Dave (00:01.486)
Andres, welcome to the show.
AP (00:04.468)
It’s an honor to be here, man. Thank you for having me.
Dave (00:07.406)
Yeah, you bet. Really grateful to have you on the show, Andres. I know the audience is really going to enjoy this one. Most of our audience are high performers. We’re all looking for an edge, not only in wealth, but in relationships and our health and really those things that matter. And we talk a lot about investing in yourself as your greatest asset.
And I know I’ve always achieved a 10X return or even 100X return when I invest in my health, my relationships, and my family, all of those things that are really important. So I think this is going to be a great episode and you have so much knowledge to really share on this topic of high performance health, on physiology, that I think a lot of people don’t really understand.
And it all starts with that education first, right? So once you have a good foundation for it, you can really start to optimize and also uncover any blind spots that you might have and become healthier and live to your really true potential. So for guests who haven’t heard of you before, tell us a little bit about your background. I know you have a unique kind of story growing up and everything, which I think would be great to share.
AP (01:31.668)
Yeah, absolutely. So how far back would you like me to go? I’ll tell you what.
Dave (01:38.062)
Well, you know, yeah, I think your story of how you dealt with ADD, I think is empowering and really how you even got into this field, right, of medicine, sports, physiology.
AP (01:55.476)
For sure. Yeah, I think a lot of people when they come across my content nowadays, when they come across me, you know, generally you’d see a healthy, ambitious, driven guy, right? And I’m so happy that I get to represent health physically and mentally and, you know, through my spirit every single day. But the truth is that that’s something that I didn’t have for a pretty long time. And…
The reason being is I was diagnosed with ADD from a very young age when I was about eight years old. I had just moved from Venezuela where I was raised. My parents are from there. And I didn’t speak very good English. I was just kind of getting acclimated to this new environment and I wasn’t focusing very well in school. So my parents, you know, they’re medical doctors and they did their research and they figured out the best way to help me get by in school. And, you know, obviously as a young person,
how you do in school, it’s very closely tied to your self -esteem. And so they knew that this was important for me, right, to do well in school. And so God bless them, they were there to help. And the time that’s the best tool and resource that we had was taking amphetamines such as Adderall, Vyvan, et cetera. And so from a very young age, I started taking that and I didn’t know what it was at first. I just thought it was like my daily vitamins, at least that’s what my parents told me. And that was great. I certainly…
Paid a little more attention in class. I got my homework done. I would study for exams I was a little more proactive whereas typically the only thing that I was really good at and that brought meaningful reward to me was fishing and video games Anyway as the years went by the tolerance for these amphetamines start to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and the side effects start to get worse and worse and worse and worse and I didn’t realize this at the time, but I had become
at one point, eventually, totally physically and physiologically dependent on the medication to get by. So I didn’t notice how bad these side effects were until I got to the end of the week because I wouldn’t take it on weekends or on summer breaks or anytime we had a vacation, I wouldn’t take it. And I start to feel like crap, you know, progressively more like crap during those small breaks because of the dependency, dependency factor. And that’s when I start to get a little worried.
AP (04:13.012)
But I didn’t really feel too inclined to do anything different. I just thought this is me, this is my life, this is just what I have to deal with every day to get by in school and have a good career and have a good life. It wasn’t until I was in my, like the second half of high school, so at this point I’d been taking the medication for almost 10 years. And my girlfriend at the time, she and her family were very worried.
about my physical well -being. Like I was skeletal. Like I’m about five foot nine. I was about the same height back then. Right now I weigh about 170 pounds. Imagine me right now minus 55 pounds. That, you know, I was skin and bone. I was just nothing. And at the time, again, this was also normal to me. I went to school in Miami. It’s hot here. I would show up to class every single day wearing a long sleeve shirt because I was so, I became so, like,
so self -conscious and so embarrassed by my physical health. You know, with amphetamines, it’s like cocaine, right? You lose your appetite, you lose your sleep. I developed a stutter, my brain was like overactive, it was on sympathetic overdrive. And so I was too anxious to really connect with anybody. And my escape became video games and fishing compulsively. Like I was just, I totally singled myself out and I just became very, very lonely.
And it was super shitty. I honestly can’t tell you how I managed to get a girlfriend back then. Like it just, I honestly couldn’t tell you how, but anyway, her influence was very important at the time. And then at one point, my brother also noticed that I was just going on a total decline of my health. And again, it was just so normal to me. It wasn’t until I had the chance to take a summer scholars program. So like a summertime,
program at the University of Miami where I then went to school about neuroscience. It wasn’t until I took that program and I learned about the concept of neuroplasticity that finally for the first time in my life, I felt like I could change and upgrade what I thought was a completely broken brain. And getting a little emotional here, but.
AP (06:36.884)
It wasn’t until I learned that and until I had the access to engage in habits that are objectively going to support neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, such as unlimited access to the gym, the dining hall, social life, which I had at the University of Miami because I was in a summer break and in this environment that is literally just designed for growth and neuroplasticity among other things, that I finally felt like I had the tools and the access that I needed.
to engage in a process that I didn’t even know existed. And so within a few short months of learning about neuroplasticity and engaging in habits that support neuroplasticity, just a few short months, man, for the first time in my life, I felt genuinely confident. I felt confident. I felt like I had agency, autonomy over my health, over my body. In just three months, I gained like, I think it was like 25 pounds of muscle, like straight muscle. It seemed like I had taken steroids and it’s because,
Again, the rapid rate of change took place not because I did anything too unique. It was more so because that’s how much of a deficit I was in nutritionally with sleep and just with the poor quality of life that I was living for the sake of just getting by in school. Now we can have a whole other conversation at some point about how broken I think the education system is. I think it’s really broken. I think for people like me with ADD, in a lot of ways it is a tremendous superpower.
