The Military Secret to Beating Burnout, Fatigue and Brain Fog- Andrew Herr

What if your exhaustion, brain fog, poor sleep, burnout, lack of focus, and chronic stress aren't signs that something is wrong with you—but signs that your body is responding exactly as it was designed to?

In this eye-opening episode of Crackin' Backs, we sit down with Andrew Herr, one of the leading minds in human performance, resilience, travel health, and performance optimization. Andrew has spent years working alongside military special operators, Navy SEALs, fighter pilots, elite athletes, executives, and high-performing professionals studying what happens to the human body under extreme physical and cognitive stress.

What he discovered may surprise you.

The same physiological stressors experienced by elite military operators—sleep disruption, inflammation, circadian rhythm dysfunction, chronic fatigue, cognitive overload, and impaired recovery—are now affecting millions of civilians every single day.

In this powerful conversation, Andrew explains why modern humans are struggling with energy, focus, recovery, motivation, and performance despite having access to more technology, convenience, and health information than ever before.

We dive deep into the science of stress, burnout, human performance, recovery, sleep optimization, inflammation, resilience, travel fatigue, and the future of human enhancement.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

 What military human performance research has revealed about the human body that most civilians never hear about

 What actually breaks down first under chronic stress: your brain, hormones, sleep, immune system, or inflammation response

 Why burnout, fatigue, brain fog, and poor recovery may be biological warning signals—not personal failures

 Whether modern life has become a form of "low-grade operational warfare" on the human body

 Why fighter pilots, Navy SEALs, CEOs, elite athletes, entrepreneurs, and exhausted parents may have more in common than you think

 The surprising connection between inflammation, resilience, cognition, recovery, and long-term health

 Why Andrew believes jet lag is far more than a circadian rhythm problem

 How air travel affects inflammation, oxygen levels, recovery, cognitive function, and performance

 Practical strategies athletes, business travelers, and frequent flyers can use to reduce jet lag and recover faster

 What concerns Andrew most about the future of human performance and modern health

 What modern humans have forgotten about how the body was actually designed to function

About Andrew Herr

Andrew Herr is a human performance strategist, entrepreneur, and founder of FlyKitt. He previously led human performance and biotechnology strategy efforts for the U.S. military, where he worked alongside Navy SEALs, fighter pilots, special operators, elite performers, and researchers focused on optimizing human capability under extreme conditions. Today, he applies those lessons to help athletes, executives, business travelers, and everyday people improve performance, recovery, resilience, and travel health through science-backed solutions.

His work has focused on human optimization, circadian biology, inflammation, resilience, cognitive performance, and the physiological challenges associated with travel and jet lag. FlyKitt was developed from research and practical experience working with elite military populations and has become a trusted resource for professional athletes, executives, and frequent travelers.

Whether you're an athlete, healthcare professional, entrepreneur, road warrior, parent, or simply someone trying to feel and perform better, this episode will change how you think about stress, recovery, sleep, travel, and human performance.

 Listen now and discover why what you thought was "normal" may actually be holding you back.

Learn More About Andrew Herr

• FlyKitt Official Website

• Andrew Herr LinkedIn

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

 Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron (00:01.764)
What if the exhaustion

Brain fog, burnout, poor sleep, and constant stress so many people feel today isn't normal at all. Our guest today has worked in the world of military human performance, studying fighter pilots, elite operators, circadian disruption, inflammation, fatigue, and cognitive resilience under extreme stress. Mmm, the scary part. Modern civilians may now be living under similar psychological conditions every single day.

Andrew Hare, welcome to Crackin' Backs.

Andrew Herr (00:37.23)
It's great to be here, Docs. Thanks for having me on.

Dr. Spencer Baron (00:39.656)
our certain pleasure. This is gonna be an interesting program. So I'm gonna start out by asking you, what did the what did military human performance and re the research that you've done and discovered about the human body w that would generally genuinely surprise the regular human being?

Andrew Herr (00:59.662)
I think there's couple things. One is what is actually possible from a human being. There are I mean, when you see blood sugar numbers from a Navy SEAL who's been in cold water for like four hours, you know, most people would just be passed out at that point. Like when you see them their bl their blood work, like most people are not operating, and yet this person is is generally fine and operating at an elite level.

So there are tremendous outliers in this world. And that's what Navy SEAL selection is. You're selecting for outliers who can handle that kind of stuff, as well as operate in an elite group environment. And I think that's another thing that I don't know if it was surprising, but to be able to study not just individual humans as so often is the case in, let's say, a lab, but to study humans in a group under stress together, I think.

give some of the most interesting takeaways and also maybe why helps us see into, gives us insight into why things are tough out there today for the human brain in the society that has sort of atomized us more and more.

Dr. Spencer Baron (02:17.711)
You know, that brings up an interesting point 'cause Dr. Terry and I both have, you know, for many, many years worked with performance athletes, high level, regular folks, or as they as some of the students call it, NARPs, non athletic regular people. So but with that being said, are you do you do you notice that

People have in their mind a certain level of of ability, but yet a Navy SEAL like the in in in when you can push someone beyond their realization that they're going way beyond what the average person notices, is that something that that that you see typically when you're you know, weeding through people? Is that they can do more than they think?

Andrew Herr (03:04.302)
I think in general, people can do more than they think, but it's also true that some people can do more than others. And part of the reason, and I think this is to me maybe the most fascinating takeaway, and one that I think is lost in a lot of people, especially Navy SEALs when you talk to them, the ability to keep wanting to push yourself harder under extreme stress or in extreme environments is itself partially modifiable and partially inborn.

So the ability to want it more under extreme stress over long periods of time is itself a sort of like mixture of inborn and train of something it's nature and nurture together. And so I think that's the fascinating thing is like it's not just the ability to do it and do your body break down, but the ability to want it is also partially physiological.

Dr. Spencer Baron (03:58.992)
We've interviewed some Navy SEALs over the past several years of this show, and y my curiosity is that that I've often heard them say that those big bruiser guys that come in that think they can kick all sorts of ass and get in there and pass this, you know, Navy SEAL t they're the ones that usually tap out first.

Is there a correlation? But like to really qualify what you're saying is the desire. Is it is it something that we can enhance?

