Mimi MacLean:
Welcome to The Heal podcast, for all things related to Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. I'm Mimi MacLean, mom of five, founder of Lyme 360 and a Lyme Warrior. Tune in each week to hear from doctors, health practitioners, and experts to hear about their treatments, struggles, and triumphs to help you on your healing journey. I'm here to heal with you. Before we get started with the podcast, I wanted to talk to you about what is in your personal care products and cosmetics.

Mimi MacLean:
What you put on your skin, which is your largest organ, is just as important as what you consume. Your body immediately absorbs what is on the skin. But did you know that there is limited regulation in the personal care industry and the last law that was passed was 1938? So the chemicals and ingredients in your products have not been tested for human safety. So for those of you struggling with your health, it is super important to use clean products. Eight years ago, I started using Beautycounter for my cosmetics and personal care products.

Mimi MacLean:
They are the leaders in clean, safer products that work. Beautycounter has done the research and taken the guesswork out of what is safe. Go to lyme360.com/beautycounter to learn more. Reach out to at mimi@lyme360.com if you want to learn more, or find out what my favorite products are. Welcome back to Lyme 360, this is your host, Mimi MacLean. And today, we have a special guest, Oz Garcia. And he is recognized as the world's leading authority on healthy aging.

Mimi MacLean:
As a nutritionist to the stars, Oz is the go-to nutritionist, have A-list celebrities and Fortune 100 CEOs. His unique and customized approach to nutrition and anti-aging, coupled with more than 30 years of experience, has made Oz one of the most recognizable name in the industry. He has lectured all over the world and has been a pioneer of the study of nutrition and anti-aging. Oz is the bestselling author of four books, the Food Cure for Kids, The Balance, Look and Feel Fabulous Forever, and Redesigning 50: The No-Plastic-Surgery Guide to 21st-Century Age Defiance.

Mimi MacLean:
He's also been voted best nutritionist by New York City magazine and is frequently called upon by some of the most respected names in the medicine and news media for his up to the minute views on nutrition and its role of aging and longevity. Oz has been featured in prestigious publications like Vogue, Elle, Travel and Leisure, W magazine, and the New York Times. He has also made numerous network and cable television appearances, including NBCs The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, Good Morning America, ABC, 20/20, 48 Hours, The View, The Doctors, Access Hollywood and Fox News.

Mimi MacLean:
You can find more information about OZ at ozgarcia.com. To get my detox for Lyme checklist, go to lyme360.com/detoxchecklist. Oz, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Oz Garcia:
Absolutely thrilled, Mimi. Thank you.

Mimi MacLean:
We've known each other for a long time, I think over 20 years.

Oz Garcia:
I believe.

Mimi MacLean:
It was before I think I even had kids. But you are the go-to person for gadgets and anti-aging and biohacking, which is great for people also who have Lyme, because we're trying to outsmart our immune system and get it optimal. So I'm excited to talk to you today about that and what things that we could be doing to helping the damage that ... I know I've worked with you closely about this, helping the damage that Lyme has caused. I think you gave me an analogy once of Lyme is almost like termites, like even once it's gone, is left damage. And so, just trying to correct that damage and optimize your health.

Oz Garcia:
Right. As I recall, it's like termites invade your house. You get to exterminate as they come in. You get rid of the termites, but you wouldn't think to go up the stairs. It is that accrued damage that you now need to undo.

Mimi MacLean:
Right. And that's what I want to talk to you today, about like even if your Lyme is gone or even if it's not, but just to correct the damage that it's causing for the rest of the body.

Oz Garcia:
No question about it. One of the mistakes that we often make is thinking that we live somewhat outside of the natural order of things. And we know we're animals, we're primates, we're subject to all the laws of nature. We are born like animals and we will die just like everything organic that passes through. So like any animal that can get wounded in the wild, let's say, even though we're civil to the extent that we are, if you do go out in the woods, if you do go out to different areas of Long Island and the northeast and now parts of the Midwest, you can pick up any kind of illness that's being carried by any insect and certainly Lyme's.

Oz Garcia:
So it's confounding because we think that because we're human and we've got such a sophisticated institution of medicine that it can be solved. And what we find out is that like many things that are occurring certainly now in time, it's not that easy to solve after all. Some of us may be able to get over a tick bite and get on doxycycline. And in two weeks or a month, it's over. For many people, that's just the beginning of the horror story. From there on end, you're dealing oftentimes with the way that Lyme's triggers different mechanisms within our body that should turn off, but they don't.