But the modern schooling system just doesn’t really work for people like us. It wasn’t until I learned about this and I realized that this knowledge was so essential for me to feel good about myself that I actually was motivated to learn and I did well in school. So once I actually started, you know, as soon as this momentum started building up, I realized I had to like obsessively study this to fix myself. And so I actually ended up enrolling in the University of Miami to learn exactly the mechanisms that helped me feel so good about myself. I knew that inevitably at some point in time,
I’d be able to deliver that knowledge and information and empathy to a like -minded individual. I just knew that in my heart and soul. And so I went to school and studied exercise physiology, psychology, and nutrition. When I was in my undergrad program, I took on a few leadership positions that were very important for me to see the impact that I could have with this kind of knowledge and experience. So for example, I was a teacher’s assistant for a biology class and genetics class. I ended up…
AP (09:02.74)
being a manager for one of the internships, everything to do with lifestyle medicine, disease prevention, applied physiology. And then I started my masters while I was still in undergrad. I was like the only student in a class full of PhDs and I became a graduate assistant very early on. So all of a sudden, man, I went from being a terrible student that was just scraping by to like…
Excelling in every way imaginable on every dimension that I was meaningful to me as a student in college And I was able to accomplish things without Adderall by the way that I just never imagined I was capable of by the way When I was getting off of the medication, this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life When I was getting off the medication actually had the option to add time to my standardized exams like the ACT and the SAT But at this point with the difference that I’d seen in my life
I wanted to prove something to myself. I wanted to show myself what I was capable of. I didn’t want to end up on a career path that I knew deep down was kind of like set in place by something beyond me. I didn’t want to think to myself later on in my life, yeah, I did well in the ACT because I studied and I took it and I had extra time with the Adderall and this is how I made this career happen. It just didn’t feel genuine to me. So that was the first…
project that I embarked on to show myself what I was capable of and Believe it or not I did not ask for the extra time even though whole a bunch of people that I know who did not have a DD They printed like fake slips. They got extra time whatever the point is I needed to prove this to myself and I ended up placing in the 99th percentile that Sparked a massive wave of momentum and then I went to school to study all the stuff that had made me feel so good of myself Anyway fast forwarding to today Now when I believe deep down in my heart and my soul and my spirit
I believe that this physiological awareness that I gained, these insights, I believe that they’re human right. I don’t think you should have to battle yourself or pursue multiple scientific degrees to understand the basics of what makes you function optimally as a human being. And by the way, optimal health to me, optimal health simply means being able to show up, perform, and be the person that you wanna be.
AP (11:21.556)
It’s not about like, you have to be the top 1 % in this and that. Everybody has such a unique identity that they want to fulfill, such a unique role, such a unique career, unique goals that they want to accomplish. As long as we can orient you towards that through applied science and an efficient and effective process, you are engaging in some kind of system related to what I would consider optimal health.
It’s living more the way that you want to live, showing up the way that you want to, feeling and looking the way that you want. And so, yeah, my story is a testament to how valuable this information is. And I’d say that beyond, you know, the reputation that I’ve gained, the knowledge that I’ve learned, the mentors that I have, like, I think the most important thing that I can do with anyone that I help is to actually empathize and connect with them and have that passion and that craving in common and show them that it’s possible.
Dave (12:19.694)
Yeah, wow, such a powerful story and really one of pain to purpose, it sounds. And that hits home for me. I’ve got a son who’s been challenged with ADD through high school. And we really struggled to try to figure that out and provide him with the right resources. And I think this is very common in today’s day and age, right? And how you actually treat that and everything. But I love this optimal,
health, right, that you talk about, Andres, you know, and I think that’s what’s going to be really interesting for the listeners to really, you know, break down this concept of optimal health and maybe try to, you know, uncover maybe some of the things that you don’t understand, you know, blind spots, things like that. So, so why don’t we break that down a little bit of what that really means to you? Where do we start with that? Right. Because I think so many of us are just inundated with, I mean,
you know, whether it’s the gym, you know, this is how you have to work it. This is how many reps, this is, you know, that you’re dosing. How many days a week do you have to do this? And it’s so confusing. Food couldn’t be more confusing. Eat this, eat that, you know. So, you know, how would you kind of just, you know, explain it like hierarchically?
AP (13:39.348)
Yeah, that’s a great question, man. So I would say that…
Starting out, the most important thing that someone can do regarding their health in this modern world where we have unlimited access to content and information is to pay very particular attention to how their context fits into that content. Because the content is endless, but unless your context is built into it, then it’s honestly for the most part meaningless. If you want mediocre results,
just do what your favorite content creators say online or what your favorite research papers might say based on a population that they study. The most established research papers, the most efficacious studies are done on larger populations. So they might showcase a very positive, very strong, very meaningful result, but it’s the end of one study that can consider your unique context to deliver the absolute best, your optimal health,
and well -being and performance. And so what I’m trying to say here is for anyone that actually wants to accomplish that, your optimal health, it really is about working with someone or with a team of individuals that can look at both the subjective data, the way that you feel, the way that you perceive yourself, the person that you are, the person that you want to be, how you want to show up, et cetera, and your objective metrics, you know, your blood work, your genetics, your gut microbiome health, your…
HRV, resting heart rate, VO2 max, et cetera. There’s a lot of these biometrics that we know are objectively linked to higher and better health standards and that are objectively going to reward you with longevity and a better quality of life. And if we can work together to take your context and administer and incentivize very specific habits and systems based on that so that throughout a period of time, you can accomplish change at the level of your identity.
AP (15:41.396)
to enable that lifestyle and maintain it sustainably, continue to improve on your own, especially when you have the interoception, the deep bodily awareness that you need to know what your body needs to function optimally. That to me, that is optimal health. And it’s something that a lot of people online promise, a lot of people that we follow, right, they promise, hey, you follow me, you’re gonna get this, you follow me, you do this, you’re gonna get that result. It’s just not that simple.
It’s really not that simple. It’s such an intimate process if you really want to be an outlier and you want to accomplish something beyond anything that anyone’s ever seen.
Dave (16:19.982)
Yeah, I really love that. Just creating context, tying that to context. And we talk a lot around wealth. It’s kind of the same thing. You always see someone with bigger net worth than you, more income, more toys, things like that. But if you really understand it, it’s not about that. It’s actually about creating your own chessboard.
and playing your game that wins for you. Because you’ll, like my friend Nick Peterson always says, you’ll never win somebody else’s race, right? If you’re playing that, right? So I think that’s a really powerful message there is having context to what it is that’s really relevant to you. Do you have, like if you again look at this concept really of optimal health and really kind of break that down, like I know Peter Attia has like the, you know,
AP (16:53.108)
Yeah, exactly.
Dave (17:13.216)
for pillars to health, you know, he’s got cardiovascular structure or things like that. Do you have some type of framework that you operate with?
AP (17:21.684)
For sure. Yeah, I do. That’s a great question. So I’ve got four pillars just to keep things pretty simple and straightforward. Sleep and recovery, nutrition, movement, and mind. And if we can go into each of these pillars, actually, there’s a specific order to those. Whenever I work with somebody to help them accomplish their optimal health, I start typically 99 .9 % of the time with sleep and recovery.
