Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart founded BiOptimizers, whose mission is to discover, present, and share supplement products and health strategies backed by
cutting-edge research that leads to a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lifestyle. They create products to empower customers to achieve an optimal state of well-being in the body,
mind, and soul, holistically defined as BiOptimization. They've served more than 50,000 customers over 15 years of business, helping people find natural solutions for difficult digestive problems.

BiOptimizers have been a featured on the many of the biggest podcasts in the industry including Bulletproof by Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield show, Barbell Shrugged and many more.

LEARN MORE AT​:

https://bioptimizers.com
https://www.facebook.com/BiOptimizers/  ~ Masszymes.com/melanieavalon

SHOWNOTES

02:00 - MASSZYMES: Go To Masszymes.com/melanieavalon With The Coupon Code Melanie10 To Get 10% Discount On Your Order! 

02:15 - FOOD SENSE GUIDE: Get Melanie's App To Tackle Your Food Sensitivities! Food Sense Includes A Searchable Catalogue Of 300+ Foods, Revealing Their Gluten, Lectin, FODMAP, Amine, Histamine, Glutamate, Oxalate, Salicylate, Sulfite, And Thiol Status. Food Sense Also Includes Compound Overviews, Reactions To Look For, Lists Of Foods High And Low In Them, The Ability To Create Your Own Personal Lists, And More!

02:55 - LISTEN ON HIMALAYA!: Download The Free Himalaya App (Www.himalaya.fm) To FINALLY Keep All Your Podcasts In One Place, Follow Your Favorites, Make Playlists, Leave Comments, And More! Follow The Melanie Avalon Podcast In Himalaya For Early Access 24 Hours In Advance! 

03:10 - Paleo OMAD Biohackers: Intermittent Fasting + Real Foods + Life: Join Melanie's Facebook Group To Discuss And Learn About All Things Biohacking! All Conversations Welcome!

03:30 - BEAUTY COUNTER: Non-Toxic Beauty Products Tested For Heavy Metals, Which Support Skin Health And Look Amazing! Black Friday SALE: 15% Off Sitewide With Free Shipping! Shop At Beautycounter.com/MelanieAvalon To Receive A Free Beauty Counter Gift From Melanie! For Exclusive Offers And Discounts, And More On The Science Of Skincare, Get On Melanie's Private Beauty Counter Email List At MelanieAvalon.com/CleanBeauty!

6:30 - Biohacking Frameworks: The BiOptimization Triangle: Asthetics, Performance, And Digestion/Health

9:45 - The Biggest Mistake When Switching To A New Diet

12:20 - Toxins From Our Gut 

14:00 - Carnivore And Plant Toxins 

15:45 - What Is A Healthy Approach To Biohacking? How Intuitive Should Diet Be?

19:30 -  Competition Bodybuilding, Yo Yo Dieting, And The Consequences Of Aesthetics Only 

28:30 - Glycemic Response Individuality And Seasonal Variability 

36:00 - Overcoming Extreme Dietary Protocols: Can You Always Return To Health? 

46:20 - The Levels Of TransHumanism: Bioenhancement & Biotransformation 

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)

​Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

50:00 - Changes In Women And Reproduction Choices

52:15 - The Cons And Potential Pros Of GMOs

54:00 - How Pesticides Affect Our Gut Bacteria

56:35 - JOOVV: Red Light And NIR Therapy For Fat Burning, Muscle Recovery, Mood, Sleep, And More! Use The Link Joovv.com/Melanieavalon With The Code MelanieAvalon For A Free Gift From Joovv, And Also Forward Your Proof Of Purchase To Contact@MelanieAvalon.com, To Receive A Signed Copy Of What When Wine: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine!

59:20 - What Are Enzymes?

1:00:15 - The Enzyme Potential Of The Body And Food Today

1:04:45 - The Purpose Of Plant Enzymes 

1:06:00 - The Human Color Vision Connection To Fruit 

1:09:10 - Using Enzymes For Exercise Recovery, Neurotransmitters, Combatting Protein Accumulation 

1:11:45 - Proteolytic Enzymes While Fasting 

1:17:15 - Food Vs. Supplemental Vs. Cultured Enzymes 

1:25:15 - Is There A Danger To Taking Too Much Enzymes? 

1:26:40 - How To Maximize Digestion With Enzymes + HCL + P30M

1:29:15 - Supplement Dosing Protocols 

1:33:15 - Using Enzymes To Gain Weight (Bodybuilding) 

Go To Masszymes.com/melanieavalon With The Coupon Code Melanie10 To Get A 10% Discount On Your Order! 

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon:
Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I'm super excited to be joined here today with some awesome friends of mine that I feel like I'm starting to get to know very, very well and that is Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart. They are two of the geniuses behind the awesome company BiOptimizers. So I've had three podcast interviews with them on my other podcast, The Intermittent Fasting podcast, but this is the first time bringing you guys to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking podcast. Super excited to have you guys here. How are you guys doing today?

Wade Lightheart:
Super excited to talk biohacking. Definitely one of my favorite topics to talk about.

Matt Gallant:
Yeah. Pumped to be here.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, we were just talking before the call. There's so many topics and tangents and rabbit holes that we could go on that we're just going to see where things go. So pretty excited.

Wade Lightheart:
Maybe I'll jump in and talk about kind of a couple of frameworks that we embrace at BiOptimizers and one of them is called the BiOptimizers Triangle, which one side is the aesthetics, how you look, which really comes down to just body fat and muscle gain. The other side is performance, which you could break down to physical performance and mental performance and as entrepreneurs, and that's why so many of the people in the biohacking movement are entrepreneurs, it's because they need it.

Wade Lightheart:
We're mental athletes pushing our brains to levels of energy and exertion that the average human being doing a manual job, it would certainly take them a long time to get up to, even if they wanted to just the output people would just fry it. Of course, we build that over time, but our needs for peak mental performance is critical. Then the third side is the insides, all your biomarkers, are they balanced are they optimize, et cetera , et cetera. 

Wade Lightheart:
That's really where a lot of the how you feel comes from, whether it's the serotonin, the mitochondria, all of these elements come down to how optimized the mitochondria, your digestion, which in our opinion, is the foundational piece of health and nutrition and we can talk more about that. That's one of our main frameworks. So as biohackers we're kind of always asking ourselves how can we increase the size of all three components of this triangle. Because to give you an example, if your goal is aesthetics, you can do a ton of steroids and growth hormone and all these things and achieve an incredible aesthetic look, which we can comment on. 

Wade Lightheart:
Your insides are going to get, they're going to pay a significant price. So, all the things that we're into kind of, and of course the dosage matters. Certain things that low dosages are optimal at medium to high dosages are very destructive but that's where our whole idea of BiOptimizers, which stands for biological optimization is about mastering the dance and tweaking all the things that ideally move all three sides, which obviously the nutritional components are part of it.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, that actually made me think of something. So because of the biohacking world, I think a lot of people often come to it from, at least in the beginning with the dietary aspect, because I think people oftentimes will change their diet and then they experience such radical changes that they didn't anticipate, because you will often will change their diet for digestive issues or to lose weight, but then all these other things if they find the diet that works for them, they experience all these other things, like cognitive benefits, and then it just becomes this train where you just want to, that's what happened for me, you just want to like really optimize everything.

Wade Lightheart:
I think there's a caveat there, if I can interject briefly.

Melanie Avalon:
Please do. 

Wade Lightheart:
I think this is maybe the biggest mistake that people make when they switch over to another diet. So every diet philosophy has strengths and weaknesses and I think that's something that is a hard point for people to acknowledge. So there's advantages to the ketogenic diet, advantages to a vegetarian diet, advantages to a paleo diet, and there's liabilities in each one of those. Then you got to put over the framework of a person's individual genetics and epigenetics. 

Wade Lightheart:
Oftentimes when a person switches, even though say that diet might not be optimal for that person over the long term, it oftentimes fills holes that was in their previous diet. So there is a, what I would call, it's kind of like getting into a relationship and there's kind of that romance period where it's just nothing but great because you're running on this biochemical ride and then at maybe six months or a year down the road or maybe even two years depending on how big those changes are or how big the holes you're filling with the new diet, now you're going to suffer from maybe some things that you didn't anticipate which your old diet actually covered. 

Wade Lightheart:
So people mistake the change with the outcome and without real getting into the weeds, without understanding and getting the right experts and looking at genetics and epigenetics and the various biomarkers, whether that's your insulin response, or your hormone cascade, or all these different things that you can look at, well, those things are going to determine the ultimate outcome and the bottom line, I think, if you're a biohacker or like we say, one of the things that we call biological optimization, which is how are you constantly adjusting to life because life is dynamic.