Andrew Herr (04:31.167)
I think to talk about the people, because you hear this all I hear this also all the time of like, you know, it's not always the guy you'd expect to come in. and I think part of that is for some people whose things have been easy their entire life, maybe they have not had as many experiences going through failure and challenge and how to bounce back. And you can imagine that the cadre, the people who are there evaluating.

Maybe they're gonna push somebody like that a little harder to see if they actually can bounce back and see how they do do under failure, even if they're usually performing very well. And so there's an element there where I think, you know, if you go to the movie Rudy, Rudy was very used to failure. But Rudy was never gonna be a Navy SEAL. He had the he had.

Dr. Spencer Baron (05:18.447)
Yeah.

Andrew Herr (05:24.531)
Every bit of the mindset, and that's what makes that movie beautiful. He had every bit of the mindset, but he had none of the other skills, size, talent that you would need. And the fact is, to be the best of the best, you need both, but n without the mindset, you're going nowhere.

Dr Terry (05:43.392)
Yeah, I wanna I wanna interrupt f Yeah Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron (05:44.239)
Forrest Gump. wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What about Forrest Gump? He had the will.

Andrew Herr (05:50.52)
Forrest Gump also had a fascinating version of it that I think is a little bit different. So Rudy had this

Andrew Herr (06:02.413)
drive and grind that sort of tr transmuted the chal like felt the challenge and transmuted it into more motivation. I think you could say that Forrest Gump had a slightly different version, which is also beautiful. I would have likened Forrest Gump's to faith, where because you have faith, the challenge is not processed the same way. Now you could say it's also just because in that movie he's autistic or or

you know, slow or whatever you want to call him. You know, the I know the old word, the old technical term is retarded. Obviously, that term has has taken on new meanings today, but you could say he just doesn't process it. But in a way, he's like someone with beautiful levels of faith, which is like he's just not thinking about getting killed because he's gonna do the right thing no matter what. Whereas Rudy sees he's gonna get killed and turns that into I want to go even harder. And they're both.

Really fascinating, but to me like kind of a slight difference.

Dr. Spencer Baron (07:02.789)
Terry, go ahead. What were we gonna say? Sorry.

Dr Terry (07:03.19)
I mean, i it right out of the box, y you know, people are gonna listen to you going, Wow, we're talking Navy SEALs, we're talking this. What's your quick background that got you into this in the first place and how did you get to the point where you're working with Navy SEALs?

Andrew Herr (07:19.137)
Yeah. I always say if I lived my life ten times, I would have been a doctor, five of them. My dad's a doctor. I grew up around medicine. and my mom's side of the family is, you know, military, military, military. And my grandfather was like a kind of a no BS war hero. and so I I grew up with both of those and I found a program in university where I could do science, technology, and national security and kinda do both. And through a series of things and fellowships and scholarships, I got to go and go to straight to grad school and I did

Graduate degrees in immunology and health physics and a third one in national security policy, where I kept kind of both sides of that going. And then serendipity is the serendipity does. And somebody walked into the career center and said, We need someone who does biology, national security, and can write. And they're like, Well, we know this guy, Andrew. And so I got hired to run studies on the future of human performance and human enhancement in biotech for basically the Secretary of Defense's private think tank on the future of war.

Dr Terry (08:17.13)
Yeah, I think he's qualified to answer these questions.

Dr. Spencer Baron (08:19.574)
Yeah.

Andrew Herr (08:19.849)
and then the Navy SEAL thing is actually interesting because it happened a little bit outside the normal channels, which is to say, of a guy who had been working in the Pentagon, then went went in uniform, he'd been a civilian, went in uniform, became a SEAL, and he brought his unit to DC and was basically like, we want to do more innovative stuff. We want access to innovation. And one of the meetings I was asked to join on the human performance side, and

Basically how it worked out is the unit didn't have a way to hire people well. Military, you know, you can imagine the government bureaucracy happens even maybe sometimes in special ops. But basically I I got to know him and some of the other guys, and they were like, hey man, like I don't know if we can do anything formally, but like will you help us? And so in the end, I ended up working with them in a sort of non-official way, but got to work in some ways more closely and get to know them even more closely because that. And so that

led to a bunch of interesting adventures, including jet lag and other things that came out of that work, which is all about, you know, in this world, when you get an opportunity to the for the most part, you just say yes.

Dr. Spencer Baron (09:29.346)
Ooh, love that. So in your opinion and and based on the research, you know, does optimization become human enhancement? Like what is describe you know the the the term is so used

loosely there's optimization or peak performance, but explain what that looks like to you and and what you look for and and can that be obviously how how would you facilitate the enhancement of optimization?

Andrew Herr (10:01.996)
So I I know a little bit of the backstory, at least in the military world, of where these some of these terms came from. So there was

There was an initial push into this world. There have been many pushes, but in the 90s, there was a push into this world. And there became a big pushback of like, hey, you know, we don't want like from the good version of like, hey, we don't want to like run crazy experiments and hurt our guys. And then kind of a silly pushback of like, you had basically like people who'd been Olympic athletes being like, this isn't fair. And my answer is like, based on whose rules, ma'am. and so

The word optimization was brought in, human performance optimization as a phrase was brought in in an intentional way to be like to deal with some mostly these spurious kind of like objections of, you know, look, I think ethics is critical and should be thought of and all these things, but I've worked with a lot of bioethicists in the military context, and most of what they have to say is neither good ethics nor useful. because it's they're really focused on will people

think this is weird and bad. Whereas we need to think about, you know, they're talking about some of the things that are important, like, hey, you can't force somebody to take part in an experiment for the most part. Like that's, you know, and in a military unit, a command, if it's legal, you know, you have to legally abide by that command. So but for the most part, there's a lot of this fear of like PR basically. And that has slowed this work in the military. And unfortunately, but a lot, you know, because at the end of the day,

Enhancing my performance versus optimizing my performance, like it's really just some assessment that there's a natural cap and what is natural and what does cap mean? And then if we can define those natural, I don't know that we're gonna get to define cap, we could maybe define, but you find new outliers all the time, then it I think I think it's kind of a difference without a distinction.