Why? Because I understand the power that regulating your nervous system has in making the process of living a healthy life as efficient and as effective as possible. Because I’ll put it this way, we know, objectively speaking, we know that if you are incorporating, let’s say, resistance training and high intensity internal training, if you’re doing high…
high intensity training on days when your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system is more recovered. You have higher HRV and recovery scores, for example. You can get by and get much better results by training way less than an identical population of people that are just training following a standard program. You can get by and get better results in less time. There’s a multitude of studies that have been done on this. In fact, I actually had Kristin Holmes, the VP of Science, one of the co -founders of Whoop on my podcast.
and she went in depth on this. It’s very well established. So that alone says a lot about how important the state of nervous system is in making this an effective, intuitive, and efficient process. So I start with that. We can get more gains in less time. Also, by regulating your nervous system and getting deep and efficient sleep, the approach to eating healthier whole foods is gonna feel easier and more intuitive.
your hunger hormones are gonna be more regulated, your ghrelin levels, your leptin, your cortisol, insulin sensitivity is gonna be a whole lot better. So it’s gonna be easier to go with the grain rather than against the grain when you’re eating and trying to eat healthier foods that are gonna lead you in a better direction. And then we get into the mind, right? Yeah.
Dave (19:32.334)
Yeah, I was just gonna put it on pause for a sec there, because there’s so much to unpack on each one of these, right? So, I just wanna help the listeners really break this down with sleep. I mean, the first thing I would recommend is if you do not have a device right now, the first thing you should do is either have a loop or an Aura.
AP (19:40.916)
Yeah, for sure.
Dave (19:57.39)
right, where you’re actually measuring your sleep. And I’ve been doing it now, you know, for a couple of years. But what a massive insight into, yeah, your HRV data, your sleep data, and it’s amazing how all of these different, you know, stressors just impact you. They could be, you know, they could be emotional stressors, they could be stressors from work, from training.
Right? All of these different things. And like Sunday, I always have a really big training ride. You know, we do, we do about 55 miles, but hard pace. My heart rate was like 194, but you know, that night, 20 minutes of deep sleep.
Like it kills me and then my HRV is really low the next day, so it’s trying to recover. So what would you recommend, let’s just talk about sleep a little bit since it is so important. First of all, what should people be looking for in terms of deep sleep and REM sleep? What are the numbers you’d like to see?
AP (20:50.58)
For sure.
AP (21:00.116)
For sure, so let me go ahead and start by saying that most people don’t get the sleep that they need because the modern lives that we live make it extremely difficult for us to separate our productivity and our recovery. And we also make it very difficult to accumulate melatonin the way that our body is designed. So if you look at our evolution,
and you look at it on a timeline, there’s this gap. There’s this gap in our physiological evolution. Our physiology evolves linearly, whereas our technology and convenience in life evolves exponentially. And so it creates this gap. And that gap, I believe, is the root of a lot of our worst health, you know…
poor symptoms and disease, right? That gap creates a disease. It’s the reason why we have these processed foods that just have a terrible effect on our wellbeing. It’s the reason why we don’t get the sleep we need. Basically, like as an example, most of us, when we’re getting ready for bed, within 30 minutes of our bedtime, we were looking at a screen or we had some light on in the house or maybe we had a late dinner or we were looking at our emails. So now we’re in a sympathetic state.
and we haven’t experienced an extremely important physiological cue, which is the sunset, or at least mimicking the sunset, because that primes the circadian rhythm, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, our circadian biology to do something very important, which is accumulate melatonin and enable a more parasympathetic resting and relaxing effect. So one of the first few things that I recommend everybody does, like you said, is get a device so you can…
objectively see your sleep data. Most people don’t think that they have an issue with sleep because they’ve actually never slept well. So they don’t have perspective. But most of us, what we see is there’s a, if anyone’s ever seen like a sleep graph, like where they see the sleep cycles and how they shift throughout the night, imagine that graph, right? You go from being awake into a light stage of sleep, then deep sleep, then you go up to REM.
AP (23:20.212)
And then you get this like, you know, you typically will get anywhere between three to five cycles of, of the three to five REM cycles a night. So you get seven and a half to nine hours of sleep, you know, three to five or six REM cycles. Anyway, imagine that graph, right? Most of us, because of this modern world, there’s a total shift on that Y axis, meaning that we don’t get to experience a significant proportion of that deep sleep. And then in that REM interval, rapid eye movement, when we, you know,
experience mechanisms involved with memory consolidation, gaining new skills, refining skills, information, right? In that REM, we actually end up waking up. So everything shifts upward and we don’t get the sleep that we need. So we wake up the next day and what do we do? We go for coffee or nicotine or some kind of stimulant and it just creates this perpetual cycle of poor sleep, more sympathetic influence.
poor sleep, more dependency on these sympathetic stressors and amphetamines, caffeine, nicotine, et cetera. And it just totally takes us away from our real physiological potential we’re actually capable of. I think most high performers who are team no sleep are doing themselves in a huge disservice because we know that greater sleep efficiency, making more of every hour that you spend in bed is…
Plain and simple, it’s your daily software update. Here’s a good analogy. You know how nowadays we have these amazing phones, like the new iPhones are like $1 ,200 phones, right? They’re these beautiful phones, beautiful cameras. They’re so fast that you can process so much information so quickly. They can store thousands and thousands of videos and pictures. They’re great. But what happens when you don’t get that software update that you need? Phone starts glitching. No matter how good the phone is, it starts to glitch.
Sleep is your daily software update. It removes the glitches. It gives you the most energy. It replenishes your dopamine, your currency for motivation and focus. It will restore your adrenals. It will help you support hormones. It will help you gain muscle from the effort that you’re making. Like you said earlier, there’s all these stressors, right? Every healthy habit is technically a stressor. It’s a hormetic stressor. The idea is that it stresses you, but if you get…
AP (25:45.94)
assuming that you get the right recovery, the right sleep, time off, it stimulates a positive adaptation. So for example, fasting is a stressor, exercise is a stressor, cold exposure is a stressor, any kind of dieting is a stressor. As long as you can give your nervous system the opportunity to regulate itself, you are becoming more and more resilient, more immune, stronger, faster, smarter over time. And so going back to these biometrics,
we look at the biometrics, they will very objectively, they will tell us, they will show us what we can and should do differently and they’re going to hold us accountable because you’re going to show us how our physiology responds to incorporating better habits. Does that answer your question?
Dave (26:33.582)
Yeah, that’s excellent. Because I think it just can’t be overstated enough how important sleep really is. It drives just so many things. And then to your point, if you’re actually, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. So you’ve got to start measuring it and then looking at things. So while it seems great to have that glass of wine or two with dinner, take a look at that.
after measuring it with your aura ring and you’ll see how much that really impacts your sleep and then your overall performance and things like that. So that’s awesome breakdown of the first pillar. So why don’t we do, did you hit the second one? Movement, was movement second? Yeah. Nutrition, okay. Yeah.
