324. Biohacking Fundamentals - Double Your Energy, Achieve Optimal Health
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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. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today's special guest is an Australian author, freelance writer, nutritionist and executive coach with over a decade of experience in integrative health. Joining me on the podcast today, we have Camilla Thompson. Camilla, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Lucas. So good to be here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long time in the making. So Camilla, do you want to sort of share with my listeners a little bit about your story? Like how did you get so interested in health optimization?

Well, I guess I grew up with it. My mom was, I call her the OG biohacker. So she was like totally ahead of her time, really progressive. Like all our food came from local farms. Nothing was sprayed. We weren't allowed refined sugar, processed foods. Everything was natural. So she was really like, she set that blueprint for health for me. But obviously I went away and I was a teenager and rebelled and did everything that we do in our teens. But

But kind of came back to that in life. And I think there's been several pivotal points that sort of got me into really focusing on my health. But the main one was when I was unwell for many, many years and couldn't work out what was wrong with me. So I had lots of unexplained symptoms. GPs couldn't diagnose or work out what was going on with me. And we eventually found out I'd been poisoned by mold.

And I went on a massive journey to try and reclaim my health. I got diagnosed with chronic inflammation. So I was just determined not to live with that for the rest of my life. So biohacking became my lifeline. So I just threw everything at it.

And do you remember like where you went to for resources when you first started getting into it? Like were there certain like blog articles or yeah. It's so overwhelming. Like it's the difficult thing is that GPs aren't trained on mold. So they don't know how to diagnose or treat it. So it's not their fault, but it's just not part of their medical training. And so therefore you've got to go to functional doctors and they're all fully booked up, particularly with mold. Like it's because we're in a massive crisis in Australia, like one in two are living in mold.

And obviously a lot of people just got unexplained health issues and are being given other things to treat it. But,

But I it was such a overwhelming time because you couldn't I couldn't find the right information. There's a great website called Toxic Mold Australia dot org. And that was like my lifeline. There was a Facebook group. There was a website and there was lots of information on there. But I worked with an amazing naturopath, nutritionist and psychotherapist. And she had been exposed to mold. She had Lyme's disease. And so she really held my hand through the process. And yeah, it was an 18 month detox process. So it was pretty full on.

So talk to my audience in terms of like, what are some of the stealth symptoms that people might like unknown to them, like be linked to mold toxicity?

Yeah, I love the word stealth because it feels like mold is totally stealthy. It's like what is going on here? Yeah, look there. It's really weird. So I mean, one thing I had was severe dehydration all the time. So mold feeds off all the moisture in your body. So you feel like you're permanently hung over, like you're dehydrated. You wake up in the morning, you feel like you've been hit by a bus or you've drunk a bottle of red wine. So that's kind of one sign is that dehydration.

Immune system issues, so constantly getting sick all the time. A lot of people have respiratory. That's not where I had it. It was in my bones. So I had what mimicked arthritis. So a lot of body pain, a lot of swelling, a lot of like tingling in my body. I had an eye that used to weep and I had it growing up in my nose, Lucas. So it was growing up here. It's called Marcon's and it was growing up into my brain. So that was pretty full on. So then you get anxiety, brain fog.

But they're common symptoms, particularly for women as well. It's like you can experience some of this with your hormones. And so it's really hard to kind of pinpoint exactly that you've got mold poisoning. So 25% of the population, we have a gene, which is part of that celiac gene, the HLA-DR or DQ sequence.

And that means you can't actually detox mold out your body. It basically means your body sees it as an alien object, but it holds onto it. Whereas most people will just sweat it, poop it, pee it out. My body goes, oh, we'll keep this and we'll keep building and building. And it's like a magnet and it just disrupts all of your systems. So hormones, the whole works, immune system. What do you suggest to people if they suspect that they might have

like mold in their house or in their environment like what do you what do you usually say to them do you say like you know get it inspected by get a mold detective in there like what do you usually recommend love it um i think i wonder if anyone's used that name yet i love it i know they have in the u.s you should buy the buy the url mold detective yeah i know yeah you've got it here first

Love it. I mean, God, the US is so far ahead of us with mold, right? Like they've been doing this a long time. And we know a lot of biohackers as well have a story around mold. It seems to be that that's like a rite of passage into help. I need to heal myself. But yeah, so just I mean, step one is you can do a urine test, right? So there's a special mycotoxin urine test, which basically sees what kind of spores you've inhaled and what's in your body.

So that's one thing you can do. You can get a mold inspector, remediator to come around and come and do an inspection. They can do air sampling, surface sampling and look for moisture and look for mold. There's no point treating mold in your body if you're still living in it. The step one of a protocol is you've got to get the hell out or you've got to fix it.

And when it comes to like what I've heard, Camilla is like in terms of actually trying to remove it yourself, like you have to be very careful in terms of, you know, how you do that.

Yeah, you have to. And there's so much misinformation out there. So a lot of products like Exit Mould are kind of bleach related products and that you spray it on the mould that disperses mould spores into the room. So you should never spray on mould. And it just discolours it. It makes it go white, but it's feeding it. So the mould's still there. So it's actually doing more harm than good. Something like Exit Mould.

