[00:00:00] Luke Storey: I'm Luke Storey. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. Dr. Ted, so good to see you again.

[00:00:27] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So good to see you, Luke.

[00:00:29] Luke Storey: Dude, we have the best time.

[00:00:31] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes, always. I remember seeing you the first time and giving you my gifts.

[00:00:36] Luke Storey: Yeah. Boy, what a journey that began. Yeah. So, Doctor Ted's been on the show twice. We did one in person in LA when the studio was there, and then we did one Zoom, which the Zoom ones for me are usually kind of, eh, but yours was awesome. We went into some crazy stuff. So, we'll link to those in the show notes and people can go back. I'll put the link for this one at, let me see, lukestorey.com/drted, so we'll make that the show notes for this one. And then, people can go back and listen to the other ones. But yeah, man, super great to see you. I want to start by saying, last night, I had an interesting experience. Dr. Ted formulated something for me kind of off—not for me, but formulated something kind of off-label and gave me.

[00:01:20] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Inspired by you.

[00:01:21] Luke Storey: Thank you. I feel honored. And he and his team recommended, just take half of one and just see how you feel. And I was like, took a whole one, I was like, wow, this is very interesting, so I had an interesting night.

[00:01:34] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes. Actually, I'm on a quarter of it right now. 

[00:01:37] Luke Storey: Really?

[00:01:37] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. It's something that's off the books. It's just something that I was experimenting on for the last three years, and it's what I call the ET or the Enlightenment troche. And as you know, the definition of enlightenment is very simple. It's a freedom from the illusion of the self. And it's not that there is no ego or a self, but rather, it's an illusion, right? And illusion is really defined as it's not what it seems to be. So, you are selfing all the time, meaning your egoic role is always coming up.

[00:02:16] So, I wanted something that will decrease the suffering of people, because a suffering, as defined by the Buddha and defined in neuroscience, actually, is this clinging and aversion to things. And what does the clinging and aversion is actually the self or the ego. I don't like to use the term ego, usually, because it connotes one's sense of self-worth. So, I refer to it as a self-referential system. And as you know, it was accidentally discovered in 1992, and then experimented on later that the seat of the ego is in the default mode network.

[00:02:59] And then, later on with these large scale networks in the brain, they identified the flow networks in the brain at the central executive network. That's one that's outside-looking. And I used to do minimally invasive neurosurgery, right? So, four hours seemed like 20 minutes when you do that. That's how you're in a flow state. And they also discovered the switching mechanism between these two. So, these two, it's called the salience network and they're oscillating.

[00:03:27] So, I said, if I can modulate the action of these three networks, will it give me the feeling of enlightenment? And this is just for my own personal edification. So, the large tracks were not really of the—networks of the brain weren't really in an encyclopedia form until 2015. And so, I started looking right away for molecules that I could give to myself. I said, I could do this meditation thing for a thousand years, I could just blast myself with this, and at least be free from the illusion of the self for about four to six hours.

[00:04:04] Luke Storey: Well, that was definitely the case, my friend. Yeah, it's funny. I took it pretty early before we had dinner, and then at dinner time, I was kind of like, I'm definitely feeling different. And then, I started yawning, which I do typically when I do plant medicines and things like that, some people puke, some people have diarrhea, I just yawn profusely. And I started yawning, and I was like, I think I'm going to go to my room. 

[00:04:32] By then, it was only like 8:30, and I thought, well, I can't go to sleep at 8:30, what time am I going to wake up? And so, I just kind of hung out in my room, because I didn't really feel like being around a lot of people. And it was really interesting, because I kind of didn't know what to do with myself, because my mind was just so quiet. I didn't want to watch TV. I didn't want to be on my phone. I called the wife. We had a great FaceTime and all that.

[00:04:53] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. This is one of the things that you notice, is the first thing that you notice is that the background chatter of your brain stops. I love that about it. Sorry, we can't really say it's on a reversion, but your mind stops, and then you're able to see your roles arise, right? Now, I am the husband. Now, for me, now, I'm the doctor now and the teacher, I'm the interviewee. You see this arise without being identified with it, right? You're not identified with the egoic role. You know that you're the actor instead. You're very aware that you're the actor and that you're playing a role. So, that's what I want to come up in there. But to Luke's credit, this morning, he was able to correctly identify the chemical classes that I used for this, which is-

[00:05:50] Luke Storey: Well, of course, because I'm sitting there, I'm going to make one adjustment on your microcode. I'm sitting there in my room last night, and of course, I can't help but being like, hmm, there's something strangely familiar here, and I start kind of analyzing the felt sense of being. And I think this feels similar to this thing. But then, earlier, I kind of felt this thing. So, I couldn't wait to see you today, just like, am I close? Am I in the right class?

[00:06:18] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, you're able to identify correctly the classes. Well, one class, actually, the intention was to downregulate the default mode network where the ego is, right? So, actually, the main structures in your brain for that are more or less midline. For the geeks out there, the most well-known one is called the posterior cingulate cortex. And there are studies that are being done, for example, in the University of Arizona, where they put a highly focused ultrasound on the posterior cingulate cortex and you experience the enlightenment.

[00:06:55] Luke Storey: Oh, wow.

[00:06:55] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. So, that's because it's basically down-regulating the action of that. Of course, the one that's responsible for your flow activity, if you see this meditation bands, et cetera, they basically hit the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, this part of your central executive network. So, that's more of your outward flow. So, one of the molecules they use, in fact, the last one that I chose, what it does is, actually, it up-regulates your flow state, right?

[00:07:42] And then, there's a dynamic switching between the two, so that requires a separate molecule to actually modulate the oscillation between the two. And it does give you a mildly dissociated feeling. Not fully dissociated, but mildly disassociated, meaning you could separate, everything looks like mildly like a dream state, like a 3D, 4D, or whatever D, and you know that you are—these are just hands and there's no identity being placed in the body, that this body is not you.

[00:08:16] Luke Storey: Incredible stuff. Well, it's a great way to start this conversation. We sort of started at the end.

[00:08:21] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes.

[00:08:22] Luke Storey: But I'm experimenting this weekend throughout these interviews with kind of not having a plan, because I'm usually very formulaic and I lay everything that I want to talk about out. And then, it gets spontaneous and it goes where it goes naturally, it's not like a rigid thing, but I do have a framework. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to feel in someone's field, and maybe have a quick chat, and then just go. But I think with you, the work that you're doing now with Troscriptions and the work that you just described, just kind of not in the public sector, but more for your research and development, I guess you could say, is brain optimization.

[00:08:59] I think right now, people are really starting to see that the health of the brain, and the lifestyle choices that we make, and different nootropics, and supplements, and things like that that we can take, the possibilities are kind of endless, and this is something people are really becoming more aware of. So, maybe we could start kind of at the base health optimization level and build our way up to the more nuanced fine tuning.

[00:09:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Sure. I would love to do that, essentially, because there's a lot of confusion right now about nootropics. You hear nootropics, you hear, oh, take this vitamin B6, it's a nootopic. And like, yeah, why? And, oh, modafinil is a nootropic and this piracetam is a nootropic, and so on. And you go, what exactly do they mean by this? So, I want to take a look at the old definition of nootropic, and it was basically Corneliu Giurgea in '72 when he synthesized piracetam, he called it a nootropic.

[00:10:03] And he essentially said, hey, nootropics can really just be divided into two classes, cognitive enhancers and neuroprotectants, and then shoved all of the vitamins, minerals, et cetera, under neuroprotectants, right? So, I said, there's something off with this, and it's because there is no definition of what is health and what is fitness, right? So, health is really very simple. It's A plus B plus C, you like the acronym.

[00:10:33] A is absence of disease, plus B, the balance between anabolic processes, meaning processes that build, and catabolic processes, processes to destroy, according to C, the cycle of life of the organism. So, illness medicine just deals with the absence of disease. So, I said, I'll take B and C, which is the balancing of the anabolic and catabolic processes according to the cycle of life, the organism, and I call that health optimization.

[00:11:01] So, what does this really mean? It means that just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're well, it only means you're not sick, right? So, that has to be differentiated with the definition of fitness, right? And fitness, basically, ask the question, fit to do what? Like for example, if you look at the advertisements of these sex pills or of these erection pills, make sure that you are fit for a sexual activity, not healthy for mental sexual activity, or in law, you're fit to stand trial, not healthy to stand trial.

[00:11:37] So, there's a question, fit for what? And so, your baseline for fitness is not necessarily healthy. For example, I can be healthy, but I'm not fit to run a marathon, right? And you can be fit to run a marathon, but you may not be healthy. The same way in the brain, I may have a healthy brain, but I'm not fit to be a memory athlete yet, because it requires training, right? But you may be a memory athlete, but your brain isn't healthy.

[00:12:08] So, you could see now that performance is actually defined by the term fitness. It's like performance to perform what? Are you fit to perform what? Memorizing, thinking, judging, because that's what the brain does in terms of cognition, right? Cognition is simply remembering, thinking, judging, and having insight, right? So, those are the things, so when you take a definition of nootropic, we're stuck in the performance mode, right? And we basically have forgotten the health optimization mode.

[00:12:50] So, when I do brain health optimization, essentially, the first thing you do is you optimize the whole body first, right? So, since the brain is made up of cells, so the brain is made up of neural networks, networks of neurons, and then they're made up of the specialized cells called the neuron. And then, the neuron is actually made up of a basic cell that has nucleus, mitochondria, cytoplasm, cell membrane, et cetera, which is common to all cells in the body, right? The only cells in the body that don't have mitochondria are the red blood cells.

[00:13:25] But once upon a time, they did have mitochondria, except that we had to form hemoglobin. So, it gave us mitochondria so we could have the hemoglobin right there. So, you could see that the basic or where it all comes in is if you take care of the basic cell, then you're basically taking care of the rest first. And that's when I introduced the class called health optimization nootropics, right? So, these are the vitamins, minerals, and other cofactors that you need. Like for example, if you're, you can test this by a test called clinical metabolomics. I think you've had this kind of things already, right?

[00:14:10] Luke Storey: Yeah, with Dr. Sherr. Yeah.

[00:14:12] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. So, you could see, actually, what your levels are of the metabolites of your mitochondria, whether or not you have enough, or whether or not you have enough vitamin B, the B vitamins, right? For example, B6 is necessary for, for example, the formation of your serotonin, your happy mood and your hormone, right? So, if you take care of the basic cell first, because B6 is needed by everything in the body, and so is vitamin C and all these. 

[00:14:44] This is not limited to the brain. So then, we have to optimize the health of the basic cell first. We have to optimize cells or mitochondria, the health of the cytoplasm, the nucleus, et cetera. And one of the things that has been bandied about here is like, okay, oxidative stress, like redox oxidative stress. Really, seriously, when you think of oxidative stress, Luke, it's easier to think of it as rusting. You're using oxygen, and therefore you will rust things as you're using up oxygen.

