Health Longevity Secrets

From Comic Cons to BioHacking!

• Robert Lufkin MD • Episode 181

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Ever wondered how a simple curiosity can lead to a life-altering journey? Meet Sandy Martin, the dynamic founder and CEO of Biohacker Expo, as she reveals her extraordinary transformation from orchestrating Comic Cons to becoming a biohacking pioneer. Struggling with severe health issues due to mold exposure, Sandy's relentless pursuit of wellness opened the door to the vibrant world of biohacking. She shares her inspiring story and advocates for a citizen scientist approach, empowering you to take control of your health through personal experimentation.

Stay ahead of the curve as we explore the groundbreaking trends and innovations redefining biohacking today. Discover the disparities in global regulations on cutting-edge treatments like exosome therapy and the rise of grassroots movements championing the right to experimental treatments. Learn how advanced biohacking tools are making their way into homes, breaking down barriers and democratizing access to therapies like red light therapy and cryotherapy. This shift promises to make sophisticated health solutions more attainable for everyone.

What does it take to integrate biohacking into everyday life? We'll tackle common misconceptions and practical challenges, from avoiding environmental toxins to overcoming sugar and alcohol addictions. Hear about the remarkable transformation of 93-year-old William Shatner through biohacking and the invaluable insights gained from community gatherings like the Biohacker Expo. These events are more than just conferences—they're movements driving collective action and advocacy for health freedom. Join us as we delve into the power of community and the future of biohacking, offering you the tools and inspiration to revolutionize your own well-being.

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Speaker 1:

here's some information for um the ai. Uh, sandy martin is the founder and ceo of biohacker expo, a two-day event in miami that gathers people who are on the path to better health to explore fresh ideas and novel solutions for feeling better and aging slowly. Okay, all right. All right, hey, sandy, welcome to the program.

Speaker 2:

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

I can't wait to dive into one of your favorite topics biohacking, and mine too, and all that but before we do, maybe you could just share a little bit of your background story with with our audience.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I have come to the biohacking space, as most people do, having overcome something in my own, in my own health. Prior to that, I was running comic cons for 15 years, and so some people say that I have the Comic-Con of longevity as an event that I run. But what happened was I was working really, really, really hard, thinking I was burning out, totally stressed, and I decided to take a break and paint the vestibule near where I lived, near where I lived, and I got sick two weeks later and didn't even put it together. But my sick was like confusion, brain fog, exhaustion. It felt a lot like stress, a lot like chronic fatigue, a lot like depression. But I loved my life and I couldn't figure out how all of those things could be happening when I loved my life. And so I got really curious and then the the brain fog got worse, the fatigue got worse, and I spent six months trying to figure out what was wrong.

Speaker 2:

I was misdiagnosed four times. I was prescribed three pharmaceutical drugs, one of which caused me to have suicidal thoughts for the only week of my life. I discontinued it and I finally came through the other side, because Dave Asprey shared his journey about mold and what that had done to his life, what that looked like on a brain scan. I'd had a similar brain scan, and so that was how I figured out maybe that was me too, and so I went and got a test for that found out I did have dangerous levels of mold in my body, and once I had that information even though I had been biohacking because I'd gotten curious in those six months I hadn't really gotten better, but once I could detox, then it started to work.

Speaker 2:

I hadn't really gotten better, but once I could detox, then it started to work, and so I had to give myself some time and space to heal and then I could start to rebuild. And as a result of that, you know that even took a year and a half to get back to what I would consider a healthy state, and once I did, I realized that everything I knew about running events could be put towards really helping people feel better. And that's when I wanted to do something instead of Comic-Con, instead of teaching people how to dress up like Batman. Now I teach them how to be like Batman.

Speaker 1:

I love it and it's such a great story. I mean, mold is still sadly not on a lot of mainstream medicine radar. You know, when people have problems and even testing for mold because you know we've all been exposed to mold in some way or another it's just a matter of you know what's going on with our own body and it's it's it's it's really challenging and it can explain a lot of a lot of symptoms like like you you've done there as well. So, yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad that you came through it and I'm glad you're you're focused now on on biohacking. I mean, we, we hear, we hear the words biohacking a lot in the world. You know, and you mentioned Dave Asprey, such a nice man. I just went down to his home in Austin for a while and we had a great interaction there talking a little bit about biohacking. But maybe you could share. What is biohacking? What does that mean to you? What do you think of when you think of biohacking?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think of it. I think a little differently than most people. Truly, it's biohacking. If you go in and you edit your genetics to optimize one thing or another, no doubt that is biohacking. But for me it's more about breaking free than breaking in, because if you think of a hacker, you're hacking into a computer and we can do those things with our bodies. We can try things. We can use light and sound and gene editing and all kinds of crazy things to get inside ourselves and shift things. But sometimes it's just breaking free of the dogma, breaking free of the expectations of what healthcare is and what nutrition is, and we have to create some space to explore and have some curiosity. I think that there's such a broad spectrum of safe exploration of health and it's a shame that people think that just because we call it biohacking, that in some way it's dangerous.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I, I like, I like the word biohacking. I mean I like the word hacking. You know, as a former DEF CON attendee, that resonates with me a little bit. But I the idea of hacking and bio in a in a very positive way and not in a bad way or anything, and the idea of um comes to mind citizen scientists, where individuals who you know are maybe not experts in their field as their, you know, as their academic job, but begin to explore things for themselves or for family members, out of personal interest, and begin experiments with an N of one, and those can be truly revolutionary. I think some of the best ideas that come from people who are thinking outside the box oftentimes and that aren't directly. They don't know what they can't do, so they ask questions on what they can do, and it's really exciting. So, and you're spending your full time now working in this area, correct?

Speaker 2:

Yes, that's right. It's all consuming too, and what's great about this time we live in is that we're kind of like work hacking too, because I couldn't have done this by myself to launch that first event, biohacker Expo, without a team if it wasn't for AI, and so AI is going to help us understand our bodies even more than it helped me understand how to put an event together by myself. But yeah, it's me and an assistant now, and I'm traveling to other events to get ideas and connect with people and find out what the latest trends are and what I can do as an event promoter. That helps connect these solutions with the population of people who need them, because it's it's always a little. It's interesting because you can't just go on their website and find out what they're doing, because the FDA bars biohacking companies from making claims about their products, and so it's only inside of events, when you talk to people one-to-one, are we free to say what happens. You know what really happens when we use red light, what really happens when we get in a cold plunge.

Speaker 2:

What does the supplement, what can we expect it to do for us? It's not on the label, it's not in the packaging. I remember when I first got into this, my mom was like well, why don't we all know about this? And that was a really big question I had to answer. Why don't we all know about this? Why is this so new? Why do I have some sort of information no one else has? And it's because the government bars companies from saying anything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, there are definitely guardrails and some would say unnecessarily restrictive guardrails on that, and I want to get into that a little later, but before we do, maybe just touching on different kind of exciting things in biohacking. You mentioned AI and biohacking. Certainly AI is affecting all our lives. How do you see it playing out with biohacking? What does the AI future of biohacking look like for you?

Speaker 2:

Well, if we take Brian Johnson as an example, he's got all of these tests he's running to. They say he spends 2 million a year to optimize his health. I think the truth is is that he probably spends a tiny fraction of that to optimize his health, but he's spending the bulk of that 2 million every year to measure what he's doing, because biohacking isn't as expensive as getting inside the body to analyze it and understand it. That takes really sophisticated equipment. Biohacking isn't as expensive as getting inside the body to analyze it and understand it. That takes really sophisticated equipment. Biohacking can be going outside and getting morning light, but the AI is going to be able to tell us. It's going to take a stream of data all day long, while we sleep, while we work, while we meditate, while we exercise, while we meditate, while we exercise, and it's going to analyze it and let us know, maybe, what we. It's going to know what we've eaten, not because, well, it will eventually have a device.

Speaker 2:

We've got CGMs now but we'll have something that measures our nutritional stability. And what's the word for that? I don't even know our nutritional balance Because I don't think that device exists right, a wearable nutritional guide. You know, we've got a metabolic guide for sugar, but you know, maybe I'll just have a continuous vitamin D monitor. Who knows? Right that's, any things like this will happen, but it's so much data we could never process it on our own. But the AI will be able to make connections between what we ate, what our levels are. Were we outside, did we have an allergic response? Did suddenly, when we took that outdoor walk, did we get a spike in inflammation? We'll know things that are just impossible to know now, and I'm so excited about the future of measurement and testing. I think we're five years away from things like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's a great point and just to shout out I've been mentioning this the last few times just as of a few weeks ago in the United States, for the first time in history, we can purchase we as citizens can purchase over-the-counter continuous glucose monitors. So both Dexcom and Abbott have released the Lingo L-I-N-G-O or the Stello. I'm wearing both of them right now and they're wonderful devices. But I highly recommend everyone get them, because before, when you had to get a prescription, many doctors wouldn't prescribe them for their patients, you know, and it was like crazy. But now anyone can do it. Just go to their website and they'll send them to your house and it's wonderful, it's a lot. You know it's biohacking. It lets you look how your own body responds to things and and what foods. It's like an engine gauge on your metabolic engine. But and and there's another company, s-bio, that just released the ketone continuous ketone monitor it's not available in the United States. They sent me a couple. It works, it's great, but they are available in Mexico. So if anyone drives down to Mexico, you can, you can get them over the counter there and so and they will be coming to the US. They're applying for these different things. But yeah, the the continuous monitoring is really exciting, but we need we need a lot more, a lot more detail and a lot of barriers to people. It's expensive and a lot of things don't get through the FDA.

