit in our predicaments or we can choose to get out of them. That's correct. Took me a long time, but I completely relate to what he felt and what he went through. To me, it's such a profound opportunity every time I get to talk to him because I feel like we're kindred spirits.

That's terrific. It is inspiring that he went from being bullied in the same manner that you're describing, having had such a deficiency-causing event, where he had the impact to his head. And now he's this expert and leading authority on thinking, memory. Whenever I spend time with Jim, and we do that often enough, if he's got a little break, he's got a book he's reading, he's constantly reading. It's just amazing. And that also triggered for me, after I was really ill with COVID, we'll probably get to that at some point, the love of reading all over again, because I just also decided to read after that. And it was like, same thing, starting with, could I read five pages a day? Until I could go through 40, 50 per day, which is pretty much what I do now. So great admiration for Jim.

Yeah. One of my favorite sayings that he has is, The only difference between someone who's literate and someone who's not is that they read. Exactly. It's amazing to me how few people read these days.

It is. It's tragic. And we may touch on that during our conversation.

So, Oz, I understand you just returned from Costa Rica, supporting a men's retreat in Digital Detox. Can you tell us about it?

I'm partners with a gentleman named Ben Lee. He lives in Santa Teresa, which is on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. It's absolutely gorgeous, like paradise on and I have done two men's retreats now. I'll just give you the outline of it really quickly, John. It's about 15 men, and we let them self-select. Pretty much, we're looking for individuals that are interested in transformation, making a difference in the world, are deeply embedded into the marketplace. A lot of digital agency work, leaders in artificial intelligence, so on. That was the group. Age range, I'd say was about early '30s into mid '30s '60s. So fascinating group of men overall. What we did is we spent a week teaching them how to get off the hedonic treadmill that so many of us are on. So could we get them off their cell phones? Could we get them to take breaks from their laptops? What is it that we could do so that they would reconnect back with nature? And one of the things to the point of digital detox was we actually had a class, a wood carving class, where everybody, all the men, needed to actually build these little wood boxes themselves.

We had to saw the wood. Even though I was one of the co-leaders, I participated in it also. We made our boxes, and then you put your phone in there closing, you put a little lock on it, and you had to see these guys lose their shit over the first day, the second day, the third day, coming around, soup and souping, seeing if they could get the keys to get into their phone It's crazy. That being said, that was part of how do you reconnect with nature. Every morning, we get up around 6:00 AM surfing. Then there were activities every single day, from mindfulness meditation to learning how to box with this tremendous mixed martial artist that came and coached with us. I found out that I need to really up my game in terms of being fit. When you're working with some guy who knows a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and all sorts of other martial arts, and you can just flick his finger and you go flying, it's like, okay. Every man had to box with him for 20 minutes. It was on the beach, and I would hit the ground every 20 seconds. I'm like, down.

He's like, get up, Garcia. We went through this ritual. It was just remarkable. We had a plant medicine ceremony also, which is beautiful. We went up to a Zen Monastery up in the rainforest. To Have men or anybody actually contemplate their lives away from the highly urbanized environments that were typically in China and connect in this manner was breathtaking.

Yeah, it sounded like just a phenomenal opportunity for those who got to participate. I was jealous I wasn't there myself.

Are you coming next time?

It's interesting. I don't know if you know who Dr. Gloria Mark is. She's a professor at University of Irvine out in California. She had this book called Attention Span. I interviewed her a couple of years ago for it, and it's just amazing. Her research has found that over the course of the past 10 years, our attention span has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes down to 45 seconds. Oh, I believe it. Because we're so distracted.

Sure. It's not unusual. I found myself doing that, too. You have your laptop, you have your cell phone, you have your iPad, and then I got a book going. Maybe at one point, I would also, when I had a TV in my apartment, which I no longer do, you got that going on. It's just crazy. There was a point where when I used to do meditation, where I would meditate, I get up and I'd have CNN playing in the background or Morning Joe. I thought to myself, Okay, this is really really stupid. But what am I doing, splitting my attention in this manner? She's correct. We find that to be much more of a serious problem. I I know you would agree within the younger generation, where you're born into a world where you already have cell phones as an integral part of your epigenetic environment. I'm watching grown men, including myself, go through withdrawals. We only had cell phones starting what? 25, 30 years ago? So we're going through withdrawals. I can only imagine what it's like to be constantly having to reference this thing and how it does compartmentalize your ability to be rational and pay attention.

Yeah. What I think a lot of people are living today is what I equate to a pinball life. It's as if we are that pinball and we're unintentionally just bouncing off all the distractions that are around us instead of taking charge of creating a healthy lifestyle for ourselves.