[00:15:16] So, the cell membranes, they wrap all of your cells, right? They can rust. So, you could see the action of the rust here by the lipid peroxidation of the body. And the only test we had before for age right was called the T-Bar test or the lipid peroxidation test, meaning if your cell membranes were aging faster, then your chronological age, then you're actually aging a lot faster than your chronological age. 

[00:15:45] So, that was the only test, but now, we have various different tests now for that. Like for example, we have tests for epigenetic age, right? So, they test the methylation of your body. It's like the way I see it is the way David Sinclair actually says it is like, it's like having plaque on your teeth. And as you get older, you get more and more plaque.

[00:16:11] And basically, with all of these optimization measures that you do, like your balance your nutrients and hormones if you have hormone deficiencies or nutrient deficiencies, or you have, say, mercury toxicity that you have to address, right? It's just like taking out the plaque from your teeth, and then you notice that your methylation marker actually gets younger. And so, I was actually surprised, right? I was bragging to you that I just, really, turned just 60 just a couple of weeks ago, and my epigenetic age is 22-and-a-half.

[00:16:51] Luke Storey: So cool.

[00:16:54] Dr. Ted Achacoso: I know.

[00:16:55] Luke Storey: That's great.

[00:16:56] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, the old test before was the telomere test, right?

[00:16:59] Luke Storey: Right.

[00:17:00] Dr. Ted Achacoso: The telomere testing.

[00:17:01] Luke Storey: So, the telomere test has become antiquated and there's something better now?

[00:17:04] Dr. Ted Achacoso: This is something better, but it's also based on something more different. Something different. By telomere test, I'm old, I'm 32. And so, this one, as you could see, when you do brain health optimization, you're doing optimization of the whole cell. And sometimes, when your body is wholly optimized, you don't need all of this performance-optimizing nootropics. So, these are my classifications, right? So, if you're addressing your vitamin mineral or deficiencies and amino acids, for example, tryptophan comes from phenylalanine, right? Phenylalanine becomes tryptophan.

[00:17:47] Tryptophan becomes the basis for the formation of your thyroid hormones, and dopamine, and then dopamine becomes epinephrine. So, you could see the importance of tryptophan. For example, if you're talking to someone and you see that the phenylalanine levels are low, you would expect that the dopamine levels are also dropping and you would expect the person to essentially have problems with focusing, right? So, you don't necessarily have to give Adderall right away. Now, you just take a look at these fundamental things. For example, if you're—sorry, phenylalanine becomes tyrosine, becomes a dopamine. And if you take a look at tryptophan levels, tryptophan is actually where serotonin is synthesized from, right?

[00:18:43] So, if you look at the tryptophan levels and we slow, then you would expect the metabolites of your serotonin to also be low. So, you could see this now. All of these could be tested. So, by simple amino acid therapy, by having more protein-rich foods and so on, or checking the amino acid profile of your food, there are some drinks and some powders there. They actually show you the amino acid profile of what you're taking. You can actually address these things without using any drugs first, right?

[00:19:19] And if, for example, GABA is actually synthesized from glutamine, right? So, it's glutamine, then glutamate, then GABA. So, you could see that this fundamental amino acids, these are used by your body all over. So, that's essentially health optimization not only of the brain, but your entire body. So, once your health optimized, then you could push the performance. Now, here's where I call them performance-optimizing nootropics.

[00:19:54] Luke Storey: Because you're not making up for an underlying deficit, right?

[00:19:58] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes.

[00:19:59] Luke Storey: So, you're correcting the deficit underneath, getting to a baseline of standard health, having the precursors and the nutrients necessary to just have general wellbeing, then when you get to that point, you turn up the heat.

[00:20:13] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Right. You said, actually, a very interesting word, which I introduced in a phrase of introducing health optimization, medicine, and practice, which what's this practice is about, it's the standard. So, in disease, you have the standard of care for a particular disease, but there is no standard of care for health. So, what I'm doing here is defining a standard of care for health, not disease. So, it's the first time that, actually, a standard of care for health is being put out there, that this is a standard of care for health, because in medical school, we're taught about pathogenesis or origins of disease, right? We're never taught about salutogenesis or origins of health.

[00:20:57] Luke Storey: That's crazy.

[00:20:58] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. So, immediately after you learn anatomy, and physiology, and biochemistry, you're shoved into pathology, which is like, hey, this is what can go wrong, but we're never taught what is healthy and what can go right, right? So, the assumption is very different, right? So, one is what's called pathogenesis, which is the illness medicine model. we have the salutogenesis model, right? 

[00:21:29] And we use an evolutionary lens for this standard, because it has been found that the cell, all cells in the body, and this is important for you to actually realize, is that all cells in the body, once you stress them out, evolutionarily, they only have eight responses, eight fundamental responses, right? And in the body, the cells would be stressed all the time, right? They would be stressed all the time, because you're continuously adapting to your environment, either short-term or long-term adaptations to environment.

[00:22:05] So, what's interesting there is that the body actually has what's called a cell danger response, right? And the body has mechanisms by which it actually hastens resolution of the cell danger response, right? And that's what we do at health optimization medicine and practice, is we optimize the resolution of the cell danger response, because if you do not, if the cell danger response is just continuously switched on, that's the beginning of your chronic diseases, like your diabetes and all of these other degenerative diseases that come on.

[00:22:43] Luke Storey: This is also, by the way, sorry to interrupt, my sense or theory on acute or just chronic EMF exposure is a cell danger response.

[00:22:55] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Well, that's already shown-

[00:22:57] Luke Storey: Would that fit in your paradigm?

[00:22:59] Dr. Ted Achacoso: No, actually, absolutely. Because I don't know whether or not you've seen my lecture before, but that EMF has been studied actually in grade school students in Canada, right? And they have shown that EMF actually increase cellular stress, right? It's not disease, but increases cellular stress. So, it's actually very funny, because when I lectured on that, I showed, illness medicine immediately goes, oh, ere's the EMF and here's the relation to diabetes, right?

[00:23:33] No, but we, at health organization, go, no, here's the EMF stressor and here's the response to your oxidative stress of the cell, right? So, we go not to the disease, but to what the cell actually, normally does. So, the cell will actually strive to immediately resolve, the cell danger response. Now, if it's perpetually turned on, then it will go to chronic diseases.

[00:24:02] And as we know, we know that illness medicine is very good at acute care, acute infections, for example, or acute trauma. But we have a very dismal record at chronic diseases, and that's because we haven't looked at lower, we're still organ-based, right? And so, now that we are able to peer inside the cell of what's happening in there and how it responds to stress, now, we could actually take a look at this thing and bring it to a coherent framework that, hey, it's about time that you take a look at the origins of health, right?

[00:24:39] Because the technology now allows us. It's like a car with a dashboard, right? So, before, we had no dashboard, so either you went to a doctor with a flat tire, or you already had a heart attack, or you already had a stroke, right? But now, you have like all of these warning lights, right? The warning lights is like your temperature is getting high, or you're low on windshield wiper fluid, or you have this, and that's a result of us also being able to take a look inside the cell.

[00:25:07] So, you're now low on alpha lipoic acid and you're now low on magnesium, et cetera, that wasn't possible before, right? But it's now possible. So, we now have what I call metabolomic dashboard, right? We take a look at these metabolites, and say, okay, they need to be balanced out, they need to get replenished, or there's too much, they need to get removed, right? So, that's the core of health optimization.

[00:25:31] And so, it's not just in the brain, in the body, and as I said, no one takes care of the basic cell, right? So, who takes care of your nucleus or mitochondria and cytoplasm, it's like, your illness medicine doctor? No, they won't take care of that, right? So, I said, well, let me start a specialty that will take care of your basic cell and its networks for you, and take care of how the cell responds when it's stressed out.

[00:25:57] As it turns out, there are around 21 metabolic branch points that you have to balance with this. And when I looked at it, the paper came out after introducing this framework, and it was actually quite funny, because I'm already addressing all of these, right? So, it was actually a great feeling for me to get validated by someone who was looking at how we actually respond to stress and how we try to resolve the stress right away. So, from there, then you could go now to the neuron itself, right?

[00:26:34] So, the neuron, actually, when you test for it, so in the basic cellular testing for the metabolites inside the cell, the fundamental metabolites of your mitochondria and so on, but when you go and take a look at the neuron now in the brain, then you have to take a look at neurotransmitters. And you know your neurotransmitters already, your dopamine is for your focus and for the reward system circuitry of the brain.

[00:26:59] There is one thing that I'd like to correct, actually, in terms of the impression of people, that the dopamine reward, if it's the first time that you're actually going to get something, it's the first time ever that you're going to get something, then it's the dopamine that's the reward, right? But if it's the second time or the third time that you're going to get reward, the mere anticipation of the reward is enough to burst your dopamine.

[00:27:27] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.

[00:27:29] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And that's why gambling is highly addictive, and all this anticipation of the reward, and you couple that with the randomness of the payout, for example, in gambling, so the more it gets addictive, because you don't know when you're going to get rewarded for it, but you keep on anticipating.

[00:27:47] Luke Storey: That's kind of like the social media algorithms, too, right?

[00:27:52] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:27:52] Luke Storey: With the likes, and follows, and comments, and refreshing and refreshing to see if I got more traction.

[00:27:58] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, that's exactly what it is, right?

[00:28:01] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[00:28:01] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You're basically playing with that.

[00:28:03] Luke Storey: I remember hearing something about the way that they build apps like Instagram, and TikTok, and stuff to be very sticky to the user, is they actually designed it to be like a slot machine, literally, with the refresh, it's like pulling the handle on a slot machine and you got three, ding, ding, ding, you didn't quite get it, so you go again. Oh, maybe this time, maybe this time. It's crazy.

[00:28:27] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And it's actually quite sad for us, too, as a society, because it doesn't matter whether or not what you're saying is true, what matters is that you're emotionally engaged, because it provides the motivation for you to do the like, dislike. Like you get very angry at something that is not necessarily true, right?

[00:28:49] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[00:28:50] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Because the whole game is to manipulate your emotion, right? And so, you engage, because it's the emotion that will get you engaged, your brain won't, your intellect won't get you engaged, right?

[00:29:00] Luke Storey: Yeah, it's the engagement that they've monetized, right? Because the more engaged you are, they throw ads at you.

[00:29:06] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And that's essentially how you gain the dopamine system of your brain, is the reward circuit. So, yeah.

