306. Health Optimisation Habits You Need To Know - With Chris The Mitopapi
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

What is up ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the boost your biology podcast. Today I'm super pumped. We have a very special guest in the studio. Mito puppy Chris Vutzas. Chris, welcome to the podcast, man. How's it going? Awesome to have you here, man. So Chris, I mean, you're very passionate about health optimization, very similar to myself. You're very fascinated by how to optimize the gut mitochondrial health circadian biology, energy optimization.

and even nootropics and all that good stuff. But maybe Chris, how did you get into this space? Yeah, so that's a great story. So yeah,

Ever since I was young, when I was a baby, I had a bit of a, yeah, I had a really bad immune reaction. It was to something that they put in your arm, you know, I probably shouldn't be saying it, but yeah, I had a, I had a reaction to that. And I was left with 40 plus life-threatening food allergies, which were atopic sensitivities, meaning life-threatening pretty much. Um, yeah, like

If you look at the panel that I had for dairy, for example, it was a 134 when I was a baby. And it's dropped all the way down to five now. Thankfully, I'm getting it lower and lower.

But yeah, I had to do a breathing treatment before school every day. I would always be the first one to get sick in my family. I had eczema from head to toe and I had to do these wraps around myself as a kid. So my parents, they saw like the doctors weren't able to do much. So my mom started finding different little remedies she could use with me. And yeah,

I was in and out of the hospital my entire childhood and I guess through those experiences, I was kind of compelled to go and become a physician when I was older. So ever since I was a very, yeah, ever since I was very young, I wanted to go into medicine and

I strived for that my entire life. I went to university. I did very well. I had a good GPA, good MCAT, all that stuff. I could have gone to pretty much like most med schools I wanted to. And yeah, it works really hard for four years. And as I was studying for the MCATs, I ended up getting so sick that I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs. Hardly. I was vomiting out stomach acid. I, uh,

Yeah, I was pretty much bedridden. I had some horrible flu-like symptoms, except they lasted for months. And I really couldn't figure out what was going on. I saw black specks everywhere. Every time I would stand up, I would almost faint. So it was quite awful what was happening. And I went from GI doctor to GI doctor to specialist to specialist. I dropped thousands on naturopaths and

Didn't get me anywhere, so I had to kind of take matters into my own hands and I was studying biomedical sciences at the time. So I figured. I probably know a little bit of this and I know enough to go through PubMed and actually start reading some research. So that's what I did. And.

Yeah, I eventually found health Twitter. And that was like my little intro into this entire cool holistic space that we have now. And I found your podcast pretty early on. I found all sorts of podcasts like Ben Greenfield, Paul Saladino. And I remember like in the very beginning stages, I just wanted to learn nonstop and

Yeah. After a while, the time came and I crushed the MCAT. I did what needed to be done on there. And right after I took it, I was like, I don't want to go to medical school. I've shadowed doctors for probably over 500 hours and they get like 15 to 30 minutes with the clients.

Their actual knowledge and scope of blood chemistry is fairly limited. They don't order the right panels every time. And the system puts them in this position where basically they say, like, I only have so much time with you. Let me give you this drug to at least help you for now. And a lot of the time it's just bandage solution after bandage solution that they're giving out to people. So I realized this and I was like, I'm just not going to apply to medical school at all. I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I'm going to figure it out. And

Yeah, then I started the Twitter accounts and I started getting on Instagram. I just started posting and I kind of found my tribe online and I found all these amazing creators that I connected with. And they showed me that there is this entire decentralized system outside of this centralized paradigm. And there's so many people that are looking for help in this decentralized system, just like I was. And I was dealing with things like candida overgrowth, gram negative bacteria overgrowths. My innate immune system was just wrecked.

I, my triglycerides had gotten to around 239. I'm an idiot American. So I only know the imperial units, but yeah, I had all these horrible things. Like you probably know a lot about this, but my eosinophils, they were at a three, not a 0.3, a three at the time. So I was really messed up. And as I continued to heal myself and I continued to get better and better health wise, I just realized that

I can kind of turn this pain into my purpose and I can start to help other people that are being afflicted by these issues. And I can just continue for the rest of my life to learn more, grow more and get better and better every single day and learn more and more about this type of stuff.

so that I can help other people going through a similar thing and also change public perception on what it means to be healthy, what it means to live a holistic lifestyle, and what it means to actually change your life and do an audit on your health to actually gain it back and teach people the importance of all this stuff.

Incredible stuff, man. Yeah, and I really, really do respect a lot of the content you've been posting. I've kept a close eye on some of those posts you've made. And it's so awesome to hear guys like yourself connecting with fellow people in this space. And I was just talking about this last night that, yes, we're all in this sort of like bubble, this like biohacking bubble. But it's also like a chance for us to unite and collaborate to have a stronger overall relationship.

Voice.

