Surviving the Side Hustle

Reversing Chronic Illness: Daniel's Journey from Athlete to Stem Cell Biology Expert and Health Coach

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 59

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What if many of today's chronic diseases were actually reversible? Join us in a compelling episode as we sit down with Daniel, a brilliant former athlete turned stem cell biology expert, who believes just that. Daniel takes us through his transformative journey from pursuing a doctorate to becoming a health coach during the COVID-19 pandemic, all while debunking common misconceptions about biology and chronic illnesses. Discover how Daniel overcame his own health battles, such as asthma and IBS, using scientific methods and lifestyle changes, and learn how you too can harness the power of biology to improve your health.

We question the conventional wisdom behind the phrase "trust the science" and push for an evidence-based, reproducible approach to health and wellness. Daniel reveals his unique methodology of using personalized experiments to guide individuals, especially middle-aged and older adults, towards better health outcomes. We delve into the limitations of traditional healthcare and the necessity of individualized care plans grounded in real-time indicators like blood tests to promote longevity and prevent chronic diseases.

We also explore the fascinating concept of health phenotypes, categorizing individuals into diseased, average, and resilient groups. Daniel shares insights on how athletes and those capable of handling extreme stress exhibit unique physiological responses. Get practical tips on optimizing cardiovascular health through heart rate and respiratory control, and discover the benefits of personal challenges like cold exposure to push your limits and enhance overall well-being. Finally, we address the influence of corporate interests on public health perceptions and advocate for critical thinking and truthful exploration in the realm of health and wellness.

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Rob:

what's going on, guys? Today we've got daniel on the show. Dan man, how is it going? What's what's up, dude?

Daniel:

hey, rob man, it's, uh, it's. It's an interesting time to be alive here on planet earth. I don't think you need to watch uh soap operas or tv shows anymore with the current state of things, and it's only getting more interesting. Yeah, yeah, uh, day by day.

Rob:

everything kind of levels up every day and it's only getting more interesting. Yeah, yeah, day by day, everything kind of levels up every day and it's just more and more exciting as time goes on. So I'm excited to have you here and ready to kind of dive in a little bit. So, if you don't mind, could you share a little bit about who you are and who you help and what kind of problems?

Daniel:

you solve? Yeah well, I'm an intellect. Who do you help and what kind of problems do you solve? Yeah well, I'm an intellect, you know. So I sit around and I ideate a lot. But luckily I have this aspect of I do take command in areas where I've spent enough time, where I have gained confidence in, and that's really biology at the heart of it. You know, you can give it fancy names like stem cell biology, but at the end of the day it's, you know, cell biology. It's the end of the day, it's cell biology. It's the basis of what makes us run. It is that we're the 70 trillion cells all working in complete unison, with an unbelievable synchronicity, like a symphony going on in order for you to have a consciousness, a perspective, an ability to have a higher order called power. That comes from that. And so I've taken my coaching background and my science.

Daniel:

You know I pushed as far as a doctorate. I didn't complete it. Covid kind of derailed it and I started working and I helped initially a lot of individuals who just wanted to stay healthy. They were worried about COVID, they were worried about life in terms of hey, if I take these drugs, what's going to happen to me? Should I stay away from them? Should I take them? And I had a massive influx at that time and then it shifted quite a bit. So, from people that are interested in how to maintain and upgrade their health, because if you go to a doctor you're like, hey, I'm healthy, but I'd like to be healthier, he'd tell you to get the hell out of his office. You know, come back to me when I can help you with. You know, when you're sick, don't waste my time, right, there's a lot of people that that do need them and uh. And so that that part was interesting to me because I've always been on the performance side of things. I was an ex-athlete, I played water polo for Team Canada and you know I had aspirations for, you know, being an athlete, but there's no real future as a water polo athlete, right? So the medicine and the biotech were the route that pulled me instead, and now it's switched gears to a lot for people that have lost their health. And so you know there's the medical system fails people, and usually that's when they turn to something else, and then they're like, okay, maybe I'll talk to this guy. And usually when they do, they'll come out with lots of benefit because a lot of what is, you know, the modern day chronic disease for adults is completely reversible and it has a lot to do with understanding very basic biology in which is simply not, it's not in the forefront of people's mind.

Daniel:

And you know these small little kind of games like breakfast, lunch and dinner for marketing. You know, hey, you got to eat to have energy. Those things are very like those short, small limericks what would you call them? They're very dangerous because it makes a person feel like they have an understanding of something when you know it can be quite destructive. Just a very simple idea oh, it's just a little sugar late at night, that's no problem. Or you know, hey, I can get away with, you know, binge drinking for weeks on end. And you know, life's about having fun too, right? No one wants to be a monk in today's day and age. So you know there needs to be understanding of what you can get away with.

Daniel:

And you know I hope for people, when they recover their health, that they can have cheat days. You know, the way I've lived life is that I've gotten to the point where any day I choose I can have a cheat day. It's not like I have to wait for Sunday or Saturday, you know, to be able to eat some cookies. But you know that's an aspect of understanding the biology that you know is kind of governing your life. And I had, you know, asthma, you know IBS, you know allergies. All that I fixed. All that I fixed with, I would say, science. But today I'm pretty, I'm convinced with how many people I've interacted with and you know smart engineers and you know, like lawyers and stuff who just I don't think have a clear view of what science is anymore.

Rob:

It's been muddled, to say the least yeah, I would totally agree with you on that part, but that's pretty wild. Um cleared up a lot of that stuff and you're saying that science is pretty muddled and yeah, I guess science just in general is a pretty vague term. Would you mind kind of diving a pretty vague term? Would you mind kind of diving a little bit deeper into what you mean specifically when you're talking about science?

