The World’s Hardest Health Protocol: Dry Fasting for Stem Cells Activation, Disease Reversal, & Max Autophagy

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. Can you really reset your body and achieve peak cellular health by intentionally abstaining from water and food. Dry fasting, a forgotten health practice, is once again experiencing a resurgence of popularity and is reshaping the way we think about stem cell production, regenerative medicine, getting the body so healthy that chronic health conditions just disappear, and perhaps most notably, radically alter the biological aging process. Join me and guest Theo Lussier as we unpack the science, share personal experiments, and explore how lifestyle tweaks can unlock new levels of health.

Nick Urban [00:01:24]:
Some of the many things that we unpack together include the science of the phase angle test and why this overlooked biomarker is crucial to understand your biological age, cellular health, and just how rapidly and profoundly dry fasting can impact this when not much else does. We also explore what to expect when dry fasting, how it compares to a more traditional water fast, the benefits associated uniquely with dry fasting, practical tips and tricks to dry fast a safe and effective way, the key tenets that you must not violate if you want to experience the same clinically validated benefits of dry fasting. We also talk about the role of bathing in water while dry fasting. You can’t drink it, but you can bathe in it. And cold water immersion in general. This is part 2 of my interview with Theo. Theo Lussier is a biohacking entrepreneur, a supplement formulator, and natural health researcher, helping people escape burnout and restore vibrant energy, all by powering up the body’s natural healing intelligence. If you’re interested in learning about dry fasting, I wrote an article, and you can find that by searching outlier, o u t l I y r, and then the words dry fasting.

Nick Urban [00:02:52]:
I will also put that in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at mindbodypeak.com/189. I also plan on experimenting with dry fasting in January or February of 2025. I’ll be taking a biological age test before and after to see what kinda impact one course has on my overall rate of aging, plus my overall health. Okay. I hope you enjoy this episode with Theo Lussier. Theo, I wanna go on to discussing a topic that I thought was gonna be the focus of this entire episode, and that is dry fasting. We haven’t we’ve you’ve alluded to it briefly, but as, like, using the detox strategies such as the niacin sauna and EDTA to prepare for that. Let’s go into the world of dry fasting now.

Theo Lucier [00:03:46]:
Well, I would say it’s the world’s hardest detox. That’s kinda after my 7 day experience recently, that’s that’s definitely why I’m calling it. But really the the there’s two reasons why you would wanna consider a dry fast.

Nick Urban [00:04:02]:
Let’s first define what dry fasting even is in case people haven’t even heard of dry fasting.

Theo Lucier [00:04:07]:
You’re gonna have 0 food and 0 water for 1, 2, 3, 5, 4, 7 days. And in the case of a Russian dry fasting clinic where they’re treating somebody with a chronic disease, it’s going to be 11 days. So that’s no food, no water, nothing. It’s it’s pretty hardcore. So then the next question is, oh my god, you’re gonna die after 3 or 4 days, like why would you do that? It activates a different enzymatic pathway in your body. So when you do water fasting, your body is gonna rely on a process called gluconeogenesis to generate energy. So it’s gonna take protein in your body like muscle and it’s gonna break it down into sugar and use that for energy. Your heart is a muscle.

Theo Lucier [00:04:55]:
So it’s gonna start breaking that stuff down and use it, and you’re gonna lose muscle mass when you do a wet fast. If you do a dry fast, a different enzymatic pathway is turned on. You actually don’t lose muscle. You don’t get gluconeogenesis. But what does happen is that fat and then scar tissue tumors, dysregulated cells are called senescence cells where they’re kind of functioning but not really. It shreds those up for fat. It’s basically it’s like really aggressive autophagy on steroids. So, you know, you think of people doing intermittent fasting or one meal a day, you have that autophagy during the day.

Theo Lucier [00:05:36]:
It’s like that times a1000000. And it’s just imagine this big cleanup crew going through your body and it’s just shredding unhelpful tissue. And then if you make it to, day 4, you get a stem cell release. And make it to day 6, you get a second stem cell release. And that’s kind of besides the cellular detox component. That is the main reason to do it. I mean, you could fly down to Mexico, you know, get a stem cell treatment for 30 grand.

Nick Urban [00:06:07]:
A lot

Theo Lucier [00:06:07]:
of them will die at the injection site or you could get your own perfect stem cells that your body makes for you and just get this endogenous treatment all on your own, for free. I mean, drive fast.

Nick Urban [00:06:21]:
What’s the magnitude of effect size from your own stem cells to this process? Like the bio I guess the the because numbers are one thing, but it’s not just numbers. It’s like the body’s ability to use those, like the bioavailability, I guess, of your own stem cells versus ones you would get injected? Like, are you getting a therapeutic effect of this or is it just like a nice clinical number but not necessarily meaningful?

Theo Lucier [00:06:44]:
No. It’s for dry fasting, it’s a therapeutic effect. And so I would recommend, if you I have read Doctor. Philanoff’s book yet. So anything that he’s translated into English, read because he’s got studies referenced in there. It’s a therapeutic effect because that’s the thing with dry fasting. Like if you interrupt these cycles, you can retard your body’s ability to make stem cells in the future. So,

Nick Urban [00:07:13]:
if

Theo Lucier [00:07:13]:
you do a 5 day dry fast and you you quit during the stem cell release portion, you’re gonna you’re gonna harm your stem cell production. It’s a huge amount. And then if you make it to day 6, you get a second wave. You can feel it when it happens. It’s really tiring. I mean, I would say, you know, it convinced me man is like I read the Phoenix protocol. And I was like, man, I don’t know. I mean, it made sense.