That's how you push public perception. It's huge. So I view it like we're an army and we're going to war. And our battle is every single battle is pushing this public perception. And now you see that RFK might get confirmed into the actual office. And he's not perfect by any means. But if you're going to have someone in office that's actually going to promote these messages, that is so huge for the holistic space in general. It's genuinely a beautiful thing, I think, that's happening.

Yeah, no, definitely, man. Well, let's get into, obviously, you know, you mentioned blood chemistry, you know, these mitochondrial health, these sort of things. I'm curious to know when you were suffering so bad, man, like,

Was there any particular like, was there a single intervention, health intervention that you applied that moved the needle the most? Yeah, I didn't even realize it at the time. But instead of studying in my apartment, I'll take my backpack right around sunrise. And I'll go on a one mile walk right in the morning after eating like berries and venison and honey. It

Pretty similar to like the Paul Saladino diet, but I would go on like a big walk after that and I would just get a ton of morning sunlight. I was walking and then I was right around the gym when I was studying for the MCAT. So I would have like eight to 10 hours study days just to study for this test. It's no joke. So yeah, I was doing that for the time being because I lost a lot of time with my sickness and I had to make it up somehow to take the test.

So I'll go on these really long walks and I basically went monk mode for a few months, but it was crazy just walking outside and getting that morning sunlight and prioritizing the evening sunlight and getting tan and getting melanin was actually one of the biggest. Yeah, it was one of the biggest pushers for me in the very beginning of the journey.

And I knew at that point that that was helping, but it wasn't necessarily taking care of all the other issues. Later on, after speaking with other practitioners, masterminding with just a lot of brilliant people in this space, I came to realize just reading my own blood work that I had all sorts of these issues, such as candida overgrowth. I found out through a genetic test that the doctor refused to test me for it, but I found it myself that

I had hereditary hemochromatosis and very bad iron overload. My ferritin was at around 550. And yeah, I discovered that I had all these things going on, like the severe allergies, the innate immune system issues, the bacterial overgrowths, pretty much all of it. And basically over time, what I did is

I kept adding on layers to what I did. So the very first thing was the sunlight and the diet, and that really helped. And then I kept adding things onto that. And it was almost like an aggregation of marginal gains over time where I would just habit stack after habit stack. And I kept adding things on and it really helped over time. And yeah, that's part of the way that I was able to actually overcome all of this. That's awesome, man.

What about in terms of I mean, let's dive into gut health. I know you're you're really well versed in this space as well. Let's look at like, all right, common offenders for gut health these days, people mistakes that they're making when it comes to gut health, and talk about some of the most powerful and useful strategies that people can implement to optimize their gut health.

Yeah, I would say that the single biggest offender of gut health in our modern environment would actually be the overprescription of antibiotics. Our beneficial bacteria are more important in so many ways that you could ever imagine. They're so important for just modulating different processes in the body. And they're very important for the innate immune system. They're like the entire gut ecosystem.

The entire gut ecosystem as a whole, it's basically there to train your innate immune system to start actually doing things and to start responding properly. And that's why you see like when a kid grows up on a farm, he probably doesn't have many food allergies. And you see that kid who grows up in the inner city, he just ends up with food allergies all of a sudden. Or let's say that you're a C-section birth and you don't inherit that bifidobacterium from going out the actual birth canal, you're going to end up with a lot of issues down the road as well.

And yeah, you might not even have the bifidobacterium to break down the human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk. And it can cause major developmental issues early. Yeah, very early on. And that's not good for the innate immune system. So part of what people need to consider when they're healing the gut is that interaction between the gut ecosystem and the innate immune system.

It's not just about getting rid of any pathogenic bacteria. It's about rebuilding the beneficial bacteria. We need a good balance of that. We need about 85% beneficial bacteria and about 15% pathogenic bacteria for the most part. And when you take antibiotics, you absolutely nuke this stuff. And I was on tons of antibiotics when I was a kid. So yeah, I believe that sometimes when I see clients, I'll look at their GI maps and

And it'll just straight up say that no lactobacillus is growing whatsoever. And I'm like, you are probably in a lot of pain right now. That's what that tells me. So yeah, that's a huge thing. Yeah, the antibiotics as a whole, they cause a lot of issues. Would you care to guess how long it takes the body to recover from one antibiotic course? I'm pretty sure it was like, what?

five to 10 years or something or even longer? Yeah. It's anywhere from 18 months to multiple years. So it's actually pretty unbelievable. Yeah. It's absolutely horrible. So, and think about it like this too. People are taking these antibiotics and

And then they're just eating the standard American diet afterwards. They're not getting enough sunlight. They're not going outside enough and exposing themselves to beneficial bacteria. They're living in these inner city environments that are full of molds. They're full of these pathogens all over the place. It's a bit dirtier. Chris, Chris, what do you think of the, like, what is the mechanism from mechanism behind how sunlight exposure can actually improve the gut health?

and specifically support gut health. What's the link there? Yeah, so the near-infrared radiation from sunlight is actually excellent for our gut microbiome. It's really good for modulating a certain species of bacteria. And yeah, overall, the actual red light that you get from the morning and evening sunlight, if you get that on the belly, it's really good for that. And in general...

