 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Amir Approve. Today's special guest is Scott, who's a founder of Depression to Expression and has been speaking openly about his experience with clinical depression and anxiety disorder since 2013. Now you guys are quite familiar for the most part with my journey within depression. I've been on and off some form of depression my whole life from childhood even currently. And so I discovered Scott through, I don't know, YouTube recommendation engine. Oh, good, it worked. It works. You finally worked. Yeah, that's right. And I went through his videos and I'm like, fuck, I gotta have him on the show. And here we are, man. So welcome, Scott. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. Yeah, likewise. And I kind of want to dive into it and talk about your journey and your experience of like, what got you into this world of helping people with depression, anxiety, kind of shedding a spotlight on this? Right, right. Well, I think the first thing is, you know, most mental health advocates, whatever you want to call us, we're in a weird group, but we're gonna talk about that later about what I don't like about advocacy. But most people in the mental health field have either experienced some type of mental illness or they know someone. A lot of it's lived experience and then people want to add meaning to their suffering. So they're like, okay, I'm gonna now help people so they don't have to experience what I did. That was kind of my philosophy. So I throw it a bit of high school, just severe anxiety that I was feeling. That was the first time I like ever really felt that. I remember going to the doctors. I'm like, there's something wrong. Like they're my stomach and my bowel movements aren't like going too well. And he's like, oh, is everything good at school? Like, all your teachers. And I'm like, why is he asking me this stuff? I'm like, yeah, everything's fine. Everything's fine. So then he gave me like an antacid and it wasn't solved. Like that was really it. I knew what the doctor was getting at, but I had no idea what was going on. So we thought it was strictly a physical problem, which obviously it manifests physically as I was going to the doctor for a physical problem. My digestion, my overall well-being and physical health. But anxiety kept going and then through university, anxiety just led to depression. I got in an accident and fractured my tibia and tore my MCL. So I wasn't being able to be physical. And then with a new course load and school and moving away from home, everything just seemed to pile on mentally. And I had no cognitive ability, no tools. This was all new as far as experiences, new environments. And I literally didn't know how to handle it. Like no idea. So it was just like a crash. And I get how people may feel like that's such a first world kind of issue. Like, oh, you went to a university and you're getting this awesome education and then this happened. It's like, well, I didn't choose for that to happen. It just did. And I started to deal with it the best I could, which is figure out what's going on in my life, figure out how to change my environment, figure out how to think differently, go to therapy, try a different diet. I've gone through the list, man, of medical literature, what works, what doesn't work. And I've been a human guinea pig for a long time, just trying different things to figure this whole depression thing out and learn more and really learn uncomfortable truths about mental health and mental illness. A lot of it flipped my story upside down the more I read, but I think figuring out the truth of why this stuff happens is the gateway to learning and to healing. So it's been a journey and I don't think it's ever gonna stop. I love continuing to learn, hear people's perspectives, their stories, meet people like you and me. So it's all good right now. It's all good. I've definitely healed since then and I was diagnosed in 2008. So it's been a long time and I haven't had a real depressive episode in a very long time. And I'm gonna talk, I'd love to talk to you about what I've been doing recently that's really helped my mental health in general. Yeah, you mentioned two things over here. You mentioned things that kind of flipped your view on everything. Yeah. What was that? Like what was your kind of catalyst or let's say when you had the aha moment where like, yo, this is all fucked up? I think the big one was actually watching a TED talk and then reading Yohan Hari's book called Lost Connections. He talks about depression. Oh, that's a good one. It's a great one. That really just got me thinking a lot about mental health care. And then I just thought about, you know, I started YouTube in 2013 just on and off having some fun. But like every email I received and people just going from one medication to the next to the next and they do that for years and they just don't see improvement. And I kept seeing this over and over and over again. And I know that's an antidote example, but it just seemed like we were missing some massive piece, some environmental piece, some societal piece that treating the brain as an island just wasn't working. People just attacking their mind as, yes, it's an organ, but just thinking that pills alone can heal depression. And I think we're just misguiding people in that sense. And I don't wanna speak out of ignorance here. We can talk about this openly since both of us have dealt with this, right? But I think it's so backwards the way we're treating these things. Well, I think one of the biggest misconceptions within, let's say, mental health, which is tied to physical, it's all connected. It's like you said, it's not an island, right? Yeah. The problem is like, you'll have people that go to their GP and the GP and in all fairness, it's like we have a system specifically here in Canada, we have a socialist healthcare system. So there's pros and cons, pros is if I break my arm or if something's wrong with my heart or if I hit my head, the ER is great. We have great ER. So I give them credit for that, like emergency, like shit needs to be fixed today, fantastic, I need a vaccine or antibiotics, like emergency care. Preventative care or healing care is horrendous. Like we're ranked bad, like extremely bad on the global rankings. And it comes down to like the average Canadian family pays roughly something like $67,000 a year in household income taxes when it comes to our healthcare system. So you go to the GP, GP has to function as a revolving door because it get paid by the government, right? So they have a limited window and people don't get it. Like unless they hit their quota of certain patients per day, they don't make that much money. So for them, it's like, I can't spend an hour with you, I can't dive in. So Scott comes in and was like, okay, I'm looking at the other electronic medical form. So you've been here, you've been here, oh shit, you have this, okay, 90% of the time they triage you. So they just refer you to somebody else, right? To like a psychologist or whatever. Or like, well, Scott, you know, based on this, here is Adrol or here is lithium or here is whatever, right? So no fairness, I understand that. But then on the flip side is you have people like my wife's a naturopath, right? And so people consider that alternative health where then you have people on the opposite side where like, well, fuck modern day medicine all in total. And I'm always telling people, I'm like, everything works together. There's a time and place where we can utilize modern medicine. Like there are situations where medicine makes sense, but in conjunction to everything else. Like you mentioned, I think we're gonna dive into this where it's like, it's not simply an island. It's not like I'm gonna take a lithium or some form of medication and magically things are gonna get better. It's like, you gotta work on everything. You gotta work on your diet, you work on exercise, work on self love, work on how you view yourself to the world. So I'm kind of curious, when you had this moment, when you were like, well, things just don't make sense anymore for me as traditionally speaking. What did you do, or let's put this two ways. What did you do and what are you doing today that kind of had the most impact on your journey? Right, I think it's interesting that's awesome that your wife's a naturopathic doctor or naturopath. People have like, it's so much black and white thinking with treatment. It's like, okay, you're either for natural and you're doing this and you're like screw the pharmaceutical industry. There can be a beautiful mix between them both. Then the deal is, it's like with depression. We