[00:29:14] Luke Storey: I want to divert a little here. Something just popped in that, for some reason, I've not talked to you a lot about, and we've had a lot of in-depth conversations on mic and off, but how does the dopamine system relate to acute addiction or chemical addiction? So, not gambling or social media, but heroin, cocaine, alcohol, crystal meth, these really hard addictions to break?

[00:29:41] Dr. Ted Achacoso: These things have the capacity, for example, cocaine has the capacity to raise your dopamine levels to 4,000%.

[00:29:50] Luke Storey: Oh, my God.

[00:29:51] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. 4,000x, sorry. By 4,000x, yeah.

[00:29:55] Luke Storey: So, that explains the horrible comedown from cocaine, right?

[00:29:59] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Because you're basically-

[00:30:01] Luke Storey: You're on top of the world, you're solving all the world's problems, you're the shit, you feel like King of the Universe, and then 20 minutes later, you're like, I want to kill myself.

[00:30:08] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes. And that's the reason why you feel like Superman in all of this. If a substance raises your dopamine level substantially, you would like to compulsively redose, you know that while you're in this, it's like you're still just, for example, a couple of hours in it, and you want another hit, because it feels so good you don't want to come down, then you know that that is basically a dopamine-releasing drug, right? And it releases in high doses.

[00:30:47] Now, for those of you who are doing this and you know that you want to compulsively redose, what I advise them to do is to actually set your doses in decreasing. You put them already in capsules if you're taking a powder and set them, this is now basically mitigation for the risk of addiction, right? Risk mitigation for addiction is that, say, prepare three capsules of decreasing doses. Say, the recommended dose is 200 milligrams, then put in the next dose at like 100 milligrams, and then the next dose at 75, and be done with it, keep the rest of your powder so that you won't basically use your entire one kilo bag in like two days.

[00:31:41] Luke Storey: I would advise just avoid cocaine if we're talking about that one, but-

[00:31:47] Dr. Ted Achacoso: No, there are many cocainelike substances.

[00:31:49] Luke Storey: Yeah. What are some of the other ones?

[00:31:53] Dr. Ted Achacoso: The one that's no longer in the market, for example, is 4MMC, which is a very strong cocainelike feeling that you get, and it became a party drug, and then it's now out, but it has been replaced by other cathinones ever since.

[00:32:14] Luke Storey: I see.

[00:32:15] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:32:15] Luke Storey: What I discovered recently through a friend of mine is cacao leaf—not cacao. Sorry, coca leaf. Coca leaf powder. They call it mambe, and you mix it with baking soda, and you put it in your cheek. And as someone who was a former cocaine addict, I was a little nervous. And then, I did some research on it, and I found that everyone claims that it's very mild, and non-addictive, and I really like it. And it showed me kind of the wisdom of a plant medicine just left unadulterated, kind of like kratom.

[00:32:52] Kratom or kratom as someone in the Asia would call it. It's like when you mess with them, then you start taking out the other constituents of that plant wisdom that balance it, so it's like the coca leaf, it's like the good parts of cocaine without the bad. And there's something about, I mean, obviously, you're getting much less of the molecule, but I don't ever find like it's potentially addictive at all. In fact, I have some here. We're not in the United States right now, by the way. And I forgot about it. I packed it in my bag, so I'm not like thinking, where's the coca leaf, where's the coca leaf?

[00:33:29] Dr. Ted Achacoso: No, you know how it's traditionally used, right? It's used as a traditional tea in the Andes to cure altitude sickness. And it used to be when you hike the Andes and you were feeling sick from the altitude, you could just go to someone's house and they would serve you that for free. They know that you can get that from the high altitude. So, you could see, the native uses it. Of course, it's used as an anesthetic for pain, right? It's also a eugeroic. It makes you feel good, right? I have actually coca leaves in olive oil.

[00:34:17] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.

[00:34:18] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it extracts something different if it's in oil.

[00:34:20] Luke Storey: Oh, no way.

[00:34:21] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, yeah.

[00:34:22] Luke Storey: Interesting. I mean, it's a great plant medicine. I mean, I use it for focus, doing computer work, and sometimes, even interviews. 

[00:34:30] Dr. Ted Achacoso: In here, you can just actually not take the leaf itself, you can just take part of the oil.

[00:34:36] Luke Storey: That's so cool.

[00:34:36] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:34:38] Luke Storey: I'm just going to geek out on some chemistry here. Why is it with the coca leaf powder that you have to put this alkaline baking soda in it to activate it? Because when I first got it, I just put it in my mouth, and I was like, I don't feel anything. And then, someone told me, no, you got to mix it with baking soda. So, I did that, and then it numbs your cheek, and you get this kind of very mild, euphoric, and focused kind of attention benefit from it. But what's up with the baking soda or the olive oil?

[00:35:05] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, the geeky part of it is that it adds an OH group to the molecule, which it binds very avidly, right? And it sort of like changes the confirmation of the molecule so that it becomes active.

[00:35:21] Luke Storey: Oh, okay.

[00:35:22] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Right. It's just like saying, well, scoot over, and then as it scoots over, it gets crunched into a different shape.

[00:35:29] Luke Storey: Oh, okay. And does the olive oil formula that you're fond of-

[00:35:32] Dr. Ted Achacoso: The olive oil, actually, since it's water-soluble, the active substances there are water-soluble, then essentially, you're extracting it at higher concentration.

[00:35:44] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting. I'm going to do that. Thank you for the tip. Side note.

[00:35:49] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Side note. But anyway, as I said, these are dopamine releasers, and we were talking before the show, nicotine at high doses can release dopamine also by 40x, right? So, these are-

[00:36:04] Luke Storey: Wow. That's a massive increase.

[00:36:06] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. That's why it's hard to quit cigarette smoking, right? For those who are three packs a day or so on, like it's really hard to. 

[00:36:15] Luke Storey: It's hard for me to not chew Lucy Gum every hour.

[00:36:20] Dr. Ted Achacoso: But because the feeling of being alert, focused, et cetera, that's very addicting.

[00:36:27] Luke Storey: It's a great feeling.

[00:36:28] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it's a great feeling.

[00:36:29] Luke Storey: Yeah, when you feel sharp and laser focus, especially if you have a purpose. I mean, for me, I started out using nicotine as a nootopic to do focus work and things like that, but I just kind of got used to the feeling. I like the feeling in-

[00:36:42] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, nicotine actually works on the same receptors as acetylcholine, so it actually boosts your working memory. So, you have a lot more of sort of like temporary storage of information while you're working. 

[00:37:00] Luke Storey: Really?

[00:37:00] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's why I put nicotine in Blue Cannatine is because that's the one that's proven to improve your working memory.

[00:37:08] Luke Storey: In the Blue Cannatine, you've got, what, 1 milligram?

[00:37:10] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Just 1 milligram.

[00:37:11] Luke Storey: Okay. Yeah.

[00:37:12] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And I'm a sissy when it comes to the dose, right? I can't even do one blue cannatine. It's like I can only do one-fourth, I'm already okay, because I'm health-optimized. So, just one fourth, really, just boosts my attention.

[00:37:27] Luke Storey: On that note, I've actually noticed over the years as I've become just generally more healthy from the lifestyle that I live, that I've become much more sensitive to nootropics.

[00:37:38] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes, that's going to happen.

[00:37:40] Luke Storey: Like I used to take a huge tablespoon of piracetam before my interviews, and now, that would probably give me anxiety. It would be too stimulating, yeah.

[00:37:49] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, that's because you're getting more and more health-optimized. And this is why I said, when your basic cell is optimized, your entire body is optimized, you just need a little of the performance-optimizing nootropic to boost performance, right?

[00:38:02] Luke Storey: Right.

[00:38:02] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, we were talking about dopamine and addiction, and then there is also one that is commonly affected by drugs is your serotonin level, right?

[00:38:17] Luke Storey: Right.

[00:38:17] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You can test for the serotonin level, it has a metabolite called 5-hydroxytryptamine, that's you could see the 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid is actually the downstream metabolite. And I have said some patients with very high 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, and when you look at it, it's like, oh, this is high, but you could see that they're actually overusing their serotonin, right?

[00:38:46] So, these clients are, clients because they're not sick, they're usually depressed and they're compensating by using up a lot of serotonin. So, you could see the rise in the downstream metabolite of serotonin. Yeah. And serotonin, as I said, comes from tryptophan, right? You can just make sure that your essential amino acid group is actually at the levels between 21 and 30 years old, and you should be okay, right? And your serotonin production should be okay. And the other important one, for wakefulness, right?

[00:39:24] Instead of taking modafinil, make sure that your norepinephrine levels, which is responsible for your wakefulness, right? When you're focusing, you can focus, but you can be sleepy, right? Those are two separate things, and this is norepinephrine, or for the British, noradrenaline, the norepinephrine levels is responsible for your wakefulness, and that comes from dopamine itself. Just one step and you get, actually, norepinephrine.

[00:39:58] Luke Storey: For this type of testing, Ted, how could someone listening that's like, wow, I'm depressed, or having anxiety, or I can't focus, or can't sleep, or don't have wakefulness, how could an average person go get these tests done? Where are they available? What are they called?

[00:40:13] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, these are called clinical metabolomics tests or metabolomics tests. You can go to the non-profit that I started a couple of years ago. It's homehope.org, and you could ask for a practitioner to guide you through.

[00:40:27] Luke Storey: Homehope.org.

[00:40:27] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:40:32] Luke Storey: Okay. Great. We'll put that in the show notes.

[00:40:39] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And we're always confused with functional medicine people, because they're after the root causes of disease and we're after the root causes of health. So, we have a very different way of looking at things, right?

[00:40:52] Luke Storey: Right.

[00:40:52] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, for them, if the disease is over, it's over. For me, the goal is your continuous optimization. So, the thing never really stops, right? Your goal really never stops you because you want to continue to optimize health. So, those three actually, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine determine mood, right? So, you could now test all of those. But the one thing that's actually neat is that you can consider acetylcholine, which is responsible for memory, right?

[00:41:28] And dopamine, and serotonin, and norepinephrine, you can call them neuromodulators, meaning they modulate the bursting of the electrical signals in the brain. And the two important ones which we just assume that they're there, but is neglected most of the time is that the glutamate, for example, is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the body, in the brain. So, that's why monosodium glutamate is what's called an excitotoxin, because it excites the brain way too much. So, it's kind of like, there's a Wi-Fi and it's crackling, and that's glutamate.

[00:42:15] Luke Storey: This is why MSG-laden food tastes so good, and that it keeps you coming back for more.

[00:42:24] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And the syndrome from it, if you eat from a restaurant that has MSG in its food, is that you get very irritable, right? And that's because it's an excitatory, glutamine becomes glutamate, and it's an excitatory neurotransmitter, and that's the main one. You can consider the others as like focal. There are regions in the brain that secrete it, but this one is all over the brain, so it's a main on switch of the brain.