Oz Garcia:
Inflammatory systems, inflammation within the brain, inflammation within our organs, inflammation within our joints, and they can go on for extended periods of time. So the suffering continues way after the Lyme has been controlled. Or many people not. So the solutions are, typically, if you go through the medical funnel, let's say, you're going to wind up with very powerful combinations often of antibiotics to try and get at every level of infection within your body. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

Oz Garcia:
And we do know, it's not like we now know, but we've known for quite a while that the cure is sometimes itself can then leave in its way a tremendous amount of damage to doxycycline, which is the drug of choice for dealing with primary Lyme infection, is also known to cause its own inflammatory damage in the aftermath of using it. So for many people who do get chronic Lyme, it's, well, what am I dealing with here? Do I still have Lyme? And often go on a second course of doxycycline, and then another antibiotic may be added on. And it'll continue in that way.

Oz Garcia:
What we know then is that you're going to suffer the consequences of long-term antibiotic use. And we should talk about that too. What does that mean? And how do you then go on an antibiotic protocol, at the same time, try and maintain your body's health and wellbeing while it's trying to get rid of this infection?

Mimi MacLean:
Yes. Sounds like a plan.

Oz Garcia:
If you go to most doctors with Lyme test positive, they're not going to suggest that you do certain things on a parallel track that I would recommend immediately, which is, of course, you need to get on probiotics and prebiotics. Now, we understand that the role of prebiotics, and I'll talk about that in a moment, maybe as critical as role of probiotics in maintaining a strong immune response while you're on the antibiotics themselves to deal with the Lyme. What happens when you go on an antibiotic?

Oz Garcia:
Well, antibiotics are not discriminating in terms of any infection that our body's going to get. So it will go after the primary infection, in this case, Lyme, but it's going to go after a lot of the bacteria in our bodies, which we need. Most of the bacteria that's in our bowel actually regulates about 60%, 70% of the overall immune response. The way that our white blood cells, our natural killer cells, the different systems that control inflammation in our body expressed themselves based on the bacteria that's in your colon, all 30 feet of it.

Oz Garcia:
So if you're taking an antibiotic that is as powerful as doxycycline in any of the medications that are in that category, you're going to decimate the bacteria in your colon. So that bacteria itself, that environment is called microbiome. And you also have a layer of bacteria in the surface of your skin too, that constitutes another line of defense. And as you're going through the weeks of being on these antibiotics, depending on the person, it may be that you can trigger chronic Lyme's just by being on the course of antibiotics, depending on your genetic makeup, epigenetics.

Mimi MacLean:
Wow.

Oz Garcia:
We'll talk about that. You may be somebody who's more susceptible to once your microbiome is taken down or substantially destroyed, you now are defenseless, your immune system cannot respond and cannot turn on or off the systems that need to shut off. So oftentimes, you may wind up with these side effects, which we now know with doxycycline, let's say, joint problems, where your joints are hurting you. You've got brain fog, you're exhausted. These are known effects of Lyme, but also of the antibiotic itself.

Oz Garcia:
And if you're left wiped, clean of your probiotics, the bacteria that should be in you, then you've got an additional problem. Now you've got a mechanism that should be controlling how well you repair, your recovery, and so on, completely gone. So not only do you need to kill off the bad guys, but you need to reinfect yourself almost continually with a multitude of probiotics. And for that matter prebiotics, the material that you would consume that allows the bacteria to adhere to the walls of your bowel and to actually rebuild the bacteria in the surface of your skin, which, believe it or not, has a lot to do with immune response internally and so on.

Mimi MacLean:
So, like SIBO, you hear a lot of people have SIBO from taking too many antibiotics for too long.

Oz Garcia:
That's correct.

Mimi MacLean:
It's like an overgrowth, and then they have all those issues.

Oz Garcia:
Well, not only that, with SIBO, you may have because of how you've been destabilized for whatever reasons, bad quality diet, some aspects of how you've been raised, your genetics, how you're built, your physiology. Certainly, if you've been on long term antibiotics, and maybe I would implicate to some degree, some probiotics taken the wrong way, what you got is got to spill over into a part of your colon where bacteria shouldn't be. And then you wind up with a very serious infection in that case too. So how do you deal with SIBO? Different doctors have different approaches. But one approach is, again, go back on antibiotics. So you can complicate your situation in so many ways, in terms of both the original infections themselves and secondarily the cure.

Mimi MacLean:
Right. Because my daughter had it and we did not use antibiotics, we use a whole other kind of protocol of herbs and rebuilding through food.

Oz Garcia:
That's terrific. Good for her. And what we now know, like I said before, is maintaining the integrity of your bowel, your small intestine, your large intestine, is really key to fighting off any disease, whatsoever, any pathogen. Again, we could go on an arc all the way from something "as simple as a yeast infection" to getting bit by Lyme, to food poisoning, on and on and on, to COVID. So there's much that has to be said for maintaining a very powerful microbiome in terms of how well you're protected against any number of infections in the environment or how strong will you be if you get infected.

