And we're going to 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. 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.
We really don't want to be 100 years old if we are to be in poor shape, not have any quality of life and need to be 24-7. We don't want that. No, we don't want to live long and carry on with sickness, but the truth is that today's biohackers, we work for to live a high quality life and express the regenerative properties our body has from the side of nature.
Yes, we want to maximize our abilities to perform tasks to heal ourselves and to regenerate. And we have a lot of tools in the box that we can bring when we need them. Yes, we do. We must understand regenerative medicine and we must also understand what makes us older and how stress affects us. We must also understand how our bodies can work optimally, only they can get the chance to do this. And in
Today we have with us Dr. Jason Saunders from Miami. He is an experienced chiropractor and he works with used kinesiology. He has a PhD in molecular biology, where the focus is regenerative medicine. We are going to talk about hyperbar, we are going to talk about anti-aging. We look forward to getting him on the line. Yes, because he is early out and he even has a bestseller on Amazon. It came out in 2020, where he wrote about oxygen therapy.
and both the research and all the advantages of using this hyperbaric therapy for us to be able to live longer and have increased progress. There are many sources of information besides hyperbaric therapy, but let's turn to Jason Sonners. Welcome to Biohacking Girls podcast.
Welcome to our podcast, Jason Sarnes. It's so exciting to have you here. How are you? I am fabulous. I'm excited to be here and share some fun information with you guys as well. So a little bit update, where are you located right now? We are currently in Miami. We've been here for about six months. We relocated the family primarily so I can finish school and we found a good school here for my kids as well. So...
Oh, happy life in Miami. We love Miami. Love the States, actually. Yes, we are kind of a bit American in our hearts. But tell us about the center you run now. And you did that for six months. How was it? How was it doing?
Well, so we still actually run and operate our centers up north. So we have a clinic in New Jersey and then another clinic in Pennsylvania. And the clinics are different. The one in Pennsylvania is primarily, I would say, functional medicine and hyperbaric only. The one in New Jersey is a bigger center. It's got about six different chiropractors, acupuncture, massage,
IV, hyperbaric, red light therapy, sauna, all kinds of combined people and combined modalities for really trying to bring them all together as best as we can. Oh, Jason, would you please open a center here in Oslo too? Yes, that's on the list. It sounds like a really nice biohacking center. Yes, exactly. Exactly right.
Could we start talking a little bit about aging, why we are getting sicker and there's so much medicine, big pharma around us? So, you know, I think the beginning of that conversation starts with, you know, are we basically spending our time waiting until we lose our health and then first getting involved trying to like reverse engineer the sickness process?
versus, you know, are we realizing that just aging is a normal part of life? And I don't even know that we want to not age as much as we would just want to maintain our quality of life. And so aging is not the enemy. It's the allowing of our bodies to break down prematurely, whether that's partially because of increased, you know, stressors in our life that we weren't designed to handle, including things like
you know, chemical stressors in our food, in our water, in our air, you know, physical stressors and the demands that we live in, you know, in the environments that we're, you know, growing up in and ultimately trying to, you know, continue our life. And all these excess stressors are just, I think, breaking us down prematurely. And in general, people haven't been actively trying to maintain or improve their health
in the face of all those stressors. And so we see this premature breakdown during the aging process. And that's really why I went back to school, even in my 40s, was to try to figure this out a little bit better. Because, you know, I've been treating patients for 20 years. And I
I think we've seen this where like our parents or our grandparents, you know, their quality of life was really taken from them pretty early on. And so even though we see these massive increases in longevity, so people are living longer and longer, they're living longer with less quality. I think, you know, at least in the U.S., the longevity is pegged at around 86 years old, but the quality of life index is still pretty much the same.
hasn't budged much in like the early to mid 60s. And so we have this like potential 20 years of loss of quality of life, which is, you know, I think it's just terrible for us to watch and to witness. And now I think a lot of, you know, in my mind, a lot of the biohacking movement is saying, listen, I recognize I'm probably going to live a long life. I want to live a long life, but I also refuse to sacrifice my quality of life in those last 20 years. What can I be doing today to
to help prevent my loss of quality of life tomorrow and maintain that quality. I think most of us would like to just maybe one day go to bed and not wake up, not necessarily have a 20-year deterioration in our life. And so, you know, I think in medicine, we have focused so heavily on just symptom mediation, right? I have this symptom, take this pill. I have this symptom, do this surgery.
But obviously, you guys know, it's so much more complicated than that. And we need to be actively taking a role in the maintenance of our health and the improvement of our health over time. Otherwise, we will lose it for sure. Yeah, because it's not that we call it dying slowly. You use just 10, 20 years just to die on all these medications. But can you see...
like a hopeful shift in your patients that they're getting this or how's the future looking? Yeah, I think the future is bright. You're good. We're getting better at testing. I think we're seeing some testing that's coming out that's a little bit more predictive of
Part of the research I'm working on right now is looking at aging clocks and DNA methylation panels because that information starts to tell us a little bit more in terms of what road you're on. If I can identify the path that you're on and to some degree start predicting the future, and if you love what that's going to look like, then you should stay on that road and keep moving down.
I think most people though, we take these tests and they don't love the road they're on and we need to intervene well before, just because someone's asymptomatic doesn't make them healthy. It just makes their issues quiet.