So you have to mechanically remove mould. You have to find the source, then it has to be removed properly. You can keep wiping it away, but it will keep coming back depending on where the source is from. And if you've had water damage, you've got to fix that if it's not just condensation mould.

So is it possible, like, for example, I mean, let's say somebody's got a bathroom that's just full of tiles. Is it still possible that mold can grow between like the cracks between the tiles? Like, or does it grow only on certain surfaces? No, it does. Look, it grows everywhere. It's a living organism and it's super smart. And, you know, sometimes that is condensation mold. It's a buildup. The dangerous mold is the stuff that comes from water damage. So the mycotoxin spores. So that's the ones that really make you sick.

Like for someone that's sensitive like me, any kind of mold can make me ill. But yeah, for most people, it's, you know, that's not the stuff that's going to be making them sick is kind of mold in the grout. It's mold that's coming in from a sport perspective. When it comes to, I mean, some of the interventions that you experimented with to like detoxify or like, obviously number one, like you said, is remove yourself from the environment in which it's, you know, it's burdening you.

Second would be like, obviously now what after like post exposure, like were there certain interventions that you were like, this absolutely makes a difference in terms of your quality of life. Yeah. Infrared saunas.

Number one, like I literally I bought one. I had one in my house It was like it was I feel like it saved my life like I was in it every other day Sweating out the mold. It was the only thing that even when I didn't realize I was living in mold I still had a sauna because I knew that when I got in a sauna it made me feel better and I didn't realize at the time but it was allowing my body to try and get rid of some of these some of this buildup of mold toxicity, but

But so infrared sauna was amazing. Like there's certain supplements that are great, but I actually went on something called colostrum, which is called CSM, which is part of the shoemaker protocol, which is kind of,

The gold standard in the U S for shoemaker is, is this a doctor, Dr. Shoemaker? Yeah. Dr. Shoemaker. Yeah. So he sort of created a kind of like a kind of healing pyramid where you've got, there's all different steps that you have to go through. Like the final step is VIP, which is when you get it out your nose, which is what I did at the end, which is like a special spray that breaks it down and gets rid of that vaso intestinal peptide. That one.

Those are active intestinal. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, it is that one. Yeah. So that's like the final step, but you go, so colostrum, CSM, which I think is used for cholesterol, I believe. You'd know better than me, Lucas. Do you know? It's abbreviated. CSM is abbreviated for something. Colostrum. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Colostrum. I'm probably saying it wrong, but something like that.

um so yeah so that's a binder right so that helps to bind the mold so you you drink that you bind the mold and then you have to go to the toilet every day because if you don't go to the toilet you get a real concentration of mold do you mean to like for feces or for yeah yeah you've got to poop you've got to poop every day so well people people people should be like i say i say this to people every day like you have to be pooping every day regardless and if you're not

Totally. But this stuff bungs you up. It's a binder, right? Right, right, right. So it's a binder. So a bit like charcoal can sometimes bung you up or like bentonite clay is a no-no for me. It just doesn't work. My system doesn't like it. So this CSN bungs you up. Me too as well. Bentonite clay, it clogs me up. I can't go to the toilet if I have bentonite clay. Activated charcoal, yeah. Charcoal has done something similar to me in the past where –

Yeah, if I'm not hydrated enough, it seems like it does slow down intestinal peristalsis. Like I do feel a bit of like a, I don't know, it feels like it's, I don't even know what the word is, but it's like it pulls water away from the intestines or something. Yeah. Charcoal, I think is fine, but not every day. Like I took it for so long and it disrupted my gut as well because it was just too much.

But so this, the stressful thing when you're taking binders is you have to go to the toilet properly. You've got to empty your bowels every day. And so therefore you need to take something to help you go to the toilet as well. So it's like this kind of vicious cycle of binding, excreting, binding, excreting, but chlorella, there's other things. It's so individualized and personalized. There's just not a one size fits all rule for mold because you've got to see what other stuff's going on in your body, right? Just,

Did you have the obvious immune markers show up on your blood tests and C-reactive protein was high, things like that? Through the roof. Yeah, my chronic inflammation was so bad in my bloods

And yeah, that's something I've really worked on to reverse. And I think I did my biological age test this year with glycan age and they test your information. And I just thought I was going to be like a 70 year old woman because I was like, it's done so much damage to my body. Like, how have I reversed this? And I was in the top 99th percentile for low inflammation.