Theo Lucier [00:07:40]:
And he’s got all the data in there to back it up. I’m like, I’m gonna do this, but I was like, wasn’t excited about it. And then I was on this really long flight. And most of August Dunning’s videos on his YouTube channel are short. And so I just downloaded them all to my laptop and I watched them from the very first one to like, you know, it was like a couple years later. I watched them on like 2x speed.

Nick Urban [00:08:02]:
And I

Theo Lucier [00:08:02]:
was just taking notes. And you can watch him d 8. I mean, at the first video he starts off and you’re like, jeez, man, this guy looks pretty rough. And and then 2 years later, he’s, like, sleek. He’s, like, trim. He’s got more muscle on. He looks younger. He’s got fewer wrinkles.

Theo Lucier [00:08:22]:
His skin tone looks better. And you’re like, woah. Oh, oh, okay. Like, what else do I need to know here? So, yeah, it is a therapeutic amount of stem cells.

Nick Urban [00:08:33]:
Interesting. Yeah. That’s the book I’m reading, The Phoenix Protocol by August Dunning. I had a couple questions so far. I think since you’re more immersed in this world, you’d understand it more than I have because I haven’t actually looked into a lot of the research he cited. One of the things you mentioned is gluconeogenesis or breakdown of tissue, specifically skeletal muscle tissue and everything as being one of the consequences of going without food if you are consuming water at the same time. So what he says is that your body uses a different pathway. And I think it has to do with the hypothalamus and antidiuretic hormone and epinephrine, but then that pathway chooses preferentially, for lack of a better term, to burn body fat instead of skeletal muscle.

Nick Urban [00:09:21]:
Why is that the case only when you’re not consuming any water as well?

Theo Lucier [00:09:27]:
I don’t know. Like, the biochemical pathway is so complex, and most of that research is in Russian. It’s only I mean, hardly any of it’s been translated. What Dunning used to write that book is pretty much what’s available in English. I think it’s a survival mechanism. I mean, clearly humans went through many periods in our evolution where there was no food and no water available and the body just flips this switch. Just like, okay, cool. We’re gonna shred a 100 grams of fat and we’re gonna get a 115 grams of endogenous water.

Theo Lucier [00:10:08]:
Great. And then we’re gonna use the glycerol or whatever it is from the fat for energy and we’re gonna we’re gonna switch to a ketone metabolism instead of a glucose metabolism. So, ketone metabolism instead of a glucose metabolism. So I mean, the the speculation that I read around that is that it’s it’s it’s literally it’s a survival mechanism and you usually only get stem cells when you’re injured, right? And so, I mean, this is it’s kind of like an injury to the body. I mean, it’s like literally trying to help you stay alive, which is why they recommend I mean, if you’re doing a 7 day dry fast, they don’t they recommend, you know, once a year, at most. I think Dunning used to recommend twice a year for that, but he no longer does. I found a 5 day was a lot easier than a 7 day.

Nick Urban [00:10:54]:
Yeah. That makes sense.

Theo Lucier [00:10:55]:
Those last 2 days make a big difference. But but, yeah, the, I mean, it’s gotta be a survival mechanism. Right?

Nick Urban [00:11:03]:
Yeah. The prevailing wisdom is that whenever you’re going long periods without carbohydrates, and that’s why some people say carbs are not essential because your body can use gluconeogenesis to create its own. Usually, the consequences is you’re shredding your tissue your your vital tissues as August Dunning calls it in the book. And that’s eventually perhaps your bone. It’s your brain tissue, which is really high in cortisol receptors. Yeah. It’s your muscle tissue. It’s a lot of different things like that.

Nick Urban [00:11:31]:
And what’s interesting about this is that he proposes an alternate mechanism, and I’d assume that there is research that’s been done to to show that this is what’s happening. Because otherwise, how can you go against the grain and state this is the mechanism if there isn’t any proof?

Theo Lucier [00:11:47]:
The Russians did it. So they they have 60 plus years of clinical proof. I mean, I mean, one of the researchers, he went 30 days, no food, no water just to prove it could be done. But they’ve done I mean, there’s whole clinics over there that they treat people using this. There’s just not a lot of language on it or language. There’s not a lot of information on it in the English language. So I mean, me just kind of liking to experiment and being who I am, I just kinda jumped in and did it. I mean, my first one was a 5 day, which is a mistake.

Theo Lucier [00:12:21]:
If I could do that over again, I would do a one, and then a 2 and then a 3. And then if you go if you make it to day 3 and you don’t stop, then you’re locked into 5 because then you’re gonna get into the stem cell release because it’s very specific cycles. But yeah, I would work up to it. I mean, I do one day dry fast pretty regularly. And I think those will be mainstream in a few years because it it resets your gut just like so fast. Like, if you have some gut inflammation, you got leaky gut, you ate something that is causing bloat, whatever, it, like, it completely resets that.

Nick Urban [00:13:00]:
One of the things I found interesting is he was talking about water production and urine production and how even though you haven’t consumed anything for a day, 2 days, 5 days, you still your body’s still producing urine. It’s not like you just completely stuck going to the bathroom. And he was describing like, which makes sense from, like, molecular biology perspective that your body is creating metabolic water, which is, like, the most important form of water to have and to consume. I mean, you can’t, like, consume because whenever you consume water, your body has to convert that water into bioavailable usable metabolic water.

Theo Lucier [00:13:35]:
The water of life, they call it. Yeah. I would say so that’s true. So my urine output went up. Both dry fast, I tracked it. And the stuff that comes out of there, man, I don’t know what it what it was. But I mean, my first five day, it was like gray. Like as soon as it settled in the jar, there was like black and gray.

