What are you willing to do and and how much time are you willing to dedicate to it? And what kind of result are you looking for ultimately? There's the other thing about biohacking. It depends on where you where you start at, but what are you looking to do? Are you looking to be in better shape?
Are you just looking to not have to take pharmaceuticals? Are you looking to just not have to go to your doctor every two weeks? What are your goals? And what's your five year goal? What's your ten year goal?
And what's your investment? We're an investment. You are the best asset you could possibly have. There is no greater asset than you.
You are tuned in to the Everything's Energy Show. Today, I am your host Roland, and we are focusing on a very hot topic that pretty much everyone's doing nowadays. And if you haven't heard the term biohacking, either you don't have a cell phone or you've been living under a rock. And for the sake of diving into the specifics of biohacking, I have what I wanna say is Las Vegas' leading biohacker with me today. I have John Wetzel or aka John XD.
I don't know how you prefer to be addressed, but Either way. Either one works. John, thank you for being here. How are doing?
Roland, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for doing this. I know we had a good time last night and I look forward to doing this because we we really connected last night and we got to understand each other. Thank you much.
You're welcome. For context, we did a little, event, an event night last night where I spoke about HRV, heart rate variability in the nervous system. And it was cool to see your OsteoStrong location. Mhmm. People are wanting to biohack nowadays.
Everyone has a cold plunge or an infrared sauna, a red light panel, all these different devices. For those who have heard the term biohacking but are still confused as to what it is, can you define it for us?
So my definition, what I tell people a lot of times is biohacking is simply doing something natural for the body, that gets a result, usually in health and fitness. And the other way I describe it is too, is it's natural and holistic medicine but we actually have data to prove that it works. You know, like we talk about grounding, we can see the blood changes when we do grounding, we can see that some of these, our systems change when we do these certain biohacks. And being able to prove it, that's really where, for me, biohacking gets all its credit because we know these things have worked for thousands of years. Right?
The Aztecs and the Incas and some of these ancient societies have used these things, but, they didn't have the data to prove it. They didn't have a way to say, hey. We can say concrete evidence that this actually works and it does this or that. And so what we're fortunate enough in the new world that we're in with the science that we have and, and people learning about cellular health and cells and mitochondria and all these cool things that we, you know, these all these buzzwords that are out there. Now we're diving into the actual science and saying, hey, we can prove that it works.
And so for biohacking, think of doing something natural for your body that lets your body use your natural resources of things that your body knows to do and get you a result. So is it more of
a health based practice or is it for the performance crowd? Because I see two paths with biohacking. I see people and and I've actually and sometimes been a little bit critical about biohacking, I love a little bit of friction in conversations because I think it makes it interesting. I see sometimes groups of people who just want to jump on the bandwagon of the coolest thing. And they'll pay for these experimental procedures.
They'll buy these expensive pieces of technology and they don't really know what they're doing, but they just want to be their best all the time. Almost like not allowing the respect for the body's natural rhythms to ever be honored. It's like, I will be one hundred and ten percent no matter what the odds, no matter what the cost. Then I see people who are trying to fix themselves from a health perspective maybe when the medical system has failed them. You being someone with your finger on the pulse, where do you see the world of biohacking currently in terms of I guess, those who resonate with it most strongly?
What crowd are you seeing?
I'm actually seeing both sides, really. I work with, you know, because what we do at OsteoStrong, we're doing skeletal strengthening. So with OsteoStrong, we're we're building the bones. Right? We're trying to help the bones get stronger so we can support our structure.
Right? Because the foundation of all of our structure is the bones. What I see with that is a lot of people are looking to, extend their lifespan and and improve their health span because, again, lifespan is one part of the equation, health span is the other.
So we all want to live longer, right? That's lifespan. We all want to get older, right? We all want to get to a different age and a different number and an increased number. But if you don't have your health span to do that, you're not going make it or you're going have a miserable time when get there.
We see a lot of people nowadays, they're breaking down and they're on these these walkers, these scooters, these wheelchairs. And, unfortunately, when they get in the wheels, I keep keep telling people the wheels are like the the sentence and that's it. They don't get off the scooters. They don't get out of the wheelchairs. It's it's really a sad thing to see because they're letting their body break down instead of being proactive and doing something about it.
Obviously, know that if we don't do anything active, our body will start to decline and start to break down. That's something that's been proven time and time again over hundreds of years. But what I'm seeing in the biohacking world is seeing seeing both sides. I have performance athletes. I have a triathlete that she's crushing races at 56, and she's running past 40 year old, women and and just destroying races because she's stronger and she's better and she's just not breaking.
For me, the the the coolest part with her story is she's been doing triathlon for over ten years. And before she got to me two two and a half years ago, she would get injured all the time, like four, five, six injuries a year where, you know, you if you get injured as professional athlete or a high performance athlete, your training starts from zero again. Well, she's never really having to start from zero because she doesn't get injured. So now she's standing on podiums. Now she's she's improved her performance level in a in a way that I it's fantastic to see.
And then I see the other people that have a why of why am I doing this biohacking thing? Because like you said, the medical system has failed them, and and they don't want their health to decline. They see their mom, they see their aunt, they see their cousin, they see their friends, relatives, or or you know anybody that's around them and they see them breaking down and they see them going into that health decline and either they don't want to do that because they've seen what could happen to them potentially or they realize that I just don't have to do that because there's so much cool technology out there if we lean into the science that's where it really kind of you know mashes both sides because the science is there to support both right we can see that different modalities work for different things but also are synergistic for both, for performance and for health because, and especially a performance athlete, I mean think about what they do, a lot of them, you know, they're not even looking at their health, they just want to perform better, right? They're not looking at hey, I want to be, you know, I'm performing at 30 years old and I'm a high performance athlete but I want to get to 50 and be able to pick up my kids or be able to, you know, go play with my dog and get off the ground when I'm done playing with them.
Well, if you don't take care of your body, your body will, I like said, break down, especially the athletes because they do so much, damage a lot of times to their body and never do recovery. Mhmm. One of the coolest things that I think I've I've I've learned along this way, as a big Tom Brady fan, most people, some people know me that I'm from New England. I'm from Rhode Island. So I was born and raised in New England Patriots.
Right? A rite of passage.
You have to, like, read the history the Patriots. How This it is.