And so, you know, we have plenty of patients, especially now, you know, when I first got into practice, all of our patients usually came in with whatever problem they had. And then we were trying to dig our way out of that. We're getting more and more patients that are saying, listen, I don't really have any issues, nothing to complain about, but I also don't want to end up like this. What can I do? So I think between
patient awareness of saying, hey, yeah, it looks like there are some things I could do. I just don't know which ones. If you could just go online, it's like the list is endless of possibilities, some of which are meaningful and many of which are probably, you know, not that meaningful. And so, you know, patients coming in looking for guidance to say, how can I take some, you know, some steps and move in that direction? And the patients that we've done that with now for years were
Absolutely. We're seeing, you know, you could be three years old or five years old or 10 years older than you were when we started, but you're so much healthier and your quality of life is so much improved now, even than then. And so, yeah, I think, and I think the science in this world, you know, as far as that part is going, it's growing so quickly that...
I'm sure by the time we need more of that help, there'll be so many things that we can do. So what would a typical approach when a client come in with this wish to stay, keep on staying healthy, how would it look like when they come to your practice? Yeah. You know, I mean, we do do some genetic testing, although I think genetic testing is very limited too, right? Your genes are basically, you know, that's the, it's the cards you were dealt, right?
And we could maintain or we could manipulate certain pieces of that, or at least if we knew based on your genetic weaknesses, well, okay, so we have to protect you a little bit better in this area because of these weaknesses that you have. But I think that changing our genetic code is not going to be something that we're going to be doing anytime soon and probably shouldn't want to. But what we could learn is we're
you know, the epigenetics around that, right? The epigenetics is really all the signals. It's really your life. You know, how well do you handle the life and the environment that you're living in? And,
The epigenome is really the signals that are telling your genes what to do. And so if we can understand those switches, and if there are switches that are turned on that we want off, or there are switches that are turned off that we want on, that's a place where we could really manipulate things and improve people's life and health. And so...
We do some genetic testing just to understand someone's weaknesses. Then we do these epigenetic tests because that helps us understand how well their body is really dealing with their environment. And then we do some more standard testing. I mean, you know, I tell patients all the time, if at least in the States, you know, most doctors, like if you go for your annual physical, the blood work you get done is not enough to know
how healthy you are, right? It's barely enough to know, are you going to live until your physical next year? You know, and if you're going to live, we'll probably just leave you alone, but it's not really going to pull any information that's like, oh, here's where your issues are. And this is what we need. It's always like a watch and wait, you know, well,
you're, you know, your blood sugar's climbing, you might become a diabetic, be careful, you know, next year, oh, your blood sugar's a little higher, you're a little closer, but come back next year, oh, you're diabetic now, now we can treat you, you know? And that passive approach is just, that's what's destroyed, I think, you know, our health in so many ways. Rather than taking such a, you know, a passive approach, we're going to start looking at other, like, you know, your vitamin levels, um,
and your patterns, right? It's not that each test we do is so important. It's that we actually look for patterns because if we see the patterns that you're going through, that starts to tell us common denominators of where we could really focus in terms of improving that. And so when we get this genetic info, this epigenetic info, and then all of these other, what I would call standard blood tests, although I think if I went to, for us, LabCorp, like one of the main labs to draw blood in the
If we just wanted to pay cash for that here, it would be like $4,000, you know? And so that's really hard for a lot of people to do. We have some good relationships with labs that, you know, allow patients to pay cash for that stuff. And so instead of, you know, four grand, it's like 200 bucks, 300 bucks. And we can get enormous amounts of data on their body and what's going on. And then we just start prioritizing it.
Where are those bigger issues? Does somebody have metal toxicity? Does somebody have a happy microbiome or do we really need to start working on gut health? Do they have certain food intolerances that they need to start moving their diet around to improve their health?
all those kinds of things. And that's really where we start creating a plan of how to move them from, even if it's a place of asymptomatic, but really start moving them into a place of improved health over time. Is that the epigenetic testing you talked about? So the test we use for the epigenetics is a company called True Diagnostics. They're really, I think, above and beyond, pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of extracting that kind of information. And then the other labs we use, we use a lab called, I don't know if you have these labs available, but
Vibrant is another one. Vibrant does great food testing. To some degree, I believe a human diet is the human diet. In other words, if you wanted to know... And diet's one of those things that's gotten so out of control, right? So if you were like, listen, I want to know what giraffes eat, what would you do? You would go...
I assume you'd go to Africa and you would watch giraffes in nature and you'd be like, oh, okay, giraffes eat leaves off of trees, right? And you would start to just watch their patterns and understand what the giraffe diet would be.
But for some reason, like we don't have the human diet. We've gotten so far away from whatever was originally natural. And is it possible that giraffes in certain areas would eat certain trees? Because those are the trees that grew in that area. And giraffes in other areas would eat different trees because there's different trees in that area. That's all very possible. So for humans, you know, based on where you lived or where your family is from, is it possible that the diet is slightly different because you guys have access to things that I don't have and vice versa? Of course not.