Obviously, we know that all of our cells have mitochondria or a lot of ourselves, not all of them, but a lot of ourselves have mitochondria. And that includes our enterocytes that include certain panacea cells that are shown in the gut. So if the mitochondria in those aren't working properly, you're going to have a lot of problems because the mitochondria are our main energy synthesis site.

It's very important for making ATP in our mitochondria, which is our body's energy currency. So if you're not making the right, if you don't have the right energetics in place, how are your enterocytes going to do their job? How are your panaceas cells going to do your job? So that alone and getting the sunlight and optimizing your mitochondrial health, it's actually going to be a massive boost for your gut health, I believe.

In terms of looking at the common gut issues that people face today, obviously there's intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut. You mentioned Candida before. What percentage of people do you think are just walking around not knowing that they actually have Candida and maybe not even aware of the symptoms? And what can they do maybe to optimize or eliminate Candida?

I haven't read too much population data on how much like of the world has Candida, but it's very prevalent and you can actually check for it. Just look at your tongue and see if there's a coding. See if you have a reoccurring history of these fungal infections. See if you have an issue with dopamine and motivation because Candida produces something called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is the same chemical byproduct that we make.

That's very toxic. And it's when we drink alcohol, we make that as a byproducts and it can travel up and go to the blood brain barrier. It can hang out in that region. And what it does is it can combine with dopamine and it can form a neurotoxin that attacks your dopaminergic neurons. So it's really bad news for your motivation. And it's really bad news for your focus. It probably gives you brain fog.

And in general, it will give like very consistent gas in people. So yeah, Candida is a big problem. If you have a bunch of fungal issues, that's definitely something to be looking into. And you'll probably notice that your GGT would be a bit elevated and your neutrophils would be a bit lower as well. If you were experiencing that, and then what you have to do is really just look at your symptoms.

and say, do these align with what candida could be? So in terms of how many people have it, it would be hard to say. But one thing that I do know is that 60% of Americans have a chronic disease and it's a huge problem. That's a very, that's more than half of the people. So when you think about it like that, there's probably a pretty good portion of them that have some sort of candida overgrowth. And I would be willing to bet money that most of them don't have high enough levels of beneficial bacteria.

I would agree, man. In terms of interventions now to sort of suppress that candida or eliminate it, obviously individuals have to be pretty careful in terms of some of the potent antimicrobials

um antifungals things like that so do you want to sort of talk about what people are currently using where they're going wrong what you would prefer to use as part of your anti-candida protocol yeah yeah so people will use like i forget the exact names of the yeah i forget the exact names people will use these really aggressive anti-fungal treatments like really aggressive

And they'll do it for like one to two weeks. First of all, I think that's an issue in and of its own, but they won't prioritize the specific diet that they're eating while doing this.

And in general, they're basically taking this really aggressive antifungal and they're just expecting that everything is going to clear up and then it's not going to come back. But what happens is the vast majority of people relapse. And that's because they probably have an environment in the guts in the first place that supports candida and allows them to thrive. They probably have issues with their stomach acid. The pH of the stomach is probably screwed up.

The entire, yeah, the entire environments might have too much oxygen, which is pretty bad for facultative anaerobes like bifidobacterium to actually thrive. So it can cause all of these issues in the actual microbiome and the actual terrain of the gut can be so compromised in the innate immune system can be so compromised while dealing with inflammation and that type of stuff.

To the points where Candida is like, I'm about to have a party in here. Let's go. So in terms of actually resolving Candida, what you have to do is you have to map out what are all of the weak areas of my physiology? Do I have low beneficial bacteria? Is my liver screwed up? Do I have bad, do I have a pretty bad gallbladder? Do I have something like Gilbert syndrome?

Do I have hyperpermeability? How's my mucosal layer doing? You got to figure out all of those things first, and then you can craft an approach that's very much so takes care of those issues first and foremost, but also the candida, because that's going to be there. So you got to take care of all the different things. You got to connect the dots pretty much, and you got to figure out what is the unique story of your physiology and what's it trying to tell us.

So once you actually go in with that, then you can use specific support supplements to support your weakened areas of physiology. And then you can do an actual antimicrobial phase that sometimes it lasts six weeks. Sometimes it lasts eight weeks. Sometimes it lasts 12 weeks. It really depends.

So what you want to do with this and what I usually do with clients is I'll use very gentle antimicrobials like MCT oil as an example, because of the, yeah, it's pretty good because of the caprylic acid. And then, yeah, if you use like lauric acid as well, it can be useful, but yeah, I'll use just general antifungals and I'll also often use.

