Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. This is the True Life and Gray Matter present series. And today, myself, George Monti, and the incredible Christian Gray, True Life and Gray Matter present Chris Clausen. Aloha and welcome back. Today we present Chris Clausen. This is the frequency where consciousness cracks open, where rebellion meets biology and the human brain becomes the final frontier of freedom. Today, we're diving headfirst into the neuro revolution with Chris Klassen, a mind architect, a consciousness engineer, and a man who refused to accept the slow fade of memory as destiny. After watching his father and grandfather disappear into the fog of Alzheimer's, Chris didn't mourn. He mobilized. He turned grief into data, pain into purpose, and began decoding the circuitry of cognition itself. As the co-founder and chief innovation officer of First Person, he's fusing ancient mushroom intelligence with modern neuroscience, creating functional nootropics that don't just enhance focus and clarity, they reignite the divine spark inside the skull. This isn't just wellness, it's cognitive insurrection, a declaration that the mind is sacred, that memory is rebellion, and that to think clearly in an age of confusion is a revolutionary act. So tune in, breathe deep, and prepare to enter the new architecture of awareness with Chris Claussen, where biology becomes mythology and the revolution begins inside your own mind. Chris, Christian, thanks for being here today. How are you guys? I'm doing great. Thank you. I'm really happy to be here and talking with you both. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. Christian, how are you feeling over there? Oaxaca is a good place to live. Okay. Yeah, absolutely, man. Away from the hustle and bustle a little bit into a whole new culture over there where, where you get to see the world through a different lens. Awesome. You know what, let me, Chris, maybe we can start off with you, man. I know I gave you a little bit of a background back there. We talked about your father and your grandfather and Alzheimer's a little bit, but what did we leave out? What, how did you get to be where you are right now? Oh, you know, the long journey of life, you know, one step in front of the other, I guess. Yeah, it's been a deal. I've had a great life so far and looking forward to living a lot more and doing a lot more things for sure. Been fortunate to do and experience a lot of different things and now get to work on a passion project around brain and taking care of the brain and brain health. Christian, how did you meet Chris? That's a good story. There's a Bales bondsman in Denver, Colorado. No, just kidding. That was part of the good experience. That might have been true quite a few years ago. Maybe I did tell you that story. I don't know. um so chris and i met when i was doing kind of due diligence and extensive research supporting uh was was that the year chris i don't even know anymore the year yeah it's kind of a blur so i was working with the folks at emerald x and sarah and team on brad dunn on uh and remind together right and remind was kind of a different type of psychedelic conference in that it wasn't about culture and heads and activism and all the things and it wasn't you know maps it was kind of something in between it wasn't it was trying to talk about the business of psychedelics and plant medicine at a time when the business didn't really exist yet so kind of early and um chris was one i would say one of the outstanding or standout speakers, not only because of what they were doing with first person, but because of the personal narrative and the passion for trying to solve for something that causes so much havoc in people's lives. So that's where we met. We got to hang out there in Vegas together a little bit. Then I stayed in touch with them. I got to know his brother a little bit in Southern California. And I've always been interested in what Chris is up to next, because it's always something interesting. Yeah. You know, we're talking about Alzheimer's today and it's such an incredible killer, especially with the demographic cliff we kind of have coming that way. And I think that people have a complete disconnect between talking about it and then actually going through it. Chris, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you thought about it. Like you, you had, you know, a lot of experience with your grandfather and your father. How have your thoughts changed about Alzheimer's? Like getting to think about it and then getting to actually experience people you love go through it. Maybe you could break that down for the audience. Yeah, I'm going through it again right now with my mother-in-law, unfortunately. So I think it probably touches most people's lives at this point at some level. Maybe not the one, two, three punches that I've had. But it's very eye-opening, at least it was for me. And just to see how it's just... how it robs the end of life for some somebody and it not only them but for everybody involved with them you know their spouse ends up being a caretaker it can rob their health um it was really hard on my mother to take care of my father um and then you know even down to my kids not really getting to know their grandfather that much or him being able to give know wisdom and and and all of that they they got to experience a little bit of that when they were really young but not really um and it's just it's it's devastating and it's uh it's largely preventable and that's that's kind of what needs to get out there it's a lifestyle disease uh and it's up to us uh right now we were talking earlier about gen x and hey, it's coming, right? But we have the opportunity. Our generation has the opportunity still, even if you're getting a late start, for it not to happen to you. You don't have to go out that way. It's just a matter of making simple choices to your daily routine and turn it around. Yeah. I got a cool picture here of your family that I kind of wanted to bring up. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about this awesome image over here. yeah yeah that was uh that's up in colorado uh where we vacationed every summer um and that's my grandfather and my dad and my mom and of course we did a lot of trout fishing when we did that but i thought it was kind of interesting that they also had to get the jim beam picture in with the middle of it um and you know i i gave you that image just because it you know it's like Alcohol is such a detrimental thing to ingest for your brain, and neither one of those guys were alcoholics by any means. I maybe saw my dad fully inebriated once in my life, but he was a nightly, hey, knock a couple back after work, drink some beer on the weekend guy, same way with my grandfather. My grandfather was an entrepreneur and inventor kind of even before that was a thing. He had his own plane when he was my age and exited businesses and did amazing things. But, you know, those daily nightcaps just slowly poison your brain. And it's something that we learn from our parents and grandparents. And a lot of us still do that. And it's probably one of the number one things that we could eliminate quite easily and really go a long way to having your brain for your whole life. Yeah. You know, I haven't done a lot of research on the, on the relationship between alcohol and Alzheimer's or other brain disease. I've read a little bit about it, but I'm just in your guys' opinion. How do you, do you think that alcohol sort of helps to bring about Alzheimer's? It helps to bring about decay in the brain. Like it does seem like it's pretty detrimental to, to thought, but what are your guys' thoughts on the relationship between alcohol and brain disease? yeah it's a neurotoxin cellular toxin it's it's it's poison you know um and i don't want to you know sound too crazy about it here because I still will have a glass of wine myself, but definitely not on the nightly and definitely try to reduce it down. But it's a known neurotoxin that kills brain cells. If you're regularly consuming alcohol, you are damaging your brain on the regular for sure. Yeah. I can't help but wonder if maybe all of this brain disease is a symptom of the society that we live in. Like if we poison ourselves with alcohol. Man, I drank so much booze. I used to call Jack Daniels John because we were such good friends. I used to go out and just tear it up. Me and John get all sideways. But man, two days afterwards, the older you get, the more you realize how toxic it is to your body. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have a beer every now and then or a glass of wine, whatever you got to do. But You know, when you start peeling back the onion, like why do you drink? Well, you probably drink a little bit to get over your day. Like you probably had a shitty day or you're probably in the midst of something. You need something to relieve that tension. But really, you know, when all those things stack up, if you're living a life that's not a full life, if you're doing something you hate, if you're in a relationship you don't love and you're using alcohol to get out of that, like all of that has to have long-term effects on your brain. How much do you think society is playing a role in some of this neurodegenerative diseases? Well, I'll go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead, Christian. I'll jump in there real quick on alcohol because it's not just to take, you know, the bad away. You know, alcohol is it's a ritual in our society. And it's an important component of that ritual. It is the symbol a lot of times that work has stopped and fun begins. Right. i crack that beer i'm pouring that drink that part of my day is gone this part of my day is starting and that's an important part of our day as well let's not discount that socialization and having fun and that's part of brain that's part of brain health our brains need that um now do we need alcohol as a crutch for that probably would be better if we could have alternatives to that um you know george we talked a little bit about that and we've all you know talked about psychedelics a little bit yeah and my hope is you know in the future you know we could have legal products that would substitute for alcohol that would give that same you know socialization feeling and lubrication up so that you can, you know, go out and put a smile on your face and have a good time with your buddies after a long day or on the weekend or on the golf course or wherever you choose to do it. You know, alcohol itself as a substance is a toxin, but as a tool in society, it's very