So you and the Packers. Yeah. Yeah. Even the Green Bay Packers fans.
We didn't know any better. I I tell people all the time. It's funny because when I was a child, I didn't know that there was other teams. I knew there was other teams that played the the Patriots. I knew there was other teams that played the Red Sox, but I just didn't know they where they were, how they how that all worked.
Big cultural indoctrination. Red Sox, Bruins, and, Patriots and Celtics, that was it. Okay. So but, what we look at is these high performance athletes, you know, like a Tom Brady. Tom Brady dedicates two minutes to every minute of performance or, exertion that he does.
So he's looking at recovery as one of his best assets. And I love that because recovery is super important. I had to learn that hard lesson myself. I was 29 years old. I wanted to be in the best shape of my life, and I I crawled into a Gold's Gym.
And I had a friend of mine that was a personal trainer. He he brought me in the gym, and I crawled in one day, and I was two to three hours a day for the next couple years for seven days a week, six to seven days a week. I was Easter Sunday, I was in the gym. It didn't matter. And all I knew was go, go, go, hour and a half of cardio, hour and a half of free weights.
So I was dedicating hours of my life and I did rip off all the weight. I took off all the weight that I had on me. I was a little bit heavy and I was two forty pounds and I went down to one hundred eighty and I felt good but the problem was I wasn't healthy. I was eating Taco Bell. I was eating you know fast food.
I wasn't doing any recovery whatsoever. I never gave my body a chance to actually calm down and recover from anything I was doing. And now fast forward to here I am at 51 years old, and I'm in better shape than I was at 30. I'm in better shape than I was at 18. And it's because I've learned recovery and I've learned to embrace recovery.
Stuff like red light, stuff like vibration, stuff like hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, brain tap, align mat, you know, these are all the PEMF, all these different things that I have as modalities that are helping my body recover so I can be active and perform at any level I want to. And again, at 51 years old, I don't look at life as a, oh my goodness, I'm getting older. I got to stop and slow down. I look at why do I have to and why should I? Because at the end of the day we're all going to get older right our number is going to go up but to me it's just a number and that's what I'm seeing in the biohacking world with some of the people like myself where we're looking at it as a I want to perform you know I'm not a high performance athlete or I'm not an athlete at all but if I want to go hiking or I want to go play pickleball or baseball or you know go run around a track or whatever the heck I want to do I want to be able to do it without limitations and then you look at the other side of people are breaking down man and how do we help them how do we help them in a way that's you know efficient?
Because the other thing about biohacking that a lot of people don't realize when when they say biohacking, it's about being efficient with your time and with your body because we know that time is one of our most valuable assets. Right? We can't buy time. I had a brilliant man many years ago and he we had this conversation. He was one of my one of my good friends.
And and he said, you know, he goes, what's the one asset we we can't just ever have back? And I I was very confused at the time. He goes, time. He goes, can't buy it and you can't get it back. He said, so you have to for every moment and appreciate every moment you have.
Mhmm. But also look at what does your future look like? Does your future look good or does your future look like you're gonna be starting to break down and starting to have all these problems that everybody seems to have in society? And that's where I I kinda took a pause and went, you you know, you've gotta make a good point. How do you use your time?
Are you efficient with your time? Or do you just waste time by scrolling on Instagram and doing these death scroll doom scrolling as we do call it. Mhmm. You know? But what if you were doom scrolling while you were sitting on a PEMF mat and breathing molecular hydrogen?
That's Well, something that I do. You know, if I'm going to search, you know, if I'm going go on social media, if I'm going do some of this stuff, what I do is I find a way to maximize my efficiency while I do it. I'm not just going to waste time when I do stuff.
Interesting. It's an interesting perspective. So if I understand correctly the definitions of the difference between lifespan and healthspan, we could say lifespan is how many birthdays you get to celebrate. Healthspan might be how subjectively good do you feel as you get into the latter part of your And you're saying biohacking's main goal as you see it. Mhmm.
Performance enhancement. Yeah. But the true value is as the numbers on the calendar click up, you don't have this big drop of Correct. Senescence. Right?
That this how do I feel? Can I do the things that I always want to do?
Yeah. You're very right about time being our most valuable resource, right? People think it's energy or some people think it's money, but there only is ever the present now. So that is an interesting aspect. We talked about the medical system failing people.
And I think now more than ever, are wanting less drugs and they're wanting more alternative treatments. I don't like that word alternative.
I know. It lumps us in with a weird demographic and
a weird There is no there's no alternative culinary industry. There's food, there's
no food, so there's healthcare
or there's not healthcare. Correct. They want modalities that are outside the conventional allopathic medical system. How does someone initiate going into biohacking knowing nothing about it? Like, where do you suggest people start and what should they look for if they want to investigate biohacking?
That's a that's a good question because for me, it was all about just research. I I'm a I'm a I'm a nerd when it comes to research. Just wanted to understand the truth. I wanted to understand the research. I wanted to understand the science.
I wanted to understand if I'm gonna buy this red light, why am I paying $1,400 for this this red light and why am I doing it every day? What is it gonna do for me? And so for me, I I leaned into the science. What I do tell people is, and I've I've since been fortunate enough, seen my, know, the group we did last night, and I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a lot of medical professionals, doctors, stuff like that to kind of let me bounce things off of nowadays. But I didn't have that at first.
What I had was I learned about OsteoStrong and that was my first introduction to biohacking. I learned about this skeletal strengthening thing and I had never thought about my bones. I had always thought, you know, we got to build muscle, right? We got to get stronger and build muscle. That's what we're taught.
And, at fifth or I was 40, let's see, 20 was in my 40s, mid 40s and I learned about this biohacking thing and I was like, wait a second, so bones are important too just like muscle. And once I started learning about the biohacking of OsterStrong and building skeletal strengthening, then I kind of went forward and once I got into Oster Strong and started becoming the owner of Oster Strong here in Vegas, what else can I do? What else can I add on? And it was kind of subtle changes for me. And that's what I tell people is look at your foundationals.
Okay? Foundationals for me, food and water. Okay? Let's bare minimum strip it down. What are you eating and what are you drinking?
Those are my first two things that I ask most people is, let me let me take a peek at your diet, and let's let's see what kind of water you're drinking first. Are you drinking really good water? Are you drinking clean water? Are you drinking a bunch of water out of plastic bottles? Are you drinking tap water?