Just different things that have antibacterial properties as well, because you don't want those gram negative bacteria overgrowths in there as well. Like, let's say you have constipation, you might have an M Smithy overgrowth, which produces a ton of methane gas and can actually induce constipation you and then that screws up motility. And it just creates this recurring cycle again, where you're unable to properly heal from this type of stuff.

So yeah, it's really important to take a very detailed approach. And one thing that anyone can try for Candida just to lessen the symptoms in general, you can do a Candida diet. So the key here is you have to control your blood sugar spikes under every circumstance, because if you look in the literature, people will try to use antifungals on Candida and it will actually survive past the treatment. If you have persistent blood sugar spikes, it utilizes those to survive in your body.

So you're going to have to use different things like maybe berberine with your meals, maybe myelinositol. Maybe you go on a 15 to 30 minute walk after meals. And then you've got to be very strict with your diet too. So only one serving of dairy a day, only one serving of starches a day, and only one serving of sugar a day. And

Yeah, you're going to want to do those things. Probably some diluted apple cider vinegar with meals. Don't go over 40 grams of carbs with meals. Just those things in general are all very important aspects of the Candida healing journey. But the diet isn't the only thing that you need to heal from that. You need to do the supplements regularly.

You need to do a proper actual antimicrobial phase. You need a proper prep phase and you need to be supporting weakened areas of physiology properly. So it's very multifaceted and complex in essence. And yeah, I just kind of rambled on there, but those are the things that I typically do in my approach to help people overcome that. What about in terms of, I mean, speaking of speaking about carbohydrate intake now, obviously,

one of your main missions and goals is to educate individuals how they can optimize their mitochondrial function. Let's say they've got a lot of their baseline areas down pat, they're doing a lot of the right things, and they're trying to really optimize their ability to convert carbs into ATP.

specifically that they're trying to like not be on a low carb diet. What are your thoughts on that in terms of individuals potentially responding well to a relatively high carb diet? Yeah, I think that high carb diets can be great. The biggest thing with that is

do you have these seasonal foods growing in your area? Because we have these things in our circadian rhythm called Zeitburgers and they're very important. The biggest Zeitburger that determines your circadian rhythm is your light environment. It's extremely important. So getting morning sunlight, getting midday sunlight, going out every hour and getting light breaks, it's extremely important for your mitochondrial health, but

Food is actually another one. So the key with that is how do we get our body to understand what our environment is like? What input can we utilize to give our body an understanding of our environment so that we aren't in this chronic mismatch with our environment? So

I'm a big advocate for eating seasonal foods. So whatever grows near you, let's say that where I live here in Georgia, I think that I think oranges are in season right now. And then it's the peach state up here. So I'll be eating a lot of peaches and oranges and just local fruits and vegetables that grow around me. And yeah, just in general, I think that going high carb, like

let's say you don't have candida and you don't have all these problems. I don't see why that would be much of an issue if you're controlling your blood sugar spikes in general. And if you're pretty metabolically healthy, if you have a lot of lean muscle mass for more glucose disposal, if you're insulin sensitive and timing your carbohydrate intake around workouts, all of those things in general are going to be really important. And personally, during the summer, I eat a pretty good amount of carbs. I'll have like 200 grams a day and I do just fine with them. So yeah,

In general, the nuance is really key here. Like you got to see, is my physiology in a position to where it's going to tolerate a bunch of carbs or like, is my physiology in a, in a position where I have to go between like 120 to 150 grams of carbs a day in general with clients, I usually do 120 to 150 grams of carbs a day. If I suspect that they're having some glucose metabolism issues on, yeah, it works really well because if you look into the research,

that amount of carbohydrate intake is pretty good for supporting the thyroid as well, because one major concern with cutting all these carbs out is you're going to tank your thyroid. So yeah, that's another thing that I really consider in my protocols. Yeah, no, I definitely respect that. In particular, I'm glad that you mentioned the fact that thyroid is incredibly important there, specifically like carbohydrates accelerating the conversion of T4 to T3.

And I'm definitely someone that's pretty, I respond pretty well to high carb diets. I mean, I'm probably aiming for about 250 to 300 grams a day, which for some people that would be like quite a lot. But given the fact that my T3 is so high and my TSH is like 0.6. Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah, that's good stuff.

So in terms of like, I mean, look at the individuals that are suffering from blood sugar instabilities or blood sugar imbalances. What are some go-to strategies that you know of that can help with lowering HbA1c and fasting insulin? That's a great one. Yeah, so...

I usually give a certain set of guidelines because a lot of my clients do have blood sugar issues. So you can do berberine 500 milligrams three times a day with your food, not away from food. Then it has more antimicrobial effects. So do it 500 milligrams three times a day with your food. And yeah, you're going to want to do that. And then two grams of myelinositol.