Mimi MacLean:
Right. I've been reading a lot and I know you believe this, that the microbiome is directly connected to your brain and your brain health.

Oz Garcia:
That's correct.

Mimi MacLean:
And when I think of you, I always think of you as like optimal brain health. That's what you love to focus on. You have lots of things in your tool chest, like from supplements to gadgets. So I would love for you to dive into focusing on what you can do if you have brain fog or if you've been affected by your microbiome to help your brain health. Then also with aging, we lose a lot from aging from our brain health. So what can we be doing to help that?

Oz Garcia:
So it's called the brain-gut axis or some people say the gut-brain axis. There's bacteria that you can take on a daily basis. I'm just going to throw this out. So we're going to go horizontal for a moment before I go through like a stack of protocols that work really well. One of the products that I love a lot, that tends to normalize the signaling between your gut and your brain is called Target X. Target X is a very unique blend of probiotics that tend to make you think better. And it's very easy to purchase. You can get it on Amazon.

Oz Garcia:
So Target X is one of the easiest ones for children that are having difficulty in school, certainly young adults are suffering from any number of problems from ADD to ADHD. And then as you and I get older, how it is that you're dealing with an aging brain? So to deal with an aging brain and be able to maintain relevance that you're able to think as well at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and beyond, if we make it, as you did in your 20s and 30s depends on any number of things. I think that we have to begin with the basics.

Oz Garcia:
The most important thing of all, and it's become even more important to me as I've gotten older, is, of course, sleep. So there we could talk for hours. There's so many people that are talking about sleep now. Matt Walker, with his terrific book on sleep, his brain, one of the smartest people out there and a specialist on sleep who's been on Peter Attia. He's been on Andrew Huberman's show talking a lot about the role of sleep in our lives and how it is you can improve it.

Oz Garcia:
So unless you're getting eight to nine hours of sleep on a daily basis, and in a way quantify it, you're not going to repair immunologically as well as you want to, one. Number two is your brain is going to age quicker. So one of the tools, since you brought that up, is to see how well you sleep and to improve on it. It's called the Oura Ring. So the Oura Ring hooks up to an app, and it measures everything that's going on while I'm sleeping. It actually can measure what's going on during the daytime too, if I want that.

Oz Garcia:
I have a very good idea already in terms of how many calories I burn, how much exercise I need to do. We'll get to that also. But what I want to know is what's going on with my sleep. So we've got different stages in terms of our sleep that we need to measure and improve on. One of them is called HRV, heart rate variability. Heart rate variability, without trying to get too complicated, is the variance between when blood is being drawn into the heart and out.

Oz Garcia:
And individuals that are extremely stressed out from lack of adequate rest, poor diets, maybe not exercising properly, that when they go to sleep, sleep itself may not be all that reparative, all that repairing in terms of how much their day affects them. So their HRV levels is something that's really important to me. The higher the HRV, the better off you are, the likelier you're going to be in terms of living longer, better. And it's amazing when people come in that think that they're doing really well and their HRV scores are terribly low. And how do you improve on that?

Oz Garcia:
So for anybody who's interested in actually dealing, let's say, with Lyme, in convalescence, from just about any illness at all, you have to have a way to measure, is your sleep actually working for you? So you want to mention deep sleep. And that's a really tough one too. Most people don't know that within the eight to nine hours of sleep that they get, a certain portion of that has to be deep sleep, a certain portion has to be REM, rapid eye movement. That's where we consolidate memories, we're doing a lot of our dreaming, and then the rest of it is like sleep.

Oz Garcia:
The thing about the Oura Ring that I like is that actually shows you your body temperature, HRV, REM deep, how many times you've been moving in your bed. So, if your day has not been an especially good one, it's going to show up in quality of sleep when you get out of bed in the morning, whether or not you're well rested and prepared for your day. So measuring what's going on with your sleep separate from quality of sleep itself, that has become a superpower. You need to be embedded a certain time, almost the same time every day.

Oz Garcia:
Our rooms have to be almost like a bear cave, everything darkened out, no lights, everything has to be taped over. If you've got any kind of devices where little lights are on, all of that blacked out. I also tend to wear a mask, and that helps me go into my space. I like to listen to stories at night. So sometimes I'll have an appearance, I'll have my Alexa app, just tell me a nighttime story. And typically, it's a book from Audible. I'll fall asleep somewhere in there.

Oz Garcia:
Many people also that have difficulty sleeping or staying asleep, I would recommend highly this particular device, and it looks a little clunky, but it's called an Ebb. Now, Ebb goes onto your forehead like this, looks almost like one of the virtual devices, but it gets extremely cold and fall asleep with it or it'll turn off by itself. Now what happens is it cools down the frontal cortex. So for people with anxiety, if you have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, the cooling down of the frontal cortex, the front part of the brain actually will induce deep sleep, will calm me down.

