 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan sake and we are at the transformative technology conference So fun here so many diverse leaders. We are now sitting down with dr. Daniel Stigler. Hello Nice to be here. Thank you for coming on to the show greatly appreciate it and so as we talk about up here on which you're co-founder of and the medical director for Neurohacker Collective so there's a lot to talk about regarding the the disruption of well-being into our ecosystems And so we'll get there. We'll talk about that. I want to ask you how you became who you are today Okay, what led you up to? You now okay, I'll try to keep it as short as possible because it is a long story. I Always wanted to be a doctor. I always looked at physicians though from the perspective of The role is to really enhance health. I Got into medical school and I realized the role was to Move away from disease And it wasn't about enhancing health you know moving towards something really awesome versus moving away from something really bad and You know it became about pharmacology and disease and when I was in medical school I looked at the different options for what I could do to still at least Kind of fit into my perception of what I should be doing and I found surgery So I became a general and vascular surgeon I gave me the ability to take somebody with a certain quality of life and I could either bring them at least back to baseline Or I did some weight loss surgery. So I was able to work with people who had fairly low quality of life and I was able to elevate them to to a new level and For a time that seemed to be Satisfying that that need that I had to to fill that role But every time I also realized it wasn't the right way to do it and it wasn't accomplishing What I was wanting to do started getting into wellness is kind of a hobby Started doing health optimization with with clients in a concierge style practices a little side job that I Truly it was a hobby. It wasn't making any money. It was just something I enjoyed doing and Eventually, I just said one day I said done. I'm not gonna do surgery anymore I walked out of the operating room and canceled all the rest of my surgeries. I had 800 person waiting list for weight loss surgery People thought I lost my mind and I was like, no, I'm gonna do this full-time Yeah, and then I started getting into genetics kind of self-taught in the genetic and epigenetic realm and Developed a very biospecific personalized approach to healthcare and Dang just that moment. I'm happy you knew from much from childhood that you wanted to do to be a doctor because sometimes it's Well, first of all, there's a lot of there's a lot of societal pressure to Figure out what one wants to do and so many people are like, oh, what are you gonna do when you're older and stuff? Anyway, we go down that rabbit hole But I like I like how you knew what you wanted to do you figured it out quickly And then you went and did it and as you were doing it you figured out that you wanted to transition into a very similar Field of health and wellness, but you wanted to do it at a point of of of making people better of at Rather than having the disease and then being better you own Prevent a disease from even occurring at first place. It seems to be a common trend here, which I really like now You know what for you for that, you know for that transition for you to To appear on is and that was that's where appear out. That is what it was the birth of appear on right? Okay, cool, and then so tell us about that you're studying genomics epigenetics and genetics, and then you were and you're figuring out kind of the An oh strong practices for maintaining good health. Is that right? well, what I what happened it was it's kind of this epiphany that I realized that And it was funny because I was reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn at the time and it hit me and I was like This is what's wrong the medical system Is broken to the point where it's not something that we can shift It's broken to the point where we have to just walk away and create something different the reason is is because The current medical system and health care and wellness even in general It's based on the premise that the human system is a complicated system And that's why we have algorithms and things like that You know your cholesterol is this and you have this blood pressure. You know, these are the medications algorithm based Problem is the human system is not complicated. It's complex and you can't apply complicated Intelligence to a complex system. It doesn't work The complex system is just highly variable. I mean truly the medical system looks at the human system as a robot That has a completely reductionistic approach. It has Predictable outcomes for everything and yet we know there is no predictability and It is just Everything interacts in the human system. I mean DNA DNA the molecule is the most intelligently designed molecule I've ever seen I mean the more I learn about it the more I'm just fascinated by DNA Yeah, I mean you're talking about a molecule that is the core of everything we know of life and It is constantly Assessing our environment and making changes in its expression To thrive in that environment. Yeah constant adaptation to the environment and It contains memories it holds memories of your