Dr. Spencer Baron (12:01.998)
So with that said, and thank you for that explanation, but optimization. What is how is a well, how is a military person optimized and how i how could that translate to Dr. Terry and myself and any of the listeners out there?

Andrew Herr (12:22.25)
Yeah, somebody I I worked with briefly, Dr. Adam Russell, he had a he had a frame that there are three major areas where you're gonna optimize human performance, which was caus cognitive, physical, and socioemotional. And so cognitive is you know, mindset, thinking, intelligence, assessment, analytics, physical, kind of obvious. and then socioemotional is leadership and assessing

The veracity or the intentions of other people. So there's a lot of really rich stuff in that socioemotional space. And so how do you want to optimize people? The answer is what do we need to achieve the mission? Because I think the critical thing is before somebody says, we have this technology, my first question is, what's the goal? And then what do we need to achieve that? And then there's short and long term. There's, hey, what do I need to achieve this mission today? But what do also what do I need to achieve?

10 missions over the next year, which means I can't destroy your body on this one mission, or else you're not going to be ready for mission two, three, four, five. So I think we we can look at that from different lenses and different frames, but I wanna think about optimizing people. My first question, you know, I've I've coached executives and athletes and others over the years. And my first question is always if you had a magic wand and could change anything about my your mind or body, what would it be?

Dr. Spencer Baron (13:50.372)
Like that. What are some of the answers that you that you could do?

Andrew Herr (13:55.201)
I mean, almost everyone wants you know, business executives, more energy, more focus. And then, you know, about a third of people like either are brash about at the beginning or at the end, they want to talk about libido and sex drive. the military personnel on average wanna recover faster. They want to be able to go harder and recover faster. And I think recovery, you know, especially when we think about optimizing over longer periods of time, is one of the most critical areas to think about. And obviously.

Dr. Spencer Baron (14:00.109)
Yeah.

Andrew Herr (14:24.842)
It has some of the most important inputs, sleep, nutrition, everything, you know, everything sort of works into recovery, including obviously, and especially what you guys do.

Dr. Spencer Baron (14:35.45)
Alright, I'm gonna ask you a question that I didn't plan to ask you and you don't have to answer because it may be information that the that the military doesn't wanna put out to the public.

But what I've heard when when I hear the word optimization, I did not realize that they would provide a lot of the military guys anabolic steroids, or androgenic you know, hormone re well, we call it hormone replacement at this age, but you know, because it makes them more aggressive, it heals faster. It's you know, it's almost like what you see with the incredible Hulk. Your thought?

Andrew Herr (15:14.572)
So historically and to my knowledge to this day, the military is not directly giving anybody anabolics. However, there are military operators who are acquiring anabolics, and there ha I I'm aware that there are some doctors who become who are not military, but become close to units and sort of support individuals. maybe they're geographically c located nearby them, or you know, you develop these relationships. Because

If you're putting, you know, if you're carrying a hundred pounds on your back and expected to perform at elite levels, both cognitively and physically, you need to recover faster. And the amount level of stress and lack of sleep and other things is gonna naturally in some people crater your testosterone levels, for example, just as one example. And so I think this idea, I think it's totally reasonable to support people.

Really, with any of these things, if we have a reasonable sense of what's not gonna hurt them long term, and in f I believe in informed consent. You know, I think that's the cornerstone of all the ethical stuff. But here's the trick. So in most clinical trials, it takes months and months and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to recruit people into a clinical trial. It is one of the hardest things to do in a clinical trial. I once ran a study.

With a civilian group, but they were all ROTC cadets. And I consented over 400 cadets in 45 minutes into a study. Because the study was, we were good, like, this is not what I said, but the synopsis of it is we're gonna give you free supplements to enhance your performance. Let me tell you, everybody wanted in. And so the the and and they wanted in, you know, and obviously, thankfully the things we were using were are very safe. And but I talked about potential side effects and I talked about all this stuff. And if you give people

A very reasonable and true answer of potential side effects, those people are gonna say yes most of the time. And so I think we have to there's a weird paternalism. You have to be careful not to force people to legally do things that they don't want to do. But also, let's not mother may I adults who are making decisions because that you're also allowing them to consent into putting their life on the line.

Dr. Spencer Baron (17:38.05)
Okay, so yes, we get that sleep, nutrition, you know, cognitive mental state is is really dependent on those two primary things. But how with the the way i like in a military environment, I get it if they're you know in the barracks or you know, at home or what have you, but when they're out there putting their their life on the line and all that

There ain't no sleeping, eight hours a day. There's not that nutrition, you're lucky if you get a space food stick. when I just showed my age, that was about a hundred years ago. But yeah, things like that. How how how do you how do you optimize when somebody's deprived?

Andrew Herr (18:20.703)
You know, I think in some ways it's actually easier because there are ways to support the body under extremists that are actually very helpful. it's harder logistically, obviously, but there are interventions, you know, for short periods of time. For example, we find that split dosing omega-3s, meaning like taking a s a sum every period of time throughout a day.

Decreas cognitive decrements from sleep restriction. for example. There are supplements that I there are supplements that Navy SEALs have reported to me help them recover much faster on deployment. I think that's a the best way I can say that. and so, because there are actually things that help you recover faster and help manage, because for example, what's the first-order negative effect of not getting out sleep? Inflammation. We can manage that inflammation with supplements.

We're using omega-3s, we're using polyphenols that activate the body's natural protective systems, even if in extreme cases, antioxidants can be helpful. But is it perfect? Am I saying you're gonna get in zero sleep and operate the same as if you had eight hours? No, but that's not the point. I want you to perform as well as you can throughout your deployment. So the answer is you just do what the like you work with what they give you. And so that's always my question is like, what can you do? And I'll go backwards from there.

Dr. Spencer Baron (19:48.344)
So glad you bring that up because you know

Dr. Terry and I, we have patients that always come up with an excuse as to why they're not sleeping or why they're not eating properly and all that. So I I I I I love that you're sharing that, you know, part of the the the perspective on these military guys. But let me let me ask you, you know, what would now I may this may vary in per person, but you know, you've worked with elite operators and high performers. What actually breaks down first under that chronic stress? Is it

Andrew Herr (19:56.159)
Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron (20:21.188)
you know, the body, injuries, is it the brain, inflammation, hormones, sleep what what what is there

Andrew Herr (20:29.362)
It definitely varies, but I would say the first thing when people are under well, it's ri you know, it's really dependent on the environment you're in and the mission. You know, when you're running missions day in, day out, if it's really high intensity like special operators tend to be, like you just have less time to like ruminate about stuff and also you know.