Speaker 1:

The question then becomes as a consumer, as a biohacker, as a curious citizen, how do we filter through claims without an FDA or without a trusted organization? What do you do to vet claims about? You know, xyz therapy? Hey, it saved my life, it changed my life. Because there's a lot of claims, you know, in all sorts of space, longevity and all these other ones. There are many, many claims that may, that may be truthful for that patient, but they don't necessarily, you know, that person had a one off experience, perhaps, or something unique to them. How do you approach if I come to you and I say, hey, this transformed my life. You know I want to, you know I want to make it available to everyone. What would you like to see from them to to give it credibility?

Speaker 2:

That's hard. I mean the credibility question is is a tough question. So there are a lot of things out there that have been practiced or used overseas for a period of time without any reports of adverse side effects or minimal reports of adverse side effects. One of those things would be regenerative medicine and so exosome treatments. We can't take them in an IV in the United States, but you can go to Panama and the Bahamas and Mexico and other places and you can have these injections and they've been demonstrated safe by being practiced continuously and studied in other places. And then there's a holdup here, and I don't know what drives that holdup. You know, Brigham Bueller said in front of Congress this week we don't have a broken healthcare system, we have a rigged system, and I wonder how much of that is because of that, and so I think it's. The challenging part is that most people don't want to do the amount of research it takes to understand what's been studied where and how much something has been vetted outside of the FDA, and so it's not for the layman.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's why it's biohacking.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and just to shout out to, I was just at the RADFEST conference, which is a longevity conference that Jim Stroll puts on, but one initiative they're doing that I think that I suspect you'll be getting behind and others. It's similar to the metabolic health initiative that happened in Washington last week, but it's going to be. It's centered around longevity but it's certainly about biohacking and it's to do a similar thing. You're going to have a march on Washington and meet with Congress and they're going to address the right to try laws and exosome laws, stem cell laws and try and, you know, make progress there, and it certainly would apply to biohacking. So I imagine there'll be a lot of the biohacking. Community will be involved with that and that's a very exciting trend. We're seeing that these interest groups that are interfacing one-on-one with our political representatives, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1:

The other interesting thing with that, another way to validate some things are like with new tests, like with off-label drugs like rapamycin, which is a longevity drug that's FDA approved but it's not approved for longevity because the FDA doesn't approve anything for longevity, because it's not a disease.

Speaker 1:

But so you have a bunch of people, like literally thousands of people, taking this drug biohacking, if you will, for longevity. So what's happened is there are now organizations that are getting together again citizen movements where they gather people together, and they gather thousands of people who are taking rapamycin and they do self-reported studies, and there's a dog aging project with Matt Kaberlein and other things. But that could be a model for other new biohacking experiences, where people just get together and say, hey, I don't know if this works, but here's a thousand people who tried it, these are the side effects, these are the benefits and something like that that's claimed. So that's good. So, yeah, ai is definitely going to be wild, but what other things do you see, or the shining lights in the biohacking space that you're particularly excited about? That we can look forward to.

Speaker 2:

So my excitement revolves around disruptive innovation and I look at the landscape of biohacking tools and I see everything moving into the home landscape of biohacking tools and I see everything moving into the home. And so right now we're at a at a mature point of the biohacking market, which seems strange to say because it's such a small market like the. The US healthcare system spends more on advertising every year than the biohacking industry is in size, and so the biohacking isn't yet $2 billion a month in revenue, and that's what the US healthcare system is spending on advertising. And so it's really a small industry, but in terms of biohackers it's. It's a mature industry of these early adopters and it has to get out into the public if we're going to really shift people's health. But going into these clinics with these giant $200,000 cryo machines and the saunas that are 30 grand and the VO2 max systems that are 30 grand and you know these things, you have to go into a clinic in order to get this level of light therapy, pemf therapy, cryo, etc. And it's really sophisticated equipment and it's wonderful and it's helping people.

Speaker 2:

But people who don't feel good don't want to walk into a place that is so trendy, where it's you know it's, they don't perceive it. As for them, and even you know, might struggle to leave the house when I was sick I couldn't stay awake past seven o'clock at night. I certainly couldn't go into a clinic like this. And so a lot of that stuff. You know you could lie in a giant red light bed, get it all done at once, or you can have a portable at home unit. You know there's one that you can use in a bathtub. That costs about 550 bucks. You can just put it on chest, put it on your leg, put it anywhere you want, and that's a great time, because you're already you're doing something to feel good. It's. It's good. In an Epsom salt bath. You can stack your therapies my favorite one is the LumaFlex and you just like get the treatment you need.