[00:42:55] Luke Storey: Is there any risk to taking certain psychedelics or plant medicines and having like a glutamate inflammatory response as part of kind of the hangover?

[00:43:06] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Not on glutamate, but I will-

[00:43:11] Luke Storey: Okay. I'm kind of jumping ahead.

[00:43:14] Dr. Ted Achacoso: ... tell you later when we discuss neural networks where this thing can happen. The other one that's neglected actually is the GABA system, the GABAergic system, right? And that's a main off switch of the brain. It also occurs everywhere. And so, the reason why people, one of the reasons why people cannot sleep right away or have poor sleep is that they have poor regulatory control of theirwhat they call GABAergic systems in the brain. Now, the reason why your tongue is orange is that I actually created-

[00:43:54] Luke Storey: I'll show them on camera. I'm not ill, guys. I swear.

[00:43:59] Dr. Ted Achacoso: ... is orange is because I created something that I said, what is it that can calm people down in a natural way? So, I took a look at what are the best sellers out there that calm people down? And you see, it's Valium, right? Benzos in street name, benzodiazepines. And they actually are agonists or they actually go to the GABA receptor and they induce this calm, right? I said, are there any natural molecules that do that?

[00:44:31] Oh, yeah, there are. And so, ever me creating something to calm me down, especially before sleep when your mind is like going at 100 miles an hour and you already want to rest, can I take something? And so, many people are asking me, we want something for anxiety, and I said, okay. So, I took a look at a couple of plant molecules, one of which is actually kava.

[00:45:01] So, we extracted the active ingredient from kava, and took a look, and saw that it actually modulates the receptor, right? That, plus we're also working with a direct GABA-agonist, plus, of course, CBD and CBG, cannabigerol, one of the minor cannabinoids out there. So, it really calms you down. And we sent it out, and people were saying, no, no, no, we get people who say, if you manufacture 2,000 pieces of this, I want it all.

[00:45:46] Luke Storey: I'm the same way. Every time I go downstairs and see Scott, I'm like, you got any more of those calmer? What are they called? 

[00:45:52] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Tro Calm. 

[00:45:53] Luke Storey: Tro Calm. Yeah. So, for those listening, there's the Troscriptions, the Blue Cannatine.

[00:46:00] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And this, Just Blue.

[00:46:01] Luke Storey: Yeah, and just like a high-dose methylene blue, and then Tro Calm are the orange ones.

[00:46:06] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Tro Calm.

[00:46:07] Luke Storey: Yeah, they're incredible.

[00:46:08] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yes, Tro calm the fuck down, right?

[00:46:11] Luke Storey: We gave Bailey one last night, and after like two minutes, she's like, wow, the side of my face is numb. I'm like, yeah, that's the kava, that's strong kava.

[00:46:20] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it's very strong.

[00:46:21] Luke Storey: There's a lot of crappy kava on the market. I mean, you go to Whole Foods, you can get like kava kava capsules, they don't do anything, so I'm glad you guys figured it out. There's a couple of other like tinctures, the KAVAPLEX is quite strong, and there's another one called Feel Free, these drinks I have that are made with kratom and kava extract, and they are noticeably calming. I mean, there's a state change. But yours is the only one, especially in a troche, that like happens that fast. So, tell us, just I'm going to sidetrack here, we're just going to bob and weave.

[00:46:54] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Sure. Fine.

[00:46:56] Luke Storey: You were telling me last night, you chose to do your troches rather than like a capsule, a pill, a liquid-

[00:47:04] Dr. Ted Achacoso: It's a buckle troche.

[00:47:06] Luke Storey: Yeah. When you put it up in your gum that it's closer to your brain or something? 

[00:47:11] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Brain circulatory system. So, the base of the brain is actually right here, just right above your palate, right? So, believe me, I've inserted many catheters in there during my days poking around in the brain with live patients, but troche can be a lozenge, where you put it under your tongue, but a buckle troche is actually between your upper cheek and gum, right?

[00:47:43] The space between your cheek and gum is called the buckle space, and you insert it up there. Actually, ideal is for it not to dissolve in saliva, right? Because saliva, you're going to swallow. So, the better the opposition between your mucous membrane and the troche itself, then it goes directly to the bloodstream that is at the base of your brain, right? So, the effect is more immediate.

[00:48:09] Luke Storey: Got it. And then, it doesn't have to pass through your GI tract, can get filtered out by your-

[00:48:14] Dr. Ted Achacoso: By the liver. And as we were talking last night, I said, I want to keep it as close to the brain as possible. But if I were making a boner suppository, I'd probably shove it in the ass.

[00:48:29] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[00:48:30] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Or insert it into the urethra. There is actually a drug that you insert in the urethra.

[00:48:36] Luke Storey: Aw. I would just not have sex. Well, you're going to meet my friend, Dr. John Lieurance, who's been on the show a couple of times, and he's the one that makes these NAD suppositories, and melatonin, and stuff. And I like that idea of alternative methods of administration, because you could bypass all of the filters that are going to take out what you're trying to get in your bloodstream.

[00:48:58] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Well, we discussed this before, the reason why DMT is not orally active is that the liver will immediately degrade it, right?

[00:49:10] Luke Storey: Oh, okay.

[00:49:11] Dr. Ted Achacoso: That's why you have to inhibit the liver. In fact, Banisteriopsis caapi or divine itself, that is actually the liver inhibitor, right? Psychotria viridis is the plant, contains the DMT. But what is known as ayahuasca is actually defined and it's actually a liver inhibitor. So, the DMT in Psychotria viridis, the plant, can actually stay in your system for much longer.

[00:49:39] Well, the liver has been very kind to us, right? It detoxifies a lot of things and so on, but sometimes, you need to inhibit it in order to get the effects that you want for an oral formulation. Methylene blue actually, at low doses, will inhibit what's called monoamine oxidase A. And that's in the liver, right? And when you do that, your monoamine neurotransmitters will rise, dope-amine, that's a monoamine.

[00:50:16] Luke Storey: Oh, wow. Okay. I got a question for you. A couple of years ago, I had, let me see, six experiences in peyote ceremonies. And these peyote ceremonies, the way that these shamans held their ceremonies was that you're not allowed to fall asleep, lay down, anything. You've got to be sitting up, cognizant, aware of the whole ceremony, because there are all of these ancient traditions that are sort of embedded in that experience. 

[00:50:48] To stay awake, I was doing the Troscriptions, the Blue Cannatine, just got a little caffeine in there and the methylene blue. And in all six of those experiences, I took the same amount of medicine as everyone else, a few handfuls of peyote, powdered cactus, and I didn't really feel it. And afterward, I was wondering, because I was the only one taking methylene blue, I was wondering if I like blocked it by taking the methylene blue. Is there anything chemistry-wise that I was in that troche that prevented me from having a more full experience?

[00:51:25] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Well, mescaline. 

[00:51:27] Luke Storey: With the mescaline?

[00:51:28] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Mecaline, peyote is mescaline. And mescaline is a 5-HT2A receptor. It binds to the 5-HT2A receptor, much like LSD and so on. But I think it's like to the order of magnitude of a few thousands less. So, a dose of mescaline versus LSD will be thousands of orders of magnitude different. So, one, it could be that the dosage of troche is way too low. Number two is that you probably raised all of your—because you're taking that, you probably raised your dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine level such that the rise in serotonin was not perceptible to you.

[00:52:21] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.

[00:52:21] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:52:22] Luke Storey: Okay. I mean, there were positive experiences as the hours wore on, there were some revelations, and things that were very powerful and worthwhile, but I just remember, on those occasions, looking around the room, and I'm going like, what did these guys take, because I'm pretty straight? You know what I mean?

[00:52:39] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[00:52:40] Luke Storey: People are seeing their grandma in the fire and having all these things, and I'm kind of like, what time is it?

[00:52:46] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. It's because it actually raises all of the other neurotransmitters, so you have a more balanced look. When you put things in imbalance, like for example, in DMT or even MDMA, where there's very high rise in your serotonin levels, you will see all of those responses.

[00:53:09] Luke Storey: Got it.

[00:53:10] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And therefore, you essentially want to avoid what's called the serotonin syndrome when you eat like tyramine-rich foods, like cheeses, for example, or even chocolate, right? Chocolate has phenethylamines and so on while your liver is blocked, so these are the kinds of things that you could get into, but it's more of the serotonin that you're worried about, right? Dopamine, you're worried about, because it can get you addicted, and the crash actually is quite severe. 

[00:53:42] In serotonin, too, the crash can be quite severe if you just take MDMA like every two hours or something. It's just like really bad, right? And so, these are the kinds of, if you take a look at it, you're basically elevating these neurotransmitters, and then crashing them, right? But when you have a liver inhibitor, essentially, they rise. So, what happened to you there in your experience is that they probably all rose, and since I think the classic peyote is Lophophora williamsii or something like that, it's a cactus, right? And actually, you need a very high dose of it to approximate even LSD or any of the other classic psychedelics that are in there.

[00:54:33] Luke Storey: Yeah, interesting. Well, I learned just based on intuition, if I'm going to participate in an experience like that, to just leave everything else out so that I can really be more finely tuned to that particular experience or that entourage of different alkaloids and things like that. I learned kind of maybe I shouldn't interfere with it, and if I get sleepy, oh, well. I think it's kind of my controlling nature. It's like I want to manage every little situation like that so that it's perfect, and sometimes, it kind of goes haywire. Not that they were negative experiences, but I just thought, huh, that's interesting. Yeah, I might have blocked some of the experience by just taking things to stay awake, and focused, and such.

[00:55:16] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it's actually a good segue, your mentioning of peyote, to the next part of what you would like to take a look at in the brain when you optimize it, right? So, first, we optimize the basic cell, and then the neurons, and then after the neurons, the neural network. Of course, the brain is a network of neurons, right? And here's where it gets interesting, right?

[00:55:40] When you take high doses of mescaline, for example, or of psilocybin, psilocybin is a pro drug, psilocybin is the active drug, it's converted by the liver to psilocin, right? And what it does is that it essentially dampens the activity of your default mode network, your DMN. It dampens activity. So, for example, when you look at the map of the networks of the brain, if the conductor is there or the ego is there, it will tell the different parts of the brain, you and you can communicate, but you and you can't, right?

[00:56:18] Luke Storey: Oh, wow.

[00:56:21] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And I'm putting my foot down, and that is the symphony that we're creating, right? But if you take out the conductor, you could see all of these different parts of the orchestra communicating with each other, and that's why you get much more creative with psilocybin or with LSD, because you're basically dampening or taking out the ego from the equation. And remember, the ego is not a noun. For me, it's a verb, right? Because you're selfing all the time. Each time that you're moving around, you're meeting people, et cetera, the self is just continuously—it's a process rather something static.