But, you know, the human diet should be pretty standardized. And I think we've sort of destroyed that. And, you know, humans have now figured out ways of creating their own food, things that didn't naturally exist. And so we've gotten like so off base, I think, as far as that goes.
that we don't even know what to eat anymore. But because of that, and because of I think what we've done to the food supply, doing food testing, understanding where people have food allergies or food sensitivities, and really getting them away. Because at the end of the day, I do believe there's two things that are causing all of the issues for most folks. It's chronic inflammation,
and it's mitochondrial dysfunction. So, the part of your cell that makes energy is dysfunctional, so you can't make enough cellular energy. And then you're bathing in inflammation. And between those two areas, almost every chronic illness that we look at, all the big, bad, scary things that none of us want, you know, the cancers, the strokes, the diabetes, the heart disease, you know, all of that stuff comes down to inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction. And so,
So the food you eat, that's something that goes in your body multiple times every day potentially. And if that's causing part of your inflammatory response, we're never going to make progress if we don't nail that down. So we look at foods, we look at other toxicities like glyphosate toxicity, petroleum chemical toxicity, heavy metal toxicity, things that accumulate inside of our bodies that cause, again, cause inflammation.
And then we look at all the things that we can do to improve mitochondrial function. And that's really like the baseline of what we're doing for most people. Is there one thing you would start with or is it quite bio-individual that you have to consider each client? Yeah, I think all of the things I've said so far are like on my high priority list. But I think once I have a minute to go through some basic conversations and understand where people's goals are, what...
you know, what jobs they've had that might've exposed them to certain things, what symptoms they're having, which, you know, you start to understand pattern again, those same patterns. And so I might take that, that list of eight to 10 things that we do, or I want to do on everybody, but the ones I might do on you or the ones I might start with for you are going to be probably different than the ones I maybe I'll start with for me, just based on
the likelihood of exposures or symptoms. I just have a random question. Sure. Have you ever seen anyone without toxins in their system? Good call. If we've looked, we've never not found. Is that always the biggest problem that they have? Not necessarily.
Is it something that's certainly worth addressing at some point in the journey? Definitely. But yeah, if I've taken the steps to look, I've never not found something, unfortunately. So what are the most common diseases you see? And when does these become chronic? Yeah, I mean, especially now, we're trying to catch people
well before their diagnosis, which that's always difficult too because if you prevented somebody from getting something, how could you prove that you prevented it if they never got it? At the same time, I don't want to wait until I have the thing before I take action on my health. So there's a little bit of a leap of faith, I think, when patients are coming in asymptomatic and looking for improved health.
But once we can document, I think, what some of these issues are for people, you know, once you see on paper that you're loaded with lead or mercury or you're loaded with mycotoxins, you know, it's not that hard to, I think, get the motivation to really start taking action steps. If I know that these are bad for me for X, Y, and Z, you know, I,
I'm motivated to actually do something to get rid of that stuff. That's great. And maybe you could, we're going to go back and talk a little bit about your book. It's such a great book. But before we move over to HBO T, could you explain the difference between degeneration and regeneration? Sure. So, you know, our bodies are always doing both to some extent, right? Degeneration is the process of breaking down. Regeneration is the process of rebuilding.
Another word to use for that could be catabolic and anabolic. Catabolic is when our bodies are breaking down. And there's great things that actually happen when our bodies are in a catabolic phase. And then an anabolic phase is when the body's rebuilding. And again, great things happen when we're in anabolic phases. Some of the issues occur that
If you're in either one of those phases too long, also bad things happen. So even though there's benefits of catabolic process, you can't just stay there. There's health issues from being there too long. And just because anabolic means rebuilding and regeneration, you can't stay there either. Things like cancer lives there, you know? And so you don't want to stay in either one. And we want to teach our body how to fluctuate between those two pathways.
When we put ourselves into a catabolic state, the body really does a lot of house cleaning.
all the autophagy, right? That's a term that's being used a lot these days and fasting, like those are, that's a catabolic state. And when you put your body in a catabolic state safely, the body goes through and wants to clean up all the garbage. That's where detox is going to live there. And, you know, getting rid of old senescent cells lives there. And, you know, getting rid of dysfunctional cells that are, you know, borderline disease. That's
That's in that catabolic state. We could wipe all that garbage out of our body. And then we move back into an anabolic state. We start refeeding. We start boosting our exercise. We take certain supplements that stimulate growth and repair. We use other modalities like red light or hyperbaric oxygen. And all of a sudden, we get stem cell mobilization. We get those stem cells to move into those areas where you wiped out those old and dysfunctional cells.
And as a result, you start to clean things up, rebuild, clean things up, rebuild. And if you can ping pong between both of those systems, you could really do a lot of work to rebuild your health. Now, I think back in the day, like before you could eat anything you want whenever you wanted or just sit on your couch all day and do nothing and still survive.
our bodies always went through those two phases, right? There'd be phases where, you know, your village collected a ton of food or, you know, we killed an animal and everybody ate plentiful for a day or two. And then there'd be days where we didn't eat much. And so just naturally the, the rhythm of living naturally would have created this ping-ponging between anabolic and catabolic phases just naturally, but we just don't have that anymore. And so,
It's very rare for us to allow the body to go through that. And a lot of what you and I are doing in our little worlds is creating strategic adversity, right? We don't fast. Well, I mean, at this point it is kind of fun, but like you're creating adversity. You're challenging the body. You're letting the body have to learn how to adapt to that challenge.