So I've gone from like my body was on fire, right? It was like red fire to managing to reverse it. And that is all through biohacking, right? That's just, yeah. And that's, that's just, that's nutrition. It's, you know, cold showers. It's reducing down my inflammation, like the amount of things, cryotherapy, things like that, that have helped, you know, I did a bit of hyperbaric, but not a lot. I couldn't afford to do everything either, Lucas. Like,

I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting well. Like I had, I'm lucky I could do that. A lot of people can't, they just actually have to stay sick because there's no support for them. At what stage do you think the hyperbaric would have been beneficial for you? Like, do you think it would have been towards the end or? I think it just would have, if I'd had access to it and I could have afforded to, I think doing it regularly would have been amazing. Yeah. It's such a game changer. Yeah. Such a game changer. Like I'm learning more and more and more about it and it's just,

You know, I've done it quite a few times and I absolutely love it. I know last time we caught up, you were in your hyperbaric chamber. Yeah. I was so jealous. I'm like, I want one. Well, I mean, I'm in the room that it was in and now it's actually, it's been packed up, ready to ship to Dubai. Yeah, nice. Yeah, you've got to take that with you. I'll have to introduce you to Sel Regen. That's the guy that sells. He's doing massive fit outs. He's doing like custom built ones now, like four person hyperbaric chambers and stuff.

All sorts of crazy cool stuff. Yeah, I'd love to be hooked up. There's so many interventions. Let's say we're talking to somebody who's just getting into biohacking. What would you have to say to them in terms of where should they start? What's a good starting point, do you think, for the average person?

Look, I talk about this in my book. It's the biohacking basics. And we've really there's no point chucking all this other stuff at if we're not eating properly and we're not moving our bodies and we're not prioritizing sleep and we haven't looked at our gut health and we're not recovering properly and we don't have the right mindset.

all the rest of the stuff is just band-aids like we have to get those foundations I talk about building a healthy home right in our body and it's like we start with those the biohacking basics the foundations we get those right and then we build the other layers and we level up but you've got to start you know just for some people cleaning up their diet that in itself is going to have that ripple effect um or prioritizing their sleep right so they've got more energy they're going to move their body they make better decisions so it's all of that kind of anchor habits

What about when it comes to, I mean, because when you say like cleaning up your diet, like there's going to be so many different, there's different sides to that. There's like people who are like strongly vegetarian, strongly carnivore. Like what do you say to people in terms of like cleaning it up?

Well, I mean, what I say when it comes to diet now is get your genetic testing done. So do your DNA methylation test and let's see what actually your APOE gene is. Let's work out what foods actually you should be eating for your genetics. And then let's look at your lifestyle and what else is around that.

But, you know, I think we've got to be intuitive with what works for our body. Like I didn't eat meat for a while. It didn't work for me. Right. But that's not to say it's not going to work for someone else. You know, I've got the pharma gene as well. So my diet is definitely more Mediterranean based diet that suits me. I'm not I'm not a hunter gatherer from a genetic perspective. But cleaning up your diet is just get rid of those ultra processed foods. Stop eating out of packets.

you know, look at the ingredients of what you're consuming, support your local farmer's markets, your butchers, you know, go get the quality, be a qualitarian, right? Mark Hyman talks about it. I love it. And I talk about it a lot. Be a qualitarian when it comes to what you're putting in your gob, in your mouth. And that also, that also obviously includes like, like not drinking tap water as well. Like making sure, yeah. Like how many Australians right now, do you still think a drinking tap water is,

on a daily basis, not realizing that it's like poisoning them. I don't know. It's funny. I was on sunrise TV talking about this. It was like, they were asking me five things I'd never do. And one of them was drink tap water, particularly on the central coast. Cause it's like, it's like chlorine. Someone's tested it and put a thing in it. And it's come up the same as a pool, like a chlorinated pool.

So, look, I think people are. I remember when I first came here and I've had friends say to me in the past, oh, just drink tap water. What are you, you know, what's wrong with you? And it's like, no, no. But I think a lot of people are. But it comes back to education and awareness. And I think.

So many people just don't know this stuff. And you would be surprised how many people don't know. Well, the way I look at it as well is like if you're trying to emphasize a pain point for someone, like let's say you're talking to someone who's trying to, let's say a 35-year-old woman who's trying to conceive. And you say to her, don't drink tap water. And she'll be like, why not?

If you say to her, because it can increase free radical damage and it just will fly over her head. But if you say it's going to reduce your likelihood of getting, you know, conceiving, like then they're going to listen. So it has to be like relevant. Yeah. Such a good point. It's the pain point for the person, isn't it? And I think...

Look, I think it says mainstream media talking about water now. So I think people are becoming more aware. But I mean, these are some just the basics of like clean up your hydration. You know, a lot of people have got these massive yeti bloody water bottles. They're drinking all this water, but they're not hydrating properly as well. They're not getting the right salts and things like that. I mean, I don't know what your thoughts are as well, because I've got reverse osmosis and I.

a full water system on my house but that takes some stuff out as well so i always put celtic sea salt back into my water just to give it a bit of a boost what's your that's usually usually what i recommend as well to my sort of clients and i've got that myself installed is um yeah i'm fortunate that i actually own this apartment where i could actually you know install something under the sink um but yeah in terms of remineralizing like i'm i'm

I'm having a lot of Himalayan salt or like Celtic sea salt on top of all sorts of foods and things like that. And then sometimes I'll throw it into my water in the morning to help hydration. I think probably the most obvious thing for people listening is like when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you need to prioritize is not the coffee. It's the hydration with like water with electrolytes because, you know, I mean,