[00:56:57] Luke Storey: Like some alter identity or something like that.

[00:57:01] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it's a process that just comes up, right?

[00:57:03] Luke Storey: That makes sense. I mean, I think so many people in spiritual circles vilify the ego, and I used to see it from that perspective, like I have to get rid of the ego, that's my problem, but I see it more broadly as nature's way of allowing us to differentiate, and to assess and judge. And so, when you become too ego-identified, then you're into judgment of everything and valuation of everything constantly, and putting yourself somewhere in the hierarchy of your valuation, as I'm better than everyone in the kind of classical sense of a big ego, or in low self-esteem and low self-worth, you're ego-identified kind of on the flip side of ego, where your valuation and differentiation of yourself compared to others is less than them, and it puts you in this yo-yo of like, where do I fit in, in order to find safety and to perceive threats, right? 

[00:57:58] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Wow. You have that down in a complex way. I look at it in, really, very simple terms.

[00:58:08] Luke Storey: But do you see what I mean?

[00:58:10] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And I do understand what you mean.

[00:58:11] Luke Storey: It's like the ego is given to us by creation as part of our navigational system to see where we fit, and where it's safe, and where it's not, right?

[00:58:22] Dr. Ted Achacoso: There's where I begin, right?

[00:58:24] Luke Storey: Okay.

[00:58:24] Dr. Ted Achacoso: There's where I begin, because as a scientist, I look at it from an evolutionary point of view, right? The ego is actually a neural network, basically, it's a network that is there for your physical protection, right? It makes sure that you get what you need to eat, it makes sure that you're able to reproduce, it makes sure that you maintain all of these things to keep you alive. So, for everything physical, the ego is necessary, right?

[00:58:59] However, we invented language, and now, we have the symbolic system around us, right? And my example is someone cuts you off in the street, and you flip a bird, it's like you get very hot under the collar, you're no longer being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, but you're still very self-protective at the time. So, for things physical, the ego is necessary. But when it comes to symbolic stuff, it's not necessary anymore, right? The thinking that goes up there, they're just like, I think of thoughts like a lava lamp, right?

[00:59:47] They're just thoughts. They're not owned by anyone. They just float out there. But the ego say, oh, no, those are mine, those are my thoughts or some of my ideas. Those are my, my, my, right? And you see that it actually stems from the fact that it has to provide for itself on the physical dimension, right? But when you basically moved it up to the symbolic dimension, then you get into all of the trouble, right? Because then, things begin to have meaning and value, right? For example, oh, you didn't get that fucking promotion at work or something like that. 

[01:00:24] I'm sorry, I've never occupied a paid position where I had to get employed, but the thing that's there is that, how can I provide for myself? Then, suddenly, your values are actually reflected or rooted still on the physical part of the role of the ego, which is to be able to provide you food, right? And to be able to do that, you must maintain your social status, you must maintain this, this, this.

[01:00:54] And the higher social status or the more resources you have, then the more assured you are that you're going to be alive and safe for a long time. And that's where ayahuasca actually is very useful, because it removes that insecurity of your survival, right? It removes the insecurity of survival, because the ego is always insecure that it's going to survive, and that drives most of us, right?

[01:01:26] The insecurity to survive drives most of us in our daily lives, no matter how far removed you are from that fundamental, fractal right there of the insecurity of the ego, if you take a look at what you're doing, why am I really doing this, and you go back, and you say, oh, because I think I still have to provide for myself, even if I'm already set, right? So, these are the kinds of things that you ask yourself, and you see that much of the stuff that you do actually stems back from the fundamental physical needs from where the ego arose, right? So, that's how I look at it. For me, it's a lot simpler, like that's the insecurity of being alive and being able to reproduce.

[01:02:10] Luke Storey: Well, speaking of evolutionarily, living beings that are, I don't want to say, lower, because it like devalues them, but a caterpillar to a bird, to a cow, and to a lion, they're just running on pure instinct and their senses tell them what's safe, what to eat, what not to eat, who to mate with, but they don't have the prefrontal cortex to then get trapped in the calculations that we get trapped in when we have that same animal body telling us what's safe, what's not safe, mating, food, shelter, all those things you're describing, but we then seem to sort of intellectualize those fears of survival in getting what we need and what we want, and that's the trap, where we can't get out of that perspective.

[01:03:01] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You mentioned something important, the prefrontal cortex. Why do you think teenagers make all of these horrible decisions and so on? Because it's not fully mature until you're 25 years old?

[01:03:14] Luke Storey: Some people, I'd venture to say maybe 35.

[01:03:18] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Prolonged adolescence, right?

[01:03:19] Luke Storey: Well, no, to that point, though, it's kind of funny, but when I was a kid, I did a lot of drugs really early on, and thankfully, I was able to stop that when I was 26. I mean, recreational, destructive drugs. And so, during the time when my brain was supposed to be developing and coming online like that, I got sober when I was 26, and I swear to God, from 26 to 36 is when I started actually kind of growing up, because I was so stunted emotionally and mentally, and God knows what other damage. So, I wonder how common that is for people that actually shunt the development of their brain when it's supposed to be happening naturally and end up kind of behind, so to speak.

[01:04:02] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. At what age should you start using drugs, Luke?

[01:04:08] Luke Storey: Eight or nine.

[01:04:08] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Eight or nine. Well, the major events in the brain at the time will be as you're hitting puberty, the brain remyelinates, meaning the insulation of the wires of the brain get changed. So, the first quiescent period is at age seven, right? Because it's when the myelination is complete for that particular time, and then it starts remyelinating again or reinsulating itself when puberty hits.

[01:04:40] That's why there are so many cross-wires, because of the uninsulated wires, because the hormones will be changing the firing rates, and so on and so forth. It's necessary for sexual maturation, right? So, that's what's called the organic brain syndrome, right? And people have been wondering whether or not that could be used as a legal argument for teenagers, doing terrible things, right?

[01:05:07] Luke Storey: Right.

[01:05:08] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, in your case, like you started at the eight or nine, and then your brain had to remyelinate, right? And then, your prefrontal cortex is also maturing. And so, when you're actually hijacking the dopaminergic system or the serotonergic system, and cocaine is dopaminergic essentially, you're essentially exhausting already the cells of the body.

[01:05:35] But the good thing is when you're younger, your capacity for neurogenesis is so much higher, right? As adults, there are still some neurogenesis that goes on, meaning the production of new nerve cells, but not as much when you were younger. So, the bounce back that you're getting is, actually, because you woke up, and said, I'm not going to do this shit through my brain anymore or to myself anymore. And when did you stop using drugs?

[01:06:03] Luke Storey: Twenty-six.

[01:06:03] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Twenty-six. Well, that's why you're like this, man. I am kidding, because I don't recommend, actually, constant drug use until you're about—no. For me, it's like this, if you're going to get fucking addicted, get addicted at 26. Don't get addicted before. 

[01:06:27] Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. 

[01:06:29] Luke Storey: Yeah. It's a tough life to grow out of, and many people don't. Many people don't escape. I would say the vast majority of people that go into acute cycles of addiction don't end up recovering.

[01:06:44] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. The prefrontal cortex is very, very important for risk assessment, right? What risks are you going to take in your life and how do you intuitively calculate those risks? And that's extremely important, right?

[01:07:00] Luke Storey: Hence, teenagers driving 150 miles an hour into a tree.

[01:07:05] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[01:07:05] Luke Storey: Yeah. That's funny you say that because I noticed now as I'm older, and hopefully, a little bit wiser, I don't like doing things that are physically dangerous for the thrill of it, right? When I was young, I mean, my whole life choice spectrum was based on that. But yeah, like jumping off cliffs and skydiving, whatever things like that. It's like, ah, I find myself opting out of things like that where there is risk involved. I guess the ability to assess that has been restored or established now.

[01:07:35] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You keep on pulling stuff out of me when you're saying something, you now actually know what your risk aversions are, right? 

[01:07:45] Luke Storey: Right.

[01:07:46] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And I have this model, the video game model of living my life, right? It's like the three things that are important to me are life, health, and time. So, one, I'm not going to put my life at risk. Yeah, I'm okay to go bungee jumping, I'm okay to go skydiving, because those are calculated risks, but I am not going to overtake a guy in anger with an obvious gun rack at the back of this truck. So, not put your life necessarily at risk.

[01:08:23] And so, this life, and then this health, right? It's like Pac-Man. You eat all of those cherries and things, even if they taste bad for you. If it's good for you, then you take them because the quality of your health determines the quality of your life, right? And then, what use is it to be in pain all the time and have all the money in the world, right? And then, time, actually, it's the only thing that you have, right? So, you have to pay attention as to where you put your attention to in time, right?

[01:09:00] If you're watching porn 60% of the day, then that's where you're spending your time. And essentially, if someone is actually always telling you what to do, then you're actually doing your time under his time, right? So, for me, it's like if you don't do all these things, it will be game over, right? So, you do all these things so that you actually don't go game over way too early. And it's the only currency that we have, really, is time and our use of it, right?

[01:09:38] Luke Storey: I mean, maybe other than the body, the only thing that you can truly own, right? I mean, you can't really metaphysically own anything except how you choose to spend each second, right?

[01:09:50] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And on a practical level, since we're talking about health optimization here, I have patients. These are actually sick people, not clients who are healthy. I have patients who I tell them to do an eight-hour feeding window. And before I suggest that, I tell them, I ask them whether or not you could change their diet. And of course, they can't, right? Because the hardest thing to do is to change your diet.

[01:10:20] So, I said, okay, if you cannot control what you eat, can you control the time that you eat it? Oh, that's easy for me. So, if you present it that way, it's like, yeah, I can control my time. I can limit my eating in 12 hours. Okay. If you can limit it for 12 hours, then let's start with that, and then you limit it to 10 hours of eating, and then eight hours of eating, and then you stay there, and they see the developments in themselves. 

[01:10:44] So, that's the value of being able to take a look at where—even in the habits that you have, where in time do you spend them in the day? Right? So, you could get into nutritional ketosis when you wake up, because you haven't eaten for the eight hours of your sleep, and then you extend that, say, to noon, and then you're 16 hours fasted, and then your mitochondria is regenerating fine and your autophagy systems are doing well.

[01:11:16] And one of the things that I learned in practice is that it's very hard to tell patients to remember things, so I want everything complete within the day. They know when they're going to eat, they know when they're going to stop eating during the day, so it's a daily schedule. They know when they stop eating and they know when they can sleep, right? And that's basically controlling the flow of your time, right?