AP (27:18.868)
Yeah, it was nutrition, but a couple more things that I wanna say on sleep real quick, because it really is by far, in my opinion, the most important pillar. Sleep is something that you’re gonna have to do for about a third of your life. Like if we live to 120, it’s 40 years of sleep. And it’s the one third of your life that makes the remaining two thirds the best that they can be, the most genuine that they can be, the most effective.
the most present that they can be. And anybody, and especially folks with a high net worth, the most valuable thing, that money can’t buy is time. And I understand, yes, maybe you have to spend another hour in bed, or at the bare minimum, make more of every hour that you spend in bed, which everybody can do. And I have a whole guide on it, I can send it out to your audience if they so wish. I’m more than happy to do that. But the point is that that will give you better quality of life.
It’ll help you show up every single day as a better and more improved, literally more improved version of yourself because otherwise you are deteriorating. You go to the gym and you’re breaking yourself down. You’re not building new muscle. You’re not giving your body the opportunity to enable that anabolic effect. You are going to feel like eating healthier is a chore because you’re going to have an unregulated nervous system. Your decision making is going to be more emotional. It’s not going to be logical. It’s not going to be.
It’s not gonna parallel your intention to be feel and perform better. You’re gonna be impulsive. You’re gonna be more emotional. And look, it’s important, even as men, especially as men, to be in touch with our emotional side as well. But we wanna know that we are taking strides towards our goals in meaningful ways. And if we’re not getting good sleep, then forget that. That just goes out the window. You are objectively gonna be more impulsive. That’s not something that you should do as a man or as a high performer. You have so, or even as a woman, anybody.
You’re throwing so much out of the window. And I’m moving into, you know…
Dave (29:17.454)
Yeah, I just think about it so simply. I mean, just think about those nights that you got really poor sleep because of whatever. You were traveling, hard workout, stress, whatever. And when you wake up that next day, do you feel like attacking the day? Do you feel like attacking your workout? How do you go into your work day?
How about the quality of your relationships? How you spend time with people? Are you just kind of going through the motions? And I think for all of us, everything is challenging when you don’t have sleep, no matter what it is. So it can be, it’s one of those things that I think is right in front of us that we have such an opportunity to optimize. So yeah.
AP (30:08.308)
Yeah. I’ll tell you right now, because I definitely want to leave your audience with very valuable, actionable steps. And I want to say with regards to sleep, right? Like how can we, in a way, mimic evolution? How can we leverage these evolutionarily preserved mechanisms to get better and more efficient sleep? So a few things that we can do.
Experiencing the sunset we know is a very important physiological cue for deep sleep and melatonin accumulation, which will decrease sleep latency. It’s easier to fall asleep and it will dilate that deep sleep window. So mimicking the sunset or experiencing the sunset. When the sun is at a lower angle relative to where we’re standing on the planet and that sunlight has to cross through more of the atmosphere, relatively speaking,
the atmosphere will filter out that blue wavelength of light. And so the sky starts to get darker and more like red. And that signals to our body, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain’s biological clock, to start accumulating melatonin. Why? Because that blue light otherwise interacts with the retina at the back of the eye and gives us like this wakefulness response. So when the sun is going down and there’s less blood in the sky, we have a cue to start accumulating melatonin. So if you can’t experience the sunset for whatever reason, at home,
Dim the lights, put all your devices on night shift mode. You can schedule that on your phone, by the way. Have it so that it is aligned with the sunset. Night shift mode at the warmest setting. On the computer, there’s a software called F .Lux, which will do the same based on your geography. It’ll dim the screen, it’ll transition as you move into the night, so it’s more physiologically consistent. And then at home, try to use amber colored light bulbs. So instead of LEDs, which are mostly blue wavelength that will keep you up,
Amber color light bulbs using candles, using warmer lights and lower lights, lights that are lower to the ground. The higher that they are, the more consistent they are with the sun when creating this wakefulness response is you want to avoid that. And then the best thing that you can do in my opinion is wear what I call blue light condoms. These are very, very, very nice, very high quality blue blocking glasses that are amber colored. So they have that like deep.
AP (32:29.108)
orange or red color because they help you have fun while protecting yourself. So I call them like blue light condoms. And my favorite brand, Raw Optics, are a optics. They’re simply the best and they help you hone in on that really important physiological cue. And another side effect that most people don’t know about with regards to these blue eyed blackened glasses, you know, I get to appreciate this with my background in psychology. It’s that they become what’s called a conditioned stimulus.
So most people here might know about Pavlov’s dogs. These dogs were in a cage, Pavlov, this scientist, he would ring a bell and then he would proceed to feed the dogs and measure how much they were salivating in the process. Well, over time, as he continued to ring the bell and feed the dogs, the bell became this conditioned stimulus. Just ringing the bell got these dogs to start to salivate. So wearing these amber colored blue blocking glasses,
Over time, what happens is that that condition stimulus becomes stronger and stronger. You have a deeper and more significant association with putting them on and going to sleep. And now, I’ve worn these for years, every single night. I swear, I put these on and within a few minutes, my head is bobbing up and down and I’m going to sleep. It’s unbelievable because I’ve set the intention and everybody knows what to anticipate. And by the way, for those of you who are skeptical of blue blocking glasses, again,
Amber colored, I’m being very specific, there are systematic reviews, studies of studies that show that regular blue blockers, the clear ones, do not work. They don’t reduce eye strain, they don’t improve sleep variables. Whereas amber colored, there’s a systematic review, I think it’s like 16 studies, 453 participants, published in 2020 or 2019, and they show objectively, boom, better sleep quality, more efficient sleep.
And the question that I have for those of you tuning in right now, this is like the key question for sleep. When was the last time that you woke up feeling refreshed? Most people don’t know, and it’s a shame. This habit alone will help you get deeper sleep. Aside from that, what else can you do? Make your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet. Very physiologically consistent will help you see more melatonin accumulation, will help you enable a more parasympathetic state.
