Bio-hack your way to health with Ben Angel

0:02 A Listener production. Hey guys, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm cas Dan. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy. To Happy books. In this series, we look at all the factors that might be making you feel crappy and the tools and the techniques that will help you overcome them. In each episode, I introduce you to interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field, and my hope is that they will help you go from crappy to happy. In today's episode, I'm talking to Ben Angel, who is a best selling author on peak performance and a weekly VP contributor to Entrepreneur magazine. Ben has a really interesting story to tell about how he found himself depleted and depressed and he biohacked his way back to optimal health. He wrote a book documenting his experience, which has gone on to be an international bestseller, and Ben's here today to share his story with us and what he learned about the importance of taking control of your health. Hey, Ben, thanks so much for being here today, all the way from Florida in the USA.

1:13 That's an absolute pleasure. Very briefly. A few years ago, you went from being highly successful, highly motivated, you know, kicking all the goals, speaking to sell out audiences, and you found yourself in a place where you were basically couldn't muster the motivation to do the most basic things. You were depressed, burnt out. Do you just want to fill us in a little bit on that time in your life and where you went from there? Yeah? Sure. So I'd spent three months traveling around the US and having an incredible time, traveled to Canada, and then when I got back home to Australia, I noticed that my behavior suddenly started to change. I was experiencing sofia fatigue. I was having to sleep three to four times a day just to get through the day. So the work that I was doing was purely driven by willpower alone, which is never a strategy, which we'll talk about a bit later. Yeah, but I also found myself in March of twenty seventeen becoming suicidal.

2:07 That's how bad it got. Wow. So I'd been going to doctor after doctor, getting blood tests done and different tests, and everything came back always normal, everything's good. And I started having some a couple of very kind of patronizing experiences by doctors which were kind of disheartening. Now that's not to say all doctors are bad. Many doctors are well meaning, of course, but I sort of started exploring what might be occurring myself because I wasn't getting the help that I needed. And there was one at the last interaction with the doctor I had in Australia, I literally walked out of the office in tears.

2:47 They told me, hey, you work out, you look fine, you should be fit, you should be healthy. And I'm sitting there saying I can barely function right now. I'm desperate for help. And it got to the point where I thought, how am I going to fix this? Because obviously this isn't the route that I'm going to get support through. So I came up with this insane idea at the time, in my depressed state, to pitch a book idea to Entrepreneur magazine in which I would go on a ninety day mission to buy hack my way back to health. Now, saying that that idea out loud right now just seems so insane for the state that I was in at the time. But it was really a last ditch attempt to figure this out because I had written three books before. It would take me thirty to forty minutes to write a basic email and I'd have to have someone check it. I was having trouble with conversations. I moved from Melbourne to Adelaide because I could no longer handle social situations, and I cut ties with a group of about twenty friends because my brain just couldn't cope. It was just completely overstimulated. And I very much went into my own home before I came back to the US and went on really what was quite an insane journey when I talk about it right now.

4:08 And what I love about that is that we had a conversation on another episode of the show with Christina Carlson, and she said that one of her favorite sayings is never waste a good crisis. And it sounds like you, as in the midst of this crisis, you found the opportunity not just to fix yourself, but then to use that to well, to write a book and to help other people as well. Yeah, And I think that's been the greatest gift out of this experience, is that I don't want anyone to have to go through the hell that I went through to get the support because not many people are in the position in which they can travel overseas see different doctors, speak to neuroscientists, psychologists and bio hackers to get answers.

4:50 It's just not in the realm of possibility, and especially when an individual is depressed or even suicidal, you're very much in your primal based fear of mind and where you're not able to make those rational, logical decisions. No, that's exactly right. And what you said in your book that you found was the self help industry. If you're not depressed enough, you go to self help, but if you are too depressed, then you get put on medication. And you were looking for something that was in the middle of those things. Is that fair to say? Yeah, So what I found is, like you said, if you're severe, you get medicated, but if the symptoms are mild, you get told to toughen up and get on with it.