important for us. yeah i just you know i've done some studying on this uh you know i've got a number of friends and some family members that have had addiction issues um you know i i like to say and not being cheeky like there's significant parts of my life where i was a functional alcoholic right like i showed up to work every day i took care of the family and kids i didn't go missing i didn't go sick i wasn't blowing money at the racetrack because i was hammered but when you grow up in Northern California as a kid, and you and your buddies are sneaking into dad's beer fridge at age seven and sneaking off with a couple of tall boys. Thank God my parents moved because I had to find new friends. And those friends were probably smoking weed and not drinking in SoCal. Funny enough. But, you know, when you go to high school parties and chugging is a thing in the eighties, talk about Gen X. And then, you know, you're in college and now drinking takes on a whole new mantle and machismo and blah, blah, blah. And then I was in the military and I never understood how a human being could take their entire seven hundred and thirty two dollar paycheck, whatever that was, and blow it in one weekend, maybe one night. So I've been in drinking cultures. And if you look at the history of alcohol and, you know, there was large swaths of the United States, you go back to the fourteen, fifteen hundreds. Right. They drank, you know, weak beer because the water would kill you. So. alcohol has been around a long time and you don't have to talk about, you know, uh, prohibition and everything else. It's just look at the history of happy hours. Like why did happy hours start and what does that mean? So it was absolutely part of society. And then you bring in our sports culture and how alcohol is tied to sports and tailgating and all the things. So it's definitely part of our society, uh, with or without, you know, using it for medicating yourself out of some trauma or pain. So. Yeah, it's definitely there. I want to talk, I want to, um, get into this, um, this book over here like let's bring this up on this under the stage over here chris clausen brain click a gen x guide to prevent alzheimer's and achieve peak cognitive performance man how did this come about tell us a little bit about it for people that might be interested yeah well you know i've when when my dad was going through it that's when you know i had to wake up call and i was just like we got to figure this out my brother joe and i kind of tackled the lifestyle change together and uh we just set out to learn everything we could you know from podcasts, to books, to going to conferences and meeting the experts and meeting the doctors and discussing it with them. There wasn't a lot of information when we got started out there. It was a lot of, hey, do crossword puzzles was the, you know, and we knew that wasn't the answer. So just through trial and error and figuring it out on our own. And then, you know, I just felt like, There's now there's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of doctors that have written books, Dr. Bredesen in particular. And there's a lot of people out there talking on brain health, most of them being doctors, rightfully so. That's their profession, which I am not. But a lot of times you'll find doctors. that, you know, if you listen to Peter Attia podcasts on brain health, and I know a lot about the brain, I might have to listen to it two or three times to fully comprehend what they're talking about. And I just felt like there could have been a more simple layman's explanation that didn't go overly scientific. on the brain that I could get out there to help people just make the steps to start changing their lifestyle. And that's what the book is. It's my experience in it. It's my learnings. It's my application of all this, the mistakes that I made. So hopefully other people won't have to make the same mistakes. And then just kind of in a language that's easy to relate to and not... you know not so high level phd md talk yeah it makes sense what what about the gen x factor is that because you yourself and all of us on here are gen xers or is that because we're we as gen xers are facing our parents going through that or maybe you can break down the gen x lens Yeah, I decided to just kind of give it a tone to our generation because once again, it's a personal experience. I think a lot of us are going through that, seeing parents going through it. A lot of people that I know my age that I talk to are concerned about their own brain, what's going to happen. know they're just they come to me say tell me what to do i don't want to end up like dad or mom or or whatever um now that it applies to everybody you know alzheimer's begins twenty to thirty years before the symptoms show is when it starts in the brain so it what i'm talking about here doesn't necessarily specifically be only our generation. It's just that in order to relate to the stories that I tell, I just felt like, hey, this is my audience. This is who needs to be reading it right now and can relate to my own experience with my grandfather and my dad. Yeah, it's an awesome lens. So Chris, I just think it would be interesting. So you don't need to sell me on the book. George will show you. I already bought it. So don't sell me. Talk to me as if I'm a fifty seven year old Gen Xer. living in Oaxaca, Mexico, where, uh, if you're not drinking coffee or drinking cerveza, and if you're not drinking cerveza, you're drinking mezcal and there's some green juice and yeah, there's definitely some healthy choices, but to your point about the social ritual, I'm loving my life right now. I'm not hiding from anything. I'm not numbing anything. I enjoy a few glasses of wine with my wife at dinner. I'll go out and have a few beers with the guys catching a game. what are, you know, one or just one, just one, what's the one most important thing I can do to take your learnings and apply them to my situation? Yeah. One. Okay. If you're going to have to, if you're going to have to break it down to one, you know, in the book, I talk about the seven pillars of brain health, which is basically you're, the seven pillars of your life. It's eat, sleep, move, work, play, relax, and learn. That's what you do in life. And it translates to proper nutrition, deep sleep, exercise, challenging yourself mentally, being social, having fun, reducing stress, and then knowing yourself, your genetics and your background. If you had to pick one out of there, The one is going to be exercise. Incorporating regular exercise into your daily routine is the most powerful thing you can do for your brain. And it doesn't have to be a bunch. There's studies that show that as little as like, thirty minutes of moderate exercise a week significantly increases brain volume. So it can be just a matter of adding, you know, some walks in it, into it to start. you know in down there in mexico you're probably walking a bunch the second thing would be you know resistance training doing resistance training is very very important for your metabolic health and that will translate to your brain really quickly so if you had to pick one of those out i'm going to say You got to start incorporating a regular exercise routine for your brain longevity and your just overall health span, you know, as you age and that fifty seven turns to seventy seven and hopefully eighty seven and ninety seven. You don't want to be confined. You want to be up and still out there doing stuff and exploring and enjoying life. Yeah, I was thinking about you this week and thank you for that. And thank you for breaking it down to one. Obviously, I'll read all seven. I might actually pick up more than one habit out of this conversation. But the movement since leaving the U.S. and not being in a sedentary society, right, where you're sitting in the car for two or three hours a day if you're commuting, maybe more sadly, or you're sitting at a desk or you're sitting wherever, you're sitting in a UPS truck, God forbid. You know, what's happened is, yeah, we're in a walking environment. And if we choose not to get in the cab to go for a mile or two, we walk a mile or two. And then I'm up every morning going to the mountains doing hikes. That's great. But it's funny you mentioned like the being happy and social. I could see that overlap with alcohol consumption. Right. So it's like being happy and social in a non-alcoholic environment. Or you might need to start letting friends know, like, hey, I want to hang out with you, but I don't want to get hammered. I've had those conversations. And then the worst case scenario is like, I can't be your friend anymore or I can't be around you because you don't know how to play. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Joe and I were trying to live the lifestyle and alcohol was probably one of the last things that we kind of conquered each other. And we just made ourselves a promise that neither one of us was going to drink for a year. So we both went into that kind of commitment together. And it was always interesting going out and being at conferences and social settings where drinking is part of it. And, you know, just say, no, I don't drink. And the immediate response is, is, it's kind of funny, you get a couple different responses from, you know, from the female, they're like, oh, you know, and real, real. um cautious about it okay i understand and the male's like yeah i got a friend he you know he can't drink either and so the immediate response is they think that you you're an alcoholic and you're doing it because you have to you know why why else would you not drink and uh you know then i explained to him no i'm just you know doing it to lead a healthier lifestyle and most of the people that refrain or cut back significantly all kind of report the same thing it's kind of like wow I feel so amazing from not drinking, but I can't go back to it, at least not to the level that they were. Yeah, and I think it's pretty easy to weave in, because I think everybody on this call has experience or had some use of plant medicine, maybe psychedelics, I don't know. In Cali, it was like, I'm Cali sober, right? That's been a thing for decades. And for people who aren't from California or who don't consume cannabis, Cali sober means I don't drink alcohol, I don't do hard drugs, but I smoke a little weed once in a while. You want to look at healthier people? for a lot of reasons. And then there's kind of the equivalent, I think, of the psychedelic space where people don't do hard drugs, quote unquote, or they don't drink, but they microdose or they