Theo Lucier [00:13:57]:
I mean, it was crazy. So, but yeah, your urine production goes up because the the autophagy, the ketosis, you know, the ketotic state gets greater and greater. And so your body’s just ripping apart that and, you know, senescent cells and tumors and what have you. And, yeah, it does go up and it sounds weird, but you’re not thirsty. It’s really weird. Your mouth is dry. And that’s a bummer. And it’s kind of annoying.

Theo Lucier [00:14:27]:
But you’re not thirsty and you’re not hungry. The 7 day one is crazy as it sounds. I wasn’t hungry the whole time. Woah. And I entered. I really want to max out this one. So I fasted. I did a water fast the day before to help burn through the glucose that my litter was holding on to.

Theo Lucier [00:14:48]:
And then there’s you’re still doing a water fast after it ended. So I just doing a water fast for 3 days after to slowly wake up my my digestive system like water and broth and like this very gentle. But yeah, it’s a man, I’m not in a hurry to do it again, but geez, the benefits been great. Like this, so the water life thing you’re talking about. I think Donning talks about it a little bit in his book, but the Russians talk about it a lot. It’s water carries information, right? Like it has a memory to it. And so it’s informed by all these inputs into your body. So you’re not inputting anything into your body and then your body is shredding apart this fat to release water.

Theo Lucier [00:15:30]:
That water is super pure. It doesn’t contain any harmful information apparently going to the Russians. What I can say is that after I recovered from the dry fast,

Nick Urban [00:15:41]:
I had

Theo Lucier [00:15:41]:
a lot more coherence, my approach to life. So, you know, when you when you structure water, they say it’s ordered water, or it’s coherent, right? Like, like, like this this light that’s coming at me from here, it’s unstructured. It’s just like a cloud of light or a laser beam is coherent. It’s focused. Yeah. So the same thing when you structure water. And the Russian say that this water of life you get that is produced inside your body during a dry fast is the same thing. And I have noticed, like, since the end of this one, I felt so cleaned out.

Theo Lucier [00:16:14]:
I got super into organizing things again, which is what’s kind of interesting. Like, you know, I’ve used a bullet journal for a long time, you know, one of these. And I was kind of falling out of the system and not using it as much as I should have. And I got so into it again. Like, I went and got the the bullet journal book and reread it and like I was doing that and organizing things and like zero procrastination. It was just like task, task, task. I was just kind of clicking through them and I’m like, man, I feel different. And I think informationally, the water in my body had been informed by a lot of noise as it would be for anybody, in the with a modern life.

Theo Lucier [00:16:59]:
And all that noise just got pushed out. It’s just gone. And then you have this clean slate where you can kind of start over. It’s awesome. I mean, I would say for anyone who is an entrepreneur or has a high stress job or whatever, if you can find the time to do it, even a shorter one, it’s worth it just for that benefit alone, much less physical.

Nick Urban [00:17:21]:
Yeah. It seems like it’s a really good full biological reset.

Theo Lucier [00:17:25]:
Mhmm. It is. It is. It’s it’s, the only thing that comes close is a sauna and niacin detox if you do the full 21 days. Woah. That’s that I would say that’s number 2. But this, as far as a detox goes, is is number 1. It’s just super hard.

Nick Urban [00:17:45]:
What I’m hearing is the perfect protocol is to do the 21 sauna niacin detox leading up to it and then to do this and you you’re fully prepared and you also think it to enjoy the 2 best.

Theo Lucier [00:17:56]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s look. If you want a huge time investment. Right? But if you wanna reboot your life, we we don’t get a lot of second chances in life. Right? But if you think of just you wanna hit the reset button and start over, maybe you’ve had some bad habits and health, maybe you feel fed up, overwhelmed, stressed. This will do it. I mean, you you that would I mean, it probably rewind your average person’s biological age back at least a decade. Well, biological, right, like in quotation marks.

Theo Lucier [00:18:26]:
But, yeah, it’s just detox first, man. I mean, you can you can add all the nutrients you want, micronutrients and cool fancy supplements. But if your cellular machinery is clogged up with poisons, it’s just not gonna work very well no matter what you throw it out. You gotta you gotta get the gunk out of the gears first, clean them up and lubricate them, then you add the fuel back in. So I believe in a detox first approach.

Nick Urban [00:18:51]:
Well, Theo, that gives me an idea. I have a couple epigenetic methylation biological age tests here. I will actually do that at some point. I’m gonna do I’m gonna work up to the 5 days of dry fasting, and I’ll do a before and after test to see literally what impact does this have while keeping as much else constant as I can.

Theo Lucier [00:19:10]:
You know what? I would love to do my own interview of you for that. We should do a before and after. It’d be so so fun to see. I had my own version of that using bioelectrical heat analyzers for the cell health score. Yes. So that was that was something because I really wanted to know, are my cells de aged by doing a dry fast? And are they holding more water after a dry fast? Answer unequivocally was yes on both. But I would love I know exactly what test you’re talking about. I didn’t do that.

Theo Lucier [00:19:43]:
I would love to see your results.

Nick Urban [00:19:45]:
Yeah. Also, do you know for the water phase angle test, have there been any, like, any research into this? Has there been correlations into how this compares to other forms of biological age testing?