Speaker 2:

And you know, instead of spending $250 a month to access a red light bed somewhere else, people are willing to spend 500 bucks to do it at home. And then, if you have a few things, maybe you have three really effective things at home a personal sauna, maybe a chiller for your tub so that you don't have to pour ice around and you don't have to get into a cryo machine. These are easy things, you know. The chiller for a tub might be 600 bucks, a sauna might be 1500 and a red red lights about five 600 bucks. Well, that's what people spend a year to go to a med spa for unlimited treatments.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of them don't even offer unlimited treatments. You get like eight treatments for your 250 bucks and I want to do stuff every day and so I think it's coming into the home. That's the most exciting part for me and it's challenging because I have a lot of friends who supply these med spas and supply these clinics, who are selling big institutional level devices, and those devices work and they're effective and they can save you time. But you have to drive 20 minutes to get to a place to do 20 minutes of therapy and drive back home 20 minutes. You have to drive 20 minutes to get to a place to do 20 minutes of therapy and drive back home 20 minutes. If you live in a place like Louisville, where I live, where everything's 20 minutes In LA, you know how long does it take you to get to a clinic 20 minutes.

Speaker 1:

Everything's 20 minutes. Here too, it's just, it's only, you know, half a mile, but it's 20 minutes.

Speaker 2:

And then in that same line of thought, I think that, um, the testing for supplementation is going to really take off in the next few years. The tests are getting better and so being able to shift multivitamins, um, from a generic stack that is one size fits all I don't even take those because they they seem to never make me feel good and I'm waiting for that formula that really gets to what I need. And there are a few companies now that do that. You know. I think biome even has one version of that bionic and routine. They all have versions of this where you subscribe to testing and then get your personalized supplements. But I think that just even just knowing that, going back to continuous blood glucose monitoring, that plus function health, which is $500 a year for testing all year long, year long, even if we're not personalizing our supplements if we can gauge progress, then we can really start to take matters into our own hands and take control over our own health.

Speaker 1:

What is the demographic of biohackers today? Is it basically one group, or is it all ages? Is it all walks of life? Who is the average biohacker? Is that even a fair statement to say average biohacker?

Speaker 2:

I think it's not exactly fair to say average biohacker we like to think of ourselves as uncommon.

Speaker 2:

But I do think it matches the early adopter profile. So it's people who are a little more apt to wear an air, to have an Apple watch before anyone else. The person who had the Fitbit before anyone thought it was reasonable to count steps right. These are the people who are most into biohacking and people who are interested in optimizing their performance. So this is CEOs and entrepreneurs and athletes. Anyone who really needs an edge in performance is interested in biohacking and ahead of the curve, even people who need to look younger. So celebrities in Hollywood are biohacking because it does so much for the skin to be healthy on the inside.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what? What is the biggest pushback? Do you think that's limiting the wider spread of kind of the biohacking ethos among everybody? What, what's kind of pushback do you experience or what needs to be done? Is it education or is it? Is it uh like evidence, scientific evidence or what do you? What do you think uh is limiting the spread now?

Speaker 2:

That's such a good question and I want to answer it in so many different ways because it's it's personal and also systemic. So in my personal life people think I'm crazy. My best biohack was my dog right, like that's not crazy. When I was really sick my doctor told me not to exercise because I had pots and I thought that was insane. So I got a dog because I knew I didn't have the motivation to do it myself. And this, to me, is biohacking and people don't understand that. It's an ethos that is about feeling better and so even just avoiding toxins the idea that I go to the lengths I go to to avoid toxins in my environment People think I'm nuts. So when I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a teacher the other day and I said, come on, and he's been teaching for almost 30 years I was like the incidence of autism is higher. Right, that's environmental and. And his pushback was well, you can't convince me, it's the hot dogs.

Speaker 2:

And I was like I didn't say it was the hot dogs but it's this reductive defensiveness that people in our regular lives have because they don't want to go to the extremes that I have to go to to eat clean, that I have to go to to eat clean. It costs extra money. It takes a lot of thought and consideration to avoid plastics and avoid glyphosate and avoid oh gosh, what else am I avoiding?