And then as you learn how to adapt to that challenge, your body gets stronger, your cells become more resilient, your tissues become more resilient, and now you can tolerate your environment far better than you did before. And so, you know, a lot of biohacking is really strategic adversity that creates that adaptation to biohacking.
you know, to the environment, I think. We have touched on it a little bit, but why don't you just dig into the difference between the traditional medicine and the regenerative medicine, just to get this clear, what you do, the difference. So, I mean, I think to some extent it's right there where we just left off. If all we ever did
was what made us happy and what was easy, we would find that our bodies get very lazy, that our minds get very lazy. The body is very efficient, right? So one example would be, you know, if you never exercised a day in your life and you got up off the couch and you did one lap around your house, like that would, that would be stimulating to that person.
And eventually if they kept walking, you know, then, then one lap around the house is no longer enough because their, their body would have adapted to that. Now they have to do two laps.
Right.
Because the body just becomes like, I don't, this is no challenge, you know? And so that's where disease lives. If somebody was training for a marathon, one lap around the house would never be sufficient to stimulate change and recovery, right? So it's all relative to where we are starting from.
And it's not just exercise, it's food, it's mental challenges. All of those things are part of this process. In traditional medicine, to some extent, we've created an environment that allows humans to become very lazy, to do whatever they want, whenever they want, because exercise, maybe it doesn't matter so much. Food, whatever you eat doesn't really... You know, how many people that come into my office with like a...
let's say, inflammatory bowel disease, right? And I asked them about their diet and they're like, yeah, but my doctor said it doesn't matter what I eat. And I'm like, if the food you eat doesn't affect the tube that you put it in, what does it affect? Like, it would be crazy to me to think that if you have inflammation in your gut, that that has nothing to do with what you're actually putting into that tube, you know, as you're eating every day. And so,
you know, we've disconnected in traditional medicine, we've become very disconnected between
the choices that we make and the lives that we live from the diseases and the problems that we have. We just assume that the human is going to break down prematurely. And we have a list of therapies to help make that person feel better. As you said earlier, as they're dying slowly, we are comforting them so that they don't feel the problems that they're going through. We're numbing them through their inevitable breakdown and death.
And we're destroying quality of life in the process. Regenerative medicine is like the exact opposite of that. It's constantly looking for what else can I do to stimulate change, recovery, and repair? I'm not going to take my health for granted. I understand that I need to be a willing participant in this process I call my life.
And as long as I'm willing to consistently make changes and push that envelope a little bit, it's that whole concept of hormesis, creating change and stimulation to create adaptation and growth and repair. And so, you know, we're constantly looking for, depending on where you're starting from, where are your weaknesses and how can we start challenging your system, creating purposeful adversity to make sure that your cells and your tissues always have a challenge.
That is enough to create change in health, but not too much to create too much breakdown that you can't recover from it. And so we're kind of always on that seesaw trying to balance those two avenues. Wonderful. And the book, Jason, that you have written, it's about all what we talked about now, reversing aging and restoring our health and reducing the inflammation, but also about...
hacks or ways to treat yourself. But first of all, why did you write this book? So, you know, I wrote this book primarily, I mean, it is about oxygen. And the reason I wrote it about oxygen was because I do think that that's one of the most misunderstood and underutilized therapy in this whole process that you and I are talking about. But I also wrote this book because I believe that most people just don't understand that concept, that concept of, you know,
it's not your genes that are just causing disease, right? We're just like, oh, I have this gene, so I have this disease. There's nothing I can do. I'm a victim.
And I just need to surrender to my genetic dysfunction and I have this problem and that's just my story. It's to understand that there are so many things we can do. And in fact, there's so many things that we need to do on a very regular basis in order to maintain our health or to improve our health. And I think that people...
give up so easily sometimes. And I think that doctors don't always explain it. In other words, if the patient was given the choice, listen, you could do nothing. You have this disease and you can take these pills and we'll try to make you feel more comfortable, but ultimately it'll do nothing to ever change the disease state. You'll just feel better. Or here are some steps you can take. And in these steps, you actually might be able to shift your physiology away from this disease and you can create a whole different you
as a process, if you go through these steps, which one would you like to do? We're not given that choice. We're given one scenario. And if we get frustrated enough, we seek other alternatives. And that's when somebody might find somebody like me. But it's not like we're given those options ahead of time. And I think it's unfortunate because a lot of people end up just giving
giving up early because they don't realize they had other options. So why don't we talk a little bit about oxygen and the importance of oxygen? Sure. Also, we're going to talk about the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. But first of all, the process, why do the body need the oxygen? So I compare when I teach a lot of classes, I compare our cell to a car engine. To me, it makes a lot of sense this way.
a car has to bring in fuel, gasoline, except my 12 year old's like, "What about a Tesla?" I'm like, "Okay, not every car." Smart one. Exactly. But a normal gas engine, right? So you have to bring in fuel.
And that fuel has to mix with oxygen. And the oxygen oxidizes the fuel. It creates an explosion inside the engine, which is really power. And so basically the engine sucks in air and oxygen. It sucks in fuel. It has this explosion. It creates power and heat. And then it has this exhaust to get rid of the waste products. And our cells are virtually identical. The mitochondria inside your cell is an engine. It's how energy and power is created.