Theo Lucier [00:19:57]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s this was first used in the 19 thirties. It was that was when it was discovered. And then it was used in research as a hot topic in the 19 sixties, mid sixties. Early eighties, the first commercial units came about. And then, I mean, the NHANES 3 study, which was like it was like 30,000 people or something where they’re basically just gathering metrics on average Americans between, I think that study ran from the early eighties to the late nineties. They they use the they use the phase angle. That’s actually where a lot of the the data was generated to do the charts for it, which is kind of funny.

Theo Lucier [00:20:42]:
So if you like that body of data is what they use for the reference ranges. So you’re actually comparing yourself to somebody from the 1980s or the nineties who was not exposed to, like, tons of EMF and, like, just all the crazy stuff that we have now. Blue light being another cellular stressor. Right? Like they weren’t on screens in the eighties and and really the nineties. So like if you for that reference range, like if you have a high score, you’re like really high because those people were healthier back then. But for whatever reason, the community that has embraced phase angle and uses it the most is the athlete community. So like like high level, like Olympic athletes sports teams, they measure and track phase angle. On the, you know, popular consumer side, I was first exposed to it going to, Bulletproof Labs.

Theo Lucier [00:21:39]:
I think it’s now Upgrade Labs in Santa Monica. It was like Dave Asprey’s, you know, playroom basically. And they had an in body machine. So you’ll see these in gyms from time to time. And they have the little plates you stand on and you grab the handles. And then it would tell you your face angle. What was interesting is none of the employees there could explain what it actually was. And it took me I can see why because it’s, like, difficult to understand until you read, like, a ton on it and you digest it and you’re like, oh, okay.

Theo Lucier [00:22:12]:
It basically is telling you how old your cells are. And there’s debate in the community like InBody runs the DC electrical current through your feet and through your hands. It’s both thick tissue, especially on your heels that increases resistance. RGL systems, what I have, they use electrodes and you stick them not on those areas. And supposedly it gives you more accurate reading, but it’s harder to do. So but yeah, I think it’s a great reflection of cellular age because I measured a friend of mine who had a lot of early life and even prenatal heavy metals exposure from our mother’s amalgams. And then also the area she grew up in, she had some mercury toxicity exposure. I measured her and her phase angle is terrible for her age.

Theo Lucier [00:22:59]:
It’s like it’s literally for somebody 20 years older than her. Yeah. And and it’s like, okay, well, what is doing that to her cells at a cellular level? And it’s probably the metals, you know? Because when we got her going on EDTA, her hair change color was starting to go gray and it went dark again. And then she even had thinning hair in the temples here or not temples, the whatever this area is called. And, it grew back in. She’s got all these baby hairs covering that area now. Isn’t that wild? I mean, an EDTA is, like, what, $8 a bag for, like, a year’s supply.

Nick Urban [00:23:36]:
Yeah. Theo, how are you doing on time?

Theo Lucier [00:23:39]:
I’m doing good. I’ve got, was it 12:30? I mean, so yeah. I mean, we’ve got an hour and a half or you wanna do any, wrap up questions or anything else about the dry fast? I mean, I want I wanna help people. I wanna give them something they can take and use. Like, what what what would help your audience the most?

Nick Urban [00:23:57]:
Well, yeah. We’ll definitely talk about more about the dry fast. But before we go on to that subject, about the speed that the phase angle changes, like, that’s the issue with some of the biological age testing options out there is that they either change so fast that if I have one bad night of sleep or I eat one piece of food that’s a little stale right before, it’ll, like, just destroy my score. Or it’s like, okay. This is how you were 9 months ago. Yeah. But if you made a change and you were doing it right for 6 months, it wouldn’t reflect as, like, a much higher score.

Theo Lucier [00:24:26]:
You know, it’s it’s the phase angle. So what’s interesting about that is that everything you do in life contributes to the phase angle and it’s hard to move the needle on it. I know like it takes it. You gotta have a lot of inputs and change a lot for a period of time to do it. But the dry fast change it in a week. It was like it was a crazy difference. I know I think when I was researching how to understand phase angle and use it, because I really wanted to do that measurement before and after the dry fast. The oh, shoot.

Theo Lucier [00:25:01]:
I lost my train of thought. Guess I need to do another dry fast. I was gonna say.

Nick Urban [00:25:09]:
When you were researching the phase angle because you really wanted to compare before and after.

Theo Lucier [00:25:14]:
Yeah. There is something we’ll come back to it. But I took the Faze angle every day during the dry fast too. And it was weird because it at first it kept going up and up and up and up and up. And then it just crashed like day 6. It was like went way down because I think my body was just like, woah, this is bad. And then the day after it was super high like in the nines. And then and then it went down a little bit and kinda stabilized.

Theo Lucier [00:25:47]:
But it’s still higher than it was before I started, and we’re like 3 months after that now. But, yeah, phase angle is a good one, man. I I hope it becomes more popular.

Nick Urban [00:25:58]:
Yeah. I’ve done some of the InBody scans. So I’m curious to go back and look and see

Theo Lucier [00:26:01]:
You should look at that.

Nick Urban [00:26:02]:
What my scores are.

Theo Lucier [00:26:03]:
Yeah. You should you should. So he started with the InBody, just keep testing with that. And then it’ll like the ranges will be the same for you. But you wouldn’t wanna go from an InBody to an RGL systems because they use different methodology and electrodes go in a different place. But super cool. Like, I mean, I think it’s a really cool score because every input that you do in life oh, I remember I was gonna say exercise seems to shift it the most. So which makes sense.

Theo Lucier [00:26:35]:
I mean, think of all the good downstream effects from exercise because it’s literally everything is detox. You’re stretching and pulling the fascia. So you, you know, fascia is piezo electric. It generates electrical current when it’s when it’s twisted just like a piezo crystal or it’s crystal. So you get electron donation from that. You’re you’re moving lymph around and you’re probably speeding up cellular metabolism. So that that seems to to affect it the most as does proper hydration. I did an experiment on my mom because it’s, you know, she’s 79 now and older people don’t drink enough water.

Theo Lucier [00:27:14]:
They just don’t. And and they go so long without drinking water, their

Nick Urban [00:27:18]:
hypothalamus becomes atrophied and hypothalamus drives your

Theo Lucier [00:27:18]:
thirst response and so hypothalamus becomes atrophied and hypothalamus drives your thirst response. And so then they don’t have a thirst response anymore. So every time I go back to where my mom was, you know, I wanna help her out with my health, her health. And so I measured her phase angle, right when I got back there and got her phase angle score and stuff, which was on the low end of average for her age. And then I made her drink water every day that had human conflict trace minerals in it because that’s a super strong electrolyte and so increases cellular hydration. And then I measured her exactly 7 days later and her her phase angle was much better just from the increased hydration of the cells. So she didn’t do anything different. Everything else was the same.

Theo Lucier [00:28:09]:
So it’s kinda cool to measure stuff like that.

Nick Urban [00:28:12]:
Yeah. That’s really cool. And have you seen overtraining or, like, training say more than x amount of time over x amount of days leads to a decrease in phase angle? Or is it one of the rare cases where more really is better?

Theo Lucier [00:28:25]:
I haven’t personally experimented with that. I do have a lot of experience with overtraining. And I wish I had access to this information at that time. I mean, it’s past a certain point, right? Like the dose makes the the poison, they say. So are you super into physical training? Like, what do you what do you do in that realm?

Nick Urban [00:28:47]:
Yeah. I mean, I I train often. I do strength and power and some, like, lactate tolerance training just for

Theo Lucier [00:28:54]:
Always fun.

Nick Urban [00:28:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. Always fun. And then I I like to mix it up and I’ll play some some sports. Yeah. I’ll go back. I have a backpacking trip planned for next week. So, yeah, I just try and mix it up.

Nick Urban [00:29:07]:
I like to kite board and do different things. So it’s more just like training for overall life.

Theo Lucier [00:29:11]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. I was, I had a partial sports scholarship in university for Olympic style Taekwondo.

Nick Urban [00:29:19]:
And

Theo Lucier [00:29:19]:
the coaches we had at the time, were they believed in overtraining physically for a mental benefit is like really old school. And it just ran my body into the ground. I was injured all the time. My immune system was depressed. So I was like colds and it just it wasn’t good. And nowadays, I focus a lot on calisthenics. I really enjoy, you know, bodyweight strength training. Of course, there’s the free diving.

Theo Lucier [00:29:47]:
I don’t surf very much anymore because the free diving kind of took over. But I’ve recently got I had a friend of mine, he’s 45. And he did this thing for a year and he actually tracked his blood work. And I saw a picture of him with his shirt off and the guy looked like an action figure. I was like, dude, are you on are you on TRT? Like, what are you doing? He’s like, no. So he was doing a 3 minute cold immersion immediately prior to working out for a year.

Nick Urban [00:30:15]:
Oh, yes. And I’d

Theo Lucier [00:30:16]:
never heard of it before because it seems like a lot of people do cold plunges after working out, which supposedly I’ve now learned depresses the beneficial hormones. And so a couple weeks ago, I recently started doing that. But just get in, do like a 4 or 5 minute cold immersion and then I immediately go into the workout and I think it’s doing something, man. I’m like like I can tell when I have more testosterone in my system when I’m working out because you feel like going more. And I it’s definitely doing something. I’m like, okay, like, here’s another inexpensive, like, not fun hack. It seems like all the the ones that work the best, they’re usually inexpensive or free, and they’re hard to do. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:31:05]:
So Yeah. I first learned about cold preconditioning a little while back, and I’ve done it one time, but I just like the hassle of, like, going to a I mean, for me, a commercial gym that has a cold plunge and then doing it and then getting out and drying off adequately than, like, working out.

Theo Lucier [00:31:19]:
It sucks. Yeah. So where my office is, where I am now, is on a a property that has a a cold plunge tank and a garage gym. And so it’s I can just go straight from that and into the workout. The only thing I’ve heard is, like, you’re not supposed you’re supposed to, like, do some kind of, like, warm up for 5 to 10 minutes because you can, like, shock your heart full blood. I haven’t experienced that. But, yeah, it’s been it’s been really interesting. I’m like, okay.

Theo Lucier [00:31:52]:
Like, cool. It’s always, like, the free and inexpensive ones that are the best. Right? Like, not always, but, you know, like, sunlight, cold exposure, working out, hill sprints, you know, like, I love what Mark Sisson has to say on this topic, you know, I mean, because he’s 70 something now. And, you know, all the stuff he says on fitness is is it’s accurate.

Nick Urban [00:32:15]:
Yeah. And that’s where I like to use biomimicry. Like, sure. It’s nice to be on sun gaze, but if you’re out late in the night or you can’t do it for whatever reason, having some near infrared or red light can help. It’s not a perfect substitute. It’s not even close. There’s a lot of other benefits you get from that those first morning rays of light. You just no technology can replicate even come close.

Nick Urban [00:32:35]:
But, also, it’s, like, a lot better to do this than to just go straight to your phone, your computer, getting blasted by blue light, which I mean has its time and place, but not when it’s it’s flickering and coming from less than ideal sources.

Theo Lucier [00:32:49]:
Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I actually used to have a couple red light panels, like the full body, thing, and I actually got rid of them because of the flicker.