That's correct. No question about it. And nobody really gives that thoughtfulness to it. No, you're going to ask me about that, too.

Yeah. So for those who don't know you or may know you as the health and wellness expert that you are today, you actually started your career as a photographer, aiming to capture the essence of models and celebrities. But it caused you to live an unhealthy lifestyle at that time. What caused you to realize at that critical point, the importance of nutrition?

Believe it or not, I got on this path in the 1970s, so a lot of listeners weren't even born yet. I got somehow interested in the Human Potential Movement, which is just beginning to get into the world. The work of Wernherr Hart, he created a body of work called YES Training, which many people would now recognize as the landmark forum. Just like many people from my generation that wanted to exit being a hippie in that lifestyle, I think that the Human Potential Movement, a lot of it was launched out of Eslan There was just a lot of work going on about how to be a better human back then. The origins, I'm screaming. There was just so much where group therapy had just been invented. If you can get this, nobody does that anymore. But back then, these were all the big things that were happening. I'd read about the YES training, and I did it. I came out of there no longer thinking that I was a victim. It was just early in the 1970s. I think I did the I had the best training in January '72. So when I came out of the training, I just had this tremendous sense of curiosity that was triggered.

If I could do four days with 300 people, and we're doing anything from final screaming to visualization, what else don't I know that I don't know that could possibly have an impact on quality of life? My thinking, and already the conversations, which eventually have evolved into biohacking, were beginning. So there was a terrific book that came out at the time The Power of Mind, and it talked about many of these different workshops that were originating back then. So that got me real interested in why was I smoking a pack of cigarettes a day? Everybody smoked back then, and I would literally light up after I'd go for a run. One day it occurred to me to go for a run around the reservoir, and I thought, Wow, this is really terrific. I'd heard about running, but all the runners would meet at the reservoir and send to park afterwards, light up a marble, red and go, That was really a great run. We Let's meet up tomorrow and do it together. That was how bit by bit, I began to question everything. Why am I smoking this? There were three health food sources in New York back then.

There was Planet Earth, Everything Natural, and Brownies. Whole Foods was decades away. Not even the neighborhood, Korean markets exist. You get fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. That triggered everything, doing the YES training, questioning smoking. William Duffy was a very well-known journalist at the time, and he wrote a book called Sugar Blues. I read and I thought, Oh, my God, what is this? So Sugar Blues triggered me to question the amount of sugar and coffee that I consumed and refined flour products. And that then began to trigger one other event after another. I was a photographer back then, you're right. And I was freelancing also before I got really deeply involved in fashion photography. And I was asked to do a portrait for New York magazine for a physicist back then Fritz Chuck Capra. He had written a book about quantum health or the quantum mind or some stuff like that. He was speaking at a place called the East West Center for Holistic Health. I go up there with my camera and I see Fritz talking. I go in, I take the portrait, shake his hand, and then I'm walking around East West.

There are signs in there. This is on Broadway in 20th Street, if I'm not mistaken at the time. One sign said acupuncture, another one said flotation tanks, another said herbal remedies. I'm like, What is this? What is this? I stuck around. I kept going back for classes. Everything kept moving me towards being a more conscious human being.

Well, it's so interesting because now all those things are in the mainstream. It sounds like a facility that we need here in my hometown where you could do all of them for your longevity and health span.

Oh, yeah.

Well, Oz, you now are renowned, and celebrities, Fortune 100 CEOs, the super elite, seek your advice for wellness and longevity. How did that all come about?

It's interesting. It was an evolution. When I got out of photography, John, I'd say by 1981, I did my first mixed-city marathon in 1980, actually. And I was one of the first 2,500 runners to come across the finish line. I did it in three hours, nine minutes. By then, can already tell my conscience had evolved a lot. I'd gone through different dietary protocols and experimenting on myself. I was ready Coaching. In the daytime, I was fashion photographer, but in the evenings, I would coach for New York City Roadrunners. I would coach many different running clubs in the Northeast, in Connecticut, in Upstate New York City, Pennsylvania, stuff like that. I started I did get a lot of requests. People would listen to me talk and they wanted to know, What do we need to know about diet and being a better runner? That was the genesis of it all. I figured, Okay, I could probably make a living doing this. The interesting thing was from the beginning, I had many people interested from the fashion world that knew that I'd moved over from being a fashion batalian. Just follow me. They wanted to know how to eat better and deal with stress better.