Oz Garcia:
Sometimes for different people that I work with, I'll recommend it if they're having an anxiety attack, if they're having anxiety. You can put it on, do a meditation, put your ear buds on, listen to something while you're cooling the frontal cortex. And within about 20 minutes, half an hour, you're out. You don't even remember what you were anxious over. So sleep, I think, is absolutely critical to healing and being able to get back. We do know what a battle that's been at times in terms of getting better, right?

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, especially for Lyme. That's one of the, I think, symptoms that people have a hard time, staying asleep in the middle of the night from 3:00 to 5:00. I spent the last six years a week.

Oz Garcia:
Unbelievable. That's the worst of all.

Mimi MacLean:
It's awful. You had another device you were showing me before we jumped on, that was the PEMF for sleeping.

Oz Garcia:
Yes. Let me grab that one. It's called Welltiss. Now, Welltiss looks like a headband, and it's a PEMF device, pulsed electromagnetic force. And it charges up by taking the little unit out that comes inside the band itself, runs off nap, and it gives you different settings. So for sleep, for quiet mind, for reducing cortisol. During the day, especially if I have a very demanding long day, I'll just put it on for reducing stress. Now, just put it right around my neck like that. And I'm aware that I'm a lot clearer and a lot calmer at nighttime.

Oz Garcia:
And it's very rare now that this happens that I don't fall asleep. But if that's a problem, I'll put my setting on sleep, put it on right around my neck, same thing. Some people like to put it on this way, like that. And that'll hit the different parts of the brain that actually begin to shut you down. So the PEMF device itself, I have a large one called Haelo, H-A-E-L-O. And it looks like a big time football that's attached by a wire to the power device itself. And I'll put that on my stomach, put that on my chest, put that on my back. I'll do three sessions with it of about 15 to 20 minutes each.

Oz Garcia:
And that's a massive PEMF device. But these are really light. These are very gentle devices in terms of what you feel. So people expect to feel something right away, expect to feel some sort of feeling from it, but you really don't. What it is, is the aftereffects in terms of tranquility, calmness, better clarity overall. So these devices, PEMF devices themselves, the Haelo, the Welltiss are critical in terms of external exogenous devices that you can use to actually get your brain to perform better.

Oz Garcia:
If you're on a path towards optimization, if you want to have greater autonomy, yes, there are supplements you got to take. There are way that you have to manage your practices every day in terms of when you get up, what it is that you're going to do, and so on. But at the same time, you've got to be progressing a little bit every day. James Clear is probably my hero in this area. He wrote a book called Atomic Habits. Clear is probably one of the world's greatest authority in building healthy habits.

Oz Garcia:
Guy was in high school, loved to play baseball, was about to go up and play for the team. And the guy in front of him lost control over his bat, which went right into James' skull and cracked it wide open. James wound up, obviously, in a very serious convalescent period. And during that time, he knew that what he wanted to do is play ball again someday, which he finally did. And the way that he did it is explained pretty much in Atomic Habits. It's not like Atomic Habits, but it's more like little tiny things.

Oz Garcia:
What can you do every day so that you're improving by 5% every single day? And he wound up being voted most valuable player when he graduated college. He didn't go on to play ball, he went on to actually teach about how to cultivate these habits and practices. And the rest of it is just history, it's all over YouTube. I can't recommend them enough. In terms of getting better from Lyme's and just about anything that that we may be concerned with these days, is being exposed almost continually to good news. Quite a while ago, I stopped myself.

Oz Garcia:
And I recommended this to just about everybody that I work with that's dealing with Lyme's disease and again, other problems that they may be encountering. How? To not watch TV, news, to try and avoid at all costs, certainly at night before you go to bed and to avoid watching TV before you go to bed. The effects are extremely destabilizing. I've got my own opinion about journalism regardless, and how it is that just picking up a newspaper, by the time you're done with it, it leaves you in a place where you're not as strong.

Oz Garcia:
There are different chemicals in your brain that are being affected that think to work in your favor or not. And those chemicals that you need that should be working for you, psychoimmunologically, in terms of maintaining your states of mind in the right place are affected by being exposed to news, especially bad news all day long. So taking a break from the digital world in that regard, I think, is really key to actually improving your health.

Mimi MacLean:
I like that. You would also mention when we spoke about Biocybernaut, I think that's what it's called, for neurofeedback. I was looking on that online and it looks like you have to go there.

Oz Garcia:
That's correct.

Mimi MacLean:
Is there any kind of neurofeedback that you would recommend or the benefits similar to neurofeedback that you could do from home?