know that taking medication isn't enough, but taking medication alongside therapy and talking things out. So you're level headed, you can finally tread water, you can breathe a bit. And now is the time to work on coping skills and do CBT and all this stuff. So there has to be a combination, but with me, obviously medication isn't enough and it wasn't enough. So the big thing I've been doing the last four months is intermittent fasting. I had no idea this was a thing, no idea. And it's just, so I don't eat until about two o'clock. I haven't eaten yet today. And the, well, first of all, there's a few things. Okay, so there's when I eat, which is two about to 10 o'clock because I go to bed pretty late, but then there's also what I eat. And to get rid of dairy was a massive, massive thing for me. Every time you go to the naturopath and with any problem, a lot of the time your wife can probably attest or like try getting rid of gluten and dairy and see how you feel. It's like these anti-inflammatory foods you want to increase and these inflammatory foods you want to decrease. So there's a lot of clinical evidence when it comes to, for example, got issues of people that have issues, extreme issues with gluten sensitivity or dairy sensitivity or nightshades. So like tomatoes and, you know, yeah, tomatoes, potatoes. That is a secondary cause. So meaning you have something in your body. There's some type of inflammatory response to these foods. It's not the foods that are causing it. Foods are just aggravating it. And so there's an underlying function what's going on. You know, we can call it a cytokine storm. So an inflammatory storm and there's really solid clinical evidence when it comes to gut issues, whether it's like SIBO or some form of gut permeability that's directly correlated to depression. Because a lot of people forget, I don't know exact stats, but I know it's above 60%. Above 60% of all your neurotransmitters and neurohormones are produced within the gut. Yeah, and that was a huge thing for me too, which it's not taught in, the GP wouldn't have told me that. Well, they have four hours in nutrition education. There you go, yeah. So maybe A, they didn't know or B, even if they did know we're at a real quick time constraint, like you said, I was in there for 10 minutes for a mental problem. And in Ontario, where we're from, where we're from, about I think 60% of all antidepressants are prescribed by your GP. Yeah, by a psychiatrist. So it's like, you're not even getting the best help in Canada when you're dealing with some kind of mood disorder. It's such a shame, but you're right with the gut. So another thing that can really aggravate nutrient absorption is if you're stressed too. Your cortisol is up, you're not digesting properly. One of the things we need to do is de-stress, which is why exercise is so huge for people dealing with depression too. Not just the endorphin story, but to actually relax the body and aid digestion. So you're actually getting this nutrient absorption. So the more I learned about this is, okay, I cut sugar, refined sugar. I rarely have bread and cut dairy. And just one of the things I notice is every single, you know, throughout my whole life, I'd always have like puffy eyes. And maybe they look puffy a little from the lighting, but it's decreased drastically. Same with my breathing. I'd have like a plugged up nose all the time. And I'm just like, ah, it's just the way it is. But the more I decrease dairy and if I don't have grains and gluten, I can breathe so much easier. It's just like these physical manifestations. I had no idea that we're connected to what I'm eating and then just making me feel a heck of a lot better. It's incredible. I think people also forget, you know, we have more connection to the fungi kingdom than any other kingdom. Like we're fungus. That's right. We're an allegamation of fungi, bacteria, human DNA. And it's a mind fuck too, when I bring this up to people, we have mitochondrial DNA, which is circular DNA within our cells. That's a whole different set of DNA. This is how we're able to trace human lineage on the mother side. We track the lineage of the mitochondrial DNA, right? So this is how we can track, you know, let's say the evolutionary theory of like, where do we come from? Where do our ancestors come from? And there's now new hypothesis that we can track it from the male side as well, as opposed to just the mother side, like mother Eve. That's I think the oldest fossils of Africa we call her Eve. Like we can trace our lineage to that mitochondria. And so when you explain this to people like, we're fungi, we're parasites, we're bacteria, we have mitochondria, we're this allegamation of all organisms working together within the body. Nothing's an island. Like everything has to be treated that's interconnected. Well, isn't it the mushrooms, they actually take in oxygen and put out CO2? Unlike trees, like that's what- Yeah, so the mushroom, the relationship with, you're talking about my core xi. So that's interesting. So the relationship they have is you have the fungi in the ground. The fungi breaks the rocks, the minerals. It feeds the minerals to the tree. In return, the tree gives it glucose. It's a symbiotic relationship. It's incredible. But again, we're treating human beings by separate organs and not looking holistically. And when it comes to how you feel, it has to do with your environment. I can't blame people for not, for maybe feeling a bit depressed in Canada, where if you look out your window too, we're in the same city right now, it's completely cloudy. Hadn't had sun in a while. We're surrounded by concrete. I look outside, when I do see a tree, it's planted on King Street in like a little hole and it's all dead. There's studies too, and I always tell these people, cities will make you depressed. Oh, 100%. Living in a shoebox, especially in Northern climate, as you mentioned, on a side note, Canada has the highest rates of MS in the world. Not a surprise, because the number one thing connected to MS is lack of vitamin D, which, you know. Everyone is deficient in vitamin D. I asked, that's one thing my GP said. I'm like, can I get tested for vitamin D deficiency? Because I know it's a thing with depression. He's like, you're deficient. It's a waste of a test. We know you're deficient, just take it, right? Yeah, that's definitely the problem with living in parts of Canada and the world. But you just think of it with common sense. I don't necessarily need studies to tell me how I feel in the city versus when I go out in nature and have a walk or go to a cottage or you go in a forest, right? There's a whole movement of forest bathing. A lot of psychologists take their clients out. While they're talking through, they'll walk through a forest instead of the classic couch scenario you see in the movies with the long leather chair. So it has to be a holistic approach. Change your environment. Just doing that can change the way you think and how you feel, right? It's all connected. But what we're doing now to diagnose people and to normalize mental illness, I don't know if it's something to be normalized. We can accept it the way it is, but when you just accept something the way it is, it's more difficult to change this and really look into it, which is what happened to me. I'm like, okay, I'll accept depression as an illness for what I've been given this chemical imbalance story, but then I got lazy about it. I'm like, it's an illness. I can't control it. There's nothing I could do. And that's what's going on in the media and on social media. It's, you see people saying mental illness isn't your fault, which it's not. But there are things you can do and parts of it you can control to get yourself out of it. And that's the empowerment piece that I like sharing. It's not how you define yourself. You aren't depression. You aren't anxiety. These are emotions, but it's not an illness you have to deal with for the rest of your life in some cases, right? Well, the problem with definition or labeling is then you have, it's pat, well, there's one, there's a nefarious point of view for that. Once they can label something, they can package it and they can make medication for it. Now I'm not against medication, but I understand the financial elements behind it. Number two is like, then you pass the puck. So a lot of people, we talked about this before the show, they get into the victimhood mentality, or it's not my fault. Now I agree people are predisposed to certain things. So people are predisposed to depression or predisposed to cancer. Yes, right? However, to say it's not in my power to change anything, that's when it gets really messed