[00:00:01] Luke: You're really healthy guy. You teach people how to be healthy, and you had a close brush with death last year. What was that all about?

[00:00:11] Josh: Yeah. It was crazy. Still even thinking about it. I ended up hurting my back lifting weights. I went and got a procedure called stem cell done, which most people have heard of. And it helped tremendously me heal.

[00:00:28] Luke: I'm curious on the stem cells, did you do adipose-derived?

[00:00:33] Josh: My own bone marrow?

[00:00:34] Luke: Oh, bone marrow.

[00:00:35] Josh: Yeah. My own bone marrow. And I probably got 80% better. And then I thought, "Okay, I just have this little nagging issue. If I get it done one more time, I'll probably feel back to 100%." And then this next time something just didn't feel right afterwards, and I kept feeling worse and worse and worse.

[00:00:51] Finally I had to put a back brace on. And then finally, one day I woke up and the pain was just so excruciating. I couldn't walk. I had to call an ambulance, have an ambulance come pick me up. And the scene of this is like, I've got a 2-year-old daughter. She's crying, "Why is daddy getting in the ambulance?" All these issues. And so go get an MRI done. I get the report back, and it says I have a spinal infection, and it was really severe.

[00:01:17] Luke: Whoa.

[00:01:18] Josh: Yeah. The infection was in my disc. It had spread into my vertebra. It was throughout my entire L5 vertebra. There was actually some getting in the spinal cord and abscess there. And so I had to take a medical flight to Florida because I was living in Puerto Rico at the time. I lived between Puerto Rico and Nashville, Tennessee. I had to take a flight. I laid down. Had to be taken in on a cot and talked to a infectious disease specialist who told me, he said, "Josh, listen, you have a really severe infection."

[00:01:50] And he said, "I want to let you know your best-case scenario is that you're going to have chronic pain the rest of your life, and anytime bad weather's coming through, you'll be the first to know." And he said, "Worst-case scenario is you could die from this because it's so close to and in the spinal cord." And he said, "There's a really, really good likelihood that you're going to be permanently disabled from this."

[00:02:10] Now, look, I was just months before doing deadlifts and squats, cycling and swimming, throwing my 2-year-old daughter five to 10 feet in the air, in the pool, and just really feeling great outside of a little bit of back pain. And so to hear that I might be permanently disabled, it was incredibly hard because I'm an active person.

[00:02:32] I've worked out almost every single day of my life. And I had about 48 hours where there were emotions I had never experienced before that I had experienced. I had never truly felt despair or hopelessness, and I felt those. And I felt so down for a couple of days. And then finally, I was just praying and I just said, "God, I just need you." And I started praying and just really felt like-- I realized something.

[00:02:59] Something I realized was going to the depths of despair and living and staying there was not helping me. And so instead, I thought, you know what? My God is bigger than this diagnosis. And I really need to tap into the natural placebo effect of helping my body heal because I had done some research on the mind-body how powerful it is. I'll give you an example of this.

[00:03:26] Our modern-day studies really stemmed from the first placebo effect in terms of where it was birthed from. And this was around World War I. There was a practicing physician who was giving soldiers morphine. And these soldiers were in excruciating pain, had lost limbs. You can imagine the pain. And morphine's an extremely strong drug. Well, he ran out of morphine. And so he said, well, I got to do something. And so he started giving these fallen soldiers sugar pills.

[00:03:56] Luke: Oh my God.

[00:03:57] Josh: Yeah. Now, here's the craziest part. Around 30 to 40% of them were getting the same pain relief as if they were taking morphine. So think about it. Your brain is creating chemicals to numb yourself or heal areas of the body in the equivalent of one of the most powerful drugs on the planet, morphine.

[00:04:18] And I don't think enough people activate that healing connection of the brain to the body. And so it's something I was really conscious of doing. I read this article by this researcher who said you can actually strengthen the placebo effect for yourself. And he said, "Here's what you need to do."

[00:04:33] He said, "You need to first be really certain about what is it you want, and be able to visualize and picture that exactly." So what I started doing was visualizing myself throwing my 2-year-old daughter up in the air, in the pool again, and running around chasing her and being active and getting back to 100%.

[00:04:48] So I visualized that very clearly, and I said, "This is what I want." And then he says, and you also need to feel it emotionally as if you're in that moment. You want to be in that future moment now emotionally. So the joy, the excitement, the laughter, all of those emotions and letting that well up in you right now.

[00:05:06] And then he says, and then you need to create a plan of how will that become your future reality. And here's the interesting thing. As I think about that, part of that is sometimes your nervous system doesn't believe you. It's like toxic positivity. I'm trying to remember the old SNL skit. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, doggone it people like-- like, I'm healed.

[00:05:29] Luke: Stuart Smalley.

[00:05:30] Josh: That's right. Stewart Smalley. And so you can say it to yourself, but you need to make your nervous system believe it, and it will believe it more if you have a plan in place of this is how I'll do it. If you read testimonials of other people that have overcome that same thing, that's why that's so powerful. So I started doing all those things. Now, the doctor also recommended that I get on antibiotics. Most of these doctors recommend, with this type of infection I had, six weeks on IV antibiotics and another six weeks on oral antibiotics.

[00:06:04] Luke: Oh my God.

[00:06:05] Josh: That's three months on antibiotics. Maybe one time when I had another procedure, but outside of that I had never-- I had not taken a drug since high school. So it's been 20 years. I was 40. But then I said, "Okay, I want to do everything I can to also minimize the damage of my body, optimize healing."

[00:06:22] And I read this study on hyperbaric chambers and how if you get in a hyperbaric chamber, you can reduce your antibiotic time. And there was a group of people that had spinal infections, they got in hyperbaric chamber and were able to cut down their antibiotic time with a spinal infection to four weeks.

[00:06:37] So decrease it dramatically. So that's what I did. I got in a hyperbaric chamber five days a week for about 40 days. And I got IVs, like methylene blue and Jensen silver, and lots of vitamins every day. Was doing loads of herbals, everything from mushrooms to Schisandra to Turkey tail, to all kinds of things.

[00:07:00] And I followed this protocol, and after two weeks I started feeling a little better and then a little better and a little better. Now here's the thing about that area of your body. It has almost no blood supply, so it takes longer to heal. So I didn't walk for 10 months. And I couldn't sit because the pain was just as bad sitting. So I laid in bed for 10 months, and then I was on a walker for two months. So I didn't walk on my own really for a year.

[00:07:24] Luke: Whoa.

[00:07:25] Josh: So this time that we're talking right now, I was just getting on a walker, of this time last year. And one of the things I'm excited to say is that I'm already way better than the doctor said I would be. The fact that I'm sitting here doing this interview, I flew here, I'm back lifting weights, I'm running around with my daughter, I'm able to swim, all those things, I'm probably about 80 to 85%.

[00:07:48] But by the end of this year I'll be back to 100%. So all that being said, the power of our mind to healing, I don't think people fully have tapped into and know the capacity. And I really believe that's one of the most important parts of me healing, was that process of visualization and planning and experience that emotions and moving forward with the mindset of healing only using mindset medicine, really.

[00:08:10] Luke: Beautiful. Man, there's so much to unpack even in that. I feel like we could just do a whole podcast on that experience, but a couple of things that come up. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but was there any mistake or malpractice in terms of getting the infection in the first place? Because I've had a lot of stem cell treatments, and I've never even thought, oh, what if they didn't sanitize properly and I'm going to get a spinal infection.

[00:08:34] Josh: Here's the thing. The chance-- I looked this up, it's probably one in a million. It is so unlikely to happen. I will say this. The practicing physician who worked on me, it's interesting, he texted me recently, and he said, "I'm probably the last person in the world you want to hear from." And I said, "That's not true. All is forgiven. It's okay." And I said, "Actually, I'm sorry I didn't text you or message you earlier just to let you know, hey, I don't blame you or anyone else." Because he really is a great physician.

[00:09:03] In the company he's a part of is probably one of the largest stem cell clinics in the world. Great reputation. And I was there. I know medicine. They did everything they were supposed to do. They did. So I don't blame them. It's just one of those things where when you're going with a needle, there could have been something just under the layer of my-- so again, it was one of those one in a million things that happened.

[00:09:29] Listen, I believe that you can sue somebody. I would try and do everything in my power not to do that. Not saying somebody's wrong for doing it. I just also take personal ownership. And I also believe that they did everything they could. Now, if I didn't believe they did everything they could, if I believe that they were actually truly negligible, it would've been different. But I don't think that was the case.

[00:09:55] Luke: Yeah, just a fluke situation.

[00:09:57] Josh: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:09:58] Luke: Whenever I think of any kind of infection, I always think of ozone. Would injecting ozone into the area of infection have any impact, do you think? Or is that--

[00:10:10] Josh: I got ozone injected into my desk. First off, most people weren't willing to do it. But at the end of the antibiotic, I wanted to make sure the infection was gone. We did ozone. We went right into my disc and did ozone.

[00:10:23] Oh yeah, I did ozone IVs constantly too, constantly. So yeah, if somebody has an infection-- now again, mine was in the disc and spinal cord. I think if anyone has Lyme disease, mold toxicity, these viral infections, to me, ozone, doing a 10 Pass, or an Eboo, or some sort of really strong ozone in the blood is probably the most powerful treatment most people could do for that. I really like the combination of ozone with hyperbaric for those things. It's really powerful.