Oz Garcia:
Sure. There's actually neurofeedback devices called Muse. Looks like this.

Mimi MacLean:
How do you spell it, M-E-M-U.

Oz Garcia:
M-U-S-E.

Mimi MacLean:
S-E, okay.

Oz Garcia:
Muse. This is the Muse S. There are different ones. There's Muse 1, Muse 2, Muse S. So Muse S is more for sleeping, but you can use it anytime during the day to actually go into deep meditative state. So it is neurofeedback, and that it's like a portable EEG machine. It will give you feedback on your app in terms of the brainwaves that you're falling into. This works two ways. One is, if you were to do something like Biocybernaut or a course called 40 years of Zen, you're going to work real hard at controlling your brainwaves and to get into the brainwaves that typically a Zen monk would fall into after studying and practicing Zen meditation for decades.

Oz Garcia:
Except that when you use a Muse, you don't have to go away to these courses. It would be terrific, I think, for anybody that's looking to get their brain online to do a course like Biocybernaut or 40 years of Zen. But Muse, I love. I use it every day. And it actually allows you to control what's going on with the voice in your head. So just by doing the exercises, that Muse is continually throwing your way while you're wearing it, you could do it for 10 minutes, you could do it for 2 to 3 hours. You could just fall asleep with it. This is one of the best feedback devices that there are.

Mimi MacLean:
That's right. Now how do you keep track of all like what you're supposed to do every day? Do you have a little sheet checkmark, like I did this, this, this. Do wake up and have a routine.

Oz Garcia:
You got to have morning routine. And I'll ask everybody like, what's your morning routine? What do you do? If it's like, well, I get up, I go to the bathroom, have a cup of coffee.

Mimi MacLean:
[crosstalk 00:26:20]

Oz Garcia:
It's like things are not going to go well this day. The mornings have to be your setup so that you can punt the rest of the day, unless you've got your morning routines down, you pay a price. So for me, it's I'm up. I start to boil water so that I could make my tea. And I immediately put on Meditation by Sam Harris. I think the Sam Harris app is phenomenal. It's called Waking Up. So you don't really need a meditation. I mean, you could just listen to him talk for 10 minutes, and you do it every day. And I've done already, I don't know, about 3000 minutes worth of listening to Sam Harris' ...

Mimi MacLean:
So you're doing stuff while you're listening to it? Or are you're sitting in a chair and just focusing on ...

Oz Garcia:
I'll sit. I'll be drinking my matcha. I'll listen to him for 10 minutes. Then I begin my breathing routine. So I'll do Wim Hof, that could easily take Wim Hof, same thing, you download the app, W-I-M H-O-F. He's got breathing challenges, breathing exercise, protocols. So he's also on YouTube teaching you how to do his breathing approach. There's one show with him and Joe Rogan, which I think is terrific. And that's where I would begin.

Mimi MacLean:
Is that the same thing as the heart map, the same kind of idea?

Oz Garcia:
Kind of, yeah. HeartMath is terrific because you've got a little device that you're looking at. In fact, I've got two of them here, where what you're looking to do is coordinate your breathing by making a dot, an LED dot, move up and down in this little device that looks like a big matchbox. I like that a lot. And for people that are just starting out, trying to get a meditative practice off the ground, HeartMath, I think, is terrific for the price. And secondarily, to just start to get some control over where your thinking is going. So the point is to get breathing going in the morning.

Oz Garcia:
And that could be easily 20 minutes to 45 minutes of my morning. After that, it's exercise. So you have to have your exercise routine, whatever it may be. I'm a little bit older now, used to be that I would run.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, you run a lot.

Oz Garcia:
Yeah, a lot. A lot of races, a lot of marathons, a lot of ultra-marathons. You're going to run for 40 years. So now what I'm doing is, as I'm rebuilding my back on my sports injuries, I've got like a home Equinox setup. And every day, I do different ways of working out so that the focus that I had for many years, and just it being aerobic, it's like people fall into two camps. It's like, aerobic, do weights, this is the only way to go and runners suck.

Oz Garcia:
Or runners have the whole other point of view, which is like, people that are using the machines in the way it's just muscle has and what do they know and they don't get the endorphin. Well, actually, it's not true. By doing breathing exercises every morning, I get the endorphin hit that I want. These are different chemicals that you produce in your brain that actually keep it cool and calm, clearheaded, and they're related to cannabinoids, interestingly enough.