Daniel:

Yeah, I think the word science is very well call it understood. What it is like, definition on paper, right, it's the systematic approach to studying the world around us. In which way it's translatable to someone else that they can do themselves. You know, if you die, they can pick up where you left off. It's not like there's a reset to it. And the principles around science are very simple you observe, you measure and you predict. Right, if you're not doing these three things, you're not doing science and you can do just one, and that's enough for the moment. For example, hey, you just observe what mushrooms are growing in your local forest. All right, you're cataloging. That's the first basis. You don't have to go to the second step. But obviously the second step is doing the tedious. What spores do they have? You know, hey, what metabolites do they have in there? Hey, how often they.

Daniel:

You start quantifying, you start bringing in numbers, numerics to it. That's your testable evidence. So anytime you take a measurement which is the caveat you need to control, you know, that's the part where everyone wants to hear about and no one wants to do. That's the hard part of science. And then you know if you've completed science, if you've done the whole spiel of what science is supposed to be. You're supposed to come out with some type of model. This is not the way the world works, or the universe or existence is, but this is a close approximation for the time right.

Daniel:

So science gives a provisional explanation. Proof is for the courtrooms. And mathematics? Now. Obviously you're going to use math as part of science, but you don't prove anything with science. What you do, rather, is you gather support. All the proofs are obvious. Yes, the sun rises. Yes, you're alive. Those things aren't up for debate, so to speak. There's objective truth, there's an acceptance of that. The one belief you take on as a scientist is that there is a truth outside of human beings. So if we were all to think, hey, the earth rotates, or, backwards, the sun rotates around the earth, sure that could be a popular idea. Maybe you gather, some know measurements for that, but there's still an objective truth of what's really happening in our universe, and so I see a science as the most masturbated word in the english language.

Daniel:

Now, you've, I've heard people you know from all different walks and lectures and presentate presenters you know say things like oh, a science hasn't yet realized. Okay, well, you know, you need to have a oh, a science hasn't yet realized. Okay, well, you know you need to have a central nervous system and the ability to be able to compare memory in order to have a realization. So I mean, grammatically that makes no sense. But you'll fill in the blank for the guy and you know such a small thing. You'll hear, you know the atrocities committed in the name of science.

Daniel:

I assure you, science has done nothing wrong and it's clearly some guy who has got no respect and complete disregard for life, or maybe his name is science, in which then he can co-opt it. But again, this is a way in which it's used in language but it's not a real thing, it's a ghost. It's kind of like when we say it's raining, what's the? It's the day, the cloud, the outside, the atmosphere, and so science. That's what's done today. Trust the science would be the exact opposite of the whole point of science. The point of science is to take belief out of the equation so that you can reproduce it saying the words trust the science, that's. That's like uh, catch-22, or just a complete oxymoron.

Daniel:

Another one I've heard recently which I kind of I kind of like I can get behind, but it's still again just kind of dementing.

Daniel:

The word is I am science, I am the science now, like in a very uh, practical means, like we are all living evidence of what's possible, and so in that sense, like okay, I can get behind, I am the science, uh, in which case you know, like I've had to again infer what that is.

Daniel:

But to me, when I speak with you know clients, or with individuals, I can see that there is a clear lack in, I would say, the checking for understanding or re-evaluation of what they're saying, what they're thinking.

Daniel:

Because when I talk to people that are very devoid from I would call it the academics or the high prestige, call it today's jobs and whatnot, the layman is what it's referred to, but I don't want to say like that, like label of layman right, it's a little bit off, but they have a better grasp of the fundamentals of what science should be than people that are very deep into it, you know where, where their intuitive response like it's evidence-based, you know knowledge, like that's spot on, it's like the basis, have always studied things like yeah, that's, that's fantastic, it's like the way of seeking truth and, and it's funny how people have a very utopic view of science yet there's still this very near understanding that it's co-opted like an industry.

Daniel:

So this is where I say you know, the science is really there. You know, some of it's like 80 years old in terms of how to get your health back in order, and the spin on very simple things has completely shifted to what people see as science. They think the person that's talking about calories they're talking about science. They're very far away from it. They're marketing to you and I think very few people can see through the marketing and actually recognize what the science is.

Rob:

Yeah, I mean, I totally understand're making things a lot clearer with me there, and I'm I'm curious to see so, so so you're using so how do you help people, um, and how do you like, how do you help people, I guess, and what is the way that you help people? You help conduct experiments and kind of run people through different things, like trial and error kind of thing, and hypothesizing different outcomes, or is it like I'm, I guess, take a step back, like who are the types of people that you help? I guess, to start there, that would probably be helpful yeah, it's mostly been middle-aged and, uh, older individuals.

Daniel:

Uh, there's, there's been like a an athlete, like an athlete at the younger ages. But I've done that kind of pro bono, more of an interest, and I would like to see them succeed and they're within my circle. So the way I help them is with very much so the structure that I shared with you and I do run people through the end of one experiment. So, for example, the lady is, and I do run people through the end of one experiment. So, for example, the lady, she has quite a lot of complications and issues and she has a lot of tests that she's gotten, she's got lots of data, and so that's great, but it's also a lot of work to sit through and go through it, and so we kind of pick out which ones are the most useful of the tests.