Nick Urban [00:33:00]:
Mhmm.

Theo Lucier [00:33:00]:
They had a super high flicker rate. I never noticed a huge benefit from them. I mean, there’s so much sun that’s abundantly available here that, yeah, I could just go get actual full spectrum sun or you know what I’ve been using that is just great? It’s like, you know, those those red light bulbs that use the heat chickens in the winter?

Nick Urban [00:33:22]:
I have one over here.

Theo Lucier [00:33:23]:
They’re great. Yeah. I was just I think I was on Amazon. It was TheraVolve or or, Ruby Luxe, I think is the other brand. And I’m like, dude, this thing is awesome. It’s not flickering. It’s an analog wave and it’s, like, eating, but it still has, like, that deep red light benefit. I was like, this thing is great.

Nick Urban [00:33:46]:
Yeah. I have mine on now right over here. Yeah. Yeah. 250 watts of incandescent light, I believe.

Theo Lucier [00:33:52]:
It’s great. Yeah. I mean, there’s a there’s a lady, Creatrix Solutions. She has a really interesting, company. She makes some interesting products, but, I know the sauna that she sells, she calls it the Sauna Fix. It’s like a portable sauna, but she uses those version of those lights. They’re they’re like full analog, which is cool. But yeah, so I switched that $30 light bulb and I love it.

Theo Lucier [00:34:18]:
I mean, I use it all the time.

Nick Urban [00:34:20]:
Yeah. So a company called SaunaSpace also has their own version of this.

Theo Lucier [00:34:24]:
Tent. Yeah. I think that’s the canvas tent one. Right? Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:34:27]:
Yeah. And they also have, like, just a standalone bulb too, and they designed it in combination in conjunction with collaboration with think it’s Brian Hoyer or a building biologist.

Theo Lucier [00:34:38]:
Yeah. He’s got he’s got some really good information, man. It’s, all the EMS stuff. I mean, that’s another one you can get obsessed with, like, EMF mitigation and and all that. I went through that phase. But, yeah, it’s, the sauna that I got my mom set up with is, it’s owned by Jacuzzi now, but it was,

Nick Urban [00:35:01]:
the Daylight?

Theo Lucier [00:35:02]:
Yes. The low EMF ones. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:35:05]:
Well, Theo, I wanna go back to dry fasting because we opened that page. We didn’t close it out. And Yeah. To make this practical, first of all, like, what was the experience like? Because I’m gonna be going through this at some point, and I’m curious what it was. And then also, like, what are the steps? Because we mentioned that you wanna prepare for it. You wanna start small with just a day, then 2 days, and 3 days. In the book, The Phoenix Protocol, he also mentioned that, like, the fat burning and a lot of the benefits only start around day 3. I’m not sure how important that is.

Nick Urban [00:35:34]:
Like, obviously, you’re getting other things out of it as well. But, like, let’s go through the the practical side of dry fasting now.

Theo Lucier [00:35:39]:
Well, if you do a 1 to 2 day dry fast, you’re going to, reset your gut. So it’s like 24 hours for the cells on in your gut lining to replace themselves. So you give your gut a break. Let’s say you’ve got a leaky gut because your tight junctions aren’t together. You got gut inflammation bloat. You do a 1 to 2 day dry fast, you’re gonna reset that and your gut inflammation will go away. So that is why I will do a 1 or 2 day dry fast is literally just for a gut reset. That’s the benefit there.

Theo Lucier [00:36:11]:
3 days, I see really the only benefit of doing I’m past 2 days is just for training, like training mentally because by day day 3 is hard. Actually, it was on both my 5 7 day. It was one of the hardest days because you burn through all your glucose and then you switch to a ketogenic metabolism that day. But it takes a while and it doesn’t really kick in to high gear until the next day. So if you do so that those are the benefits of of those. And then if you go past 3, so you don’t interrupt your stem cell production moving forward in life. If you go past 3 days, then you’re stuck, you got to do 5, because day 4 is a stem cell release. And then day 5 is consolidation of that and then you end it, you know, whatever time day 5.

Theo Lucier [00:37:03]:
And if you go past 5 days and you have to do 7. So, because day 6 is a stem cell release and it’s like he talks about in the book, but there’s like very specific cycles that you move through. So as far as what it felt like, this time around, I actually recorded a video every day. They’re like 2 to 4 minutes long. And if you go to if you find my channel on YouTube, which I just restarted, I got deleted during the pandemic because I put out a video about 5 gs. That is new to my channel, man, is all these videos is gone. But if you search for forgotten health, or my 7 day dry fast experience on YouTube, you’ll see it. And I record a video every day, which is really hard, dude.

Theo Lucier [00:37:51]:
So for me so here’s here’s what I’m gonna say to people. So I’ve had a lot of my own customers and subscribers do dry fast now because I’ve talked a lot about it. And for a lot of them, and if you watch August Dunning on his channel, it’s like August is walking around on the beach holding this big boom, you know, microphone camera set up and he’s fine. And I’m like, dude, how are you walking around? This is crazy. And then I’ve had customers do it where they’re sixties, seventies, even somebody in their early eighties and they’re like, yeah, I just did it 5 days. Totally fine. I was driving around, hanging out with friends. And I’m like, What? Are you serious? So but I’m just saying for me personally, I have a faster metabolism.

Theo Lucier [00:38:37]:
And I think that actually makes it harder. I literally just had a customer email me. He did a 7 day. And, he’s like, yeah, I felt completely fine the whole time. And I was like, hey, if you don’t mind me asking, like, how much body fat you have? And he’s like a lot, like, way too much. If I need to lose, like, £50. And so, I mean, he’s got think about it. His body’s just shredding up all that fat or water and stuff.