And since they knew me, I became a fixture on what do you need to do if you want to be a great model? Everybody from Carol Law to many well-known supermodels of that era started to see me as clients, and they just started to refer. And eventually, that also led up to the one percenters. So I'd say by the late 1980s, I was already working and was great luck, I'd say, with some of the more successful people in the world. That being said, we've always worked to keep the work democratic. We do work with inner-city students and kids. We do give away scholarships often. I'm real clear that given my good luck, I got to give some back, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that backstory. You are part of a collection of experts that I've been lucky enough to have this spring on the podcast. I've had Morley Robbins, Chris Kenobi, Terry Walls, as well as Michael Gregor, to really bring this awareness of how important to macrobiotics influence our overall wellness and nutrition. It's still surprising to me now that I've been doing this podcast for three and a half years, that although we know that the majority of chronic illnesses that plague most of Western civilization are rooted in metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance. Why are so many people so resistant to making the changes to adopt a lifestyle? And what are your suggestions that you give some of your clients to start making those different choices?

Stereotypically, it's a great question. It's actually a great question and observation on your part. When you have such powerful food lobbies in the US, in the United States, where the rise of something like Whole Foods is relatively new, and what's commodified for the most part is immediacy. In other words, if you're watching TV, You're an eight-year-old kid with a less than two-pound brain at that point, a little tiny brain, little tiny body. You're being bombarded by media capacity, potential, the billions of dollars where you've got media that permeates what you read, what you're being exposed to, what's being streamed. It's all promoting certain kinds of eating practices and eating certain kinds of foods. It's very difficult to maintain autonomy in the face of that. The industries that we're dealing with, for the most part, are industries designed to actually disinoculate you against rationality. And a child's brain isn't all that well-developed. So we're talking, if we go back even 30 years, this is already a big problem back then. It's just only gotten worse. So you've got a society, an American culture, an American food culture that's influenced a lot by years and decades of having your brain pummeled to eat garbage.

You and I know that based on our genetics, how it is that we evolve, we're the animal that's always anticipating something not being there to deal with our hunger. Having been predatory animals, prey also. So we were always thinking about, Where's the next meal coming from? So the animal that we are is always a little bit hungry, right? Anticipating that there won't be anything to eat later, tomorrow, for a few days. So when you solve the problem, where are you going to get food The whole keto-calorie phenomenon is gone. You and I don't need to hunt for our food. Or you can go to McDonald's and for 6, 7, 8 bucks, you can get 3,800 calories right in one meal. And that trigger to keep eating, now it's going full circle. Now it's fully triggered. The mechanism to actually keep eating is now working to keep eating. You have an obese culture. We've got an overweight culture. You and I both know that being overweight in this is epidemic. Type 2 diabetes is epidemic. The rise of cancer among younger people now is baffling. The weak immune systems that people have, the high amount of inflammatory problems that we suffer from.

And a lot of us, the consumption of really crappy food all day long.

I have come to the belief over time that when you think about your typical grocery store, the way you should shop is go along the perimeter and never go in the middle because it's almost everything in the middle is processed or has some type of seed oil that's behind it all.

Yeah, and also highly modified food ingredients that have no resemblance to what these foods may have been at one time. This is crazy.

Are you an advocate for the ancestral type of diet?

Yeah, very much so. I do follow ancestral dietary guidelines. I'd say about two or three days out of a week, I tend to be vegan, vegetarian. And then Then I begin to reintroduce protein. By the end of the week, I'm typically adding very heavy protein. And then I enjoy my weekend. I'll eat whatever the hell I want within reason. And then Monday, I'm back on again. I do intermittent fasting in between to mimic what it must have been like when you and I were out hunting for something. You could go two or three days without not really eating. You would pick up any insects along the way, bugs, low hanging fruit, and track an animal, antelope, zebra, water beast, and so on. You'd be lucky if on day three or four, you kill something. The history of human being in terms of its relation to food and sexual dietary guidelines was to underfeed for periods of time and then feed, and then overfeed, and then repeat the cycle. When you look at any predator, really, whether it's a big cat or big canine, they're hungry most of the time. If you see a lioness on the pral, everything is driven by the fact that they're extremely hungry.

Wolves in a pack, it's the same thing. They can go days and days where they're tracking an animal. I've actually seen this happen, where what's driving them, their speed, their momentum, and so on, is the overwhelming hunger until they kill their friend. So we're not all that different. And that's the guidelines that I do follow. And then we can discuss what are the things that I put into my diet.

