Tapping into Your Body’s Intelligence with Matt Gallant

In this Episode

• [02:37]Matt Gallant shares how he ended up in the biohacking world, the success of their supplement company, and their innovative approach to formulation.
• [09:08]Matt recommends personalized diets based on genetics, bloodwork, and psychology rather than a one-size-fits-all approach and highlights the importance of micronutrients in any diet.
• [14:43]Stephan and Matt discuss muscle testing for supplement recommendations and health approaches.
• [22:37]Stephan and Matt describe the impact AI has on creativity and decision-making.
• [27:16]Stephan shares his 40 Years of Zen experience, prompting Matt to discuss theta brain waves being the goal for neurofeedback and meditation training.
• [31:19]Matt describes his pre-cognitive visions and the power of holding your visions and goals in mind.
• [35:27]Matt discusses the importance of sleep and its relationship with spiritual concepts.
• [39:38]Matt discusses the importance of managing one’s nervous system throughout the day to stay resilient and avoid stress-related problems.
• [44:00]Matt describes adaptogens and shares insights on optimizing health and wellness through lifestyle changes and biohacking.

Jump to Links and Resources

Matt, it’s so great to have you on the show.

I feel like I’m in the right place. Get Yourself Optimized is definitely one of the things I spend the most time thinking about, and of course, we met at a Biohacking Conference, and here we are.

There are no coincidences. Let’s start with how you ended up getting into this biohacking world. Was there some sort of transformative event, tragedy or dark night of the soul, something like, “I got to get my body into peak shape? Was it just unfolding?”

Yeah, it was three key events. The first was when my father bought me a weight set when I was 12. But I only became obsessed when I was 16, and I was on the beach, and I saw two huge bodybuilders, and I was like, “I feel weak and feeble. I need to put on some muscle mass.” The bodybuilding bug bit me, and I became obsessed with bodybuilding. I went from 147 to 235 in three years, training twice a day. It was a fascinating experience to put on that much muscle mass. I lost 64 pounds in 14 weeks, getting ready for a show. The ability to change your body drastically was fascinating.

The second big one was my grandfather got hit by a car; it was a hit-and-run. He got hit when he was 75. I saw his health decline rapidly. My father built an apartment for him. He moved in with us and spent the last few years of his life, and he prayed for death multiple times a day because he was suffering so much. That was impactful. Seeing how critical health is and the consequences are when you lose it. It definitely changes your perspective on things.

The big one that made me decide that this is what I want to do for a career was helping my best friend lose 191 pounds in 18 months. I was around 19 at the time. That’s when I decided I was going to help people. I’ve built a couple of successful personal training companies—one on the east coast of Canada, in Moncton, New Brunswick. I moved to Vancouver, and I did it again there. Wade Lightheart and I struck a friendship and launched BIOptimizers in 2004.

At the time, we were focused on helping natural bodybuilders; Wade was competing then. Wade had a unique story where he was competing as a vegetarian. This was 2004. Nobody was talking about using vegetarianism at that time. It was successful, and over time, our passion for bodybuilding waned, and we became more obsessed with health. We rebranded to BIOptimizers in 2014.

What was the most important milestone in BIOptimizers in that business since 2004?

My favorite thing in the world is to run experiments, whether on myself, on marketing web pages, or with probiotics and enzymes.

We received an Inc. 5000 plaque. We’ve been the third fastest-growing supplement company in America for the last three years. That was a cool milestone.

Congratulations.

Thanks. What really excites me personally is actually more of the breakthroughs happening in the lab.  Three years ago, we created a partnership with the International Birch University in Sarajevo. We have 20 full-time biologists, chemists, and people with PhDs in bacteria doing nonstop experiments. We’ve been able to take a lot of our formulas and take them to another level. My favorite thing in the world is to run experiments, whether on myself, on marketing web pages, or with probiotics and enzymes.

It’s been really rewarding and exciting to breakthrough on a lot of stuff, which we’ll start releasing later this year.

Awesome. One example of a supplement that you guys have innovated is magnesium. There are seven types of magnesium in your supplement. Can you explain why you have multiple kinds of magnesium in the supplement and what that does for the body?

One of the things that we’re proving to ourselves, and we’ll probably publish a lot of papers around it, is the power of synergy in cofactors, which, if you’ve been in the supplement space, you’ve heard of, but very few people have never seen a lot of quantifiable data around how impactful it is. For example, we proofed, and we’re doing a red blood cell test with magnesium. We’re seeing that if you combine magnesium, you get synergy.

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You get more uptake in the red blood cells, and we’re proving that the cofactors are improving uptake by 30% to 38%. We’ve seen similar results across the board with almost everything where you’ve got this key molecule that’s got a lot of data around, but if you add the right things to it, it will multiply or increase significantly the effects of that molecule. That’s what cofactors do. When you combine Magnesium, there’s definitely some powerful synergy happening.

We knew that experientially because if you’ve used magnesium and you’ve tried magnesium breakthroughs, you’ll feel the difference. Now, we’re quantifying it in the lab. Credit goes to Charles Poliquin, who is one of the greatest strength coaches of all time. He had 400 Olympic athletes that he worked with. He’s the guy who told us to try combining magnesium. He was combining four—I used it, it was quite effective, and I’m like, “How can we take this to the next level?” We just tested a bunch of mags, and then we started adding cofactors and ended up with Magnesium Breakthrough, our best-selling product.

That’s awesome. I’ve taken that for many months. Let’s talk about vegetarian and general diets because let food be their medicine, right? If someone is taking a lot of supplements but consuming a lot of junk food or highly processed food, they’re kind of going against their own body, and supplements aren’t going to make up the difference. What diet do you recommend versus Wade—is Wade still on a vegetarian diet? What are the lab results showing as far as best practices for food and nutrition?

For the last three years, we’ve been working on answering that question. It’s a book that Hay House will publish in September.

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Wow. I love that publisher. That’s a big deal.

Thanks. We’re proud of the book. We’re just in the final edits. Three hundred fifty thousand words; it is a reference guide. We cover every type of diet. I’ll share the core message, which is that every diet works short term. We’re talking about weight loss. The failure rate long-term is 97%. But for health purposes, what you want to try to do is figure out which diet works for you psychologically and genetically. You want to use bloodwork to optimize that diet. There’s no best diet for everyone. I used to be a keto zealot. Wade was a plant-based zealot. We argued for years.

Over time, we realized they could both work. They both work; some people psychologically and genetically gravitate to certain diets, and they just work better. Certain genes will make a ketogenic diet work better for people—the same with plant-based diets. Depending on your goal, there are many things you can optimize and change structurally on any diet to make it work. For example, if your goal is to build muscle mass, you need to be in a calorie surplus. Typically, 300-500 extra calories a day.

If your goal is to lose body fat, again, every diet works—there was a guy who did the junk food diet; he was eating Twinkies and other junk food and was able to lose a significant amount of body weight because he was in a deficit. Now, where supplements come in is more on the micronutrient side as well as what you can call biological accelerators. When most think of nutrition, they think about macronutrients—protein, carbohydrates, and fats—and then we could throw in fiber and calories. That’s the tip of the iceberg, but if you go below the iceberg, that’s when you’re getting micronutrients, probiotics, enzymes, and things like that.

If you’re on a ketogenic diet, you’re not going to be getting enough potassium.

No matter what diet you’re on, there will be certain potential deficiencies. If you’re on a plant-based diet, vitamin D can be a major challenge. If you’re on a hardcore carnivore-type diet, you might have some other deficiencies, like vitamin C or other antioxidants. No matter your diet, you have to be ideally smart about it. Because there are people following plant-based diets or any diet that just are not paying attention to the micronutrients. Certain micronutrients like magnesium and potassium are difficult to get from a diet.

If you’re on a ketogenic diet, you won’t get enough potassium. Potassium is very prevalent in potatoes and bananas and things like that. If you’re avoiding those foods, you’ll most likely be deficient. Magnesium is just very difficult to get from food on any diet. If you want to be optimized, which is your podcast’s key purpose and point, you need to be smart about it and actually use bloodwork and monitor your levels. Introduce things you’re deficient in, and continue monitoring to get to an optimal zone.

Do you find that people are copper deficient? If so, what’s the remedy for that?

Yeah. Copper is a hot topic in the biological optimization biohacking world. Copper has a very tight relationship with zinc. With many of these minerals, you have to ensure you’ve taken them in the right ratios. Again, it goes back to cofactors. Some people are very paranoid about taking too much copper because it can create problems. Other people are saying people have a copper deficiency. I’m paying attention; I’m just consuming content around this yesterday. Most likely, people are deficient, but again, you need to ensure you’re taking things in the right ratios because you can throw things off balance.

Bioavailability is always critical.

In my understanding, it’s very hard to address copper deficiency by taking a particular supplement. You need to make dietary changes to get the copper you’re missing.

Yeah, bioavailability is always critical. Again, with food, a lot of times, you’re getting cofactors, and you’re getting the entourage of molecules that you need to metabolize. Let’s start with food. For example, people think I’m eating food, thus metabolizing that food. Well, there’s a whole process. Your body has to break it down. That’s where things like enzymes and probiotics can help. Your body needs to absorb those amino acids, glucose, or fatty acids. Finally, there’s another stage where your body will metabolize amino acids, store those essential fatty acids and glucose, or utilize them for energy.

There are certain things you can take, like enzymes and other molecules, that can help you metabolize those molecules. Magnesium, for example, is a cofactor for probably about 600 different biological processes. You want to make sure that you’re ideally taking the right entourage of molecules with whatever you’re trying to focus on, things like copper. Just taking things in isolation is usually not a great idea.

How do you tell which supplements are right for you and which are not? I go to a holistic doctor, who was a guest on this podcast, Dr. Kirby Hotchner and one thing he does that I am very much aligned with is muscle testing or applied kinesiology. He is testing to see whether a particular supplement or protocol will be right for my body and to what degree. Which dosage is going to be ideal? He’s pulling on my ankles as he’s doing this to check to see whether a particular dosage is right or higher or lower dosage and so forth. Is that something you recommend? Is there another process you prefer to tap into your body’s intelligence to learn how beneficial a particular cofactor, vitamin or supplement will be?

I’m a huge fan of muscle testing. I’ve been doing muscle testing for about 12 or 13 years. I’ve worked with a guy who’s the best muscle tester I’ve ever met. I have done millions of calibrations. If you read John Diamond’s work, just some old book called Your Body Doesn’t Lie, it has great content. If you read David Hawkins’ work, I think David Hawkins took many of those concepts to another level.

The book that he’s most known for is Power vs. Force.

Yeah, I think probably his bestseller is Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, but yeah, Power Versus Force was his first title. He published quite a few calibrations, and it’s great work. When I started to believe in muscle testing, I went to see a guy, and we called him the Wizard. He lives in Vancouver. He’s a chiropractor, and he started doing all these muscle tests on me and telling me all these things that are knowable—certain emotions I was feeling, what I ate the day before, and just thing after thing. I’m like, “This definitely works.”

I proved myself by doing all kinds of improbable things, and it worked. It is a great tool. One is it’s a skill, so you need to practice quite a bit. There’s a great solo test you can do. This is my primary way because you don’t always have others to test with. 

I was talking to another big muscle tester. He’s one of the most successful chiropractors, another guy that I know. He said that I think it is pertinent that you must keep muscle testing.

“I see your muscle test, and a supplement is good for you today. You should probably retest it in a week, two, three, or four weeks because you may stop, take a break, or cycle once your body’s had enough.” I would say the least; every month, keep testing and retesting because it is great for you right now. It might not be great for you next month.

If you stopped the supplement based on muscle testing and set it in your drawer, you should probably do a muscle test to see if it’s time to bring it back out. Why don’t you explain the solo test?

You could call it the V-finger method.  I’ve learned the O-ring method, which is you do an O-ring with your pinky and your thumb or your index finger.

Yeah, it’s like an OK symbol.

I’m not a fan of that. If you do a lot of it, you’ll feel it a bit in your joints. This one is more subtle. It’s also more stealthy, so you could do it anywhere. You just do a V with your index and your middle finger. You have to hold things in mind, so you hold whatever the thing is in mind. For example, “It is my highest and best interest,” which is a great way to start a statement. “It is my highest and best interest to take 4 Kapex right now,” and then I go weak. Or, “It is my highest and best interest to not take any Kapex,” and then I go strong.

You have to make a statement. It cannot be a question. It has to be declarative. You always want to start with this, “In my highest and best interest,” too, and then you hold the thing, whatever it is you’re calibrating in mind. It’s very fast. The thing about muscle testing is your nervous system gets turned on for a split second, literally a split second, maybe 200 milliseconds; it’s very quick. You have to practice timing that. The way to practice muscle testing is to go back and forth between high-calibrating thoughts and then low-calibrating thoughts. You’ll start to pick up on what weak and strong feel like, and you just have to practice.

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It’s a very clean, stealthy method of muscle testing you can do anywhere. If you’re doing it with your fingers on your lap, people won’t notice. That’s what I primarily do. Of course, if I can access people, I’ll do muscle tests with them.

Yeah, and for that, you put your arm out. It doesn’t matter which arm, left or right.

The best muscle testers I know, they’ll run both arms and the chiro, the wizard, we call him, he’s retesting the same things six ways. He’ll take the arm and go sideways and front. He’s just double, triple-checking. The coach I worked with, unfortunately, retired now. He would triangulate. When he was muscle testing as a group, there were three people. He would retest things to make sure.

Because it’s really easy to have a bias, if you have a bias about something, and this is the caveat with muscle testing, you have to be unbiased, which is difficult. Most people have biases about all kinds of things. If you have fears, concerns, or a bias, it’s probably best not to trust your calibrations that much. It’s easy to be off. If you watch horror movies, listen to heavy metal, drink too much coffee, and compromise your nervous system, your muscle testing will be compromised.

In a perfect world, you’re calm and relaxed, nothing is bothering you, and you’re testing things you have no bias about. When you have biases, it’s critical to use other people.

Do you use muscle testing to make business decisions, which vendors you’re going to hire or that sort of thing?

Yeah. I do.

Does it stir you wrong sometimes?

Rarely. To me, it’s another data point. I always take my muscle test with a grain of salt. Even though I’m correct the majority of the time, I know there’s a chance I’m wrong. I don’t always just use that, but it’s revealed some things that I didn’t see on the surface and was able to sauce out, and then most of the time, it proves to be true over time.

Do you think you’re communicating with your body intelligence, the universal intelligence, your higher self, or some combination or none of the above when doing these muscle tests?

I believe that you’re accessing the field of consciousness and that consciousness is the fundamental substrate we’re all in. It’s acting like a Google search where if something has happened or is happening, you can get an immediate yes or no on that. The yes or no is your nervous system turning on. If something is not true, it just stays off. That’s what I believe is occurring.

We were talking before the recording about AI. One of the things I dislike the most about AI is it’s soulless. We talked about how I thought it was theft because we’re not crediting the originators on which the training data is based. But from a spiritual perspective, if you are tapping into the universal intelligence, the field to God, to all that is. You’re asking for guidance on what to write about or what direction to take the book. I’m halfway through. I’m on chapter 10. Where do I go from here? An AI is not going to do that.

I always take my muscle test with a grain of salt. Even though I’m correct the majority of the time, I know there’s a chance I’m wrong.

It will use all the previous training data of all the other books that have been written. You miss that spark of divine guidance. What are your thoughts about that?

AI is the ultimate echo chamber, and people have been using that term for the last few years on social media, but if you think about it, it’s a body of work that’s already been used and done, created, and it’s using that to create these outputs, which the majority of the people are going to be using to get answers. In terms of new things, new creative works, and new and fresh outputs, it’s going to limit that truly.

I think on the flip side because I’ve been in copywriting for a long time and marketing, I feel like the people who are going to do best with AI are going to be people who are hyper-creative and could create a compelling vision and use these tools to save a lot of time on the execution side, but AI is going to be the ultimate echo chamber. It’s going to be an interesting divergence, I think some people will truly stay away from it to create original work, but I think the majority of people are going to be sucked into it and primarily use that.

Yeah. Peter Diamandis, one of his quotes that stuck with me—I was in his Abundance360 Mastermind for several years. He said there will be two kinds of businesses by the end of this decade. Businesses that are out of business and businesses that are using AI at their core.

Yeah. AI is the ultimate pattern recognition technology, and obviously, humans all have pattern recognition capabilities, and AI is already better than we are by a long shot. But it’s not just pattern recognition; it’s also solution creation. You recognize a pattern, and then if you have a winning pattern, you can use that to create a new winning strategy. We, on the health side, are circling back to that, and it’s already beating a lot of doctors in diagnosing people. I think it will be revolutionary—just to give an example, we’re already using it with BIOptimizers.

We have a guy who’s a molecular docking expert; we’re using software that allows us to save about $20 million to $30 million in laboratory testing by running tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in molecule simulations to see what could work with that and how it could dock with receptors and things like that. In terms of a human being trying to do that, it’s $20 million to $30 million in lab tests.

I think there’s going to be some really powerful solutions and outputs that are going to allow us to leapfrog on effectiveness on a lot of things. It’s going to be a mix, I think. I think people will lose a lot of creative capabilities, unfortunately, but on the flip side, we will get some incredible solutions.

If you have a winning pattern, you can use that to create a new winning strategy.

Now, the keyword I think in exploring this brave new world of AI is discernment.

Discernment is one of my favorite words. I think not that many people have it. I think that’s where doing a lot of spiritual work, doing a lot of house cleaning, and developing a lot of self-awareness leads to discernment. Unfortunately, not a lot of people do that work.

I believe that is changing.

Yeah. People are slowly but surely progressing and doing much of the work. I think it’s one of the benefits of the plant medicines. It’s a tool that leads people in those directions, but I’m excited to see neurofeedback take off, which is one of my top favorite tools.

Have you done 40 Years of Zen in Seattle?

I’ve done Zen five times and a couple of trainings outside of that.

Do you want to hear a crazy story?

Sure. I love crazy stories.

Okay, I did 40 Years of Zen. That’s Dave Asprey’s neurofeedback weeklong program for our listener who doesn’t know what that is. It was $15,000 for the week. My wife and I both went, and it was phenomenal. I got a lot of it. One of the best things I got from it was my childhood memories. I had a pretty awful childhood and didn’t have many positive memories. I’ve had some memories unlocked that I hadn’t had since my childhood.

A funny thing happened a couple of years after, just talking with God in the car silently through my head because my family was asleep in the car, my wife, my toddler son, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law. We were all driving to Orlando from Miami or vice versa; I couldn’t turn on podcasts or the music because it would wake them up. I started having a conversation with God and with my spiritual support team. One thing that comes to me is that I could ask for more memories from my childhood without having to spend $15,000 in a week in Seattle.

I did, and what happened was about ten times. The memories I got from a week-long program in Seattle came flooding in all at once after I’d asked for those memories. Memories that I had not had since my childhood. They all came flooding in, just like a big download.

That’s awesome. I’ve had similar but different experiences many times. 

Please do tell.

When you train theta, you develop the ability to access data at will.

Theta brain wave states, for our listener who doesn’t know that.

There are more, but there are five primary brainwave frequency sets. Right now, we’re probably somewhere between alpha-beta; it’s always a mix. You always have all of these waves, but sometimes, certain waves will truly dominate, like beta, which most people are in most of their waking hours. If you meditate and slow down your brainwaves, you’ll get to alpha, described as calm but alert. It’s a heart-opening experience. It’s loving. It’s a good place to be. When you do the resets or the forgiveness at 40 Years of Zen, that’s typically what they’ll train you in. If you slow down your brainwaves more, you get down to theta, which Dr. Jody Spencer calls your body is asleep, but your mind is awake. It’s very accurate.

If you meditate and slow down your brainwaves, you’ll get to alpha, described as calm but alert.

Everybody hits theta twice a day. Once they’re falling asleep and starting to dream, they’re aware of it. It’s called the hypnagogic state. When you wake up in the morning, you’re aware of your REM dreams, in theta that’s hypnopompic. With neurofeedback and meditation, you can train your brain to go there without falling asleep. The challenge people have is when they hit theta, and they typically pass out. That is, in my opinion, and, of course, one of the neuroscientists’, I’ve talked to,  opinion. The best place to download information as we talked about spiritual guides; you’ve got the clearest channel there.

That may be a dominant way for you, but in terms of downloading visions, strategies, and game plans, it’s an incredible place to be. It’s a powerful business and life tool for seeing the future. Then, of course, you need to do the work and make it happen. It’s just been an amazing tool for me.

Have you had any precognitive visions of something that will come to pass, and then it did? One example I learned about is watching Paul Stamets getting interviewed on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He shared how he had this vision. He was on mushrooms then and had a vision of all these cows in a dead field. He then shared a story of something that happened later; I don’t know how much later, if it was weeks or years later, but he was not allowed into his cabin in the woods because of a fire or natural disaster. I think it might have been a fire.

He needed to get into that cabin because his manuscript was there for one of his books. He didn’t have any other copies. He found a way to sneak in, past all the roadblocks and everything. On his way back out, it was really dangerous. What he was doing, there were fires everywhere. He saw that exact scene of all these cows dead in the field. Curious to hear your precognitive visions if you had any of your dreams.

Yeah, for me, dreaming is more when I go to a theta zone. It’s happened many times. This is why it has been relentlessly happening where I’ll see a clear vision of a person—we do this as a company. On Mondays, we have something called Vision/Traction Organizer, and we have all these future visions, things we want to happen, which typically are things that I’ll see in my mind, and we put it on there. It’s been amazing to see person after person. For example, they are heads of our labs and tropic formulators. Just people that we’re like, it would be incredible if we attracted this person and they show up.

When you wake up in the morning, you’re aware of your REM dreams, in theta that’s hypnopompic.

It’s happened to me several times where I heard a message, and then the next day, that person told me what I heard. It’s certainly occurred many times.

When you’re saying vision traction organizer, it sounds like you are implementing the EOS—entrepreneurial operating system.

Yeah. It’s been an amazing tool, but what we do is read out the VTL. The whole team holds that in mind. I’m a big believer that when you hold things in mind with a group of people, it’s exponential. The communication, the transmission you’re putting out there, and the power of it is exponential, increasing the odds of you attracting that. That’s what we’ve seen time and time again. We’ll have 60-100 people holding whatever that thing is in mind for a minute.

That’s just been amazing. I’d say it’s one of the highest ROI activities we do, holding those things in mind.

That’s awesome. That’s like the power of prayer, a group prayer. You can move the path of a hurricane through a group prayer.

Yeah, I believe that.

You need to do the work and make things happen.

By the way, I had Gino Wickman on this podcast talking about EOS and his Entrepreneurial Leap book. He’s awesome.

Yeah, it definitely changed my life.

Very cool. The wizard, you didn’t mention his name. Is he still in practice? Does he still take clients?

Yeah. His name is Dr. Steven Read. He hasn’t taken clients for a long time. He’s still working. That’s the chiropractor guy. The other guy’s name is Clayton. He’s retired, unfortunately. Steven Read, he’s the best chiro I’ve ever met. He’s in North Vancouver, and he’s special. I know he’s got so much demand and hasn’t taken on a new client for a long time, but if anybody can try to get in, good luck.

Okay. How about sleeping? Let’s talk about sleep for a bit. I’d love to find a bridge between what we’ve been talking about in terms of spiritual concepts and sleep because it’s not just your body resting and repairing. It’s also an opportunity for our soul to wander, learn, grow, make a difference in the astral plane, or knock on heaven’s door to try and get in. Let’s start our sleep discussion around the spiritual overlap with that.

Yeah, one practical tip I would recommend is that it’s a great place to start developing your theta capabilities. Here’s my advice. If you’re a night owl, which I am, then as you’re going to sleep, and you hit theta, instead of rolling over and passing out, try to hang out there. Even if it’s just a couple of minutes— two, three, four, or five minutes. It’s a great place to develop mental endurance without passing out. It’s a great place to communicate with your guides if you believe in that. It’s a great place to hold the vision.

If you’re a morning person, do that as you wake up. As you wake up, stay in bed again with your eyes closed and try to hang out in that theta zone that most people will just try to wake up from. Again, most people go to bed, and when they’d that theta brainwave state, they don’t fight it. They just turn over and pass out. When people start to wake up, the same thing happens. They just tend to wake up and get out of bed.

My advice is to try to spend time there. You’ll notice that you’ll get better and better at spending time in theta without passing out or without waking up, and it’s an incredible place to download information from consciousness directly. 

I had a time when I downloaded or was shown a vision right before I woke up. I felt conscious and got this ultra-high-definition image of a room; it was like a music room. It seemed like it was maybe from the 1800s or 1700s and had this older style of instruments, but it had a very beautiful, enlightened energy about it. When I opened my eyes, the image of that room stayed, overlaid on the background of the bedroom, for at least 20 seconds.

Not as an afterimage with reversed colors but as the correct colors, and then it slowly faded away like an afterimage would. Really wild and beautiful. Have you had anything like that?

No. I’m not very visual. When I’ve done sense tests and learning tests, visual is my weakest, so I’m very kinesthetic and auditory. The sensations will linger when I tap into a frequency, a field. I can hold that for a long time, but I’m not very visual.

When you’re in a spiritual state, you’re fundamentally in a parasympathetic state.

I get most of my information clairaudient, not clairvoyant, but I did this session Angel Team Healing. I want to have Jerry Bedlington from the Angel team on this podcast. He said he would, so I just need to get that booked, but I worked with him on a recommendation from a famous person that we both know, which I can’t say publicly because he didn’t give me permission to disclose that, but he recommended Angel Team Healing to me and wow.

I did the session. They had all these legions of angels working on me, clearing my third eye visor and doing all this stuff, and then I had these visions that next morning. I highly recommend it.

Here’s another take on your health and spirituality. Let’s talk about the nervous system because I believe that when you’re in a spiritual state, you’re fundamentally in a parasympathetic state. You have this spectrum just to give everybody a quick primer on how the nervous system works; it’s not a black-and-white situation. It’s not an on-and-off switch. You have this parasympathetic side, healing and recovery, digest and rest, all kinds of nicknames.

But it’s essentially where you’re very calm and very relaxed. You could say you’re in a Zen state. Again, that’s a spectrum from sleeping deeply to just calm but alert. Somewhere in the middle is parasympathetic, which is like a minus ten on the nervous system scale, then you got zero, which is a great place to be when you’re conscious and awake, which I spent a lot of time studying because I was very deep in self-defense and studying the nervous system for a long time.

It’s a research done a few decades ago, where they studied how stress impacts performance. In a perfect world, you’re in that middle zone where you’re not too relaxed because if you’re too relaxed, your performance drops, and you’re not too stressed because if you’re too stressed, your performance drops. Conversely, you got this sympathetic response; some call it fight, flight, or freeze. It’s essentially you’re stressed. For certain situations, you want to have a little bit of stress; if you’re working out hard, a little bit of stress is a good thing.

But learning to manage your nervous system, in my opinion, transforms the quality of someone’s life. Most people tend to wake up, and they go right into some level of a fight-flight-freeze response. They turn on their phones; they go to social media. Maybe they’re driving to work, which will be some level of sympathetic response, especially here in Panama. People work, and that’s a high beta brainwave activity, which will be sympathetic. Then they come home, exhausted, pass out, rinse and repeat.

Most people don’t spend time shifting their nervous system throughout the day. There are many ways to do that, including meditation, taking a nap, non-sleep deep rest, which I’m a big fan of, taking magnesium, and taking adaptogens. All those things will help you stay more in the middle, even under duress. Even when you’re facing stressful things, if you’re doing a good job managing your nervous system, you’ll be far more resilient.

Learning to manage your nervous system transforms the quality of your life.

You’ll notice that you’re not getting overly stressed and panicking and having anxiety and all these things. I do think that’s where great sleep comes in. There’s all kinds of data showing that. One single bad night of sleep has all of these dire consequences. One, it destroys your DNA. It will activate epigenetics, which will increase the activity of tumor genes and cancer genes, and your hippocampus will get compromised. Your short-term memory is compromised. Your ghrelin, which is your hunger hormone, goes up 28%.

Your ability to burn body fats is compromised. I was talking to a pro athlete recently, an endurance athlete, and he showed me that he’s using a CGM and he had one bad night of sleep; he looked like a prediabetic the next day on a one bad night. Great sleep is critical to laying the foundation for a great day and being in a good mood. Because if you’re not getting enough REM. REM is where there’s a lot of memory consolidation and emotional processing. If people are not getting enough REM for several days in a row, it’s almost a guarantee they’re going to be in a bad mood, which means it’s a lot harder to be spiritual and to be calm and to be Zen when you’re stressed out in a bad mood.

I think great sleep is foundational for great health. Just to be the best version of yourself in general.

Agreed. For our listeners who are not familiar with adaptogens, can you elaborate?

Adaptogens are typically herbs, but let’s just call them molecules, which, if you’re not stressed enough, will get you to that center point that we just talked about. That nexus between parasympathetic and sympathetic. If you’re too stressed, they’ll tend to pull you back. By the way, we have, in my opinion, the most powerful adaptogenic blend that I’ve ever tried coming out. A new formulator is developing it. We’re working with 17 Chinese herbs. It’s the most experiential adaptogen I’ve ever tried.

He’s a neuroscientist. He’s an absolute genius, and it’s incredible. Adaptogens have their place for sure. Again, if you’re noticing or just dealing with a lot of stress, adaptogen magnesium is incredible at shifting your nervous system and helping you stay calmer and more resilient.

Awesome. This has been such a great conversation, and it’s a shame we will have to end it here shortly. If our listener had one thing to do, one next action to move the needle in terms of their sleep, discernment or their overall health and longevity, what would it be to complement what we haven’t already discussed?

One is to learn muscle testing. I think it’s the ultimate discernment tool back to that. The other one is to try our new sleep breakthrough formula. We’ve been working on it for a year. We didn’t get a chance to dive deep into it, but it’s a lot of powerful, healthy, natural sleep molecules: glycine, L-Theanine, and four different sleep minerals. It’s got Pharma GABA. It’s incredibly potent. It’s a drink. I know, Stephan; you got a code, which is sleepbreakthrough.com/stephan. Check it out. 10% discount code.

We have a one-year guarantee on all of our products. If, for any reason, it does not work for you, you can get your money back. We have another sleep product coming out in February called Dream Optimizer. If you want lucid, vivid dreaming, this is the formula. It’s completely different from Sleep Breakthrough. It’s a spray. It has 18 micrograms of melatonin per spray, and it allows you to get the right dose, which I think most people are just mega-dosing and overdosing on melatonin.

I’m a big fan of using 50-60 micrograms, but it has other ingredients like California poppy seed, which increases REM. If you like lucid, vivid dreaming, you will love Dream Optimizer, so check that out as well.

Awesome. Do you have a code for that, too?

We’ll ensure that your code works on both. You can use Stephan’s code.

Perfect. Thank you. Do you have any online courses or anything where people can learn more from you? You’re quite a genius.

Great sleep lays the foundation for an excellent day and mood. Click To Tweet

All the products that we do at BIOptimizer are my life’s work. We do have an 84-day course. We got the nutrition book coming out. We tend to give people a lot of information when they buy our products. We give books away. We have a book called From Sick to Super Human. We have another book called The Brilliant Mind Blueprint. If you buy the nootropics, you get that. We tend to give away information and courses because I think people need to do the lifestyle stuff as much as the supplements and all the biohacking things we do. They’ll get that for free if they buy any BIOptimizer products.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Matt. This was fabulous, and the listener applied some of the stuff. Don’t just take this as passive entertainment or edutainment. Do something, make a difference in your life and the lives of others by applying what you learned here, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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About Matt Gallant

Matt Gallant is the CEO and Co-Founder of BIOptimizers and has a bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology. He’s been a strength and conditioning coach for multiple pro athletes, a self-defense instructor, and has over 15 years of experience formulating supplements. He’s also a serial entrepreneur who’s built around 13 profitable companies.

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