AP (34:50.516)
and it will help you see a decline in core body temperature, which is what actually initiates deep sleep. There’s a lot of different mechanisms that make you sleepy, like adenosine accumulation, melatonin accumulation, general fatigue and feeling tired. But what actually initiates deep sleep is a decline in core body temperature. So setting your room to anywhere between 62 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I know that’s pretty cold. And maybe taking a hot shower or doing sauna for
maybe 10 minutes before bed, like within a few hours of your bedtime, that also helps you see a decline in core body temperature that initiates deep sleep. In addition to that, I recommend a few supplements. Now I would do these last, I’d focus on habits first, but for example, magnesium is gonna be really good. I like magnesium breakthrough about optimizers, seven different kinds of magnesium, manganese, vitamin B6 for improved bioavailability, L -theanine, very calming amino acid. It leads to what’s called…
A little bit of a dissociative state and the fragmentation of thoughts. If you’re overthinking before bed, L -Penon is really, really good. GABA is also very good. You can get GABA and a GABA -ergic effect naturally from something like chamomile, which contains apigenin. You can also do glycine. So like my favorite combination right now is I do a tea, a chamomile tea, and I add a scoop of Sol Sol supplements, glycine powder, and it’s like a naturally sweet flavor, no calories.
and it puts me right to sleep. And you can also do, you know, CBN, and there’s a few more. I have these in my sleep guide and I can send them out to your audience. Those are really great. And then in bed, I would do four, seven, eight breathing. So a four second inhale, seven second hold, eight second exhale. Focusing on the specific number gets your brain off of anything else that you may be thinking. Having a longer period of time that you spend exhaling creates a more parasympathetic state. That little breath hold of seven seconds between the inhale and the exhale.
creates what’s called a cardio inhibitory effect. You see a buildup of CO2, which slows down your heart rate. And then very important physiological cues to add on top of that is breathe horizontally, not vertically. So instead of breathing up the nose and seeing a rising and falling in your chest, instead breathe into your face through the nose using your diaphragm and you shouldn’t see any movement in your upper chest or shoulders. So into the nose, breathing with your diaphragm.
AP (37:18.516)
and breathing so subtly that if you had a candle in front of your face, you wouldn’t blow it out. Very, very, very slow, very intentional, very shallow breathing. And always through the nose. Humidifies the air, it cleans the air, it actually increases vagus nerve innervation for parasympathetic state, it’s great. So if you’re doing that, I guarantee everybody tuning in, if you do that, you’re gonna get more of every hour that you spend in bed, you’re gonna have better, higher quality sleep.
Now, moving to nutrition.
Dave (37:48.494)
Yeah.
Well, I was going to say there’s just so much great stuff there, Andres. I mean, yeah, I could spend, I could spend hours talking about this stuff and just to tell the listeners, right, too, like how you, cause you taught me about four, seven, eight. And, and I got to say, I mean, that is amazing. I always stack that. Like if I’m doing red light therapy or something, I can literally look at my aura and look at the daytime HRV and just watch it plummet after I’ve done, you know, a good round.
AP (38:18.036)
Yeah. You mean go up.
Dave (38:20.08)
that breathing. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. The HAV goes up, my heart rate goes down, yeah. So that is really powerful. And all of those tactics have really helped to improve my sleep and my sleep score. So super strong stuff, so appreciate that.
AP (38:22.644)
It’s where we go up, resting heart rate going down. Yeah, there we go, nice.
AP (38:40.628)
Yeah, yeah for sure. I’d say that 478 is like a secret weapon because you can do it anytime, anywhere to enable more parasympathetic state and increase your HRV which will give you higher performance on demand. Like a lot of people, like we know it’s very well established in psychology and physiology that peak performance happens at a moderate level of stress. There’s like, imagine there’s like this stress dial. In order for you to enable that flow state where you are just performing.
Optimally just your absolute best there has to be a moderate level of stress if the stress is too low You’re gonna be bored. You’re not gonna be very you’re not gonna be stimulated enough to get this out of you if you’re Too stressed you’re gonna be anxious. You’re gonna stutter. You’re gonna mess up. You’re gonna forget things So you want to be in that moderate level of stress? Most people because we have unregulated nervous system. We don’t get very good sleep. We have terrible nutrition We’re not very active. We just have these convenient lives and this is the matter of fact
When we need to perform, we can’t perform the way we want on demand. And most of us are a little bit on the, you know, too stressed, the too sympathetic end of that dial. And so 478, it’s breath work in general, applied breath work, it’s the easiest and most accessible way to influence the state of your nervous system and to move that stress dial in your favor. And on the contrary, right, like there are breathing patterns that are associated with a very sympathetic state that will…
actually create like a positive feedback loop that works against you. So for example, if you’re getting stressed out, you’re anticipating stress and you start mouth breathing, that’s gonna make it much, much worse for you to perform the way that you want. Why do we start mouth breathing when we get stressed? Why do people mouth breathe in general? Because mouth breathing is the fastest way to breathe and it’s linked to running away from any kind of perceived threat. You know, millions of years ago, the biggest stressors in our life were things that were
going to kill us or severely injure us. There was a severe weather pattern. It was a predator. It was another tribe trying to kill us. It was really like life or death. Nowadays, to make ends meet, most of us are sitting in front of a laptop or having a board meeting. We’re not going to die. But we get stressed and so we start mouth breathing because it’s linked to our survival. But then the mouth breathing makes it more difficult for us to be logical in our decision making and to enable peak performance so we can effectively handle that situation.
AP (41:07.668)
So breath work is just amazing. And just like the 478 and the applied breath work is important, it’s also important to notice the way that you breathe at a baseline and understanding and appreciating how that might be working for you or against you. You know, we wanna be nasal breathing as much as possible. We wanna be using our diaphragm as much as possible. We wanna have a nice even breath, a slow breath. These are things that not everybody can do and it might be difficult to do.
A lot of us will get this like air hunger when we do a longer, you know, exhale or we do a little bit of a breath hold. But just like with exercise, starting to make the habit of doing this, it might feel a little uncomfortable, but it’s a hormetic stressor just like exercise. That little bit of discomfort that you feel when you start breathing a little differently is actually what’s generating the positive adaptation both anatomically and physiologically to improve the efficiency of every breath. You start to see…
simply better airway function. You can actually see changes in your anatomy and you can see increases in what’s called CO2 tolerance so that you can extend your breath hold and you’re better able to breathe through your nose, which is objectively the most, I feel like I’ve said objectively like 300 times on this podcast, but I just wanna make it clear, these are physiological facts, not an opinion, they’re not just statements, they’re real facts. They’re based in science. So not to go off too far on a tangent on breath work, we can…
I definitely want to return to the main topics here, but it’s just such a secret weapon. There’s three opportunities that I think are the best for applied breath work. It’s in bed when you’re trying to go to sleep, before you have a meal, because it’s going to enable a parasympathetic state to support digestion. A lot of high performers and busy people, they think that they are doing a good thing and being efficient by eating while they work, but it’s taking away from both things and it’s making them just mediocre in the sense that…
Dave (42:34.414)
Yeah, that’s a big time. Yeah.
AP (43:02.996)
Digestion is such a, it requires a lot of energy and attention for a body to digest food. Most of the calories that we spend at rest are resting in a block rate. The vast majority of those calories are spent digesting food. It’s a lot of calories, a lot of energy, it’s a lot of focus. If you are trying to get something done while you’re eating, there is this lack of blood flow in the areas that you need them to be.