5:33 And that's kind of I come from a personal development background that I've spent the past fifteen years in this field. I also grew up on a cattle farm in country South Australia, which has very much sucked. Up sunshine and get on with the job. Yes, And all of a sudden, I found myself in a situation whereas applying these strategies of the peak performers, and they were no longer working, and I couldn't work out why. That's where I had to address my own biases from the self help industry and go am I trying to really medicate this problem with self help when I should actually be getting medical support for what's going on?

6:14 The problem was I didn't know which medical support I needed, and nor was I getting the correct advice. So, Ben, what led you to try biohacking? Well, When I was at my worst, I accidentally came across a book by Dave Asprey, who is a world famous biohacker. He's also the creator of bulletproof coffee, which most people are fully aware of a what that is by. Now or will fast we've become aware of it. And I started listening to his book and Dave gave the example of where he started taking a vitamin C supplement because he had experienced the same symptoms that I had. He was constantly falling asleep, he was becoming depressed, and he went to a doctor and he ended up having an argument with this doctor who said you need to stop taking vitamin C.

6:59 It's you know, it's not real. It's not going to help. And Dave ended up walking out of that office and basically firing that doctor. And that was one of the biggest realizations I had. It's just like, wait a sec, I'm in control here, Like I should be advocating for my own health, and I should also be asking more from the health professionals and questioning, all, right, are they up to date with the later science? So the science of biohacking is really about finding what's impacting your internal and your external environment and what impact that has on not just our physiology but also our psychology.

7:41 So Ben, can you give us what people who haven't heard of biohacking? Can you give us some examples of what that constitutes, Like what does it involve? Sure, so that could be as simple as going and getting certain blood tests done, getting the results back, and on a personal individual level, also doing further research which more than what the doctor has actually provided us. So in my own case, my test results always kept coming back normal, but I couldn't understand why that was considering the symptoms I was experiencing. And my journey kind of led me to a company called everly Well in the United States now Julia Cheek she's the founder and she's actually one of the biggest investment on Shark Tank for any female entrepreneur in its history.

8:28 And what they. Do is you actually get a kit sent to your home in which you provide a blood sample, and then that sample gets sent off to the same laboratories that the doctors use here in the US. Then you actually get your test results back online, but it's in a format that's easy to understand. If there are any warning signs, it alerts you to seek out more medical assistance, or you can actually ask questions online as well. So I started doing some tests that i'd done previously, and there was one test that I chose to take that a doctor in Australia had actually refused to take, and that was a testosterone test because I'd had a natural path at the time when I was desperate for help and she said, hey, Ben, you're showing symptoms of low testosterone here.

9:19 I went to the doctor, I said, look, I really want to get this tested, and she fled out a few So when I came to the US, I did have it tested and I did find that I was in the normal range for testosterone, but I was at the very bottom end of that normal range. And later I followed up everly well and spoke to the medical director there and I said, you know, how are these normal ranges actually defined? Because that's not really a question we asked when we get our results back. We just told they're normal, they're fine, and she actually said to me, well, they're based. Typically the medical guinea pig is a seventy kilogram thirty year old white male. Now that by no means fits the demographic of society. So if your test results come back as normal, I encourage people to go to their doctor and say, am I at the high end or the low end of the normal results? Because if you're at the low end of the normal results, that doesn't mean that you're not exhibiting symptoms for either low testosterone or a nutritional deficiency. In fact, my thyroid results always came back normal. But seeing a functional doctor in the United States, he actually uncovered that I was at the very low end of the normal range and if it continued, I'd have to then take thyroid medication for the rest of my life. If I didn't take preventative steps at the time. So biohacking is really taking

10:53 that data and asking key follow up questions to kind of find two what it's actually really showing us. Because if you're a. Female, for example, and the guinea pig is a seventy kilogram thirty year old white male, then that normal range may be completely irrelevant for you. Now, thankfully, the guinea pigs, they're starting to change, especially for women and in pregnancies, but that has traditionally been the guinea pig. So that for me, through this experience, that caused quite a lot of concern, especially for individuals who are depressed or suicidal.