An executive who's building a company and knows they're going to be doing this for the next five years, it's a very different mindset. It's much easier to get into procrastination and things like that when you're in the mindset of working on a project that isn't gonna have an immediate impact, versus, like, you know, most of these executives who procrastinate, if you put them in a meeting, they'll perform well. And I'm not saying a meeting is like a mission for military, but there's an analogy there, which is to say progressionation. So I'd say,

For the military guys, it's you often the special operators, often their bodies are breaking down, and there's pain and inflammation injury. Whereas in the high performance business sense, it tends to be anxiety, sleep, mental ability to focus, brain fog, and procrastination that tends to break down first. but you push each of them long enough and you're gonna get to the same place.

But I would say on average, but also, you know, there's different types of stress in a way. One is while repeated, it's very acute stress. And the other is this lower grade sustained stress over years and years. And so I do think those also are different in how they manifest. So I'll pay a pause there.

Dr. Spencer Baron (22:14.669)
No no, that's great. Because so many patients

gosh, even myself. My dad used to his one of w my dad's mantras were procrastination is the thief of time. I mean, I still say that to myself. What do you do you have any suggestions of people that like like like like like having a deadline or a you know, a a a goal for a time frame that you want something done. Is i is that some of the ways that you would suggest to someone to have to l procrastinate less, or do you have to determine who that person is? Are they motivated by fear or

motivated by pleasure. Wha how do you determine?

Andrew Herr (22:52.74)
most people who are high performers will deliver at the deadline, but it's gotta be an external deadline with some sort of judgment attached. So here I mean, here is my whole frame on procrastination. If I'll I'll happy to run through it. In almost every person, there is a subconscious factor driving that procrastination. So let me give you an example, and I'm gonna use this as an example, this tool called the downward arrow, which is I'm gonna basically just ask over and over.

And what would happen then, or what bad thing would happen then? And it's a way to try to get access to someone's subconscious. So when you do this live with somebody, you ask them the questions fast and you try to get them to respond without thinking. So let's say somebody says, here's a prototypical answer. so what's gonna happen if you start the project now? well, I'm tired, so I won't do a good job. What happens if you don't do a good job? the customer won't be happy. What happens if the customer's not happy?

they won't, you know, sign a new contract. What happens if you don't sign a new contract? The business finances will get hurt. What happens if business finances get hurt? the business might fail. What happens if business fails? My family won't love me. Whoa.

Dr. Spencer Baron (24:03.438)
Andrew Herr (24:04.202)
And maybe it's like you know, what happens if business finances fail, I'll be a failure. What happens if you're a failure? My family won't look up to me. What happens if your family won't look up to me? They'll leave me. And basically, almost everyone at the bottom of this downward arrow, if they can access the subconscious or just let it go, will end up in being alone or dead or or not respected. There's these are deep core human needs. And what your subconscious does.

Is it says, it makes the jump all the way from top to bottom. If I start this project, no one will love me. Well, let me tell you, it's a bad idea to start that project if that were true. But of course, whenever you do this downward arrow, either one of the steps is wrong. It is probably, God, I hope, not true that if your company fails, your family will not love you. Or sometimes someone gets all the way to the bottom of the downward arrow and it's all true, but

Many of those steps are things you have in c your in your control. And so but so now you've helped someone understand why are they procrastinating, but understanding why is not the solution. But what it does is it helps somebody understand that actually there's a there is a they need to train their subconscious. And the way we train our subconscious is to give it evidence that this is not true. So how do you do it? It's classic exposure therapy, just like if somebody is

absolutely phobic or terrified of spiders, what do you do? You do not bring them into a room with a bunch of spiders. The first thing you do is you print out a picture of a spider and you you work with them to get comfortable near a photograph or even a drawing, so it's not even real. And then you go to a photograph. And then you go to a video. But each of these things you do slowly, step by step. For somebody who does his phobic of working out,

First thing you do is okay, today you're gonna put your shoes on, you're gonna go to the door, put your shoes on, and you're gonna then not go out the door, you're just gonna put your shoes on. Nothing bad happened. It's okay. Then you're gonna put your shoes on and go to the car, but you're not gonna drive to the gym. Nothing bad happened. So you have to train your brain that it's actually safe to do this thing. And a critical piece of this that is both counterintuitive and sometimes hard to do is you have to count those little things that seem silly as wins, and you have to be really explicit in your mind.

Andrew Herr (26:25.821)
That putting on your shoes today and not going to gym was a win. Because if you code it as fine, I did that, I'm so weak, all I can do is put my shoes on, then you just coded it as a failure. And now you're making the whole thing harder and harder. So, my whole take on procrastination is that in almost every case, it's anxiety-driven. Something in your subconscious is there from some experience or something you learned for whatever reason. And we need to train our subconscious that.

It is not a danger. And the ways to do that are the exposure therapy I mentioned. Faith also and and religion can also help people show that it's not, that the that's not a true danger. So there's all you know, doing it with other people sometimes is a trick because that's not solving the problem. But if my anxiety is around social things and there's somebody watching me do it, and I don't want to let that person down, I'll sometimes do it. So, you know, there's all kinds of tricks in the interim, but the long-term solve is training your subconscious.

That it is not dangerous to start the project when you're when when it's on your schedule.

Dr. Spencer Baron (27:28.276)
Andrew, th I l this is fantastic stuff, man. I really love it. There is two things that that reminded me. You had mentioned about the spider metaphor. The the Terry, what was the what do you think of our that guy who created the that we had on our program created the virtual reality program?

Dr Terry (27:47.434)
Right, the VR. Right. A and one pixel at a time.

Dr. Spencer Baron (27:52.267)
Yeah, one pixel of a spider on a virtual until it gets blown up and it he got somebody over to overcome his fear of spiders. It was really, really that's that's a great example.