It's interesting. I was recently interviewing Eric Edmeids. He was talking about when he goes to Africa and spends time with tribal cultures and just the way they live, do intermittent fasting. They're happy to just get one meal a day because they have to hunter and gather it all. There's been a lot of different talk recently about people saying not to do intermittent fasting. I've been doing it myself for about seven or eight years now, and I've never felt better in my life. Do you think it's one of those things that for some people it works, for others it doesn't? Or what's your feeling about it?

Well, I started fasting, John, back in the 1970s, and that was a lifesaver. I used to suffer from severe migraine headaches. I had a friend who bought me a book that was entitled The Miracle of Fasting: Oh, by Paul Bragg. And Bragg, everybody knows, like Bragg Aminos, Bragg apple, cider vinegar. So Paul Bragg, he actually died, I think, in his late '90s. I think he drowned in Hawaii surfing, some crap like that. A remarkable human being and great thinker about how to fast. So I read The Miracle of Fasting. I think he wrote the book, could be mistaken, in the late '60s, early '70s. So I read it. And I started to do what he suggested. I first started by doing water fasting. I can only last a day. And then when I knew that I could do it, I started to do it two or three days. That cleared up my migraines. When I finally was able to do four or five days on water, juices. And so that's one of the ways that I started my conversion. You just reminded me of that. So subsequent to that, I've accumulated hundreds of days of water fasting, juice fasting.

Then these days, depending on my schedule, I'll do two or three days where I just do juice fasting. Maybe I'll grab an apple, a couple of oranges, maybe an avocado on those days. That's it. And intermittent fasting, just like if you cut off your eating at a certain point in the day and you go to bed on an empty stomach, you wake up feeling remarkable. But what I'm aware of now is I'm listening to the backlash against it. Yes, there are differences, let's say, that are driven by gender. And I'd say that there are ways that women should understand intermittent fasting differently than for men, the time of the month, whether they're ovulating or not. Does it work better before the period? Does it work better after the period? It's a lot of information available about that. So that it doesn't screw with their hormones. That being said, women also had to be intimate and fosters just like we did. As we evolved, they went to the same dietary landscape where there would be food available or wasn't. And so they were subject to the forces of underfeeding just as it was for men. I just don't get the argument at all, and you probably don't either, John, in terms of that Intermittent Fasting where it's just insane.

Now, what I'm hearing is that the argument is about apathygy and that in the studies, it's showing that for rats or mice, it takes 48 hours or so for that to actually happen. So in a human, it would be 96 hours. And they're saying that it becomes unhealthy at that point. And I think that's the argument that they're saying. That's not the type of fasting I do, nor Or was it the reason I do it.

Exactly. And again, that's not fully baked data. In other words, we're going to find more data coming out on the other side that actually contradicts that. I'm real clear that something in terms of rejuvenation is occurring, even if I skip dinner once or twice a week, you feel it. And yes, the argument is that autophagy doesn't occur to a certain point. I don't buy it. From a lot of the data that you and I are exposed to, there's There's got to be some amount of zombie cell clearance and autophagy that's occurring at the 12:00 to 16:00 hour point. And remember, and I also think it's cumulative. In other words, if you're doing this on a regular basis, weekly, monthly, like that, there's no way that you're not stimulating because you're doing this regularly. I don't think that you really need to do just two or three days in a row. I think that if you're doing two or three weeks where you're underfeeding, you're going to get the results. There's no way that you couldn't. I would say that when we're using tests, to the extent that people believe in their efficiency or not, like tele-ears and so on, you can start somebody or Yolo, you can get 500 biomarkers in terms of biological efficiency.

Test on a client at the beginning of the program, and then after three or four months of training, doing intermittent fasting and so on, and you retest. Immense corrections on length of telomere. It's the immense corrections on Eola biomarkers.

Well, I swear by it, so I'm going to keep doing it.

Oh, we have to. Yeah.

Oz, a lot of people come to me and they say, How in the world did you create one of the top alternative health podcast? Because I'm not a doctor. As I started going down this path, it was primarily my me-search that resulted in me starting to modify my behaviors, and I started to realize the positive implications it was having in my own life. So it led me to this conclusion that I believe that behavior change represents the new frontier in medicine. Do you think I'm on the right line of thinking here?