Theo Lucier [00:39:02]:
He was, like, working the whole time. So it’s just my experience that for how it felt is that my brain and energy by day 3 is just completely crashed. And I would say I’m functioning at, like, a 20, 30% brain capacity. And I was I could barely string an email together and respond to people, and I just have zero motivation to do anything. So, obviously, I was still walking around. I was able to talk a little bit because I was recording the videos, but as the time goes by, it gets harder and harder to talk and my desire to talk disappeared. And because your brain is not working very well, it’s like hard to do anything other than kinda just consume entertainment. I know Dunning talks about that on his videos.

Theo Lucier [00:39:52]:
He, like, watches James Bond movies and stuff. But, yeah, that was basically it’s just like this slow decline into just, for me a malaise of low energy and almost apathy, and boredom. It it doesn’t you don’t realize how much of our life is filled up by these rituals that occupy our time, but even just waking up and getting a glass of water, that’s gone. Eating, gone. You know, cognitively demanding work, gone. So you really got a plan for it. I have a friend who’s gonna do one in between Christmas and New Year’s because that’s like a really slow time. Yeah.

Theo Lucier [00:40:36]:
But not hungry, not thirsty. Mouth was dry. My first time, my 5 day, I would rinse my mouth out with water and spit it out. That made it worse. It actually, like, kind of stimulated the thirst reflex. So this time around, I didn’t know I did a hard drive. There’s like no water, nothing. And and it’s, it’s not fun.

Theo Lucier [00:41:01]:
But it didn’t make I mean, I wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t thirsty, which sounds weird, but it’s just the facts.

Nick Urban [00:41:08]:
That’s the impression that I got back when I used to dry fast. I did 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, one time. And one time after, like, my 5 day, I went to the gym and I somehow was able to, like, deadlift and not deadlift my PR, but pretty close to it.

Theo Lucier [00:41:22]:
Well, I’m dry fast or wet fast?

Nick Urban [00:41:24]:
No. Wet fast. I’ve never wet dry fasted it. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve really cut back on wet fasting because I don’t think it’s a makes that much sense for someone Yeah. In my stage of life. And I can imagine that when you’re dry fasting, like, really even being outside in hot weather, it must be really difficult if it’s 90 plus degrees outside and you try and go outside and you’re dry fasting.

Theo Lucier [00:41:45]:
So that actually felt good. It was 90 degrees and 90% humidity where I was for part of the time. And your metabolism is so depressed and like your circulation, you know, your blood gets really thick. And so you’re actually cooler than you normally would be because your circulation isn’t as good. And but yeah, I would say day 3 was the hardest on both the 5 and the 7 day was one of the hardest and then day 6 was just wretched. It was just it my my temperature was spiking and then going down and my blood pressure is going high and going down. My heart rate was it wasn’t all over the place. But I can definitely tell like, oh, my heart’s running fast and then slow down, which is a normal part of the cycle that you go through, but it just it just didn’t let up.

Theo Lucier [00:42:38]:
It just I was like, I was so uncomfortable. And then a lot of people don’t sleep the night day 4, day 6. And like day 6, I didn’t sleep very much.

Nick Urban [00:42:47]:
That was actually one of the mechanisms that August Dunning mentioned is the thickening of the blood, how that interacts with the brain and causes a feedback beneficial feedback loop.

Theo Lucier [00:42:55]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s and I don’t think for some reason, like, I’ve had so many people that hear about dry fasting and they’re like, oh, I just don’t eat or drink water. Okay. And they they don’t do any research and they just jump into it. And I had one guy do that. Didn’t didn’t read the book, didn’t do any research, YouTube videos on it, which there’s plenty now. And then, you know, he was like panic texting me on day 3 and I’m like, dude, this is a normal part of the cycle. You’re just switching over into ketosis now from a glucose metabolism.

Theo Lucier [00:43:31]:
And he ended up interrupting his dry fast on day 4, which is the middle of a stem cell release because he was he was driving his car around and going to see friends and then his friends told him he’s gonna die and that he looked terrible. And then he broke his fast and that’s his stem cell production now is depleted, not for life. I’m sure it’ll bounce back but for a long time. So I don’t know why that’s I think it’s because it’s free and it seems really simple. So people just Yeah. Cool. I’ll just I’ll just do that. But there’s super specific cycles.

Theo Lucier [00:44:05]:
And like, I’ll tell you, they’ve the way the book describes them, the Phoenix profile is exactly what they feel like.

Nick Urban [00:44:12]:
One of the things he also mentioned in the book is the use of showering or bathing as being really helpful because of the the water not going down through your gut the same way, but it permeates through your skin and into your cells and provides benefit.

Theo Lucier [00:44:27]:
Mhmm. I did that. So I enhanced that a little bit. August, I think came to natural health kind of later in life. And, so wasn’t as aware of, like, some detox things you can do. He’s getting a lot better about it now though because I know he’s recommending people take charcoal for a week before. But I, yeah, I would do I would soak in a bath, from day 3 onwards, and I put 2 cups of 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide in the bath. And so, you know, oxygen is a detoxicant.

Theo Lucier [00:45:05]:
And so all that crap that was probably being injected into my bloodstream from the lymph as my cells were pushing toxins out, goes into my bloodstream, but then I’m soaking in a bath and I was doing it for like 2 hours because I was bored. And so 2 cups, 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide when that encounter something organic, it converts to reactive form of oxygen. And so that was just I could feel it. Like you literally are laying there and you’re so sensitive to everything. I was like, oh, wow. I actually have energy right now. And you could concentrate better. And so like your body I didn’t feel more thirsty or less thirsty.