And the fuel is your food, right? So the only reason you eat is so that you can break down your fuel, your food into these energy packets. We now know that that's called NAD, N-F-A-D-H too. But basically you create NAD from the food that you're eating. And then you have to mix that with oxygen. And if you oxidize the fuel properly inside the mitochondria, your cells could make energy. They could also make heat. That's where a lot of our body heat comes from.
And there's waste products, water and carbon dioxide. So we exhale the carbon dioxide.
And our body makes water. And if we're not getting the right fuel, we'll never make the right amount or the healthiest amount of energy that our cells can make. And if we're not getting enough oxygen, we can't also make enough, just like the engine. You can have perfect gasoline in the engine. If something's blocking airflow, it's never going to work properly. You can get all the oxygen in the world, but if you're not getting good fuel, the engine's not going to work properly.
You can have all the oxygen and all the fuel that you need to make all the power, but if your exhaust pipe is blocked and you can't get rid of your waste products, you can't make all the energy that you need. And so our bodies, our cells are very similar to that in that way. And oxygen...
it happens to be one of the most important rate limiting steps. It's one of the steps that is consistently the reason for the lack of energy being produced in a certain cell. And so, if we could figure out a way to increase the level of oxygen going to our cells,
and did nothing else, we can at least to some degree improve ATP production, cellular energy production. And so the thing is, is right now, if you put one of those pulse oximeters on your finger,
Even if you're basically healthy, you're already getting almost all the oxygen you could possibly get. A normal healthy reading on that would be 97, 98, 99%, meaning you're almost carrying as much oxygen as possible inside your body. And so even if I gave you 100% oxygen through a mask, you can't really absorb much more than what you're getting.
And so because of that, we kind of ignored oxygen therapies for all this time because it's like, well, if you're already getting as much as you can, why would I give you any more? But it turns out if you go in a pressurized environment, that changes the entire process of how we absorb oxygen. And that's where hyperbaric really fits in. Hyperbaric is just creating a temporary reaction.
a pressurized environment, allowing your body to take more oxygen than what it's normally capable of. That's going to give your cells more oxygen, which is going to allow your cells to make more energy. So before we go even deeper into the HBOT, is there any other ways for people who cannot afford or don't want to go into the pressure camera? So yes and no. I mean, in general, most of us don't breathe the way we need to breathe.
Most of us are shallow breathers. Most of us are stressed. We just, we take these little shallow breaths. We have poor posture. Like there's a lot of things that go on, I think, in terms of why so many people are mildly hypoxic on any given day.
So, exercise is certainly going to drive more oxygen into the body. Breath work is going to definitely drive more oxygen into the body. I mean, these are things that don't cost anything, you know, other than time to learn how to do them properly. And that could certainly create some abundance of oxygen beyond what your body is normally getting at the same time. And then it just depends how deficient you are because that's going to take us to a certain degree more oxygen than what we're getting right now.
But if we needed some massive mega dosing of oxygen, those techniques are probably not going to be sufficient. We're going to need some other delivery system of oxygen beyond that. So what is the history behind the hyperbaric oxygen chamber? So I mean, it actually started because of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, really, where...
these divers that were digging the holes in the riverbed to start pouring the foundations for the bridge, they have to go up and down the shaft multiple times every day. And they were going to depths, which meant to pressure and back to the surface, down to pressure, back to the surface. And they were getting this disease they called at the time, they called caissons disease, which eventually be termed the bends. The bends is something that a lot of people, if you scuba dive, that's like a term that you'd be familiar with.
And what it turned out was when they went back to pressure, they were fine. And when they came back to the surface, they'd have a problem. And when they went back down into the hole, they'd be okay again. And so when hyperbarics first started being used for that, they called it a recompression chamber. And what they were saying is we have to recompress you. We have to compress you back to the depth where you got injured. And then it kind of just stayed in that world for a while and then into like
scuba diving in general where divers were getting injured from coming back to the surface too quickly. That still happens, although it's pretty rare because now we have a lot more information about how slowly to come back to the surface, how to decompress properly. Most people that scuba dive have a computer that tells them exactly what they need to do to basically avoid things like that. But again, it still happens on occasion.
But from there, they started to see that other injuries were healing, other complaints that people had were also improving. And so in the US at least, like in the 70s and 80s, they started using it for things like wound care or certain infections like gangrene, where they saw that there was this
either this antimicrobial or this massive tissue regeneration that occurred when we got the person more oxygen. And so, you know, from the 80s and 90s, they kind of built out, you know, in the US at least, there's 14 approved indications that insurance might cover hyperbaric. Radiation burns, thermal burns, a few infections like necrotizing fasciitis and gangrene.
basically when it's life or death or life and limb, like literally we're about to amputate something because of lack of oxygen or because of infection, they'll use hyperbaric and many times successfully in that time. But really what it turns out is the same mechanisms that are stimulate this antimicrobial and this positive regenerative quality, it's the same thing you would use for necrosis or wound care or
Necrotizing fasciitis is the same thing that you and I would want from chronic aging, from chronic inflammation, from just old injuries that never healed properly, post-surgical scars that never healed properly, brain injuries that never healed properly, autoimmune diseases that are basically all...
immune system dysregulation. So all the same mechanisms that were always at play that help create a more balanced immune system, help reduce inflammation, improve your ability to fight infection, and then improve your system's ability to regenerate tissue. All of that is the same in these terrible life and limb conditions. It's all the same as what I want just to maintain my quality of life over a long period of time. It's just the amount of pressure I need is different. If you're very sick,
you probably need much higher percentages of oxygen and much higher pressures. If you're moderately healthy and just trying to improve your health, you probably don't need the same severity or intensity of treatment. And so now we're learning how to manipulate the pressures and oxygen to better meet the demand of whatever the patients are needing. So what would be like a typical treatment for biohackers or people who are not sick but would like to maintain their health?