If they start with like coffee, it's just going to accelerate that dehydration. And you can even tell by your urine color in the morning. First thing in the morning, your urine color is usually dark, which means drink water, you know? Yeah. I know. It's such a good sign, isn't it? Well, I've got, I've raised two boys, so I know. I've seen, and they don't flush toilets, so I see, yeah.

yeah, I've seen the color of any urine. And I'm like, you guys need to drink some more water. But no, it's so true. And I think as soon as we wake up, we need to really think about how we're setting our day up, right? It's like some natural life, drinking some water, sprinkle of Celtic sea salt, like hydrate properly, electrolytes, whatever it might be, just to give your body the best chance of,

having energy for the day and your brain as well so yeah i mean there's some really simple things we can do i know we've we've tried all the crazy amazing technologies and therapies and biohacks but actually the simple stuff is what really moves the dial a lot of the time for people well here's a here's a really fun question for you camilla it's around what you want stocked in your fridge year round in terms of maybe like the top five foods that you want stocked in your fridge year round

And he hasn't pre-prepared me for this, everybody listening. He's throwing me under the bus here. No, he's not throwing me under the bus. Throwing me a life fine. What do I need in my fridge? Okay, five things. I would say, oh my goodness. I would say definitely fresh ginger. I use that a lot and turmeric root. So that, yeah, those would be something I'd have in.

Probably, I'm really into sea moss at the moment. So that's in my fridge at the moment, which I'm loving. Is it like the gel or the powder? Yeah. What's the taste like on that? So good. Yeah, I've got this amazing brand and it's got like spirulina. Anyway, it's good. So I think that and what else? I'm trying to think what's in my fridge. Ghee I've got in my fridge. That's always a staple for me for cooking.

Coconut yogurt, I do love, love, love. And some kind of bone broth too, especially in winter. I'm kind of into bone broths at the moment. So lots of powerful immune boosting, gut healing. Nurturing, yeah, immune stuff. Is the ghee, have you found a difference between ghee versus butter versus olive oil versus coconut oil? Or is it just like a taste preference?

I cook a lot of Indian food. So that's probably one thing. So hence the ginger and the turmeric. So I love Indian and Ayurvedic food. I don't use ghee for everything. I use it for my eggs in the morning. I use it for when I'm cooking Indian food, but then I'll use olive oil, extra virgin olive oil most of the time. I've just started getting in, I've just the last few weeks been doing a bit of MCT oil in the mornings. Is that something you've taken in the past?

I've experimented with MCT oil. I feel like it can help to... If I'm trying to deliberately fast until midday, I feel like taking MCT oil can slightly raise ketone levels and push you into more of a fat-burning state. That's what I've been vibing, and I felt it. I just felt... Because I fast. I do 16 and 8, so I intermittent fast. Interesting, when I researched my book...

the one thing that kept coming up and up was intermittent fasting, like came up for how it can help with, you know, extending telomeres, how it helps with our mitochondria, how it helps with these zombie cells. Like it was just like everything, everything,

I looked at all those hallmarks of aging, it seemed like fasting really helped to protect some of that. So I do 16 and 8. That's just kind of what I roll with. Is that an every day of the week sort of thing? Pretty much. It depends. Sometimes in my cycle, if I feel like I need something, I will. But most of the time, I just do that. But the MCT oil, I do collagen and creatine and stuff in the morning as well, like in a liquid form.

things so that kind of just gives me a little bit of a something and then the MCT oil I've been doing which I feel is just helping with my brain my brain feels a little bit more on fire in a good way well I've I want to sort of yeah I'm glad you brought up the the intermittent fasting aspect I've had a lot of um I speak to a lot of obviously business owners and things like that and I actually ask them like do you fast regularly and they say

They say to me the same, every single one seems to say the same thing. If they feel like they're most mentally sharp, most productive, and they feel like they're just able to get heaps of work done in the first four to six hours of their day, if they fast. If they don't, their productivity drops. Have you sort of heard the same thing?

Same. Yeah, I hear it with my clients, but even with myself, like I'm on fire in the morning. I'm like 6am and I'm like, bang, I'm ready to go. And it's like, and that goes on. And then come 11 o'clock, I'll have something to eat, you know, and I always do protein now. So no more, no more sweet stuff. Even though I said coconut yogurt, that's a treat. But yeah, that is healthy.

I do something similar as well, like a light Greek yogurt with like coconut syrup. It's like a different sweetener to honey. It's even lower GI than honey. It's so nice. Yeah, delicious.

But yeah, I'm the same. And I think from a performance perspective, like I keep saying to people, like you've got to give your body a chance to rest and digest and do all the wonderful work it needs to do. But if it's constantly having to process food, it can't do that. So just trying to get people to do at least 12 hours is actually can be quite hard. Well, what do you suggest to people who like they want to get into it, but they don't know? Like, first of all, they say to themselves,

Or they might say to you, like, it's too hard. Like, it's too difficult. What do you, how do you respond to that usually? Good. That's the same as cold showers. It's not meant to be. It's meant to challenge us. It's meant to build our resilience, you know. I think we just, we're so, we're just, everything's got to be convenient, right? It's like, everything's got to be easy. Everything's got to be convenient. We're being set up to fail.