Theo Lucier [00:45:44]:
I didn’t feel thirsty at all. I could I did feel something different related to hydration, for sure. So that was super helpful. I recommend anybody that has the time and space and a bathtub to do that. So if it just make sure you get 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide. That’s really important.

Nick Urban [00:46:05]:
Gotcha. We’ve been going for a while. We’ll start to wind this one down.

Theo Lucier [00:46:08]:
Do you have

Nick Urban [00:46:08]:
any other quick tips for people who are interested in exploring this? I don’t know if you’ve shared them in other videos or resources. Dry fasting. With dry fasting, how to do it successfully. And, obviously, I’d assume this one has a medical condition. They wanna consult with their physician

Theo Lucier [00:46:23]:
or medical professional. If you have never done a detox before, don’t don’t do a dry fast. It’s gonna stress your your kidneys out like crazy and your liver too. So I I would say if you wanna do a a hardcore detox, try to do a sauna niacin detox. If you can’t do that one, do a liver detox because that will move the needle and it’s like really easy to do. And there’s many instructions online for how to do that. And it’ll cost you like $4 in ingredients. And then if you do wanna do a dry fast, if I could do it all over again, I would have started with a one and then I would have done a 2.

Theo Lucier [00:47:00]:
A 2 day. And then after that, I probably would have gone straight into a 5. I went straight into a 5 and it was hell. It was like, it was just like mental anguish,

Nick Urban [00:47:09]:
man.

Theo Lucier [00:47:09]:
I was like, oh my gosh. But afterwards, I felt freaking amazing. It’s like, I mean, how often are we handed a reset button on cellular health? Like, not very often. This is one of them and it’s free. So well, it’s free in in financial cost, but it’s not free in time cost. So I will I will say that. So that that was one of the things that was a little frustrating for me with the 7 days. Like, I really wanted to get back to work afterwards and it was like a week recovery.

Theo Lucier [00:47:39]:
And I mean, it’s like it was like having a surgery. It was like it kind of felt like recovering from a surgery. And in a sense, there I was having surgeries like cellular surgery. Yeah. I would say work up to it. Read the Phoenix protocol. Read, Doctor. Phil and I’s twenty questions and answers on DRYFAST.

Theo Lucier [00:47:57]:
See if you could find a copy. Watch the YouTube videos that August Dunning put out or the ones that I did under forgotten health, and then go for it. I mean, it’s I think it’s one of the most powerful things you can do for your health.

Nick Urban [00:48:11]:
Theo, you’ve we’ve caught a lot of ground today. Yeah. Tons of different topics. Cool to hear all your background. And these are the types of things you share in your newsletter. It’s one of the few that I’ve been subscribed to and has remained subscribed to for a while now. Keep putting those out. And if people want to either follow your work or to connect with you to see some of the videos and, like, other content you release, how do they find you?

Theo Lucier [00:48:33]:
Easiest way is just go to forgottenhealth.com. This site has some sections that I’m still finishing and working on improving, but forgottenhealth.com because that has, all my products. It’s got videos on there. It’s got some old blog posts. Like, you can see I’m an actual real person. But, yeah, that’s that’s that’s kind of the catchall site for everything. And the 5 g guide that I got banned on YouTube for is available for free on there too.

Nick Urban [00:49:01]:
Beautiful. I still have a whole list of other things to talk about with you, so we’ll save that for hopefully another time.

Theo Lucier [00:49:09]:
We’ll do another one. I’d I’d love it. Yeah. I’d love to interview you, and I’d love to to see and hear about your, your before and after test results because it’s it’s gonna move the needle a lot for you and be really interesting to see.

Nick Urban [00:49:24]:
Yeah. And thank you for giving us realistic expectations about what it’s like. It’s not like it doesn’t feel like light and airy fairy the whole time. There’s a real art to it and expect that it’s not always going to be comfortable. And if you’re going to schedule it, you can plan to have the hardest days land on the weekend so that when you return, even though it’s a longer process to return, you’re returning a little bit recharged at least.

Theo Lucier [00:49:51]:
Yeah. I was able to work the first two days, this, this recent one. So day day 1 and day 2, I was responding to emails, knocking stuff out. It was more or less fine. Day 3, I could work a half day, but then when that key ketotic, you know, that you switch over that ketosis metabolism, I was I was like, alright, dude. I gotta lay down. Yeah. Yeah.

Theo Lucier [00:50:16]:
So cool, man. Well, hey. I really appreciate it.

Nick Urban [00:50:18]:
Yeah. Thank you. And do you have any final words of wisdom, parting advice, or ways you’d like to wrap this one up for anyone who’s made it this far?

Theo Lucier [00:50:25]:
Yeah. And, yeah, this episode was a long one of it, but hopefully a good one. Be consistent. That that’s kinda my thing is is, you know, natural health is all about consistency. So, like, those eight micronutrients we talked about, whether you’re getting your vitamin, you know, DNA from cod liver oil like I do or you’re doing a supplement, but just be consistent with that every day. And over time, like, accumulatively, it just builds up. That’s it’s like consistency is key. So, yeah, that’s that’s my thing.

Nick Urban [00:50:59]:
Perfect. Well, excellent way to end this one. Theo, thank you so much for joining in the podcast today. You bet. Appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests.

Nick Urban [00:51:21]:
As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.com/andthenthenumberoftheepisode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.