Daniel:

And I like blood tests because your blood is an indicator of how you were doing at that moment. Genetics is okay, but I can't really do too much with it. It's the same when you're born. It's the same when you're dead. You shouldn't be doing the same thing throughout your life. You need to be adapting to really what your lifestyle is and what your behavior, where your actions, what your habits are pulling you towards. And so individuals come. They either bring data or I recommend and suggest what they can get in terms of data, whatever is available to them within their reach. Some people have consulted across the globe. They don't have, for example, like in America, there's 10X health systems. It's a very reasonable priced blood test where you get close to 100 biomarkers. So you know measurements from the blood, whether they're a protein, you know, like insulin, or whether it's a metabolite like serotonin or dopamine, which is also present in the blood, which has a physiological function. You know that is an excellent indicator of how you are at that moment. You know that is an excellent indicator of how you are at that moment. However, there is a very difficult interpretation to do with blood values, blood concentrations, because there's this unspoken but very much. Someone's an athlete. You can't treat their blood with the same general reference ranges. You have to have a very specific understanding of what may or may not be elevated, or or, or, you know or, so you know lower um and um.

Daniel:

This is this is a very simple, I think, easy way in which people can get in touch with their you know molecular inside health. And really what pushed me towards it was when I was a personal trainer. Someone had a stroke during one of my sessions and I felt responsible. I felt like, oh damn, why did I push him? I'm supposed to, I'm paid to push him and it doesn't feel great. And I was convinced that had we had more information on him, we would have had a different way of approaching what he should have been doing at that time.

Daniel:

But there's a little bit of a caveat there. With the more information is not always necessarily better and you are your best comparison. And so if you get a blood test and this is where I'm hoping that there is a change in the paradigm of how people see healthcare or how people see their health is that when you got it, you should work to maintain it. Especially today, there's never been a more important time to keep your health in order, because the likelihood of you the percentage of people that die all-cause mortality, of just being in contact with the hospital, is 15%. So that's with misdiagnosis, mismedication, you went into the hospital and something bad happened or operation, that's a lot of that's a high percentage for. And so in the science community we know very well if you want to stay healthy, stay as far away from the hospital as possible, right, that's where all the bad stuff is. So you know, the future of your personalized healthcare is here. I am attempting to be that person.

Daniel:

People complain that, hey, my doctor doesn't sit with me and go through you know my health and answer my questions. Well, that's not what he's trained for and he doesn't have time. He's there to help prescribe and make sure you're stable enough that you don't die, but he's not there to coach you through problems or to check your understanding. And that's where I've bridged the science and the coaching. And so some of the people have come. They want a longevity program. So we sit through and we go through what it requires to make it to old age with no disease, and everyone can do it.

Daniel:

There's no such thing as a genetic adult chronic disease, even the ones that people are attempting to call. Hey, this is a genetic disease. It has very good evidence that it is viral basis and it's never. You need a smoking gun to say it's genetic. Right, we know the genetic diseases. They are normally called inborn errors of metabolism. When you're born, your genome was not functional, but about 95% of us come on this planet with a fully functional genome. We might have a few genes that are very call it sensitive to being burnt up or oxidized or very, very sensitive, but it doesn't mean that you're going to get Alzheimer's. You know, you can still have, for example, the allele APOE4, which is associated with higher incidence of Alzheimer's, but there's plenty of individuals with that allele that don't get it.

Daniel:

So what's the driving basis there? Well, it's our habits. Our habits are like a horse pulling us through life, and there's a I believe it's a Zen proverb that goes along the lines of a guy's riding on a horse very fast through town and someone yells hey, where are you going? And the guy yells I don't know, ask the horse right. And so that's very much so how our habits pull us through our life and day by day. What we choose to engage with ends up defining our character right, which ends up resulting whether we have health or not.

Daniel:

And the aspects of health. They're very free, they're very low cost, and I think this is why there's been such a push to market so many of these solutions to you, for you to consume and buy and not do the things that are completely within your power to do, because the human body and this is what I did for the graduate studies was stem cells in the liver and stem cells in the muscle. But I had the opportunity to examine every organ because I'm interested and I sat at the lab late at nights and on Saturdays and Sundays because I'm that guy. I played around the microscope, I try to take more pictures, I try to make things look pretty and the reserve pool of stem cells within the body is finite, and so if you mess up something, yes, that might be the end, but the vast majority of our organs are very good at healing, right the worst one. Can you guess what the worst organs are to heal?

Rob:

The worst. Yeah, I would imagine to heal. I don't know gonna. I was gonna guess like skin, maybe skin skin's very good.

Daniel:

It's a lot of damage. No, skin's very good at healing. Skin is very, very uh and if you help it, even facilitate a little bit, it heals a phenomenon you can heal without scarring uh, oh, I guess so, actually, because I was thinking like a lot of sunburn and then it heals a lot.

Rob:

So I was assuming that it probably runs through a lot of this like healing ability with age. But I guess no. So what's?

Daniel:

actually pretty bad. Yeah, so if you damage your heart, that's it right, because there's no reserved stem cell for the heart. There's stem cells in the skin, there's stem cells for the liver, there's stem cells for the muscle Muscle's phenomenal Stem cells for the bone L so much brain, extremely minimal, but there are portions of the brain that have the ability to regrow, all obviously depending on the type of trauma that the person suffers. So you know, our organs have this incredible regenerative capacity, and most of the chronic adult diseases, you know they're inflammatory or you know they're clotting, they are very much centered around organs that are very good at healing, and so most of I would say and this would you know, let's, let's put it, let's put my name to it most of the heart diseases are actually a offshoot from the liver not functioning properly. So when the liver doesn't function properly, your blood blood is like sludge. Then you're trying to pump sludge through the body and the heart. It can't do that for too long, and so this is part of it.