ancestors In that genetic code and then we're seeing this now in epigenetics and transgenerational epigenetics where we're seeing the ability to Analyze this code and see how it's being passed and it's just fascinating stuff I love how you poeted that that was beautifully said It's not only the molecule of life, but it's also the takes on the epigenetics of the environment learns how to thrive in that environment So so now um, yeah, where does a puron come in to? Play then with us so knowledge. We developed them our medical program, which we've been doing since really 2012 in this model and I was giving presentations at medical conferences and physicians kept asking me If I could teach them how to do what I was doing Never thought about it and I thought well yeah, I guess I could so we started developing some training modules and working with some clinicians one-on-one That eventually in 2015 led us opening the Puron Academy, which is a training Ground for basically any anybody so anybody interested in health and we have we currently have a hundred and sixty coaches in the in the training or completed it and They 30% are physicians 30% chiropractors and the other 40% you name it dietitians psychologists pharmacists nurses health coaches and general biohackers that just want to get into this So it's a new paradigm. It's not a changing of the old paradigm and you know the Greeks had it right from the get-go the Greeks knew Epigenetics they knew complex systems and we messed it up You look back at even the term dietitica Dietitica was about man's whole way of living The true definition of it and it talked about the way he slept The way he worked the interaction with his family and the food he ate and how much he ate Yeah, I mean that was the initial grounds of Hippocratic medicine. Yeah, and those variables are What makes a life thrive or can just make a life really miserable, right? Everything goes into that system and the system responds to it. Yeah, and that's what we've missed. We have stove piped everything I mean, oh you look at What will kill? Top 10 killers kill 75% of Americans are you know heart disease and cancer one and two But if you look at all those top 10 common causes of death Every single one of them is lifestyle related and yet. How do we address them? Well type 2 diabetes. Well, we change their diet We give them medication It's the whole lifestyle though that created the problem in the first place the same with heart disease the same with With asthma same with accidents, you know, we don't even think about accidents being lifestyle related But most common cause of accidents is sleep deprivation and sleep is probably the most common lifestyle intervention that we work with in clients mm-hmm Wow sleep is the most common. Oh, yeah change interesting that people are just not sleeping eight hours a night. I Don't think any I mean It's like a 2% of the population actually get the full compliment of sleep at a night. God There's no other way to do it The interesting thing is the sleep genes are some of the oldest genes in all of life Yeah, we share sleep genes with insects. Yeah, I mean that's how prolific the sleep genes are and we haven't selected out short sleep You know, even things short sleep would be a survival benefit You know the caveman that she sleeps less time is less vulnerable to predation or anything like that So those that slept less would probably be selected out to be the ones that passed on the genes Didn't happen Maybe even if you stayed in the safe cave and you slept longer that you would have less time out in the Environment therefore, that's a possibility to But you would think that you know there would be a benefit to sleeping less. That's what most people perceive but from a Development and ancestral genetic standpoint. We don't see that so there's must be something really important about getting that sleep totally Interesting that that's like one of the first Variables that used to be tweaked for for people now. So now what does it look like to? You know, you're traveling your all these physicians were really interested in getting on board it And you have a lot of people that are not just physicians like you were listing all the other people that are They go through your program. So So what what happens when they sign up for the program? What did they learn and what did they go and teach then other people? So we do a hundred hours of online training training genetics and epigenetics So the epigenetics are broken into the modules of the different lifestyle components We teach them how to alter gene expressions through lifestyle components We teach them what certain lifestyle components can do to change gene expressions like lack of sleep and things like that So it's about a hundred hours of online training. We have a pretty active Private Facebook group where we all interact. It's pretty cool because you have people from every specialty I mean traditional Chinese medicine and Allopathic doctors having discussions about a particular case that they're working on or a client that they have and Everybody's contributing equally Judgment-free zone. I mean it's amazing the tribe that's been created with that group Yeah, I want to be in that Facebook group to learn from everyone in there I'm going to have a request to join that group is there a You know it would like walk