Which please don't ever do that, especially in Vegas. Or and what kind of food are you eating? I mean, are you going to the fast food places twice a week? Are you going to Starbucks all these different times of the week? What are you putting in your body?
So the way I look at biohacking is if I'm going to drive a Ferrari, I'm not going to take it to Jiffy Lube, nothing against Jiffy Lube, but I'm not going to take it to, you know, and put regular unleaded gas in it. I'm going put high performance gas in it. You know, I want to take care of that the best I possibly can and give it the fuel to do what it's supposed to do. Because if I would mash that gas in my Ferrari, right, I want it to take off. I don't want it to start bucking down the street and and and sputtering.
Mhmm. But the same thing with our body. We have to put clean fuel in our body, first and foremost.
So that's layer one. Layer one is That that's not biohacking, though. That's foundational health. One zero one.
Yeah. The very first biohack that I really started getting into besides the OsteoStrong was BFR bands, blood flow restriction bands. Mhmm. B three sciences. This guy introduced me, he put these these bands on my arm, we pumped up the air and you do a little workout with them and you you actually, fatigue the muscle faster and you're you're depleting the oxygen in the muscle.
And I saw this as a way to be more efficient with my work outs. So once again coming from those three hour workouts that I used to do, if I can do that same workout in twenty minutes and get the same results, well that's really cool because now I just gave myself back, you know, two hours plus of time and we talked about the time being the most valuable asset. So I look at what are you willing to do and how much time are you willing to dedicate to it and what kind of result are you looking for ultimately? There's the other thing about biohacking, it depends on where you start at but what are you looking to do? Are you looking to be in better shape?
Are you just looking to not have to take pharmaceuticals? Are you looking to just not have to go to your doctor every two weeks? What are your goals? And what's your five year goal? What's your ten year goal?
This is something we talk about when I've got a coaching program that we're getting ready to launch. And we talk about what's your goals and what's your investment? There's the other thing. We're an investment. You are the best asset you could possibly have.
There is no greater asset than you.
Had this I had this conversation last night with somebody actually, and they they they appreciate the way I put this. If I was gonna say, hey, Roland, I'm gonna give you this car. Okay? It's gonna be brand new, but it's the only car you're ever gonna get for the rest of your life. Okay?
I'm gonna give you this car, and you can never buy another one. You have to drive this car until the day you die. Well, how are you gonna take care of that car? You're gonna change the oil. You're gonna change the tires and rotate the tires.
You're gonna fix make sure the brakes are good. You're gonna make sure the fluids are good. You're gonna maintain that car, usually with exception because you know that if it runs out, you don't get another one. Well, what about our body? We get one.
We get one shot at this. You get one. I get one. Everybody out there just gets one shot, but they don't think of it that way. They don't think of this is the only car you're ever gonna get for the rest of your life.
How would you take care of it? Same kind of concept. So for me, I look at what's your investment and what's your goals? Those are the first two things that we really try to dive into with people. What are you looking to do with yourself?
Are you looking to get aged gracefully and just run a ride it out and you just wanna, you know, be able to be somewhat healthy enough to do where you can go to shows and you can have some drinks and you can go party and you can do your normal stuff? Or do you really wanna find true health where you can thrive as you get older? Because for me, now that I know that age is a number and I've put that into the mindset, I want to thrive. I want to keep getting better. I want to keep fine tuning.
So what I started with, like I said, I started with the blood flow restriction bands, that was really my dive into all of it. Then I added vibration. I added full body vibration and, you know, stimulating the body and stimulating the circulation in a different way. And then my third one, added in, I added in red light. And now ironically, do all three of those at once.
Bio so so there's there's an evolution of biohacking called bio stacking. Okay. So just so I'm following here. Level one is the foundational decisions of health, especially say related to what you're ingesting,
Correct. Sounds like level two isn't going to the devices. Level two sounds like it's getting specific on what your desired outcome is or your intention, And should then you're getting into the selection of the modality Mhmm. Next. So why don't we go into some of these modalities?
Because I think these things are overwhelming for people from a multitude of reasons. One, they may be intimidating. Mhmm. Like, let's imagine a 68 year old person jumping into a coal plunge.
That could be a terrifying as an experience. It also could be a contraindicated thing depending upon the person and their health status. So you obviously have to qualify the person. The second thing is some of these devices seem strange. Mhmm.
They seem almost a little quackery like. Like I'm gonna stand on something and just let it shake me like a you know like I'm getting visions of those
one with the band around the stuff
shakes the living hell out of somebody? I still say they were onto something they had no idea what they had.
Well, sometimes people do things and the intention is wrong, but the device it's not the tool. It's the intention of the use. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about some of these modalities and what the reported benefits are and how the body is going to take whatever the modality does and receive benefit from it.
Yeah. So we start with stuff like I I I always lean into the noninvasive stuff, like stuff like red light and vibration where it's not, you know, sticking needles in myself and cleaning out my blood and all this other stuff that, you know, some of the extreme stuff that people do. That's where it gets a little bit confusing and scary for people.
look at noninvasive. I mean, a good example is is a PE meth mat. Okay? You're familiar with Align, you're familiar with Align mat PE meth. What it is is simply a mat that you lay on and because it has the current going through it and because it has these crystals in it that hold energy and release these negative ion, what it's doing is it's just kinda calming your body down and putting your body into that repair and recover state, rest and digest.
Right? Mhmm. We've got two states. We've got fight or flight and rest and digest where we wanna get into that rest and digest more than we wanna be in that fight or flight. And stuff like noninvasive stuff, something like an alignment where you're able to do that, that's something that kinda good for everybody.
You know? There's there's a lot of there's very few contraindications.
I was gonna ask, is there anyone that this doesn't work for?
There's certain people that I would say, hey. Let's have you checked out by a medical professional to see, you know, if they've got such extreme stuff going on with their different different things going on. I I don't know. I I would I would be cautious on putting somebody that's pregnant on a mat, you know, certain things that, you know, you just want to be cautious about it. But for the most part, there's a lot of these things like that that that we can do that are that are beneficial for most people without a lot of contraindications.
Mhmm. Red light therapy is another one. Red light, there's very, very little there is contraindications, but there's very few. Photo photosensitivity and some of the things like lupus with photosensitivity, it's not recommended for red light. Cancer, they're still fifty fifty on.