[01:11:43] I'm not telling them to be militaristic, as I used to be when I was in college, 0701 to 0702, wash face. That's the obsessive compulsive way of doing it, but you could see how looking at what you value, which is one of the things that you said earlier, determines how you spend your time. If you wake up in the morning and you meditate, then you're actually valuing your energy self, right? You're valuing your equanimity, it's important to you to start your day in equanimity, for example. And then, you go out and spend your day in the sun, you hydrate yourself, et cetera.

[01:12:31] So, just looking at where you spend your time shows you what you value in your life, right? So, for people who have kids, they spend time with their kids, and so on, and shows where they value in their lives. But sometimes, they go overboard, right? And they tell people with kids, hey, you have to take care of yourself first. It's like the oxygen mask in an airplane. You've got to put your oxygen mask on first before you could put in a child. It's like the same thing with your health. You have to take care of yourself first. Otherwise, no one would be left to actually take care of your kids if you don't care for yourself.

[01:13:07] Luke Storey: Yeah, like an EMT, you train to save yourself first. It seems selfish on its face, but when you really look into it, it's really the way it works.

[01:13:17] Dr. Ted Achacoso: That's why I say being healthy requires a little bit of selfishness, because you have to be healthy first, right?

[01:13:25] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[01:13:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And I like the specialty that I started, health optimization, because I have to walk the talk, so I have to be healthy myself.

[01:13:33] Luke Storey: I can't believe you're 60, dude, honestly. I mean, not only just the way you look, but your energy and vitality is very obviously robust.

[01:13:43] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, thank you, Luke. Thank you, Luke. There's a pill for that. I'm kidding.

[01:13:50] Luke Storey: There are a few. Hey, I want to ask you, Ted, because I mean, I don't know, I feel like we could do like ten-hour podcast blocks, because honestly, there's like so much to talk about, but people always ask me when my tongue is blue, like what does methylene blue do? And I just go, oh, just energy, focus, mitochondria. I kind of just throw things out, but it's such a unique molecule, and it does so many things that it's like, I feel like you could study for years and never really get to all of its benefits.

[01:14:26] And I find it also so interesting because it's a pharmaceutical, and most pharmaceuticals are kind of single-faceted. They're very targeted. They're isolated. They don't do a lot of different things. And they also come with side effects. And methylene blue, with the exception of megadoses of it, that might have some side effects, it only seems to have benefits. So, in relation to brain health, how does methylene blue work?

[01:14:51] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. So, I told you earlier, I reclassified our nootropics. First, your health-optimizing nootropics, right? And then, you go to performance-optimizing nootropics, where you're not necessarily healthy, but you want to push something. And then, there's a class that I call bluetropics, not because my products are blue, but really, because the exemplar of the class is methylene blue. So, methylene blue does basic cell health optimization. It's able to donate electrons in the electron transport chain, and therefore you could produce more brain energy. That's why there's a brightening experience when you do that.

[01:15:31] Luke Storey: Is it? It seems to have both prooxidant and antioxidant potential. Is that true? And if so, is that unique to this or are there other things that-

[01:15:41] Dr. Ted Achacoso: It's because it can be in a reduced form, the reduced form is actually colorless.

[01:15:48] Luke Storey: Ah, okay.

[01:15:50] Dr. Ted Achacoso: But in order to do that action, it has to be either not reduced, and then it moves to its reduced form. It's just like any other redox reaction. It donates an electron, and then it accepts an electron. So, essentially, what it does there is it adds electrons to your electron transport chain. So, basically, it's a basic cell health optimizer, good not only for the brain, but for the rest of the body, because it's not distributed just to the brain, but to the rest of your body. So, it's also a neuronal health optimizer. It's because the neuronal health optimizer, at low levels, it will actually serve as a MAOA inhibitor, meaning it will inhibit your liver and raise your dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.

[01:16:47] Luke Storey: It's like a natural antidepressant effect?

[01:16:48] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, natural antidepressant effect, and then very good. And when you give it at a higher dose, it will have MAOB inhibition and it will prevent the degradation of phenethylamines, like those found in your chocolate, and dopamine, so you become more high with higher doses of it. So, after that, there's a neural network. It optimizes your neural network, it raises the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. So, we know that—just as a side comment, because we didn't touch on it earlier, so in neural network, even microdoses of LSD, for example, would raise your BDNF, right? Methylene blue will raise your BDNF. Ketamine will promote spinogenesis, meaning forms new connections within six hours of taking ketamine, right?

[01:17:49] Luke Storey: Wow.

[01:17:51] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. LSD is within eight hours, you'll form new connections in the brain,

[01:17:55] Luke Storey: Even in a microdose?

[01:17:56] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And DMT will promote the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus of the brain. So, you could see that methylene blue is also in that same class, because it raises the brain-derived neurotrophic factor. DMT is actually known to produce neurogenesis, which is a more difficult feat to do, because you're basically inducing the stem cells, here, grow more neurons.

[01:18:23] Luke Storey: Is that true of endogenous dimethyltryptamine, say, you're doing breathwork and yogic exercises, and you're exciting the pineal gland and that whole cascade of neurotransmitters to end up with natural DMT in your system?

[01:18:40] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, my sense is that it's too low, right? You have to provide a higher exogenous source in order to actually push it to a neurogenetic pathway. But I'm not sure. I'm just guessing, right? Because the studies have been to give IV DMT, right?

[01:18:54] Luke Storey: I've heard about that.

[01:19:00] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, methylene blue also does all of that that these classic psychedelics do. MDMA works by a different pathway. So, MDMA actually works by rewiring your brain in a process called neuroplasticity, right?

[01:19:21] Luke Storey: Oh, is this why MDMA therapy seems to be so effective?

[01:19:24] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, yeah. They came out with the results of the phase three clinical trials, and it's on track to becoming a drug. You have to do the concomitant with psychotherapy, right? And they have really great results in that. But what it does, MDMA actually raises three of your neurotransmitters, your serotonin, your dopamine, and your norepinephrine levels, right? But it has to be coupled with psychotherapy for PTSD, right?

[01:19:55] So, that's what it's going to be approved for. As I said, it's going to be disease-based for these things. So, methylene blue, basic cell health optimizer, neuronal optimizer, neural network optimizer. And then, there is a brain health optimizer. So, essentially, if you do low-level light therapy or you expose yourself to sunlight, then it activates the mitochondria in the brain, right? And it actually is neuroprotective. It protects the brain from damage. And it's also a brain performance optimizer, because it has been shown to actually enhance memory.

[01:20:37] So, aside from the main part that it enhances, cognitively, is your recall, right? So, that's why methylene blue is what I call a bluetropic. It's an exemplar of the class. It does everything, from basic cell all the way to the brain, all the way to the performance of the brain. So, what I did with Blue Cannatine is to create what I call a bluetropic stack, right? So, now, you want more motivational engagement, for example. So, there's a little bit more nicotine in there and a bigger working memory. So, I was envious of, actually, that limitless pill, right? That's why I want it, like what can do this for me?

[01:21:21] So, you can stack all of this and you can have what's called a bluetropic stack. And that's how I classify nootropics now. So, health-optimizing nootropic, that's really needed by your body, not just your brain. And then, there's a performance-optimizing nootropic for your fitness to perform a task, like to memorize something, or to think about something, or to have an insight about something. What is it good for?

[01:21:48] And then, there is the bluetropic stack, which is both a health-optimizing nootropic, or a HON, and a performance-optimizing nootropic. Now, what we didn't touch on, really, is that in the brain, when you're looking at brain health optimization, and you're looking at the EEG to test the brain, when you meditate, I know you're a meditator, when you meditate, it has been shown right that the frontal Theta waves and the parietal Gamma waves actually oscillate, right?

[01:22:32] They oscillate. And there's increased power in both. And it was found in February, there's a paper, February 2021, that showed that it's actually used by the brain for spatial memory, for your memory in terms of your location in space, so on. But then, there's a study like more than a decade before that shows that ketamine actually modulates this Theta and Gamma oscillations. So, I'm not saying people to take ketamine instead of meditating, but it does the same thing, right?

[01:23:09] Luke Storey: That's so interesting. There are so many different things that I want to touch on, but we were talking about ketamine, and when we're talking about ketamine, we're not talking about like going to a rave and partying, and God bless people that choose that path, but with a more intentional purpose, whether it be therapist-assisted ketamine journeys and things like that, or even just lower-dose meditations and things like that that I've used it for, I find that one to be as equally bizarre as methylene blue in the fact that it just does so much, and that it's a pharmaceutical, because I'm of the mind like pharmaceuticals are always like last resort for anything, but ketamine seems very safe if done responsibly.

[01:23:56] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You know why it's safe, right? For me, as a physician, I find it safe, because it doesn't depress your respiration when you're in it. That's why it's used in battlefield surgeries, right? It doesn't depress your respiration.

[01:24:11] Luke Storey: And for animals, small animals, and kids, and things, right?

[01:24:14] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. I had my tonsillectomy done when I was already in third year medical school, and that general anesthesia will actually fuck up your memory, right? So, I am a doctor. I was becoming a doctor and I didn't want to have a fucked up memory, and they've shown that GA can actually fuck up your memory for up to five years. It's like, none of that. So, I had, actually, ketamine infusion, and you open your mouth, and there's this huge trocar coming into your mouth, and you could see everything. Yeah, but that's why it's called a twilight anesthetic, right? You're just tasting twilight.

[01:24:51] But the interesting part of it, the new study that they did, actually in the k-hole, it's the ego dissolution that you feel in a k-hole, where you just have to yield, and say, okay, I am out, right? And you're observing, but you're out. So, what's happening there, they found out just recently, this year, is that the cerebral cortex actually stops firing for a few minutes, and you're in the k-hole. It's just beautiful silence, right? It's just beautiful silence in there before it starts firing again. But then, they also found that the oscillating firing between the Theta and Gamma waves is the one that produces a dissociation.

[01:25:39] Oh, interesting.

[01:25:40] Yeah.

[01:25:41] Luke Storey: That's so strange, and we were talking about this and 5-MeO-DMT last night, but it's so strange, I think, with those two compounds in particular, because in the depth of the experience, and I was telling you about the 5-MeO with this that I've had a few times where I felt like if I didn't exert a small amount of effort to keep breathing, that I would have just left the body. It's like someone's got to breathe me over here, because I'm not here anymore kind of sense. And you said, no, that actually won't happen, otherwise everyone would be dying all the time on it, and it would be a really big fiasco, but-

[01:26:23] Dr. Ted Achacoso: It won't depress your respiratory center, because it will kick in.

[01:26:26] Luke Storey: Versus like an opiate or something.

[01:26:28] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, an opiate will definitely cause respiratory depression. That's why it's very dangerous.