up. Yeah, you know exactly, that's what happens. I'm still saying this out of empathy. You have to be able to again tread water and be in the right mental state to then make change. So the worst thing someone can do for themselves while depressed is saying it's all my fault. I'm worthless, there's nothing I can do about it. Of course you wanna practice some self-love and compassion. Don't beat yourself up and try to motivate yourself out of it in that state. But once you can breathe a bit, once maybe you've tried medication and now you can think clearly, then is the time to take action, right? So we're not saying that a person who's dealing with depression at this very moment, it's all your fault and you should be able to get out of it. No, but just wait a while till you're steady and then really think about it, do your research, figure out different cognitive skills, try different diets, like look at more naturopathic approaches. There's so much out there and Google has led us. You wanna name like the top four or five things you mentioned, you change your diet to let's say like removing grains and gluten and dairy, kind of like a Paleolithic diet. Yeah, yeah, pretty much still eating its meat and veg. That's the biggest thing, not having breakfast. So intermittent fasting is huge just for energy throughout the day. If the energy I have working out or going for runs when I haven't eaten before is unbelievable. It's the coolest thing I've discovered the last year. It is so interesting what it's doing. You ever track your ketones, you have a ketone meter? I'm interested in that. Have you tried intermittent fasting or anything like that? I've been fasting, I've been in this health space for like forever. Okay, so intermittent fasting, there is some, there's justification for that for health benefits and no overall energy. Yeah, it all depends, there's different ways of doing it. There's a couple of benefits for it. So if people are looking for immune boosts based on data and obviously this data is rat data, it's not human data, right? There are some human data stuff, but though primarily one is 72 hour fasted window is shown for proper autophagy. So cellular suicide, meaning cells that are sick and how we get sick as human beings is quite simple. Every time our DNA replicates, think of a photocopier. You have the original copy, then the secondary copy gets a copy of the secondary and the third copy gets, and each copy is worse and worse because you're copying off the newest copy, you're not copying off the original copy. This is how cancer is formed. This is how disease is formed. And so they've shown in rat studies where a 72 hour fasted window, water consumed, 72 hour fasted window is the minimum time allowed for autophagy. Now what's popular today is intermittent fasting. So minimum window of 16 hours. That hasn't been shown primarily to stimulate autophagy as the study shown. However, it gives you enough, well there's a couple of benefits for it. Benefits of not stimulating your pancreas all the time. So there's been interesting studies in the last like 60 years through autopsies where our pancreas has been growing because of too much food consumption. We've been, let's say marketed to that we constantly have to be eating every three to four hours, especially if you're working out. And specifically we're eating way too much sugar and not even cane sugar. We're eating high fructose corn syrup, which is much worse. And so at least what intermittent fasting does it gives your pancreas a break. And if you are training in the morning, which I recommend light training, like the data is pretty simple. Like you can't train hard in a fasted state. Like you don't have the power, you don't have the glycogen, the glucose, but it is really good for fat oxidization. Meaning if you are training light training, like I do intermittent fasting training in the morning, I usually have my meals around 11. But my training in the morning is not like, oh I'm gonna fucking do Olympic lifting or power lifting or some shit like that. For the most part, it's like shadow boxing, hitting the bag a little bit, some skipping rope stuff, you know what I mean? It's more cardiovascular, but it's been shown to help with fat oxidization. So helping you get leaner. And it's really good because that training in the morning also stimulates autophagy. So, and it's been like, if you look at history of humans, like even religion, like if you look at any religion, like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, there's forms of fasting, right? It's a stoic practice. So it's not even a practice. There's medical benefits, yeah. But there's also mental and spiritual benefits. So depending, like you mentioned, oh it's almost like you are low carb on the keto-ish type of- I'd say so. Like I've tried, I've experimented with keto last year. I just did it for 30 days. Really interesting. And that was a really hardcore keto, like no spices even. I just wanted to see, if I'm allergic to anything and did it that way, right? So there's some fascinating studies on people with depression. Like I've had gut permeability my whole life. Like I was born to Syrian section. I've obviously had vaccine, was younger. I had a lot of PTSD. Like my family comes from a war-torn country. Like there's a lot of like downward pressure that I went through as a child. Like I had overdoses in my life, drug abuse, blah, blah, blah, you name it. Okay, there's fascinating studies when it comes to gut permeability and depression. As I mentioned earlier, neuro-transmitters and neuro-hormones are produced within the gut. And specifically for people, depending on your genetics as well, like what's interesting with ketones, A, they provide more energy than glucose. Like the ATPs, there's more ATP in one molecule of fat than there's one molecule of glucose. But it's the delivery mechanism. Cause a lot of people forget for your cells to properly efficiently utilize glucose. There's receptors that must grab glucose into the cell. Glucose itself as a molecule cannot enter a cell. It needs glute receptors, right? This is why exercise is good. It stimulates those receptors for your muscle tissues to eat the sugar, which is good. Ketones don't need a taxi driver, as I call it. Ketones can enter your cell. They can pass a blood brain barrier as well. This is why we've seen clinical studies. Ketones is really good for Alzheimer's, good for Parkinson's disease, good for depression, like extremely good for depression. And so I'm not surprised that you mentioned intermittent fasting in the morning has been, like you feel like really good. Like you mentioned, and you said something interesting, like the energy that you get. And this is why I asked you the question, like, are you experimenting with the keto meter? Cause I would interested to see the level of ketosis that you're in. Yeah, me too, actually. Yeah, you mentioned that one. You can get the glucose keto one. They have a dual one. I think it's the company's precision. Yeah, the company's precision. Wait, just break your finger or something like that? Same thing as the diabetes thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You break your finger, go on it, and you can see blood ketone levels, yeah. I love that. Well, I don't know, it's, I love how you said the overeating culture. Yeah. I don't know, but I don't know where this whole three meals a day thing came from, and like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacking, and you need to eat every few hours in order to, it's like, people have given these stupid metaphors of your body being like a fire, and you need to keep feeding the fire, or else when it goes out, you have to rebuild the whole thing, and you have to have a bigger meal. It's so wasteful and so not true. I don't know, you know, I can't source studies, but for me, I don't know if I'm eating less, I'm not counting my calories right now. All I know is that my body is functioning way better doing intermittent fasting, and eating a little bit. Technically, you are eating less, and there's two reasons why. Number one, you're not eating one meal. So there you go. Number two, if you are paleolithic low carb, depending on your source of meat, you're eliminating a whole food group, which is carbohydrates. So automatically, you're eliminating those calories. Right. And so there's two for one, right? So you're missing a whole meal, maybe that meal's a hundred, maybe a hundred calorie meal that you're not eating in the morning, and now you are eliminating a whole food group. Right. And so, and you're also, well, a lot of people don't understand too, is our hormones and how we get satiated is also dependent