Every time we go to make a decision around food in the supermarket or wherever we're going. Right. But people do have more control. And I think if you can't take control of what you're eating and when you're eating, then you've got to have a word with yourself around where your discipline lies with yourself. So I just get people to start with 12 hours. It's like, OK, you're sleeping for most of it. Like, surely let's start eating, finishing dinner a little bit earlier, pushing out breakfast a little bit more.

But some people will say, I'm starving as soon as I wake up. And then, well, that's actually a red flag that something's not quite right if you're absolutely starving when you wake up. So go away and get tested. Let's work out what's going on with you because that's not a great sign. Yeah, yeah. Did you ever get into like wearing the continuous glucose monitor? I did. The CGM? I did it for a week. I was meant to do it for two weeks. I don't like the fact – I don't really like having Bluetooth stuck in my arm, even though I think they're amazing and I think they're really great for people with diabetes. Yeah.

But for me, I am really sensitive to EMFs massively. And that's just part of mold. Being in mold, you become really sensitive to chemicals, sensitive to EMF. It's like your body's like this kind of, well, I mean, our body is electricity and energy, but you become even more heightened. So I had it for a week, but yeah. Have you done it? Yeah, I ran a few experiments. I wanted to basically identify how I'd respond to something

To certain foods and... Yeah, it's great for that. It's really enlightening. You can do it for a couple of weeks, you know, run a bunch of, you know, end of one experiments and just sort of say, you know, like sushi really shocked me. Like I wasn't expecting sushi to be so spiky. It's not even a word, but just, yeah. Spiky sushi. Yeah.

Well, it is. There's so much sugar in the rice, so they soak the rice in sugar. Is that what they do? They actually soak the rice? Well, I think it's soaked in a water-sugar solution. I might be wrong. Feel free to correct me, but I believe so. I wonder why. Obviously, the taste, yeah, but it doesn't need to have that. It's definitely sugar in the rice, so that's probably why.

Yeah, in terms of fruits, I didn't see as much of a spike that I initially thought I would see with fruit. Like berries in particular never like made a difference in terms of like it was pretty steady. And then also probably the best biohack that I figured out from that was the 15-minute walk after a meal. It's so good, so, so good. It makes such a difference, doesn't it? Just to get the digestive –

juices flowing and walk it off. It's yeah, it's so good. Yeah. What about in terms of like another aspect towards like the big, the foundational aspects around biohacking sleep optimization, what do you usually recommend to people from like sleep standpoint? So I guess it's just getting people to sort of

Get consistent around their sleep. And like I try and encourage everyone to do belly breathing before they go to bed. So to literally breathe themselves to sleep with their hands on the belly and just feel it rise and fall only through the nose because that activates our vagus nerve, our parasympathetic. It sends a message that we're safe.

flushes out cortisol so it's like it's you know part of a lot of people will wake up at like 2 3 a.m because we've got this big surge of adrenaline cortisol our brain's looking for glycogen it's like hey i've been using all this energy source i'm looking for something and like if we do that breath work before we go to sleep and we do it when we wake up say at 2 3 a.m it starts to train the body and it helps us to get into that parasympathetic nervous system so

That's like one thing about changing kind of what's going on from a nervous system perspective, because a lot of people are running in fight or flight all day, right? They're on cortisol, adrenaline, junkies. And then we try and go to sleep. We're tired. We're wired. You know, it's just and then your body's still revved up inside.

So I think the breathing is really good. Look, magnesium, I just, it literally is a breakthrough for some of my clients and it has been for me in the past, but like with any supplements, I always say, take it for a period of time, give it a rest. You don't need to take this for the rest of your life. And then if you feel like you need it, go back. But magnesium, yeah,

definitely like night magnesium or putting it on your body or having a bath or drinking it can really help. What are your views on magnesium? Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. Well, it depends on the form. Usually if I prescribe and recommend, you know, the magnesium glycinate, that can either go in one of two directions. For some people have found that can be like overly stimulating, whereas like

Um, cause there's some weird like paradox that happens with like glutamate to, to gather conversion. Something happens there. It's, it's pretty complex, but, um, yeah,

Yeah, I think the one intervention that I'm really excited to experiment with myself from a sleep perspective is actually what we spoke about last time. I think it was the PEMF, Matt, using the PEMF. Yeah, it's fantastic. Do you want to sort of share that with my audience, what that's all about? Yeah, so that's a sort of pulse electromagnetic field bed, and it's not the bad EMFs that we're getting from technology. It's different.

But again, there's the regulations here in Australia around trying to get approval for these beds. Like you can you can get them from more of a medical perspective, but to have them at home, it's harder. Most people are ordering from overseas, but you can have them on. There's so many different things that they work with. Like there's a whole like menu of different things, different disorders and issues that you can actually help with them.