No question When you think about it. I think that discipline is critical. I think being a mindful human being is critical. I think being able to connect the dots. If I stay up late and I'm watching TV and I get up in the morning, I'm exhausted. It should be evident that that particular practice is doing you a lot of damage. If I eat a bowl of pasta at 12:00 noon and my head hits the table and I'm just exhausted, it's like, Oh, probably eating a huge carbohydrate meal in the middle of the day is just not smart, or when I work out regularly, whether I'm doing power yoga, I'm doing a run, or I'm doing a hike, and my head is clear, my emotions are even, then these are incentives that drive people to actually to up their game. Remember when we started, we were talking about James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. The formula is no acquisitive practices, nothing acquired. If you're not interested in making the changes and then hold yourself to account to some degree, and I want to discuss it a little bit more, then you don't get the end result. You don't get what you're looking for, what you're complaining about that you don't want to have.

If you've got concerns, let's say, with energy, weight, or sleep, you're going to do a deep dive. These are things that you got to study, find out you need to talk to, do you need to read a book by the world's great experts on sleeping, what do I need to know about food, what searches I need to do? Then craft a program, either by yourself or with yourself, or working with an expert to actually understand that you got to work to actually get your brain behind you and support you in the habits and practices that you're talking about. There is no way that you and I are to wind up where we want to wind up unless we're investing time now every single day. That's why everything in terms of monitoring your sleeping practices, using something like the Oura Ring, I don't get anything paid back from it. But then you're quantifying what the hell is going on during your sleep and during the daytime, making the time to actually meditate, making the time to read, making the time to get bodywork. All of these things are critical. I mean, it's a 73 years of age, but I've been at this for 40 years.

I was never all that perfect, but I've always been consistent. Even with particular setbacks in my health along the way and so on, there's a consistency. I always come back to doing the basics. If you're not going to do that, you're just going to wind up prematurely older than you ought to be. And what Peter predicts will occur to everybody. You're dealing with what he calls, what is it, medicine 2.0 versus medicine 3.0, which is what you're doing. You're a citizen doctor, you're a citizen scientist, and That's really what defines the best of being a biohacker. So that you're busy doing the things that your doctor, your general GP can't tell you, because they're equally caught up in the market.

They absolutely are. The biggest positive change I made in my whole approach to health care was putting myself as the CEO of my own health and really practicing personalized medicine. I like that. Because what ends up happening is, if not, you're being treated for all the symptoms, all the leaves on the tree, but you're not looking at the system holistically, and no one knows that system better than you. I've done a ton of experiments. Sleep was a huge issue for me, and what I learned was, at least for me, and I think for most people, you have to have a regimen around your sleep, meaning probably shouldn't eat three hours before you go to bed. If you want to have optimum sleep, you should probably do a routine of setting yourself up to sleep, meaning get rid of the lights, possibly read, make sure that your internal clock is right by getting out first thing in the morning at dusk so that your body realizes what time it is. And then I think the one thing that tons of people screw up is they're not consistent about what time they go to bed and when they wake up.

And when you fluctuate that, your body doesn't know what to do. It has had such a profound difference since I figured it out. I also eliminated alcohol, which I think also helped. But your body just feels so much better when you're getting that 6 to 8 hours of sleep.

Certainly uninterrupted by having to metabolize alcohol in your sleep.

Yeah, it's such a huge difference.

Oh, in med, people that are consuming alcohol, like two or three glasses. And I'm only honestly drinking two or three glasses of wine every night, but they wake up feeling really crappy. Not even a hangover. Blood sugar is all screwed up. Your neurotransmitters are all screwed up. You didn't get good quality deep sleep or rem sleep, or your HRV levels just like low. You're wondering, why do I feel so lousy when I wake up? Why is my energy crapping out at three o'clock in the afternoon? I need another coffee. People are disconnected from what you talked about, John. It's just completely disconnected. Sleeping properly is a superpower. What comes up a good night's sleep is immeasurable. You want to be a more fit human being, you got to get your sleep under control. You want to eat better? You got to get your sleep under control. It doesn't work the other way around. It's not like you eat better, you're going to sleep better. Yes, you got to understand how all these things hook together. But at the hub of it all is sleep. Getting good quality sleep, going to bed early, getting up early, that stuff.

So, Oz, one of the most interesting things I learned when I was studying your research is the impact of blood type on the diet that works for you. And I have tried the vegetarian diet, hasn't It hasn't worked well for me in the past, nor my daughter. And it turns out we're both type A blood. And your research showed that there's a correlation between the two. I never thought of that. How does the blood impact what diet we should be following?