Wade Lightheart:
You could be on a diet, and I've experienced this you can be on a diet or a system or process that's working really well, then you go through a major stress piece, you work too much. Maybe you go through a relationship trouble. There could be financial stress, there could be some other, maybe it's a sickness in the family or divorce or things like that, that put kind of external stressors that can put a person into the toilet, even if they're in the optimal diet for them. The question is, well, how do you build yourself back without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Matt Gallant:
There's one more thing to I want to add to what Wade said, that in terms of explaining kind of the increased benefits of switching, which is to remove toxins, and I'm not talking about the obvious toxins and the blue dyes and all the chemicals. I'm talking about our nutrigenomics and our gut biome will either happily be able to digest certain foods and there's a lot of foods that are just not optimal for our biology. 

Matt Gallant:
This is where again, this biological optimization. The great thing is we can do some tests like Viome, which what was really valuable about Viome, it validated a lot of intuitive things and it also revealed some super foods that I kind of always liked, for example, arugula, watercress, I don't like normal lettuces, and those came up as super foods for me, because they're feeding certain strains that are loving that. So that's an example. Of course, a food sensitivity test like cyrex is very valuable because, of course, we could watch our heart rate variability and see the stress response from different foods which is one way, but I think just getting a food sensitivity test is a great tool. 

Matt Gallant:
So just to recap, what we were saying is you're filling in nutritional deficiencies, and then you're removing certain, again, maybe certain toxins, which, for example, if you're switching from meat to vegetarianism, maybe your uric acid was too high, maybe again, you don't digest meat, red meat that well or chicken that well and those were stressors, and then you switch and you're getting that benefit. Same thing happens with carnivore, there's a lot of plants, so plants are a stressor to the body. 

Matt Gallant:
Now, what a lot of people are failing to understand is that there's a hormetic response, which is improving the health of the body. So yeah, these plants have all these defense mechanisms designed to keep them alive, but at the same time, just like weightlifting and other cryo and all these things that we stress ourselves with as biohackers the site of food also falls in that category. Again, some foods are just too much and the positive hormesis, the adaptation it's low compared to the problems that are coming up. So it's really those two things that happened when people shift.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I couldn't be in any more agreement. I'm so glad you brought that up. Because, if I know one thing about diet, it's that I don't think there's one right diet for everybody and there's not one right diet probably at any one time for everybody. It drives me a little bit insane how people do, they'll try a new dietary approach. You mentioned things like carnivore or vegetarianism, or things like that. Because of such a drastic change, maybe are addressing deficiencies they had or getting rid of toxins that they didn't realize they were reacting to, and they do experience benefits. 

Melanie Avalon:
Then we get these camps where it becomes almost religious in a way and everybody needs to follow that diet and it just drives me up the wall. It did make me think a little bit more. So how intuitive Do you guys think diet should be because perhaps that's one of the potential downfalls or intricacies or complications of biohacking because to what extent should our bodies innately just know what they need and we could just listen to our body's cues versus us need to intervene, be it with digestive support or genetic testing or eating certain compounds or extracted supplements that may benefit us. What do you guys think is a healthy approach to biohacking?

Matt Gallant:
First of all, slow that question because we are both huge on this, which is to do both. If you're in a relatively healthy state, I think the healthier you get the more sensitive or body aware you become. I want Wade to talk about his experience when he was dieting down in bodybuilding competitions because it's a great example of that. The point is that, you start noticing these things. Now in terms of digestion, there's some very clear, let's call them warning signals that most people consider normal. In our opinion, again, it's not normal, just like brain function be normal, just like a lot of different things that people are just used to living in and where we're from, both Wade and I we're Eastern Canada.

Matt Gallant:
The mentality there is like, I'm so full, I couldn't finish my plate. That was a great meal in a restaurant. So people are really used to kind of having a heavy stomach. A heavy stomach, even though it kind of tells your brain that you're full is obviously not a good biofeedback signal. Again, you should never really feel heaviness stomach, same thing with gas, bloating. I know a lot of course women struggle with that. 

Matt Gallant:
Most of that is food generated, which I'll get way to talk about the five stages digestion because if you understand that, then all these problems, you can troubleshoot them. Then obviously, constipation diarrhea, again, not normal things. So that's examples of very clear cues that obviously you don't need a blood test for, to kind of gauge your digestion. In terms of, there's a lot of things happening. I was just in Bosnia last week in Sarajevo, and I saw one of the most mind blowing posters I've ever seen in my life. 

Matt Gallant:
It was massive, it was probably, four by five, four feet by four feet and it was called everything that happens inside of a cell. I just looked at that for like 10 minutes and it just blew my mind. I'm like, yeah, this is how much is going on. I think that's where blood tests and other trace mineral tests, all these things will reveal things that we're maybe a few decades away from feeling the consequences of.

Matt Gallant:
So I think where a lot of the technology comes in is being able to detect these things far quicker and far earlier than why wait till your cells are falling apart because you were lacking a trace mineral or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think you got to use both but Wade, maybe talk about your experience. I know you were a big user of biofeedback when you were competing with Scott Abel, and talk about all the cues you were using I know you've been a user of biofeedback for a long time. 

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah. So first and foremost, I think you have to understand your own personality type. So some people are just naturally more intuitive and some people are, I would say, naturally more logical. I think the more logical you are, the more you're probably going to skew towards data, external systems. I think the more intuitive you are, the more you're going to go to kind of more intuitive biofeedback kind of things and everybody's some mix of that. 

Wade Lightheart:
So what I use it, so I was tracking biofeedback literally from my teenage years because that's what Arnold Schwarzenegger said to do and then that's was also echoed by Scott Abel later on, that what I would say is once I got a professional coaching in my life, what they were able to turn to say, physical cues and keep in mind this was for bodybuilding. So it was a very competitive sport that had specific training regimens and specific cues that you could know and I was able to leverage the expertise of world class trainer to help me interpret what it was when I woke up tired every day or my appetite was up or if I felt strong in the gym or if I felt weak in the gym or how sore I was.

Wade Lightheart:
These were very crude formats relative to the sport I'm dealing with. In that case, that's a high performance situation that a lot of people probably aren't going to experience. Same thing when you get into single digit body fat levels, for competitions, the sensitivity level that you're at is, I would suspect it's probably 10 X of the average person walking around in North America today.

Wade Lightheart:
You just get really, really sensitive as you get down to single body fat levels and you also get a visual representation. Now at my evolution, what I began to get into as my competitive career ended in, I would say, we were kind of biohackers before it was called that. We were talking about a lot of things they were today 15 years ago and testing it with our clients all around the world and we got a lot of data from that. What I found is, as the testing has improved, you can get specific tests and if you're already tracking biofeedback, and the simple way to do that is just get a notebook. 

Wade Lightheart:
Write down how you feel on a day to day basis, write down how you diet on, or how you're feeling relative your diet on a daily basis, and you'll actually see your own patterns and if you're doing testing, correlate it with that. Over time, you're going to build an associative connection with the data and that is when your intuitive capabilities even if you're a more logical person is kind of going to go to the, what I say the optimal sphere. 

Wade Lightheart:
I think a lot of people really underestimate their own internal capacity to figure themselves out. I think for most people we're so far gone as far as being in tune with our physiology, that the average person is going to be much better off getting some testing under the guidance of an expert, so that they can get that data points and start making proper correlations between that feedback as they develop their ability to be more intuitive and interpret their biofeedback correctly.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it's such a complicated dance to follow because I feel like for me, personally, I've oscillated between times where I want to do all the testing. I want to see where all the markers are and I want to address everything specifically and then I kind of hit like, supplement biohacking burnout where I'm like, I'm over it. I'm like, let me just try to reach an intuitive state. So it's like how does one find this balance where they are being intuitive and following a dietary protocol and exercise lifestyle protocol that works for them while still upgrading their performance with whatever tools they have access to.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, I think you're talking about Matt kind of talked about it in the triangle is what's the primary focus and in checking in on that, is it aesthetics? Is it performance? Is it health, and everybody has a tolerance on each one of those things at any given time. I think checking in on that on a regular, regular basis because you know what, certainly I can think of my own self where I was an absolute as fanatical as you can get on diet. To have success on a national and international level in bodybuilding, you're a fanatic. There came to a point in my life where it's like-

Matt Gallant:
Absolutely, you got to talk about the rice cakes Wade. I just want to cue Wade up here because, I've never seen anything like it before or since Wade and I struck up a friendship when he was competing, and I got to kind of witness that. So Wade, accurately describe what you ate for a long time.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, when I was competing I think at the going for the Mr. Universe contest, my diet consisted of a very limited amount of things. I had two Shredded Wheat biscuits in the morning and 50 grams of protein. My second meal was 25 mini rice cakes, and 50 grams of protein. My third meal was 150 grams of potatoes and the protein and then my fourth meal was the same as the earlier rice cake meal and then the fifth meal was a salad and a protein, a small salad with no oil or dressing. I was the absolutely opposite. Now, did I get ripped and did I have single digit body fat level and was I competitive? Sure, it was a great performance diet as far as relative to that field and it set me up for the biggest health crisis of my life after the Mr. Universe contest.