But you just feel like this kind of you lie on it. It's very relaxing. You kind of go into this. Some of them have got red light. The one I've got has got red light on it. It warms. It's infrared. So you're warm. You've got the red light you've got. And it's got like crystals in as well. And yeah, I mean, they're really interesting. I haven't I've only been using it for about a month. I've noticed it really helps to calm my nervous system and.

and it have used it a bit for pain as well so have you seen any changes in terms of like hiv or um deep sleep i haven't measured it but so that would be i would i should do that actually i should do that on my whoop because i do that with other stuff like when i when i take magnesium the difference in my sleep with my whoop is noticeable

Um, so that I can really tell it makes a huge difference and particularly, and also breath work that helps how my HRV is overnight. So those are some things that I definitely look at. Um, some simple things as well. Like, I mean, I use a silk eye mask at night to sleep in because they prevent wrinkles apparently, which I'm going with. Um, but also just like it's, I've like retrained my brain. As soon as I put that mask on my body goes time to sleep.

and it's like, it's just like a cue that helps me to get to sleep. So I really recommend that. Um, there's a honey hack as well. So like for manuka or raw honey for some people to take after dinner or before bed, if you're not fasting, um, that tricks and mimics the body into thinking it's glycogen in the liver. So the brain uses that. I have had clients sleeping through the night from just taking honey in the evening. It helps. Yeah. Do you rate it? Cause some

people are like, whoa. No, actually, I actually do it as my last meal for that reason. Good. Yeah, like I'll do it with, obviously with like the honey, but yeah, sorry, with like the yogurt, like I mentioned before, but

I feel like it's a very steady carbohydrate supply. Because most people don't realize that sometimes when they wake up during the night, it's actually because their blood sugar has crashed and then therefore cortisol and adrenaline spikes and that wakes them up.

Yeah, 100%. And so I really do rate that. But it comes back to the quality as well. We've got to have good quality honey. I'm like, do not use the cheap, squeezy stuff. Not Capilano. Not Capilano. It's going to put your blood sugar through the bloody roof. That's not... What's the... Like, how do they get away with it in Australia where they can cut... Like, are you saying that the honey... You know, I'm not going to... I'm going to mention brands. Like, for example, Capilano...

or a honey like that, the ones that are like really cheap in the squeezy bottles, like are they, what you're saying is they're not actually honey or they're just really bad quality honey?

Look, I don't know. I haven't gone into them. I haven't used them ever in my life. I haven't really looked at the products, but they're not pure raw honey unfiltered. So we know that. So it's a combination of other stuff. But you just like raw unfiltered honey is not expensive, you know, and the same with like Celtic sea salt. It's like $12. It'll last you three months. Honey, like these are just hacks that anyone can afford to do. Like it's not...

People often say, oh, I can't afford to do stuff for my health. And I'm like, okay, but what do you, are you buying a bottle of wine a week? Are you, or two bottles of wine a week? Are you buying lots of processed foods? Like where can you stop sort of buying things like that and put that into making better health decisions for you? So, yeah. And then there's the quote, which is like, if you think being healthy is expensive, try being sick.

You've heard that one? Yeah. Well, I know. I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting well. And on this support group I'm at for Toxic Mold Group for Facebook, people are sleeping in tents in Melbourne in the winter or in their cars because their homes are making them sick. And they might be in public housing or disability housing or they're just in a house and they can't afford to move out. Right. And they can't afford to get well. So it's like it's shocking what people are going through. And there's so many unwell people.

And they're not getting the help they need. What do you think is one of the problems with like the Western medical system? Like what do you think, if you could redesign the entire system, like where would you start and what would you do? Let's get controversial. Let's not get controversial. It's Australia. We've got to watch what we say. Look, I think it's a reactive system. I think we all know that. We need a proactive preventative system.

It's doctors. I mean, I know that this has been talked about in the US doctors need to be trained on nutrition. Like I feel bad for GPs actually. I feel like they're being let down because they're not getting the right training. They're not trained on nutrition. They're not trained on hormones properly. They're not trained on mold. So then we're going to the doctor saying help. And they're like, I don't actually know how to help. So they need to be retrained. They need to be, you know, there's, I know there's degrees now you can do once you've got your doctor's degree, you can do another one in more integrative health, but

So that needs to change, right? Education, GPs need to understand what we need. Like we need to be food first, nutrition. Like I know people that have had like bowel cancer and then they've gone back to the doctor and the doctor has not discussed with them a nutrition plan. And they've just said, right, we've done all the other stuff, off you go.

And it's like, oh my God, it's like a critical component. So I think just, yeah, preventative health. Like we've got to, there's so many exciting things. Like I was just, Prenuvo, I'm sure you know of those guys who do the full scans now to look for different cancers. Like everyone should have access to that, right? We need that early interventions key and that prevention piece. And I think people need to understand what they're putting in their mouth is impacting so much as well as epigenetics, right? It's like what we're eating,

It's turning on and on that gene expression. So, yeah. Do you think highlighting and showing people the impact of these different like foods, different interventions, it's a way for them to like solidify and ingrain the fact that these behavioral decisions are definitely having an impact on their health? Do you feel like that's...