Daniel:

Part of what I've learned that I'm doing for people is I am bringing forward information, but I'm also helping them dissolve beliefs that have gotten them to a bad spot. Dissolve beliefs that have gotten them to a bad spot. Now, when, when someone asks me like, hey, can you help me with a family member and I'm, you know, I'm brought on as a consultant for their health it's a way different story, because their beliefs are set in stone, you know, and they don't want to change. But when someone seeks you out, they're looking for that information, they're ready for a transformation of their, their understanding yeah, I imagine that's kind of like intervention People.

Rob:

They're probably going to be a little more resistant to wanting to change if someone else is kind of pushing that on them. So I totally hear you on that. So, um, so you had mentioned a couple of things earlier that I kind of like jotted down. That kind of you started saying how that we people don't prioritize when they have their health, they don't prioritize maintaining their health. Um, and I totally agree with that too.

Rob:

I feel like everybody, they just push it off, push it off or maybe distract themselves with other things, and until it gets to a point where it's unbearable and they need to do something. And then at that point it's like, okay, well, what's the quickest fix to me? Getting back into whatever it is that I'm doing or whatever I enjoy doing. And I think that's probably why so many of these marketing things make so much money. And I'm guessing that's where why there's not as much stuff on like the preventative kind of health, like, hey, you're still pretty young now maybe you should start paying attention to your stuff for longevity and you can continue to live longer. But do you think that there's a way of? Obviously you believe that there's a way of bringing more attention to that. But do you think a lot of this, this like money and marketing, and do you think we'll ever get to a spot where most of the population is going to be in this preventative world, kind of leading through your example?

Daniel:

I was optimistic at one point in time and the more I see sort of the world state, the less optimistic I am, but at least proud for individuals that are able to do it and maintain it in what I would say in such a time of clout, where the reason why I'm less optimistic now than I was, let's say, five years ago, is that there is an incredible amount of money and money represents human work power and there's an incredible amount of human work power that's pushing this you know narrative of. You know like the drugs, or you know you. You know what you're capable of as a human being, whether it's infections or your immunity, whether it's your you know age and disease. There's a constant push to say, hey, it's okay, it's not your fault, you got cancer and of course there's no use in blaming the individual, you know, for getting the disease. That's not your fault, you got cancer and of course there's no use in blaming the individual for getting the disease. That's not helpful, it's not going to do anything for the individual.

Daniel:

But there is a very, I think, deceptive way in which money is being used in order to push people towards, I would think, a very feeble lifestyle where they've succumbed and they accept it. And now they're looking for someone else to tell them how to heal or what they need to do. And now they're looking for someone else to tell them how to heal or what they need to do. And the reason I'm less optimistic is now I see 20-year-olds on drugs for life and I think, man, what we were saying in my grad classrooms is exactly true. Right, like when you're developing a drug. You know, I know it because I sat in there with the professors and you know the people in the industry that are developing these things. They're not going to develop drugs in which are going to cure diseases. The professor says I'm not going to get a patent for this, I'm not going to get funding if I make this. No one's making these types of drugs and I see very young individuals, both men and women, falling prey to this type of marketing and thinking that this is their only out. And there's a part in which there isn't someone in their life to ask them to. Hey, let's gain some strength, you know, not necessarily physical, but very much so mental and emotional. That's necessary in order to be able to move through, and you know, that's why the underdog stories in which people heal and regenerate, you know, is dear to me. That's why I love working with that, you know, with that group is that you know they've taken the what I would say the odds. Technically the odds are in their favor. But you know, what's being presented is a different story, this massive I don't think we understand how massive of a corporate, foundational industry it is that's giving from textbooks to media, to what's on your television, and it seeps in very slowly. This is the part where I am a diehard.

Daniel:

I would like to say call it truth for the common good, because life is very complicated. You know, in this world there's such a thing as viruses and for some reason there's this, you know, kind of meme going around. I call it a meme, but people have been hypnotized to think viruses don't exist and like I just have to back up, like, okay, that's a good thing to question whether a virus is causing a disease. Excellent, you're asking for evidence. You want to see the science. That's good, very good. Like I can order a virus from a scientific company and, you know, use that virus to make my cells glow green. So, whether you're calling it a virus or not, I can still use this thing and I can do this thing, and you know very small, subtle aspects that you know they call it the powers that be the marketing powers I call them. What they do is they'll say, well, even in education, right, sometimes the guy's wearing you know, professor hat or a doctor hat or a scientist you know cloak, lab coat, and you know they'll say things like, oh well, is the virus alive or is it dead? And what that does is, even though it's very innocent, it actually puts a different type of understanding in a person's mind. Right, they didn't actually get firsthand what's going on, right? This is like confusing the car for the factory, right? You would never say, oh, can the factory drive? Or hey, you wouldn't mix up two. You don't mix up a boot for the manufacturing plant. And that's the same thing as a virus.

Daniel:

A virus is made from a cell. It's a component, it's a living component, but it's not itself. Call it alive, just like you wouldn't isolate any other portion of the cell and be like, oh, is that thing alive? It's part of life. That's an example of a very small, subtle thing. Is that a bad thing? Probably an example of a very small, subtle thing. Is that a bad thing? Probably not.