It’s lack of adequate blood flow that’s number one, taking away from digestion. You’re in a sympathetic state. You’re trying to use your brain to solve problems, to communicate, to make things happen. But the blood is away from your brain. It’s in the digestive tract, but there isn’t enough blood in the digestive tract to actually digest the food well. So what ends up happening is you end up performing at a mediocre level mentally and even physically because the blood is out of the extremities. And on top of that, the digestive process is slowed down. It’s being heavily taxed.
and just like weighed down. And so what happens, you get brain fog, you feel weak, you might get a quick rise and fall in your blood glucose, and then you have hedonic cravings coming in. Now you’re just like ravenous for something sweet or something processed, right? And it’s just like so bad. Like the more separation that we have between our environments of performance, of productivity and work, and our environments of sleep, recovery, and digesting food,
the better that we’re gonna feel, the better that we’re gonna be, the better we’re gonna perform, the better we’re gonna look, the better we’re gonna, body composition we’re gonna have. The more degrees of separation that you can create, the better. So again, last thing I’m gonna say with sleep, super important, keep the phone and email outside of the bedroom. The bedroom is for two things, sleeping and having sex, period. No phone in the bedroom. And with your work environment, do not eat in your work environment. If you’re starving,
maybe have some essential amino acids, which will reduce the perception of fatigue, will give you a little bit of energy and can help you lower your cravings or have something that is really easy to digest like a, you know, whole fat Greek yogurt with some blueberries or something a little more ketogenic so you can stabilize your blood glucose while you’re in a stationary position, you know, getting some work done and then hold off until you have a real opportunity at least 30 minutes to 60 minutes to actually have a meal where you are present, you’re chewing.
AP (45:21.268)
Thoroughly, you’re chewing enough to increase the surface area of the food so you can effectively digest it and take advantage of that parasympathetic state so you can get right back to work and be your best when you’re working. So anyway, all the nervous system regulation stuff that we just tackled with the sleep, all of that is going to influence the remaining habits, the nutrition, the movement, and anything mental because it’s going to be more intuitive, it’s going to be more aligned, it’s going to be easier and simply more productive.
And then look, I’m not going to go off the deep end with nutrition. What I’ll say is the most important thing is nutrition, obviously eating whole food, eating a wide spectrum of food. So when they say eat the rainbow, you know, that’s great because a lot of color represents nutrient density. It’s important to incorporate nutrient dense foods in your diet and natural colors will reflect that. I don’t subscribe to a particular diet. I think certain diets can be effective for different reasons and different
periods of your life are different people. I think ketogenic diet can be very effective for some people. I think carnivore can be very effective for some people. I think vegan diet can be very effective for some people. Me personally, I eat a little bit of everything. I focus on a 90 -10 rule. 90 % of the time, I’m totally on track eating what I know I’m supposed to be eating. 10%, I do whatever I want. I enjoy my life. And then definitely not eating…
throughout the whole day. I think that there should be some degree of intermittent fasting, whether it’s once a week, once a month, every other day. For women, it’s very different, very, very, very, very different according to where they are, like their unique female biorhythm, how old they are, where they are in their life, totally different. So women should be very particular. Most science is done on men, not women. Do your research, ladies. And what else do I believe? I believe that…
Clean water is very hard to come by and it’s very important. Install a super high quality water filtration system at home. I have a Greenfield Water Solutions under the counter filter. It’s a five stage filter, harmonizes, structures the water, remineralizes the water. If you have an RO system, reverse osmosis is getting very popular nowadays, make sure that it remineralizes the water or you can get spring water, but hydrating adequately, especially in the morning.
AP (47:42.068)
Because overnight just by breathing and a little bit of sweat you can lose five to six pounds of water. You can be very dehydrated. Most people they get the bad sleep. They wake up feeling like crap. They go for their coffee, which is a diuretic. It further dehydrates them and puts them in a sympathetic state. They get burnt out. So in the morning hydrate, add electrolytes. Add, you know, I like the RELITE brand of electrolytes because it’s made with Redmond real salt. It’s sea salt from Utah from an ocean that was there thousands of years ago.
And so it has zero heavy metals, zero plastic and 60 minerals in the salt. And I’ll add some creatine to that. I love creatine. It’s beginning very popular. There’s been an upward trend in creatine content online and been a lot of good research on it. It’s the second most studied ergogenic aid after caffeine. Ergogenic meaning work reducing. It will increase your strength, your power, make it easier to gain muscle. And it will also improve the health and the function of your brain because your brain…
like the rest of your body, uses creatine as a substrate, as a fuel source, to improve the strength and propagation of nerve impulses, to improve your memory, to improve your mood. In fact, a lot of the studies that they’ve done on creatine, they see the most significant benefits in folks that are sleep deprived or are depressed. They see the most, you know, the greatest rate of change, as you can imagine, in those individuals. It’s an extremely effective supplement. I take that for both the cognitive and the physical benefits.
And every morning and this goes back to sleep as well every morning as I’m hydrating with my 32 ounces of clean water my creatine and My electrolytes I’m getting sunlight no sunglasses exposing as much surface area of skin to the Sun as possible so that I can prime at my circadian rhythm to give me natural endogenous Energy production to wake me up and get that nice natural rise in cortisol stress hormone that we need
to arrive at optimal performance. And that is a very important physiological cue early in the morning because it also dictates when you’re gonna start to see a fall in cortisol and rise in melatonin in the evening. Most people don’t get sunlight in the morning. They might get sunlight at some point in the day, typically in the afternoon. And now they’ve shifted that window of when they start to see that declining core body temperature, that melatonin accumulation, and that cortisol fall.
AP (50:07.636)
doesn’t happen until much later in the evening. So they have to reach for their melatonin supplement, or they have to take some ridiculous sleep aid to finally go to sleep. So very important to start the day with that hydration, with some supplementation, with some sunlight, and ideally some kind of movement if you need an extra kick in energy, and potentially you could do a cold shower if you want to increase those dopamine levels. And then maybe after all that, after you’ve done all that,
maybe consider having caffeine. Before reaching for your cup of coffee, do this, I guarantee, it’s gonna give you so much energy, focus, productivity, you’re gonna feel amazing. So hold off on the cup of coffee. Give your body that endogenous opportunity first. And yeah, in a nutshell, that’s nutrition.
Dave (50:58.03)
Well, yeah.