Matt Gallant:
Let me jump in and describe that from kind of an outward perspective. So I saw Wade, and he was getting ripped and it was kind of fun to see. Wade was getting kind of leaner every week, and you'd see the striations and stuff come in, but I was also seeing his brain decline, to the point where he would walk into World's Gym, and I would say, hey, Wade how are you and a totally zombified look was continuing to walk, says just another day in paradise, bro. I saw that, it was kind of a gradual thing. Then Wade, maybe share what happened after that competition.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, after the Mr. Universe I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. Turned from Mr. Universe to Mr. Marshmallow, which the good news was, number one, I could relate to my obese clients better. The feeling I had cosmetically, imagine going from your cosmetic ideal to your cosmetic worse in three months. Then the secondary thing that also helped me understand the consequences of a performance only based diet, where that leads to, if you're only pushing end of that triangle, if you will, health performance, that kind of thing or aesthetics, you're going to run into trouble or two corners, you can run into trouble. 

Wade Lightheart:
Then the third thing I guess, would be, that's where we started to dive into our dietary components and looking at digestion, looking at the role of the microbiome, the role of enzymes. All of these things that are really, really important. The importance of essential fatty acids and brain health and things like that. Being smart, had nothing to do or being mentally effective had nothing to do with how I looked on stage at the time, right? But it certainly made a difference in how I functioned in the rest of the world. 

Wade Lightheart:
So it took us quite a while to correct that and to turn back into a more healthy approach. Of course, Matt and I who have what a lot of people say is polar opposite dietary practices, found the common ground in understanding the role of making sure whatever diet you're following is in alignment with your genetics, your epigenetics, your lifestyle, your microbiome, and your ability to absorb, utilize the food that you're eating.

Matt Gallant:
Just want to go back to your question as well and a couple points. First of all, where we're at in terms of bio hacking or bio tracking technology, in my opinion, is at 0.1% of where we're going to be probably 10 years. Probably the biggest limitation in the tracking is that it's snapshot driven. If you take a glucose measurement, a prick versus a constant glucose monitor, they're incomparable in terms of the value of that data. Because now you can start seeing trends, you can start seeing how a meal affected you and how it didn't affect you.

Matt Gallant:
As a quick little tangent, it's really interesting that they've taken foods, just to recap, there's a glycemic index, which supposedly, if you eat X amount, your blood sugar rises by certain number. What they found in tests is that different people eating the same food had a very different glycemic response. Why? Because of your gut biome. So your gut biome-

Wade Lightheart:
Not to mention that same foods, the same foods at different times of the day is going to change.

Matt Gallant:
Even our genetics. There's was a great eating cherry out of season study and they found the downregulation of a couple of genes that actually made it harder to burn fat. So even are bodies are tuned into, am I in a winter climate, am I in a summer climate. The point is that going back to the tech, I can't wait to just have one device that's literally taking frequent measurements, if not constant of every biometric that we need from hormones to glucose to, you name it, the more the better, but all working and kind of in the background where we don't need to be worrying about stuff. 

Matt Gallant:
It's feeding us suggestions, based on what's happening in our bodies. Maybe again, there's certain vitamins you need at that moment, there's certain supplements you need. Certain foods you should eat, certain foods should avoid. If we were able to just automate the whole thing which is going to be done inevitably, I think within the next decade. That is really the golden age of biological optimization. Now, we're far away from that and we have to use what we have, which is things like oura rings and whoops. We do have a constant glucose monitor, and we can get blood tests, but blood test is very expensive.

Matt Gallant:
I get a lot of blood tests, and it's not cheap because I like seeing what's happening on a relatively frequent basis because I do experiments. I can't wait for the day where I spend , 200 bucks and get 10,000 times more data that I'm getting now in a way that's easy to understand. I think also your intuition around taking time off is a smart thing, especially when it comes to supplements. Like the only supplements and I know it's going to sound self serving, but the only ones that don't stop are the digestive ones but a lot of the vitamins and immune system boosting herbs and growth hormone changing substance and things like that, I'm not going to just stay on them.

Matt Gallant:
I think, again, our bodies want to go through periods of growth and then periods of autophagy. I think as biohackers you want to cycle through systematically and I think when you're taking time off, because toxicities can build even of vitamins and things like that. I was doing a lot of cheap vitamin B, like 17 years ago, and I got a blood test. I had toxic levels of vitamin B in my blood at that time. So that's the potential consequence of taking cheap supplements. 

Matt Gallant:
I think again, you're going back to even the same concept as cycling from the nutrition, from whatever diet to keep the carnivore or whatever diet to vegetarianism, you're clearing up maybe some toxic overloads or you're patching up deficiencies, but I think taking time off of biohacking and just kind of seeing where normal is because, I can bio modulate myself to pretty high levels in terms of performance and other things like.

Matt Gallant:
I'll just yesterday as an example. So I just went on the craziest trip of my life. It was about 13 days non stop 12, 14 out of 17 our day and flew to Europe, to Syria, came back with three red eyes, four time zones So, I got home Sunday, sorry Monday morning, after a red eye. So, I was hurting a little bit yesterday. I woke up and I'm like, okay, this is not my normal state. My physiology is hurting. I need to patch this up.

Matt Gallant:
So this is kind of how I think you want to approach, especially brain boosting things. You want to approach them based on what you need at the time. So it took five [inaudible 00:28:00] caffeine pre 60 milligrams of my favorite CBD. I took two pills of Lavela, which is a calm aid. It's a lavender oil based product. It's awesome. Highly recommend that product, not many people know about that. It raises alpha and it's kind of like l-theanine and then did three tier [inaudible 00:28:20] and then just drank a bulletproof coffee. 

Matt Gallant:
That combination, I was on fire. Again, I had to go till about 9:30 PM last night but is that something I'm going to do every day? I mean, as fun as it was, and as good as I felt, not really. So I think again, this is where discernment and mindfulness and being present to what's going on, I think is critical for biohacking or bio optimization.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it's so interesting that you brought that up, perfect timing because actually, so in our last interview on the Intermittent Fasting podcast, we went on a whole tangent about the enzyme factor, phi.

Wade Lightheart:
Hiromi Shinya.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, by Hiromi Shinya. I was actually, so Wade, because I was reading that when we were talking last time and I was finishing it up last night. One of the things he actually said, which I don't think he has, I was trying to find the study that he was referencing for it. He was saying, I'm actually reading right now that, there is some research that indicates too many supplements can have a negative effect on our immune system, increase free radicals, prompt changes in the fat found in the liver, heart and kidneys. He's talking about supplements, like supplementing certain macronutrients and vitamins and things like that. 

Melanie Avalon:
So just to come back to your point about finding the balance and the tendency to potentially overdo things. It's crazy. I would love to hear a little bit more especially Wade, hearing your story about your bodybuilding career and the implications of your dietary approach and what that did to your body. So coming out of that, because I think a lot of people do, maybe not to that extreme, because not everybody is a national bodybuilder, but people often do get into these dietary approaches that seemingly serve them or serve their goal for a certain amount of time, but might actually be perpetuating intense hormonal, biological effects that are really, really hard to get out of. 

Melanie Avalon:
So, some questions surrounding that, how did you come out of that and when our bodies do experience such extreme dietary changes like that, do you think that our bodies can always return to a state of wholeness and well being or can we potentially do just so much damage and restricted dietary protocols that will never be able to be, "what we were before?"

Wade Lightheart:
First and foremost, I'll answer the last part of the question first. The body's ability to re-constitute itself or rebuild itself if given the proper technology and the right guidance is pretty extraordinary. That being said, most people who get themselves into a compromised state do not have access are unaware or are unwilling to make the necessary adjustments which are sometimes radical, both not just what they're doing dietary wise but also what they're doing lifestyle wise. 

Wade Lightheart:
I'll explain this relative to my own case, but I've seen literally hundreds and hundreds of people in that situation. I think it gets stronger to the more radical the technology you get. So for example, if you get into hormones, and once you go down that rabbit hole, pretty hard to come out of it once you take that step. So I always tell men who are looking to say use testosterone replacement therapy, or younger men, which are oftentimes partial to using anabolic steroids to meet the Muscle & Fitness covers look.