Daniel:

But then you get to this idea of oh you, you caught a cold, but you don't catch a cold. Right, there's no way of catching one. What you do is you incubate it, right, like how many people have been in an lecture hall with like 300 people, whatever any some kind of place, a church gathering or or concert? There's thousands of people in a small area and anytime there's a percentage of people that are sick, sneezing, coughing, exuding what we would say these viral particles. Yet a fraction of people even have the chance of getting sick. Why aren't we talking about the vast majority, the 95%, that didn't get sick? Their virus was around, they didn't catch it. No, it's because they didn't incubate it. Their immune system was completely apt and fine to be able to stop it and their system wasn't ready to actually take that virus in.

Daniel:

But that part aside, there's just an example, hopefully, of how these ideas are all around us and very few people, I think, have enough energy to be interested in the world around them because they're bogged down, have enough energy to be interested in the world around them because they're bogged down when a person's in a this is what I've at least. My experience is that when people are very well off, they ask a lot more questions, especially when I'm working with them. If I have an hour with them, there's rarely ever a time where I stick to the hour because they ask more questions. When a person isn't feeling well and they're sick, they can't wait to get off the call. They're like this is too much information for me, already 30 minutes in. And so you know.

Daniel:

This is where I really am hopeful, because I do see certain individuals come and they say I don't want to die like my dad did on 12 drugs that looked awful. He wasn't there for the last 12 years and there is a small percentage of the population says okay, well, I want different. What did he do wrong? And what can I get away with? If you like to drink, can I get away with drinking? How much can I get away with? And there's a level to play with in all that. What I say, the science, I mean the real information, but how many people can access it is a different story.

Rob:

Yeah, oh, man, a lot of interesting things there that you're kind of bouncing around, and when you were talking a little bit earlier I made a little note here and you kind of got into it a little bit there, differentiating between individuals who are sick or who are looking to actually just get better or be better too. I rarely see people, people coming to me. They're always looking to just kind of figure out what it is the baseline that they need to be doing. And I imagine a lot of people do that with their doctors too, because a lot of people I talk to they go to the doctor and like, yeah, I'm all healthy, I'm good, and I don't maybe because I don't go to the doctor very often but I rarely get a client who's like, yeah, my numbers came back decent, but I want to improve. Them weren't quite to where she had wanted to be.

Rob:

So then she's trying to have a conversation with her doctor on how to further improve it, because she's an individual who'd be really interested in working with you, because she's seeking more information. But the doctor's just kind of like no, no, no, no, no, like you're okay, let's just leave it at that. Come talk to me if something actually gets worse, and it sounds like you aren't necessarily dealing with those types of people who come to you and they're just like, hey, yeah, I just want to get back to baseline healthy. You're looking for those people who are like, yeah, I want to bring it to the next level and I want to continue staying healthy. But do you still work with those individuals who are just trying to get back to healthy? And if you do, like, how do you, how do you? Do you help them shift their mindset into like, hey, you don't want to just be baseline, you want to be like the baseline is really up here. You're just getting to like the minimum kind of thing, like, yeah, absolutely so mean.

Daniel:

One thing I do, I think, decently well, is give people a rank in where they measure up one with their age, one with, call it, their demographic, and when they're going to push the boundaries. It's because I've gone away from, I would say, the fold of the typical medical industry and I'm acting more of this auxiliary help that I've gotten to see some unbelievable biology, because what people shared with me was metrics that you don't get to see in a regular cohort. Usually you have to exclude the exceptional person from the cohort because they're throwing off your data. It's not a good sample population, and so the fundamental science has been done to an extent where we understand the correlations or the trends that are going to go a certain way. But now you can't just exclude the outliers. They're real people, and so when someone comes and say, hey, I want to get better, what we first do is like okay, well, let's give you some type of performance metrics, give me something to work off of so that we know if you do something, then it gets better. Now, if the person has, let's say, some financial resources, often what we do is we get a blood panel right, and I preface that the blood panel isn't this end-all be-all where we have to try and nitpick every single number. But what we want to see is we want to see a general trend towards when we now, let's say, we take four months, we take a blood test, then we do something for four months, then we retake the blood test. We want to know how much that our efforts really translate into something we can see in the molecular level, much that our efforts really translate into something we can see in the molecular level.

Daniel:

And so each biomarker I analyze in three ways right, if it has the call it, the functional or the capacity within that biomarker. So not all biomarkers do, but so it's. One is that what's the marker for disease? It's the least interesting, because if you're healthy, then we're not really worried about the disease and being like you have a 40% increased chance for arthritis or diabetes. That doesn't mean anything. That's not real in terms of communicating the information.

Daniel:

The other way, in which is, I think, a lot more intuitive, is just biological age. Like, hey, you got this biomarker and it looks like you're in your 20s, even though you're in your 50s. That's great, good job, however you. However, unfortunately it's not that simple in biology because things are dynamic, you're not a static entity in which your concentration stays just stable all the time. But there are some proteins and I say proteins, not metabolites there are some proteins that are stable and if they move then that gives us a lot of call. It either worry or is thick action, or confidence, be like great.

Daniel:

You had an awesome adaptation. We can see an increase in your physical fit. We can see from your physical fitness that there's an increase in fitness from your blood and we can say your biological age is less than what your chronological age is. And then the last way is just simply that there's our like I talked about earlier is that athletes have different blood values. Now I've biased that to say, because athletes have, I would say, superior health, that when you're trending towards those type of values with those particular biomarkers, then you've adapted to such a way where you're no longer what I would categorize as like an average individual, where there's three types in terms of understanding blood chemistry.