About twice daily. It's excellent for that as well. And then you can do diluted apple cider vinegar with meals. That's going to lessen your blood sugar spikes. I might mention actually with the myo-inositol, that one there has been unbelievably effective for myself and also some clients. It's unreal, isn't it, man? Are you going for like two to four grams a day typically? Yeah.

Yeah, when I had a... So I did this experimentally. Don't try this at home, kids. But when I had really bad OCD back in the day, I wanted to fix it. And I took...

14 grams of myelinositol each day with about three grams of nac and it got rid of my ocd and yeah i'm not sure like on all the science behind that and everything i'm sure that it probably reduced it or probably dampens glutamate function to an extent messes with those things i also i also looked into that as well i know i know what you're referring to there was a particular thread back on the this forum called the long jessity forum um where they were talking about

Yeah, high doses of myo-inositol basically dampening helps a lot in like schizophrenia, mood disorders. I do take quite a lot myself. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, big time. Yeah. And I believe that they used to call inositol vitamin B8. And then there was like some technicality and they got rid of it. But

it's pretty hard to get like from diet. And one of the best sources that people don't realize is goat's milk. It's an, it's pretty great source of a Nostril. So yeah, Nostril, one of my favorite supplements, one of my favorite products to recommend to people. And yeah, just going back to the blood sugar thing, you're going to want, you can do berberine, a Nostril diluted apple cider. Is there a reason why, um,

Have you looked into the new form of berberine, the dihydroberberine at all? I've heard of that. Yeah, I have heard of that. And then I usually give people the, what is it, the thorn one. So it has the berberine chelazone and then it has berberine HCL as well. And yeah, I've seen a lot of success with that, but I'm really interested in the dihydroberberine. And yeah, I'll have to do a lot more digging into that. Have you done much research on that?

Yeah, man. So the dihydroberberine between 100 to 200 milligrams does not elicit any of the GI side effects of regular berberine. But it still manages to lower blood sugar levels more effectively than like one gram of berberine. So it'd be better for blood sugar purposes, but not so much for antimicrobial purposes. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating stuff. That's very interesting.

In terms of any other, I'm really curious to hear about some more of your experiments. I mean, I'd imagine you've been like myself and you've just sort of dived into, you've tried so many different nootropics, different supplements. Yeah, do you want to know what I'm on about? I took a bunch of stuff before this podcast actually. Yeah, so tell us about some of the experiments that you've sort of ran on yourself over the years that might be interesting.

Yeah. So I call this one, don't try this at home again, but I call this one, the dopamine assembly line. So what I did is I took, I took one gram of L tyrosine, 500 milligrams of DL phenylalanine just for precursor for the dopamine. So it's like, you're putting the products on the assembly line and then I would take bro maintain to upregulate tyrosine hydroxylase. So then the assembly line is like, it's going crazy.

And then I would take Subroxy to re-inhibit, yeah, to inhibit dopamine reuptake. So you're pretty much just dopamine maxing when you do that. And back when I had a very bad candida, I had very bad motivation issues because like I was saying earlier, it can actually hurt your dopaminergic system, the candida overgrowth. So that was one little hack that I did that really helps me at the time. And yeah, I love all those products now. I took some good old L-tyrosine before this actually.

I should have sent you a bottle of our Catuaba extract. Catuaba bark is incredible. Not only is it great for libido, androgenic function, all that good stuff, but it has pretty dopaminergic effects as well. I think the combination of L-phenylalanine plus Catuaba plus...

potentially like a low dose taurine, like that synergy combination there would just be like, yeah, anxiolytic, energizing, dopaminergic. Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, people don't talk about that too much. I love like that GABAergic type of focus. Just taking all Yeah, I love like you kind of combine like those anxiolytic agents with something more dopaminergic and it leads to a very nice feeling and then maybe you throw in something like CDP choline or alpha GPC and you're gonna have a really fun time whenever you're doing with work.

what about in terms of some other sort of experiments as well like from a you know maybe like methylene blue things like that you've sort of tried and or any other mitochondrial enhancers that you think my audience should be aware of yeah mitochondrial enhancers cacao nibs are actually great for this because if you look at the actual concentration of pqq which is an important molecule for the mitochondria you'll see that

In cacao nibs, they are through the roof. It was like 800 and something that I was reading. And the next highest one on the list is Kiwi at like 25. So cacao nibs are a big hack for that. And they have plenty of bioactive constituents. I believe that stearic acid is one of them, which is pretty useful for mitochondrial health. And then.

Probably the biggest thing for your mitochondrial health is getting tons of sunlight, especially morning and evening sunlight. So that's going to upregulate and it's going to be very nice to something called cytochrome C oxidase. And this is in turn going to produce something called subcellular melatonin. It's different from the melatonin that we make from our pineal gland. And this is the master antioxidant.

pretty much controls a bunch of other antioxidant systems in the body and it's very powerful for these purposes as a whole and it's one of the best things you can do for just longevity how you feel mitochondrial health in general yeah that's cool man so you're basically mentioning um subcellular melatonin that's produced um locally within cells like the body actually produces it locally yeah yeah that's where most of our melatonin comes from about

I think it was 90% of it is subcellular. And then think about another 5% in the gut. Maybe it was 85% subcellular, 5% in the guts, and then 10% from the pineal gland. I probably messed up some of the percentages. But the important thing is that the vast majority of our melatonin is being made in our cells to serve very important antioxidant roles. What about in terms of another one that I've loved recently is lactoferrin?