macrodose or whatever. So I see these healthy choices. I mean, it all probably starts with mental health, right? If your mental health is good and your attitude's good, you can apply these seven pillars. If you're struggling with anxiety, depression, eating disorder, sex addiction, you're probably a candidate to keep drinking. Yeah, well, it's, you know, they feed each other either direction. Habits gather a momentum. And in order to break any kind of momentum, you have to replace it with something that has an equal reward. So as you look to change those habits from maybe things that are not good for you to a more healthy lifestyle, you got to think about it and in habit form? And how can I change those habits? And it isn't just stop, right? It's not just stop. That's the mistake a lot of people make. Like, I'm just going to stop. What are you going to do instead of, you know, those unhealthy habits? Let's get something that still fires the dopamine, fires the reward center, and allows you to transition away from it. And in the book, I described like our nightly ritual of wine, Christian, my wife and I had that too. And I was really wanting to stop it, but I really enjoyed that time. And so, and I struggled with it, with stopping, you know, one day. glasses of wine turned to three and kind of developed this kind of healthy blueberry frozen treat ice cream thing that I'd make. And we replaced that the wine with that. And guess what? We still had a ritual. We were still able to enjoy that time together. We just took alcohol out of the equation. Yeah, I love that you brought up dopamine. I actually caught a video. I'm a bit of a curator and a grazer of content and information from all sources. And there was a great bit because I think so many people associate dopamine with oxytocin and how one is like the pleasure center, but they confuse the craving, right? The want or desire to do something And can you just talk a little bit more about dopamine or because with all your pillars, right, there could be a craving for exercise. There could be a craving for these things. And then there's the actual what happens when you get the reward, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, dopamine is super interesting neurotransmitter in the brain. And a lot of people who have, say, ADHD are deficient in dopamine. and when you boost up their dopamine levels it gives them the ability to kind of focus and concentrate on one thing but it's the it's the reward you get it's the the from exercise um it's a combination the runner's high of exercise is a combination of dopamine and adrenaline flooding your system and you feel good and it makes you want to do it again you know same way with if you're hang gliding or riding dirt bikes or whatever you do for that thrill. And some people, it's taking drugs. And a lot of drugs focus on the dopamine, cocaine, stuff like that. You get this massive reward. You want to do it again. Let's hit it again. And you're looking constantly for that dopamine, scrolling on the phone, does the dopamine. You got to learn how to use it to your advantage and not let it control you. Yeah, I guess this is where it gets tricky, right? Because dopamine can be used in reinforcing positive, healthy habits. And clearly dopamine plays a role in very destructive or potentially not the healthiest behavior. Yeah, that's why you can, you know, transfer that habit to something else. You know, someone with a, you know, a coke habit might need to, you know, Take up paragliding or something crazy like that to kind of keep that dopamine reward hitting to try to make the transition rather than just cut it off completely. You just got to, you know, we're a chemical machine and got to learn how to use the tools that we've got. It sounds a lot like we're talking like neural pathways to me. And for me, it brings up the question of what's actually happening in the mind of someone with Alzheimer's. I know that there's some I haven't read too much, but maybe you can talk about that. Because I know that people used to talk about like the tau tangles and stuff like that. But do we know what's going on inside the brain when Alzheimer's is happening? Yeah, there's there's a lot beta amyloid and towels, you know, that's what they focused on for so long. Um, the pharmaceutical companies jumped on it, you know, billions of dollars of research. Um, we're gonna try to see if we can get those out. Um, but. What they found out is that. Just because those are present doesn't mean you have Alzheimer's. Just because those get washed away doesn't mean that's just going to prevent Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is multimodal. Dr. Bredesen describes it as like having thirty-six holes in your roof. There's lots of things going on in the brain. The reason that they can't just take the magic pill and give it to you and it goes away, is because so many different things that are influencing it from neurotransmitters to to insulin resistance in the brain some people call it type three diabetes uh to you know from to the blood flow, not proper, you have a microvascular network in your brain and improper blood flow and causing brain shrinkage, inflammation. There's so many things going on in Alzheimer's brain, which is why they can't come up with a cure. The cure is plug all thirty six holes in the roof. You know, if you don't, you've still got a leak. Something's going on. So particularly if you've got it in your family, if it's running in your family, you've got some genetic predisposition like I do. You really need to, you know, take it seriously. Everybody does. Just because you have genetic predisposition or don't have the genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's does not mean you're immune from it. And as we... continue to advance technology that is going to enable us to live longer in our physical bodies we're going to have to address the brain do we want to live longer in our physical bodies if our brain isn't functioning they i i can tell you the answer to that is no it's there that's not a lifestyle you want to live my dad was super healthy But his brain was not. And he had to live in a pretty terrible condition as his body slowly deteriorated and his brain quickly deteriorated. So the only real way to take care of the brain as of now is to deal with it from our lifestyle and our choices that we make. You a couple of things are popping for me, Chris, just how important this conversation is, like belaboring it. Obviously, you wrote a book, so you know how important it is. And your brother made it your life's work. So Captain Obvious here reporting for duty. Seeing these images reminds me so much of being, I don't know, seven, eight years old. And I grew up in a mixed household in terms of religious lineage. So mom, Irish Catholic, they know a little bit about drinking. I won't say who, but that's a thing. And then my dad grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist house. Right. And my grandma and grandpa on that side, you know, for people aren't familiar with the Seventh-day Adventist face, extremely lifestyle and health oriented, going back to the Kellogg's and stuff going on in Pennsylvania. And they were doing, you know, heat and cold contrast before anybody knew what the hell that was. Like all these things that the Seventh-day Adventists were doing, like in the sixties and seventies would have been perfect at a commune in San Francisco. And then here it is again, like longevity growth hack, you know, life hacking. And I'm just, thinking when I was seven or eight and my grandma showed me images of a healthy lung that was all pink and happy, and then showed me the lungs of a smoker, I did not smoke. I had no interest in having lungs like that. And, you know, I might have had a closed cigarette here or there and I might smoke other stuff, but cigarettes were not on the menu. And it was like somebody smarter than me. And I'm paraphrasing like when you have awareness, when you're really aware of your health or anything, you can start to make informed choices. If you don't know that that extra two beers during the football game is going to do this to your brain, you may not care. If you haven't visited a senior living memory care center where you haven't had a family member go through dementia or Alzheimer's early onset, you have no effing clue what's coming for your family or for you. So I think education awareness. Yeah, sure. You know, so often George and I talked about this a little bit. It's like, you know, unless it's right, affecting you right in the moment, we have a tendency to say, I'll deal with that later. But like I said, you know, it, If you're living an unhealthy lifestyle, chances are you've already got some progression towards that image on the right there. But you can turn it around. But Alzheimer's is twenty to thirty years before you start seeing symptoms. And a lot of times when you start seeing symptoms, it's too late. And that sounds like terrible news. And there has been some reports of people, you know, starting to show symptoms of Alzheimer's, really getting their lifestyle in check and coming back out of it, or at least not progressing any further. But not everybody. And, you know, if you if you wait till that starts that that's a problem um and that's part of the reason for the book part of the reason I do what I do is try to you know bring awareness to people like just start now it's pretty easy to make these changes and you'll feel much better right now anyway uh your life is going to change for the better as you go forward and your brain's going to be You know, I was going through brain fog myself before I even started looking back on it. I was like, wow, I was definitely heading down that path. And, you know, my brain right now functions better than it ever has in its life. Wow, that's saying a lot. Can we talk a little bit about your personal story? You know, I don't want to make it more painful or triggering, but like, As a grandson and watching your grandfather's descent and how aware you were of it based on your age and whatnot versus kind of what you saw with your dad versus what you're maybe going on today with your mother-in-law. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was, I talk a little bit about it in the book. Um, my grandfather, like we said, he was, uh, he he's the reason I'm an entrepreneur. Cause I was, uh, I was a little kid and I can remember like standing at his desk and looking at like newspaper clippings hanging on the wall of him and, you know, businessman of the year and all this stuff that he had hanging up there. And it changed me. I was like, that's that's what I'm going to do. That's what I want to do with my life is do stuff like that. And then, you know, when my grandmother died, And she was kind of making up for his, we didn't really know as kids that he was going down because you're a little kid and you're just at grandpa and grandma's house and you're running around and my cousins and I were causing trouble and just in and out of the house. But then once she passed away, you're like, oh, he can't take care of himself. Oh my goodness. He's not here anymore. And it came real evident. but then you go on with your life and you're young and you don't think about it and then then once dad started going through it it's like oh um this i'm next you know this i'm going down the same path i'm going to be next and that's when it started getting serious for us now and from today's perspective you know at looking now again at my mother-in-law who's in memory care right now. You can see going back, same way with my dad, that it was unfortunately self-inflicted. And they didn't know any better. That generation didn't know any better. They grew up with a default healthy lifestyle, on farms, raising food, killing their own chickens and eating their own animals and working during the day and they were naturally healthy. But as they went through adulthood and we were kids, then everything started switching around. And that big food started coming out. Packaged food started coming out. Cooking at home started being common and it took a toll on them. And, you know, they didn't know any better. But like we talked about, Gen X, we we know better. Even if you're ignoring it, you know better. Oh, I don't know. I think if you're ignorant, you don't have to face the realities of your choices. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I'm hoping that... And, you know, I feel confident that my kids are not going to have to go through it with me. I hope that they learn from my experience of not going through it and follow that lead themselves. But they're young and, you know, they're doing the young things right now and eating fast food and drinking. And, you know, but I have hopes they'll, you know, eventually wake up and come around as well. Can you talk a little bit, Chris, about the signs? And George, I've got something for you to share there. What were the symptoms? Because there's a really profound part of this slide at the very bottom, like we get away from the ten symptoms. Dementia is not a normal part of aging. I think we've been just like we normalize the war on drugs. We're normalizing that early onset dementia memory loss is normal. And, you know, I've heard it more than once from family members. Oh, I'm getting old, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank. Right. And it's losing the keys. I can't focus on this or fog or whatever. You know, and I think a lot of that's going to get blamed on COVID and long COVID. Right. That's that's the other culprit now is responsible for everything, but just aging. And to your point, you know, two hundred years ago, what was the average lifespan? You know, we're living double lifespans. And so our brain and our body didn't need to make it to seventy and eighty and ninety years old. Right. Maybe that was exceptional during biblical times. But, you know, these days we're living that long. These are some of the symptoms we're going to see. It's it's not normal. Right. Like we can be healthy and be cognitively solid and sharp. Yeah, it's it's unfortunately it's normal. but it doesn't have to be right unfortunately it is normal and we've accepted it as the norm but we all know those people that are not that way that's eighties and nineties and and super sharp and some of these people were you know were were lucky and some of these people maybe you know exercise their whole life if you see somebody that's exercise their whole life, they're generally pretty sharp mentally, even into their seventies, eighties and nineties. You can pretty much count on that. But yeah, your brain can get stronger. That's the thing. We're saying, oh, your brain weakens as you age. And that comes from the thought that you can't grow new brain cells past your young, but we've proven that to be wrong now. So you can actually do things, you know, through some of the seven pillars through nutrition and exercise and doing these things that will spur neurogenesis and actually increase your brain power. So I feel like my brain power is getting better as I get older, not going down. And I expect myself to be even mentally sharper at eighty five than I am right now at fifty five. That's what I that's what I expect. You know, let me take it back. Let me jump in here real fast because what if it's not just a bug? What if it's a feature? Like on some level, and this is my conspiratorial side, but it seems like it's in everything, man. And you can't tell me there's not a death industry. Like I have had people I care about go into homes and be kept alive because there's a paycheck coming. My grandma checked out a long time ago, but she was kept alive, not for the benefit of the family, but for the benefit of the care home. at least in my opinion, and maybe that's a dark thing to say, but there's an industry around it. And some of these drugs, it seems to me, and this is just me, a truck driver talking right here, but it seems like there's a lot of money being made in pharmaceuticals about potential drugs that may slow things down. There's all this research, but what about the preventive side of it? It doesn't seem to me That we put as much care and respect and knowledge and money into all these healthy habits. It's in the food. It's in the Red Dye Forty. It's in polyester. It's in everything, man. And those play a huge factor. I think that there's... What do you guys think about it being not a bug, but a feature? Unfortunately, you know, I think as... particularly partially, you know, maybe one of the benefits of COVID was just a mass awakening of people to realize that, wait, wait a minute here. This is such shit. And, you know, and, you know, as, as a progressive person, progressively goes along you realize hey more and more stuff that we've been taught or told our whole lives has been a lie um and you know it it's kind of a punch in the stomach but it's also a good thing it's still kind of digesting like you know what do i how do i handle all this information because you don't want to be a cynic But so much of it is, you know, that they're still trying to feed us doesn't appear to have any validity to it and appears really shallow when you look at it. And a lot of it from big food to big pharma. they've been intertwined and it's been, you know, since, you know, the sugar industry, you know, falsifying claims and blaming fat for heart disease back in the fifties with scientists getting paid off, that it's been, you know, it's part of it. Unfortunately, it's part of our human nature. You know, we've all, I think we're very trusting Of what we're being told to trust the science and here's the research and all that. But now I think people are realizing, wait a minute. this is all intertwined it's all feeding each other there's all this money involved with it follow the money and but that's at a micro scale we all have control over ourselves right so we don't have to follow along um you know we can we can forge our own path outside of that system and and it's very difficult at some level to to get through it but you can get through it i've got through it you know you can get through the you know being on the move and working and eating and still figuring it out you know unfortunately um that there are challenges and there are limitations and you have to skip some stuff and maybe you have to skip a meal every now and again but that won't kill you you can do it on your own but george i i agree it's an intertwined system um that just has been sprinkled with corruption over years that you know has become normalized Okay, let me put this one out here too for you, Chris. You know, as someone who has loved ones that have gone through the medical system, and I wanted to say very clearly, there are incredible people, doctors, nurses, there are incredible people in the medical system that genuinely care about providing the best possible care for everyone out there. And I don't wanna take away from the medical professionals. I'm so grateful for so many of them. However, if you go into a care home or you go into this meeting with a doctor or someone who is an expert and you see someone you love in cognitive decline, how do you as an individual come with the correct information there how do you just not acquiesce to the authority figure that's a tough thing to do when someone you love is going through this thing hey they have alzheimer's they need this drug look at these tests this is the best thing for them like how do you as an individual prepare yourself for that conversation if you really want to do the right thing how did you do it chris uh yeah it's it's just you have to really take matters into your own hands whether they have alzheimer's or it's even just yourself yes you know and yes there's a lot of doctors out there wanting to do the best thing for you there's limitations on the economy of being able to do that as a doctor from all the way from their med school being financed by big pharma and what they've been taught. So it's not necessarily their fault or that they're not doing what they think is best. I generally think they think they're doing what they believe is best for you. But you got to really, really look into every interaction and make sure and just do your homework and dig in and make sure that's the only way. And I'll give you an example from myself and part of the mistakes I made from my health and wellness journey. And um i i was in a lot of ketosis i was i was in keto for a long time um uh and but i didn't really realize at the time that it would deplete the minerals out of your body like it does um and it and i believe that was leading to uh me having some afib problems so arterial fibrillation of the heart irregular heartbeats racing real quick And I had a really, really bad one that was up and wouldn't go away. I couldn't get it to calm down for a while. So I went to a cardiologist and I go in and explain to him what was going on. He's like, oh, no problem. We're just going to go do an ablation. I'll schedule it for you. We'll have it done here in the next few weeks. And I was like, well, wait. Is that the only thing? Is heart surgery the only option on the table here for me? And he's like, yeah, it's no big deal. We'll just go in there. We'll snip it. It'll be done. And I was like, okay, I got to look into this more. And so as I research it, I'm looking at it and I was like, oh, that can be caused by magnesium deficiency. And I was already supplementing with magnesium at the time, but I wasn't supplementing enough to make up for the fact that I was in deep ketosis a lot of the time. So I just upped the magnesium and then stopped, never, didn't happen again. as long as i kept supplementing magnesium my wife's uncle also was getting ready to go through having ablation for afib and i said hey why don't you before you go in just supplement with magnesium and see if that helps it and he did and it stopped it and he didn't have the surgery so i mean it's just you really got to take matters into your own hand and really really educate yourself on your own health There's a chapter in the book called Know Thyself, which you really need to know some genetics. You need to know your biomarkers and you just need to understand it. We're all different. Each one of us is different. And one thing that drives me crazy, you see a lot on social media, it's just blanket statements from people. health influencers, but this will fix this. Just do this. And it's just not the case. Come on, Chris. It's just broccoli. I mean, it's just, I mean, no, it's keto. No, what you need to do is have healthy fat. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. You got to learn yourself and you got to tweak it. It's all peptides. Peptides fix everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Whatever's hot right now. So you got to take it into your own control. For other people, for your loved ones that have Alzheimer's, really do it. But for yourself, most importantly, know yourself. Know what makes you you from a health standpoint. And you'll be able to kind of push and pull and tweak things and turn the dials and get it working for you. it sounds like one of the best things to do is have a community of people that have been through it. And it sounds like maybe you have that with like first person or you got this book coming up, but maybe it sounds like that you have a community out there of people, Chris, that you have spoken to or that maybe people can tap into. Yeah, it's, you know, well, you know, the health and wellness community is definitely growing and there is getting to be more and more awareness of that, particularly where you might live might have more access to that. I live remotely, so not so much immediately here, but I'm always surprised when I talk to people, even here in Oklahoma, how top of mind it is to them and how knowledgeable they are. with the one good thing, the bad thing of social media on, you know, being numerous and people telling you one size fits all. The good thing is it's really brought awareness to it. And there's starting to be a lot more knowledge and just everyday common people about what we're consuming and concerns about what we're consuming from visual consumption to nutrition consumption and spiritual consumption, everything. Yeah. You know, I think it'd be interesting if you can grab that image of the mother daughter. This just came up to me. So my folks are in there. mid eighties, mid to late eighties, Chris. So, you know, they're going through a few health challenges. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the senior living industry around twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. So I kind of had an early preview of what was coming. And I'm just kind of wondering from your perspective, your lived experience, really, as you started to notice some of those symptoms with your dad and obviously having the grandfather's experience, like you were you're getting more and more educated as you went through time. Right. And How, I don't even like to think about this. How do you have that conversation with a loved one when they're already starting to slip or maybe people weren't catching the symptoms early enough about their choices, right? Like if you're past the point of maybe changing or maybe you're never past that point, you can start eating healthy, you know, at eighty seven and still have an impact or exercising for sure you can, right? You can always start exercising. It's going to make a difference no matter what. But just like. How do you prepare yourself for, how do you talk to your siblings or the rest of your family? And how do you talk to the loved one? How do you go there? Yeah, it's tough. You know, we when when dad first started going through it, it was like a full on attack. It was like my youngest brother was at that time was like, OK, we got to get MCT all that. You got to do this. You got to do this. And I was, you know, at the time going, you know, it's not going to work unless he wants to. And I think that's what we have to accept. We want it for them. Let's do it. Let's get going. But if the motivation on their end isn't there, and a lot of times it goes back to the habits and such, they're long and grain, they get this momentum built. And if they don't have the motivation to change that, they're not going to and you're not going to make them do it. And that's if you approach it from that reality of saying, hey, here's some things that can help. I'd love to jump in there with you. We could do these things together. I think that that helps. But forcing it down the throes of someone who's already lived their life I don't think it's very realistic thinking. It's just going to have to, at some level, they maybe accept their fate. You accept it as well. And, you know, enjoy those times the best you can. Give them the guidance, the knowledge that you know. But, you know, they're eighty years old. They got to decide that on their own. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. Maybe we can shift gears. And I don't know, George, you get any questions from? I got a bunch of stuff stacking up over here. Let me let me let me ask one more and maybe bring up the neuroplasticity and then we'll go to to the folks out there. Okay. So Back to the psychedelics and plant medicine or other states of altered states of consciousness. And just the whole idea of the value, because I think much like peptides, neuroplasticians are becoming the hot topic, right? They're going to be a panacea for everything. And, you know, you know your way around some of the neurology and the brain science and brain health. Can you just speak a little bit to the value or importance of neuroplasticity and then maybe just a few ways to increase it as folks age? And obviously one of them you've already talked about, which is reduce the neurotoxins that you were putting in your brain in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Neuroplasticity and neuroplasticity. that neurogenesis and all of that is great because that's what they didn't think would exist, that we could actually make new connections, build those connections stronger. And a lot of that that we can do, we were talking about psychedelics and the first person group, we were looking at non psychedelic mushrooms like lion's mane mushroom, which helps increase BDNF. Psilocybin mushrooms do as well. BDNF is brain-derived nootropic factor, and it will actually spur neuroplasticity and help strengthen those connections, help build new connections and repair the ones that are there. which is what you want. You want, you want, and then you want to continue to build those connections through repeating positive behaviors. You know, you can strengthen those connections. It's like your brain can have, you know, a paths build in that get ruts in them and you get stuck in that thing and neuroplasticity and a lot of times psychedelics help you get out of those and create new pathways and new ways to think about those things. And for people out there that maybe don't have experience in that world, it doesn't have to be scary. You don't have to you know you know see uh creatures and and talk to god to get the benefit of psychedelics and neuroplasticity that's where doing microdoses can i think can really help people or even smaller than doses you know above a microdose but still get this effect of you're thinking of things a little bit differently and you can tell that those uh new pathways are opening up But and that's I think that's what's exciting about for me, about the whole the brain and brain health is that you can get stronger. That's what I was talking about. You can improve if you take the right steps. And that's through neuroplasticity and in fueling your brain properly and trying not to poison it. But the seven pillars are essentially built around. neuroplasticity that's what it's driving towards strengthening your brain and this kind of this is how you do it it's through lifestyle it can be through plant medicine and stuff like that and can definitely be a part of that lifestyle i don't address that in the book i didn't do that on purpose as just to kind of leave it be more generalized but it's something i strongly believe in You know, it brings up an interesting point for me. I think all of us have probably worked around addiction on some level. And when I look at some of the ibogaine clinics that I've been working with, they're working in addiction. You have that same sort of neuroplasticity problem. You have these old habits, these old loops that become the functional pathway of the brain. And this is an opinion here, and I'm curious to get your guys' thoughts on it. Do you think that maybe... like some of these ibogaine clinics or some of these psychedelic centers that are already working with addiction could be working with aging too, because it seems like there's a lot of similarities in the problem right there. Like the brain is malfunctioning. People are in hardcore addiction. Their brain is also atrophying. Do you think that maybe we could be seeing some of these centers in the future where people are going for addiction, only they're going for aging, and they're trying some of the same techniques, be it ibogaine or LSD or five MEO? What are you guys' thoughts on that? Well, I think in a way they already are, right? People are doing psychedelic retreats to help improve their life, not necessarily on addiction purposes. And those are the people going to do. A lot of times they're just understand life better or themselves better. And I think that that's part of what's going on here. I think, you know, the danger of it, the only danger of it is people might see that that is the only way to do it. You know, when really the application of What you learn is the true benefit that repetitive behavior, rather than just, you know, getting to see it every once in a while, can you incorporate that kind of life into your everyday life? yeah it makes it makes a ton of sense i'm hopeful i had a friend it's anecdotal but my friend adam tapp's father was pretty deep in dementia and he went on a regimen of five meodmt and i'll point everybody to adam tapp just google his name and check him out the guy's an incredible human being he's got a real life story of his father pretty deep in dementia and they start on this process of five meodmt and over the course of a month his dad goes from forgetting who the people in his family are to Adam tap coming home one day and his dad playing guitar that he hadn't picked up in a year. And he's like, dad, what are you doing? And he goes, you know, I realized that I haven't played guitar and, Man, I haven't talked to you in a long time, Adam. I just felt like getting back into the rhythm. Adam, it's a beautiful story. He starts crying and stuff. But that's an anecdotal story of these particular psychedelics really having an effect. And if we could get more of that sort of research out there, I think it would provide avenues for people who might feel stuck out there. So I just wanted to kind of put that out there. Yeah, I hadn't seen that. I will definitely look at that. That's amazing. Oh, yeah. I had a similar experience with my father and psilocybin, not to that extent, but it did give him some quality of life back at the end of his life. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Towards the end of his life, he was to the point he was getting – he was just – you know, pretty much just sitting there, not doing anything. You know, he was not interacting and nothing along those lines. And my brother, they had been given him. He went through a stage of where he had been agitated and hard to deal with and he was still a pretty big dude and so um and we were all kind of taking turns helping take care of him my brother when he was there he's like i'm going to give him some some cannabis edibles to try to calm him down a little bit And that didn't work very well for him. I was on the phone one time with him and I could hear dad going, I can't see in the background. I was like, Joe, maybe you need to cut the edibles down a little bit. That may not be best for him. But then, you know, when it was really towards the end stage, which is, you know, let's just see if any psychedelic mushrooms could actually be a benefit here. and he was really pretty non-communicative at that point and after taking some in his coffee he got up and went in the kitchen gave my mom a hug and said thank you for taking care of me right which was amazing because he hadn't said anything like that in years and then you know he would you know, then be a little more interacting and laugh and kind of tells crazy stories and stuff like that. So it was a good thing for the end of life care for him, for sure. Thank you for sharing that. That's a, that's a, that's a beautiful one. Go ahead, Christian, you got something? Yeah, just it goes back to that, that article that I wrote, by the way, I wrote it AI was not available in like it is today. So research and written by with some support from an editor. And there's a piece, let me see if I can find it real quick about there's a TED talk and a book. atul gawande's ted talk on being mortal and it speaks to your point that you brought up george about your grandma and like what do we do in western society to extend life past the point of quality and i'm not even getting into you know uh life ending diseases or just just aging, just aging, quote unquote, normally a healthy individual getting older. And as we get older and older, how much money spent by the health care system, how much money is made by the health care system and who's paying the price? And I'm not talking about the financial price. um and so i'm like i say i'm i don't think this is the the forum or the talk about you know death with dignity but if we're just talking about at some point uh all the things are happening to me you know i'm losing control of my um biological systems you know but if i'm happy in a wheelchair eating pudding watching the nfl monday night football then leave me alone like i'm good like just let's keep going but you know other people uh on life support systems or not necessarily checked out mentally but they've they've stopped showing up for life because they've been put in this box or bubble and they're not having engagement with other humans they're not having connection like when somebody is ready to go, let them go with peace and grace. And I think I have several friends that are death doulas involved in hospice care and transitions. And as I get older and I'm trying to be more and more aware of my own mortality and not fear it, right? Fear death, make friends with it. I wanna host some death cafes. I wanna have honest conversations with friends about end of life and how to prepare for that and how to leave gracefully, which gets into how do your parents feel about that conversation? Most of the folks that I know of that generation that I've spoken to are deathly afraid, no pun intended, of death and dying. It's not a topic you bring up around the dinner table, sex, politics, drugs, and death. Let's not bring that up during Thanksgiving. But it's coming for all of us, unless somebody knows how to ascend. we gotta be prepared for it. So I just think there's a lot of knowledge and learning. I'll bring that Ted talk up in that book. And I'm curious about both of you, like with your grandma's experience, or even thinking about other family members, George, and then what you've been through, how do you prepare for the end of life in a way that's healthy and thoughtful and loving? Yeah. I think that the problem is that we have this like unwritten or written rule whatever you want however you want to say it that it's just it's taboo right to to humanely end a life is with few exceptions that are allowing it um it's just like you can't even talk about it like you said you can't even discuss it even as they sit there and suffer and curl up in a ball and is unbelievable suffering we can't as a society decide that it's okay to go ahead and put an end to that suffering we can for a pet but we can't for another human and i don't know for sure if that's because of the religious undertones of you know of some some sort of retribution that you'll face if you participate in that. But it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy that people have to suffer until their last breath when there's no hope. And it's really unfortunate that as a society, we can't even really have the conversation. But maybe that's going to change with our generation. I hope so. We're doing ourselves generation, right? So we'll handle that ourselves, too. yeah it's man you know that there's a weird relationship between courage and surrender you know because when i think about death you know i like to think that i would be courageous enough to not put my family through things When you see it up close and you get close to it, it's like, you know what it is? It's like, you ever been held underwater like long enough or like you can't breathe. You start panicking. Like I didn't go to summer camp with you. What are you talking about? Jesus. Okay. There's a great story about, I forgot where I heard it from, about this person that wants to understand what it takes to succeed. And he tells this story about, he goes out with his two mentors and he's finally going to learn the secret of what it means to become the best version of yourself and succeed. And these two guys take, they meet him at the ocean, they take him way out in the ocean and they're like, are you ready? And he's like, yeah. and they just grab him and they hold him underwater until he can't breathe he starts panicking and panicking and he's like fighting and fighting and they're just holding and pushing him underwater as long as he can and like they feel him about to pass out and then they pull him up and they're like there you go you're welcome like that's what it takes and i think that that is what it takes when we come to the edge of death is like you you think like i've done a lot of psychedelics and i've really come to places where i thought like i'm gonna die like i've taken too much oh no i've taken too much i'm gonna die my heart is racing oh my God, what is going on here? And I equate that with watching my wife sit in a hospital, holding my son's dead body. I've seen that close a couple times. And it is something to be feared. We can sit here and say, oh, it's easy on this. We're being born. Yeah, but you don't know. And when you come close to it, even the older people in my life, they want no part of dying. And it's, it's, it's me, that fear of not knowing what happens. And it's easy to say like, Oh, I'm going to go gracefully. I'm going to, I'm going to have the dignity. I'm not going to put my family through it, but what happens when you get there? I don't think, you know, until your back is against the wall, what you're going to do. And so I agree with you. And it's a yes. And for me, because you don't know what you're going to do and you might leave gracefully. You might have a relationship. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. I think you get to choose which way you go. And that's the crime of extending somebody's life beyond their wishes and desires. And especially when you start getting into quality of life, right? Like if quality of life is playing bridge or sitting there and watching sitcoms with a bunch of other old folks in the senior living place, rock on. Somebody else's definition is like, I want to be able to chop wood and go hunt some elk. And when I can't take the tree down anymore or start a fire in my fireplace, I'm done. It's just different choices. Ram Dass does a lot of work around death and dying and transitions. If you haven't seen any of his stuff, there's a great documentary on Netflix. People can tap into hospice resources and networks. Death doulas are becoming a thing. And I think it's in the West. I think it's beautiful because what do we hide from kids in polite society is birth. And before that, we hide sex. So conception doesn't happen. And then certainly you don't want to hear about babies being made. are born and then we hide death. Like the two major capstones of our existence, we put behind a curtain and it's nuts. So having open conversations, having dialogue, not being afraid of a conversation that leads to awareness, I think can lead to informed choices. What about celebrating it? Absolutely. I've written my own obituary. I wrote it like seven years ago. My mom did not want to hear about that. My wife was a little distraught. But I'm like, I don't want somebody else to write my story. I want to write my story. And I was actually writing it aspirationally, like at the age that I was. I was like, forty seven or forty five. Like, what do I want my obit to say? I don't want to say I was hammered every Sunday watching football and I died of early onset dementia. That would suck. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think too, especially where you are in Mexico, like you have the Dia de Muerte and over here we have you know, you palliative, like the root word of palliative is to hide. Like pal means to hide, like you're hiding these people in these rooms. And for those of us who have been to those care centers, it's, it's, it's scary going in there. There's people moaning and crying and like running around in their underwear and like just crazy stuff. You're like, Oh my gosh, what is this? But if you go to Dia de Muerte and people are at the, they're at the, at the, at the graveyard with like a picnic. They're going there on regular days, having a picnic, drinking, having a little bit of gin with their family. Like they're celebrating the times. And in the Western world, we don't do that. And I think psychedelics can be a huge catalyst for that. Like what if we had these going out parties? What if you were like, I'm on my last one. Hey, everybody come on over. We're going to have this last party, and then I'm going out. This is going to be the send-off party. I don't want people crying. I want people partying. Let's do this thing together. That's a monumental shift that can happen if we have the courage to embrace death in a way that is a life living. You know what? One thing I noticed closer to death is that all the bullshit kind of falls away. You can read the biographies of people that are dying, and no one's tapping on the gurney. saying, I wish I would have worked harder. No one's tapping on the gurney saying, I wish I would have put in more overtime. But in the biographies, people are saying, I wish I would have been a better father. I wish I would have been a better husband. I wish I would have taken that vacation. I wish I would have done that one thing with my wife. I never did. I wish I would have jumped off that rock. And so I think getting closer to death allows you to actually live a life worth living. And if we have those conversations, maybe our ideas about death will change. Maybe we can learn a lot from our neighbors to the South and begin to celebrate it. What are you guys' thoughts? I would love to hear what Chris's reflections are, especially because I think there's what do you want to achieve before death or graceful transition? But I would just back it up a few decades. How do you want to live before if you're going to have early onset dementia or Alzheimer's? Like if that's coming, you have the biomarkers, environmental factors, you know, one too many fraternity parties and, you know, your dice set. what should you be thinking about now to prepare for that? Or how do you enter that phase of your life with awareness, I guess? Yeah, I definitely, I love the idea. I love your idea, George, there. Let's, and we, I've talked about that with friends, like, go out, go out with a bang, you know, somehow. And, you know, is there a flip the script on the funeral and the obit reading and all of that stuff that goes on? And you're right, there needs to be. Maybe that's something that we'll catch on. But I think, you know, having the same way you wrote your you know aspirational obituary i think that that's a great way to think about it and george you touched on that you know let's go out with a bang from this point on right if you haven't been doing it or if you do it already i kind of feel like um i've always kind of lived that way anyway um but like let's just let's let's think about it from that end point and when you think about life you know if i saw my father-in-law pass away recently and my dad and you know just you know looking back with the you know i think for my dad with the exception of you know getting alzheimer's and having to go through ten years of that that he would have liked to have back he lived a really full enjoyable life and did you know did things and raised his kids and had a had a good time along the way and and was a good person and i think you know if you think about that last day and you live like what are you going to do today that it's going to be At the same time. Respecting that. You hope that it's. Thirty. Forty years in the future. Realizing that you don't know. And. Doing everything you can. To have that full. In celebration. No matter when it comes. That's. I think that's. A great way to approach life. That's beautiful. Look at there. Yeah. And you know. Maybe. Maybe in life. We get a chance to. To simulate death. You know. Like. Maybe quit that job you don't love. Maybe get rid of that relationship you're not being part of. Like maybe you get a chance your whole life to experience death if you have the courage to do it. Well, I think I wasn't able to make it to Santa Barbara. I was already down here in Mexico. But part of the theme here was like small deaths, like jobs and relationships and big deaths, right? Like there's – and, you know – psychology, one on one, whatever the seven major things that happen. Right. But with death, right, we've got denial and agreement like the stages of. So I think we have lots of opportunities to practice death and dying or loss might be another way to put it. And how we learn to navigate that, so it's it's not like not a motto and it's not a cliche but i i've tried to share with my kids and ad nauseum at the dinner table and when they're falling asleep at night and on road trips we have this little thing called gref so it's g r e p h and so g's for gratitude r's for resilience e's for empathy and p's for patience so it used to be grip then my my son's like what about humor dad you got to have humor so with with those those characteristics or traits or behaviors you can get through anything and including loss and death right um and so we all have choices to make how we show up for life when it's good sometimes is pretty chill, tranquilo. How we show up for life when it's hard, including losing loved ones or people dying is where we really, I think, earn our medal, right? Like we show who we are when things are difficult. Yeah, for sure. Sure. Yeah. Let me jump in. We've got some people stacking up over here. Let's go with Ava from Brooklyn says, Chris, if memory is the architecture of identity, then when we alter that structure through chemistry or technology, are we healing the self or building a new species of consciousness? Thanks, Ava. That's a pretty deep one. That is great. Memory is the architect of identity. Is that what she said? Yes. Yep. um memory is the perception of identity maybe not the architect of identity and i think your identity lives somewhere in between you know the past that you are remembering and the future that you are imagining and the actions that you take today that's to me that's your identity um so uh a lot of times um i think we can also lie to ourselves right a lot particularly about the past and sometimes we're okay with that sometimes we're okay with that lying but i think if we we're more honest with ourselves to realize that your past influenced who you are today, but is not the foundation architecture of who you are. You get to choose that based on your own consciousness right now. Yeah, that's beautiful said. Rico, coming from San Francisco right down the way from me, he says, when we optimize the brain for performance, do we risk sterilizing the chaos that gives birth to creativity? Oh, my experience has been it's the opposite of that. But I... I'm naturally a very right brain person in creative and thought and visual and thought already. So it amplifies that for me tremendously to the point that I have to try to put some guardrails on how many of these ideas I want to pursue. So I think quite the opposite. I think a strong brain, a healthy brain, healthy Neurochemistry fuels creativity, and that's what drives creativity. And that's part of where it comes from. Yeah, I like that. There's a lot of, uh, Ian McGilchrist has a new book out called the matter with things. And what he talks about is like, we're living in a society of left brain people, this analytical scalpel that just like digs into like, just so many just silly questions about who cares? Like, what about the creative side? What about the humorous side? What about the big picture side? So I, I, I'm hopeful that we're, we're moving into a more right brained world moving there lena lena coming all the way from berlin ladies and gentlemen thank you lena so much for being here she says functional mushrooms are ancient teachers do you think we've reduced their wisdom to biohacks are we finally listening to are we finally listening in a new dialect of science I mean, there is some talk about that, like, you know, there's some talk about, OK, here we have these this ancient wisdom and people are using it to get get more work done. Right. Like maybe we should maybe we should respect that a little more. And I think, you know, from my own perspective on utilizing like psilocybin mushrooms and microdosing um being very deliberate to use that in a way that um that fosters that creative thought um and so a lot of challenge of any business um and in my position as innovation uh with first person I'm trying to solve problems and come up with what can we do? How can we do this? What can we make better? Can we make this ingredient better? Is there a pathway better? And instead of just getting more work done, I'm fostering tapping into that ancient wisdom, other worldly connection, and hopefully be a conduit. I think, you know, a lot of psychedelics, you know, open up that conduit to a higher consciousness. And you can do that for things besides spiritual growth. You can utilize that for, you know, making, you know, It's one thing, you know, yeah, you're in the woods, everything's beautiful, this is great, and life is wonderful, but we also have to function as a society, so it can be utilized to improve that. at at our core function as well and a lot of that has to do um with um infrastructure and products that we have that make those better and you know getting away from uh you know pre-packaged garbage and turning things into stuff that nourishes your body and some of that connection and some of that conduit flows through for those