Daniel:

There's the diseased, which is very complicated in terms of what you can see as responses. Depending on disease. You might see varying, whether it's low or high. There's the average individual, which is great. This is where most of the biotech's algorithms are designed for right the average individual of how they'll respond.

Daniel:

And then you have the resistant or resilient phenotype, where these are the athletes, these are your military personnel, these are your individuals that can do extreme stress challenges. So you don't actually have to be an athlete. But, for example, heat, if you can deal with high heat stress, your blood will adapt and you'll no longer have the same response as that of an average individual. And that's a key thing because, let's say, you're going to your doctor and you're in a near car accident, your adrenaline will skyrocket and your cholesterol will go through the roof.

Daniel:

If you have that resilient phenotype, I can't guarantee the type of response you'll have, because we'd have to take a deeper dive into what you've done in your history. But you will have a different response. You might be able to blunt different aspects that might go up in a regular individual, because your system is tuned in such a way in which you're engaging different parts of your body, there's a different priming effect. That's happened, and so when someone does want to have hey, I want superior health we take a look at some metrics to ask have you ever gone from your call it Honda Civic chassis and built yourself up into a Ferrari, right? And if you did that in your 19, 20, 21, 22, it doesn't matter if you let it go for, let's say, 10, 15, 20 years. The fact is, you're actually still operating on a chassis that's a Ferrari. This is why athletes have a shorter lifespan than you'd expect is because they end up not maintaining that chassis and then you end up having a stroke or a heart attack chassis, and then you end up having a stroke or a heart attack, right?

Daniel:

And so you know the individuals that do want to push their health. And when I say push their health, all I'm saying is you know, get in touch with what you really are, right? You know, use your muscles, use your body, use your brain, and not be so coddled to sit in this thermoneutral like right in the middle state, being afraid of discomfort, because when you allow your body to like right in the middle state, being afraid of discomfort, because when you allow your body to experience stress, even though we can go off stress on a completely different show, which is useless Biologically speaking that word is in vocabulary. It's very important for people to communicate hey, something's on my mind, but we rise to the challenge, and that helps us grow. Right, and there's a very good principle it's an ecological, geographical principle called Bergman's rule, where you can see that if you take a species from the equator and that same type of family of species, as you go further to the pools it gets bigger. Right, take the emperor penguin, for example. You can take birds, different mammals, the bears. As you go further to the pools they get bigger.

Daniel:

So, as something has to figure out how to endure and deal with the cold, that cold acts like a stimulant, it's a stressor, it's really unlocked the genome to be able to bring you forward to, I would say, a superior type of health, a superior type of human in which you have an increased chance of survival in all aspects. If you get hit by lightning, you have an increased chance of survival in all aspects. Right, if you get hit by lightning, you get an increased chance for survival. If you're in a car accident, increased chance for survival. And it's not what people think, I think when it first comes to mind.

Daniel:

Right, I had a few guys that are big bodybuilders. They're very much so, the gym bros, very, very, very fun gentlemen. But they're pre-diabetic in their blood, right? Not that they're going to get diabetes in the next decade or two, but the same signature appears which the cells don't love your cells, like a particular type of concentration around them, and that tells you that they're kind of stressing their cellular system in such a way in which it's going to deplete their health span and lifespan. Right, can they change it? We hope we did. You know we did some things to tweak around what they're doing. They're still big, they're still good looking and their blood looks a little bit, you know, a little bit better. And in the long run, is that going to work out for them? I hope so. You know that's the best technology we have to date to be able to put them on the right course and catch them very interesting.

Rob:

So I have a question right there, um, right off right from what you're saying there. But before I go into that one, I gotta ask you um, how do you define somebody in that athlete kind of category? So, like you got the disease, you've got the general regular? How, how do you get into that? Is there a certain thing or certain metrics or something?

Daniel:

Yeah, a free metric you can do by yourself, just to check. You can check where your resting heart rate's at. If you're below 60, that is probably a sign that your stroke volume of your heart has adapted to be something of an athlete. If you're hovering over 60, that's the average. So you need to rest, relax. I wouldn't use a device, I would use your fingers and I would use a stopwatch. I would count it numerous times and I would do it when you're actually resting, relaxed, and if you're below 60, your heart has a higher stroke volume, which means, very positively, it has to work. Call it less for the average individual, and this isn't, let's say, scientifically. Call it less for the average individual, and this isn't let's say scientifically. Call it guarantee.

Daniel:

There's an idea that's been floating around ever since I was a kid, and it's still kind of shared today, that you only have X amount of heartbeats. And so if you do exercise and whatnot, yes, your heart rate goes up, but the amount of time you're actually exercising is negligible in your whole lifespan. And if you think, if you slow your heart rate down when you're sleeping, when you're just sitting, when you're reading and you're doing everything else, that means your heart has a way easier time and you're getting more beats in the length of time than the other individuals. So there's a free one right there. Other ones that you can do are usually with your respiratory system. Again, the free version would be you're going to do a controlled inhale and a controlled exhale and you'd have to not lie and you'd have to actually try and continuously blow, even though it's tiny. And the longer you can do that, the more likely that you have adapted your system in such a way which meaning your nervous system and your muscular system is adapted in such a way which would then correspond obviously into your blood and other aspects. And so you can do a triangle breath or box breath.

Daniel:

I think box breathing is what people I like the triangle just to cut out one of the holds but inhale for four seconds, hold, exhale for four seconds, hold. Or you can go inhale, hold, exhale just to make it simpler, but you can do that for four seconds. If you can't inhale, hold, exhale just to make it simpler, but you can do that for four seconds. If you can't do four seconds, you're in trouble. Then you can try to go to eight seconds. If you get to eight seconds, you're okay.