So do you want to sort of discuss the powerful healing effects of lactoferrin? Yeah, so imagine this. Imagine like your body's at war and you're pretty anemic and you can't get that iron. And all these bacteria, they're just trying to take the iron from you and they're just ruining your life. Well, lactoferrin is going to come in there.

And instead of saying, no, this is my iron and I'm going to put it in the right place. So get out of here. So it's really good for that. And in general, it has deprives a lot of these bacteria of iron. So it's pretty useful for a, it's pretty useful. Antimicrobial you can use about a hundred to 200 milligrams a day. And it's really good for that. It has pretty good anti-inflammatory effects on the body. And you can actually get a good amount of lactoferrin from raw milk.

Like not too much, but you can get a decent amount of it, which is why I do support raw milk to a pretty good extent. And yeah, overall, it's really good stuff. With the raw milk, have you had any sort of friends that have responded? Well, first of all, most people are so fearful of raw milk and they're like, oh, you know, it's going to cause severe sickness and that sort of stuff. But do you even know anyone that's had a negative effect from it? Or is it more like dose dependent? Yeah.

I don't know anyone that's ever had a negative effects from it. And I know a lot more people that have eaten like some salad from the store that have gotten really sick. So if you're going to hate on raw milk, how about you hate on all of the other produce that we're producing in these stores that are also having like listeria outbreaks and these types of things. It's yeah. I find it to be pretty ridiculous. The fear mongering over that. I agree, man. What about in terms of like, are there select vegetables that you permit to

and allow into your diet? And are there certain ones that you're like, most humans should stay away from? Actually, I think that if your gut microbiome is pretty good, and you can tolerate them that vegetables are really good. And I think that the actual what

whatever you want to call them, anti-nutrients, lectins, phytic acid, all that stuff. If it like, it can cause like a pretty good hormetic response at times as well. And I know broccoli is a good source of sulforaphane and I believe it has some dim in it as well. So yeah, they have very good constituents and the polyphenols and vegetables are very good for us. The key is just, yeah, if you can get fermented ones, I'm a really big fan of those.

But for the most part, I don't, yeah, I don't really say that vegetables are bad for you. And if you do have an intolerance for them, it just means that for the most part, you're going to have some work to do on your guts and your immune system. And you probably have to go through a bit more of a complex protocol to get that resolved. But yeah, vegetables, they're good sources of soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, nutrients, polyphenols, antioxidants, all of this different good stuff. And yeah, they're basically like,

a literal pharmacy that we're eating for all these beautiful constituents. So I don't really understand the whole carnivore idea. At least like forever, like I don't understand why someone would do that forever. For the most part, there's always exceptions. But I think that most people that are chronically on this carnivore diet, I think that vegetables are the devil. They just need to fix their guts and they need to fix whatever's wrong with their health. And

I don't like it when certain influencers, when they kind of project their own health inadequacies on people, and they say that all of these foods are bad for everyone, no matter what the case is. I think that a lot of nuance gets left off when people make statements like that. What about in terms of...

sleep optimization specifically? I mean, I'd imagine you've sort of experimented with different types of magnesium, different sleep protocols, things like that. What are your top three sleep optimization hacks for most people?

For most people, that's very easy. I used to sleep one hour a night for the most part. I used to have horrible insomnia. So I know this firsthand. And just so you know, sleep is probably the most, one of the most important things in your healing journey. Your testosterone levels are going to be screwed if you're not sleeping good. So keep that in mind. And yeah, you're screwed if you don't sleep well. So my top three things that I would have everyone do is step one, watch the sunrise and the sunset.

Step two, have magnesium in the morning and the evening. So magnesium malate in the morning, magnesium acetyl taurate in the evening. And step three would probably be block out all artificial blue light after the sun sets. So turn your phone to red, get blue light blockers.

Don't mess with that artificial light because when you're looking at that blue light on your phone screen, it is literally telling your brain through the connection of light going through the eyes signaling to the signaling to your brain to the super charismatic nucleus. It is telling you that it is like 12 in the afternoon pretty much.

So it causes huge problems with your sleep. And that's probably one of the most important interventions, just blocking out blue lights and then also turning things like your Wi-Fi router off at night because the EMFs and yeah, these are just non-native electromagnetic fields from like our TV, from our Wi-Fi routers, from 5G, all this stuff.