Andrew Herr (28:02.345)
Again, s you're you're showing you're you're getting data you're safe, pixel by pixel, pixel by pixel, and you do the same thing behavior by behavior. So yeah, that's a beautiful example analogy.

Dr. Spencer Baron (28:07.148)
Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron (28:14.186)
And what's interesting is what you actually did was something that that I that I was put through. they called it the Charles Dickens strategy, where they take they took the, you know, Scrooge and brought him years in advance if he continued to be an asshole, you know, that kind of thing. And what he would what would happen. And then they brought him back and he was able to be a nice guy. So, Terry, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Andrew Herr (28:32.839)
Yes.

Andrew Herr (28:41.353)
Yeah. But often you gotta work through the change, unfortunately. It's not it's not a fli a switch flipped usually. Some people I will say, some people can flip the switch. It's very rare though.

Dr Terry (28:52.0)
You know, for a lot of regular people, not your Navy SEALs, but regular people, they get into their world and they get really stressed and and you know, they think just anything is stressful. And then I think they're influenced a lot by influencers' movies and books and and now you're seeing you know, you see movies where there's a super soldier, you know, Captain America and now there's the enhanced games going off in Vegas coming up. And then you see people talking about the super soldier

and accessing the brain and the and the subconsciousness and consciousness and now there's the Nodic society and they're they're trying to in put people under and and in see if brain travel is possible. You know, what's your thoughts on some of this this blend of fantasy versus reality?

Andrew Herr (29:44.436)
I think the good parts of this stuff are helping people realize there are things you can do to live a better life and feel better and perform better and get towards your mission. Like I think, you know, people being public that they're taking things and eating differently. And you know, obviously there's a lot of talk about the Hollywood diet, the superstar does to undergo the transformation. And originally they didn't talk about all the steroids they were taking in the HGH. But now, honestly, like for some people, I think it's a reasonable decision.

For other people, you know, it depends on your age and if you had kids and you want kids and what's your risk tolerance. But like, I think it's really valuable that people know there are things you can do. However, the further we get away from things that have been shown to work over time, the closer, the easier it becomes to sell things to snake oil. You know, I am very allergic to products where you don't either notice the difference within a few weeks or two.

it changes a lab value that matters or something like that. So if somebody tells me you should take this supplement every day for thirty years and it'll help you at thirty years, but you won't notice anything for ten for ten years, like I'm probably not gonna take it to be honest. so that's my general take. But then I think the fantasy stuff

Andrew Herr (31:04.029)
I hope it inspires people. Some people are always gonna be, you know, the the Instagram problem is real, which is to say everyone's living a great life and happy and traveling all the time, and I'm miserable in a shitty job that I hate. And so I do think that's real. I think it's important that we do be that we are aware of the propensity of humans to compare themselves to others. And so I do think social media is really, really bad in that regard. But

I also think it can be inspiring. And so, you know, I wanna I wanna take the positives, I wanna acknowledge the negatives, take the positives. I think on balance it's bad, to be honest. But but yeah, I think some of the you know, I do I also think things are possible that seem wild. So and the second we close off our minds to possibilities, the that's the moment we're locked in the box. So is it possible is ESP possible?

I don't know, maybe I don't seem to have VSP, but like I've seen wild things in my life and I'm not closed off to the idea that there is a lot more going on than I learned in school. You know, I've become spiritual as I've gotten older, religious spiritual, and you know, I believe things I didn't used to believe. And so I think there's a lot out there, but I also want rigor.

And I think this, you know, I'll close this off by saying there is one path forward for every person.

Now that seems crazy because everyone's physiology is different, psychology is different. The path forward for everyone is end of one experimentation. You should take each thing you do and run it as an experiment on yourself. Does it help you get towards your goals? Does it help you feel better? Do you, you know, and does it help you feel better over a period of weeks? Because some things make you feel better today, but if you do it every day for two weeks, you're not gonna feel very good. So run the experiment.

Andrew Herr (33:08.572)
People always often ask me, does this supplement work? Does that supplement work? And I'm like, I might tell you, you know, for most people I've seen it does work. But the answer is run the experiment and see if it works for you. And if it doesn't, great, you don't need to spend money on it. And if it does, great, you found something that works for you. Fantastic. I think NM1 experimentation is the key path forward for everyone.

Dr Terry (33:31.616)
Mm. You know, right, right. You know, now everybody says modern civil sil civilization is getting harder. Yeah, if we look back in past civilization civilization from the Roman times, all that, it was yeah, you you were lucky to live to past thirty years old, right? And but now are is modern civil civilization getting closer to low grade operators because of

Dr. Spencer Baron (33:32.886)
And that's from a researcher. That's great. Yeah.

Dr Terry (34:00.65)
Everything we're exposed to.

Andrew Herr (34:03.122)
think modern civilization is absolutely more angiogenic, is much more anxiety generating. We're you're dealing with much more chronic psychosocial stress than people did, except obviously in times of hunger and f and famine. That's a different thing. But yes, I think today's society is almost perfectly designed.

Чума ло град аншос о тем.

Because the two great human stressors as far as I'm concerned, once you get out of the bottom Maslow's hierarchy, which, you know, hung you know, do you have a roof over are you dying of exposure, you're dying of famine, things like that, are uncertainty and social judgment. And the way we've designed society, you know, if you look at jobs, fifty years ago you were gonna work at the same company for a long, long time, and you had, you know, as long as you didn't mess up, you had a job. Today, no way. like what better tool

Of for social jud to feel is socially judged than social media. I can keep going on, but basically, and then everything we do eat and consume today, every one of our senses is constantly assaulted. Hearing the music you listen to today, if you listen to the average pop music today, it's pretty negative. Your nose, do you look at the synthetic fragrances people are breathing into all day long? I think it's probably pretty impro inflammatory.

If you look at the things coming to our eyes, social media, Instagram, Facebook, like all day long, that's not helping. Things put your touch. What are people putting on their skin? And people are further away, so there's not as much touch, there's not as much social interaction. Anyways, you can go through every sense, every way we gather data, and every one of them is essentially being assaulted all day long by things that are negative or things that

Andrew Herr (36:02.471)
can trigger anxiety in a human, therefore the low grade stress of is just there constantly. And I think to your point, that has a massive physiological effect and psychological.