us through Someone that becomes a one that takes on up here on Processes, so I go through a hundred hours of training. I learn about Genetics and epigenetics. I learn about them in all of the different variations of the lifestyles Changes and variables they were talking about and then then I go and I apply what I learned to as a life coach Physician to our populations of people that they were right because we we see that as the next Kind of the next need you know everybody talks about this physician shortage. We don't have a Healthcare crisis with a lifestyle crisis. We need lifestyle coaches. We don't need more physicians. Okay We need people that can spend that time. I mean when I work with a client I'm on a video call for 30 to 40 minutes once a month Every month for 12 months. I'm interacting with them as part of our Interaction, so they're getting six hours a year a year minimum of FaceTime with me Yeah, and we work with every aspect of their health. So every call I'm talking about What's working with this? What's not working with this? What's the next step? What does your biometric device tell me about your sleep? You know when your doctor's creeping on your sleep You're a little bit like oh, okay, maybe I need to get those eight hours And and we treat teach the coaches the same thing so the coaches can work with it and and we're not talking about a Financial model that's out of range for everybody because we have a wide girth of coaches That all have trained under the same platform. They may not have the same credentials but they're also not going to charge the same fees for this and This can be a model that a physician group can adopt and actually utilize in that regard But with this we teach them to bio individualize the approach says nothing cookie cutter about what we do Everything is about how is this person a unique individual? We look at their genetics We have our own genetic tests that we do similar to the 23 and me, but it's a very private and You own your own data. We don't share. We don't sell nothing like that We have genetic reports that we work with we train the coaches and the clinicians on how to interpret those reports So you actually have somebody that can interpret your genetics for you and then with those genetics They can be very individualized and biospecific about you know This is a nutritional pattern that has the highest probability of working well for you This is an exercise pattern based on your goals that will most likely get you there But it's not a matter of absolutes We're not going to say oh, this is the perfect diet. It doesn't exist We look at it and we say okay Is this diet conducive to your genetics is it conducive towards your goals and is it conducive towards? What your desires are as far as food and if that works then we try it and we set metrics up So if we can measure it we can manage it Everything we do we measure like when a client comes in and they say oh I'm on these 20 supplements I'm like okay. I need to know why you're taking each one and what you're doing to measure the whether it's working or not Yeah, and I can tell you if they can't answer both of those they get marked off the list We take them off. Okay until the end when I say okay here are the supplements. I would recommend This is why we're gonna take them and this is what we're gonna measure to see if they work. Yeah yeah man these These practices I'm happy that you've put them into Into a Curriculum for for people to be able to access and apply to their lives just because it's ridiculous if we're if we're not If we don't know the why of why of why we're doing things and we're not measuring Just and like you said we need more lifestyle coaches not physicians right people that can help us Understand how we can tweak things in our environment that will help us live healthier More emotionally well-being So Okay, so how many total people have went through up here on now, you know as far as coaches as code. Yeah, coach Completed the training we've had about 60 60 yeah, we've got another hundred in the training right now nice and it takes them how long to a hundred hours is it varies They get full access to the course when they register, but Some of them will burn through it in three to four months and some of them will take over a year here Okay, and then And then what so what does it what so how big is the team then your team our team? We have about 16 people in the corporate level 16 people okay, and then the cost of the course is It's around three thousand dollars three thousand dollars. Okay And has it been spreading mostly like word of mouth related it has I speak quite a bit A lot of people will hear me when I when I give talks We also travel around and do two-day live seminars to give people a kind of a taste sweet of that Oh, that's cool. We're one was the last one. So we were in Austin in September December we're in Sarasota Then we are touring Australia well Zealand so March is Australian New Zealand and then I think we're coming back to Chicago before June two-day workshops and at these workshops. They're learning What you're teaching we teach them basic genetics and epigenetics because it's something that a lot of the healthcare practitioners are They kind of dabble in but they're not really sure of the science of you know epigenetics epigenetics is one of these things that You know Bruce Lipton was great. He brought it to the forefront But I think he took it a little bit too far into the you know the pseudoscience world trying to explain things with it and A lot of people have adopted it in pseudoscience to explain the unexplainable which you know Epigenetics has true science behind it. I mean there's over 10,000 peer-reviewed journal articles published a year There's over 200 clinical trials actively going And believe it or not it's physicians that are the most skeptical About epigenetics and yet we had tons of literature on it. Yeah I think once we get to a point where we understand Epigenetics really well. I think we can manifest our destinies better. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know people will say you know Oh, I've got the these genes in my family like so what? Hmm, you know the genes are nothing more than the code of propensity Their lifestyle is your destiny. That's what you have control over and You know even people with like the ApoE for Alzheimer's risk gene You know you can based on your lifestyle. You can have 30 times standard risk But you can also do lifestyle practices, which we've shown in research That's been able to bring that risk almost down to average. Yeah, even with a high risk for developing it Yeah, so we know these lifestyle factors have huge impacts on gene expression. Yeah, I Was born with this gene. So what? Yeah, so what you can we can make change we make change with the way that we behave in our environments Wow Now is there something now do you foresee a future where more people are Aware of the epigenetic science and that can like manifest their destiny through behavior changes and do they themselves? Take like a smaller version of your course to make those changes or do they always work with like someone that has taken your full course Or how would how do you see that playing out? Well that that kind of brings up something we have transitions of Health progression So we have the unbalanced state, which is what the Hippocratic Medicine did not recognize disease as a entity. They said system was either in homeostasis or it was unbalanced It's out of homeostasis Most people were out of homeostasis. So the first step is to get them into homeostasis Once we're there, then coach physician whoever can take them and say, okay, what are your goals? Okay, these this is how we can leverage lifestyle components to Change gene expressions to optimize Your functioning as a human being We see another phase of this though and this is the enhanced human phase and I mean even even Stephen Hawking's and his final book said Gene editing is coming and we are gonna see the enhanced human beings and you either accept it or you become a slave to those and You know, that's something that a lot of people are uncomfortable with but for me to think that Homo sapien is the end point of evolution is a bit naive totally and we are the first species To ever take the reins of evolution into our own hands And we should get good at it and practice it. Yeah, and have stewardship for earth You know, it amazes me that You know, they did a study asking people if they were okay with gene editing and it was like, okay We're okay. If a child is going to be born with a Life-threatening disease or a birth defect or something like that. We're okay with gene editing But we're not okay with gene editing to make people smarter stronger faster But that's so yeah, but that's what we do every day as we try and make ourselves smarter and stronger. We do and and You know, I say What is one thing that can potentially have such a profound impact on? society Smart people. Yes, you know, we become more intelligent. We become more empathetic empathetic. We become more compassionate we are able to Create solutions to a lot of the problems that we've created already. So what is wrong with creating a smarter human being? Mm-hmm. I wonder if it's still I'm curious if it's gonna end up being something that you know If if I can access appear on in a smaller dose To be to have a like of that small dose of here's a behavior change I can do that can immediately start affecting positively without having to learn Everything to and not everything but a lot and then well and see this comes down to the complex nature of the human being Every piece of the environment interacts. It's just like, you know height height from a genetic standpoint We used to think that there we could identify a gene for height then we said, okay Well, it's polygenic. It means there's 10 20 genes that are involved in determining height Then they found out that yeah the key 20 genes account for about 1% of height differences the new model is That the entire genome Contributes to every trait that we have and this is the same with lifestyle Everything within lifestyle contributes to outcome. So when we work with somebody somebody may come in they say well, you know I have diabetes and this that and the other thing and I'm like, I don't care. Here's all we're gonna do We're gonna work on your sleep. We're gonna work on your stress We're gonna work on your nutrition. We're gonna work on your supplementation. We're gonna work on your hormones We're gonna work on your movement and exercise and we're gonna work on mitigating your environment Yeah, we work on all seven categories Simultaneously, it's not a matter of