Wade Lightheart:
I think many people really underestimate the consequences and if you're going to go down that road, I think you really need to have expertise and guidance and someone who's well versed in that, and those are not easy to find, I would say, or they leverage and they certainly are going to cost you stuff. The other thing is, is oftentimes we choose a dietary or exercise regimen, or whatever it is, based on what our lifestyle objective. 

Wade Lightheart:
So I see this all the time with aging executives, who have a standard of performance and capacity that they want in their 20s or 30s and they're in their 40s, 50s and 60s, and they haven't fully accepted that the body is not as responsive as it was that and they don't want to make the necessary changes in their lifestyle, because they're demanding this. So what happens I often start what I call chasing the dragon and using more and more invasive technologies which set them up for health disasters or sometimes even personal disasters.

Wade Lightheart:
So you have to take those into consequences. So once you enter into the realm of drugs, I do believe that there's far more implications than say if you're doing nutritional supplements. Now, in my own case, when I came out of that, I had the guidance of a doctor, Dr. Michael O'Brien, who transformed both my life and Matt's life and I'll tell you exactly what I did. I did 35 enzymes a day in five divided meals, because that's what I was used to at that time. I don't eat that many meals on a day now. I took five enzymes before every meal. 

Wade Lightheart:
I took two probiotics with every meal and I took 10 probiotics in the morning, 10 probiotics and evening and that's what I did in order to reconstitute my microbiome, which I totally destroyed with my nine months or 10 months on the diet I told you about, the five thing diet. That's the five food diet that I did, it destroyed my microbiome. So, bottom line, I did that, I went to a completely raw food diet because I was extremely acidic at the time and it took me about six months. 

Wade Lightheart:
I also added in some vitamins and minerals, a lot of green foods stuff, some special amino acid combinations as well in conjunction with that, and it took me six months to kind of rebuild my health and my physique. My physique really was great in six months, and I had similar condition, not quite to contest condition, because I wasn't pushing it that fast. I got to really great conditioning, feeling great, which was a total difference from before. 

Wade Lightheart:
Now, keep in mind at that time, we're looking at, I was 31 years old at the time. 31, 32. So, my body's responsiveness was different. I wasn't on any anabolics of any type. So that was a factor that allowed me to, mine was mostly dietary and stress related from the training and the competition standpoint. So take my lifestyle two years after that, right? 

Wade Lightheart:
Well, two years after that, I found that there was holes in my raw food diet that had to be addressed and I had to make another pivot again. So these are the kind of things that as you move through the different stages of life that you're going to have to be reflective of where you are, where you're at, and where you want to go. Then how much time energy and investment you're going to make on that because there's always a trade off. If Matt wanted to be his optimal, healthy self, he'd probably have to dial back his business career somewhat.

Wade Lightheart:
If you want a better business career as a lot of people in the health industries do, they're probably going to have to pay less attention to their health and if you're dying of sickness, whether it's self induced or genetic or environmental related, you're probably going to have to dial back your business and your personal life in order to address that and come out of it. So these are always factors and that's why sometimes when you do these podcasts, you do stuff, I think a lot of people, unfortunately, will, we might be commenting on a specific person or a specific thing or answering a question and they take that as the gospel or the truth, but it's relative to the person at the time and their goals and where they might be. Of course, that's where your, as I call it, the Jedi Council comes in and that's your team of experts that helps guide you through that.

Melanie Avalon:
I love that and I do wonder, so as far as the hormones go, would you also extend, you spoke about testosterone with men. Would your thoughts surrounding hormones also apply to things like progesterone and hormone-

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, I'll say one quick comment, and I'll let Matt kind of go on it. Yeah, I can remember, I'll give you an example. I had a female client back when I was a personal trainer. She was an awesome lady. She was actually a billionaire. Just a fantastic person and individual, and she was aging. She wanted to get on a variety of different hormones from a doctor and I remember looking at her panel and I was like, I think you need to address a couple of these issues before you go down that road. I have some serious concerns. She didn't want to listen to me, I understand it. I was just the personal trainer at the time from her perspective and five years later, she was dead for the very reasons that I suspect it was going to be a problem. Her commitment to performance and optimal performance as concordant with her cosmetic ideas really jeopardized her perspective on health. I'll let Matt jump in from here.

Matt Gallant:
So I have been on testosterone for around four years. Now prior to that, and when I met, I only competed once in bodybuilding and I was so against steroids at the time. I really wanted to see if I could do it naturally, which over many years of insane, hard work and not having the genetics I realized I couldn't, so I gave up on that. Anyways, the time I competed, I saw Wade and I realized that okay, and I didn't want to do testosterone, I didn't want to do those things. So I just stopped bodybuilding. 

Matt Gallant:
Four years prior to starting testosterone, I tried, every supposed testosterone booster on the market. Nothing really moved the needle. There was a few things that moved estrogen a little bit, and there was stuff that moved luteinizing hormone, which is a good one, especially for sex drive. Then, in terms of testosterone, nothing move that boost. By the way, what matters more is free testosterone, and that's where certain nutrients like boron and zinc, if you're deficient in those, if you fill those gaps, you will see a boost in that. 

Matt Gallant:
Even that, my testosterone at the end was in the two hundreds. I think for a man to feel at his peak self, I would say it's around 500 to 1000, is around the range. These days, I keep myself around 750 and I feel pretty good. Higher than that, to me, this is where again, the difference between optimization versus maximization is one thing. Again, I'm not trying to get as big as I can, I'm not trying to lose as much body fat as I can. 

Matt Gallant:
I'm mindful of all the data parameters and I get frequent blood work and monitor all the things you need to be mindful of which again, you need to look at your prostate, your liver enzymes and things like that. So, knock on wood, I haven't had any issues, but I'm constantly monitoring to make sure that if there are, I'm catching them really early. As Wade alluded to you want to work with functional medicine doctors that are really on the bleeding edge and good news is there is more and more coming out there. 

Matt Gallant:
I think it's a great trend and emerging market segment that you're going to see a lot of doctors shift to that. Like Wade said, it's not a light decision. It's a permanent decision more or less unless we find a peptide or something that can activate that system. In terms of testosterone dropping, and we're all biologically wired to peek in our 20s and wither away. That is the biological wiring that every single human has. So if we're not doing things to, again, slow that down, then we're going to age and we're going to have all the consequences, brain, body, et cetera, et cetera.

Matt Gallant:
Now, I think this is a good segment into another framework, which is kind of like the three levels of transhumanism and as biohackers, I think we all fall into this category of transhumanist. The first level is like bio modulation, is tweaking things, is hormesis, it's exercise. It's all the biohacking stuff. It's kind of like the process of hormesis, you're triggering responses, you're lightly patching nutritional deficiencies using supplements. 

Matt Gallant:
The second level, now we're into bio enhancement. That's a whole letter level, that's where the hormones come in. Peptides, stem cells, we're radically enhancing or changing systems in the body. Again, you have to be mindful of all the relationship between all the systems and monitor that that's where the tracking comes in. The third frontier, which is really here now and it's about to explode, is bio transformation. 

Matt Gallant:
Now we're talking gene splicing, we're talking cybernetics, we're talking brain to tech interfaces, such as neural link which is here and of course, it's not mass market. I won't be the first guy for either genetic engineering or neural link but I might be in line for the third and fourth variation of those things. I think it's wise to do your research and make sure you understand what you're getting into.

Melanie Avalon:
It's an intense frontier that we're entering.

Wade Lightheart:
I would cite the book, I call it homo data, some people call it Home Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, and he was also the writer of Sapiens which was where he outlines the five different types of species that were on the planet and emerged into Homo sapiens as we know it today. It's a pretty fascinating book but the second book with this Homo Deus kind of book is where humans are right now, with the rise of infotech and biotech are literally, we're going to enter into an era in the not too distant future and this is part of the conversation both on a political level and on a social level, is that there's going to be the emergence of a radically enhanced species on the planet, and it's happening now in the biohacking community. 

Wade Lightheart:
Biohackers are the early adopters of that evolutionary shift, that they are able to perform at levels previously not in the capacity. I'll give you a great example. Tom Brady and James Harrison, both are football players. James Harrison was the longest standing linebacker in the history of the NFL. Tom Brady's probably the highest performing quarterback at his point. They're spending, Tom's probably spending upwards close to a million dollars a year Harrison said that he was spending $370,000 a year to keep him on the field and it made sense for guys like that because they're making millions of dollars a year. 