Daniel:

You're somewhere in, I would say the mid-range, where you should be feeling pretty good most of the days. If you can get to 12 seconds, you're already looking at pretty good. I would expect what I would see from your blood is a little bit better than the average individual. But you might not have gotten there. If you can do 16 seconds plus, you're probably in the elite type of individual on the planet and that doesn't have to mean that you're musculately capable to do a marathon at the moment. But what that does signify and say is that your nervous system and your muscular system has adapted to a point in which you are able to control oxygen intake to a very fine degree.

Daniel:

And oxygen intake is where all the science points to for longevity, right. So the more that we look at the native gritty mitochondria and then the DNA, the way in which oxygen circulates and is used within the cell is the end-all, be-all to the lifespan of the cell, right. And so in longevity it's how well is the cell doing? And then, is that cell working well within its physiological correspondence? Are you going to have heart attack? Are you going to have a stroke? No, Great the cells, because you've been maintaining them. They can go the length of time to 100. And even if you start at age 50, you can still get quite a few years shifted and at least the years of health. You don't have to get some weird chronic arthritis or anything like that. You can definitely avoid those.

Rob:

Awesome. Yeah, thank you for clarifying that a little bit there. Going back to that last question, you were talking about those gym bros, bodybuilder kind of guys. It had me thinking, because you said that they were kind of pre-diabetic, so their blood glucose levels were slightly elevated, I guess, compared to like norms for their ages. Yeah, so glucose yeah.

Daniel:

So if you get a fancy blood test, there's a lot of biomarkers, and so some of them are going to be amino acids, other ones are going to be metabolites, and what I can do is I can just match them up and be like are they a signature for disease? And so they do. The glucose is not in the same range as it would be for a diabetic, but if you take a diabetic and take a look at all their biomarkers and there's plenty of literature for that then you can see ah, okay, here's what a pre-diabetic would look like. Their glucose isn't skyrocketed.

Daniel:

But you have these amino acids that are quite out of whack, and the body's very good at controlling a range. You know when it's out of a certain range. That gives you an understanding that an equilibrium has shifted. And now, if you understand how that plays in terms of you know's it's um, you know global crosstalk of organs you'll be able to predict whether there's going to be an issue or not, or which organ might be problematic later on, and so for them it's very much so. Kidneys is like the first one which I'd worry about, and the second being the liver, and if the kidneys and liver go, you know who cares if you get diabetes or not? You just lost your kidneys, so yeah um.

Rob:

So my question with that is because you were talking about earlier a little bit on like pushing comfort zone and kind of um, different things. Even with some of these tests and such, to kind of figure out where you're currently at. Every year I tend to do like a birthday challenge in December, try to push myself. Um, I'm not. I I still pretty competitive rugby player at the gym very often, Um, but I don't train very often, especially running. I don't really enjoy running too much.

Rob:

But last year I tried to push myself to run for 24 hours and see how far I could get. Um, the dust settled. I finished 53 miles. So I just got past that double marathon mark, which I was pretty proud of, because the furthest I've ever ran ever was a marathon once a couple of years prior. So not too bad out of the not training, but it was still terribly bad because I was planning to try to get to 100 and I just failed pretty bad. But even just for that I felt like I was pretty proud of that.

Rob:

But what I'm trying to say is is it good to push yourself through different extremes? Do you believe in fasting for certain periods of times and trying to stress yourself through those different ways. Because I'm a big fan of competitive eating also. I won first place in like a meatball eating competition. I placed second place in a donut eating competition, but like that's stuff that I don't typically eat, but like putting myself through that and pushing myself, and like physical challenges and dietary challenges and a bunch of other things. Do you recommend something like that when you get to people who are kind of pushing the boundary to the extreme, or does it not necessarily need to be like okay, you're potentially going to hurt yourself? Because the whole reason why I slowed down during that 24-hour thing I was like damn, is this what it feels like to have rhabdomyolysis? Am I causing serious damage to myself? And then I was. Then I was like second guessing myself and a lot of things were going through my head.

Daniel:

That point yeah, first off, man, good job, that's, uh, you know, physical feet, great to push through the pain, but like a mental accomplishment that I think few will ever even experience in their lifetime. That hats off to you, buddy. Um, you know, in in terms of what I recommend, I, I always recommend talking about it, you know, first and foremost, to have an idea of what may or may not happen. And you know life is about, you know, putting ourselves through challenges, and obviously, you know there's a risk of getting hurt, no matter what you do, even if you just sit at home, uh, and so you know, uh, context always matters, you know, I, I am an intellect and I would like to bring that as my skill to whoever group I come with. And so what I would say is that you know, for the, you know, eating food, eating challenges, there's a smart way and there's a not smart way of doing it right. Where it's kind of like what's the best analogy I can give, it's kind of like. Let's think of a blood vessel or a pipe. Right, if you have a pipe and that pipe is very, very like, reinforced and strong, and that's okay, you can pack dirt on it, you can push a lot of force through it, it's reinforced, there's no issue. But if you previously to you pushing an insane amount of pressure to that pipe, you know, did a heat cooling, heat cooling, heat cooling, heat cooling for the last 300 days, there's a good chance that that pipe's going to rupture. And so very much like the similar aspect. Think about it in physiology like your blood vessels or your joints, they can take a beating and they can regenerate and they can come back.