It can actually impair deep sleep and REM sleep to an extent. And that's why a lot of people, when they live in the city, they notice they don't dream much. So take care of your light environments, sunrise, sunset.

block blue light after sunset and be very careful with your emfs and then ideally turn your phone on airplane mode when you go to bed and look up some shortcuts that you can do on your phone i have this setting and i can just click three buttons and then my phone turns red in the evening so it's very nice and then i also have these light bulbs in my home i got rid of all the leds and

Yeah, mostly have incandescent light bulbs, which have the full light spectrum. They don't just have that isolated blue lights. They have actually the red light in with that. And the distinction there is that.

Red light, it's actually good for your mitochondria. It can actually speed up the ATP synthase. Blue light, it slows it down and inhibits certain things in this area. So in nature, we have a harmony between the two. But when you're indoors in our modern environments, you just have the blue light and it's very toxic for our mitochondrial health. One thing that I did with this apartment that I bought is I replaced all the globes in the apartment. I switched them over to...

You can technically change them to any color, but I've selected red for the entire apartment. That's what I'll do too. I have these light bulbs. I just flick them on and off. And then if I do that three times, they're like completely red in the evening. Yeah. Now, I definitely think from a sleep perspective, a lot of people are very, very addicted to caffeine as well. So, you know, what are your thoughts on caffeine? Do you think

moderate consumption is actually okay? Do you think coffee itself is actually a health food or what are your thoughts there? - Coffee has a ton of benefits, but where the nuance lies in is are you a fast metabolizer of caffeine or are you a slow metabolizer of caffeine? And I found out all about this myself because I couldn't sleep for years and I was just laying in bed one night and I was like, what am I gonna do to fix this issue? And I went into my own self decode genetic reports

And I read that I was a very slow metabolizer of caffeine. And I was like, that's it. That's been it all along. It's literally the caffeine that's causing this. And I realized that caffeine, its half-life is roughly, what is it, 6 to 12 hours, 4 to 12 hours, something around there. So if you're a very slow metabolizer, that can stay in your body for up to like 10 plus hours.

So it's going to really screw your sleep and your body's going to be stuck in this fight or flight mode. Your neurotransmitter systems are going to get all screwed up. It's yeah. I believe that you can have a two to three, two to three times the risk of having a heart attack or some sort of cardiovascular disease. If you're a slow metabolizer and you're drinking caffeine. So it's not for everyone. And that's kind of the truth of that. But yeah,

there is something that you can do alternatively. And I guess where the nuance comes in is you got to remember that caffeine it's getting metabolized by the CYP one, a two enzyme. And this enzyme is extremely important for metabolizing that some of us metabolize it slow. Some of us metabolize it fast. So if you are a slow metabolizer, there's a little hack that you can do when caffeine gets metabolized.

it turns into three things. Mainly it turns into parazanthin. It turns into theobromine and it turns into the third one is like theothril or something. I forget the exact name of it, but parazanthin.

Yeah, I knew I messed that one up. But yeah, what you can do is you can take like theobromine, you can take parazanthin. That's what I do here and there. And parazanthin, it gets metabolized a lot faster. I believe the half-life for that one was around like two to four hours or something. It was pretty interesting when I was reading it. And I experimented with myself. I tried having it at four in the afternoon once, and I slept completely fine, which is pretty remarkable to think about. So yeah,

Yeah. Parazanthin can be a bit of a hack for that, but in general, caffeine is absolutely not for everyone. And you really need to pay attention and see like, am I a fast or slow metabolizer? Do I get really jittery from caffeine? Does it give me sleep issues? If I cut it out for two weeks, does my sleep improve? That's a good test as well. And

Yeah, I would rather have like sleep is the best performance enhancing drug in the world. I would rather have a good night of sleep and wake up ready to rock and roll and have a cup of parazanthin rather than be restless the entire night and then get in this ever perpetuating cycle just using caffeine to survive. And then yeah, just using that to survive and have energy and then not sleeping like crazy.

That's just so horrible for your health. It's so horrible for your adrenals. It's probably pretty bad for your DHEAS. It's bad for all sorts of things in the body. So I would personally avoid if you are a slow metabolizer. What about in terms of over the years, Chris, have you sort of played around with like high dose vitamin B1, vitamin D, any sort of vitamins or things that you've sort of mega dosed or experimented with that could be interesting? Yeah, I...

when I was, but I have like severe allergies and I didn't know this at the time, but I had heretic. Yeah. I had hereditary human chromatosis and I didn't realize it. And I took a ton of vitamin C acerola, cherry powder, and it actually made my iron overload worse, but it helps me a lot with the histamine issues that I was experiencing at the time. So it was useful for that. I personally don't supplement vitamin D much. I prefer to get that one from the sun. And the reason being is when you get it from the sun,

The vitamin D is sulfated correctly. So not only do you have fat soluble vitamin D, but you get water soluble vitamin D as well. And all of it's really cool metabolites that have their own unique effects on our physiology. So I prefer to get it from the sun. I don't supplement it much, much, but one thing I will supplement is.