on a circadian rhythm, right? So you have, and I'm gonna simplify this as much as possible, you have two primary hormones, the single your body that you are hungry, not hungry. One's called leptin, one's called ghrelin. They work opposite, right? One tells you that you're hungry, one tells, ghrelin tells you that you're hungry, leptin tells you you're full. I might be confused. That's all right, that's all right, okay. By the way, guys, I am not a doctor or a medically trained person. I ran in person, that's curious. That's fine, that's good. And so the problem is people eat constantly and you're sending the bad wrong signals to the body. Because you train the body, the body's no different than you're training a muscle, like if you're in the gym training the biceps, or you're training your back, right? These are negative feedback systems that you're doing. So if you're constantly eating every three, four hours, you're training your body for that insulin spike. You're training ghrelin and leptin that you need food every three to four hours. And in reality, you don't. Right, and it's the same with, while your insulin is spiking all the time in your blood sugar levels, and with someone dealing with anxiety and having these spikes of energy and too much, you kind of want that constant energy feel. And if you're already predisposed, if you're dealing with an anxiety disorder, even just the frequency of meals and what you're eating, it's huge to have kind of a balance and level head. And again, it's something we don't talk about. So I had to unfollow, I like to be in the mental health arena with see what people are doing. And I had to unfollow so many people, even one yesterday who was defending that, I have to have McDonald's and all you people who are judging me, I just needed like this meal, but they complain all the time about how they're depressed and they're taking McDonald's is kind of like fat activists, how they're, the pendulum is just really far this way to say, hey, like, this is the diet culture here. Well, I'm going to complete opposite because I love myself and my body. And some of it might be for attention, some of it might be for taking a stand against something different or with something different, but- Majority of the time, it's aiming for attention. I always say, who hurt you? Things, well, exactly, that's a really good example. They're not, they're hurting, maybe looking for validation, maybe again, trying to start something new and have a following, but it's really sad to see that and people getting defensive when they post these things. And I'm just like, if you really want to help yourself, like people are, the comments for this specific McDonald's post was like, people were legitimately trying to help. Like, hey, like maybe, you know, let's think about your diet next time, maybe McDonald's once a week, it's probably not helping how you're depressed all the time. But again, we go back to that mantra that people are saying that it's an illness and it's a chemical imbalance and there's nothing I can do about it. If there's nothing I can do about it, then anything I do won't make it worse and anything I do won't make it better. I think we need to get out of that way of thinking and just support each other and have a more open mind to different treatments. Yeah, so let's continue on this train of thought. You changed your diet, you started intermittent fasting. Besides that, did you get into any supplements? Like I first want to focus on the diet and stuff that we can get into like stuff you mentioned like CBT and other like, let's call them modalities. Cognitive, yeah, yeah, yeah. So as far as supplements, I'll take Omega-3's high EPA formula. I kind of go with very studied out there and as far as that, as far as anti-inflammatory properties and Omega-3's, that's huge and also just eating more fish and shrimp and oysters. Oysters are the best, man. They are the best. That's a recent discovery for me too. Oysters and anchovies when it comes to pound for pound and Omega-3. Yeah, I know if you don't like taste, man, but they're cheap and fucking nutritious. Well, that's the thing, right? And there's something really cool called the antidepressant food scale, which oysters is at the top, same as anchovies and fish are all there. And as you get lower, it gets to like, geez, what would like maybe pork on the meat side and poultry, but things that come from the ocean, it's amazing for the brain. So that's one thing, Omega-3's also take B vitamins as well, just based on the evidence that's out there, B12, and magnesium sometimes, if I'm having trouble sleeping, but that's nothing huge. I haven't experimented with probiotics. I'm not sure about that yet, but it's something that I'm open to trying. But as of the last few months, like this supplement routine that I have, Omega-3's, B vitamins, intermittent fasting, mixed with low carb, no dairy, low sugar, has been amazing. It's really been amazing. Do you fuck around with like fermented foods like kraut or kimchi or any of that stuff? I have tried, well, even the, wow, it's, what's the kombucha? Kombucha. It's delicious, but something about the fermented, maybe I'm trying a different one, but it doesn't work with my stomach that well. But I know fermented foods are supposed to be great. Well, the kombucha is interesting, guys. I think it was, there's one of the strains that is lactobacillus in kombucha. And so it causes some people have got issues histamine. Like it's been recorded. It's not the best for people. Like I don't do quite well with kombucha either. I actually make my own homemade kombucha from scratch. Easiest fuck, like, it's the easiest. I need the starter. Bro, I ordered on Amazon, I can't get my house. You can get that on Amazon? Yeah, they come in like what, a dried vacuum sealed package, I guess. Well, not dry, it's wet, but yeah, it's vacuum sealed. Cool. Yeah, it's so easy, man, beyond easy to make. Like anyone can make it, a six-year-old can make it. It's great. Okay, I'm gonna try it. It takes about three weeks, but it's worth it. But yeah, for me, like I eat a, like what I added lately in my regimen, like a lot of it is kimchi, like raw made like kimchi, like spicy Korean kimchi. Really? Okay. And so in regards to how you're feeling, you know, we can kind of go back and forth as I'm interested with you too, because you've dealt with depression. I'm talking a bit about diet. As far as your diet, what have you kind of changed not recently, but what's your daily lifestyle like as far as diet? My diet's more timing diet, so it's still more on the, I wanna say it's lower carb than regular people, but I still have carbs. And the primary carb source I would have is tubers or white rice. And the only time I do eat carb is after workout. I never have carbs before a workout. Okay. And so how my regimen is, how I designed my lifestyle, it changes, like every quarter have different, I like to experiment, I like to fuck around. At least for this quarter, I'm doing IF and very light workouts in the morning. Like I mentioned, kind of like boxing, shadow boxing, skipping rope, all that stuff. And I just had my first meal. So my first meal is around 11 o'clock and it's usually a nice protein. I try to get organ meats as much as I can. So I have organ meats, I'm big on mushrooms. I'm a mushroom freak. Like I try to mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms. And so organ meats and mushrooms, a little of the garlic on there and then I would have maybe some tubers. So for me, it's more timing of the food because I also don't eat three hours prior to bedtime. So my window of eating is I usually have one gigantic meal, which is my after workout meal. Like I probably had 70% of my calories right now. Like I eat a lot after my workout. Cause that's when you're the most insulin sensitive, where meaning I can grab the insulin or my cells can take up the glucose. I can utilize all the calories that came in for my workout. And then I eat less and less throughout the day. And so my next meal right now is like 130, it would be probably around six and it'll be no carbs. Okay, interesting. Yeah. And then as far as supplements, do you take anything? I'm on a lot right now. Oh yeah? Okay, what are you taking? High high dose EPA omega threes in conjunction with a lot of fish. I eat a shit ton of sardines, just easy and quick for me, open up the can and ready to go. So high EPA to DHA ratio of omega threes, I take high dose magnesium about 2,000 milligrams a day. They're split usually. So one in the morning, one in the evening. I take high dose ashwagandha. Then I take... Is that a berry? Is that a berry? No, it's an adaptogen. It's good. Oh, okay. So