[01:26:32] Luke Storey: Someone might take heroin, and hit that twilight experience, and dissolution, and disassociation, but their breathing will stop, and thus, heart stop.

[01:26:43] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And that's the issue with that, right? And that's why the safety, for example, for ketamine and for these classic psychedelics, the safety for them is really very high, because, A, no one gets addicted to classic psychedelics. If any, you should have a healthy fear of them as I do.

[01:27:04] Luke Storey: Oh, my God, I sure do.

[01:27:06] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Remember, I have a way of making ayahuasca gentle, right? I have my-

[01:27:12] Luke Storey: Someday, dammit, I'm going to join you in that.

[01:27:15] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And for me, it's like there's this fear that you're even going to take it, you feel this calling, but there's a healthy fear. So, there's really no danger at all that you're going to get addicted to it. And second is that you're not going to get any respiratory depression from it. In fact, my worry more is that in the traditional—I know that people would like to preserve the traditional ways of doing things, right?

[01:27:43] Like for example, the actual ayahuasca, where you have the dieta, and you throw up, and so on, is that if this is done in a forest, et cetera, you can actually choke, right? You can have all of these accidents that can happen. So, for me, it's like there are more gentle way of doing this, because I found out from my genetic testing that I could not metabolize the MAO inhibitor in Banisteriopsis caapi. So, in fact, if you really want to kill me, Luke, you can just give me a bottle of proton pump inhibitor, like Zantac, I would be dead.

[01:28:33] Yeah, because I could not metabolize—my liver does not have the enzymatic capacity to detoxify it. And with classic Banisteriopsis caapi vine, which is a liver inhibitor, that's the reason why I was throwing up so badly the first time I took it, but you know that is a significant experience, but it's just like, is there any way to make this experience more acceptable in terms of the body weren't there, so you could bring back something significant from the journey, right?

[01:29:12] Luke Storey: Yeah. Well, I think that's a good point. There's a balance of the traditional wisdom, the ancient wisdoms, the wisdom carriers, the shaman, the facilitators throughout time that have done things in a certain way, and I know that there is value in that, because in the spirit realm, a lot of things can't be explained. So, perhaps, there is some purpose to taking the ayahuasca vine with the DMT-containing plant and having that whole experience, the purge. Who knows, maybe demons are being purged out of you through throwing up? I mean, I've heard some people next to me, and I'm like, that's more than throwing up, that's the exorcist, you know what I mean? So, there's something to that.

[01:29:56] Dr. Ted Achacoso: I thought purging meant divorce.

[01:29:58] Luke Storey: Yeah. At times, it can. But that said, I mean, I think the intention of people that are having these experiences, with the exception of people that are maybe trying to escape, or just have a good time, or something, which I would not advise, you take these types of substances to do that, it's probably going to be a nightmare if you do, which I've experienced earlier in life. But I think we're all seeking to have a deeper relationship with consciousness.

[01:30:24] There's something within our spiritual will that wants to go back to the mothership, so to speak, right? It's like we're here in the Earth plane, and we're in a material world in our body, and it's linear, yet some of us are drawn to what's beyond that and we want to have those experiences. And I think what's exciting but also people might want to be mindful about is that, now, this is becoming more acceptable, culturally. I mean, we wouldn't have even talking about this on a microphone 10 years ago, medical licenses or someone's reputation, and also, the risk of influencing people to be reckless when they do have these experiences. 

[01:31:03] So, it's an interesting time because you have the ancient wisdom, but then you have innovation, like what you're describing, oh, okay, well, yeah, we can take DMT without having to have that purgatory effect, yet still come away with things that heal us emotionally and physically, and connect us spiritually into one another. So, it's a really interesting time in that way.

[01:31:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Always very eloquent when you say things that way. Me, I'm always like the blunt type with that, because I got stomped once when I was asked, so how do you include spiritual health in health optimization medicine and practice? Well, I said, lack of spirituality is called the DMT deficiency syndrome.

[01:31:55] Luke Storey: That's good. That's good.

[01:31:57] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Just give them DMT and let them begin their spiritual journey, right?

[01:32:02] Luke Storey: What I've called DMT, particularly 5-MeO, is I call it the cure for atheism. It's like, I don't know how you could walk away from that, and be like, nope, this is all there is. I mean, it's just next level. On that note, we were chatting a little last night about 5-MeO, and I was telling you how I felt at times, like I could stop breathing right now, like am I going to die?

[01:32:27] Not in a fearful way, but just out of curiosity. Being still in a body and having a subtle awareness that your consciousness is still inhabiting and animating this body, but you're barely tethered to the body, if at all, for a moment. And then, that fear comes in of like, oh, boy, I better get back in the body, because I'm not ready to leave, right?

[01:32:50] Dr. Ted Achacoso: That's the ego restarting.

[01:32:51] Luke Storey: Yeah, I have work to do here. What is actually happening in the brain? And maybe neurochemistry, but also brain waves in a 5-MeO experience.

[01:33:05] Dr. Ted Achacoso: I have not seen, for example, the brain waves, but there are fMRI studies, the blood oxygen level studies, the bold studies that are done in fMRI to see where the blood is actually flowing, right? So, we know-

[01:33:23] Luke Storey: So, someone's taking 5-MeO and going in a tube?

[01:33:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, in a tube.

[01:33:27] Luke Storey: Oh, my God. I guess you wouldn't really care, actually, because you're kind of not there anyway.

[01:33:30] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And what it does is that it significantly decreases the blood flow to the default mode network, meaning it actually, for a more shocking word, actually kills the circuit for a short period of time, like totally quiet. So, no electrical activity and so on, and then you get out of the—no, no, no. The fear again because the ego is coming up again, the circuit is coming up again.

[01:34:04] Luke Storey: Yes, absolutely true. And I've observed quite a few people as just a witness in those experiences, and it's really interesting to see that some folks are able to just completely surrender through the whole experience, maybe it's a 20 to 30-minute whole thing, and three, four, five minutes of the depth of the experience, they take the hit, lay back, and they just have a smile on their face, and they're just totally surrendered, and other people take the same dose, and they're like, fuck this, what's happening? And they totally freak out. And it's so interesting to observe, you can really see the ego, fighting and grasping for its sense of identity, right?

[01:34:47] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[01:34:48] Luke Storey: And I had an experience last December, because the first time that I had 5-MeO, I was very surrendered into it, and it was extremely intense, but there was nothing that arose within me that was fighting, and grasping, and hanging on. The second time I did it, I had a complete, I don't want to say ego death, but an ego reawakening after the depth of the initial experience during which the witness observer was not even present. 

[01:35:18] It was just pure consciousness, just absolute oneness. Then, as I started the I, the ego started to re-emerge and have an awareness that something was happening. It then put up this massive wall of resistance, and was like, make this stop, I'm out, I stood up. I was like, make it stop. And it was kind of a bad trip within what ended up being a really beautiful and enlightening experience. And it took me a couple of weeks of integration to ascertain what might have happened, and what it seemed like happened was there was a total disillusion of the self and that default mode network.

[01:35:56] And I was surrendered into that, and just breathing, and just in pure consciousness. And then, as the ego started to become aware of what had just happened, it put up a fight. But what's so funny, and I think it's such a great example of kind of the lack of innate wisdom in the ego structure, it came up and fought, but it didn't realize it was already gone. You see what I mean? Like it was mad about what I already just did, not what was about to happen, because I was re-emerging and coming back into normalcy, right?

[01:36:33] Dr. Ted Achacoso: That's classic, right?

[01:36:34] Luke Storey: So, it kind of came in like retroactively, and two weeks later, I'm like, wait, ego, you came in and put up resistance, but it was too late. You were already out of the picture for a good three minutes.

[01:36:44] Dr. Ted Achacoso: But that's exactly what it does, right? What do they say in classic meditation teachings? You always basically either dwell on the past or in the future, but never in the present. So, that's what the ego does, right? So, even if it already passed, it still actually hits you for what you did in the past.

[01:37:05] Luke Storey: Yeah. And it was like, it was late, I'm like, you already missed it. We already separated from you and we were in consciousness, you can relax now, but then the beautiful thing is in subsequent experiences with that medicine, I've built a working relationship, I guess you could say, with that ego identity, with that structure. And so, there's more of a unification between it and I, the Self, so it's like going into the experiences, even when it gets a little wonky, there's this sort of razor's edge I've been able to find, where I keep the ego at bay and communicate to it in a sense that it's safe, that it can relax.

[01:37:54] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, that's a key part.

[01:37:54] Luke Storey: It can relax, and then both of us can actually have this incredibly healing experience.

[01:37:57] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, you have to keep it safe, right? You have to make it basically feel, the word that I like to say is you have to make it feel secure, right?

[01:38:06] Luke Storey: Right.

[01:38:07] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Because it's the insecurity that drives it, right?

[01:38:09] Luke Storey: Right.

[01:38:09] Dr. Ted Achacoso: What drives you to, you already have everything in the world, and you still want more, and more, and more, right? What drives you to, well, you already have everything in the world, and say, I want more profit, and therefore I'm going to pollute the waters, I'm going to use child labor, I'm going to traffic humans, and so on, and so forth. That's the ego, right? Nothing is ever enough for it, right?

[01:38:32] Luke Storey: It's abject insecurity.

[01:38:33] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, it's just the full insecurity. And then, what happens when I want to be remembered forever? Right? There's also the insecurity of being impermanent. I say one of the meditations that you do is meditate on impermanence of things. Everything is just impermanent and goes into cycles, but it doesn't like that. It noticed that when you were younger, if you found something good, you wanted to make it permanent, right?

[01:39:04] But you realize that, no, it goes through the cycle. You can't make something permanent just because you find that it's good. So, that's what it does, is that it tries to reassure. At my age, I have many patients who want to leave a legacy one way or the other, right? And I tell them, well, you have to reassess exactly, are you wanting to leave a legacy or are you going to motivate yourself to allow your values to be revealed in the world instead? Right?

[01:39:40] I myself had that kind of in-depth look at what I really wanted to reveal in the world is I am concerned about health, because it's the one thing that makes people suffer less, right? If you're healthy, you suffer less, the people around you suffer less, and therefore you tend to make healthier decisions even for the planet, right? Not only for other people, but for other creatures. The thing is we've become so, and this is my lamentation, Luke, we've become so human-centric, right? Everything is just about humans that we are not looking at, we are just one species here, we're probably not the most important one, just the most pernicious ones, right? And then, there are all these—our environment-

[01:40:31] Luke Storey: What is what's the most important? I think it might be phytoplankton or bees. Those might be my top two.

[01:40:39] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You might be right about the phytoplanktons, because they could generate energy from sunlight, right?