here and there is vitamin K2, especially MK seven, because if you're getting that vitamin D three and you want to obviously promote that bone growth and all that good stuff, you need vitamin K2 MK seven to facilitate some of that. So that's another thing to consider, but I've also experimented with high dose thiamine. I've tried TTFT. That's a good one. Bento thiamine, uh,

Thiamin, HCL, all that good stuff. And I prefer to do that when I'm on a higher carb diet. It really helps with the metabolism of it. And for some reason, when I took really high amounts of it, it kind of gave me some of the tropic effects, which I thought was pretty cool. Nice, man. Yeah, definitely. I've had some pretty good effects from Thiamax, TTFD.

Yeah, that's a good one. In terms of eliminating brain fog, increasing just general energy and also minimizing any slump following carbohydrates, like there's zero crash. Yes. That's what changed the game for me. Exactly. Yeah, that's a really good one. And then I've experimented with niacin as a pre-workout. It's pretty fun. Please be careful with that one. I beg of you. And yeah, please start with like a very small dosage, but

I mega dosed it one time. I want to do new Tom classes. Yeah. The ex bodybuilder. Yeah. He's like an ex bodybuilder and he has these YouTube videos where he just does like all of his workouts until failure and they'll do like leg extension until failure and then go right into back squats. So I was kind of an idiot one time and,

I decided that I'm going to take 1500 milligrams of niacin and I'm going to combine that with 500 milligrams of caffeine. And I'm going to combine that with nicotine and I'm going to see what happens. And I have like the craziest workout of my entire life probably. So don't try that at home. That's like a crazy biohacking thing that I did. And if you're on niacin, please start at a very small dosage and work your way up. It gives you an intense flushing reaction. Like your face,

will be pure red. And if you've ever had a pre workout that gives you like the beta alanine itches, it's like that times 10. Like it's hardcore stuff. So Chris, my my final question for you today here is going to be if there's one piece of health advice that you'd love to spread to as many people as possible, what would that be? Whatever you do,

whatever, yeah, whatever you're actually going through, because everyone's health journey is going to be a little bit, yeah, it's gonna be a little bit different. Whatever is happening in your life, just remember that the one thing that's going to change it all for you is having faith and having hope in a better future.

in your actual ability to heal. And when you do that, you're going to be able to function from a state of love, abundance and gratefulness. And when you do that, it's going to make your entire journey so much easier. I remember when I was really sick, I was pretty resentful. I was pretty rude about stuff. And I just had so much bitterness in my heart. And the one thing that I really would have wanted to change throughout that entire thing was

Just being more grateful for the fact that I knew that I was going to heal in the future and just doing all of those things. And in terms of some simple take home advice, watch the sunrise, watch the sunsets, go exercise. It's extremely important. Optimize your sleep, eat whole foods. Don't eat that processed junk food. If you can tolerate it, eat fermented foods like raw sauerkrauts, like,

fermented veggies like raw kefir. Those are going to be really good for your guts. And never be afraid to just seek help from an actual practitioner because I see so many people on these Reddit forums and they're experimenting on themselves and it's good, but

i i felt comfortable experimenting on myself because i studied biomedical sciences for four years and i had a massive network of practitioners that i could talk to about this stuff i wasn't just going on reddit forums i was doing it pretty responsibly so never be afraid to take that step and go see a good practitioner and it's really complex at the end of the day and yeah you really want to take a multi-faceted approach to healing and it's really often not just one thing that you need to heal

It's often many things and it needs to be a very specific way in which it's done. If I'm making a soup, I'm not going to randomly throw ingredients in there at different times. I'm not going to add the wrong amounts. I'm not going to screw any of that stuff up. It needs to be prepared in a very specific way to taste like a pretty dang good soup.

So remember that when the healing journey and remember that being more precise and using evidence to actually support what you're trying to heal, it's going to be a lot more effective than trying trial and error for five years. Awesome, man. No, I really, really like that stuff. Chris, for my audience, if they want to connect with you, where can they find you online?

Yeah. So on Instagram, my name is the mito poppy. I think it says it on the screen. So it's not mito poppy, but it's the mito poppy on there. And then in, uh,

on twitter i am mito poppy just m-i-t-o-p-a-p-i and then yeah just feel free to shoot me a dm shoot me a follow if you have any questions and i leave all of my dms on open and i check every single one of them so feel free to shoot me a message if you have any questions if you want to connect whatever and yeah i would say that my instagram and my twitter are the two best ways to reach me right now awesome i'll make sure to leave those linked in the podcast show notes for those listening in but uh

Otherwise, Chris, it was an excellent time chatting with you today. We'll definitely keep in touch. And for those of you who have listened to this podcast, please do leave the podcast a five-star review and leave a comment as well to support the algorithm. That's it for me today, guys. Thank you for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

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