purposes besides just a connection with God or a connection of a higher feeling maybe it's also functional like we need to apply those things to our everyday lives um and not just uh get out of the thought that maybe it's only can be used for spirituality it can be used for improving our existence here on our Yeah. Christian, what are your thoughts on that, on the idea of using functional mushrooms and they're really, you know, teachers or biohackers or both? Yeah, it's, it's funny. There's schisms and tribes within tribes and, you know, you get into some of this dogma and I'm, I'm paraphrasing this. I don't want to take credit for it. And it's, you know, so much of life is put into these polarities like left and right and, you know, conservative and liberal and, My experience and what I've seen living abroad and in the States and this and that is like life is more like a clock, like there's twelve o'clock and six o'clock and three and nine. All the dogmatic folks, the people that like my way or the highway, radical right, radical left, extreme Muslim, extreme Hindu, extreme Jew, go down the list, extreme hippies. I know hippies that you got to go their way with the dreadlocks and actually not washing or whatever. and if you're dogmatic you see the world through a very specific tight aperture i think most human beings want to live somewhere between like three and nine and like twelve o'clock it's a big like that's where the bulk of society lives like do i have a roof over my head do i feel safe and secure do i have food for my family and all these things You start getting into what are the best and highest uses of mushrooms or adaptogens and is, you know, are we doing things to our psyche and our mind or our bodies that weren't meant to be done? Because, you know, Chris and his team have gone to build this amazing production facility. They're producing CGMP level quality products. They're putting them in capsules. They're giving dosage instructions and are getting them to mom and dad to make a difference. And there's some people would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If they're not out foraging, then that's not right. You're not supposed to eat mushrooms from a capsule. But to me, it's DIY, right? It's choose your own adventure. If you feel comfortable with Western medicine and that health care system and you want to go down that path, go for it. if you want to go forage mushrooms in the wild and make sure you're not eating toxic ones and that works for you good but i i think it's kind of a hybrid like people need to make choices i love a lot of what you said chris about being informed and your own patient advocate and taking control of your health and wellness and not leaving it up to the experts because there are experts and they provide a ton of value but ultimately we have to live with our health choices and adaptogens and, uh, you know, medicinal mushrooms and psychedelic mushrooms, uh, are to be used wisely and with informed consent and understanding. Yeah, that's well said. Chris, can you talk about like, do you, do you have a certain set of capsules for your parents or what, what, what do you have as far as functional mushrooms or what are you doing on that aspect of business? Well, part of what we do at First Person is we want to innovate at the ingredient level. So we set our sights on functional mushrooms, lion's mane mushroom, big fan of lion's mane, been consuming lion's mane for years, knew that it was having a benefit. Fact on me and just seeing if we could improve the technology around extraction, which we set out to do, and we innovated our own extraction technology. without any chemicals, using several steps, including ultrasonication to break down the cell wall, the chitin of the mushroom, and release those compounds of interest so that they are more bioavailable to us. And then have been experimenting through a process called co-crystallization, where we take the terastilbene which is an antioxidant similar to resveratrol only is out of blueberries and you combine it with the lion's mane mushroom to increase its bioavailability through solubility and it also increases the effects of lion's mane and we haven't done research because we haven't had the capital to invest in clinical trials this is something that we definitely would like to do but there's a noticeable effect with our crystallized lion's mane with terra still being that you feel its effects within minutes you can feel your brain light up within minutes um and we're really hopeful that we've created something that is going to really be a game changer in in the world and people that are suffering mild cognitive impairment and early also alzheimer's may be able to benefit from like i said we're still a ways away from being able to prove some of this stuff out but from just an experiential uh it's it's really amazing What does it feel like when you're, you know, I've had, I've taken some supplements before and I can feel like I'm on. I feel as if my mental clarity, my ability to recall words or think clearly, like that's what I think of when I feel like my brain lighting up. But how would you say it feels when your brain is lighting up? Yeah, this is a lot of the stuff in the nootropic world out there. Really dive deep into it. A lot of it is relying on caffeine as a stimulant. If you really dive into the ingredient list, I've been in the business long enough, I know ingredients really well. And that's fine, but I think we're pretty caffeinated already. And caffeine is great, but it's not... going to do the same thing as, you know, if we could do out of mushrooms, in particular, the lion's mane mushroom and the BDNF in the brain, it feels like you really, your brain turns on a lot. And it's not just, oh, I kind of feel better. Lion's mane mushroom is, if you take it, if you get some good quality fruiting body or fruiting body extracts, it will, over time, you will feel like your brain is operating better. And you really notice it, I think, when you stop taking it and you go, oh, wait a minute, that was working. It's not something that you... put in your coffee and you go, oh man, that was great. It's kind of like I take it every day and my brain is working better and I feel like it's working better. The product that we've created, you feel it right away. You feel your eyes open up, you feel your brain more in tune you feel everything on and and it is we really think through that solubility possibly that is you know it's getting to the brain crossing the blood brain barrier more efficiently something is happening um we look forward to being able to kind of prove that stuff out but right now you can try it prove it out and you can feel it right away yeah Yeah, I think so too. Who else do we got coming? Noah. What's up, Noah? Thank you for being here today. I hope your day is cool and beautiful. He says, if the brain is a living network, could consciousness be a distributed phenomenon? Something we tune into rather than possess? I, I, one hundred percent believe that with Noah. No, I think you're right on. We're tuning in. It's coming to us, not necessarily, or through us, not necessarily from us. It's grabbing the frequencies. And I think you can use that to your advantage by becoming more aware of that. And I think that's a lot of the benefits of meditation and mindfulness is tuning that frequency and receiving that conduit. And, you know, people in the psychedelics that have experienced that conduit open up and receive some of that, some of those messages and thoughts that you know for a fact didn't come from you or came to you. But I think that's the normal existence for sure. Yeah, I love it. Well, gentlemen, this has been absolutely amazing. I'm so grateful to get to hang out with all of you. Let me see if I have anything else in here from people coming through. Okay. What do we got? Anders over here after this. Okay. We've been through all of these ones. Let me just kick it back to both of you guys though real fast as we're kind of landing the plane right here. Chris, if people were listening today and they were like, man, I want to check out the book or I want to see these supplements or I want to contact you myself, where can people find you? What do you got coming up and what are you excited about? Yeah, the book is on Amazon. BrainClick.co is a website. You could find it there as well. If you want to reach out to me there, you can link in and reach out. I'd love to talk to anybody about anything they have, any concerns they have. I'm really excited about... the possibility of just getting it out there and getting people to start. You know, you it's it's it it seems daunting. And you look at the seven pillars and you're like, oh, my God, that's changing my whole life. And really it is, but it's not. It's small adjustments along the way. And just take your time. You know, I've been at it for uh fourteen years now of this kind of making this change and it didn't happen all at once it was steps along the way you know i didn't even tackle the alcohol component until three years ago. So you don't have to jump in right now, but if you can just start making the big steps, it'll go a long way. And once you start feeling the improvements in your brain, it's motivating to kind of keep going. It's a lot better way of existing. Yeah, it's well said. BrainClick.co. Christian, any closing thoughts? Oh, you're muted. Boop. Memory slipping a little. Sorry. Uh, I'm, you know, I'm just glad I know you, Chris, like I just, the work that you're doing and how you and your brother are showing up in service of others. And without having this conversation, without reading your book, I would probably be making different choices in the next few years that would have ramifications. So my future self thanks you. Right. Um, and, uh, just think we hit on so many different things that i need to process the last two hours but you know being prepared to transition end of life hospice care mental health plasticity movement like i'm there was a reason i asked you for which one of the seven right like i'm already doing some but i'm going to do more i'm going to focus on movement and mobility and i'll get those benefits and we'll see if we get to the mescal and cervices but you know Awesome. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you're within the sound of my voice, I hope you have a beautiful day. Go down to the show notes. Check out Chris at brainclick.com. Thanks for hanging out with us. Gentlemen, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of my voice, I hope you have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha.