Hi everyone, welcome to Biohacking Girls podcast. We are the show's host, and I am Alette. And I am Monika. We are good friends and colleagues, and we put together our experiences and knowledge to inspire you to become your own biohacker and optimize your life.
We follow new research and trends and ask the questions we think are necessary. Yes, we share information about biohacking, life coaching and fitness, and we hope you will feel inspired and ready to take a step forward to get in the best health-oriented form. Welcome to the Biohacking Girls podcast.
One of the first things that popped up on my Instagram account was a guy called Tim Gray. The first stories I saw of him, I thought he was clean cocoa. He had rings in his nose and tape over his mouth. He had colored glasses and he was sitting with a breathing apparatus. Do you remember all this?
I remember it very well, and not only that, he had IVs in his arms, and he had, I mean, there was a lot, and we got a little interested too, didn't we? Yes, and then there's the balance between what is exciting and exciting love, and what can almost feel a little unpleasant, and when we wanted to make Biohacking Girls, we wanted to have a little more feminine impact on it, not the extremely disgusting, like, that goes on
Thank you.
We have absolutely. But I think it's a classic thing to do when you go all in. You really want to try absolutely everything. We tried a lot the first year, Monika, just to have done it. But now we have calmed things down a bit, a bit more back to basics. And I see that biohacker Tim has also started with that.
I wonder if you have that chip on your chest that David Sinclair has, because I'm a little curious just to say that. But we're sitting here as we speak with some new devices that we're going to get back to, but in any case, this is cool because we have now launched Biohacking Weekend, and that is also a small common denominator with today's guest, which is Tim Gray.
That's right, and we have been talking about how we want to create this biohacking environment in Norway, which we see is in so many other countries, and especially Tim Gray's, what he has achieved in the UK, is absolutely fantastic. I think we are now meeting, Monica, I think the time is right for a biohacking weekend here in Norway as well.
Yes, I think so too. We have been working on this since last summer. We started thinking about creating a community. We are of course inspired by summit conferences we have attended, both in lockdown, online and physically. The one we are really working on now is Tim Gray's Biohacking Summit, which is in May.
Yes, it is now at the end of May, the 28th and 29th. We really have to try to get that inspiration to meet the people who give attention and see all the new things that are out there. Yes, yes.
Let's talk about Tim and tell us who he is, because he is the leading biohacker in the UK. He is also a psychologist, entrepreneur, and he talks all over the world at many health conferences and events. That's what he does. Maybe he will come to us one day in the future, we don't know.
But he is very well known in the UK. He is the UK's biggest biohacker. He has been in The Times, The Wanderlust and GQ. He has also become a checker, that I would say.
Yes, and he has been doing research and self-healing on his own body for years and tried to be healthy from chronic sufferings. So he has done that through biohacking and he tries to inspire many other people to take care of their own health as we wish. And he has also created a network called the Health Optimization Summit, both online and physically.
This is super exciting. Tim Gray, UK's leading biohacker. We actually have you on our podcast and we are so thrilled. Welcome to us. Thanks for having me.
So let's start with your background because we have to introduce you. We already did that, but we need to hear your story and your starting journey. Of course, we have to start from the beginning. Not a chance. That's going to take too long. I'll give you a quick skip through history.
Busy business guy, running multiple companies, thinking being sick was for weak people and just my staff that wanted a day off. Got to the point of burnout, started forming kidney stones, started getting infections, urinary tract infections, bloating, intolerances, brain fog, borderline depression, anxiety, and basically just started falling apart.
And like with many people, when things start going wrong, it spirals out of control often. And then you get sucked into the medical system of doctors giving you pills as opposed to actually intervening properly, in my opinion. And it got worse and worse and worse until one day I just kind of went, I'm going to tackle this like a...
business problem with a pack of post-it notes which I carry everywhere and stuck them all over the wall all the different symptoms and researched every single thing until I traced it back to where I needed to and then tackled them one by one through and I mean I guess it's a systematic thinking approach to optimize my health which you know 2000
So yeah, so that was really biohacking, but I didn't know what it was. I didn't know anything about biohacking. I knew about liver flushes and Epsom salt baths and various supplements and things, but there wasn't really any prominent biohackers at the time. Functional medicine wasn't really talked about and Instagram hadn't really evolved at that point to have the support.
or the info that's out there now. And then in 2015, I think it was, I heard about Bulletproof Coffee and Dave's podcast and couldn't believe that there was someone with a similar mindset out there. Loved Bulletproof Coffee, felt like I came alive from being on a high fat breakfast opposed to a carb heavy one.
And then the turning point really was when I heard about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and that was actually on the Bulletproof Radio from Dave. So I got him to thank for that. It was, he said, well, no, this is crazy chamber. You go in and it gives you extra oxygen and you feel amazing from it. Then it heals all sorts of things. So I tried it out and it was a few hours outside of London. I really loved it. And it was a significant shift for me. So yeah.
So, but because I was running multiple companies, I couldn't get out of the city for a whole day, two or three times a week. It would cost me too much money in my time. And that was the most valuable thing. So I opened a clinic in central London in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, really just for me to use. But, you know, it became a very popular, very popular clinic. It was full up with two chambers all around all day, every day.
And that kind of got me on the map, I guess. I went to the hyperbaric conference in the States and met Dom D'Agostino and told him what I was doing and then started talking about my journey a bit more. And I'd written a blog and that picked up a bit of interest. And then I started going to the conferences like Bulletproof Conference and Metabolic Health Summit and various other things.
and realized I was a biohacker and it kind of went from there. And then I went to the Bulletproof Conference 2017, realized that there was a really, really, really big community of crazy health optimizers like us out there and decided to start a meetup in London. This little meetup, I was thinking it was going to have 20 or 30 people. On the first one, it was 50 people.
And then the next one was 150 people. We got to about 150 people a month turning up. And then one day my mom said to me, what's this biohacker thing? And I said, well, it's a meetup of biohackers. And she said, well, what is a biohacker?
And I said, well, it's someone that optimizes their health. Like she's been doing her whole life actually because of leaky gut back in the 80s she had and various things. So she associated with that label and I thought, well, that's actually being from a marketing background, I'm going to call it health optimization, not biohacking, even though I am Tim Biohacker and I am a biohacker. The health optimization is the goal. The group grew to several thousand people and
Next thing I know, I'm doing a conference, which has got 1200 people. And it's kind of gone from there. So yeah, this year, obviously, the Health Optimization Summit is at the end of May 28th, 29th. And we're expecting 2000 to 2200 people, 105 exhibitors, which is like a playground, playground, if you're in the health space, every single brand has been hand selected by me. And yeah,
Yeah, 35 speakers, including Ben Greenfield, Dinah Rogers from Sacred Cow, Dr. Sachin Panda. Wow. I mean, the list is just insane. I mean, I've spent three years collecting, working, doing the best I can. You know, this is basically how it's gone. So that's a skip through history, a quick one. And that went on a while. Amazing. No, that was really, really, really, really good. So...
How many summits have you had? Because I guess you didn't have any during the Corona. No, we did one digital conference during Corona. I've done about 15 smaller events of two to 400 people and one large scale event at 1200 people. And then this one in May, which is going to be 2000 to 2200 people. Would you do like a digital version of this one too, if people can attend?
No. I mean, there's enough digital stuff out there. I mean, you know, how many physical books do you read and how many internet sites are out there? Who do you know what to trust? It's much easier to do a digital conference, although it's still a lot of work pulling these things together. I mean, when I first started doing the conference,
With my team, I thought, okay, I'll convince a few speakers, convince a few brands, share a bit out on social media, and people will flock. It's not really that simple. I mean, it's really, really, really, really complicated machine and process.
you know, every speaker has specific requirements and timings and flight times and where they're staying. And then when they go on the agenda and is that going to be the right time for their topic and are people going to attend and are they on the right stage? I mean, there's a whole host of things. So, um,
Digital conference, I think, is so much easier to do, but still complicated. But after Corona, people are absolutely dying to meet, hug, have human interactions, meet random people that you wouldn't have met otherwise, come to a new city or whatever, just have a break away from what's been going on the last two or three years. So that's why I'm sticking to physical events, not digital ones.
I do agree. I think that we are hungry for the hugs this year. So good on you. But can we get back to the hyperbaric oxygen chamber? You kind of just breezed over it. I want to know more about that. Yeah, it's very amazing therapy, actually. So it's been around a very long time.
And it's typically used for divers that have the bends and they're pressurized usually two, three atmospheric pressures, something like that. What that does is it creates pressure like as if you are underwater. And what they then do is give you oxygen via a mask, almost 100% oxygen with a mask. But because of the increased pressure, what it does is it helps you dissolve more oxygen into your bloodstream.
which means then you can do it at normal atmospheric pressure. And what that means is that you saturate your cells with oxygen. So bearing in mind that we live in a city, many of us live in a city, or don't have the level of oxygen that we should have if we were living in nature like our ancestors. And also oxygen has declined over time. It was in the higher 20s centuries ago.
So the point is, is that because we're partially starved of oxygen and partially because of posture, and I'm guilty of that and working on posture and your lung capacity and whether or not you're a mouth breather or nose breather and all these different factors, we're under oxygenated. And even if it's by 5%, that has a significant impact on one, our immune system, two, our healing and three on our cognitive system.
performance. Okay. So being in a hyperbaric chamber can give you up to 15 times more oxygen into your cells, replenishing your body with what it's actually craving for that you didn't realize that you needed. So for instance, where it has a particularly effective application is for people with diabetic foot wounds. For instance, usually the foot would have to be amputated because it just won't heal.
When they go into a hyperbaric chamber after 15 to 30 sessions at two to three atmospheric pressures, which is significantly more pressure than we have in the normal world, what that does is it gets oxygen to the wound and helps it heal from the inside out. Pretty similar to like when you have a cut and you're bleeding, if you put a plaster on it, the oxygen or the air won't get to it, it won't dry out and it won't heal.
Exactly the same, very similar to that principle from oxygen from the inside out. So it saturates your cells and think of it. And while it's not about water specifically, think about it like if you don't water your plant with enough water, it will live, it won't thrive. And the body is like that with oxygen. It will live, it won't thrive.
And the hyperbaric oxygen fills that deficiency almost. So for some people, they notice a huge difference. And some people have die off and actually feel quite like knackered for a few days while their immune systems regulated and worked better. And other people don't notice anything at all. And often the ones that don't notice anything at all are usually athletes that are super oxygenated because they're very active. So yeah, so...
that's basically it yeah but uh so do you still do this how often can you do it yeah um i i had a surgery back in 2017 and they told me it would take three to four months to heal i lucky enough to have my own clinic so i was in there every day and i had 90 minutes at two atmospheric pressures every day for three weeks and i was healed
I was using red light therapy on it as well for 15 minutes a day. So really it does. So my point is, is it really does depend on what you need it for. Do you want it just for a bit of better mental clarity? For instance, you've just had a flight and the oxygen levels and carbon dioxide levels on a flight are very poor actually. And I measure them everywhere I go. Actually, I've got something measuring over there right now. Yeah.
After a flight, your body is stressed. We often get colds because our immune system hits quite hard after being on a flight, especially with recirculated air and things. The best thing to do is obviously jump in a hyperbaric chamber and get lots of oxygen back into your cell so your body can repair properly.
I actually contacted you and you gave me some good advices when I was in London last time, but I didn't have time to prioritize that. But we haven't tried that yet. But what do you think about like HRV or oxygen water? Would that be like just a little sister? Is there any ways for us who don't know that in Norway? The amount of oxygen available to us is in abundance.
We don't need a little bit more from our water. What we do need to do is practice proper breathing because for instance, there was a client of ours that was very sick and poorly. I won't go into the details.
But he was supposed to have hyperbaric therapy every day, five days a week, every week. And in the end, he couldn't get into London. His son couldn't spare the time to bring him into London. He couldn't have session. So what we did was we got him actually to practice breath work properly, proper breath work. And that includes Butyco method, such as Dr. Patrick McCowan's work, which is where you learn to hold your breath on the out-breath.
so that you can deal with carbon dioxide better. And the better you deal with carbon dioxide, obviously, the better you deal with oxygen, because the better you can deal with carbon dioxide, actually, it helps force oxygen into the cell. So by getting them to practice breath work properly every day, as well as using some Wim Hof method, he actually didn't need hyperbaric
oxygen therapy anymore after he had been doing it for around a month. So I think if you're thinking that drinking different water that's been oxygen infused or whatever blah blah blah product that someone wants to buy, I don't necessarily think it's going to be the magic pill. Sure it might help a little bit but really it starts with you, your environment and your daily habits, not the water you drink. However good water is
mineralized water, reverse osmosis water or fresh spring water can make a massive difference to your health. But I don't necessarily think that getting oxygen infused water will make the massive difference that anyone's hoping for.
So to our listeners, when you read Tim Gray's amazing posts on Instagram, they're always filled with reflection, philosophies. And I think you really add an extra touch to the biohacking content because you are also a specialist in psychology. So it's not just about the health. It's also about the emotions. How do you...
take care of that yourself as a biohacker. It can be a lot of texts and things to organize in our stressful lives. I'm very, very lucky to have had mental health issues in my family since a child. And growing up with a parent that has bipolar or whatever label you want to call it these days, really, I didn't understand how that would affect me in my adult life. And
and that's not to say negatively um more i always um solution focused in everything i do you probably notice it in my in my content is always actionable takeaways always something to to take away not just talking in theory you know like the academics do and it's like well okay well what can i take from this so really as a kid i wanted to understand and i only realized this recently i wanted to understand how to communicate with my father properly
because it was hard to get through to him because of his illness. So anyway,
20 years of psychology, cognitive hypnotherapy, behavioral sciences, body language, emotion detection, micro-expressions, everything, all of these things. I really had a hunger for it for many, many years. And in fact, I applied that to digital marketing eventually so people could communicate better on their websites. I had a whole agency on it. And this is before my biohacking. So all of these things, I didn't realize...
compound effect of how significant this would be in my adult life of really understanding communication or people's intent behind communication and then also self-reflection as well and I think to distill everything I've learned along the way and it's very simplifying it because there's been a lot of you know hundreds of books and many hours of study how I manage it perfectly is
or as best I can, is every morning I wake up, I have my supplements and I sit on the sofa and I close my eyes for 10 minutes. And I call it silence. I don't call it meditation. I call it silence because it's easier to be silent and just close your eyes without distraction than it is to meditate for many people, including myself. And I think through anything that is triggering or has triggered me the previous day.
For instance, I had builders come to my house a few months ago and the lady spoke to me in such a way. I nearly said I was nearly rude, very nearly rude. And the next day I sat and reflected on it. It's like, why was I nearly rude? Like, what what is that? What does it say about me? Not about her. It's nothing about her.
And on reflection, it was like, well, actually, when she spoke to me in a rude way, it made me feel like I was stupid. And when she made me feel like stupid, I then needed to or wanted to take back the power to show her I wasn't stupid. Now, once upon a time when I was younger, I think I was very stupid, very, very stupid. But I like to think I'm very I reflect on things and I learn and grow every day. Point is, is my insecurities I had as a younger man of being stupid aren't there anymore.
I know I need to be better, but I know I'm not stupid. So that insecurity actually that once served me getting cross to her to make a show I'm not stupid was once a behavior that supported. The point is basically now I go, well, actually I didn't need to get cross because I know I'm not stupid and I can talk calmly. So when someone speaks to me and I'm stupid in future,
I know I don't need to react negatively because that comes from a place of insecurity. So that's just one example of how I sit down in 10 minutes every day and reflect inwards and say, what triggered me? And what does that say about me? Not about them or the situation. What does that say about me? And what can I do to be better every day? And I found since I've done that, and I've been doing it well over a year,
I found that things that I've needed to work through have gone instantly, like almost the next day. I've reframed that thought or understood that thought. And I thought about it from every angle in that 10 minutes is like, what does that say about me? What else could that be? How is that perceived by other people? You know, why do I care how it's perceived by other people, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I think in terms of psychological health, that's really helped me, you know, turbocharge,
my growth. And then the second thing is actually morning affirmations. And I've shared a few of them out on my stories on Instagram over the last month or so. For instance, one thing that used to trigger me was because I meet a lot of people, I hang out around with a lot of people, I introduce a lot of people and I feel like it's a good fit. When I introduce some people together and then they hang out without me, something triggers in me and it's like, oh, I feel like I'm being left out. I'm not lovable. I'm not loved.
And that would always trigger me and I couldn't figure it out. But when I sat and reflected on it from an inside perspective and then put it into my affirmations, I'm like, well, actually, when people I introduce meet and hang out without me, it shows how good I'm at introducing the right people and they want to bond deeper. And I will get to hang out with them another time and be rewarded for it another way. And so that's the example how the self-reflection and the affirmations every single day of my life
helps me let go of my own as vision lackey arnie calls it brawls rules um and really uh perform better every day and then you can lock it in you can say okay i don't need that bad behavior anymore
And on to the next. I really like that because it's like an inward journaling when you sit in silence. Instead of writing down, you can really feel it, think about it, and then let's go. So inspiring. Yeah, this is something we should all do, everyone. And these last years, the world has changed a lot. And how do you see the world through a health perspective these days? Yeah.
I think what motivates me is to teach people the things that I've learned that have been so valuable.
And I don't want people to have to go through the stuff that I've gone through. And I still go through health issues. I mean, you know, why am I a biohacker? Because I had health issues. I still do. But the point is, I consider myself to be in a significantly better place than I once was. And I don't want people to have to go through not being able to leave the house for a year because they can't get off the toilet or, you know, or their brain's just not working or their immune system's going wrong and you happen to have a different tooth pulled every week. You know, these things, I don't want people to have to go through it.
So I'm really just doing my best to communicate what people can do. And it's not really a chore, it's a passion. And so I just keep doing it when I learn something new or things that I have learned that come to surface that I forgot that I haven't talked about, then I just share it. And I think the lockdowns, the world, how it's been the last few years has really turbocharged it for people. They realize...
actually, this is something I should be focusing on. And, you know, me being so stressed about worried about catching, you know, this virus, perhaps I should do something about it in the long term. So it's just going out drinking and smoking every Friday and Saturday night, like the typical Brit does. So I, you know, I think the other thing is before COVID hit,
early 2019, I did a survey on Oxford Street, which is the busiest shopping street in Europe, actually. And I asked people, do you want to biohack? And less than a tenth of a percent of people said yes. In fact, they didn't even know what it was. And I think this is before the biohacker TV show that came out, which is wrong in my opinion. And then I said, okay, do you want to optimize your health?
And 94% of people said yes, if they had time or if push comes to shove, yes, they would. Yes, they do. 5% of people said a loved one and 1% of people just pushed us out of the way because they're busy and it's London and they're probably on their lunch break or whatever. So the point is that
That was pre-COVID. 94% of people said their health was important to them. Where can it be now? And having a conference or whatever called Health Optimization Summit after a pandemic is a pretty, I think, pretty fortunate brand to have because it's in the forefront of everyone's mind.
How long that lasts for, I don't know. But I do know that the health space and the health tech and supplement industries have all grown massively through the pandemic. And there's a lot more investment going into the longevity fields as a result of people being worried through this. So I think the natural order of things is to continue for it to grow at an even faster rate.
So you are such an experienced biohacker here in Norway. We have been biohacking for several years and our podcast is just a year old and the community starts to grow. But do you think your summit with all the experience and years behind you, is that for everybody? And is there still spaces left to attend? Can everybody come? Yeah.
So it is for everybody. So if I go back to my mother for a second, when she said, what's a biohacker? Every piece of content is written and spoken in a way that everyone can understand. Okay. Some people may say the word mitochondria. I personally on my Instagram use the word energy production.
instead of mitochondria most of the time. And I like to educate as I go along, but I'm always in the mindset that people are joining this space and they're not five, 10 years in like I am, which is why I created the fundamentals of health digital course, because so many people said, where do I start? What do I do? You know, what are the intricacies in that? And answering 150 messages a day just isn't possible. So I'm like, do the course, this will bring you up to speed.
The summit is the same. It has the speakers that can talk super deep so the people that have been in it for many years understand. And it's also aimed at people like my mother so they can understand it and learn from it.
at the conference and then all the goodies all the tech all the supplements and everything like that are obviously hand curated by me in every single one um and there's nothing on the floor that isn't accessible to everyone some things are a little bit expensive um but most of it is very accessible you know like 85 percent of it's very yeah accessible
And you can try out hyperbaric oxygen therapy there. We have a test lab. Yeah. You can test it out. That's great. Would you like to talk a little bit about diet and lifestyle, what you eat? We are keto coaches. And of course, there's variations into that keto lifestyle too. But how do you eat and what do you focus on? Very good question.
It really depends on my goals at the time. I've tried plant-based. I've tried fully vegan. I've tried vegetarian. I've tried fully keto, including dirty keto. And I think every single person has an individual need, depending on their goal. Men can fast 18 hours a day. Women, okay, they can, but it screws them up. And I don't think that's right. I think there's always caveats and exceptions to everything.
But really it's about being hyper-personalized what's right for you. We don't need to necessarily do blood tests and be diagnostic to the absolute T with everyone, although it is nice to do so. So you can see if you've got any intolerances that you should avoid because that can save you years on your optimization. But really, I think the rules that I live by are 95% of the time organic,
Don't stress if it's not, but make sure that it's the exception when it's not. Organic, good plants, clean grass-fed meat, wild caught fish, raw dairy, preferably A2 protein dairy as opposed to A1.
And 5% of the time, let go and enjoy life if that's what your bag is because the excess cortisol from being so stressed about not having a single thing with a crisp or something bad in it will actually hurt your digestion more than from the stress alone than the food in one off would. So basically, paleo and as keto as I can, I
Um, but not stressing if it's not, um, but it is very individualized, very, very individualized. And for me, I can't have fermented foods because I'm working on a histamine issue at the moment, which ties into my genetics I'm working through. But for most people, you know, histamine isn't necessarily an issue. Um,
Yeah, but being very diagnostic. For instance, I'll give you an example. A few months ago, I tested having a McDonald's to see what it would do to me. Now, I thought, I haven't had one for years. Actually, there's no other food around. I really should eat. And I was like, actually, now is the time where I'm going to test it to see what my heart rate does, to see what happens to my body. And I'm going to be in a good space for the next 48 hours. So let's just test it. It
Absolutely destroyed me. My resting heart rate went up 18 beats a minute within half an hour. And I was on the toilet pretty much for 18 hours as a result. That's how adverse my body is to this stuff now. And once upon a time, I'd be eating it three or four times a week, 10, 12 years ago. But for other people, having it once might not be an issue. I mean, obviously, your body is not going to really get much benefit from it, but...
Everyone's different and I think it's important to test where you can and be sensible. Eat as our ancestors would or as close to it as possible is the ultimate rule. At least you get to shock the system every now and then and the body doesn't become lazy. But how about wine? We know you dry farm wine. Any suggestions there? Yes. I hadn't drunk for four years at one point.
And I just remember craving that crazy feeling of not giving a shit about the world. You know, I'd been hyper stressed for many years and I went out and I got tipsy and I was walking home and I was just like, oh, wow, it's so good to feel like this again because it's just so different. I think it has its place. And after that, my health actually improved because I learned to let go. I actually came out of a...
stress state into a less stress state even though my body was put under a short-term stressor the alcohol so i do think it has its place and when i do drink it's obviously biodynamic organic natural wine which isn't full of you know different chemicals and preservatives and whatnot it's mineral rich which means that the grapes are generally grown on mineral rich soil that's rotated and
And the grapes haven't been irrigated. So it's not just, you know, basically added water. It's high quality grape juice with low sugar, medium alcohol. So you don't get hangovers because it's not so stressful on the liver. And that's what dry farm wines essentially is. And they scour Europe for the best biodynamic organic practice farms out there.
So if I do drink wine, it's that. And actually they are a sponsor of my summit. I love their mission. I love those guys. However, if I don't drink wine, which I avoid most of it because I'm not a fan of red wine, white wine or the orange wine I do like, I generally have a Negroni, which is really high in bitters and it's clean gin.
which is my poison of choice. And I probably do that three times a year. Or it's gin and sparkling water. That's basically what I drink. If I do, obviously I have activated charcoal and chlorella and I make sure I carry some hypertonic from one of the Quinton hydration, something like that. So I'm remineralizing and finding any toxins that might be
to support me and then I don't get a hangover. And that's 95% successful. Copy that. We love that. What about peptides, Tim? Have you tested any peptides and what is your experience about them? Could you share some there too? I haven't tested peptides yet.
Yes, yes, I do. And yes, I have. I think they're an incredible tool to have. I don't think it's wise to just have any peptide and
go for it just buying them off the internet and hoping for the best I think it's important to work with a good practitioner that is fluent in them the typical ones are BPC 157 which helps you heal faster TB 500 which also does very similar LL 37 which is
antiviral and powerful, very, very powerful one. Then there's thymocyanin alpha-1, which also helps regulate your immune system.
There's a whole host of them, really. One that I do like at the moment, and I'm trying to remember the name of them. I think it's BioPrime Supplements, BioPrime. And they actually do a face serum copper peptide. So use a derma roller and the copper peptide, which actually helps reverse gray hair, which is good for me because I'm, as you can see, I'm
turning quite quickly at the moment he doesn't look like he's great but anyway so so yeah so they all have their place they a lot of them are experimental um and um
I think they're going to become much more mainstream in the coming years, for sure. And there's a lot of practitioners in America that are actually prescribing them. And I've seen a lot of very good results with them. So CanLab is at least one well-known DN laboratories. So we haven't started yet, but we have Epitalon and Epitalon.
epimoril and kiss pepton here but that's injectable you need like an insulin uh inject what you call that so uh well it's new is there any biohacks that you haven't tried that are way too extreme or you're considering them or yeah i'm 10 years in
It's pretty confident I've done the majority of the ones that are worth doing. There's always something new that comes out and there's always a re-spin of something similar. But really, I mean, if you've got the fundamentals down, a lot of these biohacks are fun. Like for instance, and I'll give you a slight tangent, biohacking can be for health or it can be fun as a hobby. It's the same with sex. You know, it can be to reproduce or just because we love it.
It's exactly the same with biohacking and optimizing your health. And when you start really feeling good from doing it, it almost becomes addictive. And it's like, actually, I want to feel better. I want my brain to feel sharper. I want my energy to be peaking all the way through to the moment I jump into bed. The fundamentals are important more than anything. And any other biohack are all good. All the extreme ones are very fun.
Trying coffee enemas, doing red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ozone IV where they draw your blood out, ozonate it and put it back in again. All these different supplements and everything, but unless you've got the fundamentals down, nailed your sleep and tracked it to make sure that it is as close to 100 out of 100 as you can. Make sure that you're hydrating properly with clean, good water with minerals in it, not tap water that's low in minerals.
making sure that you're moving every day, that you're getting your lymphatic system flowing, making sure that you're having the right nutrition for you as a person and making sure that you're not deficient in nutrients and testing to make sure that you're not, making sure that the toxic relationships or relationships that are draining in your life are gone, that you just cut them loose and focus on the amazing people because it's
limitless amount of amazing people that you're not meeting because you're focusing on the wrong relationships which can change your life and your health overnight. It's all these areas and until you've got them down, there's no point doing all the funky biohacks, although they're great. These should be the icing on the cake. The smurfing is more like a very nice Instagram photo. The boutonniere. Yeah.
But we totally get it. And to have all the basics and the sleep and the sleep quality. The problem is, is the basics isn't sexy. And as you know, like with Liver King or Paul Saladino or any of these guys, they go all out extreme. Like, you know, this is bullshit or this is the only way to eat raw liver. It's like that gets engagement, that gets likes and it gets people's attention because it's not mundane and mediocre. Yeah.
the fundamentals are really where people should be focusing on 100%. And all the other stuff is just distracting. So the people that go, Oh, well, you know, the basics aren't sexy, you know, but that's why you should focus on them. Um, otherwise they're just a distraction. I mean, like for instance, one of my favorites is methylene blue, um, you know, the blue tongue stuff. I find it to be very, very good. It helps with oxygenation. It helps with my mental clarity and I do it three or four days a week. Um,
It's great. It's great. But if you're not doing your breath work or if you're not breathing properly and you're breathing through your mouth and snoring every night, right away. There's no point. And also free biohacks are really valuable because not everybody can spend money on high tech and imported drugs. So...
Yeah, we really love that you always come back to those five fundamentals you always talk about. It's really good that you always focus on them first. But we have to know, what is your most extreme biohack? So many. There's two moments where I've gone...
Oh my God, what am I doing? The first one was when I was in a hyperbaric chamber because I was in, I use the word clinic loosely. It was more like a barn in the middle of the Kent countryside in England with mold up the walls and stuff. I mean, it was not good. It was the only place I could find hyperbaric. I was in this chamber and my ears were popping and it was getting more and more pressured. And I was like, am I doing this right? Like, are my ears going to explode? Like,
what am I doing? What am I doing? And I was so, so motivated to optimize my health and be better. But I just went for it. And I'm like, I'm not sure if this is right right now. But it was great. That was one moment where I was like, this is a bit too extreme. And now hyperbaric is commonplace. It's normal with biohackers, but then it wasn't. And the other one was actually self-IVing.
I was taught by a surgeon to self-IV. Now, self-IV isn't so bad based on experience, but if you're self-IVing something like magnesium and you go too fast, you can stop your heart. Oh, my God. And so I was once doing self-IV magnesium, and I had my timer on because you can't go too fast. You have to do it over five minutes if you're doing a push.
And I remember thinking, this is outside my comfort zone. I was stripping with sweat. My cortisol was spiking. I was super stressed, but I knew I needed to get this magnesium in. I knew I needed to achieve this that I had been taught.
The thing is my sleep was horrendous that night because I was so stressed from doing the IV. I actually had the opposite effect of what I needed. And now I trust only medical professionals to do it unless it's for an emergency reason. So my point is don't do it at home.
It's definitely not good for stress and it's definitely not safe, regardless of who's listening to this and may do it themselves or whatever. Do not go to a clinic and have it as a relaxing thing with a professional doing it. That was probably my most extreme experience, yeah. Thanks for sharing. And speaking about IVs, what are your favorite IVs that you usually repeat? I like glutathione.
very much. My levels were very low, but I needed to work on the precursors. In the short term, you can boost your glutathione levels like that. Glutathione is nice if I start getting a cold or something, which is rare these days. Vitamin C, 15 to 30 grams is what I have. So it's a pretty big dose that generally burns it out very quickly. And I'm not so much of a fan of NAD.
Have you tried it? I hear there's a lot of consequences. You get stomach pain or... It depends on the NAD. I mean, I have subcutaneous, so I can do it in my belly fat at home.
So I'm fortunate in that regards, but I've had a few IVs of it and I find it's quite nice. It gives me energy, but really why would someone be deficient in NAD in the first place? That's really where, you know, the biohacker should be looking at, not just injecting NAD. But again, both are fine. If you need it quickly, yeah, go for it.
So yeah, NAD, vitamin C, magnesium and glutathione are really my go-to. Great. Also combining a lot of supplementation and biohacks. We are always cleaning up the closet and trying to measure a bit and see how things work. Do you have any advices for us? Yes, I would get a test done.
before supplementing and that test is actually in in the uk it's very easy to get it's called the nutria eval from genova labs and that in the nutria of our looks at your cells to see what you're deficient in or what's in the cell that shouldn't be
and then you can figure out what you should be supplementing. And a good functional practitioner will obviously guide you on this and tell you what you should be doing. So, you know, if you're deficient in, if your methylation is low, you don't just necessarily supplement with B12. There could be other things going on. But really, you know, it's easy to spend a fortune on supplements. If there is an area that you do focus on, it's not, you know, all these fancy compounds that you don't necessarily know what they're doing or how they're affecting us.
it should be the basics again. Like, is my digestion working properly? If my, you know, if when you go to the toilet, it's not optimal, you need to make it optimal. And that can be testing your gut bacteria, make sure that that's balanced. Or if your digestion isn't right, getting the right digestive enzymes. It's very important.