Wade Lightheart:
This is where athleticism is going and this is where high performance executives are going. So in order to compete with the 30 year old executive, if you're a 55 year old guy, your options are pretty much limited, you pretty much have to become a biohacker and it's the same thing also for females, I think, which is really important to understand is that women today now have more choices than they had in generations past. They have choices, largely in part because of sanitary developments for women's periods, and the advent of birth control. 

Wade Lightheart:
Those two elements allowed a woman to decide whether she wants to bear a child or not and a lot of women are choosing to bear children much later in life. Now, because they're doing that, because they want to experience these other aspects that weren't really available for women prior too, people can look about the social components of it, but there's just the biological factor of being a woman and bearing a child of something a man can never possibly do, or course maybe they'll be able to genetically alter us and maybe that'll happen. Who knows. 

Wade Lightheart:
The bottom line is as women start to have children later and later in life, the consequences of that are significant. Women are made to be having children's when they're like teenagers and young adults primarily and of course, women died a lot from childbirth, as well and technology allowed more women to survive the child birthing experience than they were before. So they're already biohacking. We just don't necessarily look at it that way because it's so commonplace and I think as women get older and they start having children, the biochemical consequences of those choices are significant. 

Wade Lightheart:
I think you're going to see an explosion of women biohackers as they come to terms with the reality of how do they stay in their optimal status as they as they age or choose to have children at a different age than they were previously condemned to, if you will in the past.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. That's something I've been thinking a lot about, especially just as far as like the female body is concerned in this whole biohacking world and this stress world and everything hormones, just because the female body does seem to have another aspect to it as far as how it reacts to stress and the implications of dietary changes. Then even things like you were talking about with extending the potential fertility window. The implication is I don't even know if we know where things will go in the future. Kind of like, I don't think we saw the implications of not to say, it will be a bad thing necessarily that happens but with things like GMOs or things that I think we didn't realize would have such far ranging consequences by fiddling with the natural mechanisms of things in our environment, I think it's really hard for us to get a grasp of the implications of that.

Matt Gallant:
There is a positive, which if you look at every technology, it goes through a few phases. One is a lot of waste. If you look at the industrial revolution, take a look at cars. Obviously, it was a lot of pollution, which gotten better and better and now we're basically in zero emission technology thanks to guys like Elon Musk. So I think that a lot of technologies are going to go through that including potentially even GMOs, maybe we'll truly create super foods. 

Matt Gallant:
The issue with the intent of the GMO was to maximize yield, not maximize health. So if we get a new generation of high calibrating, high consciousness scientists, actually engineering food to be super food, not make the biggest tomatoes you can with zero nutrition and it could survive whatever climates and blah, blah, blah, which again, I'm not totally knocking, but it does seem to affect our gut biome according to a lot of issues and Wade and I have way bigger issues with the pesticides.

Melanie Avalon:
That's actually yeah, I realize I was saying GMOs by I meant to mention pesticides as well with the implications of the water soluble toxins and the effect on the gut microbiome and the genetic effects of it, I think are just overwhelmed.

Wade Lightheart:
Well, if you look at herbicides, pesticides and insecticides, they all have the same ending as homicide and suicide, and how they work just so people understand the implications of it, what those chemicals actually do, how they kill the pests, or those agents that are disrupting the yield of that crop, is they interrupt the enzymatic process of those animals and render it so dysfunctional, that they die. So think about that. Well, if I'm going to kill a bug, and I need X amount of dose of, I'm just going to go say whatever chemical Monsanto is thrown on crop, and how much of that do I need to ingest before it damages me? How much do I need to ingest? 

Wade Lightheart:
What's interesting I can't tell you how many people have told me they can eat something like pasta which would be a wheat based or whatever here in North America. They go to Europe, they have bread or pasta and they hang out in Italy for two months. They never have a digestive issue with that food and they come back here and their first bowl of pasta they have or loaf of bread, they're in pain or they're bloated or dysfunctional, and I relate that directly to the enzymatic interruption that's happening and then there's a cumulative effect. 

Wade Lightheart:
We know there's a cumulative effect because if you take tests of adipose tissues, I had a Harvard surgeon who put the first stent in the body, he's a friend of mine. He said to me when we extract the fat tissues, here's what we found. We find herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, dyes and preservatives, all of those agents, which are agents of I would say, the modern food production and food distribution industry, which solves the calorie issue or solves starvation issues which plague the planet forever, but it was a short sighted look at what food is and what's required and what are the consequences of adding these agents in. 

Wade Lightheart:
So as a society, I think we have to recognize we do need mass food production and mass food distribution, but our previous definition of food was limited and had some serious gaps in it and we're having those consequences, as well as addressing the issue of chronic toxicity due to these agents that have helped us solve the calorie program, but have actually initiated I would say an advent of genetic diseases, toxic related agents or challenges that people are subject to today.

Melanie Avalon:
So when it comes to enzymes, because you're speaking of disrupting, that's crazy about the mechanism of action behind the pesticides and herbicides. So when it comes to enzymes, can you paint a picture in general of what enzymes are? Because I think we have this word enzymes. So there are enzymes in the body, there is digestive enzymes. What are enzymes?

Wade Lightheart:
Great question. It's interesting, and this is the part that why Matt and I are on this massive crusade for people to consume enzymes on a daily basis. That is, we both have a background in exercise physiology and nutrition kinesiology, and we've read literally hundreds of books and every one of these books on nutrition will have maybe a page or a paragraph talking about the role of enzymes and that's all you hear. You don't hear anything else about it. 

Wade Lightheart:
So it's overlooked by medical field, it's overlooked by nutritionist. It's overlooked by sports performance experts. Frankly, it's probably the biggest mistake they can make and finally, we're starting to get evidence to support that as far as recovery and longevity and health and things like that. I'll refer to Dr. Howell's Enzyme Nutrition or Food enzymes for Health & Longevity. 

Wade Lightheart:
So, what an enzyme is, first off an enzyme is the difference between the living and the dead. The difference between stones plants and people are enzymes. There is literally thousands and thousands, over 25,000 known chemical reactions that are formulated or accelerated through enzymes. Enzymes are essentially catalyst. Basically what they do is they take substance A and converted into substance B in your body, and while retaining its own principles, and then they'll go off and do something else. 

Wade Lightheart:
So every time that you damage your enzymatic potential and your enzymatic potentials the total enzyme capacity of an organism and basically think of it this way. The only thing that does works is enzymes and probiotics and probiotics are specific targeted bags of enzymes that do, if you look at it. Those things, there's a finite capacity, which Dr. Howell called your enzyme potential, that is your ability to do metabolic work or biochemical work. As I study enzymes, they're very real. They have a quantum tunneling ability, it seems like they appear here, then they disappear and they show up here. They have all these radical properties.

Melanie Avalon:
Can you expand on that? 

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, it's like they'll show up at a piece in the body, create a reaction disappear and then show up in another place of the body. The same enzyme. Yeah, they call it quantum tunneling. They call it quantum tunneling.

Melanie Avalon:
So can they trace enzymes through, like, how do they-

Wade Lightheart:
There's a series of studies and you're getting really, they don't really know the mechanism of why that is. They just can track the markers of enzymatic activity and they'll show it disappear and then reappear, but they can't see the enzyme itself in the in between stage. So there's a bunch of biochemical stuff. The Netherlands, back in the day actually built a whole stomach to see how enzymes would, they wanted to prove that enzymes become reactivated in the intestinal tract if they're properly made, and they were able to demonstrate that which previous to do that everybody said that enzymes were destroyed in the high acid environment of the stomach. 

Wade Lightheart:
Yet they were able to prove that that's absolutely not the case if you have a properly formatted digestive enzyme. The other factor is if you look at the enzyme potential of the food that we are eating today, it's almost zero across the board. A simple experiment is go eat a carrot out of a garden, an organic garden versus a carrot in the store. It's going to taste, it's going to feel, it's going to touch completely different and it's going to have a whole bunch of different responses inside your body and you can feel the difference. I can remember eating an heirloom seed from a, those people that don't have the, a Mennonite farm, because I was thinking the people don't use tires and engines and all that stuff.

Wade Lightheart:
I had a tomato and a cucumber and I was full on a tomato and cucumber. It was so nutrient dense and had so many enzymes because it was a 300 year old heirloom seeds that they were using. So what I was eating is nothing like a tomato add today. Plus, we cook all our food which destroys all the enzymes. So the average person by the time they get 30, and this was back in the 40s, we're only getting 30% of the enzymes less. Today I bet it's probably 10 or 15% and that's why people suffer from low energy.