I take ashwagandha, I take high dose, 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C split up. What else I take? I take, what else? Should I take a bunch of other stuff? Vitamin D? Yeah, I take vitamin D with vitamin K because they have to be together. They can't be disconnected. So they work synergistically. So if you look at food groups, there's always vitamin K with vitamin D. So I'm taking like 4,000, 5,000 I use with vitamin K. Okay. What else am I taking? Why are you taking vitamin C on its own? Well, I don't take it on its own. I take it with... For that supplement, why do you take vitamin C as a supplement? Are you not like, isn't that pretty available when fruit and things are eating or do you not eat a lot? Not at these doses. So there's really good clinical studies and the godfather of this research is Abram Hoffer. I think Abram, vitamin C, all through molecular research. Okay. Vitamin C. Pretty sure his name was Hoffer, Abram Hoffer. Abram Hoffer, yeah, my memory works. So Abram Hoffer, vitamin C, really good for gut permeability issues. So you have something called microvilli which are like finger light projections within the gut, which are responsible for nutrient. So they're good studies for vitamin C. For that stuff as well. And you're taking how much vitamin C per day? 2000, 1000 in the morning, 1000 in the evening. Hmm, that's something I wanna look into now. Yeah, and there's a bunch of other stuff too. Like I started recently fucking around where like I'm getting into peptides. Wow. And is this to make you just like the most super human or the best you could feel possible or most productive? Do you know what I mean? Like you can take anything to the extreme. And some people with nutrition, other people with working out. Like what's the goal of you experimenting with these things? Just at a straight curiosity, feeling better? For me, you know, I run a couple of startups. I'm in the tech scene, it gets stressed out. And so for me, it's like also looking at my levels, it's like these are things that in a stressful scenario are the first things to be diminished within the body. Like maybe in goes vitamin C goes to, you know, put up a little bit antioxidants. But I'm also curious on, there's two aspects. There's how you feel, which is really important. And then there's data, all right? And usually they correlate. Right, yeah, yeah. How you feel can correlate into your lab results. And it can be like checking, you know, C reactive protein. You can be checking your hormone profile. So testosterone, free, you know, free testosterone. And there's a bunch of other ones. So for me, it's like how I feel, but also correlating to my data. Now for me, it's like, I just like, I don't know, I guess I'm a, I wanna call myself extreme guinea pig. I just like to, I like to, let's say experiment to see how I feel with certain things. Like last year, I went on a fucking rip on, on, on new tropics, like the Parasitam family, the Madaffinels, the new PAPs, like all that stuff. And? Not, for me personally, like literally, like. Okay. Madaffinel works as a fucking pharmaceutical drug. What's the intention behind that drug? Focus, it's for people with ADD. Like I'm technically diagnosed with ADD, but like. Do you take, do you take medication for that? No, I'd be, I'd be, I have ADD when it comes to other topics, but when I find something that interests me, I have the opposite of OCD. Like I dive in so deep that it's hard for you to rip me away from something. Right. Madaffinel works, but it makes me very anti-social. Like I don't like the feeling of it. I see. It's almost like an Adderall effect where people like forget to eat and you're much cleaner. Like I would recommend Madaffinel any day before Adderall. Adderall is fucking meth. There was a, I know there was a Netflix documentary on Adderall. I didn't know anyone at university who was taking it, but I guess they kind of do it behind the scenes. It's a really popular study drug. I had no idea. I didn't know, like, I don't even know if I would have taken it at the time. It's not like- Very addictive. But yeah. Very, very addictive. Right. So I think what you're saying is you want to be on top of your game obviously, but I think that's fair for everyone. Where you see the data and you're like, I'm low on this, I'm low on this, and this could help me perform better. This could help me be a, that she's a better partner, a better dad, a better worker, a co-worker. It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm going to be open with people, but I'm going on a big peptide tear soon. I'm slowly going, losing my hair. It's super genetic. Like, actually it's a freak of a nature why I still have hair for my family. Like everyone's bald. Looks like you have lots of hair though. I have a lot to, it's thinning. It's like, it's actually, it's thinning. So like there's a bunch of cool studies on peptides. And so I'm going in like, fuck when I have time for this, probably like March. That's when I have more time, but like, then whole next year is like, I'm just going to fucking experiment like six months of peptides and see what happens. You know, the person who cracks the ball thing will be a, like more rip skin. The problem is, the problem is there isn't, if you look at anything in life, like depression, let's go back to that. There's no one size fits all. Right. That's the thing. It's like, circumstances matter. Like we, you know, we talk about depression and I'm a firm believer in for the most part, free will doesn't exist. Like you behave in a certain spectrum. It's not like things aren't in your control. They are in your control. But the reality is you are born with a base of genetics. Okay. X, Y, Y, X, you know, different chromosome from your mom and dad. Your genes are expressed in a certain way. It's called epigenetics. Now, your upbringing has a very, very important role in how you view the world. That's your nuclear upbringing, meaning your internal family. And that can be anybody and like the people you spent the most time with as a child. Then you have society upbringing. Then you have cultural upbringing, you know, past your, let's say elementary school and now you're in high school and you're out there and it's even worse today with social media. You can look at the study. Jonathan Haidt has great studies when it comes to depression and anxiety. Yeah, he's great. His last book is really good cuddling of the American mind, showing that especially females, like young girls in social media are the worst mix possible. And so you look at all this and it's like, okay, Scott is born with a set of genetics. He can't control that. Comes to the mom and dad. Then he had an upbringing. Comes as a nuclear upbringing. It's, this is something innately, I'll call it gifted to you, everything's a gift. It's not what happened to you, it's what happened for you. And so then it's like, okay, I'm in this situation. I know that I can only control up to a certain degree. Right? So it's like, I know my genetics are like this. And like, I'll give example with people. I have addicted personality. I quit drinking alcohol before it's in vogue now. Like I quit nine, 10 years ago, I think now. Like I don't drink a sip of alcohol. Whoa, nothing. I fucking quit that shit. Do you smoke? Used to a long time ago. My smoking story is the most funny is fucking smoking story of all time. I got time. So I try to quit forever. Like are you mean cigarettes or you mean weed? Never got weed. I didn't like it. It's not good for my personality. It made me slow. I'm like very hyperactive. Okay. I used to sniff cocaine and eat together. That was my favorite drug. Yeah, I would call it Tony Smurf. And yeah, yeah, yeah. So I try to quit like six, seven times cigarettes. And I was a pretty big smoker. Like I party four days a week. I drank in the club. I was a club hopping nonstop bottle service, cocaine, ecstasy and like a pack and a half or two packs a night. No problem. Like binge. Okay. Nothing worked. What worked, believe it or not, is I was having a basketball game. I was a bunch of younger. And I think I was like, I think I quit when I was like 19. Yeah. Something like that. And they fucking killed me. Cause I was out of breath. I like, I wasn't conditioned what's aware. And I'm like, my ego got destroyed. I'm like, dude, like these little fucking kids fucking beat me in basketball. And I love that. And that was the catalyst. I'm like, bro, I got mad. I got angry. Like, fuck this shit. And so I quit then and there, but I was quite aware of my triggers and made me smoke. Coffee cigarettes. It's like, they had chemical engineers designed those two things to go together. Seriously. And