[00:10:57] Luke: There's some really interesting stuff people are doing. My friend, Dr. John Lieurance, has a clinic in Sarasota.

[00:11:04] Josh: Here you go. So when I went to the infectious disease specialist I saw was in Sarasota, and John is who I got my IVs from.

[00:11:10] Luke: Oh. Great.

[00:11:11] Josh: We were doing Jensen Blue or--

[00:11:12] Luke: I was going to say, man, methylene blue with the intravenous red light laser followed by a hyperbaric, there's not many things that won't improve, if not heal completely.

[00:11:23] Josh: I did all that. I got to show you a picture of my phone here. Let me just show you. So John would take these red lasers and put them in my back, and you can actually see it going through deep into the tissues of my back. It's absolutely crazy. So we can keep talking while I find this. But yeah, it's--

[00:11:42] Luke: Well, the thing that's interesting about that, I met a guy named Dr. Matt Bennett. He's out of Laguna Beach. I met him about three years ago, and he's got a clinic out there, and he uses methylene blue IVs and hyperbaric. This is during COVID. Oh, he is got the intravenous laser right in your back?

[00:12:01] Josh: Yeah.

[00:12:02] Luke: Holy crap. That's wild. I love John, dude. He's such a renegade.

[00:12:07] Josh: Now let me show you a picture of my blue pee because I did so much methylene blue.

[00:12:12] Luke: Yeah. I'm very familiar with this phenomenon.

[00:12:15] Josh: At first I'm like, what is going on here? Oh yeah.

[00:12:21] Luke: Oh man, I wish they could see that on camera. What is this? A catheter bucket or something?

[00:12:29] Josh: At first I did four hours of IVs a day, and so I would have to-- I'm getting so many fluids in me. And I didn't do that every day. Again, you can do too much for sure. But just at the very first week, we wanted to do everything we can to help kill the infection, and so yeah.

[00:12:44] Luke: That's funny. Wow. That's like really blue. I've seen it green, but that looks like Smurfberry Crunch Blue.

[00:12:51] Josh: Yeah.

[00:12:53] Luke: Wow. Interesting. Dr. Matt Bennett, he's the first clinician that I met that was working with Epstein Barr, Lyme, even HIV. And in two or three months using that methylene blue protocol-- oh, he was using red light too, actually, now I think about it. He would clip a 660 nanometer red light on the IV bag. I think John does that too. And give people whatever dose of methylene blue based on their weight, and then have them in a hyperbaric chamber, a high pressure chamber for, I don't know what, two hours after each IV.

[00:13:28] And he's reversing all these "incurable issues" just doing that. And then I think John caught wind of that and talked to him about it and he integrated that. But man, there's so many cool things like that out there. It's like when I talk about them, it's frustrating because I know many people that have these issues, chronic illness and stuff are out of work. They can't work. And so this stuff is expensive and not covered by insurance.

[00:13:58] So it's like I say. If somebody has Lyme disease, man, we know the answer, but hey, it's going to take three months and thousands of dollars. But my hope is that somehow in the future, a new paradigm of health insurance that actually works for you is developed. And so people that have these issues and don't have the cash flow to undergo treatment can find a way to do it.

[00:14:22] Tell us about your book. I'm really excited to talk about mindset because in the realm of physical healing, I think many people get caught in that paradigm of thinking that if they throw enough biohacks at their problem that they're going to get well. And that does work for some people, but I have noticed people with a really negative mindset, or someone that, God bless them, but they fall into a real victimhood mental state because they've been suffering for so long with whatever issue they're having, or people with childhood trauma or any kind of trauma in their life that they haven't addressed, they just won't get well.

[00:15:00] And I'm sure you, in your practice, have experienced that, where you're throwing everything in the kitchen sink at something on the physical, material level, and it's not moving the needle. And there's something inside, I think, that many of us miss, whether it's our spiritual connection to whatever we believe, or maybe, in some cases, the lack of believing anything is detrimental, to your point of praying for healing. So tell us about your book and where you're going in the mindset piece because I think that's a really important thing to cover in the space of biohacking and functional medicine.

[00:15:35] Josh: Yeah. One of the things I realized-- and I used to run a full-time functional medicine practice and saw tens of thousands of patients. I absolutely noticed that one of the biggest factors, if not the single biggest factor, in someone healing was their mindset. I'll give you an example.

[00:15:52] Oftentimes I'd sit down with patients and go through their diet diary and start making recommendations, even on the first visit. And there tended to be two groups of people. One group would hem and haw and say, "Oh, I can't have my special case cereal anymore, and you're not telling me I shouldn't do skim milk and this and this." And just trying to figure out everything they could get away with, or they felt like they were being robbed of something.

[00:16:18] And then there was another group of people saying, "Hey, I can do this. This is great. Oh, do a super food smoothie for breakfast or do this, do this." And they also really believed they were going to heal versus some people came in and they were just very skeptical.

[00:16:33] And now sometimes the skeptic healed amazingly well, but I do think that that is an important thing, your whole mindset about healing and believing and knowing you can heal. When you look at ancient history and a lot of physicians and spiritual healers, when you look at religions like Christianity or maybe the more mystical side of Judaism, and Judaism in general, and Buddhism, I think you'll see that there are a lot of quotes and a lot of beliefs even by those physicians about how they tell you to heal.

[00:17:05] And so, for instance, with my faith, Christianity, you're going to see a lot-- for instance, Jesus, he doesn't say this supplement, or this medication, or this practice has healed you. No. Your faith has healed you. And the Bible's talking about your beliefs or your thoughts. And so I really believe that if we're talking about healing, more than 50% is spiritual and mental when it comes to healing. One big thing I see that keeps people from healing is when they overfocus on their condition; it becomes the primary focus of their entire life.

[00:17:41] Luke: Oh, right. And also identity, right? The identity gets tied into that, where I am a Lymey or-- and I'm not disparaging anyone that is doing this-- but it's a really important piece.

[00:17:53] Josh: Well, both of you and I have a lot of compassion for people with that because, again, I didn't walk for a year. When you don't walk, or you've got chronic Lyme, or a chronic autoimmune disease or cancer, and you are in a crippled state, it's incredibly hard not to only think about your condition, and not to be a victim, and not to obsess over and over, and over, and also even think about trying to do things to heal.

[00:18:17] But the reality is you really should spend the most limited amount of time you can on doing what's necessary to heal. But outside of that time, focusing on the future, focusing on your family, focusing on God, focusing on serving and loving others, because when you focus on your condition, it, in a way, feeds that condition.

[00:18:35] It also creates a lot of obsession as a form of worry that starts to tax your pancreas and your insulin levels and cause cortisol to go up. And so you really have to be careful not to obsess on the condition and focus just on healing and other things in life. And my book's called Think This, Not That, and really it goes through, here's what you should think in terms of adopting a healing mindset.

[00:19:01] And this is healing physically, but it's also having great relationships, having success in life, just living your best life possible. And so we tap into identity and purpose and all those things going deep, and I think it's probably a different perspective than almost anybody's ever read. And I believe that healing really starts with your identity and your purpose. You know what's so in interesting? And by the way, I love your home here. It's absolutely beautiful. I love the--

[00:19:28] Luke: Thanks, man.

[00:19:29] Josh: The feng shui-ness. I love a lot of the amazing artifacts here. The reason I bring that up is that I think there's a few Ayurvedic elements. I notices a lot more Indian. But I do think that when you look at these ancient forms of healing, let's talk about Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda in particular; they never diagnosed anyone with a condition. Never. Because they knew that that wasn't healthy for the patient. Because it can become part of your identity.

[00:20:03] They would diagnose you with patterns. They'd say, for instance, in Chinese medicine, your body's too hot internally or too cold. Or you're too damp like candida, or you're too dry, which a lot of women start to go through that with menopause and/or as you age. Or your body has too much movement or too little movement. Or, hey, your adrenals are low. It's like your body's battery. Try to do your adrenals and ATP if we're talking western medicine. We need to build that back up.

[00:20:30] Or there's feminine, masculine, yin and yang. We got to balance out that estrogen and testosterone levels within your system. And so what's better for a patient to hear? You have cancer. You have autoimmune disease. You have a 40% chance to live, like they did with my mom. I'm just giving an example there. Or you know what? Your battery's low. We got to recharge it.

[00:20:57] Luke: I like that a lot better.

[00:20:58] Josh: Yeah. Your body's a little cold internally.

[00:21:00] Luke: Or the terminology of just that you're out of balance. There's just an energetic imbalance here, and so we don't even have to heal you. We just have to get you back into balance and then the body heals itself, right?

[00:21:11] Josh: That's right. 100%.

[00:21:12] Luke: Yeah, it's a really different mindset than Western medicine. I'm terrified of going to doctors, for a number of reasons, but I don't want that diagnosis even put in my consciousness. It's like, I know I have a couple of things going on at any given time that I'm working on healing, but I have to be at a really, really desperate place to walk into a medical clinic or something like that.

[00:21:38] We have a great place here called Alive and Well in the neighborhood that's like functional medicine clinic and great, well-curated wellness store and all the things. So I can go in there and see a functional medicine doctor, and they're awake enough where they're not going to go, "Ooh, you have this, you have that," and diagnose me. They're going to frame it in a way that is going to help facilitate a solution rather than getting me trapped in the identification of the said diagnosis.