Wade Lightheart:
That's why they have trouble with digesting their food. That's why they have brain fog in the morning is largely in part because their body doesn't have enough enzymes present in order to break down the food that they have. Of course it's perpetual problem that has led to now we have 12% of the emergency hospital visits or gastrointestinal related issues. We have 25% of the population on prescription medication for some sort of digestive ailment and we have a third of the population who are suffering from some sort of digestive stress on any given day.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, I have so many follow up questions about enzymes. I'm so excited right now. It's like ridiculous. Okay, so what is the purpose of the enzymes in these natural plants? I wouldn't think it would be to digest itself.

Wade Lightheart:
Actually it is. Go ahead Matt.

Matt Gallant:
Well, actually, one thing that people might have heard of, maybe they haven't is soaking nuts. Actually, these nuts have enzyme inhibitors and when you soak them, then the plant knows it's a safe environment to come out and to drop these enzyme inhibitors and that's when a plant comes to life. Then if you take a banana, so I live in Panama and if you take plantain for example, which is very commonly eaten here, you can kind of eat it, either when it's really green, or if you let it sit, then the enzymes break the starches into glucose and it becomes really sweet.

Matt Gallant:
You prepare other dishes, of course, we see that with bananas, they go from green to brown and rotting and that's the enzymes breaking that down and just part of the cycle of life. It does this thing, it comes out and if nobody eats it, then it moves on to the next phase of life. 

Wade Lightheart:
I'll add to that as well. So it's there's a lot of evidence that humans developed color vision, unlike, say, carnivore species so that we could recognize the coloration of fruits because humans have been traditionally fruitvores, certainly in their early ancestors probably predating humans. If you look at Homo Erectus and these type of things. So one of the reasons we develop that is just look at where is the enzymatic potential of that food. 

Wade Lightheart:
So a couple of the interactions is temperature. So temperature and light, and the biophotonic energy can also interact with the enzymatic capacity of the body and I'll give you a real world example. I'm an extremely fair haired person, blond hair, northern hemisphere. I would burn very easily, but by taking massive doses of enzymes over a period of time, I can get a deep dark tan and I do know I can go out into the sun for extended period of times where there was no possible way that I could do that in the past, because now I have enough enzymes to create the chemical reactions to improve the melanin of my skin. 

Wade Lightheart:
That's directly correlated to something and I've duplicated that with dozens of my friends who were fair haired and I told them this story. They didn't believe me and I said, "Look, just go on a 25 enzymes a day for the next six months, and see what happens when you go in suntanning." They be like, "I can't believe this. This is unbelievable." So that was kind of an anecdotal research around that. 

Wade Lightheart:
To answer the question, for example, when a killer whale eats a seal, and all physical organisms have an enzyme called cathepsin and that enzyme becomes activated at the moment of death, and literally starts to accelerate the decay and degeneration of the cellular matter. The same thing is with plants, and that's why if you freeze something, it will suspend the natural rotting of say if you put bananas in the fridge, if you put bananas on the counter, they're going to go bad in a week.

Wade Lightheart:
If you put bananas in the freezer, well they can stay there for years before they bring out because you've actually stopped the enzymatic reactions. So temperature is a big factor and of course, at 114 degrees, you destroy all the enzymatic capacity of anything and that's part of where pasteurization and sterilization came in to preserve food for food distribution, so we can get out of the grocery store shelf, which is nice and convenient. 

Wade Lightheart:
Again, we left out enzymes in the definition of food and then what happens is our body has to manufacture enzymes to counteract the lack of enzymes present and that has a metabolic costs which accelerates aging, which increases the likelihood of degeneration and limits your capacity to optimize your performance. That's why as a biohacker I believe that the foundation of being able to interact and develop the kind of superpowers that you want to develop or maintain capacity of an early person is directly correlated to systematically using enzymes over the long term.

Matt Gallant:
Let me jump in for a second. I think everybody listening, all the biohackers out there that are really wondering, well, what does this mean in the real world? What Kind of improved performance, maybe you don't have bloating and gas because you eat really clean. Well, what we found with enzymes, first of all in terms of recovery from exercise or recovery from injuries, it can cut the time in half. I know Wade for some of his later competitions after his disaster, used massive amounts of enzymes while training a couple times a day and stuff like that.

Matt Gallant:
So recovery is big. Neurotransmitters, which, again, if you're talking about peak performance, if we're back to the mental performance component, a lot of is driven by neuro transmitters. If you're struggling to break proteins down into amino acids, your body is not going to have enough amino acids to assemble the neurotransmitters and the peptides like melanin that Wade just referred about and that's an issue.

Matt Gallant:
So an example, my friend Frank, he's 78, might have just turned 79. At the time was 75 and he got on MassZymes which is our best selling product and within, I think two months, he stopped taking a bunch of antidepressant drugs that hae had been using for a decade plus. So again, and these enzymes are not obviously affecting the neurotransmitters directly, but they're producing far more amino acids, which is the key to just about everything in your body. 

Matt Gallant:
The enzymes work with the amino acids and other nutrients to produce certain effects and results. Then from the anti aging perspective, one of the interesting theories that is out as far as what's actually killing centenarians and super centenarians is protein accumulation in the cells. So, if you're eating food and you're not breaking the protein down and that protein is seeping through, first of all, it can kill you. An allergic reaction is an undigested protein your body seeing as a threat.

Matt Gallant:
Even again, let's just call it normal proteins, if they accumulate in the cells, the cells stop functioning and then they can't do their thing, they can't duplicate, got senescent cells and all these issues. So we believe that one of the best things for the aesthetic side, especially longevity is to do fasting and of course, you're huge fan of fasting, your other podcast and take high dosages of proteolytic enzymes, and the proteolytic enzymes are the ones that break down the proteins into amino acids. 

Matt Gallant:
Again, if you're not eating and you take proteolytic enzymes, well first of all, they're going to break down undigested proteins in the intestinal tract. Second, they're going to go into your bloodstream and start cleaning house there. The third thing and Wade, I'll let you share your sister story, is cancer. So, there are some doctors, Dr. Gonzalez, he's using fasting in conjunction with proteolytic enzymes at superhuman dosages and the theory is that it can break down the wall of the cancer cell and then the immune system can identify and deal with it. Wade, anything you want to add to that?

Wade Lightheart:
I think it's pretty succinct. I will say that with tumors, and we're not making any claims here by the way. We're not advocating this as a treatment protocol or anything like that. Go see your doctor. Viruses in tumors share one common element is that they create a protein coding that our immune system can respond or react to and can't identify it. So the theory goes from Gonzalez is that if you can break down that coding, then guess what, your immune system can attack that and I do believe that's correlated with enzymatic capacity and I have a theory, and of course this is an unproven theory.

Wade Lightheart:
I have a theory one of the reasons why people get sick more often as they age is that they don't have enough enzymes or they don't have the right microbiome that can take out the viral component, the bacterial component, or maybe the formation of tumors inside the body because they don't have enough enzymes in order to break those things down properly. 

Wade Lightheart:
We just get used to the aging process as just a gradual degeneration, but I believe that a lot of that degeneration, particularly cognitively, is relative to enzymatic components. Now diet is a big factor and I don't want to discount diet, but again, your diet is only as good as how well you digest, absorb and utilize whatever the diet is you're having. I don't think that there's anybody today in the modern world that has a completely optimized digestive tract. 

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, and I was speaking to you before we started about how I was interviewing David Sinclair this week about aging and longevity. Actually, that was something that he had brought up as well was, because he's been with his work, working towards an aging cure involving the epigenome and its relation to genes and the aging process. One thing he did say was that the potential, like one of the things might be harder to address with aging would be actually these protein buildups.

Melanie Avalon:
He was using the example of amyloid plaque and Alzheimer's and stuff. but he was saying that by fixing and addressing the epigenome, it'd be possible that perhaps people could have these plaque buildups or protein buildups, but because of epigenetic changes, they wouldn't create the inflammatory perpetuating response. So it was fascinating. I think that the enzymes, the protein, everything is huge. I do have actually some more follow up questions about the enzymes.

Melanie Avalon:
Like you said, Wade, I think it's so it's so huge, but it's so rarely discussed. So I'm really excited to be going deep in it. Because I know for me and this is just N of 1, but I did go through a dietary phase where I was eating massive, massive amounts of pineapple actually, which obviously has the enzyme bromelain in it and I actually want to bring it back into my life for the bromelain benefits.

Melanie Avalon:
Right now I'm just kind of struggling with like blood sugar type issues. So it's been a fail every time I try, but what are your thoughts on enzymes from foods, because you mentioned whether or not they are denatured in the stomach, when we take an enzymes naturally from foods, do you think they can still have a systemic effect or do they just work locally in digestive process. I have some follow up questions about MassZymes and supplemental enzymes.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, I'll answer that real quick. No. The enzymes present in a food are usually sufficient enough to break down and digest that food. If you're eating in a raw and pristine case, and it was growing under pristine conditions, most of the food that we get isn't there. The other thing is if you get into more genetically altered things like pineapple and stuff, oftentimes people, has a blood sugar issue, and then there's a burning, I would get burning in my mouth when I eat a lot of pineapple. 