Oz Garcia:
The body itself, the human body, in fact, most mammal bodies, but certainly primate bodies have a cannabinoid system wrapped around the nervous system itself, which is equally as sophisticated as the nervous system, probably why it is that we do so well with CBD and different compounds that are found in cannabis. So that's a podcast for another time. But certainly, when you do get into exercises where you're doing a lot of deep breathing, you're triggering that part of the cannabinoid system that keeps you very clear, focused, and reduces anxiety

Oz Garcia:
And this is really important if you're dealing with Lyme, if you're recuperating from Lyme. Once I finished my exercise routines, then it's debatable whether I'm going to do an ice bath or not. I'd say about three, four mornings a week, I either do cryo. So cryotherapy is where you step into a big tank. There may be different cryotherapy destinations, just about every major city, Equinox in the city has some. There's a couple of them not too far from my home. So you step into something that looks like a big giant beer can and your whole body goes into it.

Oz Garcia:
The temperatures dropped to minus 200 degrees for three minutes with nitrogen gas. And when you come out, it's like the greatest rush on Earth. There's a lot to be said for that in terms of controlling inflammation, how it improves brain function. There's a lot of evolutionary data that seems to indicate that periodic exposure to extreme cold seems to make the brain develop itself a little bit more. There's an enzyme that we produce called BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor. And it's also dendrite nootropic factor.

Oz Garcia:
These are enzymes that make you build more brain, more neurons, healthier neurons. And so, cold seems to precipitate the production of BDNF. So if you want to think better, cryotherapy periodically. I'll do an ice bath. This is not the easiest thing in the world.

Mimi MacLean:
Do you do that in your apartment?

Oz Garcia:
I do it in my house. I'll go down to the local drugstore, I'll go to the supermarket, I'll get 40 pounds of ice, sounds like a lot. I throw them to the tub, fill it up with a little bit of water. And then I'll get in, I'll get in from anywhere, from 1 to 20 minutes. Whew. It takes years to build up to that. But I got to tell you, in terms of recovering from exercise, when you're really down, if your mood is just in the dumps and you can't pull out and maybe your supplements are not working, if you're on a medication, an SSRI med, and that's not kicking in probably.

Oz Garcia:
The extreme cold makes a phenomenal difference as, as extreme heat. There is a brilliant podcaster, Rhonda Patrick, she's got a terrific show called FoundMyFitness. And you'd have to like cycle back to an episode, probably about a year ago, where she interviews a really great thinker. And I can't think off the top of my head which university is associated with where they study the effects of extreme heat, saunas, infrared or regular saunas on depression.

Oz Garcia:
Where you'll do sauna every day for about an hour with breaks, 20 minutes break, 20 minutes break, and so on over the course of several weeks. And they can actually measure the improvement in serotonin, melatonin, quality of sleep, the kind of questionnaires that they use, so that they can measure what's going on with you emotionally and how you score. Saunas, I think, are terrific for controlling inflammation, certainly inflammation within the brain that may lead to depression, poor quality thinking. Alright.

Oz Garcia:
So then if you mix them both up, if you do extreme cold and extreme heat, then you've got a remarkable bundle in terms of how you can control what's going on with your brain. So there are different centers here that have infrared saunas with cryo, or you can go to a traditional Russian bathhouse on a Sunday afternoon where I'll meet my buddies. You sit in the banya, which is essentially an oven. It's set at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, sweat for 15 minutes, run out of there, go into the ice cold plunge, and then go sit down and catch your breath.

Oz Garcia:
And repeat that a few times. You'll have the best day of your life. And for days after that, the inflammatory control is remarkable, improvement in sleep, control over anxiety, moods, et cetera. It's pretty spectacular.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. So I know you had a couple other like there's a ball there that I saw you bring in. What other gadgets do you have there that we haven't talked about?

Oz Garcia:
So this is Hyperice. Hyperice is a company that makes different kinds of devices that actually cause very extreme pulsing deep tissue massage without getting a massage therapist. So once this turns on, it's pulsing at about 30,000 times per minute and it becomes its own massage machine. Also when you're dealing with recovery and you can't get a massage therapist to come to you, you're aching all over, using this particular device is really quite remarkable.

Oz Garcia:
For people that have chronic backache, chronic neck pain, you can put this on your couch and just lean your neck into it or your back into it. Hyperice makes rollers besides this, and it also makes a pulsing gun. And I'll show you that one too. These are really critical hack in biohacking devices. The pulse one ... It's a gun, looks like a gun. We haven't seen this one. Same thing. This isn't a massage gun. This is a pulsing device. Sounds ridiculous. It's like, well, what's the difference? The pulsing itself is extremely deep. And in terms of recovery, sometimes in the morning, this will be part of my morning routine also. So after I do my exercise and/or before my ice bath, I'll do every square inch of my body with the gun.

Mimi MacLean:
What's that brand?

Oz Garcia:
This is also Hyperice, and it's called Hypervolt. Alright. So for anybody who's in recovery, going through treatment protocols, getting blood flowing is critical. And if you're not going to do an ice bath using the Hyperice volt called the Hypervolt, I think, is critical in terms of getting adequate massage that you give yourself. The other thing that I would recommend, there's so many things you and I could spend another hour or two here very easily, are the Kokoon headsets. Now, these are my favorite.

Oz Garcia:
Because if I'm doing a meditation with Muse, I've got Muse on my forehead, and then I'll listen to it through this headset. Thing about Kokoon is it fits beautifully against your head, it's got little readers on the inside that can tell when you fall asleep. So you can use this for meditation. You can use this if you want to go to sleep and you want to listen to a story, you want to listen to a podcast. Audible, it is amazing in that you don't feel it at all. And like I said, it will turn off the app once it knows that you're asleep. So it knows when you fall asleep. [crosstalk 00:36:55]

Mimi MacLean:
This is cool.

Oz Garcia:
Very, very cool. It's spelled K-O-K-O-O-N. Now one of the things that happens often when you're in recovery, is you begin to lose energy and you suffer a lot because of that. There's damage is sent to the mitochondria, in your cells. Mitochondria are engines that burn sugar, glucose, and fat to produce fuel, ATP, part of what's called the Krebs cycle. Every little muscle cell has thousands of mitochondria. Mitochondria, by the way, interestingly enough, were bacteria that migrated into human cells way before there were human beings and created a symbiotic relationship where they would get fuel food from the organism that it invaded.

Oz Garcia:
And at the same time, it would then process that particular fuel to produce energy for the organism that was housing it. So this tells you the damage that antibiotics can cause also to energy systems within the body. Mitochondria will not fire off properly. So we'll talk about a couple of quick products here that I think should be taken to actually improve mitochondrial function. So that as you're dealing with the drag on your energy, just from Lyme, just from being sick, or a flu, and so on, what can you take to actually maintain energy levels?

Oz Garcia:
One of the things that I recommend is immediately get on a protocol to build your lungs and maintain good lung power, so that you're not losing oxygen to your muscles and yourselves. Alright. That's where the breathing exercises coming in the morning. This is a device called Airofit. Alright. You can get this on Amazon too. This is used primarily to make an athlete stronger. Again, an NFL player last longer. It looks like a mouthpiece from NASA, looks like that. Turn it on. There's a little green light go on. It goes in your mouth. And then it has different settings on either side.

Oz Garcia:
And then runs off an app. So this will test your lung capacity. So I can do a long test every day, morning, afternoon, before workout, after workout. I've got a good idea as to more or less what I'm capable of doing at this point. So my lung capacity is not all that far off from where it may have been about 30 years ago. But the device will also take you through different exercises, beginner, intermediate, expert. And it mimics the kind of breathing that you would have to exert if you were throwing a football, if you were jogging, if you're bicycling, if you're bicycling uphill, if you were running, if you were running on a flat surface, if you were going through a parcourse, and so on.

Oz Garcia:
So you can set the device to actually do that, and it also has the capacity to rebuild brain function and ways that I never would have bet on. So I really missed a day where I don't use it. So I'll do five minutes. And some days, I'll do five minutes in the morning, five minutes at night. You do sleep better with it. It also calms you down tremendously. So not that it calms you down that you can't work, but it calms you down so you can actually think better. Alright, in that regard. So this is another biohacking device. I did want to point that. And we've gone through about a half a dozen of them, yes. And then I'd love to talk about some supplements and some other things that I think are really important in the morning.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. I was gonna ask you, I know you love doing shakes and stuff like that in the morning.

Oz Garcia:
Sure.

Mimi MacLean:
If you could talk about that. You usually add some good stuff for the brain.

Oz Garcia:
I'm going to share right now. Also, I did want to say that journaling is critical, probably writing five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening. If it's hard for you, I would download the Five-Minute Journal and get the app. And it's primarily a gratitude journal. So it will ask you, what will you be grateful for today? And at the end of the day, what are you grateful for what happened today? Just doing that every day and then looking back over a year is a mind blower.

Oz Garcia:
But to get you to focus on any number of practices that you may not do regularly also has profound effect on shaping your neurochemistry, what's also referred to as neuroplasticity. So how you shape your brain to your advantage is turned by how well you practice gratitude, gratefulness, forgiveness, letting go, lovingness, meditation. But you can journal this and you'll be aware of the fact that after a while, if you do stick with the practice, you're much less prone to be anxious, fearful.

Oz Garcia:
And you can let go of stuff a lot quicker, and get back on what's relevant in terms of the subject matter right now. So, that I want to point that. That actually does take up about 20 minutes of my morning too. In terms of supplementation, so I don't drink coffee, I do like caffeine. So I'll have tea or I'll have in a smoothie to begin with, matcha DNA green tea. So if I don't have it in a cup of hot tea with, let's say, stevia, this goes into my blender, UltraClear, in all standby. This is made primarily from rice and pea flour. So, it tends to be more on the vegetarian side.

