You want to just move the bass, you can just pick it up. You can also pick the whole thing up if you want to. It's the smallest micro change I've ever seen in my life. That was amazing. Okay, ready?
Oh, wait. Wait. So, we're rolling.
Yeah, rolling. Okay. Three, two, one.
Feels actually really good. I feel like my bowl is a little smaller than yours. That's always been the case.
Hello friends and family, colleagues. Uh, that was amazing. Very prominent ejaculation. Welcome to Random Show.
Welcome folks to another episode of the Random Show.
Yes. Couch audition edition.
That's right. ADU back of my place edition.
Why do we have these fancy balls?
So this is for people not looking. These are meditation balls. Yeah.
Got a bunch of script. Presumably that's Tibetan or Sanskrit or something.
And you have a little corner, but that's not the bad corner. That's the Zen corner.
Yeah, that's the Zen corner. Would you say bad corner?
Yeah. You know, you put kids in the bad corner.
You like stand. Did you have to do that as a kid?
In school, I got sent to like the bad table all the time.
Oh, yeah. And then the teacher in kindergarten sent me to the bad table with a bunch of other kids who were really bad and then forgot that she had decided it was the bad table and just left us at the bad table for like the entire year. And so she's explained a lot of psychological issues that I've carried with me.
This is not the bad table. This is the meditation area. And I have bowls over here that I just use. I just like the sound of a good... I mean, you heard that. Hopefully, it came through and didn't distort the mic. But a well-rung bowl is just... it kind of sets the tone for the beginning of the meditation, then also at the very end. It's also just perfect for a podcast in Southern California.
Yeah, exactly. Nice to be in person. Plays well in the whole SoCal environment. There's bowls per capita out here and crystal shops are very high.
High density. High density, man.
Yeah. Another beautiful day in SoCal.
Where should we start off, man? We got tons. We just came back from our retreat.
We did. We did. You want to describe the format?
Yeah. So, we've done a couple of these retreats. This is the second one where it's just a small group of people that are interested in meditation and that want to go a little bit deeper in the world of Zen. You know, you and I both talked about The Way and Henry Shookman a ton. The Way being his app. And Henry's just a great leader, great Zen master, and was accompanied by Valerie, another Zen master at Mountain Cloud Zen Center, New Mexico. So, we flew out there, small group, got together, and it's kind of like if a proper Zen retreat is like 5:30 cushion in the morning and then you're off at 7:00 p.m. and it's hardcore, like no talking, shitty food. This was not that. Like this was... we had a good chef that was there and we were allowed to ask questions in between sits. The sits were purposely kind of time bound to call it maximum of 25 minutes and then a walking meditation then another 25 minutes. That was like kind of the max.
Yeah. Let me interject just so we don't get into hyper-bougie territory too fast. So the chef was not our chef. He's actually, as I remember this, a former, I think, James Beard award winner who decided to forgo the accolades and the attention.
How is that less bougie than what I was going to say?
Well, you said we had a nice chef, and people might assume that we're like bringing in a chef. This is a chef who actually... he lives there locally.
I know that's the point I'm making. He lives at the Zen Center and has chosen a life of simplicity working with local ingredients and stuff.
And he is also normally there. It's not like we had our own dedicated chef.
That's right. That's not in my house. I eat venison jerky sticks most of the time. Lentils out of a can still.
And you chug my freaking ketones about 5 minutes ago. Tim just goes in my fridge and he's like, 'Okay, what are you up to? I want to see what Kevin's up to. I want to see.' He's like, 'Okay, we got a little semaglutide in here. We got some patha. What else?' He's like, 'Oh, ketones.' And he starts chugging my ketone esters.
Well, yeah. I unwrapped it and I was like, I probably should ask if I can drink this, but I'm guessing this has been in there for weeks.
Dude, I don't... that stuff that you drink is like... So, they make several versions of that. Yeah, that's like the full-on... I won't even... F-16 isn't the latest fighter jet. Whatever the gen 5 fighter jet is, F-22, it's the highest intensity. This is the Delta G brand ketone monoester, which is BHB, which is kind of what you want bound with something called 1,3-butanediol, which I will say if you see that on the ingredient list of your supplement for exogenous ketones, treat it like a shot of tequila. You really want to use it in moderation. And there's mounting evidence that it's pretty unhealthy for your liver. So just use in moderation in terms of ketone supplementation. But hey, right before a podcast, it's a great time for me to take like 15 g. I will not do 30 because... and I talked to, she'll probably come up again, our mutual friend Dr. Rhonda Patrick about this. I don't think I'm talking out of school here, but when you take, when I take, and this is true for her as well, and I suspect other people, the full 30, like the entire shot, rather than decreasing anxiety, it actually for me spikes it. And I think that could be related to a very rapid rise and then trough, right, afterwards, but who knows? The point is keep it moderate.
You're the first person to tell me that it impacts liver function and I have more often than not had elevated liver enzymes. Surprise, surprise, on the whole drinking front typically, but it's something I watch. And when did you hear about that? Cuz I'd never heard that to be the case.