Blood type dying is based on the work of Dr. Peter D'Adamo. He wrote a book, I don't know, 25 years ago entitled Eat For Your Blood Type. Since then, Peter branded that out. What they found was that among the four major blood types, type A, type O, type A, B, that there appear to be certain properties that do work well. I don't buy into, if you're a type A, you need to be vegetarian 89% of the time. There are other factors, too. It's the same I'm being type O. I don't think that being type O means that you need to eat meat two or three times a day. Genetic factors play a role. Epigenetic factors play a role. Whether you're breastfed or not plays a role. Your microbiome plays a role. Your exposure to toxin. You and I could expand out everything that's important in terms of determining what's going to be best in terms of what you and I ought to be eating. Blood type is one thing. The thing I like about blood type is the potential for lectin sensitivity. So what we do know is that particular blood types, like blood type has a greater intolerance to certain kinds of lectins, that blood type O doesn't, that blood type B doesn't, that blood type A, B doesn't.

I like about blood types because it's, Oh, okay. I got a good general sense of what may be lectin sensitivities with this individual, and that's a good piece of data, along with all the other ones. And that's why I think blood type really comes into play.

Thank you for sharing that. I know you have a special interest in supplements and nutraceuticals. There's so many on the market. You could be stirred in so many different ways. It becomes cost-inaffective for many people. Given this vast array of supplements and nutraceuticals available, which ones do you think offer the most effective, enhancing performance and influence on our well-being?

I'm going to answer in a couple of parts. Part one is, you're correct. We were speaking about earlier today, John, about the democratic or undemocratic aspects of life extension, life-spanning, affordability, insurance, and so on. Unfortunately, a lot of the products that I think most people should be using are not all that inexpensive. That being said, let's just say that I like to break supplements down into a number of categories in terms of what they are, whether it's a vitamin, a mineral, a peptide, a neutropic, plant-based product, oil, or amino acid, like that. But then beyond that, it's their function. I think that in terms of functionality, what's really important, you need to start with probiotics. You need to really have a sense of what's a prebiotic, a probiotic, and a postbiotic. I think everybody can afford getting good quality probiotics. No matter who you are, whatever age you are, whatever gender you are, having probiotics to begin with is where I start with everybody. And then bit by bit, I'll introduce a prebiotic, and then I'll introduce a postbiotic. We could say that in terms of prebiotics, there are different brands. I don't want to mention anybody, but they could do enough searches, and the Google search would be best probiotic.

And we now know that there are probiotics that will have an impact on metabolism, on metabolic syndrome, on weight, on mood, on depression, on bowel problems, IBS, energy. You can actually qualify. You can even break that down even more. Probiotics for energy, and then start working with that. In terms of prebiotics, I think like Jerusalem artichoke powder, which is easily available on Amazon. You just type in prebiotic Jerusalem Artichoke. There are many companies that come up, and it looks like sugar. If you drink tea and cloth from the morning, you can put like a half a tea a week of a prebiotic in there. And that makes the surface of your bowel stickier. So when you introduce your probiotic, it actually adheres to the wall of the bowel with greater efficiency, reduces the risk of bowel cancer, reduces the potential to build up olives in the colon wall. So that's critical. And then postbiotic I actually do the same thing. They actually give the bacteria in your colon a lot of food. So butyric acid is the one that comes to my mind right away. And butyrate, different kinds of butyrate, butyric acid. Butyric acid comes from butter.

So it's simple to remember that, but I know you'll probably put this in the notes, but butyrate is remarkable. So you've got gryosamartichoke, probiotics, and butyric acid. And that's where we begin. I think building up the microbiome is critical. Energy products that I like a lot are NADH, not NAD. So Enada, and these are all derivatives of vitamin B3, Enada, ENADH in a lozage, like 5 milligrams, 10 milligrams, 15, 20 milligrams. And now it was developed, NADH. So the H is for the hydrogen molecule at the end. It can be taken as a lozage, and it has a massive impact on the production of ATP within all your mitochondria. So for people that have chronic fatigue, long haul, want to be better athletes, it's one of the best products in the world ever. So for energy, we can go there. I think for sustainability, for brain function, acetalcarnetine I think is remarkable. Acetallcarnetine, probably about 500 milligrams a day. That has a trifecta impact on the brain. It increases BDNF, brain-derived nitriable factor. And you and I both know that's an enzyme that makes it build a better brain. The second thing that acetyllcarnetine does is it has an effect on the type of neurons that are being built.