Dr Terry (36:16.041)
Yeah, I agree. One of your big things is jet lag and you know, the world's gotten smaller and people are flying more, they're traveling more. Heck, my son was in four countries in less than a month in different time zones and and so what is the travel expense the travel itself, y you associate jet lag with circadian rhythms. what's the physiological trauma that's being bombarded for all these business executives, these people that are traveling

constantly. What's your thoughts on that?

Andrew Herr (36:47.889)
Yeah, this is something this is something I figured out based on work I was doing with the SEALs. They have massive pressure changes in their life in diving. and it turns out that there's some really fascinating Navy research showing that large pressure changes can cause an inflammatory response, oxidative stress and then inflammation. And fast forward, I had a client who's a business executive who's flying from the East Coast.

To Asia to close business deals, they'd land at 4 p.m. There's a big dinner that night, and they wanted the other side wants to negotiate at 7 a.m. the next morning. Basically, the the Koreans in this case were using jet lag as a negotiating tool. And he said, Andrew, what should I do? I was like, Great, David. When are you leaving? It's like Tuesday. It was Sunday. I was like, Thanks, David. I'll give you something tomorrow. So I sat down and had to develop a program, but the core of what I have over time figured out is the pressure change in flight. So when you take off.

The average commercial airliner at altitude pressurizes to 8,000 feet relative. Basically, it's like climbing an 8,000 foot mountain in 15 minutes. You're getting a taste of altitude and decompression sickness. That's causing oxidative stress, which can then turn on an inflammatory response because of the hypobaric hypoxia. Low pressure, lower oxygen. At altitude, you're breathing about 26% less oxygen because of the lower pressure. And so this hypobaric hypoxia.

leads to an inflammatory response. Then now let's say you're flying long distance, you actually can't sleep a full night, even if you had the time on a plane, because if you sleep eight hours on a flight to Asia, you're gonna like wake up at like 3 p.m. and you're not going to bed that night. So you actually need to do you have to have a short night of night of sleep there. First negative effect of not sleeping is inflammatory, plus low sleep quality causes this inflammation. Anyways, a bunch

The dryness will then affect your lungs, and you can get more sensitive to inflammation, your upper respiratory tract. Long story short, this inflammatory piece then overlays the circadian piece. And what I've found over time is that if we block the inflammatory effect and keep it low over time, we can flip your circadian rhythm night one using all the tools: supplements, light, meal timing, sleep timing. and, you know, in the last trial we did, we did a

Andrew Herr (39:05.051)
study with Inner Miami, the pro soccer team, where they took a round the world trip. I think it was five matches, four cities in a month, and they actually did a full round the world. and they saw the players who used this protocol saw ninety four, ninety five percent fewer symptoms from travel than the players who didn't.

Dr Terry (39:31.959)
So what

Andrew Herr (39:32.315)
basically orchestrating all the tools, it's cause timing is such a big piece. So basically we had to figure out a way to orchestrate the supplements and the blue light blocking glasses and the meal timing and sleep timing. And that's been the lift to make this into a into a product basically.

Dr Terry (39:46.488)
So

For the person looking for listening that's traveling tomorrow, what is a I without giving all your secrets away, what's some tips that a person can do that's gonna be flying and have that? Because I literally have a guy that or had a guy that flew to Asia, landed, they didn't even leave the airport, they didn't allow him to. They went to a conference room and they made him sign some paperwork and then he had to get on the the flight like four hours later and fly back from China. And so now

you're telling me that they use these as as a as a tool and I'm like, wait, you're flying all the way China and you're there for two hours? He goes, maybe three, you know? And so what's some tips that the person listening who's flying for either a not even business for family for anything like that

'Cause you hear, well, get on the same time frame, you know, time side if if th if you're gonna go there and as at two o'clock in the afternoon but it's it's night there it sleep then, put your block or your lights, you know, block on. What's some other things that these people can do beside and also stay hydrated?

Andrew Herr (40:52.847)
Yeah, so what are some things you might have around the house if you're flying tomorrow that can help you manage this inflammatory effect? obviously we've custom formulated some stuff, you know, it's you know, we've talking around it, but you I I have a company that sells this product that has an app and customizes it all for you, and we do our own custom supplements. But some things you might have around the house that you could use. Vitamin C, asorbic acid, will help manage the initial inflamm that initial oxidative stress insult, and omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil.

Dose throughout the day, take a few of them during that travel day can help. but there's other things that don't have to do with supplements that you can do to prepare your body. So for example, when you work out, it upregulates the it turns on the genetic switches in our cells to produce more protective enzymes and compounds. So obviously you don't want to work out right before you get on a plane and be sweaty, probably, but if you can work out in the so in the few three, four hours before you get on a plane, it's actually gonna prime your body to be more protected.

Sauna will do the same. These sort of hormetic stressors, like workout and sauna, will prime your body. I also like poly these polyphenol compounds. These are the things they call antioxidants in fruits and vegetables, they're actually not, they don't work as antioxidants in your body. It's a totally mechanistically and from a physics standpoint impossible and wrong. What they do is these compounds activate a genetic switch called NRF2 that turns on the production of detoxifying enzymes and protective compounds in your cell. So

You know, what's that look like? You know, things that are foods that are highest in polyphenols are let's say berries, where you eat the skin and the skin is dark, so blueberries and strawberries and raspberries and things like that, compounds like that. Then in terms of sleep, the trick, if you're if you're going over for four hours, honestly, the best thing you can do if it won't you know, if it allows you to be awake during the meeting time you're there, is keep your home time zone. Don't switch it all if you're going for four hours.

that works best. But if you're going for days like a normal trip, then what you want to do is careful not to sleep too much on the flight over. Because what you need to optimize is you're optimizing between being awake and alert enough to make it to bedtime that next day and not just like falling on your face asleep, but not sleeping so much that you you're not going to be tired and can't fall asleep that first night in country. So most people sleep too much on planes to Asia.