[00:22:04] Josh: Well, one of the things it's doing, and this is constantly violated in the conventional medical community, but it's breaking the hippocratic oath of first do no harm. You're actually harming somebody when you say you have-- I'm not saying that we shouldn't run tests and have diagnoses, but you're better off telling somebody they have a pattern.

[00:22:26] We'd be much better practicing more of the Chinese, Ayurvedic medicine, biblical medicine, these forms of medicine than we are today. And this would be a whole other topic, but even our whole conventional medical system, the way it's set up, it should be alternative medicine.

[00:22:40] Luke: I know.

[00:22:41] Josh: Nutrition, diet. And I don't say this to boast or sound over confident, but I've helped thousands of people, patients and some non-patients, reverse type 2 diabetes, reverse hypothyroidism, reverse autoimmune disease. And most of the time, when people go into a conventional medical doctor, that just doesn't happen. And we do it all with lifestyle.

[00:23:05] If you're changing your diet and eating more superfood and taking some supplements, there are no side effects to that. There isn't a single medication out there that doesn't have a side effect. The most common side effects aren't on the label.

[00:23:19] Every medication depletes your body and nutrients. I recently just read this study that is going to blow some people's minds, and that is, if you take birth control long term, up to 10 years, your chance of having hypothyroidism goes up by 283.7%. This is at the British Medical Journal.

[00:23:37] Luke: Do you think that's from the fluoride in certain medication?

[00:23:41] Josh: Not with that one in particular. I think it has more to do with what happens when you put in basically something that increases estrogen in that way and then what that starts to do. But basically, birth control depletes your body of vitamin B2, B6 B9, which is folate, B12, selenium, magnesium.

[00:24:02] Those are all the nutrients responsible for methylation. And so now it's really going to impact your cellular energy and your adrenals, and that's going to then impact your thyroid. But the reality is, if you're going to a natural practitioner who really knows their stuff, they're going to know how to address those things, even natural practitioners.

[00:24:23] I think it really takes somebody who understands more of these patterns of Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and really knows East meets West in order to do it probably to the fullest extent. But so many people are walking around with these major nutritional deficiencies because they've taken medications.

[00:24:40] Something like statin drugs, that's totally wiping out your body's co-enzyme Q10 and B12. So now you have an increased risk of diabetes. You actually have an increased risk of a heart attack or certain types-- not all but certain types-- of heart conditions because you're taking a statin drug.

[00:24:57] That's one of the worst of worst. Anyways, people need to realize that. And so it just makes more sense if somebody has a health issue, we should absolutely, the first year, or at least early on, do everything we can with dietary changes, supplements, herbs, lifestyle changes. And then if all of those things don't work, then you step into this emergency care system and get on a medication for a limited period of time.

[00:25:22] Most of these medications, people should only be on if they get on them for a few months until you can actually make the right lifestyle changes, like antidepressants. But people get on antidepressants and are on them for their entire lives, which then really affects and damages their body's ability to balance out dopamine and neurotransmitters long term.

[00:25:43] So it's incredibly, incredibly harmful our conventional medical system today. I actually believe it's, according to an old study,--not too long ago-- I think it was John Hopkins study on hydrogen death, third biggest leading killer. But I actually think those numbers are underplayed.

[00:25:57] I actually think it's probably the biggest leading killer because that study was done only on ones that we know where medications absolutely killed people. That's only on medical mistakes, diagnosing the wrong drug for the right condition. A lot of times people die for the right drug for the right condition.

[00:26:17] Luke: Wow. Well, there's the other sad phenomenon with medication. And I, like you, "Hey, listen, if I needed to take some medication--

[00:26:26] Josh: And I got an antibiotic for a month.

[00:26:28] Luke: Yeah. If that's my only option, I've tried everything else, sign me up. So I'm always careful not to just totally crap on the entire system, but it's obviously very flawed. But another just sad thing about it is some of these medications have such dramatic side effects and throw your body so far out of balance that then you end up on multiple prescriptions because you're chasing your tail, trying to alleviate what you unknowingly are experiencing as the side effect of the first medication in line.

[00:27:02] I don't see many of these people personally, but I'm aware of people in the periphery where they have a medicine cabinet in the bathroom full of medicine, full of prescriptions. Well, I take this one for that, and now I have this, and now I have that.

[00:27:15] And it's like if you get caught on that hamster wheel as you age, it's not like you're going to take less and less medication over time. And we don't even know the interactions that are created with some of these molecules when you mix them up. They don't study the side effect.

[00:27:32] There's some things you can't mix, but so many of these combinations are just left unstudied and left up to chance. What happens if you take a statin, and you also add this, and then you add that? It's like, dude, no wonder people are in such bad shape.

[00:27:47] Josh: Yeah. Yes.

[00:27:48] Luke: It's terrifying, which, to me, is motivating. That's why I commit so much of my time to being healthy in all the natural ways, because I don't want to end up in that sort of situation as I age.

[00:28:01] So some people might think I'm a bit extreme with all the ice baths, and saunas, and getting out in the sun all the time, and blocking the EMF in the house, and all these things. I think from one perspective people would see that as a bit overkill or neurotic, which probably is. I'm a bit OCD, I admit. However, I'm not going to be the guy who's 85, who's falling apart, that can't walk across the street, I don't think.

[00:28:27] Josh: Yeah. Well, it comes down to priorities. You have priorities, and health is a higher priority. Here's the thing I used to tell my patients. Most people spend the first 50% of their life spending all of their health to get wealth. And the last spent 50% of their life spending all of their wealth trying to get their health back.

[00:28:51] Luke: That's good.

[00:28:51] Josh: And that's reality. I can tell you from working with so many patients, once people get to be, a lot of times, especially in their 60s, it's like their biggest focus is trying to get their health back.  I had a patient tell me one time, he said, "If you can help me--" chronic arthritis. Just never took care of himself because he was just so busy. Said, "I'd give you millions of dollars to get my health back."

[00:29:12] And we helped him a lot, but there's certain things-- him creating so much damage. He came on 10 medications, and we were able to get him extremely better. And I'm like, "I don't need a million. We'll just do the regular care." But it's a lot of people. So I think preventative, as you're talking about, is the way to go.

[00:29:32] Same thing for me. I take loads of supplements. I do a cold plunge a day or two a week. I get an infrared sauna. I'm spending a lot of time outside. And your body's going to thank you for it when you're in your 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond.

[00:29:48] Luke: 100%. I can only imagine. I'm 53, and at this point, I still have issues that come up. You know what I mean? Nothing that bad, but I have really crazy tinnitus, for example, which is just maddening, speaking about not feeling like a victim. I've really struggled with it emotionally.

[00:30:10] Some days it's very hard to deal with, but I think, wow, imagine how much worse I would be if I would've kept on the trajectory I was on as a kid and a teenager just eating garbage, and doing drugs, and drinking, and just being a maniac. I literally probably wouldn't be alive on the track that I was on had I not changed my ways in my late 20s and got on this path.

[00:30:32] And this is what I see. I meet people around, not really in my inner circle, but I meet people my age, and yeah, "How old are you?" And they go, "I'm 53." And I go, "Dude, you look 80." Not tooting my own horn, but I'm just like, oh, wow. I'm much younger than I would've been had I just lived the standard American lifestyle. The proof's in the pudding.

[00:30:54] I want to go back to something you shared about when you had your diagnosis and your process of healing with prayer. I'm a deeply devotional person, and there's just no way I could live my life any other way. I don't know how anyone survives without some faith in something.

[00:31:13] And I've found over the years, in my various spiritual studies and practices, that prayers in general, I believe all prayer works, but prayers that are very general, like, "God, help me," give you general results, to your point of envisioning the result you want. And so I'm curious for you, have you found that when prayers are hyper-specific and directed-- "God, please help me with this outcome. This is what I want to see, feel, and experience on the other side of this." What does your prayer life look like?

[00:31:51] Josh: Yeah. Well, let me share a few thoughts on this one you'd mentioned. I think that everyone does have faith in something. It's just faith in the wrong things oftentimes. So everybody has a God in their life. Today, a lot of people, their God is government.

[00:32:11] Luke: Yeah, unfortunately.

[00:32:13] Josh: For some people, it's environmentalism. It's the god of Gaia-- little g but been around for a long time. So I think that there are a lot of things. Whatever's the number one thing in your life, that really is your God. You're putting your faith in the government to help you, to be the one to rescue.

[00:32:27] What's your faith in? Is it in a certain person? Is it in the government? Is it in the medical system? What is it in? For me, it's the God of the Bible. And so I think it's also important to know what you believe about God is the most important thing about you.

[00:32:52] It's the single most important belief you could have, is what you believe about God. Because, really, it's also where our identity comes from. We all have a maker. We all have somebody that's our God. And so if you believe that God is a tyrant and a grumpy old man, or is distance and doesn't care about you, that's going to impact your identity more than anything.

[00:33:16] Really, the way that it works is, as a foundational level, your belief about God is the biggest, most important part of your own identity. Secondarily, it's your own identity tied to other people because none of us live in a vacuum. Our identity changes based on other people. I didn't have an identity as a father, but then I had kids, and now I have a new identity.

[00:33:37] So other people transform your identity, then your identity feeds your purpose. And then your purpose determines your beliefs and then your actions and a number of other things. And so all that being said, I think that my prayer life, I believe that God is a perfect God. We don't understand him.