So many good things to work on there. I really love it. So yeah, let’s talk about, I think movement is so interesting, especially post pandemic where so much of us have really lost a lot of movement in our day to day, right? We’re doing Zoom calls, we’re doing all these things. So trying to figure out, I’ve been working on like trying to micro dose different movement throughout my day.
AP (51:27.764)
Mm -hmm.
Dave (51:29.072)
walking, you know, walking, treadmill, standing desk, you know, anything, but I still always feel like, you know, tight, you know, I just want to be moving. and then I definitely want to cover, you know, mindset as well, I think is key.
AP (51:43.38)
For sure. So with regards to the movement, look, I’m busy too. I’m a busy guy. Movement is obviously a very important part of my life because it makes me feel great. It is directly linked to the way that I want to look and feel every single day. And I know that it’s also going to reward me with longevity. And by the way, when I say longevity, I think longevity is less about extending lifespan for the sake of more moments. I think it’s more about extending lifespan through the quality of the present moment.
If you optimize for this moment right now through the right habits, you are gonna live longer. And that’s the secondary benefit in my opinion. Yeah, it’s nice to know that we’re gonna live longer. But if we can optimize right now and have the confidence that that will help us live longer, I care about now. I don’t care as much about later, I care about now. So I just wanted to be specific there. Yeah, for sure. So with regards to the movement,
Dave (52:35.438)
That’s huge. Yeah. That’s that’s huge. Yeah.
AP (52:43.188)
Here’s my approach. Here’s what I think most people can and should do. I wanna make this as realistic and attainable for anybody tuning in. We know that high intensity interval training, and there’s so many different kinds, but high intensity interval training is going to stress your body in a very specific way. The specific adaptations that we’re gonna see are very closely tied to longevity. In fact, high intensity interval training is…
the most efficient and effective way to increase our VO2 max, maximum oxygen consumption, which represents a lot, high VO2 max assumes a lot of other things being optimal, and I’m gonna get to that in a second, but VO2 max is arguably the single most, the most highly correlated metric with quality of life and longevity. So let’s actually break down the equation of VO2 max real quick so I can show you why HIIT training is so important.
VO2 max, the FICK equation, F -I -C -K equation of VO2 max, shows that VO2 max is equal to cardiac output multiplied by what’s called AV02 difference. So cardiac output is how much blood is leaving your heart every minute. It’s a multiple of your stroke volume, so how much blood is leaving the heart with every heartbeat, and multiplied by your beats per minute.
and then you multiply that by the AVO2 difference, the difference in oxygen saturation between atrial and venous blood. So basically how much did your tissues absorb from what your heart was pumping out? How much oxygen did you absorb? That’s VO2 max. The number one, so if you look at all those variables, the number one component that you can influence to increase VO2 max is stroke volume. So if you increase stroke volume, the heart,
you know, is more contractile. Every time your heart beats, more blood comes out. How do we do that? We have to get the heart to pump harder. That’s how you get the adaptation. So you have to get it to pump harder and more efficiently. So what kind of training? Well, HIIT training, right? Because by doing intervals, every subsequent set, so after every rest interval, the next set that you do, you can get back up to that really high level of intensity. Whereas doing continuous training, so like traditional cardio,
AP (54:57.3)
You can’t, yes, your heart rate will get high, but you can get to that peak to stimulate the adaptation, that specific adaptation. You wanna get to that peak, have enough of a recovery interval where you can replenish creatine, your endogenous, natural, by the body creatine, and yeah, the supplementation helps, but when you replenish that creatine after a couple of minutes in that resting interval, then you can get back up to that maximum level of intensity that you need to stimulate the adaptation. So with HIIT training,
You can get by doing a much shorter workout, but the intensity is much higher and the benefits are so closely tied to increases in stroke volume, which is the number one component of VO2 max as far as what you can manipulate. I know that’s a bit of a mouthful. So what does the ideal and most effective and efficient HIIT training protocol look like? You want to have about five to 10 of these intervals of high intensity.
Dave (55:42.254)
good stuff. Yeah.
AP (55:54.644)
where your heart rate gets to what’s considered 85 % and beyond of your maximum heart rate. There’s many different ways to calculate maximum heart rate. A really good way to estimate it is taking the number 220 minus your age. So if I am 27, right, my maximum heart rate is gonna be around 193. 85 % of that is, I don’t know, something like 170 -ish.
right, 165 or 170. So I know that anytime I get beyond that, I’m stimulating this adaptation. And then what I do is I will spend enough time recovering to the point where I can get down to about 40 to 50 % of my maximum heart rate. Once I know I’m in the heart rate zone, I can generally, I have enough evidence to suggest that I’m ready to do my next high intensity interval. Now, how can we expedite the process of that recovery interval?
This is where applied physiology comes in and it ties back into what I was saying earlier. The more regulated nervous system is, the better your sleep, the higher HRV, the better that you can manage change, the more adaptable that you are, and this is something that you’ll see when you’re working out too. Your resting intervals are gonna be shorter, and then if you apply breath work, so if you make the effort to nasal breathe on the recovery, at a bare minimum, during the recovery interval.
using your diaphragm to breathe so you have a more efficient breath, you’re getting more oxygen in your body and more parasympathetic activity with every single breath that you take, then you’re gonna expedite the recovery interval. Most people, they do a high intensity interval set, they’re not fit, they don’t know how to breathe, and they’re just like mouth breathing and now they’re like taking forever to recover and they think that it’s working for them because it’s an easier way to breathe, but it is not an efficient way to breathe. So doing this applied breath work helps a lot to expedite the recovery interval.
lower the heart rate and get you ready for that next interval, the next high intensity interval. You do five to 10 of these, you do this once or twice a week. So it’s just like a, I don’t know, 15 to 30 minute workout total. And now you have the confidence that you are taking strides towards longevity. I would suggest doing this on high recovery days. So if you’re tracking your data, I would do this on days where your nervous system is regulated enough.