It is, but it's hard because people are addicted, right? So these foods are created with these bliss points where people, it makes them feel good. And in a world where people feel shit a lot of the time, right, because of everything that's going on around us, these foods are making people feel good for a split second, right? And then it's the come down after, right? Like any drug, it's like there's a high, there's a low. And I think, you know, people are addicted to these foods, you know. I've got a teenage son who's addicted to...

dominoes, all this crap. He was never brought up on it, obviously. And I'm just, it frustrates me that he, and they want convenience all the time. They want it on their doorstep. They don't want to cook anymore. They don't want to, it's just, it's really, we're setting people up for it to fail from a health perspective. I like what you said around the like preventative, like educate, educating upfront. Like,

Like you said before, with the doctors, at least the way they're trained here, the minimal effort and emphasis on nutrition when you are what you eat, right? So how can we, like if you had to redesign it, so obviously you would implement that, like more training for GPs, practitioners to understand the importance around it.

um what about in terms of like pharmaceutical medications what are your thoughts on how they're yeah it's really hard like i think some pharmaceuticals save lives we know that right and you know i've got a friend of mine who's got addison's disease right and he's got so he it's really rare and he has to take pharmaceuticals every day to keep him alive right so i

Yeah, he's got no, his adrenals completely gone. So it doesn't have any anymore. So if he didn't take that, he wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. So it's like, yeah, it saves people's life. I mean, maybe there are other ways he could help himself. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a doctor. I can't go into that. But look, I think the thing that worries me more about pharmaceuticals at the moment is the overuse of a prescription of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. And particularly for women at a certain age where we're going to GPs looking for help.

around our hormones and we're just kind of put on something to dull us and to try and it's not addressing the issue. So that really concerns me. But it's such a, you know, I work with a lot of doctors. So I work with the guys in Melbourne, Everlab. I send all of my clients to get medical testing. I work with neutropath. I do a lot of testing myself.

So, but it's just like, yes, if we can avoid pharmaceuticals, great. But sometimes we can't. And it's just, yeah, it's a long conversation.

Yeah, I think I definitely resonate with what you're saying there around. I mean, my dad, my dad was a pharmacist. Exactly. It's in your blood. It is. And the thing is, like, I had the choice of going down the route of becoming, you know, becoming a pharmacist or the other route, which is what I pursued instead, which was to become a naturopath. And the reason why I was so passionate about naturopathy is because, like, it actually is holistic.

And even though like when I mentioned that I'm a naturopath to GPs in Melbourne or they sometimes they'll, you know, they'll look down and they'll just say like, what's this? It's a Mickey Mouse course. It's not even. It's not. It's so much study. I looked into doing it and I was like, oh my God, it's intense. It's four years full time. Like, yeah, extensive, extensive work. It's massive. We do a lot. We do a lot. Yeah.

And life-saving like the naturopath I work with, with mold, there's the GP couldn't have helped me. I had to work with someone that had, you know, an expertise in mold. So yeah,

But it's looking at the whole body. And I mean, if we go back to the medical system, this is a problem. Everything is disconnected, right? Nothing is holistic. We're not looking at things from an Eastern medicine, like when we look at TCM and we look at Ayurveda and we look at the whole body and how we treat the whole body and how everything is interrelated. And that's the same with naturopathy. It's like we are looking, what's the cause? What's causing this? And how do we get to that rather than just band-aiding it with a pharmaceutical drug?

So, you know, they have their place 100%. But at the same time, we've got to look at other alternatives as well. You mentioned before this machine that people can go in to like detect things.

Yeah, Prenevo. P-R-E-N-U-V-O, Prenevo. Is that rolling out in America only? No, it's in here in Australia. Okay. And it's amazing. So it's basically, I mean, it's not cheap. I think it's about three grand.

Per assessment? Yeah, it's just one scan and it will pick up. So it's looking at what's going on in your body and it can pick up cancer and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's amazing. They've been using them in Asia for years, Lucas. Like I remember, yeah, when my father-in-law, he unfortunately passed away of pancreatic cancer. But when we were in Thailand, my husband took him to get checked and they did all of these different checks to check because something wasn't right for cancer. And the only thing he didn't add on was the pancreatic check.

And they checked for every other cancer, said he was fine. And the irony was he had pancreatic.

So really tough because we could have, again, early intervention. But these have been in Asia for many, many years. This exact, like this technology? Very similar. I don't know if it's for another, but similar technology where they're scanning. It's not, it's a longer process. It should be once a year assessment at your GP and it should be covered by Medicare. It should, but it takes hours to do it as well. It's not a simple, quick, whooshed.

because they're actually scanning for so many different things in the body. So the technology is there, but again, it becomes a little bit elitist. It's only people that can afford to do it. And yeah, but that's what it is from a technology. There are other companies doing it cheaper now, but I know Pranuvo are like definitely the leaders in this space. I'm definitely going to reach out to them and see if I can create some content around that. You should. I just did this morning. Yeah.