So it actually works to not only build a better brain through BDNF, but it's actually structurally making the neurons that are coming out better. And then third is it improves ability to think with great clarity. I think I took a thousand milligrams this morning. So acetylcarnetine, and then I think you would agree, probably alpha-GPC. So that those are two easy enough brain products. One is a choline derivative, one is a carnitine derivative that has highly measurable effects on states of mind, thinking, discharging, executive obligation to the brain. And then I think different nutrients that really help you sleep better and are critical for nutrient absorption, magnesium. So there are different ones that I think you would like, that I know you like, that I like a lot of magnesium. 3-8, which crosses the blood-brain barrier. It actually makes you calmer, deals a lot with excitotoxicity within the brain. So you can be more relaxed with it and you sleep a lot better with it. I think also magnesium glycinate. I love it. That's magnesium bound to glycine molecules. So magnesium is central. Critical and critical. And I typically take both those types of magnesium at bedtime.

I think ashwagandha is critical. There are different forms of it. I'd say just good quality ashwagandha, about 500,000 milligrams at bedtime, has not only an effect on sleeping, but on your daytime ability to regulate stress. I would add to that probably Bacopa, Bacopa Manieri, which is also a plant-based product that works really well with ashwagandha to deal stress, to regulate the impact of cortisol to help you sleep better. Then I would say for life extension, slowing down wear and tear in the body without getting really expensive and into the high weed. High-quality fish I think you would agree. The best quality omega-3 fatty acid, get your hands on along with olive oil is turning out to be remarkable. There are certain products in the market, I think life extension makes a form of omega-3 fatty acid from fish. It's called Super Omega 3+. It's got olive oil added. It's got astrosanthetine, which is, you and I both know, the coloring agent that makes shrimp red. But that also seems to have a powerful impact on vision. Sesame seed oil, which is probably one of the only seed oils that I would advocate for. Sesame seed lignins and olive leaf extract.

Can't believe I remember all this. So that particular combination works really well with all the other things that you and I talked about, and it keeps you within budget.

Thank you for sharing that. I'll make sure we put a list of those in the show notes for people to refer back to. I'm going to have you come back on the show because we're only on the tip of the iceberg of your work. I just want to bring up that you've written a ton of fantastic books. We're not going to be able to go through them, but in Redesigning 50, you advocate for a proactive approach to aging, integrating insights from different health and beauty domains. And in this, you have an approach that's distinct and effective in helping people rejuvenate and maintain their vitality. In your book, Balanced, you a personalized plan to optimize metabolism. And there's a great 45-question quiz that the listeners can go and purchase the book and do. But I understand you're working on a new book that focuses on a lot of what I talk about, which is the pursuit of a meaningful life. I was hoping you might be able to share a little bit about that.

Oh, absolutely. Starting out with The Balance, which is the first book that I wrote for Harper Collins, it actually went on to become a New York Times best seller. My concern back then was was pretty much about nutrition and exercise, an oxidative type, whether you're fast oxidizer, slow oxidizer. Then over the years, thank God that I had such a wonderful publisher, I was able to write probably one of the first books on anti-aging, which is entitled The Healthy High-Tech Body. That came out in 2001. That eventually became Look and Feel Fabulous Forever. I was looking at the technologies that were available then to reverse aging, growth hormone, disaster and Replacement Therapy, Natural Hormel Replacement Therapy for Women, Lifestyle Practices. I think I was one of the first people to acknowledge that you needed to understand the role of sugar in aging your body. I elaborated on that in Redesigning 50 was my foray into women's health. What did you need to do to actually understand menopause? If you were facing that, my publisher at the time was Judith Regan at Harvard College. She was going through menopause. She was just absolutely losing. I think we went to dinner.

We're going to talk about the next book she wanted me to write. She just started crying at the table, and she's like, I just don't know what's going on. They're like, Do you have any answer? I'm like, Why don't we write a book about women transitioning from perimenopause, premenopause to menopause? That became the mechanism by which we launched Redesigning 50. Interestingly enough, and it turned out to also become a best seller, Redesigning 50, I just wanted people to know, and we did touch on Men's Health India, but primarily targeting women, that there was an option-filled environment, that they didn't need to go to their male gynecologist that was going to put them on Premarin, and as they were moving through menopause as a solution. Premarin is a form of estrogen that's made from pregnant mare urine, Premarin. And it's an equine-based estrogen. So You're talking about the fact that they would extract these very powerful estrogens, put them in a pill, and give them to women as a solution for menopause. I don't know how successful it was for most of the women that were on it, but we do know that the turnover rate was about a million women a month.