We're still trying to do some research on that. But the red light has been around since the nineties, right? It's been around really popularized in the nineties with NASA.
Basically, light's been around since the sun existed.
Well, red light Yeah. Red light's been around since the dawn of time. My my other statement with that is, the Aztecs and the Incas actually used red light and and people really didn't they don't think about that. Mhmm. So the Aztecs and Incas, when they were sitting around by a campfire after they hunted their food and then they sat around at the campfire with no shoes on grounding to the earth and they were eating food, talking to their friends in their community, and they were sitting around campfires.
Well, what's the light in red red and yellow light is in campfire? So they're reenergizing, restoring their body. They just didn't know what they were doing. Like I said Keeping warm also. Keeping warm also.
Because ancient societies were also outside a lot of time. Mhmm. So we also look at the elements, you know, the sun grounding to the earth, water, air, clean air, you know, going for a walk in the forest, you know, which I wish I could do here in Vegas. I don't have that ability.
Go walk in the dust bowl in the
desert. Yeah. I can go I can I
can It is you know what? There is a beautiful expanse of feeling. I sometimes when I'm here, I go for a drive, towards Pahrump, for example, and I'll pull off the highway, and I'll just go in this one of these, it's like a relief center parking lot, but there's trails. Yeah. And there is this feeling of just sturdy groundedness with the expansiveness of the desert because I I think everything has something to offer.
And then there's also Red Rock. You go down to the Red Rock area.
I've had fun. Gorgeous. Oh, it's beautiful.
Wherever you are, you have no excuse to get into the elements. Yeah.
That's the thing. The elements are around us and that's something that, you know, I I lived in Florida for seventeen years, and I I loved my Florida because I lived across the street from the beach.
You have Florida Man energy.
Yes. I do. And I love I I'm one of the few people that love humidity. Everybody complains about humidity here in the dry desert, but I'm I actually love it. And when I lived across the street from the beach, I would go to the beach a lot of times and both day and night.
And, you know, I the running joke is, you know, why long walks are on the beach are so cool. You know, it's it's not because you're with your girlfriend or your your, you know, your your loved one. It's because you're actually rain energizing your body. You're grounding to the earth. You've got salt water.
You've got air. You've fresh air. You got sun generally. So all these different elements are hitting you at the same time while you're with a companion possibly. So that's why people like long walks on the beach.
I used to go at night as well and and just listen to the water and just listen to the frequencies and the sound and stuff like that that was happening in the water. And that would put me into that calm and relaxed state. You know, I I I lived a different life when I was in Florida because I I was a, photographer, and I did a lot of stuff in nightclubs and and these these high energy environments, you know, mixed martial arts and boxing where, you know, everything is adrenaline and energy and you gotta take yourself down from that. You've gotta try to calm yourself back down. Mhmm.
Something that we're gonna talk about probably here in a little bit about the the nervous system. Mhmm. And so for me, it was, you know, doing all those things and having the elements around me appreciate the elements. But then now that I'm in the desert, I look at the same kind of thing is what can I do? Well, I can go to Lee Canyon or I can go to Red Rock or I can go hiking and something and get that fresh air and get that outside experience where I'm not connected to electronics or anything and really kind of reset the body.
Also a great opportunity for grounding, you know, because You wanna walk, there's plenty of It's my mind you, it's gonna be a 120 degrees.
If you don't like the bottoms of your feet, you can subject them
But it's an interesting topic to dig into for a second because if you actually look at what most biohacking tools are, they're trying to replicate some aspect of what nature gives us. Absolutely. You know, I'm of the mind if you, and this might not be a popular opinion with people or you as a biohacker, if you live in an environment that is very conducive to you being interfacing with nature as much as possible, you probably don't really need a lot of the biohacking things. You probably don't. That's my belief.
I agree. But as I say that if you look at the population as a whole, especially in the Western developed world and subcategorize those who live in cities, whenever I work with my clients, I ask them how often do they take off their shoes and walk barefoot? How much time do you spend outside in a day? Do you see a sunrise? Do you see a sunset?
And do you get some full spectrum light in the middle of the day between 10AM and 2PM?
You lost most people at full spectrum light.
Yep. You know? And and it's a symptom of society. Mhmm. So I think for me as a person who's in the health industry and interested in biohacking, I think if you frame it through that lens where you're trying to replicate that which your body's expecting that unfortunately it does not get subjected to because of the lifestyle
you have unconsciously chosen to have to support you, your family, whatever. Like it's no one's fault that they're not getting outside as much as maybe they want to. Working from home thing has made it more likely that people can work in the backyard if they have a good internet connection. But you know, by and large, we are indoor animals. Like an indoor cat life or a zoo animal in a building all the time, going from place to place in a car.
We do lights all Chronically connected to, electronic devices that emit a variety of different frequencies which have been proven to be disharmonious to the frequency that is us, which is energy and material form. So that's where I think the argument about biohacking, is it useful versus is it not needed for someone? That's the basis of the rationale that I'll push back on when someone tells me everyone needs to biohack. But I appreciate that you have the same perspective.
Yeah. It's like I said, I have the same thing because I biohacking is not for everybody. It's pick what you are trying to connect to. Mhmm. You know, like I said, we gotta find out what you want as a goal.
If I don't know what you want as a goal, I can't direct you to anything. I need to know your even give me some simple ideas of what your starting goal is. Hey. I wanna be in better shape. Wanna lose some weight.
I wanna be able to walk around the block. Mhmm. I wanna just not I I wanna not just feel like I'm nervous all the time. I wanna feel like I'm not stressed all the time. What is your end goal?
How do you wanna feel? And then let's let's dive into how we can get you there. Mhmm. And it could be something as simple as literally telling somebody to go outside and stand in the park for five or ten minutes and walk around the park with no shoes on. I've I've actually told people to do that.
I'm like, hey. When's last time you I've done the same thing. When's the last time you've touched grass? And they look at me strange when they start thinking about, well, when is the last time I touched grass? Well, if it's been more than, you know, a month two, you might want to look at that.
You know, when's the last time you went out and saw morning sunlight? You know, it's it's get that full spectrum light, get that light in your in your in your body and let your you know, we were many years ago, the sun was kind of like demonized, know, with eggs. Remember the last few years were starting to come back. Cholesterol and that light giving you skin cancer. I mean, God forbid, we have real light and and have beautiful, sunlight hitting our skin to activate the the photosensitivity that our bodies have to the light.