so I, alcohol, yeah, alcohol. Yeah, exactly. Wow. So then and there, man. I quit. I paused drinking alcohol. I paused drinking coffee for a year at that point. I didn't go to a club, didn't go to a bar. Anyone that smoked around me, I just left. Like, I couldn't be in the environment. And this circles back to your genetics is like, your environment has to be conducive to your success. So if you're depressed and you're in a environment that is not conducive to your success, like you have a partner that's an enabler or you're working in a work environment that's putting extreme social pressures on some form of pressure. I don't care what you do. It's gonna, like, don't get me wrong. Like the medication or the diet that you do will help to a degree until you get your ass out of that environment. Like, it's not, you're not gonna solve anything. Exactly. No, you're right. And it's interesting. I tried to, this was years ago, tried to go to a depression support group. This was back in like 2010. And it wasn't peer support. It was like a depression support group with anyone who was going through a hard time and dealing with depression. You're all in a circle. Just think of what you've seen in the movies. That kind of thing, like AA setup. And that made me feel so much worse because everyone would just, you just go around in the circle talking about the problems in your life. If you're depressed, the worst thing you can do is to hang out with someone else who's depressed. Seriously, we think it's good because all we can connect with someone and they'll understand and they're feeling what I'm feeling. But that's not gonna get you in. It might make you feel hurt for a second. But it's not conducive to actually getting you to rise above it, right? You need to hang out with people who have maybe been through it and they're on the mend or they're on the other side or people who, geez, maybe people who don't even understand depression and maybe won't take it too seriously. They just wanna get through the day to day and have fun and not really look too far into it. The environment and who you hang out with is massive. So I went to one of those support groups and never looked back. It did not help at all. It didn't help. So you mentioned CBT. Like when did you get into that? That was when I went to therapy for 2009 and that was like kind of the go-to with looking at how you think and it's like metacognition. You have to think about what you're thinking about and I'd never really done that and analyze thoughts. And there's a few different approaches. Like again, you can think of it black and white. Some people will be like, oh, you can have the meditative and Buddhist approach where you let thoughts come and go and be an observer and don't judge. And absolutely there's a time and a place and that actually helps with CBT. But sometimes you have to actually pick a part of thought or pick a thought apart and really see where it comes from. Where's it going? What else does it lead to? Is that thought coming from a past experience? Okay, let's go into that past experience. Look at the evidence and now look at the thought again. And to do that through CBT is to really, I think it actually helps you realize at the end that they are only thoughts and a thought isn't necessarily you and you can look at it and you can kind of move on. When anxious about the future you can, I just literally think the future is just a thought. The future doesn't necessarily exist. It exists in our minds and in thoughts. And with CBT it helped me realize that there's a time and a place to pick apart a thought and then with mindfulness and me practicing meditation since 2009, there's also a time and a place to just let them do what they do, let them come, let them go, observe them for what they are and don't take them so seriously. So again, I think as we talked about with diet, there's a time and a place for having pharmaceuticals and a time and a place for naturopathy and to combine those two and figure out maybe one works better for you, maybe the other works better. Same with these cognitive tools that I use. It's like CBT is sometimes picking apart and journaling the hell out of something and analyzing and taking time towards one thought. That works beautifully a lot of the time and then a lot of the time sometimes meditation, sitting with a thought and just being like, let it go, let's see what else comes. That's also powerful too. It's a beautiful compromise. And I hate how a lot of the time the Greeks were right with moderation is key. It just always seems to come back to that but in my life, it's so true. Yes, there's a lot of good benefits with CBT and so people wondering that's cognitive behavioral therapy and I think the problem with a lot of people when meditation is they think classical meditation where it's like, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you practice meditation? Yeah, so I don't practice classical meditation. So I'm a very kinesthetic person. Oh, do you do dynamic meditation, like OSHO stuff? No, no, no, no. You know what that is? Bioenginegetics, oh, I want to try that. I got deep into better. Okay, I know. Okay, okay. So that's another part. Bioenginegetics is legit. That's what works, man. That's what helped me with, that's where depression to expression came from. Oh, really? Yeah, it was me physically using the body to release depression and I'd go in the woods where no one was and I do bioenergetics and I'd scream and I would just, it like demons would literally come out of my body. It felt like and I would shake, I would vibrate, I would drool, I would spit and as crazy as it sounds, it was a lot less crazy doing that than to keep dealing with depression. And I've definitely been an advocate for that kind of meditation of using the body. When you're anxious, I think for me, the last thing I want to do is like, sometimes just calm down and sit and breathe and say album, there's like nervous energy and tension you got to get out. So can you relate to that? Well, yeah, for me, and this goes back to knowing thyself, everybody's different. And so I tried for the longest time, classical sit-down meditation. And for me has to be kinesthetic movement. So my form of meditation is every day I walk, I have a dog too, so helps, but every day I walk about 35, 40 minutes. I use noise cancellation headsets. So no music, no nothing, just noise cancellation. And I just let my brain go and I just walk and I walk and I walk and I walk and I walk. When I used to live in a house in a townhouse I don't have a backyard, but when I used to live in a house at a backyard, I would do a lot of Qi Gong joint mobility. I used to compete professionally in sports, so I got into deep into joint mobility and practice that form like energetic stuff in the morning, grounded on nice grass. Qi Gong, is that similar to Tai Chi? Kind of, there's two Qi Gongs. There's a medical Qi Gong and energetic Qi Gong. So there's two types of camps of different Qi Gong. But for me it's more or less the act of moving is enough of a distraction from the mind and until you get into your body forces you to get in a focus and then the movement of your body gets a point that you don't even realize that you're in flow. Like that's a whole point. You wanna get in a state of flow. And so it's also like your ambient environment. Like I can't sit down in my house, I don't like to be in my house. I like to be outdoors. You know, I'm big in psychedelic therapy and a lot of people do it indoors at a house. For me, I personally can't, like I have to be in nature. Like I just fucking have to, I usually go to my cottage. I'm lucky I got a six acre lot up in just north of Wasega, it's beautiful. Oh, nice. Okay, thanks for the invite. Yeah, we'll do it, man. We have some nice psychedelic retreats for sure. Oh, cool. Well, okay, let's talk about, if you don't mind, I would love to know your experience with psychedelics because there is some research that basically got stumped with mushrooms and with LSD when treating depression especially. And grieving and loss and I think that is fascinating and it's a shame that I don't necessarily know the data of people who have done it. And I don't know if it can, you know when weed was treated like kind of like these kinds of drugs that it'll kill you and you're gonna ruin the rest of your life, I don't know if there's such thing as a bad trip with those drugs that it completely changes your brain. People label it a bad trip, I just label it as a trip. So I do wanna emphasis a caveat and researchers, I'm not clean Toronto, we have great research. One of the top researchers in micro dosing is Rodin Petranker from U of T here in Toronto. So Toronto is one of the super clusters of universities focusing on psychedelic research and we're having a massive renaissance and we still need a lot of research. You know, the contradictions, if you mentioned earlier like if you're on benzos or if you're on SSRIs or sort of the medication or, you know, let's say you do a genetic screening from 23 and me and you realize you might have a predisposition to psychosis or psychiatric, not psychosis and schizophrenia. So there's like any medicine, there should be a astrics where it's like, we need to do screening. Like where are you in your life? What are you taking? And plant medicines are very different. Like LSD, it's a synthetic but derived from organic material, you know, it behaves quite differently. And funny thing that people don't realize, okay? So there's something in science called LD50, lethal dose 50, what that means is what is the amount necessary to kill half the population within the study? So it's kind of like a bell curve, if you think about it. And so LSD and psilocybin, no LD50, you can't have a dose on it, nonexistent. Interesting. That's the active ingredient in mushrooms. Psilocybin? Yeah. Okay. And then what's the, there's ayahuasca and then there's an active ingredient in ayahuasca that you got. Dimethyltryptamine, DMT. That's it, yeah, there's. But DMT alone is not ayahuasca. So ayahuasca is DMT with a MOA inhibitor. So you need a MOA, M-A-O, M-A-O inhibitor to have the proper effects of DMT. Now you could get oral DMT, but it has to be five MEO DMT from the frog to have the same kind of effects, which is like, I haven't personally done five MEO DMT. I've done DMT with vaping, I've done copious amounts of psilocybin shrooms, wet, dry, hero journey of five grams plus. I've done iboga, nuffel dose, micro dosing and low dose of iboga, which is quite beneficial. LSD, a bunch of times, peyote. But these are all different, right? And then like any, like you mentioned CBT and you mentioned bioenergetics, like anything that has to be integration. So people think they can just take in, but whoop, that thing will be better. It's like, listen, if you don't have proper, and this is why I always recommend find somebody. In Toronto, believe it or not, we got good talent. There's really good people who can facilitate and who are both psychologically trained as a, whether it's a psychiatrist or somebody that understands the mind or have gone through the journey, Toronto, we're blessed to have really good talent that we hear that can help people. Wow. And I don't know if this is something like we've spoke about CAMH for those listening. It's the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. Do they do any work with psychedelics for? No, you think they're gonna know? No, nothing. This all is kind of privatized, but it's not funded. Like you can see it is funded by who though? Private donors. Oh really? So with all of these drugs that you've experimented with, was there an aha moment in some of those? Was that something that helped you with depression? The best one that's been helping me the most that helps me with my PTSD would be integrative MDMA therapy. So that one has helped me the most, yeah. I did not know they used in lower doses. No, no, you can't do that. There's a tipping point. So MDMA can't do micro dosing. So the protocol for me is you start with 0.1. So 100 milligrams or micro grams. I forget. Anyways, 0.1. And then every 30 minutes you do a bump to then a 0.005 and a 0.005. So you end up with 0.2. But then there's a system like you're laying down. I have a journal. I use my phone as a tape recorder. I have something called Sleep Mask. What the fuck is that Sleep Mask called? Mindfold. It's a 3D Sleep Mask. So it's foam. So you can keep your eyes open, but it's pitch black. Oh, that's so smart. Yeah. So it's a mind. The mask is called a Mindfold Match. You use it for sleeping as well. It's great. I want that. It's the best. Best $20 investment you can possibly make. Oh, my gosh. OK. And so you have all this stuff and you do a lot of integration because you're in the moment. And for me, how I correlate MDMA, listen, anybody listen to this, take this with high warning. Please do not try this on your own. Please do not just go out. Like I said, it really does matter if you're on SSRIs or if you're on benzos, if you're on medication. Really, all medications, anything in life, do not mix. Consult somebody. And if you guys are in Toronto, we have the Toronto Psychedelic Association, which can help you with any guidance that you need. Or you can contact MAPS, so Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies or Research. There's American Division, which is run by Rick Rubin. We're not Rick Rubin, that's a producer. Rick Dublin. And then we have the Canadian one too. And so for me, that was the best one. And then other ones like Shrooms, I always have amazing deep dives and shrooms. And then you can combine them like MDMA with shrooms and different analogs like 2CB, 2CA, and all this stuff. Right, I think this is the conversation that I think needs to be more open when it comes to mental health. So the reason that I don't call myself an advocate is because a lot of people don't have conversations like this, which is why I was so excited to come on here. And I didn't know it would even go in this direction, which is even cooler. A lot of it revolves around psychiatry and pharmaceuticals, which is fine, but that can't be 95% of the conversation when there's so many alternatives that we know. And when alternatives like this we talk about, like psychedelics, when we talk about diet, I think it's automatically cast in the shadows and thought of as alternative medicine. And maybe it's called alternative for a reason, but the alternative can be just as powerful if not more than a pharmaceutical. This is also a good litmus test when you are trying to work with somebody. Imagine if you went to a car mechanic and the car mechanic only looked at your spark plugs. That's it. You'd be like, yeah, what the fuck are you doing? You know what I mean? I can't stop, man. Like, what are you doing? The car works as a whole unit, right? The alternator has to be there. The spark plugs have to be working. The cylinders, everything, right? The whole engine has to be working in unison together. You can't just be looking at one aspect of it. And so if you are, and that's what I recommend, always go by referrals. Go to your network, ask around, and work speaks for itself. Let me put it that way, right? So like I said, we actually, there's really good healers within Toronto and Ontario. And so yeah, as soon as, and anytime I hear anybody pooping on like diet doesn't play a role and I look at them like, you really are dumb. Like, I'm pretty bad at being like, you're just dumb. No, it's true. It's true. Like you can't ignore that. And I think, again, having these conversations and knowing that there's evidence everywhere and that the body works as a whole is just something we need to get out there because I know how difficult it is to when you're in, when you know it yourself and you're in kind of that industry and you're following certain people that spread this kind of information. I tend to think that, okay, then everybody knows about this stuff. It's common knowledge. But if you go outside of that circle and see how mental health is talked about and depression talked about as a whole, like outside of our community, people don't know shit. And it's so sad. The education isn't there. The research isn't there. The curiosity isn't there. The skepticism isn't there. That can go back to what we teach kids in school. That can go back to what we're learning, like it's household upbringing, what the public is telling us, media, social media, who the big players are in mental health, who's sharing certain information. It's just a shame. It's like, it's a real shame, which is why I started depression to expression, right? The other thing I'd like to say is, so we talked about diet, meditation, CBT. The other thing I did recently, last year was sensory deprivation tanks. Yeah, and I still have one for going this month again and I'd like to go once a month. But that is something if you're, you can probably combine it with different drugs if you want to go nuts. But even someone without using drugs on top of it, just going in sober is quite an amazing experience. What's been your experience with the float? The first time I ever went, so there are 90 minute sessions. I went to the one on Queen Street, Toronto. Yeah, Float Toronto, yeah, stay here. It took me almost 90 minutes to get into the zone and then time was up. I'm like, well, fuck. I was kind