11:34 They keep on getting told they're normal, but those follow up questions haven't been asked. Yeah, So it's really about taking charge of your health and asking the pertinent questions and being an advocate for yourself and for your health. Yeah. And the challenge is when an individual is suffering, you're experiencing fatigue or lethargy, you're very much in your primal base mind. When you're in that state, you don't rationally think to ask these questions. So through writing the book and producing document documentary style episodes that actually followed along with the journey as well. I'm encouraging people that even if you are depressed, here's some basics that you should be asking to follow up with your practitioner.

12:21 I think that there are a lot of people listening to this, and I know amongst friends of mine who will really resonate with this. I've had friends too who've had thyroid tests and they've all come back normal, but they've actually been you know, they've on the verge of Hashimoto's disease things like that, and they've had to push and push to get the tests done that they needed to get done to get the answers. And I know there's loads of people out there who are really frustrated and struggling. And especially with thyroid thyroids. An interesting one speaking to the medical director and Julia Cheek of Everly Well, is that when you go to a doctor based on the insurance that you may have, and it's very it's very tricky here over in the US. So here in the US, the insurance will cover certain lab tests, but you may have one thyroid test that may come back as normal, but there are actually other tests that you can try, but the insurance doesn't actually cover those. Other tests, so the doctor doesn't suggest them. So the individual may be having issues with a thyroid and the test results keep coming back normal and the patient's sitting there what's going on?

13:31 So we have to consider there's a lot of systemic issues that kind of come through that. And one of the biggest things that came out of the book is obviously the pharmaceutical industry, the opioid crisis here in the United States and I saw an interesting article talking about it potentially hitting Australia very soon. Is the over. Prescription of medication as well as a lack of education around the side effects of that medication. So, Ben, in the book, you talk about one of the first things you introduce is this concept of an identity gap. So can you explain for our listeners what that's about and why that's important.

14:19 Absolutely. So when I was kind of working on the book and trying to get myself back to health, what I realized is that we're constantly in a state of play. We're trying to evolve from who we are to who we want to become, and to become that person that we've always envisioned ourselves becoming. We have to close what I call the identity gap from who we are to who we want to be in the future. To close that gap, I looked at not only the medical model, the psychiatric model, the self help model, and also buy a chemistry to look at all, right, what are the things that can fuel this change? And when you look at the different models, if you look at the self help model, it's very much focused on beliefs, inspirational stories.

15:05 You can outthink a lot of things. And part of my issue was I was trying to outthink bad biochemistry, which was such a revelation for me. So it created a new formula that was based on these discussions with neuroscientists, psychologists, clinical social workers, bier hackers, doctors. I really reached out to everyone and the formula that I came up with is, I want you to picture a light globe. So the light globe represents your purpose, your vision, the goal that you want to achieve. Now, to light that light globe and provide it with energy, a battery has to be attached to that. So the battery as much as possible, we want it to be fully charged. But over time, like your mobile phone, any battery will get depleted over time.

15:54 So how do we recharge that battery. Now, if you look at the self help model, it's very much focused on so ecology motivation kind of just do it, get in there and do it. But that's just one factor that recharges us. The other factor is, of course the biochemistry, the food, the nutrition. Are we nutritionally apt in everything that we're taking in to provide really the energy for our brain to process the psychological output, because we can't have a high psychological output without paying a high biological price. And the self help industry, and I know I sound like I'm bashing it, I'm not. It's great, it's full of well meaning people. But right now my concern after going through this is it's some of it is bad advice at best and dangerous at worse, especially for individuals who are suicidal. So the focus is very much on the psychology.