Wade Lightheart:
For example, it gets to a point after three or four days of massive pineapple uses, I start getting sores in my mouth from it and [crosstalk 01:08:42] yeah, it feels amazing, except my face is burning off. So just to qualify the different types of enzymes because I think a lot of people don't understand that either. They say well, I took a protease in or I took bromelain or papain and didn't feel anything or got very limited results.

Wade Lightheart:
There's food enzymes which are found in food and then they're derivatives which are sometimes sold as supplements as the cheaper end of a supplement. Then there's animal based enzymes which are extracts from animals and you'll see a lot of that.

Melanie Avalon:
Like pancreatin?

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, exactly. Pancreatin. So which is relative to usually a very specific function or for pH levels inside the body and then you get into what's the systemic enzyme and a systemic enzyme is an enzyme that is not used in the digestive role, but is used to break down tissue. Something like serrapeptidase or Serrapsidase depending if you're using the two different types would break down adhesions in the body and there's a variety of different enzymes in those fields. 

Wade Lightheart:
Then there is cultured enzymes and a cultured enzyme is an enzyme that is growing under extremely rigid conditions using a variety of stuff. It's a highly secretive process. There's only a few places in the world that actually do this and virtually other enzyme, people extract the information from that. A cultured enzyme number one will work in a range of pH that is, anywhere from two to 12, which is gives it much more robustness based on the person's diet. 

Wade Lightheart:
The other thing is, it's going to be anywhere from 100 to 1000 times more potent than what you would find in a food enzyme. So when people look at enzyme, unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand the enzymatic equation. They don't understand the process and they don't understand the variants and a great cultured enzyme and we have prove of that, so MassZymes, we only produce cultured enzymes, enzymes that are grown specifically, and we believe, caveat here, we're not making claim but when you use these in therapeutic levels or therapeutic doses, they are able to produce effects in the body that you can't produce from regular enzymes and we have thousands of people and anecdotal evidence that has said that that is absolutely what they experience and I can't tell you how many people try enzymes and then they try ours and I go, wow, this is a wholly different, that's because they're not the same class. 

Wade Lightheart:
It's a food enzyme versus a cultured enzyme. So with the cultured enzyme, you can take those on an empty stomach and get a systemic enzyme response and what that means is like I had a friend who had a scar on her shoulder that was about a half inch thick and three inches long. She had gotten a spider bite and was like a necrosis thing and she had that for years and caused her so she couldn't continue her career in the circus, where she did silks and things like that.

Wade Lightheart:
As an experiment, I was giving her five MassZymes twice a day on an empty stomach and every time she took it within 15 minutes that scar would itch. Over the course of nine months, the scar became completely flat to the skin and lost all the red discoloration and actually went to the color of her skin so much her three year old daughter, she was holding on to your daughter and her three year old daughter grabbed her shoulder one day says, "Mom, what happened to your scar?" "It's gone." 

Melanie Avalon:
That is insane. I love the systemic enzymes. I know for me, it's fascinating because I always have this, it's like a tense spot in my shoulder and whenever I take high dose enzymes in the fasted state, I find that spot or areas where I think there is some sort of scar tissue or build up, I feel it, like it flares up and I feel like it's actually going to work in that area. Again, that's N of 1 but it's very, very real and present to me. Question about the cultured enzymes. I know you said its proprietary and secret, but it has been posited, well, first of all, are those cultured from like fungi or bacteria.

Matt Gallant:
So different plants will produce different sets of enzymes. So it's plants that are fermenting and then you extract the enzymes. 

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so it's from-

Matt Gallant:
It's a combination of I mean, again, each enzyme, there's a way to culture that particular enzyme. That's kind of the secret sauce but that should give you the juice.

Melanie Avalon:
The reason I'm asking is I've seen people debating whether or not people especially who have immune responses to certain bacteria or different yeast or fungi, that they might have negative immune reactions to enzymes because of the culturing. So I wasn't sure if that was a factor there.

Wade Lightheart:
There is an outside potential that that's possible if you're doing something like an Aspergillus or something like that, which is a fungal based enzyme and some people who have suffered from fungal type conditions are concerned about it. I find in most cases, it's not an issue. I would say 99 times out of 100 it isn't but there is that 1% case where it is and of course, that's easily monitored. I don't underestimate the psychosomatic effect of someone who's developed an aversion to fungus to take something and get an aversion. So like kind of the negative placebo effect. 

Melanie Avalon:
So true.

Wade Lightheart:
Right? Anytime that you get any diagnosis about any kind of condition, I would always say caveat, buyer, beware of that diagnosis because any of us are subject to a limited paradigm. That is we only know what we know and there's actually more that we don't know than what there is. I think biohackers are good in the standpoint, they're not as easy to accept the limitations that have been brought down to them by an external authority no matter how science they are, because doesn't matter how smart you are, you only know what you learned.

Wade Lightheart:
I think the whole aspect of biohacking is to break out of the limitation or the limiting paradigms that we are seeing objected to in our modern world, and to go beyond and to experiment and to take a little bit of what I would say, responsible risks in a pursuit of optimization. That doesn't mean that every experiment is going to go right but by that spirit is how that's all that's ever moved the human species forward is to be able to take a calculated risk with various things. The reality is, the risk of having some kind of issue with an enzyme is almost zero.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, ever since I've been recently studying very intensely, like the placebo effect and the different, left right brain studies, and I've just realized we know nothing and the implications of our mind is insane. Ever since I read, especially a study where they made it so that people, so only part of their brain could see certain objects and only part of the brain could see the other objects and basically, long story short, the language part of their brain that had no idea about anything of the person that experience because of how they set up the experiment, the left brain would just come up with an entire story and make up an entire memory to explain events. 

Melanie Avalon:
So the person would literally think all these things that happened that never even happened, because the brain just needed a reason. I was like, okay, so I got to stop trying to figure out anything because it could just be all in my head. I do have one question though, because I go high dose with enzymes, I'm a huge fan of enzymes. I take a lot fasted. I also take a lot with eating and digestion, but something I've been dying to ask you guys is, do you think there is the potential of taking too many enzymes with your food? 

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, you would super digest the food and it can like completely get rid of bloating and things like that, but would that, arguably be in a way making the food almost more, "processed" because you're breaking it down so much that it would be like akin to, for example, eating an apple versus apple juice. If you took so many enzymes with your meal that would make it more refined in a way.

Matt Gallant:
It's not really that fast. The amylase is pretty fast like the carbs, but proteins and fats take a longer, longer time to break down. So I think what you're really asking is it going to just completely dissolve it in the stomach, and the proteins and the fats take a while. They're kind of working through the different phases of the digestive tract. That's why we have a variety of different proteolytic enzymes that get activated at different pH levels. So that as the pH is changing from the stomach to the small intestine and large intestine, they're continuing to do their work, but it's not like just complete dissolving.

Matt Gallant:
I will say in my experience and our clients' experience, the way to really optimize digestion is not necessarily to take more enzymes. I think for most meals, five MassZymes will digest just about anything on the enzymatic front, but it's to add HCl, like say two caps of HCl and then one or two caps of P3-OM which is our proteolytic probiotic. There's definitely synergy specially with the HCl and the enzymes because those are two different pathways. 

Matt Gallant:
For example, heartburn is caused by not having enough acid and then the gas builds up, pushes the valve open and then liquid comes up and you feel that burn. So, we and I like food and I do big 6,000, 7,000 calorie day every Sunday and it's a great opportunity to test things because, just a lot of food and again adding the HCl made a big difference. The other thing too is to optimize the enzymes for the food that you're eating. So we do have another product called Gluten Guardian and I just went to Europe, London and Sarajevo, was eating a lot of bread never felt a second of bloating, thanks to Gluten Guardian.

Matt Gallant:
So that's a great tool in the toolbox and then we have kApex, which is more designed for people on keto, that are eating a lot of fat and eating a lot of protein. So, I think the answer is really pick the right enzymes for your diet or your meal and then add HCl and if you want to take it to the next level then add P3-OM. That's the combo that you just feel awesome. No bloating, no gas and that you really maximize the nutrient breakdown and absorption.

Melanie Avalon:
I agree about the protein and fat. I guess my concern was more with the carbs and the fiber. That sounds great.