Oz Garcia:
One scoop of this goes into the blender. There's a very important chemical that you and I need, so that we have power in our muscles too. I wish I would have known more about it a while ago. It's called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is very rich in beets, arugula. And so, what it does, is along with the energy produced by mitochondria, it then enforces that energy within the muscle cell, so you've got greater power. I use beet root powder that goes into the smoothie. This increases nitric oxide levels very quickly.

Oz Garcia:
Then, is a combination of citrulline, which is an amino acid made from watermelon, and arginine, that also increases nitric oxide. So when I mix these together, I've got a power smoothie. I'll put in a handful of blueberries. I'll put probiotics into this smoothie too, some ice. I may use coconut water. And that's my morning power up. I may use some MCT oil, typically, it's medium-chain triglyceride in order to get good power with an exceptional fat. I'll give my medium-chain triglyceride from coconut oil.

Mimi MacLean:
And do you need to keep that refrigerated?

Oz Garcia:
No. I've got like three containers, so I keep two refrigerated. But if I'm going to use it, I'll keep it out. I mean, I'll take it out because it gets hard as stone.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, and then not cold.

Oz Garcia:
But it's a terrific fat in order, again, for you to have adequate levels of fat in the morning, something that your body can burn through and sustain you throughout your workouts throughout your day and so on.

Mimi MacLean:
That's good.

Oz Garcia:
So, that's the morning smoothie. My diet tends to be, for the most part, extremely easy. I tend to usually skip lunch. It may be a soup, could be squash soup, could be bean soup. Dinners are on the early side, around 6:00, and they tend to be seafood, roasted vegetables, a really good carbohydrate, yam, squash, quinoa, handful rice. I'm getting hungry talking to you. I may throw in a handful blueberries too. So ...

Mimi MacLean:
So there's only one meal a day, pretty much?

Oz Garcia:
Pretty much so, yeah. So it's a smoothie, something light in the midday, and a light dinner. I do intermittent fasting where I'll just do fluids from, let's say, breakfast till the next day. I may do 20 to 24 hours, at least once a week. And then there are days where I'll have a smoothie, I'll have a lunch, but I won't have a dinner. So essentially go to bed on an empty stomach. And that's terrific. Same thing, that causes your body to create an effect called autophagy.

Oz Garcia:
Where, in autophagy, you're replacing a lot of sick cells and just dumping them, then replacing them with new healthy cells. Autophagy and the flipside of that is called apoptosis. And same thing, these are events that occur where you're building new cells and you get you're placing dead old cells, sometimes referred to as zombie cells. If you're dealing with Lyme's, I would definitely consult with your doctor to see if you should be doing intermittent fasting, but I can't recommend it enough. Because turnover in terms of getting rid of old bad cells and you healthier cells is done really quite dramatically by doing intermittent fasting, by reducing the amount the food that you eat.

Mimi MacLean:
This is great. So much good information. I love this. Thank you so much for your time. This is so much taken, but it's all good.

Oz Garcia:
I can't wait to hear it.

Mimi MacLean:
Yes, you always have new stuff, every time I talk to you. It's like new ... I don't know where you find all your good information, but it's always ...

Oz Garcia:
Curiosity, it's a superpower.

Mimi MacLean:
Yes, this has been ... You boiled it down and made it sound so simple and broke it down for everybody. So this is great. And I really, really appreciate it. Is there anything else that we've missed that we should end on?

Oz Garcia:
That's plenty. That's plenty.

Mimi MacLean:
Okay. I thought so.

Oz Garcia:
I think when you put the notes up for the show, people can go through it. They can always go email you, email me or my staff, and we can fill in the gaps for them.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, you do have a lot of great supplements on your website as well for people. Yes, I'm still addicted to the Vivaxl.

Oz Garcia:
That's like a thunderbolt in a packet.

Mimi MacLean:
I know. It's like that's my coffee in the morning. I don't think I can go without that every day.

Oz Garcia:
Oh, phenomenal, Mimi. It is a good thing.

Mimi MacLean:
Anyway, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Oz Garcia:
Welcome, sweetie. I'll talk to you real soon.

Mimi MacLean:
Take care. Each week, I will bring you different voices from the wellness community so that they can share how they help their clients heal. You will come away with tips and strategies to help you get your life back. Thank you so much for coming on. And I'm so happy you're here. Subscribe now and tune in next week. If you want to learn how I detox and you want to check out my detox for Lyme checklist, go to lime360.com/detoxchecklist. You can also join our community at Lyme 360 Warriors on Face book, and let's heal together. Thank you.