We're photobiomodulation creatures. We need light.
You know? Photobiomodulation. So just to break that down, the modulation or the influence of your physiology changing being exposed to light.
That's and it goes both ways. Right? One of the most valuable biohacks that I've personally used is like, don't wear glasses. I don't actually have a prescription, but we're in the studio right now. These lights are insanely bright.
Blue light, which is the dominant spectrum of light that's in most high efficiency energy bulbs
actually not very good for you. Correct. It can dysregulate what's called your circadian rhythm. Correct. Compromise sleep quality.
And it's something that most people don't give two thoughts about because again, it's not part of what we consider because it's a symptom of our normal society, a normal environment. So,
yeah. So sleep so sleep is another one. That's another great foundational that a lot of people miss. For me, my background dictates that, my sleep was definitely compromised. So getting in a little bit of my background, I was a nuclear submarine, torpedo man.
So, basically, I went on fast attack submarines out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and I was stationed and trapped into a submarine for, you know, weeks and days on end. And sunlight there? No sunlight. But you're also the thing that people don't realize is when I the time that I was in, we were actually in eighteen hour days. So this is where it gets really fun because you're in an eighteen hour day.
So you're six on so you're six on your whatever your watch station is, then your next six hours is supposed to be your what you call off going watch station where you perform your maintenance and do your duties that you have to do. And then the next six hours is technically for quote unquote sleep, and then you are back on watch. So if we do that though, and we go, okay, I was on watch from midnight to 6AM. From 6AM to noon, we usually run a lot of drills, right? We always train.
Training in a submarine happens really every day because you always want to be prepared for the unexpected. And so 06:00 now till noon, we're doing training and that's your time to do your work where you didn't get a chance to do your work necessarily. Then from noon to 6PM, you're doing more training because we train in the afternoon as well. And now you're back on watch at 6PM. So from midnight until 6PM, you've never even had a wink of sleep.
And now you're back on watch from 6PM to midnight. And then maybe at midnight, you get to go to sleep for a little bit. So when I got out of that, I mean, was, I was fortunately 21, you know, years old, almost 22 years old when I got out. So I was fortunately still in that younger time, but I know my sleep was trashed.
You used a lot of your reserves at a younger age.
My sleep took a hit. Absolutely. And that's where I I you know, even getting back now, you know, we've done my nervous system. Right? We did a test with me last night.
And and looking at that and going, okay. What what happened in the past is what we can kinda look at to see why we're in the situation we're in now. And as a biohacker and somebody that actually takes care of myself and does a lot of the modalities, out there, I know sleep is important and I try to get my proper sleep which is why I have things, technology to use like an an Align Mat and another device called BrainTap which some people may or may not be familiar with, but it's a really good device to try to help with the sleep.
Explain it a little bit if you want.
BrainTap is something that basically, it's a headset with a visor that comes over the eyes. Mhmm. And in the headset, in the ears, you have red and blue light to activate the mitochondria in the hemoglobin stimulated and try to help with the nervous system. And the lights in the front are the blue light when you put the visor on and you put the program on, they're flashing in your eyes to try to help your body regulation with your nervous system regulation. So right eye goes to the left side, left eye goes or left side goes to the right side of the brain.
And there's different programs for it. There's everything from just sound like alpha sound, delta sound, there's different frequencies or even some of these programs where there's somebody talking to you and kind of helping you with things and kinda just, guiding you through almost meditation
and putting It is like a guided meditation.
A meditative state. Yeah. But the nice part about that is that a lot of times will you know, I fall asleep with it on. You know, I'll I'll be listening to whatever even if it's somebody talking or not, and I fall asleep with it on. Well, the benefits are I my subconscious is still taking that information in.
So even though I'm out like a light, I wake up and feel refreshed because my subconscious still heard everything that was being said. Mhmm. And then like the when I do delta at night for the frequency and I can knock myself out pretty quick. And for me, somebody that's always had trouble falling asleep, that's staying asleep is usually not my problem. My my problem has always been falling asleep.
Soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm thinking about what I did yesterday, what I have to do six months from now. Mhmm. What am I doing two weeks ago? You know? It's it's it's all these different things that we we call it not being able to shut off.
In the military, we called it failing open, you know, in which certain valves when they when they when they break, they actually fail into open position versus a closed. And that's how my brain was. It would fail in the open position and I'm just wired. I can't fall asleep. Mhmm.
So now I have the ability to put this headset on, put a program on and usually anywhere from eleven to twenty two minutes, sometimes thirty minutes, doesn't matter. But what will happen is my body will go into that rest and relax and recover state. The beautiful part of that for me is once actually, you know, wake up when that headset's still on me, I take the headset off, set it on my night on my nightstand, and then I can go back to sleep. I can actually fall back asleep just in in seconds, which has been a huge benefit for me because it's something that I've never been able to do. Once I'm up, once I'm you know, once you're awake in the middle of the night, I'm awake.
And a lot of people have that problem. Especially, I I deal with a lot of seniors, and that's something that's really, really popular in the senior community is that once they wake up, they're awake.
Busy mind or just they they can't go back
to I get people that wake up at three, 04:00 in the morning, and they're like, John, once I get up, I'm up. Mhmm. And so I've introduced some of them to the BrainTap, and, I've I've got some really good results with that, man. I get people sleeping through the night now.
You know, it's not typically thought of as a biohacking device because it's more of an experiential thing, but the EE system, which is the basis for why this show exists, in some ways is the ultimate biohacking tool. And, what doctor Sandra has often said is it actually lends itself incredibly well to using other modalities while in there because the room in and of itself generates an efficient coherent field of energy that allows the efficiency of the body's recovery to, you know, multiply in terms of its speed of of enhancement. So if you're in a room like that and you want to down regulate, that's one of the most powerful effects of the EE system because it puts you more into that. If you want to look at it from a brainwave state, you know, deep alpha theta. So that's kind of that flow state meditation cross over.
And that usually does correlate with increased vagal tone activity in the nervous system because it really is about healing. So, you know, it might be really cool to try some of these devices like go to an EE system and bring a brain tap.
Yeah. You know? And see what happens.