16:51 But when we look at peak performers, we look at their peak performing psychology, the time of the day, they get up, their routine, sometimes what they eat. But we don't actually look at their biochemistry. We don't take blood tests to see are they do they actually have enough vitamin D magnesium, is their thyroid functioning, is the body of the physical physiological level healthy and going to fuel that psychological work. So with the identity gap in recharging this battery, I created four different identity types based on all of these conversations. So say, for example, a battery it can go down to fifty percent. Below the fifty percent threshold, you have identity types such as defender and guardian.

17:38 So a defender is the most depleted of all. So the individual is most likely exhausted, depressed, potentially suicidal. They are constantly sleeping, they may have feelings of numbness, and they have limited access to the cognitive function. Then just above that we have guardians, so they're the same kind of symptoms. So if you look at battery, if it's one hundred percent fully charged at the very top, you've got the catalyst and the synergist who can function therein conscious thought, conscious creation. When you hit below the fifty percent threshold for peak performance, that's where we go from conscious creation to unconscious creation because we have limited access to our cognitive function. So when we hit the fifty percent threshold below that, we turn on what I call is self preservation mode, which is really where our primal mind takes control and it prioritizes vital bodily functions over goals that we want to achieve, over doing the dishes, over reading or rioting or doing courses. It is purely focused on a life or death situation, so we're not able to logically think our way out of it, which is why I think it can be very dangerous. And I'm sure you'll find you've known in your own practice trying to medicate a medical issue with self help.

19:01 At least I mean in my profession in psychology. Obviously we're not medical doctors. So we do the work on the thinking and the behavior, and we do some of us you know, we very much focus on getting enough sleep, you know, and we talk to people about how they're looking after their physical well being. But it's definitely not taught in our degrees. And I think what you're saying really is that we have these silos. We have the medical people do the medical stuff, and the psychology people do the brain stuff for the mind thinking behavioral stuff. But we really and then you see a nutritionist for the food or whatever it is, but we really need to be taking a holistic approach to our health and well being, which is you know, that's what our podcast is all about, really if we're going to really achieve what we're capable of and really be functioning at our best.

19:51 And you're quite right when you say that we're all operating in our own individual silos. That was one of the first comments in clinical social worker actually discussed with me when I was on this journey, saying, you know, Ben, we're all part of the problem because we're certain I guess modalities and methodologies. We'll focus on one piece of the solution, but not all of it. So when we kind of look at biohacking, we're trying to encompass absolutely everything, and in particular especially gut health and the gut microbiome should be on every single person's radar.

20:32 Right now, Do you want to talk a little bit about that. So the gut microbiome basically exists inside every single person and it weighs about the weight of our brain, so we can kind of think of it like an extra limb. But we know that through the gut. Brain access the bacteria that is in our gut can either stir us towards depression, anxiety, fatigue, and fear, or it can obviously fuel us into a state of well being. Now almost every single day at the moment, there is a new research paper coming out about the gut microbiome. It is absolutely fascinating. And on this journey, one of the things that I observed and I started kind of questioning.

21:18 I traveled from the. US and around Canada, got home and I started exhibiting all of these stomach and digestive issues and I couldn't kind of pinpoint it. And I sought out a company called Thrive that actually provide at home gut health tests. So you provide a fecal sample, which I know sounds really sexy. It's not, but it's very easy to do. It's only the size of a piece of rice. You send it off and then they send it off to their labs throughout the US. And it doesn't matter if you're in Australia. You can actually still take these tests and get the results back. So what happens like Eaverly Well, where you get access to an online dashboard that gives you your medical results, it also gives you the makeup of your gut microbiome. Wow, so I will tell you are you deficient in certain types of bacteria? And what bacteria?

22:13 What that actually means for your health as a whole. Now, fascinatingly, my test results came back and it actually showed that I had next. To no bacteroids. So bacteroids are a type of bacteria in the gut. And a study only came out a couple of weeks ago that showed that individuals who didn't have many bacteroids or a high level of bacteroids would exhibit depression, anxiety, and other symptoms. So it's been interesting through this journey connecting all of the different pieces. So for individuals that suffering with depression and their struggling, it's important to not just look at the gut health, but also look at food sensorivities because that is a big one that is not being discussed in relation to mental health and ben.