focusing on one. That's old medicine model. Yeah, so, you know people will say well fix my sleep Well, are you eating right? How's your stress? You know, what's your relationship like? Yeah, you know, we have to hit all these things because The answers aren't in these Individual pieces like people looking for that limitless pill Doesn't exist and it's not going to exist You've got to do other things Simultaneously in order for that to occur. Yeah, I like how you're making that really clear You got to have a solid understanding of those seven major categories of wellness, right and pursue a conscientious Pursuit with yourself an honest goal setting and achievement with yourself in those in those fields Is there something else that we should mention Dan about appear on or about What you're building that we miss that you think is really important. We are building an AI platform now this is going to be a whole different approach based on on our model, but The AI platform is going to incorporate everybody's genetic data their lab work their supplements their medications their their lifestyle and The really nice thing about is we're going to incorporate our coaches to help make sure that this is maintained Yeah, and We're going to incorporate biometric monitoring devices, but we're also going to have subjective confirmation on These devices on this platform and I know there's a lot of people out there developing platforms, but We have we're leveraging our distribution network with the coaches To help make this work, you know A lot of these companies are trying to get all these people in and they they're great for about a month And then people drop off they quit doing it With the accountability of the coaches We think we can develop a platform that will get real actionable data and we will start seeing interaction So you have this this gene you took this supplement. This is the common outcome Yes, we're seeing in this group of people. Yes, and it's all going to be Kind of crowdsourced so everybody Is going to voluntarily be on this platform that wants to be So you choose to share your data on this platform in Exchange for getting the benefits of being in that group We're not going to share the data. We're not going to sell the data. It's the same with our genetic testing We don't do any of that and finding the patterns. I love that I'm really happy that you brought that up because when you find the patterns It makes it so you don't have to do the trial and errors again and again. Yeah, you get it and There's there's going to be a lot of variables to crunch Oh, yeah, I mean it's going to take a quantum computer at some point to Take crunch and it's because the human system is unpredictable It is a highly variable system and you hit the nail on the head there I mean that's the problem with the current system as it's based on that assumption of an algorithm works and yeah That would assume that we were computers and robots. Yeah, and like you said, it's a specific You know, maybe a specific supplement for specific ailment for physical gene to change You know a specific exercise routine for specific, you know demographic people or that have a certain ailment, you know, there's it's just Yeah, this is it's very tough to figure it out but once we get the the Kind of this fundamental layer of principles and research that at least we can build on top We need to build At least that layer and keep building the layers on top and if we new advancements come then we can go back to be dynamic Yes, yes, I mean research alone is broken right now because it's based on a non uniform population, but it makes the assumption that the population is uniform Yeah, and that's where it's not working. This is where it has to come down to this dynamic This has been super interesting, Dan. I'm really happy that you're building this into our world and this is I I personally I need to learn more about epigenetics I need to learn more about how we behave in our in our environments in these seven Categories that you listen and really dive deep into until I always I always say like when I ask you questions I'm like look in the mirror and ask yourself these questions, too And so, you know, how am I? You know the quantified self-moving will help us a lot if we actually take that onto ourselves and be like You know, I can't lie because my my dad is clear clear that I wasn't sleeping or exercising my heart It's been the same all day, you know, or yeah Awesome, so that was a lot of fun. Thank you for teaching us. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show Thanks for having me. That was a lot of fun and everyone Go check out the link in the bio to appear on please go check them out also Check out transformative technology conference link in the bio as well in their Academy Also, go and leave us some comments We'd love to hear from you about what you know about epigenetics about what you know about changing your behaviors in your environments And how that affects you we'd love to you know, like we said start the conversation and keep up Building onto that foundation of knowledge that we're pursuing Also go and build the future go manifest your dreams into the world. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We appreciate it And we'll see you soon Nice. Thank you so much. That was fun. I'm glad you had a good time. Yeah