of like the first two times I went until my body get used to it. And it's a great experience, like it's room temperature, your leg pitch black. And so the second time I went a little bit micro dose, tiny, tiny bit, not too much. And then this time I brought also waterproof, I fucking don't have a year. I brought waterproof these earbuds. Oh, right on. What did you play on them? Just binaural beats. So I have like just cool audio stuff, yeah. Cool. And binaural beats really helped me. Yeah, I had the same experience. Took me about half the time to relax my neck. That was a big thing. And I'm so tense trying to like stay afloat. You forget that you can let go and the salts are doing the work for you. So that took me a while to get the body in tune. And then once that happened, my mind could relax. So a lot of the time it actually starts with a body and that affects the mind for sure. Think about any exercise really. But that had a really cool effect on self-awareness, spatial awareness, getting out and just walking home and being a completely calm state. And I had a feeling that's maybe what some other drugs can do, but that was completely natural and felt amazing for me. So I'm definitely gonna bring that into my practice every month for those listening. Yeah, the isolation tanks, flotation tanks, whatever you wanna call them. You could do it in your own bathroom but you need like 80 pounds of salt so you can float that well in your tub. You can do it in your house. I've been doing since my, I used to train a semi-pro MMA martial arts when I was much younger and I competed professionally in kettlebells. And I did a bunch of crazy stuff when I was younger. How do you compete in kettlebells? You mean kettlebells? Like the, what is that? Just a lifting contest? Yeah, similar to Olympic lifting, like kind of the lifts. So the first lift, well, no particular order but first lift will be a jerk. Yeah, you compete with 32 kilos so the jerk is 32 kilos, 32 kilos. So about like 70 pounds in each hand and you jerk over your head for 10 minutes straight, proper form. You put down the- No. Yeah, so then you have the long cycle. So long cycle is you start with the swing between the legs, bring it up to chest and you jerk. So that's a long cycle for 10 minutes and then you're counting your reps. Everything has to be locked out straight, proper form. Then the third lift is a snatch. So 32 kilos. So you do five minutes left arm snatching up and switch five minutes snatching up and how it works as a coefficient score. So it's a, you take your weight divided by total reps of your lifts and that's your coefficient score. So that's kind of- Oh, geez. When I see like, I don't wanna try kettlebells heavy at least cause I see like form is so important with any of that stuff. Well, anything like you start with a barbell if you're doing Olympic lifting or powerlifting or even like without weight, I see a lot of people at the gym trying to do pull-ups. Horrible. Like they don't activate anything is like- Right, right. I'm like- Are you the guy that goes and like helps them out? Cause sometimes, yeah. I know it's hard. I got my music. It's the noise cancellation headsets. I got a hoodie half the time. Like I don't have a hat and a hoodie. Like I'm in fucking Eskimo like this. But it's sometimes hard to see these people and not, you don't wanna be the guy to offer advice, but at the same time, if it's coming from a genuine place, you wanna actually help cause you can see like, yeah, that guy's back is gonna be messed up in like six months. Yeah. If you're doing that. Let them be. You know, I hate when people bother me. That's what don't bother people. Like people come up to me, ask me about stuff. Like, oh, I see this and I'm like, fuck off. Like, no, just respect. But like I'm here to train. Then I'm not here for two hours and I'm not here for a chit chat. Right, right. Like I'm training, like leave me alone. Like this is my meditation and I'm fucking training. Right, right, right. Well, the guy with the hoodie on, with headphones on usually is a sign that, you know, this guy wants to do his thing. Let him be. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. But you use that, use the gym for meditation. As you said, like, I totally get that. Some people use it to be social and to see familiar faces. I'm the same way. It's like my time to, you know, get back in my body after sitting for a while looking at a pixelated screen. So I can totally understand that that's your time. Oh yeah. Yeah. Ever got into breathing, like Wim Hof, like deep diaphragmic breathing? There's, oh geez, what's the kind of yoga? Kundalini. Kundalini yoga, Kundalini yoga gets really into breathing. I've done that once and it was very interesting. I've never felt my lungs that much before. Like I've never been aware of my lungs that much and what air feels like. But that's something I'd like to try. It's really just during my sit-down meditations. I'm just inhale, exhale, very simple. But what are other breathing practices? Wim Hof is a really good, simple one. Is that the, that one? Yeah. And in my stomach? Yeah, so it's, okay. So it's, okay. So it's 30, 30. On the 30th, you exhale, you don't inhale, you hold as much as you can, but you don't want to hold too long. So you just hold until you just feel that feeling. Then you inhale, then you hold it until you just get that feeling where you, not too hard, you get like that difficult feeling. Then you exhale. So that's one set. How many sets, how many sets? I do three. Okay. So then it'll be 90 reps. Is there a research into this kind of breathing and how it affects the brain and like oxygenation and that kind of stuff for the money? Yeah, there's research, yeah, yeah. I'd be interested to see that because I know like just you shallow breathe throughout the whole day until you realize and come to terms with, to how you're breathing and have that awareness, right? And then when you finally do a breath, it's like, if you pay attention, might the bottom of the lungs feel like almost stale, like they haven't been touched. I know that's not how it works, but that's how I feel like finally when you take a bigger inhale, you kind of wake up the whole body. It's the breathing is something that I definitely want to bring into a daily routine. And just not sitting down and doing it, but just as we're walking, just as we're at the gym, it's just much easier to do and focus on while let's say you're at the gym. He's like, yeah, I fuck around when I walk. So I try to hold my breath as much as I can. Oh, that's amazing. I do like hypoxia stuff. So it's like, then just walk. I'm over anyways. And then I can't take any more than exhale, but then I don't inhale right away. Then I hold that exhale as much as I can. Then I like rinse and repeat. That's so, that was, you know, David Blaine, the magician. Yeah, the magician, yeah. That's kind of what he did to train the breathing, or train himself to hold his breath for whatever eight minutes or something. It's like he would do that until he would get massive headaches. And then do it again. That guy's a giddy pig. That guy. But I'll do that too. Like I have a pool in the condo and I'll just go and just stay underwater for as long as I can. People looking in from the gym, they're like, is that guy dead in the pool? I just put a hand up. Yeah, what's up? But the long story short, there's like, as we've just attested to, there's so much you can do for mental health that just needs to be explored. I think people need to have a more giddy pig approach to their bodies. And as everyone's different, as you mentioned, like, so what works for some people won't work for others, but the point is to kind of find your niche and find what works for you. And that's kind of the whole point. I can't say that something is completely wrong, although it's really hard to when you see someone eating McDonald's every day, complaining that they have depression. I'm like, that might be the wrong thing to do. But holding judgment won't really help anyone long run, but I think everyone just needs to figure out their own recipe. I agree, yeah. I think we'll leave it at that. That's a great ending. Everyone figure out your recipe. That's right. Well, Scott, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and experiences. If people wanna get ahold of you, learn more about you, what's the best resource that can reach you at? Yeah, depression2expression.com. And then let's see, check out my YouTube channel and my own podcast where I'll be having a mirror on as well and getting him to do more of the talking and explore this a little bit more. So, depression2expression.com. Awesome, thanks, Scott. Thanks.