I fortunately, by virtue of doing the podcast and also being incredibly interested in science, interact with a lot of researchers. So I get to have chats with them once I get to know them better about pre-publication data, right? Studies that are underway and they never want to talk about them publicly because you have to check all the boxes and science is also very much about not fooling yourself when you make a certain hypothesis. But the first whispers of this were from, and still are from, animal models where you can basically dose mice with 1,3-butanediol and give them the equivalent of fatty liver disease.
It's not good. And I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, but holy [__]. The point is treat it like ethanol. Treat it like not even tequila. Moonshine. Like you're drinking moonshine. And you wouldn't want to do that every day.
It tastes like moonshine or cough syrup.
Cough syrup. Moonshine. Yeah. So that is just to say I think they still think there's a time and a place for it. I've been experimenting with other versions like ketone salts. Dominic D'Agostino, he's also the co-author on some of the papers that are describing this.
He tried bath salts for a while too, which is... that was a very odd version of Tim that... if it's good for McAfee... just eat, eat, eat, eat, eating the flesh off of... yeah, eating people. Wasn't that thing that happens in the median in Florida? It's always a Florida man. Yeah. It's a Florida man dot dot dot. Yeah. Eats another person. Doing someone's face off after bath salts. Stay away from bath salts, kids. So, yeah, I came in nice and fully loaded today.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I am glad that you're feeling better cuz you also might not have made today. So, I... yeah, that's a sidebar. I ended up... I may have had a glancing blow of eggplant to which I'm deathly allergic and woke up in the middle of the incredibly sick last night. So, I'm glad I'm here. Yeah. And I brought my EpiPen for dinner later. Amazing. Learned my lesson. Bring your backup. Yeah. So, the retreat, let's finish that off real quick. So, we got together.
What did you learn this time around? Cuz we've done this twice. You've dabbled in the world of Zen. You've always said, correct me if I'm wrong, but meditation has been a hard thing for you typically. Mhm. Where are you now with your practice?
Well, what I would say is, you know, the first thing, speaking as very much still a novice on any level, I would say that meditation is kind of like sports or exercise. It's like, do you like exercise? Like, well, what kind of exercise, right? Meditation. There's so many different ways to meditate or explore mindfulness. There's the Vipassana approach. There's transcendental meditation. There's Zen, which is very much its own thing, right? And you know more about that than I do. But what I do find helpful about the retreats is you can describe what is going on when you're sitting still with your eyes closed trying to focus on something, in the case of say the breath, or trying to just observe whatever comes up. And the feedback that you get from someone like Henry or Valerie where you can do a 25-minute sit and then take a short break, talk about it and they can say, well, given that you experienced this, this maybe you had restlessness. Maybe you had, in my case, this sort of planning compulsion, right? So rather than memories or fantasies about who knows what, not necessarily. People can run wild with that, but I default to plans, like things I need to do, right? And it's like, okay, well, if that's coming up, then Henry might say, why don't you try in the next sit, which we're going to do in 10 minutes or 5 minutes, A, B, or C. And then you do it and you provide feedback. And so you're able to really polish the stone moving forward. And similar, I suppose, to a lot of what we might call transcendental experiences, which sounds fancy but it's really just perhaps not fixating on the self or interrogating what this thing is that we call the self, which you can do through meditation.
You can also do it with, or maybe you're forced to do it in some cases with, psychedelic experiences or other things, breath work.
When I was there at the retreat, you might remember this. I was getting very frustrated and I was like, where's all this frustration coming from? Yeah. And while I was there, I was like, I don't know how much I'm getting out of this right now. Mhm. But when I got back to quote-unquote real life in Austin, I had like 3 to 5 days of this just kind of blissful, calm attention where I was able to get everything done I need to get done. There was no rushing. There was no looping and any kind of future tripping. And I was like, well, that's very interesting. And it also holds true for say breath work, psychedelics. There are many different things that you could look at. And interestingly, maybe this is one way to think of it. I mean, in a sense, there are a lot of parallels between different methods for entering what people might consider a trance state. And I don't think meditation is exempt from that depending on what it is. But if it's a concentration practice, it's like for sure you're using a mantra or you're using something you're repeating. In the case of TM, in the same way that you might use rhythmic drumming. Yeah. And you can go some pretty weird places and then you come out of it and you're like, I don't know what to make of that. And sometimes the payoff is what you notice in the next unfolding week or two or three or whatever the duration might be. That's right. So that was very invigorating for me. And also Henry at one point used a prompt in response to... I'll give a great... this is a real-world example of something that happened to me, something I experienced in the sit, and then Henry's response. Right. So I use The Way all the time. Full disclosure, we're both involved with it. I mean, it's really because more than anything else, it's just I think it's good for humanity and people to learn from somebody who is really deliberate about layering on progressive skills that you can take outside of the meditation. But one of the practices is labeling. So if... and there are a million different ways to do this, but let's just say talk comes up in the mind and you label it radio or talking, and then if some kind of video comes up in the mind, right? Images, you're imagining something or planning something or remembering something. Okay, that's video, right? And so on and so forth. Yeah. But for me, as someone with very well-established OCD, I can just end up being like radio, radio, radio, and it turns into instead of a helpful thing, a very interruptive, stressful thing, right? And at that point in the retreat, and the retreat clearly was 3 to 4 days, something like that. It was very short. Henry said, 'Okay, well, let's...' He moved into the next sit and he said, 'Just be still, right? Like, just be still. That's it. That is the focus. Like, just sit still.' And did that for two consecutive sits. I just focused on that. And it was remarkable how much everything calmed down. I was like, 'Okay, well, just like exercise, like some people, sure, can go to the gym and do full sprinting workouts on an incline treadmill. Not everybody can do that, right? And other folks are well suited to yoga. Some people are well suited to different types of lifting, etc. And everybody should probably spend a little bit of time in each of those compartments if they can. But it's not like everyone is equally suited. For instance, in my case, to like the open monitoring stuff, like we'll just sit there and notice all the things that come up. I was like, so I came out of the retreat thinking, you know what, something along the lines of transcendental meditation, not necessarily with that branding, but using a [__], using 'just be still' as a concentration practice that I repeat really gives me a lot of payoff. If I just sit still for 10 to 20 minutes twice a day.