How many sessions? How many, how low do you go? Yeah. It'll also vary, I think, a bit depending on what they're, what someone's goals are. I feel like everybody, especially in the biohacking environment, everybody's like, well, if some is good, more is better. So like, you know, forget this low pressure stuff. You know, I want two and a half atmospheres. I want three atmospheres. You know, what's the most a human can tolerate? That's what I want.
And that's just not how it works. You know, it's I really do think it's important to try to match the intensity of the therapy with the goal. And so if we use two and a half atmospheres for wound care or if we use almost three atmospheres, 2.8 atmospheres for, you know, carbon monoxide poisoning, like you're literally about to die.
you probably don't need that if you're a pretty healthy person. And so what I would say is, in using those same numbers, like those soft chambers that you probably have seen, those usually run around 1.3 atmospheres all the way up to maybe 1.5, 1.75. I mean, that's
1.3 atmospheres, just breathing air. If all you had was air, no extra oxygen, but you were in a 1.3 chamber, you're going to get 30% almost more oxygen than what you and I are getting right now. So if you had 100% oxygen right now and you had a mask of 100% oxygen, you'd get like 1% or 2%. You can't get much more than you're getting.
But if you're breathing air, but now you're in a pressurized environment, that 1% or 2% becomes almost 30%, because pressure is really the bigger manipulating factor. Once you have pressure, you can start changing the percentages of oxygen, and then you could have an exponential effect. So just to give you some numbers, 1.3 air only would be almost 30% more oxygen.
1.3, if you had 100% oxygen, would be like basically three and a half times, like 300% more oxygen. 1.5 atmospheres is like seven or eight times more oxygen than what you would argue. So it's like, these are enormous numbers.
So, do you need 14 times more oxygen? Do you need 20 times more oxygen? That's what we use for these really bad diseases, but you and I shouldn't need that much. Even three times more oxygen or four times or five times more oxygen, that's an enormous amount. And so...
I think that 1.3 to 1.5 for most people is very sufficient for what they're trying to accomplish in this space. I still do some higher pressure, so I might do a few. I also have access to it. It's pretty easy in my office or whatever, but I'll do some sessions at like two atmospheres periodically. But almost all of my...
sort of my annual routine, most of it is done with a soft chamber in my living room. And then just periodically I go to my office and I'll do some higher pressure stuff.
In terms of protocols for where people should start, there's short-term benefits and there's long-term benefits. Short-term benefits are things like increased your immune system response, increased ATP production, a little bit of reduction in inflammation. Those are things, balancing of your autonomic nervous system, the whole stress response, like fight or flight versus sympathetic, parasympathetic.
nervous system. You'll get some balancing of the autonomic nervous system pretty quickly.
But the things that I think most people really want, like new blood vessel growth in areas that were damaged and never healed properly, neurogenesis, like the rebuilding of neurons or synapses in our brain, stem cell mobilization, telomere growth, things that even for a biohacker would want a lot of these long-term benefits. So I still think that most people need to do absolute minimum of like a 20-hour to a 40-hour protocol.
over the course of about two months or three months, regardless of what pressure you're doing, at least that will give your body a long enough period of time to get some of those long-term changes to start happening. If that person then wanted to go into more of a maintenance model, I think that that would be okay.
But sometimes we get a phone call from somebody who's pretty healthy, like, hey, I'm pretty healthy. I don't really want much. I just want to come and do hyperbaric like once a month. I typically just tell them not to waste their time or money. If you just did it like that right from the beginning, you'll get a few of the short-term benefits, but only some of them, and you'll never get the long-term benefits doing it that way. So for me, as an example, at this point, I've been doing hyperbaric, I think like 17 years, so probably thousands of hours that I've done. Mm-hmm.
But what I would say is you do a 40-hour program, then you could do something like once a week or twice a week if you want, like as a maintenance. You could maybe go to like every other week or something like that. Or I would just tell you to take a break completely. For most people doing these pockets of like 20 to 40 hours, two to three times a year, I think that has a bigger effect than like the once a week or every other week on a regular basis would have.
I do both because I have access to it and it's easy and I think it's that important.
So I do probably somewhere between one to three hours a week on some regular basis. And then every quarter I do a 30 hour program where I'll do like two to three hours a day until I hit 30 hours. So that's how I, you know, that's how I arrange it. So I just finished the 17th. We have a center here in Oslo. Oh, good. I don't know. Of course, we did a measurement before and after. I still have three to go because I bought this package of 20 and I don't have any issues.
so I don't obviously notice anything except from we could see the nitric oxide levels go a bit up and the cellular function a little bit better but you talk about the long term but it's
It's like 17 hours in there. Of course, I'm reading a book and relaxing, but I would prefer going outside, working out, grounding those 17 hours instead of being in the hyperbaric. But do you still think I got some health benefits from it? And would you recommend me to continue with this kind of approach? Yeah. So there's a lot of things that happen cellularly that are just not easily measured. So again, when I teach this stuff, we talk about the mechanisms of action. So
There are certain things that happen inside a hyperbaric chamber no matter what. And you don't get to check the box. Like here's 20 things that are going to happen. These are the six that I want. These are the six that you want. You know, you don't get to choose. This is just, if you put a human into a chamber, these are the things that are going to happen to everybody, right? Now, you may have certain issues that these things are better for you and I might have certain issues. So these things are better for me, but we're both going to get all of them, right? It doesn't really matter. It's almost like...