Speaker 2:

Mostly plastics and glyphosate, Because if you can tackle those two things, you're probably in good shape. Um, but, but it's too much for most people, and I get it. It's overwhelming when people are exhausted by what it, what all of these chemicals are doing to us. They don't have the energy to focus on how not to do it and they can't quite believe that switching to glass bottles or switching to organic foods or reducing sugar could actually make them feel better, because they haven't felt better. So for me it's. I mean, we can get into the systems too, but for me the biggest pushback is someone who's like, yeah, I'm not going to give up my alcohol, is someone who's like, yeah, I'm not going to give up my alcohol. I love beer. Oh yeah, no, I really love donuts, so I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to keep doing that, and and it's hard to argue against that because they do love it and and so they do what they've got to do.

Speaker 1:

But that's the hardest part for me. Yeah, yeah, the. The addictions that we have, you know, are it's not necessarily about the sugar or the alcohol. It's like, like many addictions, it's related to our, our childhood experiences and other things in our lives that have traumatized us and we're seeking for solutions, and the solution may be that sugar donut or that alcohol or something like that, but, yeah, it's definitely complex. Well, glyphosates what do you do to get rid of glyphosates? Glyphosates, of course, is a weed killer. This audience knows that it's outlawed in 35 countries around the world because of its association with cancer. But in the United States, Monsanto Corporation, using what's called Roundup it's basically grains are soaked in it Many, many, most grains are. So what do you do to avoid that?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'd stick to organic foods, but even just this past week I learned that, given my mold sensitivity, that you can't protect yourself from moldy foods by selecting organic foods, and so one of the ways that glyphosate is used is on harvested wheat, which I didn't know about until Bobby Kennedy mentioned it a few months ago on a podcast that I watched, and so that's a way that they keep mold out of some food supply, but they douse it with chemicals, and so everything's a trade off and I get that, but which one is going to cause me and my makeup the most damage? I think that the glyphosate really creates that permeability of the gut. You would, you would know better than me, but that's how the other toxins get through. So I'm I'm accepting that maybe there's a little mold in my buckwheat. I'm, I'm accepting that maybe there's a little mold in my buckwheat and it's. It's. It's hard because I thought I was protecting myself.

Speaker 2:

It's like when I first started this journey of getting better, I thought that an organic cupcake was good for me because it was organic, and it's not. I'm, it's fine Every once in a while. You know, I'm not going to deny people their birthday parties. I don't have cake on my birthday anymore, but it's not that I never eat sweets, but it is. We all have to decide for ourselves what makes us feel good, and so, for me, I choose organic foods. Um, and reduced sugar intake, and that's how I. That's my gauge. Against glyphosate Um, obviously I don't use it in my home. Um, we, I used to spray it in my mom's driveway. I used to eat two Krispy Kreme donuts and drink a small Coca-Cola every morning before high school, every morning. It was walking distance from my high school. I loved it.

Speaker 1:

They are good. No, I agree. Well, as a biohacker yourself, what are some of the most powerful biohacking tools that you found for yourself? I mean, you mentioned the mold. Certainly that was transformative in your life. Anything else you want to share about just routines or biohacking that you think are particularly powerful?

Speaker 2:

Sure, of course. Yeah, I have a water filter on my tap, so that's that's number one. It has hydrogen added to it. I don't understand how that works. I know people are excited about hydrogen water. I bought it because I bought a lot of things and I drink it, but I've not really noticed any difference from my water. I have great air filters. I use the Jasper. I have three in my home, even though one probably takes care of my home. I'm a little sensitive to my air quality. It's fall, so I've had my windows open and that's when the meter on it says my air quality is low is when I open my windows.

Speaker 1:

And so.

Speaker 2:

I'm okay with that. It's nice to know that my inside air is better than my outside air most of the time, and I'm okay with exposing myself to what that is. I mean, we're human. It's good to smell the outdoors. I have some gadgets, I have an oxygen chamber and I have some red light and I have frequency healing devices, microcurrent devices like the Healy and the Alpha Stim, but I think most of the time I don't use that stuff regularly. I'll tell you what I use. All the time, though.

Speaker 2:

I love sound therapy and I have giant gongs that I play, and I love the way it feels when you can feel a sound coming off the gong and um I it. This might be a little crazy, but I'm trying to heal my dad's neuropathy and I built a sound chair that I put in his home. That is not what a normal sound chair is. Normal sound chairs give you sound in the ears and then they have vibration transducers on the body and those will enhance lymphatic drainage and circulation, but they will not penetrate the bone marrow, but sound does. Sound penetrates matter, and so I'm pumping frequencies low frequencies that have been associated with stem cell proliferation in the body into his body with these sound chairs that I'm making, and so that's the most exciting thing that I've done lately.

Speaker 1:

Oh, nice, nice. Are there any like? You mentioned several things, but are there any things that you absolutely do every day, that you feel make a difference, any things that you try to do every day?