Andrew Herr (43:19.044)
When the optimal sleep is three to four and a half hours, maybe a little more if you're not using the kind of support we give you physiologically in our kits from supplements and other things. But to Europe, it's often people don't make that mistake because the flight's shorter and like you just like there's only so much time on that flight to Europe. If it's east on the West Coast, you can mess it up, but from the East Coast to Europe, you know, you can only sleep four or five hours on that flight over. So you kind of take what you can get. So I'd say those are a few examples, some supplements.

Some behaviors, and then move around on the plane, hydrate a lot, stay away from alcohol if you can, because that ramps your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight, messes up sleep quality, causes more inflammation for people. And careful of the plain meals because plain meals are pretty salty and it's for two reasons. One, it helps preserve the food. But two, your taste buds don't work as well at altitude. So they're adding more salt for it to taste better. But then if you have too much salt and you're not hydrating properly.

That really can mess with your body also.

Dr Terry (44:19.071)
What kind of meals would you order the any a special meal when you travel, or would you just travel?

Andrew Herr (44:24.272)
I mean, I usually want to just bring food you could either bring food with me, honestly, or you know, if I'm in an airport and I have time and and I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna try to get some proteins and veggies, whether that's chicken, fish, beef, whatever, just something something, you know, too much carbs, especially before you sit, can spike your blood sugar, which itself can be kind of pro inflammatory. So you know, staying away from obviously from things like fried food and sugar and things that can mess with our system. But if, you know, on a plane

I don't know, I I personally just typically won't eat on a plane unless it's food I brought myself that I you know is kinda clean. It turns out you obviously cannot bring liquids through security, but you absolutely can bring a Tupperware of dinner through airport security and they may look at you strangely, but they do not stop you from bringing in unless it's soup or something, I guess.

Dr Terry (45:14.039)
Yeah, I I can see Spencer and I we have a show coming up out Monday. that by this time will already come out on sardines. So, you know, I can see us cracking open some sardines and the person next to us would just love us.

Andrew Herr (45:26.574)
I do I do try to make it as a a policy not to bring fish on a plane. That seems like a bad manners. Cans of tuna. That even the jars of tuna, the very nice stuff in olive oil, that's very bad manners, I think. so I'm I'm with you. but man, the sardine diet is getting a lot of a lot of PR right now.

Dr Terry (45:30.071)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Dr Terry (45:45.015)
It's getting l it's getting a lot pop. Yeah, all right. So you have a special operator, you have a CEO, and you have exhausted parents. What's biologically do they all have in common?

Andrew Herr (45:57.627)
They probably all have in common a ramped up sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight system, which is then gonna make it harder to sleep well. You're gonna be having higher typically higher levels of cortisol and stress hormones that then can over time cause immune dysregulation and inflammation. And on average you're probably not eating very well, to be honest. All three of those groups tend not to eat super well. And so then you're either

Depending on your, you're either underfeeding yourself, which is a problem for some people, or most people are overfeeding themselves. And now you're gaining weight. And, you know, one of the like sort of brutal ironies of of gaining weight is that that fat tissue is not inert. It's not just fat sitting in those cells. That fat tissue is a is an organ and it is putting out inflammatory cytokines and hormonal stuff that is or things that are affecting your hormones.

Sadly, none of which seem to help us get out of the situation. So it's a little bit of a vicious cycle. So I'd say all those groups are probably under like poor sleep, more infil more inflammation, worse stress hormones,

But but some people but like the environment you're in and the level of trust you have with the people, with your spouse, with your coworkers, with your teammates, like there are things that really modify it. and so the impact of that on your body and mind is goes through a lens of things like trust, things like mission focus, and is obviously also modulated by diet and exercise and th and others.

Dr Terry (47:33.697)
Mm. What what's some of the concerns you see with all the science you're doing and the research you're doing of the the future of human performance?

Andrew Herr (47:44.339)
Andrew Herr (47:48.45)
I so I'm gonna I'll just give you a gamut of things that are in no particular order. One, this health optimization stuff can become a source of anxiety all its own. And that's basically unhelpful. Like, right? There's a study, there's a study that people were talking about recently. They put, I don't know, aura rings, whoop, whatever, some wearable. And when people and when they tell people their sleep was worse, they performed worse. And when they told people their sleep was better, they slept better, irrespective of how they actually slept.

Not great. I think there's a lot of new compounds on the market, supplements, peptides, prescription drugs, where we don't yet know some of the impact. And so maybe for short term use, maybe I'm less concerned, but for very long term use, I think we really don't know what the implications of some of these peptides that are coming, including the GLP ones. Look, short term, they obviously work to help people lose weight.

They have all kinds of other odd and interesting effects on behavior. what does it mean to have your dopamine system shifted and your level of connection to things shifted? as a little bit of a weird that like I can go down a rabbit hole pretty hard on that one if I need to. so I think we should be smart about using things that we don't understand how they work as much and or things that may not work.

We may not have data on long term effects. I think we should, if we need to use them or want to use them, I think we should bias towards using them short term or intermittently. You know, like for example, the compound BPC 157 is a peptide that many people use. it's obviously people are using it for recovering from injuries. So you probably see patients coming in on it, or and it seems to help some people recover faster from injuries. Does that mean you should take it all the time? I don't know.

Does that mean if you have a really nasty injury? I know somebody who tore their biceps, full tear, really nasty injury, and he used it to recover from that surgery. And like, I don't know, that felt like a reasonable trade-off to me. Yeah, serious injury. but like, should you take that every day for the rest of your life? I don't know. Then I have to have some more questions. So I think those are some things I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about a lot these days in terms of concerns.

Andrew Herr (50:12.719)
But I'm also optimistic there's more data. The ability to run your own trials and to get access to your own blood work to see how things are affecting you has gotten so much easier in the last two years, let alone the last five years. so I think there's a lot that's going better. I think like the answer is always to do it in a way that is working for you and not against you.

Dr. Spencer Baron (50:38.838)
So what is something that modern humans don't realize that they're built or designed for? In other words, from what I understand that, you know, we tend to forget that we're, you know, back in the caveman days, you know, we are always not only the hunter, but the hunted. You know, and so some of that is still in our

in our, you know, genetics or in our in our cellular level of that s there's a certain amount of stress that's normal, that we're always in that fight or flight scenario. is there anything that you feel that we were design how we were designed to really function? You know, what what you know should someone be thinking in term instead of always under stress?

Andrew Herr (51:31.557)
I mean, first of all, like the many things that are different in modern society. One, move more. you know, it's just the fact that like hunting is an intense activity. Gathering is actually a very, very labor-intensive activity. And so men and women were both moving, maybe different ways. You know, hunting is a little bit, you know, we'll have endurance with a little bit more of that, you know, sprint kind of aspect to it.

Dr. Spencer Baron (51:37.066)
Yeah. god, yes.

Andrew Herr (51:59.587)
whereas hunt gathering tends to be more of like you know more of a slow and slow endurance activity, but certainly people were moving more. Two, people lived in close connection with their fam extend with their families and extended families and other people, and like this atomized society where you don't know your neighbors and you

Maybe just talk to people on the phone, which is not the same as seeing them in person. Like we're just not designed that way. and it's not good for people. so I think, and then, you know, like social, you know, we talked about earlier how all these different parts of society are assaulting all our different senses. Like before, you know, we were in nature and there's all these like weird studies that seem to suggest that when you stare at a picture.

Look at a picture of green and nature, you have less stress than we look at a cityscape. So what's going on there? And what is it about these built environments that we live in that are more anxiogenic? You know, I've heard some people suggest it's like you know, in a forest, there's always gonna be birds chirping and things like that. And when they stop, it tends to mean there's a predator around. And so it's interesting to want like some people have suggested like literally the absence of some of these tones in our environment.

Suggest to our brain there's always a predator. I don't know if that's true or not, but like you can like you could see how these different things would have subtle but important effects. And then there's just like, I mean, the majority of younger women are on birth con are on a horm are taking a hormone every day that's changing their mind and bodies. What is the impact of taking a hormone that is not exactly like, but suggesting to your brain that you're or body that you're pregnant a lot of the time? And so

I mean, we are messing with our and then, you know, you know, it's not just women, men are taking things and eating things. So, like we are in a wild divergence from the norm. We also have things that are amazing. We have incredible access to food. In America, we have incredible access to healthy food for the most part. we you know, our level of wealth and space we have and resources is like and our access to knowledge is unparalleled.

Andrew Herr (54:20.002)
So there are great things and we can use these resources to help, but man, we're in an environment that is in many ways misaligned.

Dr. Spencer Baron (54:26.849)
thank you for sharing that. That's absolutely that is ideally important too. we are nearing the end of our program and we always have this rapid fire question that there's five of them that we're gonna we would love to ask you. And they're some of them have nothing to do with what you do for a living but you personally. So if you're prepared for rapid fire question number one, and it

Andrew Herr (54:53.762)
I did not study, so I don't know what's coming, but I'm ready for it.

Dr. Spencer Baron (54:57.225)
There you go. It's stuff you would know already. But here's the deal. We the the answers are rapid fire. They're brief. So here's Yeah, arrow down. Right. Right. There you go. All right, Andrew. Rapid fire question number one. Do you think burnout is really an inflammatory disease? If so, what is one tip that the listener can begin to do today to change their course?

Dr Terry (55:04.769)
Well it's like his arrow down, you know, it's just you know, quick.

Andrew Herr (55:06.978)
Yeah, yeah. Just to hit me with the downward arrow. There you go. We'll do it.

Andrew Herr (55:24.9)
Partially and optimi and if you're in burnout, you're probably your sleep is a mess and sleep is really a heavy hammer on inflammation. So I would work on ways to optimize your sleep. There are supplements that can help breath work before to calm your nervous system, take a shower before to calm your system and also play with the heat parameters that your body needs to fall into deeper sleep. I can keep going, but I'll stop a rapid fire.

Dr. Spencer Baron (55:46.634)
That was fantastic. Good. I think sleep is very underrated. Question number two. What is the biggest lie modern wellness culture tells people these days?

Andrew Herr (56:03.182)
Take this pill and you'll look like this guy.

Dr. Spencer Baron (56:05.855)
There you go. That's good. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah.

Dr Terry (56:06.271)
Love that. Or or take this shot.

Andrew Herr (56:10.818)
W whatever. Take this t do this one thing and suddenly everything in your life will be better. Like I regret to inform you that's unlikely to be the case.

Dr. Spencer Baron (56:19.519)
Question number three, Andrew. What would surprise people most about how elite operators actually recover?

Andrew Herr (56:28.452)
I think the most surprising thing would be to people that like pro athletes and these guys are not always taking care of themselves as well as they could. Pro athletes in particular, it is very you have some, but it is rare that people are eating super well all the time and doing that kind of stuff.

Dr. Spencer Baron (56:37.107)
that's so true.

Dr. Spencer Baron (56:46.799)
you are not kidding. It always fascinated me that some of the baseball players that were in Major League Baseball that came from other countries that had the worst diets and they were smokers. It was like, how do you Anyway, question number four, favorite jet lag trick you have learned over the last years?

Andrew Herr (56:56.857)
Yeah.

Andrew Herr (57:04.568)
I mean guys, I sell a product that solves it all for you. So like I don't know what to tell you. I'm gonna sell my product here. It's called Fly Kit, F O Y K I T T. Go to our website. It works. If it doesn't work for you, we just give you your money back.

Dr. Spencer Baron (57:15.999)
Love it. All right. Question number five, Andrew. When it is all stripped away, the science, the performance, the optimization. Hey man, what do you hope people remember you for as a human being?

Andrew Herr (57:35.414)
I believe that my mission here is even in healing is to help people heal so they get more connected to the whatever you want to call it, to God, to truth, to spirit. and I hope that I am able to help some people find that beauty in their lives.

Dr. Spencer Baron (57:52.923)
Andrew, that's a perfect way to end the show. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your knowledge and what you've done for human performance. Thank you.

Andrew Herr (58:02.181)
Well it's it's been a joy. we got to talk a lot more about the psychology stuff and sometimes it's all about pills and potions, which I enjoy also. So this was a really, really a fun show. And thank you all for thank you both for having me on and look forward to continuing the conversation offline.

Dr Terry (58:17.324)
There you go.