23:07 The other really interesting thing that I want to talk to you about is the wearable technology that you tried as part of this ninety day challenge that you took. Can you talk to us about some of those and what you discovered? Yeah, sure, So I tried various different technology. There was actually one device that provides electrical stimulation to your motor cortex. Now, this particular project was funded by the Pentagon, so they're not messing around. So this electrical. Stimulation actually helps speed up the learning process between the brain and physical movement in the body. So this device, you wear it for twenty minutes before you start performing any type of exercise that could be learning to play a new song on the piano. Because it's based on movement, weight training, swimming, it really doesn't matter as long as as if physical type of exercise.

24:02 Now, what they found. Is through their research, not only can you lift heavier and exert more energy, it's also easier. So I did an intense thirty day CrossFit challenge and we've got a documentary style video on this where I did the before and after photos. Then I flew out to San Francisco to interview the neuroscientists who created the device, and I found that every single day for thirty days, I was able to lift heavier and beat personal best. Now, this particular device is being used by the military, by snipers, by fighter pilots. So in researching this book, I didn't want to experiment with devices that didn't have research or significant backing. And I also wanted to look at who the backers were and the application and majority of the devices and the new topics I tried have military application and a lot of the research has actually been funded by the military.

25:03 And then when you say wear it, so for our listeners, it's like a headset, right, It's not around your wrist, it's a set of headphones. Is that wrong? Yeah, So this one is called Halo's Sports. So it looks like a really expensive pair of headphones. So if you can picture the Beats headphones, they're quite heavy. They sit on the top of your head. They have little foam sparks, so you've got to wet these foam spikes before you put it on to make sure that the electricity is obviously connecting to your brain. So, Ben, the thing is that these days everybody's obsessed with their fitbits or their garments, like we're all about the wearable technology. But I've got to be honest with you.

25:44 I were a fitbit for a couple of weeks and the novelty wore off really quickly. And I hear that from a lot of people. So how does this kind of technology kind of. Compare to the tracking your steps on your fitbit? Yeah? Sure, the technology has come a really, really long way compared to a fit bit. So a fit bit is kind of like a gamification of exercise to really kind of help encourage and potentially compete with friends online to encourage your steps. There are devices out in the marketplace now. One is called the Ora ring so o ure so to ring that you wear on your finger like a typical ring you'd wear every single day. Now, this tracks a multitude of different functions, so everything from body temperature, respiration, heart rate, sleep and comparing too a fit bit or a Samsung watch or an Apple watch, the data that you actually collect from the or ring is I would say one hundred times more accurate, and I know I find as the eye watch is definitely getting there. But what Aur does differently compared to other devices is on your phone, it actually gives you a readiness score in the morning after you cup. So a fitbit will say a general hay ten thousand steps, or a ring will give you a score out of one hundred to say whether you should push yourself for the day or you should actually rest and recover. So if your readiness score

27:16 is over eighty, that's a good day for you to go push yourself with the gym. If it's seventy, then that's a good day to recover, and that is based on different factors. So your body temperature may have been too high or it may have been too low. Your respiration may have been too high or too low. You may not have had enough deep sleep. And what I found with this particular device, why it's so useful and buy hacking our way back to health, is that on one particular morning, I looked at the results from the your Ring and it actually showed that during the night my body temperature was significantly higher than what it would normally be. Now looking at this, obviously that's an indicator for potentially getting sick. Immediately, I jump to the supplements that I've learned about, and thankfully, in this case, the cold of flu never took hold. It only lasted about twenty four to forty eight hours in total.