Speaker 2:

no-transcript. Three minutes. Sometimes it's my car, Sometimes it's before I'm in the conference, it's my hotel room, before I go downstairs. I'll own champ for three minutes and get my HRV up to a 60 or a 90 just from chanting, and that's. That's the thing I do multiple times a day, every single day.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow, that's. That's really powerful.

Speaker 2:

And I love things that are free.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, well, even I mean. The Apple Watch is wonderful technology and even now, most smartphones, at least, will have step counters in them so that everybody, if they want to start small, they can count their steps. And I just started doing 10,000 a day, which I wasn't hitting consistently, and now I am, and it's I've. I've never felt better and I think there are a lot of benefits and it's relatively simple to do. Once you make it a habit, it just, it just happens. But yeah, it's, it's amazing the things that are available to us, that are available to us. So I want to talk about your conference, because I went to it last year. It was amazing, I had a great time. This isn't an ad, this isn't a plug, but I think it's something that our audience should hear about. If they're interested in biohacking and they're curious, it's a great place to go and tell us a little bit about that and what led you to that. You mentioned before coming from Comic-Con and all, but please share with us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you, and one of the things that was so fun last year was that we had William Shatner getting biohacked on stage and he's just so funny and so curious, and so we had a great time with that. I still try to.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I did just interrupt. He is 92,. I think he's 93. 93. And the man doesn't look at it at all. He's a model for all of us. He's such a nice man and such a good example for what biohacking could do for sure. So sorry for the interruption.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, I think that's great and I think we changed his life at that event. Because he was struggling with his shoulder and when you have trouble moving part of your body you start to feel old. And I think maybe that sets in in our 40s, where people start to just shuffle a little bit more and get a couple of aches and pains when you wake up. And if you're not really actively making sure that you're not in that state, I think that's a common progression for people. And so there he was, where he's been living better, but it's starting. He's starting to feel that in his 90s, right, that that aches and pains when he gets up and that shoulder was driving it. And he made a comment in the back room and he said you know, I guess I'm just getting older and and so I told him about what changed my life last year.

Speaker 2:

When I went to Radfest last year, I was sitting down talking with a friend and someone walked up and he was in his 70s and just had this pep to his step that is uncommon for people in their 70s and had this zest for life and just was so happy and thrilled to share his story. And my friend Dan asked him. He said what do you attribute this to? You are so full of life, what's your secret? And he goes I'm just getting started. And I looked at him and I was like, oh my God, here I am waking up at 49, thinking you know, I'm a little stiff here, a little there, and this guy, I'm just getting started.

Speaker 2:

So I shared that story with Bill and I and I said you're just getting started. And I explained to him this theory that if we can live one more year for every year we're advancing in technology for the next 10 years, then we're going to have a breakthrough. I said you've just got 10 more years before you get this reset for yourself and and you perhaps don't continue to age. And so I gave him kind of the theory of the science behind it, because he likes to be grounded in science but he also really likes an idea to latch on to, for hope and to go beyond what we think is possible. And I heard him in an interview talking about the eclipse a couple months later and he told the journalist. He said Well, this is a once in a generation, once in a lifetime, event We'll never see. And he goes. He stopped himself. He said no, you'll never see this thing again.

Speaker 1:

I might, I think I will.

Speaker 2:

And so we helped him believe that he might get another 20, 40, 50, 60, 80, 90 years. And I'm not betting my life that I'm going to live to be 180. I'm not going to aggressively pursue those things, but the idea today that I'm just getting started shifts my entire state of being.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. That's such a great message of mindset and longevity and I love that you shared with me when we were talking earlier about some of the speakers that are going to be at the conference this year and some of them are going to be looking at aspects of the mind the mind outside the body and I can't wait to hear those. Those are going to be great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one of my favorite speakers that's coming is Mark Serto, and he was with the Monroe Institute for so many years and now he's got a program called the Triad Mind, which is a meditation journey that helps the mind get into a place where we can experience what we are beyond our physical bodies. And it's something I'm exploring and I don't have a lot of experience with, like, I acknowledge that it's there, but I don't have a lot of interaction with this space around me. That's not my body, but I'm getting there and to be able to introduce people to this idea. But I mean, we know there's an electromagnetic field around our bodies that can be measured up to 10 feet. We know that, and that's just up to 10 feet with our current measurement tools. What's in there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's gotta be at least as interesting as what's on the internet, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, maybe share with our audience uh, our audience what the Monroe Institute is or was if you could, it's fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so Robert Monroe became famous for his travels outside of the body and he created the Monroe Institute to study that technique that he happened upon. I don't know how, I don't remember exactly how he figured out how to do it, but he traveled the astral plane and had some fun outside of his body. But he also got recruited by the CIA to work on a project called the gateway experience or experiment I forget which one, but he trained the CIA how to do remote viewing, and that has been classified until just a few years ago. And so Mark helped to work on the audio tracks that get the mind into a state where you can have your consciousness leave your physical body Not done it really hope to someday, but we'll see, Hopefully this spring right, yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's what I loved about the conference last year I attended and I'm going to attend the next one also, and I'll be speaking there as well. But the great thing about it was it was participatory. So in addition to having presentations and book signings and booths, there were also large amounts of space that were dedicated to where you could go and one could go and test out different technologies, different biohacking experiences. So it was wonderful and I'm really looking forward to that this year.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for noticing that and pointing it out. Because I did that, I made sure that we would have a lot of experiential things to try, because I spent way too much money on things that didn't work for me when I was healing my brain. I spent $97,000 in my first year to heal my brain and most of the stuff that I bought didn't work until after I detoxed, and so it's important to be able to try things like, you know, brain tap you can try it, and nano V you can try it, and the red light therapies, and we even had cold plunge and saunas you can get into. And you know, we've got this great building that doesn't care what we do inside of it. And and I heard a friend of mine told me that he was talking to someone who said you know, that event was a little more ghetto than what I'm used to, and I was like that's right.