Can I tell you my theory on this? No. So my one of my theories, because I've been going super deep on bioelectric medicine and different ways of using electricity in place of pills basically and medications, which I think is really the next frontier in a million different ways. People should check out Michael Levin at Tufts and some of the crazy stuff he's able to do. But related to meditation, I did this deep dive with someone named Kevin Tracey, who's a very credible scientist, very widely cited, helped discover and explore a lot related to TNF-alpha and all sorts of things. And he is incredibly knowledgeable of vagus nerve stimulation. Not the bogus [__] kind, which is 99.9% of what you see on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. But using say implants the size of an omega-3 capsule in the neck, which is where the biggest nerves run. It's really like two transcontinental cables running down either side of the neck. Each one has about 100,000 fibers. And if you put an implant in that's giving continuous stimulation on and off, on and off. It's not 24/7. It's incredibly effective for things like rheumatoid arthritis. And actually, it was FDA approved. It was on the cover of the New York Times the day that I interviewed him. And that raised the question, how? Why? What's going on? And it just so happens when you stimulate the vagus nerve, you activate something called the inflammatory reflex. And you can in effect prevent damaging cytokine storms, decrease systemic inflammation of all different types. That word inflammation is kind of an umbrella term for a thousand million different things. And I remember chatting with one of my friends who is a professor. He was using the 10% Happier app by Dan Harris and he was meditating twice a day and after like one or two weeks he's like all of his aches which are debilitating. Like he had a lot of musculoskeletal issues, they just went away. And one way people might try to explain that is like, well, you're becoming more present to your feelings and maybe it was psychosomatic, right? But I think it might actually be when you sit still and you inherently end up breathing rhythmically because you can also stimulate your vagus nerve with say box breathing and other things, that you do that twice a day. If you were to use an implant or let's just say either ear-based or neck-based stimulation of the vagus nerve, guess how long it lasts? Roughly 12 hours. So you do it twice a day, you're getting full coverage. Oh, interesting. And so if you're getting full coverage, and there's a lot more to it, I won't dig too deep right now. If you're getting twice a day vagus nerve stimulation from sitting and focusing on breathing, even if you don't realize that you're entraining your breathing, I think that might have explanatory power for some of the benefits people see from meditation.
That's fascinating. So, I bought one of the vagus nerve stimulators that hooks onto my ear. Have you seen that one? And you feel that this little tiny pulse of current that's happening.
People who are not watching this may have trouble envisioning this, but I'm actually in communication with a couple of scientists in Scandinavia. I don't want to dox this guy because I don't think he's public with it yet, but there are two ways currently, non-invasively, to stimulate the vagus nerve that are commonly known. One is the neck, where you really press some type of device. There are a number of them out there, mostly used for migraines or cluster headaches. It's pretty unpleasant. You stimulate the neck and it activates the superficial muscles in your face and it pulls your face down.
And I used one of those for probably four to six weeks. Didn't see any systemic benefits. A friend of mine doubled his HRV using one of those devices. He had some — I'm not going to call it PTSD, but he had some overactive sympathetic drive.
Mhm. And the vagus nerve stimulation is associated with the rest and digest parasympathetic. Okay. Which is also why right now I stimulate before bed, five minutes twice a day.
I mean, I do for the ear. Jesus Christ. No, I talk about the... for the ear. There's something called the tragus. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah. If people can see, most of the research...
This little bit right here. Most right here. Okay.
And you can look this up online. You kind of want the portion of the tragus that is closer to your sideburns, let's say.
And then you need another piece that is grounding and/or completing the circuit, and that's got to be touching your skin. The contact point is incredibly important.