Oh, it would probably just be layered. Bio there you go. We found bio stacking within the
EE system. Look. We can bio stack in any way. I mean, I I bio stack with, with Align mat. So I'll put the Align mat down.
I'll put my brain tap hydrogen cannula in my nose, and I'll breathe molecular hydrogen while I'm laying there on the Align Mat with BrainTap. And that's three devices all at once and twenty minutes to half an hour. And I wake up feeling refreshed and feeling amazing or even, you know, if even if I do it in the middle of the day. A lot of times on my day off at, like, 11:00 in the morning, I'll go downstairs and and I have the Align Mat in my in my house, in my living room. I'm one of those rare people in my house is this crazy Biohack Center.
Shocking that you have a crazy Biohacking house where the guys gonna be watching Hacking Las Vegas
T walks in and they go, okay. I know exactly where you're at. And, like, you got a fitness center in in one room and then all my biohacking stuff, it's really obvious what I do. But, again, I I, you know, I talk about with laying on this Align mat and breathing the hydrogen and having brain tap on, how hard is that to lay down? How hard is it to just lay down and relax?
That's exactly what I'm doing. But I'm also resetting my body and trying to regulate my nervous system. Because as we saw last night, we actually did a test with me and we did a couple tests with me and kinda showed that I am in fight or flight for the most part. I am the high adrenaline person Mhmm. High energy person, and that's not news to me.
I I've known that for a very long time. Mhmm. But I look at, what I wanna do is I wanna show what happens after I do the Align Mat. So when I did the Align Mat and BrainTap for the very first time together, we did a neural check before and a neural check after. So we did so I I actually I'd love to show you that and show you what happened to me and my body completely shifted.
That's actually what made me buy BrainTap. Mhmm. Was because I did that, and I saw the shift and went, oh my goodness. This is perfect for me. This is exactly what I'm looking for.
Because, I mean, I'm I'm I'm in this body. I know what I mean. I know who I am. I know I'm high energy. I know I'm, you know, all go, you know, never stop.
I know how I am. But I also know that that's going to affect my health. And so I look at that as a as a piece of my puzzle because the other thing of this is it's all a piece of the puzzle. Right? We're we're we're have this big beautiful tapestry, and there's a lot of these pieces, you know, nervous system, brain health, actual fitness and and muscle structure, bone structure, you know, food and and clean water.
There's this big tapestry that we have and all these different pieces of the puzzle. You just have to figure out how it fits in and how you can fit it into your lifestyle. There's the other thing. Now I know people don't have any time but how can we do something simple you know like I said if we could do a twenty minute brain tap while laying on a line mat and breathing the hydrogen that's twenty minutes of your day. Do you have an hour for yourself in a day?
I always tell people this too do you have an hour? Do you take one hour for yourself per day? There's twenty four hours in a day. Do you take one hour for yourself? You're worth it.
You're worth at least an hour a day. What do you do for yourself? And that could be something as simple I read a book or I like doing this, like relaxing or I like eating, making food. It doesn't matter what you like to do, but if you take that hour for yourself, be your best self advocate. You're your best asset.
You have to take care of it. Be the best version of yourself. Not a hard concept.
Well, it's it's a nice way of looking at biohacking as a perspective or a potential entry point into self work and self development. Because what you just described there, you know, being quite vulnerable with your own admission of, the things in your world that should shall we say, and are not ideal and how they're regulating themselves right now. You have to know yourself, and you have to have enough self awareness if you are gonna start some of these things to know that you may need something to help you better yourself from the position that you're currently in. Correct. Because for most people, they kind of just become automatically programmed to live life on repeat to some degree as the day before was, as the day before that was.
There's a consistency and a momentum that their behaviors, habits, and and activities are programmed by. For people to want to change their health, they have to break habit.
Habit and behavior are not the same thing. And there's an old saying that I like that short term motivation leads to failure. Mhmm. Habit is efficient. And because it's efficient, it doesn't take energy.
You don't have to think about it. You don't have to interrupt what it is that you've programmed yourself to do. Behavior takes work and it doesn't give you an immediate feedback of, reward and pleasure seeking because oftentimes you don't do new behaviors well. If anyone's ever golfed for the first time in their life, I guarantee you many people never go back to the golf course because of the experience they had. Because they didn't thrive, they shit the bed for lack of better
decision. Didn't go well. Yeah. So from what you're
saying here, see that the message that you're putting out, it's a nice way to look at it because that tapestry was a beautiful example of know thyself, become self aware of what needs work in your life, and then start to get quantified, self quantified in maybe figuring out what's going on with your body. Mhmm. Why do you not sleep well? Why do you have a hard time relaxing? Maybe for some people it's their digestion's off or they get headaches or they have energy pot of coffee a day?
Yeah. Coffee's delicious.
I like coffee. Much of coffee is good. So
maybe it is something as simple as biohacking is kind of like a twenty first century window into the avatar, if you will, of each person's body that they're given and the personality and the nervous system and how things are wired Mhmm. Where you can start to focus on changing yourself so you can improve that health span in addition to the lifespan and that quality of life.
Quality of life. That's a huge one. That's something that's that's stuck with me for a very long of life. Mhmm. So with me in, 2011, my mom was 65 years old.
Okay? And she was five foot tall, a hundred pounds soaking wet, ran around the beach. I mean, she was a beach girl. She was she looked like a different nationality because she was so dark because she had so much sun. And and she loved life and she lived life.
And in 09/26/2031, she actually had a brain hemorrhage. And she had a blood vessel break in the back of her brain and filled her brain with blood. And when I went in hospital that night because she went into a coma, the doctor said something very specific to me that I will never ever forget in my entire life. He he you know, we asked, you know, how long you know, how does she recover from this? And he goes, there really isn't any recovery.
He said, the best you could hope for is vegetable. And I said, okay. I said, we're not doing that. And he said, you have to look at quality of life over quantity of life. He goes, how did she live?
I said, she she was at the beach this morning. I said, so she lived every minute, and she she did the things that she wanted to do. She was retired from work, and she wanted to hang at the beach. She loved my daughter to death, and she loved going to the beach with my daughter. So that's what she did, and that's what she loved to do.
And, unfortunately, her situation, she kinda went out that way. But at the end of the day, when he said that quality of life thing, I've never forgot that. Mhmm. And I I look at that going forward of, I want everybody to have quality of life. I don't want everybody to be shortchanged on on having quality of life and especially as they get older.