Speaker 2:

It is because you can get in there and you can try stuff that you cannot try in a fancy hotel ballroom, and I really pride myself on bringing that experience to people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's totally. I mean there are a lot of. You know there are many great conferences and with with the booths and stuff, it's you just can't you know, standing next to the booth and putting it on and you know it's not the same as maybe lying down for 20 minutes and going through a deeper process and a deeper evaluation of the technology. So definitely hats off to you for that. And the conference this year is going to be in Miami again, right?

Speaker 2:

It is yes, in Miami February 28th and March 1st.

Speaker 1:

Yes, in Miami February 28th and March 1st, and are you guys going to live stream it at all?

Speaker 2:

Will that be?

Speaker 1:

available as an option for people.

Speaker 2:

Yes, both stages the main stage and the education stage will both be live streamed this year. It was just the main stage last year, but we're expanding this year oh great, and so what we're offering is a membership. We've got talks like yours from last year online now with with an AI interpreter of what you talked about, giving more background to it, and so and then we've also got a link to your book to get a free chapter.

Speaker 2:

So we've taken the talks from last year. We've used AI to create biohacking guides that anyone can access now biohacking guides that anyone can access now and so we're trying to help people all year long. The biggest mistake I made last year was that I thought that people who are in pain could come to my event and feel better, and I found out people in pain don't leave their houses, and I should have figured that out ahead of time and I just didn't put it together. I didn't leave my house when I was hurting and I should have known better. And so this year, I think that you know I I like to say that the person who is going to love my event is the one who just started feeling better and can't shut up about it, like it's just telling everyone they know you've got to try this, you've got to try that. You cannot believe how great I feel now. It's so exciting to feel good once it happens. I mean I know, you know what that means. I know what that means.

Speaker 2:

There are people out there who just got like this little taste of oh. You mean, I don't have to limp when I get out of bed in the morning Like, oh, I don't fall asleep at three o'clock after, you know I don't need that cup of coffee in the afternoon. You know, maybe it's because they're wearing red light glasses at night, you know red glasses, or there's so many things that people can do that hardly cost anything. That just shift the game. If you can sleep through the night, like the difference that makes when you wake up. And so once people figure that out and they start telling everyone and their friends are like enough already, those people are the ones I think are going to love my event the most.

Speaker 1:

And you mentioned you. You hinted at something that for people who attend the event either in person or live stream, they become a member of a community. Right, and tell us a little bit more about that community, and that's such a powerful concept. Community is great and I'm so happy to see you're doing that, but maybe share with the audience a little bit about what that's about.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's all on the back end of the website.

Speaker 2:

You know, we can just use the internet to bring people together where you can gain access to tools and information. You can start to interact with people socially that part is growing. But being able to offer help all year long to the people who are interested in this, instead of just saying, you know we've got all of these things that will help you feel better, but now you got to wait six months to find out what they are. So we're trying to help people stay in the know and get whatever questions they want answered as they go along, as their journey progresses, and meet them where they are. And yeah, maybe, maybe somebody doesn't feel good today, sees your talk from our last session on our website and then, by the time March rolls around, they're ready to like. Imagine someone getting the information we've already collected, using that to feel better and then joining us in celebration with the others who've already started to feel better too. To me, that's that's the dream is that people are motivated to go somewhere because they feel better.