Do you take any supplements? Yes, we do take some supplements like omega-3 and yeah. Okay. So what do you feel from taking omega-3? Not much. Nothing, right? No. So why do you take it? You have some understanding that you need this...
nutrient in your body because this nutrient does certain things to your body. And if you're deficient, there's consequences of that. And so in order to prevent deficiency, you're choosing to take this supplement on a regular basis to improve your health, even though you don't feel like it's actually doing anything. I would say that oxygen is very similar that way.
oxygen is basically a nutrient. Your body needs that nutrient. And many times you're not getting enough of that nutrient on a regular basis. And so you want to periodically take more of that vitamin, vitamin O, and that allows your body to be sufficient in oxygen to allow these other things that we're talking about happen in terms of cellular healing and the like. And so 100%
In most cases, if you're healthy, all you'll really see maybe is improved sleep. If you measure sleep, you should see improved deep sleep. You should see improved REM. You should see improved heart rate variability. And so, you know, improved sleep, improved energy, you know, not getting sick as much. Like those are some things that a lot of people report pretty quickly. But it's very possible since you're healthy that you could do 40 hours of
You wouldn't necessarily say, oh my God, my whole life is different. But I promise you cellularly, your cells are saying, oh my God, my life is so different because they're actually able to do what they needed to do. And so to expose yourself periodically to that type of benefit-
I could promise you that there's enormous long-term improvements because of that. Good to know. I actually have a client and she's doing the same protocol, but she is very sick. But she actually, and I can see it, her skin in her face is so much healthier, so much more less wrinkles. Have you seen that before? Yeah. So again, we could talk about them. I don't have them all memorized, but what are all the benefits? Just to answer that question.
hyperbaric stimulates fibroblasts and collagen. And so all of your soft tissues, your skin, your ligaments, your tendons, your muscles, your cartilage, this is all made out of fibroblasts and collagen. And so we know that one of the benefits of hyperbaric is the stimulation of those. So people report like healing of old injuries, like ligaments and tendons and stuff like that, which don't have great oxygen supply to begin with.
People often report improved skin for sure. That's a, you know, that's a very common thing. And that's similar to like why we see such improvements with wound care or, or post-surgical care is because how well it stimulates the, that type of healing response. But aging is just a slower version of, of all of that.
Just real quick, some of those other benefits. So getting more oxygen to your mitochondria, which means making more energy. That's always going to happen. Improvement of your white blood cells to fight infection. A reduction of the cytokine response, so reduction in inflammation. Vasoconstriction, so often that'll help reduce swelling and edema. The collagen synthesis, the fibroblast formation, stem cell release, telomere growth.
a reduction of oxidation. So, you know, a lot of the issues that we have is related to overexposure to oxidative stress. Even though hyperbaric is an oxidative therapy, it actually helps stimulate your body's own defense mechanisms against oxidation. So, the net effect of going into a chamber regularly is a decrease in your overall oxidation.
And then it stimulates, well, we said mitochondrial function, but also neuron healing and regeneration. So all of those things are going to happen to everybody. You know, it just depends on what your needs are, whether or not you're going to feel them or not.
not. So assuming all these details is happening in my body after just 17, 20 sessions, would you recommend to do this like twice a year or once a year, like do a package like that? Yeah. So I think if money didn't matter and time didn't matter, I would tell you to try to hit 30 or 40 hours before you stop your first protocol. Because there's, especially on the stem cell side, there's amazing things that happen once you hit those levels. Okay.
And then for me, like I said, the 20 to 30 hours a few times a year, twice a year minimum, three times a year, great. I do it quarterly. So I do it four times a year. But some version where you just hit that protocol a few times a year, that would be definite. In my opinion, I think what we're going to see, that's the best way to plug this thing in periodically. What do you do in there? Do you read? I read. I often...
I take a nap usually. Okay. That's good because I can never fall asleep. I do a lot of breath work in there. I think that that's a great place to do at pressure. You can't do breath work when the chamber pressure is changing, but when the pressure is going to be stable for a period of time.
So I do some breath work in there during that time. I usually do some reading, which leads me into some breath work, and then I usually fall asleep. That's pretty much my routine. So for me, there wasn't any consequences. Sometimes I had a bit of pressure in my ears, but I could equal that out just pressing out the air. But-
Is it safe? Yeah, I mean, you know, it is just oxygen, right? And so your whole body knows exactly. We're not adding any ingredient that's foreign to your body. Every cell in your body, other than your red blood cells that carry oxygen, every other cell in your body uses oxygen for energy.