Daniel:

And I have, for example, a military individual who trained outside of the military doctors and personnel and then when he got his blood test, they told him his kidneys were going to explode because his creatinine levels were 17-fold higher. And it wasn't until he got to me. He's like you know, I've talked to five doctors now. They're all telling me I should take all these drugs and I'm about to die and my kidneys are going to fail. I feel fine. You know, should I be doing this? And you know I feel fine, should I be doing this? And I looked at it. I'm like I've never seen it being this high, but very much so. Like, did you participate in exercise? He's like yeah, I did seven hours four days in a row with my brother-in-law in military training. I'm like, okay, yeah, they're not normal to see that high, but very much so expected for you to be able to produce that metabolite.

Daniel:

And so you know, if you were doing this in a very call it unprepared state, I wouldn't recommend that because you know, if you damage cartilage to a certain point, it might be very difficult to heal later in life. But if you prepared for it, even somewhat, then that point where you've done a lot of damage to your system, you know, so long as you haven't damaged your heart, you don't damage your lungs, you don't damage your brain, you don't damage your nervous system, you know you'll come back from. And you know, if your joints are screaming and you have some problems, well then you can work to reinforce it. And then you can see, you know, how much can you get away with in the future. And I do recommend this for people, right, I wouldn't say it out loud in a, you know I'll say public setting for everyone to do this, but one-on-one. You know, if we were working together I would talk you through what you were doing and then you know, we would just prepare the joints as best we could to take that burden.

Daniel:

And you know, make sure that your bioenergetics your system can keep. You have access to it so you can keep. You know you can keep going. But energetics your system can keep, you have access to it so you can keep. You know you can keep going, but you know that's the name of the game, I think right. Like you know, you got to live a life that's worth something. You don't want to just sit, you know, coddled, you know protected, and live to 100. I don't think anyone would find that a meaningful, fulfilling life either, and so pushing your boundaries is also quite an inspiration for the rest of the people, even if it's in a small aspect or a small avenue.

Daniel:

I think it's very important for us to have those type of challenges, and one I think that's very easy to access is just cold. Cold challenge is very good for the body. It's an easy stress, so long as you can actively participate in it. Like you, don't want to be in there jittering, you know, feeling the pain and thinking that you're going to die. You know I've had people, you know, pass out after it.

Daniel:

But when you're in there, when you're active with it, when you put the process, the body takes over. You generate heat as a human being and with so becomes, you know, a great invigoration of the health and the systems. And so there's oh, man, that's, I mean, it's an awesome. Thanks for that question. By the way, I've never been asked that I do recommend people push their boundaries right, but I do recommend people do it with as much intelligence and preparation as possible so that you know they're one, they're alive to tell a tale, and two that they, you know, can, they can still have a good life after they do so right, and it seems like you're doing great. So obviously you know you prepped well enough for it and, uh, you know you came out.

Rob:

You came out a better man yeah, it survives, so that's that's what I'm happy about. Um, and yeah, I love that you mentioned the cold there. Uh, because I'm a huge fan of of cold exposure and and talked a little bit about the breath work, and I'm a huge fan of cold exposure and talked a little bit about the breath work, and I'm a big fan of Wim Hof. And I apologize too. I know we're kind of going over. You warned me in the beginning too, but that's OK, just loving the conversation I have met.

Daniel:

Wim Hof. I did do his workshop. I have a picture with the man and there's a little bit of secret with the cold exposure and with the Wim Hof method, and that is it clears out and cleans out the mitochondria in ways in which it's very difficult to do so without different pharmaceuticals. Some can be quite useful, but the mitochondria, for those, I'm sure it's hard today not to have heard that word once upon a time, but it's how we breathe. The whole point of us breathing is for eventually, in the mitochondria. That's where it's going to be used and unfortunately, with the modern lifestyle, that mitochondrial apparatus, it gets blocked and gunked up like sludge in a system and so there's a pseudo suffocation. There's oxygen present, but you can't use it to the same affinity, present, but you can't use it to the same affinity.

Daniel:

Now, what the cold does and what the you know breathing techniques do is they help raise carbon dioxide in the blood, which helps pump out and actually clean up the mitochondria so that oxygen can actually go in and be used in order for us to, you know, create or use energy, because we're technically hydrogen powered. That's what we run off. We run off of hydrogen power. We use the oxygen to accept the hydrogen, and that's how we use energy from our food. And so the cold exposure, I think, is one of the easiest ways, and when your health is just okay, that's for the person to now start challenging themselves very call it gently towards something right If you've lost your health. Different starting points.

Rob:

Yeah Well, Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time. I know we're pushing it here, but how do people find you and how do they stay in touch with you? And are you taking new clients too?

Daniel:

Yeah, so my company is called Timeline Sciences, right? The idea is that we have one timeline that we all share and science is how we describe it, so timelinesciencescom. If you send me a message through there, you can get in contact with me. If you like the socials, I am on Twitter, or X, formerly known as Twitter, and so, if you like, I'm not good with anything else in terms of socials as I am, you know, still learning that skill set. I'm very much so a scientist at heart, uh, and so if you reach out to me, we can figure out what the best approach to you is. I'm always taking on new clients, uh, there's always opportunities to to find and schedule in, whether that's just for one conversation to clear up a certain understanding, whether that's to get me to do work in terms of presenting information to you that you're interested in, or whether that's a long-term. Hey, I'd like some coaching across a certain venture, whether it's your health or performance. I'm there and I'm interested and more than happy to be part of your journey.

Rob:

Awesome, daniel man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much and I would love to have you back on and continue this conversation down the road. I'd be happy to, but thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, all right guys, talk to you later.