[00:33:55] There's a lot we don't understand, but I believe that He is form me, not against me. I believe that the Bible really shares who He is. And based on those facts, I believe that he knows me to the very hair on my head. He knows everything about me. He knows me better than I know myself. I know that he's constantly setting up situations where I can win.

[00:34:16] I know that he uses all things for good. My back pain that I just had, not walking for a year, as I was going through that, part of my mind was like, God, how could this ever turn out to be a good thing? And it's going to be such a blessing. It already is. I'm now able to go and help others.

[00:34:36] When my mom had cancer when I was a kid, she was 40 years old. Breast cancer. I can remember being in junior high, her taking a comb through her hair, and all her hair coming out.

[00:34:49] And I remember having to go in another room and, as a kid, just sob. And I remember thinking two things at that time. God, how could you let this happen? I also remember thinking, I want to help people like my mom. There's got to be a better way. That launched me into becoming a doctor, and it saved my mom's life.

[00:35:08] And looking back, I think back, my mom got diagnosed a second time, and at that time, I was about to open my functional medicine clinic. Helped her juice vegetables and do superfoods and all things. And we reversed cancer naturally with her. But going back to all those experiences, my mom now is so grateful for life. She's so grateful. My mom now teaches other women how to overcome breast cancer, doing green smoothies, and taking supplements, all kinds of stuff?

[00:35:36] Luke: Oh, man. That's cool.

[00:35:37] Josh: And this led me into being a doctor. So if we wouldn't have had that experience-- so God took lemons and turned it into a lemonade.  So now I'll talk about prayer, but I think what you believe about God is incredibly important. Because if you believe he is perfect and just and working out things for your favor, then there's one type of prayer there.

[00:36:03] And I also believe even the way that this world is set up with family units, having a mom and a dad and kids, now that I have daughters, I know more about God because I have daughters.

[00:36:19] Because before, it's like, how could I ever be willing to step in a bullet for somebody, or take a bullet, or just sacrifice literally everything or say, "I would die in your place?" And I would for my daughters. So I think when I think about God knowing He did the very same thing when He said Jesus to die for us.

[00:36:41] That's my belief. That's like, "Wow, God. I know you better now. I know the extremes you're willing to go through for me." So when I pray, I really believe it's a two-way conversation. And that's actually what prayer means. If you go to the roots, it's like this. We're having this conversation.

[00:37:01] And I think because God's a spiritual being, it's much harder for us who are also in flesh right now to decipher exactly what he's saying in the same way that you and I are having this conversation. But I think if we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and we choose to see the impact the wind has on the trees, if we choose to see the impact that the spiritual beings and God have on the things around us, then we can be aware that there is a God and have a certainty there.

[00:37:30] So what I will do is I try and really be conscious of having a balance of like, God is not a genie in a bottle. He's not a slot machine. God is a father, just like we have kids. Here's the other thing. God is not going to give me something I'm not ready for. So you might pray for things like, well, God didn't answer it.

[00:37:48] Because that wouldn't be good for you. You got have a perfect, loving God. My daughter asks for things all the time. She never doesn't ask for a second, third, or fourth piece of chocolate. But we can't just give her dark chocolate with all the caffeine before bed, or she's going to be bouncing off the walls.

[00:38:04] So my prayers are very much, one, starting off with adoration and wonder. "God, you are so amazing. The most amazing being ever. Loves me, cares for me, is setting up an eternity for me." So it really starts off with this praise and adoration. And the next it gets into just sharing where I'm at.

[00:38:25] "God, this is a hard day. God, this is a wonderful day. God, thank you for my spouse. God, can you help me work out this sweet thing that Chelsea and I are trying to work through together?" And so it's just a really open communication conversation. So there's adoration, there's conversation, and there's also requests of, "God, I need your help so badly to heal. Right now, I feel despair. I feel hopelessness. I need your help. I need to feel comfort."

[00:38:53] Or, "Lord, I'm trying to have more influence. Lord, would you send people my way, specific influence?" I remember praying this prayer when I was in college. I felt like I did not have a good group of friends. And I was actually part of a fraternity and was just drinking and going out all the time.

[00:39:11] And I just looked around and I realized, I don't have anyone around me that actually really cares about me. And I felt really empty. And my exact words were, "God, would you send a flood of Christian men into my life, of spiritual men that can help mentor me and help me grow and guide me?"

[00:39:27] I went to this group a few days later, and I had a guy come up to me and talk to me a few minutes. They said, "Hey, I'm starting a men's growth group. You want to be a part of it?" Now I could be like, "Oh, that was random." Random chance. No, it's like you can believe nothing is a miracle or everything's a miracle.

[00:39:43] And so I believe that that was a divine intervention for me. And so anyways, my point there is, I present my request to God. And the last thing is I listen. And I've never heard God audibly, but I pay attention to like my conscience. There's my conscience, and I believe also there's a God conscience that speaks to me in the way of the Holy Spirit and being able to attune myself to. And I really am able to discern that voice correctly by, I think, reading the Bible and understand what he says in the Bible.

[00:40:13] And then if it's the similar energy that I'm experiencing there, which is typically very altruistic, rather than, "Josh, I'm going to give you this perfect, wonderful thing," it's like, a marriage. "Hey, would you help Chelsea see this?" Or, "Would you help my in-laws or my parents or someone I might be having a challenge with?" Most of the time it's like, no. The problem is you. You need to be more compassionate. You need to pursue them. And I'm like, okay, that sounds a little more like God than it sounds like me. And then I try and act on those things.

[00:40:46] Luke: Yeah. It's like the prayer St. Francis of Assisi helped me to understand rather than be understood. I used to read that prayer every day for years.

[00:40:55] Josh: Good. I love it.

[00:40:56] Luke: Yeah. There's so much in that, but it's like on face value, you're like, "Yeah. Wow, this is beautiful." No one of conscious mind could read that and be like, ah, this sounds like bs. You read it and you go, oh yeah, this is the answer. But to actually do it when you're in life because you want to be understood.

[00:41:14] Josh: And speaking of St. Francis Assisi, I've spent the past few years studying a lot of the Saints, and it's so enriching, and I think it makes me sad that so many people haven't studied history. Of course, in the Catholic and Orthodox Church, it's spoken about more, but even evangelicals, I think they should focus on a lot of the saints even more and focus on that as part of their faith.

[00:41:38] But you'll see they're just very spirit-led. And I think it's harder today than ever before because there's so much noise. Everything from social media to just driving in cars to, we're almost always distracted. Something always has our attention. Like our daughter, she says, sometimes I'm bored. We're like, good. You need to be bored sometimes. Just think. Just be present.

[00:42:02] Luke: I noticed that conditioning when I get way out in the bush, out in nature with nothing around. There's a period of withdrawal from stimuli. It's uncomfortable for a bit until you settle into it.

[00:42:20] Josh: Ever seen anybody getting off drugs? The movie that's popping into my head is Walk the Line when Johnny Cash hasn't had alcohol for several days and drugs, and it's like you have those symptoms. But that is what it's like. You get in nature, and it's like your body's almost screaming, but it's a detox.

[00:42:37] Luke: Yeah. It's like a stimulation detox. Well, I love your perspective, and these are ideas I've been teasing out for many years. I had a really beautiful experience. I didn't grow up with any kind of spirituality or religion at all. It was just a non-issue. I definitely wasn't an atheist. Maybe an agnostic, just like, I don't know. I'm not interested. Never had any reason to care or look into it.

[00:43:04] And then I was an addict and in a really bad shape, and so I checked myself into rehab with the help of my mom. God bless her. Really saved my life. Anyway, I check into rehab. I'm coming off all kinds of drugs and alcohol. 26 years old, close to the end, really. And I went into the nurse's office on the first morning, I guess, when I came to, and I tried to get some medication. I wanted some Dilaudid or some painkillers because I was coming off of heroin.

[00:43:37] And they took my vitals and they wouldn't give me any medication. They said, "You're actually okay." And I was like, "I am not okay. I guarantee you I'm far from okay. Please give me some Valium, something. I'm losing my mind." Because of the withdrawals and everything. So anyway, the nurse said to me, "Well, we can't do that, but I can give you a tool that will be useful."

[00:43:59] And I'm like, "Yes, yes. What is this?" "Well, go to your room and pray." Because most rehabs are based on the 12 steps, which is a non-denominational sort of spiritual program. And I was like, "Pray? You got to be kidding me." But I was so humbled, so defeated, so beaten, and so desperate, and that's literally the only thing I had to possibly make it through that day.

[00:44:22] So I went to my room. And I didn't even know how to pray, really. I've seen it in movies and know. So I thought, well, I think you put your hands together like this. You kneel in front of the bed. And I did that. I don't know for how long. Maybe a few minutes or something. And kept doing it. Kept coming back to it anytime I would start freaking out. And it was really interesting because it was the most powerful spiritual experience of my life, yet nothing happened. It's like the room didn't fill with white light and a wind came through and moved the curtains.

[00:45:00] Nothing was happening. It was just stillness. But I started to realize in the subsequent days after I began this process of just praying so hard every day that I wasn't craving drugs and alcohol. It was literally a miracle. It was, poof, just gone.

[00:45:19] Josh: Wow.

[00:45:20] Luke: And the interesting thing about that was, to me, it was irrefutable proof that there is a God and that you can talk to this God. And if it's in alignment for you at that time, your prayer will be answered. So that was 27 years ago, and it's been a lesson of building my trust and faith that that same modality or that same dynamic is possible for all the problems in my life.

[00:45:52] I think it's a lifetime practice. So I'm having the problem with the finance or the business or whatever. The dog gets sick, anything. And it's like, I find it so funny how I forget that certainty that I had, that that is what moved the needle for me and transformed my life.

[00:46:13] And then there's that doubt that's like, "Well." Even my wife, we pray together a lot, and we'll be struggling with something. She goes, "Honey, let's pray tonight. Come on. Before we go to bed, let's go upstairs." This is our prayer room. That's why I like recording in here.

[00:46:25] Josh: I love that.

[00:46:26] Luke: It's a lot of good energy in here. And she almost has to drag me to it sometimes because I forget that it works, that it's real. I think, no, I need to just buckle down, get on my computer, send some emails, whatever it is. I'm going to fix this problem by exerting my will over it. And it's just funny how we're wired to lose that faith and that certainty, even when we have empirical evidence that it's absolutely real.

[00:46:51] Josh: Yeah.

[00:46:52] Luke: But anyway, that was the beginning of my journey, and that's the one thing that I really hinged my life on, was that there's no denying that something entered into my life that is unexplainable that was definitely not only me.

[00:47:08] Josh: Yeah.

[00:47:09] Luke: I had a part to play right because she told me to go pray, and I did it. And then I did all kinds of work for 27 years after that to make sure that I kept that relationship with my higher power alive and continue to grow it. But there's no denying that I didn't just have a change in attitude all of a sudden and be like, "I'm going to be sober now." I tried that a million times for years and years. Nothing ever happened until the day I truly surrendered.

[00:47:36] Josh: Wow. That's such a powerful word, surrender. I think today we tend to glorify power. If you say, "Who are the most successful people?" They most powerful, most wealthy. And I think that's a state people need to get to. And I think this is also why when people hit rock bottom, they tend to be most likely to surrender.

[00:47:54] Also, when you hit rock bottom, if you're at the very bottom, the only place you can look is up. And it's God. But I do think that it's tied to humility, surrender, humility. I need help, God. I just need you. I can't do this without you. I know when I had one of the biggest turning points in my life, it was, I mentioned, college, rock bottom feeling, just a sense of emptiness, like a hole in my heart.

[00:48:20] And then really inviting God in and that connection, and then I felt full. I don't know how else to explain it. It was this spiritual, emotional, mental fullness. And that to me was just such a powerful sign too.

[00:48:34] Luke: One of the things that I started doing early on was-- well, my first prayers were just, "Help me be sober. Remove this obsession I have to just constantly destroy myself." And that was answered, as I said. But then the way I was directed, because it was around recovery, was surrendering your will to God.

[00:48:56] Josh: That's good. Yes. Yeah.

[00:48:58] Luke: It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up, hold up. So then I started doing all these word studies over the years. What is will? And what I understand will to be is desire. It's like when somebody leaves a will, it's what they desire to have happen after they expire. And our will, it's like what we want, what we desire. And so I think there's a real challenge for the human ego to truly surrender what we want to something that is pretty nebulous, even though it's all that anything is, it's invisible.

[00:49:34] So here's where I've arrived, and I want to get your take on it. What I've come to understand, to your point of seeing your mom's cancer journey and different things that you've gone through in your life where you wanted something, your will was like, I want this outcome.

[00:49:47] And then God goes, "Hmm, actually, we're going to give you this outcome because you gave me your will." It's this understanding that-- and I know this to be true in my own life. I could give you a million examples-- that sometimes my will or my desires are shortsighted and ultimately don't serve the highest good for all creation of which I am included.

[00:50:13] So I'm praying for God's will, and it's like, okay, see, I'm in a business deal. And I'm like, make me get the long end of the stick or whatever. I want to win in this. And it's like, well, maybe God's will is that the other person wins. And in the short term it'll seem like I lost, but down the road, if I have some introspection, I'll see, oh, that was actually the highest outcome for all of reality, and I'm included in that reality. And so my life went down a completely different track that I didn't choose because I surrendered the entire outcome of my desire to God.

[00:50:46] So it's like this understanding that what God wants for me is infinitely more beneficial to me than any little ideas that percolate out of my brain. And that's a huge thing to overcome when you've been a directed person or an atheist or agnostic your whole life to go from that where you are in charge of everything and if I don't do it, it's not going to get done, to like, "Hey, I'll take the necessary actions to facilitate something happening, but the results of it, it's on God. And it never fails to prove itself. So what's been your experience with your will, your desires, trusting in your faith that what's going to be delivered to you is better than your little temporary plans and designs?

[00:51:34] Josh: Yeah. One of the things I always tell God is, your plan's better than mine. I want yours. Because it always turns out to be better. And it's so interesting that you brought up will. This is something I get to in my book, actually, because I think it's such a powerful idea for people that can transform their life.

[00:51:52] Thomas Aquinas talked about will, and he said, "What love is, it's tied to will, and it's willing the good of the other." And I give an example in my book of this. I'm sure a lot of people have seen the movie Lord of the Rings or read the book. There's this scene in the movie if you look at Samwise Gamgee and what he's doing for Frodo.

[00:52:12] But there's a scene in the movie where Frodo gets to the point on the mountain where he can't walk anymore. He cannot carry the ring up the mountain. And basically, Sam is like, you may not be able to get there, but I can-- throws him over his shoulder, carries him up the entire mountain, brings him all the way to the top.

[00:52:32] And I think part of that is it's willing the good of the other. I think a lot of times when we hear things like the golden rule, love your neighbor as yourself, the second greatest commandment, I don't think people fully grasp what that looks like.

[00:52:47] I think what it truly means is that it's that thing. I'm going to use all my time, all my energy, all my talents, I'm going to take that burden that you have upon myself and pour my heart and soul into helping you. If you're in the state of an addict, it's your mom saying, I'm going to spend my money.

[00:53:06] I'm going to drive you there myself. I'm going to do everything I can. I think a lot of times we don't probably go to-- and myself, I'm as guilty of this as anybody, go far enough in just loving people and just sacrificing what we have. And so today people really think of love as this romantic arrows in Greek love versus really, if you're talking about what real love is, it is I'm sacrificing everything I have in order to bless you and love you, and it's dine to self.

[00:53:34] And I think that it is such a paradox because you would think if you give everything up, you have nothing left and that you'll be unhappy. But the reality is, if you just live for others in that way, what you get back is infinity. Because here's the other thing. In a way, you're exchanging, trying to accomplish things for yourself for becoming a certain type of person.

[00:54:08] I was at my grandfather's funeral. This is about seven years ago. He was an amazing man living to be 96 years old. He was a World War II veteran in the Navy. When he was in his mid-40s, he was working on telephone lines outdoors, preparing broken poles. And he just got to the point where he is like, this is not what I want to do my whole life.

[00:54:25] So him and my grandmother took their life savings, bought this pine with 50 acres and turned it into a campground, a swim park. They had retreats and reunions there. It was this magical place, absolutely magical place. And he ran the business till he was 96, so 52 years. And I ran that to say when I was at his funeral, they don't always do this at funerals, but they did it at this one.

[00:54:48] The pastor said, "Does anyone have any final words about Howard?" And the man next to me blurts out, almost screams, just sobbing. He goes, "Howard was my best friend." And I look over at him, and I feel a little guilty, but my first thought was, "I don't think you're my grandfather's best friend. Because that's my Uncle Alan and Uncle Don."

[00:55:10] But then I thought, "There's 150 people here. I bet half the people here believe my grandfather's their best friend." And nobody said my grandfather didn't accomplish in terms of-- now, he accomplished creating this beautiful, magical place, but he retired with almost no money because he just gave everything away.

[00:55:27] But then after that man said that, somebody said, "Howard saved my marriage." Someone else said, "Hey, Howard led me to the Lord. Howard was the father I never had." And it went around person after person, just started sharing these stories of him.

[00:55:42] And I bring that up to say my grandfather was that sort of person. He just sacrificed his life for everybody. Never thought of himself. He had such joy, and he didn't accomplish anything great in his life, but he became a certain type of person. When I was there, it really struck me like, I'm trying to have too much of an accomplishing mindset in life.

[00:56:04] I'm trying to achieve and accomplish and hit goals and whatever. Not to say we shouldn't do that, but also I need to focus more on becoming a certain type of person. Because it's like, okay, I can go and achieve something in business, but it's very different to achieve something and do it by cutting corners, cheating, lying, being mean, and fighting for my way, or doing it with generosity and compassion and a win-win mindset.

[00:56:27] And so really I realized when I do anything, rather than having a to-do list, I need a to-be list. Or I need to have a to-be list along with my to-do list. I might get something done, but am I very, very kind in doing it?

[00:56:38] Luke: I love that to-be list. That's good. Well, yeah, that makes perfect sense because it's like the outward manifestation of your life is just a reflection of your character. And I think this is, especially when it comes to wealth and business and outward success, why many of us fail, is because we actually aren't the person who's capable of holding that, or we don't believe ourselves to be a person who's capable of holding that.

[00:57:08] It's like this whole idea of affirmations and stuff. It's hypnotize ourself into thinking that we can achieve a certain goal, but sometimes we skip the step of like, "Oh, I need to have the level of consciousness that actually feels deserving and capable of that outward symbol." It's like the cart before the horse kind of thing.

[00:57:31] So I like this idea of becoming what you want rather than just staying the way you are and thinking that when you get the thing you want, that's going to change who you are. We have a lot of it backwards.

[00:57:44] Josh: As I watching your social media posts, watching some of what you've done, one of the things I really love is that you have such a great focus on awareness. Because I think a lot of times when it comes to living your best life possible, people are focused a lot on goals, which is good.

[00:57:59] That's the end in mind, which is that what's one thing you need to be conscious of. But you also need to be conscious of where you're at now and have a high level of spiritual awareness, emotional intelligence, knowing your starting point and being really vulnerable and honest with yourself of your faults and your shortcomings.

[00:58:16] And that really allows you to better grow and also know where you're going in life. I notice this with patients. I think the patients that get to be the healthiest are the ones that have the greatest physical awareness. They know how a food's going to impact them.

[00:58:35] They know that I can do this and not that. They start to have this awareness and this physical intelligence. Even more important though is mental intelligence and this spiritual awareness too. When you look at the people that are the most spiritually mature, they tend to be the most spiritually aware. They're very aware.

[00:58:55] For instance, if people spend much time around a rabbi or a pastor or a priest, on average, most of them are more even keeled. They have this calm sense about their spirit probably more than the average person. And I think they have a level of spiritual awareness of, "Well, this person probably has this going on in their life and this, and I'm in this place."

[00:59:17] But a lot of people go throughout their entire life without really being aware of what's going on inside of them. What are these emotions I'm feeling? What do I think? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And also that of others. And so for instance, one of the greatest things you can do is be able to develop awareness of yourself and others. It's called sometimes in the psychology world, self-distancing. I want to tell you about one of the coolest study I've ever read, I think. It's called the Batman Study.

[00:59:45] Luke: I like it already.

[00:59:46] Josh: Exactly. And so they did this study on kids, and they wanted to see what made them the most productive. And so they had one group of kids, and I think these were four-year-olds and six-year-olds. And they would go in, and they would work on a project. And once they got bored or once they felt like they did as much as they could, then they would go and play games. So the first group of kids, they said, "Hey, go in and work on this project, and then afterwards you can play games."

[01:00:14] And so they work on it, and then they'd go and play games. The second group, they did this practice of self-distancing, saying, "Johnny, think about yourself doing this and stepping outside of yourself. And they helped them with this practice of self-distancing, becoming more aware, self-aware.

[01:00:29] And they improved what they were doing by, I want to say it was something around 13 to 16%. So it was a pretty big improvement for by kids becoming self-aware. Now, here's where I think the study becomes really amazing. They had another group of kids, and they said, "Hey, who is your favorite superhero or princess or whatever?" One little boy was like, "I'm Batman." The little girl was like, "I'm Dora the Explorer." And they said, "Okay, go in and do this, but you're Batman."

[01:01:00] Well, those kids were 26% more productive at getting things done because they had an identity change. They believe I'm Batman. Literally just believing that. Having that level of awareness, I think, is so powerful. And a lot of people are walking around, and they have a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, very low self-esteem, low self-worth, low self-value.

[01:01:21] And I think if people really recognized that they're a child of God, that God created them with gifts that no one else in this entire planet has. And if they could really just tap into those, what they could do is really becomes almost unimaginable, I think.

[01:01:38] If somebody were to tell me when I was younger that I would be having the level of impact that I have on my podcast, or my supplement company, or in life, I would've said no way. And I feel so blessed because of it. And I feel humbled because it's all God, my relationship with him and really him leading me into, "Hey, I've called you to do this."

[01:02:04] Becoming more aware of those things. And so all that being said, there's a C. S. Lewis quote that I love, and I'm going to totally butcher it. But basically he says something like this, if we were to see each other right now, you and I, in our spiritual forms, we would just shudder and just sit there and just be an absolute all in wonder of, he says of little g, but gods and goddesses.

[01:02:28] And so he said, if you look at the most average person, if you look at a homeless person, if you walk up to them, it'd be very easy for us to maybe a superiority complex, or feel like, I'm better than that person. But if you would see them in their true potential, what they're capable of in their spiritual form, he said that you'd have a temptation to bow down and worship that homeless person if you saw what their true potential was and who they could truly become. And so if you can develop that level of awareness about who you are and who other people truly are, it really can change your life.

[01:03:05] Luke: That's beautiful. Yeah. Do you know Ian Mitchell?

[01:03:10] Josh: I've heard the name, but I don't--

[01:03:11] Luke: Yeah. He's got a great company. He's just a mad scientist. We call him a wizard. And so he started a company called Wizard Sciences, makes some really innovative, cool, supplements and stuff. But he's been on the show a number of times, and he shared a quote with me by Romana Maharshi a couple of weeks ago because we were just talking about the unified field and just this idea of oneness and non-duality.

[01:03:34] To your point, when we walk up to that homeless person, one way is to see them as another person, and one way is to see them as just another finger on God's hand, kind of thing. Another branch on God's tree. So this quote, Roman Maharshi was an Indian mystic, and so someone asked him, how do you deal with other people? And he immediately says, there are no other people.

[01:03:59] Josh: Yeah, yeah. A lot Indian--

[01:04:02] Luke: That it's like at the level of consciousness where all-- everything is God. Everything is consciousness. There's nothing that's not God. This is my perspective or interpretation of that. Therefore, you sitting there, my senses lead me to believe that there's a Dr. Josh Axe sitting there and that you have this different experience, which you do because you're an individual expression of God, but fundamentally, to your point of seeing someone as their spiritual self, we're actually just two individual waves that are part of the same sea, but we're still sea.

[01:04:33] We're sea. And so I find in my life the more I can be the sea, focus less on the individual expressions of the sea as a wave, I'm a wave over here. I'm different than that one. I don't like that wave. It should be another wave. Or I would feel better if I was like that wave, if I had what that wave has, that kind of comparison. It's a really great orientation to life to just be able to see God in everyone.

[01:05:01] However, and this is the question I'm going to extract out of this, at times in my life, because I do have a really high level of empathy. I'm someone who's gone through a lot of struggles like many of us have. I've overcome them. So I have this innate desire to really feel other people, to help other people, to love other people unconditionally. And at times I've learned hard lessons around discernment and boundaries because I just see the good in people.

[01:05:30] I can see someone's higher self. I can see their potential. I can see their soul. Yet at the same time, it's dangerous sometimes to not also be aware of people's distortions and the parts of them that aren't their true self. That can make someone dangerous because they're unconscious of who they really are. So I wonder how in your faith, in your interactions with people, how do you practice discernment and boundaries while still loving people unconditionally?

[01:05:59] Josh: Yeah. Well, one, don't throw pearls to pigs. Don't take your time that is so precious in your gifts to somebody who is absolutely choosing not to embrace it. I think about it like this. I do some regenerative farming. Jordan Rubin and I own 4,000 acres of certified organic land.

[01:06:26] We own some in Missouri. We own a lot in Tennessee. And yeah, we've got greenhouses. We practice something called food foresting and permaculture. But we try and be conscious of when we grow certain plants, the soil we're planting in. So if something's really rocky and the top soil's very thin, we don't typically plant there.

[01:06:49] Now, we will then go and have our cows go and defecate and urinate and feed on the grass. It's there, and then all of a sudden, a few years later you're like, whoa. But my point there is that we can only spend so much time sowing seeds. We want to sow on good soil.

[01:07:06] And sometimes soil just isn't ready yet. Sometimes it needs to be urinated and defecated upon. We could dig this analogy, but in a way, actually, this is very true. They need to be smelly and down enough and whatever else in order to realize, okay. You know what? Now I'm ready to be planted on.

[01:07:29] And so I think that's part of it, is also knowing there's no use in just taking-- if I had fruit seeds, just dropping them on a hard concrete sidewalk, nothing will grow. So I'm wasting their time, wasting my time, wasting all the time. And it's not to say, in that individual interaction, I shouldn't be loving and compassionate and do everything I can, because, in that action, we should.

[01:07:52] But if I'm actually going to go and pursue somebody and spend extra time in order to do something to help turn this earth into a heavenly place, I'm going to go and look for the best soil possible in order to plant in. And so that would be my thought there.

[01:08:11] Luke: Yeah, well played. So we're drawing nearer to our end time, which is frustrating for me because--

[01:08:18] Josh: This is so fun, by the way. I love these conversations. I tend to have a lot more conversations regarding, which I love talking about, nutrition and natural medicine. But this is where I get on fire. I love this because I think that when you think about the most important thing in your life, physical health is important, but your spiritual health is the most important.

[01:08:40] We're going to all live for eternity. And so what are you doing in setting yourself up for eternity? Everything we do in this life right now brings through eternity. And so, as the Bible says, don't store treasures for yourself here on earth where moth and rusts destroy. Store them up in heaven where they're not destroyed, where they'll be forever.

[01:08:58] Luke: I agree 100%. It's like you don't take any of this with you, but what I feel like we do take with us is our character.

[01:09:09] Josh: Who we become.

[01:09:10] Luke: Yeah. That's the thing. So if that's the thing you take with you, then why the hell are we here in the first place? To build that thing, to refine that thing that is impermanent.

[01:09:21] Josh: I think there's a misconception. A lot of people think that once die, people that are already spiritual, we go off somewhere else. If you're a believer in the Bible, that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible starts off, you're in a garden, and God calls Adam and Eve to take this little regenerative food force, this paradise, this perfect place.

[01:09:42] Luke: This biodynamic farm.

[01:09:43] Josh: Exactly. But make the entire earth paradise. And if you go to the last book of the Bible, Revelation, in the last two chapters, it talks about we will live in a garden city. We're back here on earth. We actually will live here for eternity. It's just going to be in new body that never ages, and we are going to be doing some pretty cool stuff here on earth. And so, yeah, it's a different perspective.

[01:10:12] Luke: I like talking about the Bible with people that can understand it. I was doing a podcast with a woman yesterday, and I was like, I'm sure there's a lot of value in the Bible. I just have always had a difficult time reading it. Just the language. I just can't dig into it. But I know there's something inherently beautiful and valuable there, obviously. It's the bestselling book of all time. But I love talking to people like you. They can give it to me in common parlance. And I go, oh yeah, I understand that. But if I tried to read that chapter or verse, I'd be like, what? Thou, thou, who art what? So I like the translation.

[01:10:49] I would be remiss to not touch on what you're doing with your company. I know you're a really classy guy. I'm sure your sales are great. You don't need my podcast to get you more sales. But I ask because you were one of the first clinicians in the functional medicine realm, like Mark Sisson, you, couple of other guys, that launched brands that have been wildly successful.

[01:11:15] I see your stuff in Whole Foods all the time, Ancient Nutrition. I go, oh yeah, I remember that guy. I remember him on podcast 10 years ago, talking about functional medicine. And then you roll out a brand and build that brand into something quite massive. What's that journey been like? What was your first product, and how did that go, leading up to now you're in every freaking Whole Foods or wherever you are?

[01:11:38] Josh: I feel so blessed to be able to do what I love. The way we developed our first product-- so my business partner is Jordan Rubin. Jordan first founded another supplement company, which was really successful. Wanted to do something at a whole other level at Ancient Nutrition.

[01:11:55] And so I used to have my patients do a bone broth fast or a lot of bone broth because I had people coming in with inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disease. And I always believed that bone broth was probably the single biggest food that people were missing because 30% of your body is made up of collagen. And the only source of collagen you're getting for most people's bone broth or the skin of animals, it's the only place you're going to get it.

[01:12:20] And so people were really missing this. And so I was talking to Jordan about doing some supplements, and I said, "Man, I wish we could find a way to get bone broth in powder form." And it clicked for him. So we launched a product called Bone Broth Protein. Now it says protein at then, but really it's bone broth in powder form.

[01:12:38] Now, it has 20 grams of protein per serving. But to me, it helps so many people. We've had so many people that have taken this product, Bone Broth Protein, and they've said, "My joint pain's gone. My gut health is better. My skin, hair, and nails are amazing. My immune system." Because it's chicken soup. It's chicken bone broth, a lot of it. Beef bone broth mixed together.

[01:13:00] And so I even noticed myself my joints and body feeling younger. So when we created products, Jordan and I are very much obsessive about, we want to create the best thing possible to help us heal. Because Jordan created supplements to help him heal from Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

[01:13:17] I originally got in the space to help my mom with cancer, and so we really wanted to create supplements that were going to be impactful that went to a whole other level, and also following ancient principles. To give you example, when we create our turmeric product, most people are going to take the cheap turmeric and put it in a bottle, and that's what they're going to do.

[01:13:34] Well, we're actually one of only two companies that are not just organic certified. We're regenerative organic certified with a lot of our products. So you're going to start seeing this in the future. Right now, again, just like before, there was no such thing as organic. Well, now the highest level you're going to start seeing on certain products is going to be regenerative organic certified.

[01:13:55] Luke: I was eating some ice cream last night, which is one of my, I don't want to say it's a bad habit, but a habit I should probably do a little less. But my wife found this brand, and I wish I could give them a shout out. The fridge is too far away right now. But it's made with a2 grass-fed milk.

[01:14:10] Josh: We work with the company.

[01:14:11] Luke: Oh yeah. Regenerative pharma. Usually I don't even read the ingredients because it's so depressing. I'll feel guilty for eating it. I said a2, and then I read the ingredients. I was like, hot damn. The only thing they could do to improve this is if it was raw milk. But they can't do that because of stupid rules. But I was like, they nailed every other part of it.

[01:14:32] So I'm excited to see people going beyond the greenwashing of organic. Some of the terminology used in marketing, even the pasture-raised, what does that even mean? Cage-free with eggs. There's a lot of kind of marketing shenanigans going on. But when you see regenerative, that to me takes it to another level.

[01:14:52] Josh: Yeah, it's a really high standard. We grow a lot of our herbs on our farm. We grow turmeric. We don't only grow turmeric. We grow black turmeric, which is this purple color. We grow blue turmeric. We grow green turmeric. We grow all our own mushrooms. We grow Schisandra. We grow ashwagandha.

[01:15:10] Luke: Really?

[01:15:10] Josh: Yeah, yeah.

[01:15:10] Luke: Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that.

[01:15:12] Josh: So now we have a new line, which most people don't know this because we only carry these ones online, but they're Regenerative Organic Certified. It's a whole line. We call them ROC products. And so we've got a ROC turmeric and a ROC ashwagandha and a ROC hormone balance for men and women.

[01:15:26] So we've got a lot of those products there as well. Our Super Greens, very similar. We got regenerative organic certified in the Super Greens product. So really, we're very much what is the top tier we could possibly create the most energetic-- for our mushrooms we grow, we do light therapy. We do music therapy while we grow them.

[01:15:45] Luke: Really?

[01:15:46] Josh: Oh yeah. We only give them structured high grade water.

[01:15:48] Luke: Really?

[01:15:50] Josh: Yeah.

[01:15:51] Luke: I didn't know any of this.

[01:15:53] Josh: We need to do a better job as a company marketing because we go to every extent possible to try and make this stuff next level.

[01:15:59] Luke: I'll be honest. Because I just study this stuff and I have access to so many unique and novel supplements and stuff, when I see something in Whole Foods, I automatically just go, "Ah, it's commodity." I've used your Bone Broth Protein for years. I know yours, but I wouldn't walk by your average bucket of Super Green powder or something in Whole Foods and think it's at that level.

[01:16:29] Yeah. So it's interesting and cool that you've infiltrated the mainstream market with the structured water and doing next level stuff, playing music to your medicinal mushrooms. I would've never guessed that.

[01:16:41] Josh: Oh yeah. Hey, if you're ever in Tennessee, in Nashville--

[01:16:44] Luke: Dude, I would love to. It.

[01:16:45] Josh: One of our farms is an hour south of Nashville. It's in a city called Summertown.

[01:16:49] Luke: I'm obsessed with permaculture, biodynamic farming, all this stuff. We bought this house a couple of years ago, and I haven't done the landscaping. The outside is a train wreck. And one of the reasons I haven't done it is like, I don't want to do all this hardscaping that doesn't then make irrigation plans and room for a permaculture set up on this little lot we have. It's like I at least want some fruit trees or something that I maybe won't kill.

[01:17:15] I love the idea of growing your own food, especially what we're seeing now with-- they're scary. They're scary stuff happening. I try to not be too conspiratorial, but when you see all these food plants just randomly blowing up over the past couple years and nefarious characters buying up mass--

[01:17:33] Josh: Farmland and--

[01:17:34] Luke: Farmland. And kind of like, "Hmm, what's the end game here for these people?" Because it doesn't look like they're trying to help us have more abundant and healthier food. So I like the idea of sovereignty. Well, for people that want to check your stuff out, the show notes for this, you guys, are going to be lukestorey.com/draxe, D-R-A-X-E.

[01:17:53] I'm excited to go check it out because I just like, "Ah, that's the Bone Broth Protein I like." And I don't go on your website and order. I just pick it up when I'm out and about. So that's super cool. Am I mistaken? Am I imagining this, or do you have a Marine collagen protein?

[01:18:09] Josh: We do what's called a multi collagen, and so it's got marine.

[01:18:14] Luke: Okay. That's what I have. And I have some in my cabinet.

[01:18:19] Josh: Yeah. There's a principle in Chinese medicine called like supports like. Your body has many different types of collagen within it. So the collagen that makes up your joints is fairly different than the collagen that makes up your gut lining. And so we found that in certain different products, animal tissue, like fish versus chicken, there are different forms of collagen. And so we created a multi collagen that's more, I would say--

[01:18:45] Luke: That's what it is then. I think the one I have is citrus flavor or something that. It's pretty good. I had one question about the Bone Broth Protein. When a few of these brands came to market with that type of product, which is obviously very useful because making bone broth yourself, I learned back in the day, is a huge pain in the ass. Very messy.

[01:19:03] Josh: Yes.

[01:19:03] Luke: I used to buy the bison grass-fed bones at the farmers market.

[01:19:06] Josh: Those are big ones. Oh, yeah.

[01:19:08] Luke: Yeah. It was great, but it's just like, I don't have time for this. And then if you order really good frozen bone broth, then if you don't eat it in time, it'll go bad when you-- anyway. Bone broth can be huge pain in the ass, as healthy as it is, depending on if you like to cook or not. But then when I started looking at the bone broth proteins, there are murmurs on the internet about, well, if these animals have lead in their bones, then you're going to get heavy metal poisoning. How do you vet the chicken bones, beef bones that you're using to make sure they don't have any funky stuff in them?