So it's an inherently safe therapy. There are very few people that can't go into a chamber. Pneumothorax, or if you have like a literally like a popped lung, you can't go in. If you can't equalize that pressure in your ears the way you're describing, you can't go in. Then there's a list of other things that you could probably still go, but you really need to be evaluated like COPD or emphysema or serious heart issues, certain medications,
In the US, pregnancy is considered a contraindication, although I don't agree with that, but it is. But yeah, other than that, I mean, virtually everybody else would do really well. It would be completely safe.
Once you exceed two atmospheres of pressure, do you know what pressure you're going to, by the way? So we call it like 80 and 90 and yeah. KPA probably. Yes. Yes. It's KPA. That's right. I remember now. Yeah. So you're below two atmospheres, like 1.75, something like that atmospheres. But once you exceed two atmospheres-
Now you start understanding that there's other risks, a thing called oxygen toxicity. So even though oxygen is amazing, I'm telling you, you're getting like in the situation you're in, you're getting like eight or nine times more oxygen than what you're getting right now. It's enormous. But once you exceed two atmospheres, you start to start thinking about other consequences like oxygen toxicity. Now, again, if the condition is very severe, the benefits outweigh the risks. But if you're just trying to be a healthy human, why are we adding extra risks? My opinion, I don't think we need to. And so-
Then we have other conversations at above two atmospheres on what other things we might want to be concerned about. But at the pressures you're doing, there's really virtually almost no risks that I can think of other than making sure you could equalize the pressure. So good to know. Because when we reached like nine, they wanted to go all the way, but I felt more comfortable around seven and eight. So I just stayed there. It's not worth going because I was a bit dizzy. Okay. Yeah.
But Jason, this has been so interesting. And so I've learned so much. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do the therapy yet, but I have read your book and it's interesting. Yeah. You're next. See?
Yes. She's next. Where can the listeners find you? And also, do you accept like Zoom calls or do you work with foreigners? Yeah. So for Hyperbaric, our main website is hbotusa.com. And that's really just an educational website. I'm so passionate about people understanding where this fits in their life because I think it's just, I love all the tools.
I do all the tools and I recommend all the tools. Again, depending on what people's issues are, what their goals are, but if I could only have one, it would be this one. The reason for that is really simple, is just that this one tool affects so many different pieces of the puzzle. If I can give you one modality and know that that's going to do 10 or 12 or 15 different things for you, instead of one modality that does one thing, then I'm going to recommend that because it's so foundational.
So HBot USA is primarily, it's an education tool just so people can learn more about it. Thehbotcourse.com is another website that we run and that we have a lot of our training. So a lot of our education training courses, stuff like that is on hbotusa.com or sorry, thehbotcourse.com. We also have a YouTube channel, which is just HBot USA. I think I have like 200 and some odd videos on hyperbaric so people can learn more about that kind of stuff.
Um, and then, yeah, we do, we do, um, I do consultations for people if they're trying to, if they, you know, should they be doing hyperbaric? Shouldn't they do be doing hyperbaric? Uh,
Maybe they want to get their own chamber. What is that appropriate? Is it not appropriate? So a lot of my week is used in, in doing consultations for people to do that kind of stuff. I also treat people all over the place. So, you know, doing that blood work and doing, you know, that kind of work with people in terms of trying to help improve their health and stuff like that. We, we do programs like six month programs, 12 month programs where we really design, you know, a process for people to go through, uh,
Using all these different tools, using diet, using exercise, using supplements, using, you know, hyperbaric red lights on ice, all these different PMF, all these different things. And so we help design those protocols over the course of time to help improve, you know, people's health. So I do, you know, I used to only do that in person and then we started doing it virtually in the US and then, you know, now we do it all over the world.
Wonderful. Are you on Instagram too? I don't know is the answer. I have a YouTube channel. I just record videos and I give them to somebody. I think HBot USA is on Instagram, but I've never actually seen any of the videos I make or any of the things that are put up there. I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. I'm sure it's probably HBot USA, but I don't know how to say it in Instagram language.
We will find it. But I'm sure it exists. Thanks a lot, Jason. That was really interesting to talk with you. And we'll make sure to put the links even to buy your book and where to find you. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you. Of course. No, my pleasure. I'll see you in Oslo one day. Yes, we will see you in Oslo. Absolutely. Stay healthy. All right, you too. Bye. Bye. Bye.
It's lovely to have Jason with us from Miami. I'm sitting here again with a feeling that it's good to do Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber. I've been a little impatient with all this, as you know. But I'll just have to complete and maybe even add some things since I'm first starting now.
Yes, absolutely. It is a new up and coming in Norway and still very expensive. This is for those who are interested. I think you should continue, Monika, because it is very exciting. I want to get more and more of a chance for this. What I found interesting with Jason was to summarize the different thoughts around aging, medicine, all these lifestyle diseases, inflammations,
Yes, just to see what is happening in our society and what we can do. He was very good at explaining, and it became clear that we are talking about it all the time, but we can hardly talk enough about it. We have to get this out to the people that we have to do something. And from different angles. As always, when we have an international guest, we will talk a little about this episode in Norwegian, which will come a little later this week.
We hope you got some information from it, and we recommend reading the book, because it's not just about hyperbar. The book is about everything we talk about, but even more detailed, in terms of aging. Happy biohacking! We remind you that you must talk to your own doctor or cost-saving leader about diets and other questions related to medicines and supplements. Information we share can not be used to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any symptoms or conditions.