Wade Lightheart:
Well, I will address that. With MassZymes, there's 17 Different enzymes. There's a big proteolytic component but there's 17 different enzymes, its enzymes for the masses. It's probably the most sophisticated enzymatic product on the market today to handle the widest range of variances and the other products that we've cultivated are basically the branches out of that digestive thing. If you're eating a lot of, like you said, things that have gluten, you use Gluten Guardian.

Wade Lightheart:
If you're on a more ketogenic diet, I actually use kApex a lot just for the energy components. I take for every morning when I get up. I absolutely love it, it's better than a cup of coffee because you don't get the nervous system responses. Those are different enzymatic focuses for specific diets where you can get a little bit more tweak because obviously we add a lot more lipase which breaks down fats for the ketogenic diet on the kApex product and with Gluten Guardian that's dealing specifically with gluten itself.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, and I know we are coming on time. So for listeners who want to get these supplements to optimize their digestion, what is a practical implementation of the order of the supplements? So if they're going to have their meal, what would they take? At what point?

Wade Lightheart:
Okay, so the standard, and by the way, if you contact our company, we have a bunch of different options for you based on your diet. Our staff is really well conditioned to answer those questions and any question they can't answer gets directed directly to me. So you can be sure that you're getting solid information in regard to that. Typically, what we found is for people to get the maximum benefit, I do suggest they commit to 90 days on what I would say a higher dosage. 

Wade Lightheart:
We have just noticed with, we've had over 50,000 clients that the people who get the best results do that. Largely in part, the first 30 days, they start to notice a significant difference. First couple weeks, they oftentimes notice a difference with the first month they like, okay, that's great. Second month they start sleeping less third month they're like, okay, this is unbelievably good. It's typically the practice that people go through. 

Wade Lightheart:
Of course, the more distressed they are, the earlier the benefits they feel. Usually the benefits they feel as less bloating and a lot better experience when they go to the bathroom. That's the first sign usually, but when you're taking enzymes we suggest, I always use the balance of three. So three enzymes for a regular meal, five for a big one. If you're having an apple or something one's sufficient.

Wade Lightheart:
One to two HCl, if you do have a predisposition for heartburn or acid reflux or those things you'll probably do better on two HCl and one or two probiotics. I do like to take the probiotics to enzymes in a two to one ratio or 2.5 to one if you're on the higher side of the enzymes. Do that for 90 days and if you can take five enzymes on an empty stomach and then add the P3-OM him at night, say add an extra five capsules of that before you go to bed. So it could work all night long. 

Wade Lightheart:
Do that for 90 days, and if you want to do the high dosage at five before every meal, I think that's the winner when it comes to enzymes. Then after 90 days, you can kind of titrate down to the level that's optimal for your diet, because obviously a person that's maybe on intermittent fasting might not need as much or if you're on time restricted eating, you could probably get away with less. I do believe the benefits of those things are due to the fact that they're preserving the enzymatic potential of the body.

Wade Lightheart:
You're not manufacturing digestive enzymes, you're actually able to use your enzymatic production capacity to work on metabolic processes or heal the body. Anytime that you add more and more of those enzymes, you're just adding more workers to commit more chemical processes and if you look at the Gonzalez protocols that he was doing, people are doing super physiological dosages of enzymes anywhere up to 500 a day, but they were in situations where they're dealing with cancer and things like that. 

Wade Lightheart:
We're not suggesting that you can do that. Got to be careful about those things, but I have not noticed any negative effect by going up to 1000 enzymes a day, which I have done and experiment with. I felt fantastic and didn't break the GI barrier like you would if you were taking any other product. So, again, but not everybody can do that. I'm not recommending it, but usually 25 a day, 25 to 35 enzymes a day, two HCls after every meal and with two probiotics after every meal, and then empty stomach, five and two enzymes to P3-OM. Do that for 90 days and then titrate down and you'll see and feel the benefits and it's an extraordinary place to live.

Matt Gallant:
More protocol to for people that are trying to gain a lot of weight doing bodybuilding or just trying to gain mass. We've had a lot of clients use more to 50 to 100 a day range which I know sounds a little wild. Bodybuilders are the most extreme, they were really the first biohackers and they're all into extreme dosages. What happens is your ability to eat less protein get more aminos out of it and not have the bloating and the issues that come from eating a lot of food are all mitigated which is awesome.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, I think as anybody that's in one of the strength related sports are things that require a lot of physical effort and high training like football and things like that, they tend to do better on the higher dosages and of course, Matt, you have some research in regards to recovery components and martial artist. Maybe you want to share with the effects of proteolytic enzymes on recovery because your capacity to recover as an athlete is the determining factor of how much volume you can do. the more volume and the more intensity that you can do as an athlete, the faster you get to a higher level. That's of course limited by your abilities to recover so you want to share that information Matt?

Matt Gallant:
So they did a couple of studies with karate athletes and boxers, and they found that taking high dosage proteolytic enzymes on an empty stomach cut the recovery time of contusions, black eyes, all kinds of injuries, by anywhere from like 40 to 60, 70%. So it cut it in half basically which is again if you're pushing yourself and you're dealing with injuries is a great tool and toolbox.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome, awesome and we do super grateful for this. So if listeners are interested in getting some of these products and taking charge of their digestion and biohacking all the things with the supplements, they can go to masszymes.com/melanieavalon and if you enter the coupon code, Melanie10, you will receive 10% discount off of your order. So super grateful for that. Thank you guys. Listeners, I definitely encourage you to take advantage of that offer because these supplements are absolutely amazing. I love the enzymes I love your P3-OM. Is it back in stock by the way? Fingers crossed

Matt Gallant:
The truck is landing at the warehouse today. So it should be able to come out by the time podcast drops. We'll have that back in stock. We've been selling so much of it lately. It's crazy to keep up with the demand.

Melanie Avalon:
I feel like that's a sign of a sign of a good supplement sign of a good thing when people want it.

Matt Gallant:
Yeah, our repeat purchases are kind of off the rails. It's awesome to see that.

Melanie Avalon:
I saw that it was gone. I was like, oh no. What am I going to do? So for listeners all of this information will be in the show notes and again, the show notes will be at melanieavalon.com/bioptimizers. So thank you, Matt and Wade. This was absolutely fantastic. I wasn't sure where the conversation was really going to go when we started, but I think we got into some really, really awesome, amazing topics and there's just so much we could talk about, but this was a great

Matt Gallant:
We just scratched the edge of the itch. So we'll have to come back and do some more.

Wade Lightheart:
Yeah, I really want to give a shout out to Melanie for producing such a great show and making such a difference in the world. It's a real honor to be here and we really appreciative that you bring us on to share this stuff because it is something that can really make a positive impact in people's lives and there are so many people suffering that's our goal. We're on a mission to end physical suffering and to activate what we call biologically optimized health or awesome health and your message and your system is, I think, a big advocate. So thanks for having us on here.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, thank you, and actually, I'm so glad you said that. Well, first of all, thank you from the bottom of my heart. That really makes me feel so good. Thank you. I almost broke my streak. So the last question that I ask every single guest on this podcast, and I forgot, so glad that you said that, just because I realized how important mindset is and everything when it comes to our health and our wellness. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Wade Lightheart:
I'm grateful for my spiritual practice. I think that finding a spiritual practice in your life gives context to some of the things that are very hard to deal with in life and the human condition. I always say that nobody gets out alive, it's pretty tough. So the bottom line, it gives you a greater context to address issues and to see yourself as part of not just your own individual isolated itself, but part of a greater sense of humanity, and what it means to be a responsible citizen and continuing on the trend that has existed, hundreds, if not millions of years before us and hopefully we'll continue on in the future the same.

Matt Gallant:
Well, Wade, that's always my number one thing as well is spiritual awareness, spiritual guide, spiritual growth, spiritual practice, but since Wade used that one, I'll go to the next one, which I think is just the experience, the vitality that you experience when you do optimize your body and biohack. Wade and I, we're kind of relishing about that feeling, 16, 17 years ago when we started using enzymes at a high dose, and you just feel awesome.

Matt Gallant:
Wade and I are both in our 40s and I feel better today than I did, certainly in my early 30s, even in potentially late 20s. So that's exciting to me. Again, I think we're redefining what it's like to be a human being and that really excites me, whether it's supplements biohacking, all the stuff we talked about, just having these tools and being able to feel great 99% of the time is pretty darn awesome. So that's it. That's my second choice.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, thank you. I love hearing that, especially I feel like we went into some dark places with discussing the potential future of things. So that was a wonderful note to end on and I could not agree more. I am so thankful for you guys, thankful for your company, and hopefully we can bring you back in the future for another episode.

Matt Gallant:
Thank you very much.

Wade Lightheart:
Thanks Melanie. Appreciate it.

Melanie Avalon:
All right. Bye.