[01:19:43] Josh: One, we find the best farms to get the best quality product to start. The next thing we do is we have never not done a batch that's third-party tested.

[01:19:53] Luke: Ah, okay.

[01:19:53] Josh: And every time, it's below, or it's zero. It's absolutely clean. And we've published it over the years at different places sometimes. But yeah, we do third-party testing on all of it to make sure that's not the case with our product.

[01:20:11] Luke: Epic. I think that's a really good standard to set. Because think about--

[01:20:16] Josh: Wait. And a lot of people don't do any because, honestly it's a little expensive. But no, we have never put out any that have not been fully-- and what we're talking about, we test for thousands of different things.

[01:20:27] Luke: I'm glad to hear that. Because I know, over the course of my journey, many people that are spending a lot of money on health products, a lot of them are tainted.

[01:20:35] Josh: Yeah, they are.

[01:20:36] Luke: And the companies that sell them maybe don't even know because it's not part of their assembly line to do third-party testing. Take something like methylene blue. You don't want to buy methylene blue on Amazon. You know what I mean? It's made in some sweat shop in a dungeon in China somewhere with all kinds of other chemicals. So that's the thing. I try to be very discerning about the products I promote and of course the ones we use ourselves.

[01:21:00] Josh: Yeah. Oh yeah.

[01:21:01] Luke: I'm stoked to hear that. That's amazing. And I am absolutely excited to take you up on your farm tour if and when I get to Nashville. I haven't been there in many years, but it's not that far from here. When I lived in California, Nashville was like across the damn country. Now it's kind of like, "Oh, it's right over the hill."

[01:21:19] Josh: Yeah. The fall is a beautiful time. Beautiful time to be there.

[01:21:23] Luke: I bet.  I do have one question for you, and I intuit what one of them is going to be, but we'll see if I'm right. Who have been three teachers or teachings in your life that you'd like to share with us, the most meaningful teachers or philosophies or anything?

[01:21:38] Josh: Oh, wow. Well, number one by far is Jesus.

[01:21:42] Luke: That's the one I was guessing.

[01:21:45] Josh: Yeah, yeah.

[01:21:46] Luke: Based on our conversation.

[01:21:50] Josh: Yeah. We live in a westernized culture where the way that people are taught is, tell me. Tell me what to do. The Eastern culture did this a lot better than we do, and it was, show me what to do. Show me how to live my life.

[01:22:09] And I think that when we think about Jesus, he was God reincarnate and just living out the perfect life. And so we know this is the life we should live. And if you want to start somewhere, the Book of John is a great book to just read about what that looks like.

[01:22:26] So that's been the number one philosophy of my life, is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. If there are three things that I'm most conscious that I'm trying to do every day to live the best life possible, it's loving God.

[01:22:41] And by the way, I think the word love there is really know. Get to know the person and then meet the desires of their hearts. Like my wife, Chelsea, loving her, it's like, "Okay, my wife loves the water. My wife loves these gifts. My wife loves this food. How can I serve her and love her in that?" and so the same with God. And so love God, love people. Make her the heavenly place. Do that initial thing. Turn this world into an absolute paradise. And so that's a big part of the teaching of Jesus.

[01:23:06] And then number two, ooh, wow, this is going to be hard. I have so many people I really love and admire and have impacted my life in a positive way. Oh goodness. One person that's had a really big impact, my business partner Jordan Rubin. I read his book, The Maker's Diet when my mom had cancer the second time.

[01:23:30] It just impacted us so positively. And Jordan is a person that is so loving, so caring, so sacrificial, so wise, and just an amazing friend. I think what he has taught me is just to have great faith and take the risk. I think a lot of times people don't take risks. They don't change their career, or write the book, or do the thing. And so I think being able to see he's done that in his life has really given me the confidence to do it.

[01:24:03] And so I think part of it is I've learned to model people, and so, model him. He's had an incredible impact on my life. I'll give a couple of other modern people. And again, this may not be a popular one. This is probably going to be a polarizing. Jordan Peterson. I know he tends to maybe divide the political lines, but I think in terms of actually thinking for yourself and some basic principles, he has a lot of good things to say about things like responsibility, understanding some of the more archetypal, philosophical, and psychological components of the Bible.

[01:24:41] He did the series on Exodus where he brought in a number of people, and it was one of the best studies I've ever seen. It was really incredible. And so I would say that there's a lot that I've learned from a psychological standpoint. And he's learned some from Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and others.

[01:24:59] But I do think that that's someone else. I have so many people that I'll love to listen to and watch. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine. I love going back and studying those old saints. It's so rich. And so those are some people as well. Gosh, I could have just kept going.

[01:25:18] Luke: I love that you named Jordan Peterson. It's funny because I interviewed a woman yesterday who's Canadian. She has that same accent. It's a very nuanced accent. And we were talking about just all kinds of random things. One of the topics was this idea of controlled opposition in the truth movement, alternative health movement, politics, etc.

[01:25:36] Many people that build big platforms are accused of working for the other side, and they aren't really pro humanity. They've been propped up as a figurehead and allowed to make it into the upper echelons, but they're not really for the common man kind of thing. So I asked her, I was like, "What's your take on Jordan Peterson?" she said, "Satanic."

[01:25:57] Josh: Yeah, yeah.

[01:25:58] Luke: It's so funny. I love having people sit across from me in just the diversity of thought and opinion. And, I don't know, I didn't get her to explain why she used that word, but she said, "Dude, that doesn't have a platform. He has by accident." No one's allowed to reach that level if they're truly anti-establishment. But I think she was speaking more from the political spectrum.

[01:26:20] Josh: Yeah. What I like about Jordan Peterson is I think he's just-- and listen, I think other people fall in this category. I think Russell Brand does. I think Joe Rogan generally does. I think generally they're truth seekers. They're just trying to find the truth. And so you may disagree with them, but I think that-- and I think he's exposing a lot of things today in terms of, I think our world today has really tied to a modern identity of relativism, nihilism, and just subjectivity.

[01:26:47] And this is why today identities are crumbling. When I first opened my practice, the most common health conditions I saw and things that were on the rise was cancer, diabetes, childhood obesity. Well, today, mental health issues have far outpaced anything. And one of the things I like about Jordan is that he's speaking out on more on how to establish a real strong identity.

[01:27:11] If you go back and watch his lectures, like I have, at Harvard and University of Toronto, really, that's a big part of what he's doing, is helping, I think, people identify how to become responsible. A lot of people don't have these father figures in their life. And so I think he's been able to help create structure for people.

[01:27:28] I can see why people don't like him that are more in that relativistic subjective, do anything you want sort of world. But I think today we've allowed things to become-- I think we need structure. My daughter, she's thrives when we give her some structure in life.

[01:27:44] Luke: So do I.

[01:27:45] Josh: Yeah, yeah. Me too. Me too. So that's probably the reason.

[01:27:48] Luke: If I don't put it on myself, there's no one else to put it there. But to Jordan Peterson, an interesting thing I observed about his brand and just what he's doing in the world is I went to one of his lectures a few years ago in California, and man, if I could just take that couple thousand people and create a town, those are the people I would want in my town.

[01:28:09] And that was a really interesting representation of his teachings and what he's doing in the world, is like, by their fruits, you shall know them. It's like, well, the fruits of his content are really great people. And I didn't meet all of them personally, but everyone is well dressed.

[01:28:25] Everyone had a sense of humor about them. There was a real lightness. There was an intellectual prowess that you feel. It was diverse in terms of, I don't know what people's politics were, but it wasn't a bunch of redneck Republicans or something by any means. There's different races of people, a good mix of men and women. It was like, "Wow, this is a bunch of really intelligent, well-meaning people coming together to learn about some philosophy," which I think is ultimately positive whether or not you agree with someone's every single opinion.

[01:28:59] It was one of the issues we have now, is I've experienced this from having people on the show. I had Alex Jones on the show, and most people loved it. It was vastly entertaining to them. And I lost one sponsor that was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe you even just had that guy in your house."

[01:29:15] And it's like, "Well, when did we lose the art of actually having a conversation?" Imagine a world in which we all agreed on everything. Oh my God, that's so boring. Who wants to live in that world? So I like that Jordan Peterson is causing people to think in big ways.

[01:29:34] Josh: You can't grow if you're constantly offended and if you're going to hold onto your ideology. It's the world today. It's like, you know what? Be open. Be open to change. Yeah.

[01:29:50] Luke: Hot damn. All right, dude. We did it.

[01:29:55] Josh: This is was amazing by the way. I love this conversation. This really is energizing to me. I love talking because, again, I think our spiritual growth is the most important part of our lives. And so, man, this is fun. Thanks so much for having me.

[01:30:08] Luke: Yeah. I appreciate that, and I love that you encompass all the dynamics of healing, because it's ineffective to just focus on purely the gross physical realm. You're only going to get so far. And I also just get bored of that after doing 560 podcasts and someone's like, "Oh, I got to fix the gut."

[01:30:28] Yeah, I get it. But there's so much more to the comprehensive human experience to our healing individually and collectively. So I love that you're into the spirituality and the mindset. It's such an important part of it.

[01:30:42] Josh: Thanks again, Luke. Thanks a lot.

[01:30:43] Luke: Thank you, sir. You too.