Are there any of these that you like that are consumer available? Because a lot of the stuff you mentioned...
You can DIY it with components off of Amazon, and maybe I'll make that available to folks. The reason I hesitate to do that is that it's easy to get wrong, and you can... I just don't want to be responsible for people trying to put current through their heads. Right. There are a lot of people who DIY trying to do TMS and stuff.
Yeah. This is the one, and they reverse polarity, and they like... you can fry your brain. Not with the vagus nerve stuff necessarily, but you got to be really careful with stimulation.
Have you ever heard of this one? Neuropod.
Yeah. I haven't had... I mean, it's basically, if you look at who's involved on the scientist level, like it's crazy the number of... you know, N-E-U-R-O-P-O-D. Let me see. The world's most studied wearable vagus nerve stimulation. 100 plus international... UCLA did a study, there's Penn...
That's interesting to check it out.
It's interesting, but I will say, like, just beyond anything I've owned, this thing for about a year and a half, I did it for about two weeks for 30 minutes a day, and I didn't notice anything.
Yeah, I'm looking. It's hard for me to see the placement on the earpiece. The placement is very, very, very specific.
Clips right here to this lobe right here.
Oh, yeah. I don't think that's in the right place.
But you feel a little ticky ticky tick, like shock almost.
Yeah. I don't think you're... Look, this is my first time seeing it, but I don't think you're going to be necessarily hitting as many fibers as you would want if that's the placement.
But who knows? Look, a lot of fancy names on the website. Maybe I'll take a look at it. Yeah, I mean, it's worth mine. I want something I can recommend to people.
Yeah, exactly. Right now, I can't recommend this because it's not done anything for me. But when I was doing the research for the most, like this one, they've clearly paid for studies to be done. Obviously, that's a huge grain of salt because who's doing the studies and what their biases and whatnot. But I'll let you borrow mine and see if it does anything for you. It is a $900 device, which is like... that's a lot of money to spend.
Yeah, I'm using a prototype of one from Scandinavia right now. On Amazon, look, I'm sure people can find some instructions for this. You can DIY something for like 20 to 25 dollars worth of components on Amazon.
It is not. It's just a small unit with cables. The placement is very challenging to get right.
And I did not see much in terms of results from me, even with a lot of professional guidance using that. So I want to tell you about something related.
But can I stop for a second? Try breathing. Like, do box breathing. Or something like that. Do that twice a day.
Okay. This is why also in 'The Great Nerve', which is a book written by Kevin Tracy, it's a great book, there's an extended chapter about Wim Hof. And Wim Hof is a very controversial figure, but well known for breathwork. And you see some of the same effects in terms of controlling immune response so that it is not excessive with respect to various types of cytokines and so on. You can do it with breathwork.
So yeah, what are we looking at?
This. Have you ever heard of HeartMath?
I have heard of HeartMath.
Okay. Yeah. I went to a little mini retreat where they were doing like a bunch of different modalities in terms of different therapies and things to just really let you be the best version of yourself. And one of the things that they did was they gave you a HeartMath device and they had a whole class on it. And I was like, 'Yeah, I heard of that thing before. I never tried it.' And so I hooked it up to my ear and it measures your HRV. But what blew my mind was that the app, once you launch it, it's like, follow this box breathing and you get to watch your HRV in real time.
And dude, when I followed it just as it was telling me what to do, the HRV just like shot up.
And then I would try and trick it, and I'd follow it, but I'd think of something really stressful and my HRV would go down. So there, I'm telling you, this is the coolest device I have owned in a while. And you lock into this coherence mode as you do this breathing. And it's pretty awesome. It's 250 bucks. I'm not an investor or anything, but heartmath.com. And 60-day money-back guarantee. And well, I want to say that because I hate recommending stuff.
Affiliate code Kevin, 40%.
Exactly. Tim, 20% off. I hate recommending stuff when people spend their money, but I will say this with the one thing that I was...
I've heard good things about HeartMath. I don't know who's involved. I did... Maybe you didn't know this. For a period of time, maybe it was about three months, I did training for this specifically, I think it was before any retail options were available, with a doctor named Leah Lagos, who has a book about this. And we actually in real time...
would do a video call and identify what type of breathing specifically would have in real time the biggest impact on HR.
And there is something to this. There's definitely something to this. I can't speak to HeartMath, but I've heard of it before. So, don't worry about the device for stimulation. The point being, try meditating twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes. And if you're like, ugh, meditating, god, I'm allergic to that word because it gets used so much. Try breathing, right? Use HeartMath or something else. There's not a whole lot you need to worry about. Andy Weil has some very good breathing exercises.
Yeah. So, I have box breathing and 4-7-8 on my app. It's still in the app store and it's 100% free.
Yeah, there's no way you have to pay for anything on the app. So, if you just Google, you can find it and it has like six different breathing techniques on there that people do.
I think here's a hypothesis/bet. I think that if it hasn't been demonstrated already — I haven't done a full lit search for this — I think there are breathing patterns, if you repeat them in the morning and at night, twice a day, roughly 12 hours apart, like 10 to 20 minutes, that you will see a lot of benefits for things like chronic pain.
I think it is. I really feel very confident about it.
So that's exciting.
Yeah. Sweet. What else you got? I've got crazy things. I mean, I just had my birthday a few weeks ago, which is crazy because I'm marching towards 50 really quick.
I know. And so are you getting dragged through the doorway with your fingernails leaving?
It's really scary from the linoleum.
Well, what's crazy is, dude, okay, so when Tim and I first started hanging out, like whatever, 15 years ago, 17 years ago, maybe 20 — I don't even know how long — close to 20 years ago.
It was 20 years ago. You know, every time you walk into Tim's house, he like tackles you with some kind of new jiu-jitsu move to take you down. And like the last three years, he's been carrying a ball for his lower back where he's like, 'I can't move.' And it's like old man Tim has appeared, and that old Tim that would tackle you with a jiu-jitsu move is gone.
The gentle art, not so gentle, turns out.
But I know one of the things that I want to really focus on for this next decade is balance. Balance obviously is such a key thing, and it's the number one way that people as they get older, in their 60s, 70s and beyond, are actually permanently injured, is by falling and breaking a hip and things like that. So, two things to show off.
Like incredible increase in risk of all-cause mortality if you're older and you break a hip.
Yes. Turns out breaking hips are not good. So, check this out. This one right here I've had for a while.
Don't fall on your wobble board.
So, don't — can you imagine? I smash my face on the wobble board. So, I'm going to show you how this works. Have you used this before?
And so, are you good at these or no?
Oh god, you feel like a parent watching after me. How well can you do the balance boards?
Uh, I haven't done it in a long time. There's one called the Indo Board, which I have and I've messed around with it. I don't think today is the day. Well, so check this out. So, five minutes a day. There was some research that was done around people with ADHD and it dramatically improved their symptoms, which I have a ton of.
Yeah, you can't really...
But I want to know if you can do this. I want to see if you can do the...
You have to pay attention if you're on this thing.
I don't know. Never tried it.
And then the tippy toes. So, I do 50 squats like this.
I should also point out you have history as a skateboarder.
Let's see. Let's see. Tim, I don't know if I'm going to... You'll be okay. You'll be okay. I'll hold your hand when you go up.
Come on. Just give it a shot for a second. I want to see.
I'll give you some Depends and a walker so you can get up there.
Okay. So, one foot there.
Jesus. Okay. Oh [__]. Hold on. There you... there. Oh, it's got blockers so you won't slide off the end. Yeah. Yeah. Lean hard, right? Hard right. Hard on the right foot.
Well, I'm like nervous about falling over. There you go. There we go. Now the squat. This is kind of like slacklining where you need a couple of days to get your nervous system...
Yeah.
Yeah. Isn't it amazing how your nervous system adapts to it?
Yeah.
So, there's a crazy video people should check out. I think maybe it's not online. There's a guy named Zor Gregoric I had on the podcast. He's got to be 70-something right now, but he was 67. He could stand on one of these at 67 with a fully loaded barbell with like 150, 200 lb. He weighs probably 130, and he could do a perfect-form Olympic snatch, landing ass to heels, and then stand back up and do repetitions.
So, dude, when I was just in Japan last week...
All right, there we go. That's enough.
When I was just in Japan last week, I was out there and I was at this event — whoops — I was at this friend's birthday party that Tony Hawk's also friends with. I was hanging with Tony and he's like...
Last time I saw Tony, I was like, 'Dude, how you doing?' Because...
Tony Hawk, one of the most legendary skateboarders of all time, for people who don't know.
People definitely know who Tony Hawk is, but yeah, you might...
I mean, a lot of people know who Tony...
So, Tony, for the youngsters...
Last time I saw him, he had a cane.
And I was like — this was probably like eight months ago or whatever — and I was like, 'Dude, how you doing?' And he's like, 'I just got a couple screws put into my hip,' and you know, he had this injury. And I was like, 'Holy [__], man.' In my head I'm like, a [__] legend. You know, pushing himself in his 50s to do like — he's still doing, you know, whatever, 720s on the halfpipe in his mid-50s, like [__] crazy. And I saw him up in Hokkaido and we were going snowboarding. He's like, 'Yeah, I'm going boarding today.' He has no cane, no nothing. And I'm like, 'Do you have pain? Like, do you have pain? Like, do you feel pain?' Like, what are you doing in your mid-50s doing vert snowboarding, you know what I mean? And he's just like, yeah, he's like, 'My wife jokes that I should have a shirt that says like always in pain or something like that.' And I was just like...
That is a... some people are built like that, though.
Have you ever seen his shins? I'm sure they're just like... he looks like a Thai kickboxer.
Yeah, exactly, dude. He has been hit so many times by the board. It's insane.
You and your birthday... when I was at your birthday in New York, probably about, I don't know, maybe seven, ten years ago, you had a slackline in your backyard.
And I couldn't do it at all. Not even one step, because it is very much a nervous system practice.
It's a nervous system practice.
So I found this online, it's like a little home one. Do you have one like this?
That's cool. I have played around with these. These are pretty sweet. So I have not used the smaller ones. I had one between trees, same company, Gibbon. And just for people who've never played with this, if you're going to try it, don't do like an hour thinking that you're going to figure it out in one day. You actually, my belief is you need sleep cycles for your nervous system to try to integrate it. So you're better off doing a few minutes every day and gradually you'll figure it out. But that's cool. Very portable. So obviously a lot easier to set up and take down than a gigantic thing between two trees with ratchets and everything.
Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to get one because again on the balance front, they have a little QR code there at the end that you scan and they give you about 20 or 30 different exercises that you can do with it, like the toe taps where one foot is on and you tap a toe on each side of the bar. And like you're right in there's this weird thing and I noticed this in my kids where they got those little hoverboards for Christmas so they can just kind of zoom around and they're seven and eight. And day one, like eating [__], you know, helmets, full gear, and day two my youngest is just like flying over the place, totally figured it out there. But it took a couple days of that kind of adaptation and that muscle memory to kind of kick in, which I think all these things do. But yeah, this has been awesome.
Yeah. And for people who might want to try slacklining, don't get on a slackline really far off the ground, number one. But a lot of rock climbing gyms have slacklines set up so you can potentially get someone to show you the basic ropes, pun intended, of walking on a slackline over there. And it's called Gibbon. Pretty sure this is why it's called Gibbon, because if you see really good slackliners, they do this with their arms as they're walking across. And what does that look like? It looks like a gibbon, this monkey. And you can see footage of gibbons walking across like rope on small suspension bridges. Pretty fascinating stuff. So try it out.
Awesome. And you know, I'll throw something out there.
Because it's related to rock climbing. Well, a couple of things since you brought it up. So for the last two days, you know, we've been hanging out a little bit and you have not seen my little blow-up Pilates ball that I usually put behind my L.
I just mentioned it a few minutes ago. I normally do see it. Yeah, but you haven't seen it.
I know. So what's going on? Well, it seems like, and this is not going to apply to most people, and this is a work in progress, so it's not definitive, but I ended up meeting with a neurologist and surgeon in Austin.
And you've injected baby seal stem cells into your spine.
No, it's going to be some [__] like that. Like, no, it might apply to a very, very small fraction of the people who are actually listening to this.
He did imaging. He used to be in a clinic where they ran trials and studies related to something called Bertolotti syndrome. And Bertolotti syndrome is incredibly uncommon. Most specialists in his profession might see one or two cases in their entire careers, but he's seen hundreds. And he looked at my imaging and he said, 'You may actually have Bertolotti syndrome.' And he pointed out they had very advanced imaging. It's the first time it came up. It corresponds perfectly to where I point to when people ask me where I have pain, excuse me. And it's in effect where you have a transitional segment. So it's like a lumbar vertebrae that's behaving like a sacral vertebrae or vice versa. And let's just say it's like L5 and the transverse processes, I think it's transverse processes on both, try to form a pseudo joint. So they basically lay on bone and other material to try to create what is then called a pseudo joint. And if you look at textbook cases of Bertolotti's, you're like, 'Yeah, of course that's going to hurt your low back.' And as a way of testing the hypothesis, he said, 'Well, before we even consider any interventions, let's try to hone in on whether that is accurate or not as a diagnosis. The way we'll do that is there are some nerves that affect that area specifically. There's no like radiating effect or anything down the leg. Let's put in effectively a nerve block and then see what happens.' Like we'll put in a nerve block.
What does a nerve block... basically stops the area from transmitting pain signals. But like what does it mean though? What when you put in a nerve block?
Well, you lay down, in my case, on your face. I hate when anyone is messing with my spine, man. It's like very... I've had so many things done to me and I'm usually cool as a cucumber, but when needles are like in or around my spine, yeah, I really get the fear sweats. I don't like it at all. But in this case, that was required. So you get a... in this case it was, I think it was lidocaine, small amount of lidocaine to numb the surface. Then they're going through quite a bit of deep musculature. So they go in and then they're putting in... and obviously you need specialists for this who... the baby seal... prolocaine, they have baby seal semen... um, no, it was prolocaine and something called Kenalog. But none of those specifics are the punch line. The punch line is after he did the injection he said, 'Okay, this particular portion of the cocktail is going to last 18 hours and then you're going to get probably two weeks of effect from the Kenalog,' something like that, which is a cortisone shot basically. And he said, 'I want you to do all of the things that you think will most piss off your back. Like all the things you've been avoiding,' which for me are sitting on hard surfaces, sitting with a slightly flexed back, like if you're sitting on a bar stool and you're kind of like this, any of those, stretching in that position, sitting on the floor with the dogs, certainly things like heavy deadlifts, squats. So I did all of that stuff for three days straight. Zero pain. And I'm like, 'Holy shit.' After having so many specialists from different disciplines say like, 'Yeah, I know you point to that, but that's not the spot. It's actually because there's referral pain from this, this, or this.' And just having so many people dismiss how precisely I could point to where I felt the most pain, which was consistent over years. And for the first time, he's like, 'If we look at the imaging right here, it is exactly where you were grinding with your finger.' So I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean, this is the first time in six years.
Also, just like you have, there are different tools that work for different people. Sometimes it requires multiple tools. A lot of people have benefited from the work of John Sarno. But that school, for instance, in effect says none of the imaging really maps to symptoms. Well, it's all in your head. So do cognitive training and reconditioning to solve it because...
That's the guy that Howard Stern got his back problems fixed through, right?
It might be... a lot of people benefit from that stuff. But it's also infuriating to be told like every type of back pain is in your head. I'm like, really? If I took a ball-peen hammer and smashed one of your vertebrae, that would be in your head? Like, I guess technically since the brain is governing pain, like fine. But this is the first time with a very simple, relatively simple but precise intervention. I guess it's been about five days. It's like I can do everything with no pain. So...
Dude, that's amazing. So what does that mean? Well, could be the cortisol shot. That's the one thing that's like... Well, that is probably... had that before, right? Or no?
No, I haven't. But here's the thing. So that's going to have anti-inflammatory... a different... yeah, anti-inflammatory. It's also going to basically kind of, for lack of a better term, like puff up the pseudo joint in a way that sort of reverses the chronological age or development of that in some ways from a symptom perspective. But this is where I'll offer people something they can potentially look into, obviously with the help of really, really, really good doctors. If that shot continues to deliver benefits and I can do all these things pain-free, which is the case right now, then there's something called radiofrequency ablation, RFA, which is used to, in this case, temporarily completely incapacitate those nerves. So they go in, they apply radiofrequency ablation and that should last for like a year, a year and a half hopefully. And the hope in that case is, okay, with a year, year and a half, and I already spoke... you know, I've spoken to multiple people and they're like, 'Yeah, it shouldn't... even if you resume a lot of your activities and stair-step into it that previously caused pain, you shouldn't structurally make that worse,' right? That was a concern. And I think that's enough of a period of time where you could effectively reprogram your pain patterning, right? Because for years now, it's like if I sit on a hard surface, my brain is like code red, DEFCON 5, like you are about to not be able to sleep for six to seven days. And you're going to have trouble walking and sitting and standing. So super exciting.
All right. So, you mind if I continue my TED talk for a second? All right. So, also had long overdue surgery. I think I might have talked about this last time, but on my extensors, right? So the forearm extensors. So this would be considered like tennis elbow. Oh god. Like 20-plus years overdue from a sports injury. And I'm back to rock climbing. I'm not great at rock climbing, but I love it. I just love rock climbing. Feeling really good. And if people have never seen something called Abra Hangs, so like Abraham, but Abra Hangs, go on YouTube, find this Swedish rock climber named Emil Abrahamsson. So Abrahamsson, S-O-N. He is a monster. Very competent rock climber. Does like V13 problems and probably much more. Incredible explainer of things and dives into a lot of training. And he, along with the help of this scientist named Keith Barr, B-A-R, who I've actually had on the podcast, developed or tested this protocol for improving tendon strength. And it is the simplest, lowest-impact thing you can imagine. It's basically 10 minutes twice a day. And he does a bunch on a hangboard, but let's keep it simple. Let's say you're hanging on... could be a pull-up bar, could be a door jamb, could be, you know, the underside of some stairs, whatever. And he's hanging with like 30 to 85% of his weight. So his feet are still on the floor. Does that for 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off, 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off, and you do it 10 times. That's 10 minutes. And then you do it again later in the day. And his before-and-after strength and endurance tests are mind-blowing. This is already a guy who we could say is a high-level climber and to see like the before-and-after is crazy. So you don't always have to kill yourself to adapt in really, really interesting ways. And that's something I've really, really benefited from. But the low back has been a limiter, right, for like the last few months because hanging from a bar, if I don't engage the abs, it could cause some issues with the low back and spasming. So I bought this thing recommended by a friend of mine, Nick Norris, who's also been on the podcast, former Navy SEAL, called the Nug. And the Nug is... it's about the size of like a gigantic bar of soap. It's a piece of wood and it has different depths of grips on it. It's like 25 millimeters, 20 millimeters, and you can move it around really easily. And basically, like you could keep it in a jacket pocket. And as long as you have a carabiner, like one of those things that kind of clicks on, you can do all sorts of exercises while you're traveling. And at home, I have basically a plate-loading pin that you can load plates on. Yeah, exactly. So that you can basically do like a single-handed deadlift. And so this is the same as essentially doing the hanging board.
It's similar, right? You're going to be... I'm looking for the same kind of loading.
But what you can also do is take this thing that you can fit in your pocket and attach it to like a low cable machine. That's what I was doing in Santa Fe, actually.
And just like get the weight off the ground, you know, the stack off of the resting position. And then I was doing 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off. 10 seconds on, 50 seconds.
And you only have one of these?
Yeah, because I'll do one hand and then I'll do the other. Like 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 40-second rest. 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 40-second rest. And I think a lot... Yeah. The website is fictitiousclimbing. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but like friction, fictitiousclimbing. They have the Nug. They have a bunch of other items that you can use while traveling for this, which are really, really interesting. So that's another one that I've been traveling with. I'll let you go and then...
Yeah, it's just a fun little tool to play with. Do not overdo finger training. You do not want to tear a pulley or something in your fingers. So less is more. Less is more. Less is more. This is I guess something like 30 to 85% of body weight. And if obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, if you're doing that's with two hands. So if you're doing it with one hand, it's going to be, you know, 15 to 40%.
That's amazing. Well, this is cool. Thanks. I already just ordered by the time you're done talking about it.
Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to play with.
Yeah. So I've got a couple things. One, I was hanging with Craig Mod in Japan. And you've had Craig on the show before.
Craig, amazing. Amazing guy. I don't think there's anybody that understands like Japan the way that Craig does, like in terms of the backcountry and just like the little artisans and all the stuff that he's into. Craig has walked, I probably fair to say, like thousands of miles of different trails and pilgrimage paths in Japan. It's very likely he has walked more of Japan on foot than any other person.
Yeah. So he was out here visiting. He actually stayed in this house for a week when he was out here in LA. And I walked in and he's got all his little toiletries like sitting out, you know? And I'm always like... it's like sitting out. He puts it all in Japanese order where it's like got a nice little cloth and it's got like all this [__]... like dresses like a Japanese person.
I know. I know. I know. So I mean, he's lived it for 25 years, so that kind of makes sense.
But I saw his toothbrush and I was like, that is a dope-looking toothbrush. And I got you one.
So you can get these on Amazon. It's got a really wide head. He said it's his favorite Japanese toothbrush.
So for people who can't see it, it's like the toothbrush bristles are almost in a square, right? I mean, it's very square, like as opposed to being more elongated. And so you get three of these for $11.50 on Amazon. And what does it say in Japanese?
From Premium Care. Old Toaster here.
Hey, buddy. Like an old man Toaster. I was just saying hi to him earlier. This is Toaster now, 15. You know, I was just saying to Daria that the last time we did a podcast sitting on a couch was at your place in San Francisco back when Toaster was a puppy and he chewed through the cable, the XLR cables on the Zoom.
Yeah. He can't hear anything anymore. And sadly, his back legs are falling out from underneath him now. But...
Look at that. He's still a good dude. I feel like you recognize me because I've seen him so many times.
He's such a good boy. So yes. Premium care. Yes. Yes. I got you one of those and like there's a three-pack for $11.50. I think it's great. It's a fantastic toothbrush.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I dig it. Thank you.
Speaking of all things Japanese. So I am hesitant to give this up. So if you want to get... if you want to get a loan stock, only one left. Well, hold on. Let me tell you why. So first of all, check this out. Check out this jacket.
Cool. All right. Oh, nice. You feel how heavy that is. Feels like almost like a... I know what this is. I know what this is. So this is a fireman's jacket in Japan.
And this is a heavy, like dope fireman's jacket. It's vintage. Probably hard to rip. Like the 1970s.
And so I found a store on Etsy.
How did you even think to look for this? Because I love this style of jacket.
Vintage Japanese fireman jacket. I just typed in like Japanese jacket on Etsy. And so this importer... they import like the coolest vintage Japanese everything from jackets to... like you know how they used to do that patchwork kind of work where they take stuff, they would like patch quilts out of old material. Yeah. So like everything from like little tiny shrines to wicker baskets. Like, dude, check out the store. Let me just show you the store real quick. And the only reason I'm plugging it is... vintage Japanese indigo-dyed Kindo jacket. So they got all the little dolls. They've got... look at these different types of indigo-dyed kind of blankets. And...
The seller is just an importer from Japan. Exporter. No, I will. So he... well, here's the deal. It's so inexpensive. Like in the States, if you were to buy this jacket from a designer called Visvim, which is like a well-known Japanese designer, this style of jacket would be... gosh, I mean, it would probably be $2,500.
More expensive than my car.
No, it's not. They sell these jackets on there for... here's one for $92. Like, look at this vintage 1960s jacket. $92.
Oh, that's cool. Oh, watch out, buddy.
Okay, bud. He kind of needs a little help. I don't think you're ready for this slackboard, my friend.
Okay. I know. I know. I mean, that jacket's dope. Oh, but I just wanted to give this out there because I think if you're looking to buy vintage fun things in... you can't score.
I know. I know. I know. I'm being an idiot.
If you're looking for just various objects around your house that are vintage from Japan, this place is insanely inexpensive for all different types of things.
Yeah. So the Etsy name is Blue Heritage Japan.
4.9 stars, thousands of reviews.
But look at some of the stuff.
Yeah, that's cool. These kind of hanging tapestries for stores and stuff. Those are fun.