Oh, really? Yeah, because I, well, so Everlab who I work with in Melbourne, so they, they, they really recommend Pranubo as well. So we were talking about that, but yeah, they are, it's incredible what they're doing. And this is comes back to prevention and like the amount of money on the healthcare system for people one and two are going to have cancer before the age of 85 in Australia. Like, what are we doing to prevent this? Like, it's like, it's a crisis.

So the government have got to step in, you know, it's not just the medical system. The government needs to start with proper messaging around nutrition and movement and yeah, all of this, all of the above. That's what I say as well. Like our voice is only so loud. You know, we, we have a platform and my platforms, what 90, 90,000 followers on Instagram. Like it's, but then it's like, well, to actually reach the whole of Melbourne, like we need multiple voices, multiple people educating us.

And therefore, we have to hit it from the top, which is like the government level educating and just, yeah, shifting. I think after the pandemic, the whole population, I feel like, particularly in Australia, has become...

The good news is that they're a lot more interested in biohacking in general after the pandemic. Would you say so? Absolutely. I think people are really waking up. I know Australia, we're a little bit behind from a biohacking perspective, but it's really catching on. But with anything new, there's going to be skepticism. There's going to be challenge. We're going to find, you know, I'm already experiencing it. I launched my book last week and already experiencing that pushback because people can't understand things or they're,

the science isn't catching up quick enough and like, oh my God, this week, Lucas, like I've, you know, loving all your stuff that you're talking about with Ashwagandha because I used, I mean, I've taken it, I've had a good experience with it, but now that I'm diving into it and going, oh, okay, hang on.

We really need to look at what else is going on here from a blunting. But 5-HTP, apparently, same thing, can have a very similar impact as ashwagandha. Did you hear that from a client or you were researching yourself? 5-HTP, I heard it. No, I heard it on a podcast with Tim Gray in the UK. Yeah. Oh, really? They were talking about 5-HTP. She was.

Maybe she saw my post because I posted about it like two years ago. Oh, did you? Yeah, I actually posted about this, like that 5-HTP can actually increase cortisol and also dampen dopamine's effects. And then Huberman about six months ago admitted on a podcast that he doesn't want to deliberately increase serotonin for that reason through supplements. So that's a really good one.

I'm glad that you picked up on that as well. And you can, yeah, just, just warn people about it. Cause I've, we have a sense of responsibility. I love that you're doing this because you, but you know, I mean, I think it's comes down to the individual and I wonder if it's same for men and women, probably not. I mean, I have taken ashwagandha in the past. It's been great to help me with anxiety, like really has and,

But, you know, it's not something again, with everything, we shouldn't be taking stuff all the time every day, like I'm trying to reduce my supplement stack down. But it's and try and do more, you know, liquids or foods or liposomal, whatever it might be. But like, I've just I'm fascinated by some of the stuff you post, because it really makes us to think and we've got to think critically. And even from a supplement and health perspective, like not everything is good for us. And

We're seeing an increase in liver disease from too many supplements. That was an article that came out in the last few weeks. So we've got to be careful of what we're doing. And it's, yeah. No, it's definitely, I'm glad you brought that up. It starts with education, but also like the awareness from the individual as well. I always advise like people when they're starting new supplements, try and do some basic tracking on their notes app, on their phone, or just something. Otherwise,

you'll literally have like 30 different supplements in your protocol and you won't even know which one's doing what. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing. I don't know how some people are taking over 100 a day or even like what's happening to your gut? What's happening to your liver? Like how can your body process all these supplements? But, you know, each to their own. But I think we've got to be mindful. It's such a big market and there's so many cheap, bad quality brands that are toxic, like plastic and just sitting in our gut. It's not even degrading.

So people have got to think twice about just taking stuff. And it comes back to test first, always test. Like even with NAD, do an NAD test rather than just taking it. Like see if you need NAD, you know, rather than just taking it every day. And we still don't know what the long-term impacts of that might be. Like,

As much as I love it, and I do love it, but we've got to be careful. Yep, I'm a big believer in, yeah, test, don't guess. That's the saying. And what gets measured gets managed. The same applies to biohacking, which is really important. Well, Camilla, if my audience wants to, thank you so much for featuring today. Oh, I loved being here. If they want to connect with you, you know, learn about your new book, your socials, where can they find you online?

Yeah, so my new book, Biohack Me, great title. It says what it does on the front is you can buy it on Amazon, all good bookstores. It's in all the airports. Also Booktopia, those guys. And then my website is www.biohackme.com.au. There's a free biohacking guide on there. I do coaching programs. I host retreats, biohacking retreats. I've got one in Bali in September.

for women only and we'll do a men's one next year and then a joint one. But yeah, that's me. And you can find me on Instagram at biohackmecoach. Awesome. Make sure to leave that linked in the podcast show notes for those listening in. And otherwise, guys, thanks so much for tuning in. If you did enjoy today's podcast, please do leave it a five-star review. It really does stuff with the algorithms. And as always, thank you for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

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