Speaker 1:

That's, that's so exciting. How do you, how do you see this event, or biohacking in general, like 10 years from now? What, what, what do you hope and what do you? What do you expect, or is it, is it impossible to say?

Speaker 2:

We're at an inflection point in society, right Like. People are talking about things right now in a way that we've never talked about them before. People are calling out the food and drug administration. They're calling out the, the lobbyists, in with respect to the food supply and how we differ from other industrialized nations and the freedom of speech. We have now to say these things that we didn't have three, four years ago. I don't know what shifted that. I don't know if it's just Bobby Kennedy or if it's something else. No, maybe he just was loud enough, but I suspect it's either going to go forward and we're going to break these barriers down or it's going to get worse, I think. I think now is a real tipping point and I have a hard time saying like.

Speaker 2:

I saw an AI generated video today of a robot farming and it was a green screen kind of a thing and it was really really cute to watch and one of my first thoughts was oh well, if they could do all of it with robots, they might be tempted to dump more poison on the fields and and so with every advancement, we have to check ourselves and we have to make sure we're clear on our values, and I don't know that society is clear on values right now, at least not in the US and so you know, as a field, we're going to keep pushing to protect our own individual rights to do these things. But if if it still stays fringe and you have to travel to an event to talk to somebody in person to get the information, it's going to stay small, and I think that we have to keep pushing for the freedom to be able to speak about our success and how we're feeling better and spread that and that people who do feel better, like you I mean it's just you have to tell people you feel compelled, Like it's hard to keep it inside, it feels wrong to feel the way I feel today compared to four years ago and not share it with the world. Yeah, so I really hope that we break through this and that we have the freedom to speak more and more and more about what we're experiencing and we can try and share more. But in this controlled marketplace, this isn't a free market.

Speaker 2:

The healthcare market's not free, and so if you can't tell someone the job to be done with your product, it's not a free market, and and I hope that we can get to a point where we can have a free market, with safety is important, but the market's still not free, and so if we can push through and use this movement, then I think we're. It's just the sky's the limit and what we can do. If not, it's all going to be controlled and it's just going to be another version and have to have the gateway of the physicians and the things, and that's how most people will experience it, and there will always be a little group that will do their own thing. But I'd like to see everyone empowered, and I'm not convinced that's coming yet.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, this is such an important concept. Do you see your organization as having a role in political action? In other words, you have this community. Now, well, do you see, like, have them automatically put in their address and their congressman's name will come up, and then they can send emails to them and basically be a voice for, for what you hope to do, and actually move legislation based on this, this, this lobbying group, if you will, you know yeah, I'm gonna say that's like next on the list thank you for that idea.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that sounds like exactly what we ought to be doing. I feel like business serves an important role in society in terms of raising awareness for things. In a in a different sort of a way, I see money as proof of concept. Right, like if, if people are willing to buy a ticket to do something, it has a purpose, it has value, and so sometimes a letter to a congressman can help, but sometimes demonstrating that 1,600 people are gathering for something, it's not the join the resistance march on Washington that's about to come up. That should have hundreds of thousands of people, but you know my 1600 attendees. They, when people show up for that, it gets noticed, and so my goal is to get beyond the tiny community of biohackers and spread the word, and so I I use this to get it to more people, and that's hard, but that's my guiding mission is to break down barriers and put it in front of more people, and the more I do that, the more I'm called crazy, and I think that that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just having that community, their strength in numbers, and you can I'm sure you're already thinking of this of people contributing their data in anonymized or de-identified fashion, what their particular biohacking choices are, and then you could do an annual report that says these people use red light therapy, these people do this, these people do that. I mean, I would love to read that and it would be valuable information, just like the you know the work with the rapamycin group. You could do it across all biohacking things that your community uses and immediately see, well, how did the community like this? Oh, it didn't work, you know that doesn't mean it won't work for me, but statistically it did. But anyway, so many exciting things, I'm so excited. I can't wait to be there this spring in Miami. And well, maybe you could tell our audience your website, how they can get in touch with you and how they can register for the meeting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you. It's biohackerexpocom and it's biohackerexpo on social media and you can email me. My name and phone number are on the website. You can just reach out directly. It's all good, I'm here for everyone. I hope that I have trouble picking up all the phone calls because of this interview that would be. The greatest problem to have is that if people are looking for answers, they have somebody they can call and reach out to. I'd be happy to give any direction I can. Um, yeah, and so it's. Uh, it's just such a great honor to be able to host this for people and to bring people like you in front of people to inspire them to change and feel better. That's like the best thing I get to do in life.

Speaker 1:

Oh well, thanks. Thanks so much, Sandy, for spending time with us today, and thanks again for all the great work you're doing. This is going to be so much fun.

Speaker 2:

Thank you again, yeah.