Because what we see a lot of times is we see that quality start to diminish. Right? We see at a certain age, you know, start aches and pains start, then, you know, joint pains start and then they don't want to move around because everything hurts and, you know, they go to the doctor, they get medications and then it doesn't really fix the problem, it just leads to more problems and more medications. Their quality of life decreases. And usually at a certain age, and it decreases rapidly.
And that's the thing that I really look at. How do we fix that? How do we get people to understand quality of life? Because there's an interesting conversation because a lot of people don't understand that. What does that mean, John?
Well, it means not going to the doctor every week. It means doing the things that you want to do for you, not the things that you have to do because you're trying to keep yourself alive. Is it something simple that we could add into your lifestyle, some of these biohacks that we could add into your lifestyle that would give you a better quality of life? You know, what you didn't have to do 16 doctor's appointments this year? What if you did two?
You know, and each time you went to see the doctor they went, you know what? You're in great shape. Everything is looking perfect. Your blood work looks great. I'll see you next year.
That's what most people would love to hear. But instead, most people hear, okay, well, I'm gonna give you these three prescriptions. You know, make sure you pick them up at the pharmacy this week. And it's unfortunate because they don't understand the difference between quality and quantity. Quantity, we are gonna get older, right?
And potentially, that's the goal of lifespan, get older.
Inevitable, hopefully. But we want quality of life while we do that. I don't wanna be in a walker or on a walker. I don't wanna be in a wheelchair. I don't wanna be on one of those scooters.
I I I really just dislike scooters. I I I think that has been one of the worst things we could have done in society almost because it really forced people to be lazy. It forced people to get into this habit of once I get that scooter, I don't have to walk around anymore. I don't have to make any effort anymore. I can go to the store, they provide me a scooter if I don't have one.
And unfortunately, see these people starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger because their quality of life is diminishing. Mhmm. Because they're stand they're not standing up anymore. They're not moving around. They're not moving that body to get the the joints moving, to get the blood flowing, to get all these things, these natural systems that we have that work fantastically, but you've got to put in a little bit of work.
And a little bit of work could be just walking around your neighborhood. Take your dogs for a walk. Take your grandchildren for a walk. Take your kids for a walk. Do something.
Do something active. That's something that we did see in in in COVID. We've seen people realize how bad of health they were in. Mhmm. If nothing else, the blessing in disguise of COVID was people got exposed to how bad of health they were actually in because that person that hadn't walked around and hadn't done anything for fifteen years except for watch TV every time they got home from work, they said they wanted to go walk around their neighborhood for two miles, you know, because they wanted to get some exercise.
They walked half a block and couldn't do it. And it's because they just hadn't focused on anything. They just didn't realize that fifteen years of inactivity would would lead to this result. You know, it's it seems like a lot of people are confused as to, well, if I if I don't use it, I lose it. And that's that's how our bodies are.
Our body is designed that way. You have to put strain on the body. You have to put effort into the body to get the body to keep going. The the the easy way to look at it for me when I like, I look at the astronauts. The astronauts go into space.
Right? What they're doing is they're removing gravity from the body. Well, what happens? Your your body's full of muscles. Right?
So your heart, your lungs, your brain, your connective tissue, all of that stuff gets weaker because it doesn't have strain on it. Right? Gravity is missing. So we lose strain. And the other big one is digestion.
People don't even think about that one. Well think about your digestion system. Your digestion system is a flowing system, right? It's a gravity driven flowing system. And if you take gravity away from that body, now what happens is those systems don't work right.
So those people come back from space and they have all kinds of problems, medical problems, health problems. Same with somebody with a coma, the same exact situation. You take that body and you don't move it for a while, They don't get them up and run them down the hallway. They get them up and move them slowly because you've got muscle atrophy. Mhmm.
So we look at all these different things of, wait a second. If you the science has proven time and time and time again. If you don't use it, you lose it. It couldn't be any simpler than that.
So it sounds like the concept can be encompassed in the term personal responsibility. Accountability.
Yeah. One simple word, accountability. Okay. You have to be your best advocate. No one is gonna take care of you like you.
And and that's something I say to people all the time. And it's very true. I take care of me better than anyone possibly could. And and it's because I I I like living and I I like being here and I like being able to do cool things and meeting cool people. Yeah.
You know? I mean and you've seen the crowd we had last night. We we have fun. We we enjoy people.
It comes full circle. That's amazing. Yeah. I I appreciate that perspective, John. And I think that's something that is, digestible, pun intended, just talking about the digestive system, for people to hear.
But it's also a little bit of, a prod in the in the direction of, look. No one's coming to save you. The difference between someone who unfortunately gets processed by the system and someone who finds their way out of a bad place is personal responsibility Mhmm. Catalyzing behavior change Mhmm. And accountability to sustain that.
And it's not so complicated that everyone can do it. I believe Every single person within reason of those who may have, you know, situations and scenarios where unfortunate actions may have happened, but, you know, everyone can get in better shape should they want to. The human will is a very powerful thing.
Consistency. Simple consistency. Right? Being consistent with something. Every day, you eat food and drink water.
You're consistent with that. You do it every single day. Otherwise, you die. Right? If you don't drink water and you go I think it's, like, three days, you can go without water and pretty much your system starts shutting down.
So your body knows that you have to be consistent and you have to have water and you have to have food. And that's just a piece of the puzzle. Why can't you incorporate that into everything? So for me, red light therapy is a great example for me. I bought a red light panel 11/09/2022, and I have used that every day, twice a day.
I've missed maybe five days in three years. And it's just because I was traveling and and stuff like that. But other than that, I wake up in the morning, and I do red lights while standing on a vibration plate. And it's just a it's just a lifestyle thing for me. It's not like a, oh, well, I gotta get this red light in, and I gotta do this thing.
I just wake up, and I know that's what I have to do.
Yeah. You've made it part of your normal thing.
It's part of my normal thing. Then I make my protein shake, you know, with all my other supplements in it. Again, it's just a normal thing. It's I know it's gonna take me ten minutes to get all the powders put in there and get my my my capsules and stuff put together. It's gonna take me ten minutes, but it's already factored into my day.
Mhmm. It's not something weird I have to do. It's already factored in. The time's already been allotted for it. You know, remember people used to read newspapers.