To the extent that they would go on it, they'd be rolling off it. That eventually kept evolving until I wrote my last book, which you know about, John, which is After COVID, it's pretty much my story about how I survived, and then there's a workbook in there for long haul as a post-COVID survivor. Then the book that I'm interested in now is to the heart of what concerns you and me, too, which is now that I've got a much more spiritual bent on life and value systems. You got to be a good guy in this world. You got to be noble, you got to be kind, you got to be grateful, you got to be loving. You really do. You got to be practical in terms of knowing when these things are missing, when you're lacking compassion or you can't forgive. Having a more meaningful life now means that you and I are paying attention not only to whether I'm doing an ice bath or I'm doing cryotherapy, I'm doing so on, I'm doing intermittent fasting. There's a lot of automaticity there. We're also dealing with our trauma, trauma from childhood and events that have happened in life, the wins and losses of our existence.

I'm now interested in how do you become a really good meditator? How do you become a more mindful human being so that life becomes contemplation and reconciling yourself to your own finality? Well, you and I are going to check out someday. And being okay with that. Can you have your biohacking practices not only support you living longer and living better longer, but can they actually expand your practices so that you can modify a piece of mind. And I think that when you're valuing peace of mind along with everything else, then life has is richer. It's more granular, and you're not so prone to losing your shit over nothing. I think about my dad and what a brilliant man he was and having been an immigrant that came to this country, flap broke and built himself and made himself. I never knew this guy to be happy. It's all life. And that's the story of many immigrants, many people that came here without anything. The lives that they had that precluded being happy. It was all about having two or three jobs, and eventually you make it. That value system was passed on to me. Like Neo in The Matrix, where the Lawrence Fishborn character whatever his name was, tells Neo when he comes out of whatever, gives him an offer, either have a blue pill or the red pill.

If you take the blue pill, you go back to your complacent existence and you think everything's okay when it's not. Or you can take the red pill and you can actually live a life of authenticity, a much banter term these days. If you live in New York and you live the way that most people live, and I would say that this is problematic whatever career path that you're on, which is people are taking the blue pill everywhere. How do you and I get off that and get on the red pill program and live authentic, fulfilling lives? That's what I'm going to have in the new book. I actually want to make it a bit more humorous. I think I'm entitling it How to be a rock star at 120, the first 10 things you need to do starting today.

I love you brought up the matrix because for some odd reason, there must have been cosmic juice is flowing that you were going to bring it up. I actually googled famous quotes by Morpheus.

Oh, my God. There you go. That was one of them.

Yeah. Oh, my God. There's like 15 of them that are just phenomenal out of just the first movie. Well, Oz, so thankful that you came on today. We'll make sure all your books are in the show notes as well. What is the best place for listeners to go if they want to learn more about your work?

Go to the website, osgarcia. Com. That's simple enough. And follow me on social media, Oz Wellness on IG, Oz Garcia on FB, and just go into the website itself. And then start going to the books.

Well, one thing I love, just so the audience knows, is that you do interact with your followers on the social channels, and a lot of people don't. So thank you for doing that. And it's a great way if you do have a question that you want to pose that people can reach out to you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much again for coming. It was such an honor to have you.

Same here, John. Let's do this again so we can do a part two.

What an incredible honor that was to interview my friend, Oz Garcia. And I wanted to thank Oz for joining us on the show. And links to all things Oz Garcia are in the show notes at passion struck. Com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at passion struck Clips. Go check it out, subscribe, and join over a quarter of a million other subscribers. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passion struck. Com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Are you interested in hearing daily doses of passion struck wisdom? Then join me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles. And if you want to express your courage muscle, then consider joining the passion struck weekly challenge. And you can do that by signing up for a newsletter, Liveintentionally at passion struck. Com. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the passion struck continuum, then dive in to our engaging passion struck quiz, crafted to share the core principles that are reflected in my most recent book, Passion struck.

It's a dynamic way to gage your progress on the passion struck continuum. Just go to passion struck. Com to sign up. It'll take you about 10 minutes to complete. You're about to hear a preview of the passion struck podcast interview that I did with Homera Kabir, a celebrated women's well-being and leadership coach with a rich background in positive and coaching psychology, who joins us to discuss the transformative journey from perfectionism to embracing the full spectrum of our inner and outer lives.

When we have positive global beliefs, we live this authentic life with a sense of pride and joy and ease. When we don't have this, we're striving insecurely to prove ourselves in some way. So at the end of the day, belonging is about connecting to ourselves, understanding who we are, learning to like ourselves again, building relationships of trust where there's emotional connection, understanding what brings us joy, what doesn't bring us joy. Then from this place of security, stepping out into, Okay, what do I enjoy doing? What brings me a feeling of connection, a feeling of authenticity, and then having the courage to go out and do it.

Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share this show with those that you love and care about. If you found today's episode with Oz Garcia, inspirational or impactful, then definitely share it with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion struck.