It's very simple. If you're struggling to get enough protein in every day, and you know, I think one and a half to two grams of protein a day per kilo of body weight is ideal. Personally, if you're struggling to get that, get some protein, some good protein, or make sure that you eat quality steak and have digestive enzymes with it, um, or aminos, which is actually something I recently brought out, uh, to help me with my goals. Um, you know,
Really, it should be targeted. The problem is with a lot of biohackers when they first get into biohacking, they're just like another pill, another pill, another pill. And I was there once. I'd have a mouthful of 40 different tablets in my mouth all at once thinking that more was better. But really, we don't know what happens with all these different things going in at once. It should be timed. It should be precise. And it should be to tweak.
not to rely on and supplements are for supplementing. Great. So if you, for instance, are going to, if you do a blood analysis and would try to have a protocol to change your blood, it takes six months to change the blood. So it's a good advice to go slow. This is very interesting, everything you talk about, Tim, and we would like to run and talk a little bit about the Health Optimization Summit, which is going to
now and the 28th of May, maybe we can come and see you there. So what are you most excited about this year? I'm looking forward to it happening. It's been three years nearly that we've been building this event because of COVID. And it's we're twice as big as we had planned on being just because we've had so much extra time and
Everyone wanting to get back on it in a bigger way. So I'm looking forward to the whole thing coming together. And, you know, the tickets are selling like crazy. In fact, we're almost sold out. All the VIP tickets have sold out.
we've got speakers you know speakers applying to speak left right and center because it's got so big so quickly um and we're turning them away now because we're full and even the exhibition floor we've got like two spots left out of 105 i think it is as of now so i'm just looking forward to it happening looking around all happening and seeing all the people that we brought together
and all the good times and relationships that will come from it. That's really what I'm looking for. In terms of talks, I'm very much looking forward to seeing Dr. Sachin Panda speak and hanging out with a lot of these, my friends and speakers and just, yeah.
That's what it is. Can people come to one day or do they need to turn both days? Yeah, it's a two-day ticket. I mean, obviously you can turn up one day, but it would be a waste. It's not like a typical conference where it's 10 euros or whatever to come in and then you come in for half an hour, realize it's rubbish and then leave. I mean, it's really a curated event where it's a weekend ticket. I think it's 350 pounds, something like that. We have a code, TimBioHacker, which gives 15% off, I think,
That's Tim Biohacker? Yeah. And could you repeat the website? It's healthoptimizationsummit.com or summit.healthoptimization.com or hosummit.com. Any of these. You can just Google it. I mean, it's there. We're going to write them down and it's optimization with an S. Because we're British and awkward. But yeah.
Yeah, it's going to be a significant event. And I think most people don't want to leave at the end of the weekend. In fact, it's just really such an amazing vibe and so much stuff happening. And everyone's heroes from around the world, speakers, authors and everything, walking around, you get to meet them and hang out with them. So I think it's a very addictive weekend, actually. I can understand. And all of this is in London, right? Yes. Central London, 28th and 29th of May.
in exactly one month. Oh, yes. Well, Tim, this has been a pleasure. So nice to get to know you. And thank you so much. Hopefully, we'll see you at the summit. Thanks for having me. Do come. Yes. And you can find him on Instagram too. We'll put everything in the show notes. Thanks a lot, Tim. Hasta la vista.
Monika, this was exciting. I have to say that I'm almost a child and really starstruck. Tim Gray knows his stuff, and it was really fun to talk to him. Yes, I agree. If we're going to exaggerate a bit of what we've talked about, which we're constantly returning to, it's not about going too hard and doing too many things at the same time.
I know, but you can get it on lab 1. It can happen that you have a requisition, but we have tested both. It's not a joke to take a lot of supplements where your body doesn't need it or can take it up.
Yes, these are the things we come back to all the time. I like that he talks about the five fundamental things that are so important before you start with these extreme things. If that's not in place, then you can just throw money out the window and start with lots of supplements. It's the sleep, the circadian rhythm, the diet,
it's moving, it's the simple and a bit boring bioworks that we've talked about that don't sell so well, but incredibly important. And what I absolutely take with me on my to-do list now and further, it's journaling. Maybe I should do a little mental journaling with silence and stillness.
I also think about breathing. I use Wim Hof's app, I'm inspired by my son, so I try to breathe with that app, and it's really nice, I can hold my breath for a long time, and then finally take care of getting enough oxygen and movement.
I'm completely obsessed with breathing. It's the best thing ever. The mouth taping has made my life completely new. We do nose breathing in my family all the time. But Monika, we have to go. We have to go, but thank you at home for listening. Please leave a comment. You know where to find Tim if you want to go to London for a summit. We would love to go there. If not, you know we have a summit here.
I'm more in the start phase than he has been, but in Norway we have to start a set. So until we hear from you again, we say... Happy biohacking! We remind you that you must talk to your own doctor or diet manager about diets and other questions related to medicines and supplements. Information we share cannot be used to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any diseases or conditions.