Remember that? Back in the day, people used to get out this newspaper. They
would Sure some people still do.
And I'm sure some people still do. Yeah. But what do they do? They consistently consistently do do it. It.
If you notice that the the people that read newspapers and especially I had a grandfather that was like that, man, and he he read newspapers and that's what he did. He he would get the paper off the porch and consistently did that. Mhmm. But what if you did that with anything? Take that time and consistently put it towards something taking care of yourself.
Put it towards something good for you. How hard is that? Well, once you do it for so many times, it's gonna be adapted into your lifestyle and you're just gonna not not not do it. It's just habit. Now it's you formed a beautiful habit and it's a positive habit that can help you get a result, usually a positive result.
Smoking smoking is a great one. Smoking. You look at how consistent people are in smoking. Think about smoking.
I didn't say smoking is a great one. You're contextualizing that statement.
Smoking smoking cigarettes Yeah. Is is a great example of consistency. Yes. People That's that smoke cigarettes are very consistent with it. They're dedicated to it.
And especially you try to tell them, hey, why don't you just take a break and not smoke for a while? They get mad at you.
Well, there's a habitual dependency
Chemically that's actually driven there too. Right? Yeah.
But because they've done it so long that these people can't stop because it's just so it's part of their lifestyle. They've allotted the time. They've allotted the resources. They've allotted the effort to do it. Because smoking cigarettes, you have to make an effort to go to the store, purchase the cigarette, bring it home or or smoke it in your car.
There's there's some steps that you have to do and be consistent with those steps to make that happen. Mhmm. But it's just like anything. Why can't you do that with food? Why can't you do that with exercise?
Why can't you do that with with, recovery things like biohacking, you know, simple red light or simple Align Mat or Brain Tap? Be consistent it.
I can align with that. So in all of this stuff we shared today, John, if you can distill it down to maybe some final takeaway messages or a singular focus takeaway message for anyone listening, maybe they're interested in starting biohacking. Maybe they don't know what to do. What would you say the best first step is to do? And then how would you suggest that they maybe start to rearrange some things some things in their lives to maintain it?
First thing is is, like, I I always go back to what are your goals and what are you what is your investment? Your investment should be you. Right? You're not an expense. All these biohacking modalities and tools and, you know, memberships and all that, that's that's just money.
It's a tool. But it's not an expense. It's an investment. So my takeaway from from most of this is, what are you looking to invest in yourself and how are you looking to invest in yourself? Is it, you know, you wanna you wanna have, the ability to wear the fancy clothes?
Do you wanna wear the fancy or, you know, have the fancy watch? Or do you wanna just be in really good shape? You know, everybody has a thing that they wanna do and and how they wanna portray themselves. For me, I always looked at being in shape. It it people treat you differently, as weird as it sounds to say.
People treat you differently because they understand that there's a discipline that goes into. This is earned. This is not bought or paid for. I can't look this way because I paid a bunch of money to do it. You know, some of the richest people in the world, money doesn't matter when it comes to health.
They can't buy their health. So for me, it's being your own self advocate, being your, the the person that takes care of you the best, and having consistency and having accountability. If you're gonna do something and you're gonna put your money or your effort towards it, do it. Don't don't half ass it. Don't, you know, dip the toe in and then, know, hey.
I I took these supplements, I only took them one time out of two months. Hey. I I I I did this red light but I did it one time in six months. You know be consistent with it and then track your results. There's another thing that people don't do is they don't look at hey how do I monitor what's happening and how do I understand if I'm getting a result good or bad.
You know, this is something with we talk about the nervous system. If we don't track these things, how do you actually know what's going on? Luckily, like I said, I'm fortunate enough to have some doctors around me that we, you know, work and blood microscopy and all these other tests that I do to show my body is going in the right direction? Or if it's not, how can I adjust and make some moves to make it go that way? So if somebody's looking to get into this, the the first thing I you know, are you gonna be consistent?
Are you gonna be accountable for yourself? That's the very first and foremost thing you need to look at if you wanna do any biohacking. Don't just jump in and go buy yourself a cold punch, red light, you know, vibration plate. Hey. I'm gonna buy this vibration plate.
That's really cool. I'm excited. I wanna get it are you gonna use it are you gonna use it at like three times a week five times a week give me a number how much are you going to be able to be consistent with that product or with that modality and if the answer is you can't be don't get that one that meant maybe that's not the right thing for you And maybe you will get it down the road. Maybe you will adapt to it in time. But start with something you can be consistent and something you can have accountability for.
I love that. It's a it's a wonderfully practical first step. Right?
John, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom, your insights, your experience, your stories. If people do wanna check out more about your location, what you're doing, where can they find you?
I'm in Las Vegas, so I tell people to go to biohacking las vegas dot com. That's my website for the the biohacking movement that we're creating here, which you're part of that now. I hope you realize that you are part of our biohacking movement here in Las Vegas. We're trying to we're trying to turn Sin City healthy. That's the first place.
And then, john x d b three is my Instagram. Biohacking Las Vegas is is an Instagram as well. We actually have a TikTok as well. If you just look up john x d, a lot of the stuff will kind of pop up. I'm the only John XD in the world.
I I did that for a very specific reason. There's a lot of Johns in the world. There's only one Shocking. There's only one John XD. Fair enough.
And that's that's how it all started. It's it's just people didn't understand, you know, they put their number in their their my number in their phone and like, I have a lot of John's in my phone. I'm like, put XD behind it. Once upon a time, my company was called Extremely Digital. I as a photographer, Extremely Digital because I was doing digital photography and I was one of the first ones to do that.
you. Extremely Digital made sense with the XD. Right. So I said, look, just put XD after my name and this way you can't forget me and it stuck. There's people that have known me for twenty five, thirty years that have no idea what my last name is.
It's okay, man. You get a little bit of anonymity but also some some uniqueness.
But I know if I walk into a room and they see me with my hair, they know XD's in the house. XD's there.
Yeah. Bleach blonde goes a long way.
It does. Hair everybody ever says blondes don't have more fun. I I tell you it's incorrect. We do.
What a great way to finish off. Thank you as always, guys. Please do like, share, and subscribe if any of this information does resonate with you. It's always a pleasure to bring some amazing content your way. We'll see you next time on the Everything's Energy Show.