AP (58:07.412)
to the point where it can effectively manage this hormetic stress and drive as much benefit movement as possible. I would not do this on a low recovery day. On a low recovery day, I would do zone two training, which we know is also gonna benefit longevity, VO2 max, and will help you burn a lot of calories and improve your body composition. So this is like, you know, think about like a light jog or a walk at a faster pace or an incline or cycling at a low intensity. You know, the zone two is typically gonna be,
more closely tied to improvements in the AVO2 difference end of the VO2 max equation. And it’ll also make your heart more efficient. It’ll help you improve your metabolic flexibility. Like there’s a lot of things that it can help you do, but I would do that on a day where you technically are better suited for something like that. So look at your recovery scores and look at the status of your nervous system to add this in and titrate it in very, very strategically. On days with moderate to high recovery,
I would do resistance training. And if you are super motivated to do a resistance training session and you have very low recovery, technically you can still get by if you do lower weight and higher repetitions. So instead of focusing on the standard eight to 12 reps, which is typically what most people do for gaining muscle, gaining strength, at any rep range you’re gonna gain some benefit, or really all the benefits. There’s specific rep ranges that are more closely tied to very specific benefits. So for example, anything below five.
at high velocity is good for power. Five to 10 is better for strength. Eight to 12, better for hypertrophy. 12 to 15 plus, better for endurance. But at any rep range, as long as you’re making an effort, you can improve all these variables. But anyway, on a moderate to high recovery day, I would do a standard lifting program where you’re doing eight to 12 repetitions of a movement for four sets, typically three to five total big movements, compound movements. So instead of focusing on isolation,
you know, really trying to engage as much muscle as possible per unit of time. Why? Because well, if you do the world’s most intense bicep curls, it’s just small muscle. So the cardiovascular demand isn’t going to be very high. So basically you get a double whammy if you are focused on compound movements, multi -joint, multi -muscle movements, because even at lower intensities, the net unit of muscle fiber that you’re using for every minute that you’re spending,
AP (01:00:30.164)
is much greater. So not only are you going to have a greater anabolic response because you’re breaking down more muscle, but you’re also creating a greater cardiovascular demand. So now you’re seeing a benefit from both the muscle side and the cardiovascular side, and you have better benefits, more gains in less time. And then, yeah, like you said, like I try to do personally, I try to do like three resistance training sessions every week. So I do full body typically three times a week.
For up to an hour. I really don’t need to do any more than an hour Sometimes it’s just 45 minutes at a very high intensity on higher recovery days I’ll do my hip training either mixed in with that or another day with high recovery I typically have once a week where I will do some kind of group activity whether it’s tennis or Playing some kind of sport or a going kayaking or spearfishing. I love free to have spearfishing. It’s my main sport and then when I have really busy days in my
you know, home office or my other office, I have a pair of kettlebells that I’ll use to micro dose workouts. So I’ll do a five to 10 minute, you know, compound movements at high intensities. And if you do a few of those a day, it’s honestly as good, if not even better than a dedicated session in the gym, because going to the gym, like you have to take the time to prepare for the gym. You have to get to the gym. You have to get set up. You have to get ready. You have to wait for a machine if it’s busy and you have to get back. It’s like two to three hours of your time.
Get something at home that’s super easy, super simple. Get a nice few flows that you can do anytime and you’re gonna see tremendous benefits. And then walking as much as possible. I’ll tell you what, secret hack that I just started to do as of the past six, seven months, I got a puppy and I got a very active dog. I got an Australian Shepherd and it has forced me to walk more than I ever thought I was capable of. Like, he bothers me now to walk.
I love taking him to the dog park and I’ve multiplied my step count by like two times and it’s helped me lean out like automatically. I have made no other adjustments than getting a puppy and I am now leaner because I got it. So yeah.
Dave (01:02:36.398)
Yeah, yeah, no, I think walking is huge. And, you know, I think for people, give yourself permission to do some zoom calls or some calls while you’re walking. I mean, Steve Jobs literally used to do all his meetings walking around the campus.
AP (01:02:49.844)
On a walk. 100%.
Dave (01:02:56.558)
Right? So don’t always feel that you need to be tied to your computer. I think people will appreciate it. And the other thing is you find yourself so much more creative and kind of less stressed when you’re actually out walking around. So that’s a good little multitask.
AP (01:02:56.628)
Yeah.
AP (01:03:12.852)
Absolutely. There’s a few physiological cues, by the way, that give us better performance while we’re walking on a call. So for example, when we’re in an office or at home working, like right now I’m staring at the screen, my field of vision is like tunneled, right? Looking at you, looking at me on the screen here. And that is gonna create a little more sympathetic effect because this is linked to running away from danger. We typically fixate on some point, some…
somewhere that we can run to to help ourselves. Whereas engaging the peripheral visual cortex, so engaging a panoramic view. So if we’re going for a walk, we typically have this panoramic view in an enriched environment. We see the sky, we see nature, sunlight. These things are gonna help us produce more endorphins to feel better. We’re gonna be in a slightly more parasympathetic state. We’re in a little more adaptable. And on top of that, the act of actually walking increases neuroplasticity and…
What’s it called? One of the neutral factors that I’m liking on. But anyway, it’s great for neuroplasticity, it’s great for flow, it’s great for the endorphins, the panoramic effect and parasympathetic effect. It’s absolutely great. You are objectively gonna perform better and be a little more creative, a little more open, feel better, be more empathetic even when you’re on a call. And yeah, I mean, I go out of my way to take the vast majority of my calls on a walk. And I think it’s a matter of…
being able to communicate that effectively to the people on the receiving end, you know, why do they hear birds chirping in the background and maybe an ambulance or a car honking here or there? And look, the truth is if they’re getting better information, more empathy and better productivity from you, I think that the trade -off is definitely worth it. Just make sure to communicate that effectively and give a bit of a disclaimer and tell them and show them why you’re doing what you’re doing. I think that’s very, very important.
Dave (01:05:08.558)
Yeah, that’s great. Andres, I really want to respect your time. This has been such an amazing master class and I feel like we haven’t even scratched the surface for folks yet. But I know I’ve got so many things that I want to work on myself. So I know everyone has enjoyed this. And if people want to learn more from you, check out your podcast. What is the best place for them?
AP (01:05:37.524)
For sure, man. It’s been an absolute honor and pleasure. I would say, as you guys can imagine, there’s just so much more that we can get into and this has been great. I really appreciate my time here with you. I’m more than happy to come back anytime. If anybody wants to reach out to me personally to see if and how I might be able to help them to live a more fulfilling life with the confidence that you’re operating the way that you want to, that you’re…
living in such a way that really rewards you with that longevity, with fitness, with a good mood and nervous system regulation, productivity, making this process of being, feeling and operating at a higher frequency, more effective and efficient. Please reach out to me. My email is undress, A -N -D -R -E -S at knowyourphysio, like K -N -O -W -Y -O -U -R, physio as in physiology.
KnowYourPhysio .org or reach out to me on Instagram, AndresPreshell, P -R -E -S -C -H -E -L, or you can go to my website, AndresPreshell .com, and I’ve got a ton of value there. I’ve got my podcasts, I’ve got content, articles, and yeah, I’m more than happy to help anytime.
Dave (01:06:58.638)
Awesome, and really appreciate it. Appreciate you.
AP (01:07:01.78)
Yeah, I appreciate you too, man. Thank you for the opportunity.
Dave (01:07:03.598)
Yeah, thanks again.