28:12 So when we. Look at all of these different wearable technology, I think there's now technology out there that provides us with greater insight where we can immediately respond to the data that we're getting and change our behavior. And I mean this is especially great for women for that time of the month to actually watch the body temperature and adapt what they're doing to what their body is actually doing. I find that so interesting. And one of the questions that comes up all the time in the communities that I'm in online is, you know, I'm not feeling it today. Should I be resting? Or am I just making excuses for myself? And people really struggle with that. So what you're saying is this can give you give you some real information about whether you are just making excuses or or whether.

29:01 You really do need to take a break exactly. And what I've found is it's the psychological relief that that data actually provides, because we're not just beating ourselves up saying I'm just lazy, I don't have enough willpower, I'm not good enough, I'm just mentally weak. Right now, we're actually looking at the. Data and saying, no, based on your physiological signs, you should be taking it easy, and by no means should you be feeling guilty about. It, which is a good thing. And on the other hand, I'm wondering if our reliance on all of these trackers in this technology is almost disconnecting us from just tuning in with ourselves, you know what I mean, Like, we're so obsessed with counting and tracking and looking to an external device. Is it disconnecting us from being in tune with our own internal wisdom.

29:56 I guess that was one of my main concerns in going into a lot of these devices, But I found it had the absolute opposite effect. Okay, because before I some days during the experiment, so I want to check is this ring accurately collecting the data? So I'd ask myself first thing in the morning, how am I feeling? Am I feeling up to the challenge today? Before I would actually check to see if there was a physiological thing happening in the background. So it's really helped me to fine tune my own intuition into what my body is doing and saying, hey, you know what, today isn't a good day to push it. I'm going to focus on other activities that don't require a lot of mental work or physical work, and then I'll pick it up tomorrow.

30:45 Because when we push ourselves when we don't have the energy required to do it, I mean we can trigger obviously nutritional deficiencies, because once again, you can't have that high psychological output without paying a high bio logical price. So it's really helped me to fine tune. I guess what my body is doing. So again, I guess it's about taking that holistic approach and not relying solely on the technology, checking in with yourself, but almost getting the validation from what you're getting in the biofeedback. Yeah, and I think it's having that validation that once again provides so much mental relief to go. You know, I am a bit off today and that's okay, I should push myself. No one can tell me to suck it up and keep going. I need to back off.

31:33 Then that is fascinating for anybody listening to this who is now inspired to try biohacking, What do you recommend is the first thing that they could go out and do right now? Sure, So we actually developed a quiz after talking to all of these scientists and euroscientists so they can head to Aruunstoppable dot com. So thirty part questionnaire and it's going to give you readiness scores, tell you your identity type, your cognitive function, and also in you whether you should push yourself back off, or certain tests and doctors that you should actually seek out to get extra professional advice. You also have developed a thirteen week program that goes along with your book Unstoppable, which is obviously out now, which documents this whole journey, and so people can actually sign up for that online and they can follow through with this process themselves.

32:23 Yeah. Yeah, we had staggerantly over sixteen hundred people signed up in the last two weeks. We had an individual who was suicidal for most of his adult life finally work out why, and his message almost brought me in to tears because it's incredible to obviously share my experience and be helping others through this. Ben, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I almost feel like we could have you back again because I know that there is so much. That we still haven't covered. But I hope that our listeners have really gained a lot of insight and perhaps some hope if they find themselves and frustrated. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Cas, We thank you if you can relate to some of Ben's experience and you're inspired to take back your own health. I know that there is so much more he has to share that we didn't get to cover in our conversation.

33:18 He covers it all in his book Unstoppable, which. Is a great read and you can find it at areuunstoppable dot com. I also have some exciting news that Crappy to Happy book is now available to be ordered. Link is in the show notes, or you can come to my website cast done dot com. We love hearing from you, so if you love this show, please give it a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, or get in touch with me personally hello at castone dot com. On the next episode, I'll be talking to Tarn Bromfort, who is the founder of the Body Image movement and the director of the Embraced documentary. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cash Dunn, produced by Davis Lensky. Audio production by Darcy Thompson.

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