[01:40:46] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[01:40:48] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, just as a tangent here, one of the things before that I was thinking, it's like, I really think that moving for the sake of finding food is a waste of time, can I put in some chlorophyll in my system, harvest sunlight, and produce energy?

[01:41:05] Luke Storey: Totally. I mean, they say there are breatharians that nailed that, the sun gazing and the breath. You hear about them, but you need to follow them around 24/7 for a couple of years to make sure they're not sneaking their candy bars, some sardines here and there. I remember back in the early days in kind of the vegan raw food community, there would be these figures that were supposedly breatharians. And I don't disbelieve that. I mean, in the quantum realm, like energy's energy, right? So, I think one could develop that ability, I think it would be a very exceptional person that could do that. 

[01:41:40] Dr. Ted Achacoso: I just received a cartoon actually that reflects that. It's like if Jesus Christ actually multiplied the loaves into 5,000 and fed it in a multitude, the multitudes will say, is that gluten-free?

[01:41:58] Luke Storey: Or the wine, they'd be like, what's the sulfite level of this wine, sir?

[01:42:05] Dr. Ted Achacoso: But anyway, it was just so funny how we have made it as complex as we have today in terms of the way we live our lives and so on. So, I always like to go back to first principles, first principles of health, first principles of performance, first principles of how you combine the two, and based on our many conversations, Luke, especially our off-camera conversations, is that, how do we include spiritual health optimization into everyone's lives, right?

[01:42:46] How do we make sure that they feel not only included, but they have a sense of responsibility to an organic spaceship called Earth that's only one that's hurtling through space, and it's the only one we've got for now? Right? So, when we look at things that way, all our petty problems are really, really petty. They become so insignificant when we take a look at us as a whole, right? Not just humanity, but the world as a whole.

[01:43:20] Luke Storey: Yeah, as one fluid-moving organism, the whole thing. I think that's such an error in humankind's perspective, this dominionistic relationship with this living being that we call Earth, that we're separate from it, therefore separate from one another, separate from the environment. And one of the most beautiful, I think, experiences and lessons that I ever had was one day, actually, in a psilocybin journey out in nature, and it sounds trite, when you describe these processes and these experiences in integration, they always sound like kind of flat, but in the moment, when you have the realization, you're like, oh, my God, the key to life, but-. 

[01:44:02] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, it's because there's one thing that actually captures that. These things are experiential, right?

[01:44:09] Luke Storey: Right.

[01:44:09] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You can translate it to words all you want, but it will always fall flat because it needs to get experience, right?

[01:44:17] Luke Storey: Yes, absolutely. And like any powerful spiritual realization, words fall very short, because there's no way to convey or transmit the felt experience. But what the experience was, despite it sounding like obvious or trite, perhaps, was such a profound knowing that—because I was out in nature, and I was like, wow, God, it feels really good to be out in nature. And the voice kind of spoke to me, and said, you are nature. And everything changed in that moment, my whole relationship to the planet, the living beings on it, was just completely altered forever. I felt like I was part of the fabric of the material world that's kind of held in suspension here by this invisible hand of God, right?

[01:45:10] It's like I don't feel from that moment forward that I'm separate from the frog, the creek, the sky, the other people, even those people I disagree with, looking someone in the eyes, and having a conversation, and the intellect going like, I disagree with everything you're saying right now, yet being able to subjugate that and see past that, and go, oh, I'm actually looking at myself right now, I'm looking at myself, and how much compassion can I generate for this person that I don't like or disagree with, because I'm actually just really cultivating compassion for myself, because I am them? That kind of experience, again, like it's hard to describe. It sounds like airy-fairy and kind of fluffy unicorns and rainbows, but to actually integrate that, and cultivate that, and have that experience grow within me, it's been a huge gift.

[01:46:05] Dr. Ted Achacoso: We have model-making brains, and I like to put in models in my hat on, that when I look at it, I visually understand it inside my head, and I was trying to conceptualize this whole thing and concepts are the worst things when it comes to this, because you can express them in concepts. But I said, initially, I was looking at myself as this character in a holodeck, right? And everything is made up of the same voxel. We are all the same, made up of the same voxel, everything is moving around.

[01:46:38] And then, I realized, no, I'm actually the holodeck that contains me and everything else in it. So then, you begin to see that that's consciousness, right? That's consciousness. Everything that's appearing in there is you, including the way you look at yourself and this body that you have, and so on, and so forth. All of those are appearing in consciousness, so that switched from being the character in the holodeck to being the holodeck itself, and that you're all made up of these fucking voxels, the same thing, the same energy, the same everything else. Then, you shift immediately, and say, okay.

[01:47:19] Luke Storey: That's great. That's kind of like if you think about the center of the universe, right?

[01:47:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[01:47:27] Luke Storey: The center of the universe seems to be generated from whatever point you are in it, right? Because there is no like center of the universe over there. The center of the universe is dictated by the observer of said universe, therefore I am in the center of it, right?

[01:47:44] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah.

[01:47:44] Luke Storey: It's wild.

[01:47:45] Dr. Ted Achacoso: There is also another thing that you mentioned that actually triggered something in me. Remember, I was raised Catholic, right?

[01:47:52] Luke Storey: Oh, right.

[01:47:52] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, when you pray, you pray to a God, right? And the God is external and so on. And with a pharmahuasca journey that I did for two years regularly, every two months, I was taking my pharmahuasca, those are my own medicine, right?

[01:48:12] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[01:48:13] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And it is actually interesting that one of the key lessons that emerged there is that no, you're not a supplicant. The first instance, I was this person looking up, asking the heavens for whatever I needed, right? And after the journey, you are the creator looking down, and saying, this is what you want to make happen, right? So, from supplicant to creator is one of those major switches that the pharmahuasca journey or the DMT journey has done for me, is that we're basically creating things all the time, right? We're co-creating things all the time. And so, we're not separate from our environment. Our environment is making us just as we're making our environment, right? 

[01:49:07] Luke Storey: Wow. Yeah.

[01:49:09] Dr. Ted Achacoso: So, that's why there's no boundary, there's no difference between us and others, and us and environment, and the term is like that old concept that we have of dominating nature, it's just a very old one, and it's very hard to take out because our educational system is that way, right? We are separate and our role is actually to control and dominate nature. That's how I grew up.

[01:49:39] And then, you realize like, no, no, no, you are nature itself, so you flow with it, right? And then, now, you begin to understand the I Ching, and the Tao Te Ching, and all of these other Chinese systems, where they always take a look at how energy flows, right? For example, I Ching is a divinatory system, will see the rise and fall of cycles. If you take a look at just the basic philosophy of how that oracle is made, I Ching is basically, you flow like water.

[01:50:17] The Tao Te Ching is, basically, you flow like water. So, you see the energy is like, no, you are actually part of that whole process. You are, what is it that Rumi said? You are the drop in the ocean and the ocean in a drop, right? That's what Rumi said. And those things are really very hard to communicate, because it's an experience. The best that we have are these kinds of sayings, and it's very hard to understand if you haven't had experience.

[01:50:50] Luke Storey: Yeah. Wow, dude. What a great conversation. Thank you.

[01:50:57] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, always a pleasure, Luke.

[01:50:58] Luke Storey: Yeah. Every time we chat, just like expanded consciousness, awareness, learning, intellectual understanding, felt energetics that are beautiful. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for coming on the show.

[01:51:14] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, Luke, it's always my pleasure.

[01:51:16] Luke Storey: Yeah.

[01:51:20] Dr. Ted Achacoso: And for the people who are following you, Luke has been gracious enough to actually try all of my various experiments and things after I've experimented it on myself, but actually grateful that he's giving me all this feedback.

[01:51:37] Luke Storey: I love it. I love it. No, that was fun this morning, actually, getting to kind of like, hmm, let me see if I can unravel the mystery of this one, just really out of curiosity. Not that it matters, but it's just, yeah, it's difficult to not have one experience like with one molecule, and then when you do something else, the mind wants to find a correlation, because it wants to kind of make sense of it somehow.

[01:52:01] But yeah, I love your curiosity, and you have the intellectual prowess and the understanding of chemistry and things like this to actually be able to do things safely and effectively, and move us forward, because what we're, I think, describing here today in terms of expansion, it's expansion. It's expanding consciousness, and awareness, and intelligence, and intuition, and memory, and all of this stuff that kind of is within consciousness, but the brain seems to be needed to do a lot of it, right? So, it's like, the brain is kind of this transmitter-receiver thing that's helping us to interface with consciousness, and there's ways that you can up-level that and improve it.

[01:52:45] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Actually, two things. One is we should consider us as an entire instrument, right? So, we don't have this picture of a disembodied brain. So, the brain is actually housed within us, and it's part of us, and so on. And it's necessary, right? Because essentially, consciousness is all we have in order to experience anything, right? It's all we have. Our appearances, the internal sensors, external sensors, like your eyes and so on, they all appear within the context of consciousness.

[01:53:28] So, without that, we basically don't experience anything in life, because it's what's available. And so, for me, the mission that I have stated is to democratize enlightenment, right? Because what is preventing us from actually becoming that consciousness itself or becoming the holodeck itself, becoming consciousness is that the ego actually prevents us from doing that. What if we can assure it that it's already secure and its survival is assured, et cetera, et cetera?

[01:54:09] Is it possible for us to be able to decrease suffering that way because it's the ego that suffers? And what I say when I'm actually teaching this is that if there is a who, then there's an ego. If there's a who that's suffering, then that's the ego. And it's the one that is doing the suffering, so how can we decrease the suffering? Because for me, that's the root fractal of everything else that we do.

[01:54:37] So, if you decrease the suffering, then all the other suffering in your life would decrease, right? And suffering for me is simply defined as that clinging and aversion of the ego, right? And you're not even noticing it that you have the clinging and aversion. What if you can observe that clinging and aversion? Right? So, now, as I said, we go back to the beginning now of our talk here is that enlightenment is a freedom from the illusion of the self.

[01:55:13] So, when you are free from the illusion of the self, that is just a process in there that's happening, there's no true identity, then you are able to become nature itself. You are able to become consciousness itself and watch everything arise. And the important thing for meditators out there, even attention is an arising from the consciousness. That's why that's a role, is to focus on one thing to the other. It's why you anchor it in a breath or you anchor it in a mantra, you anchor it because you have to cook it somewhere in order to keep it behaving, right?

[01:55:50] Luke Storey: Right. It's like tying up a dog.

[01:55:52] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. That's not the ego that you're tying, you're tying attention, right? You're tying attention to something for you to be able to see that it's just another arising in consciousness, right? And that's how I say that our company mission is smarter, not harder. The makers of Troscription is to decrease suffering in ourselves and to decrease suffering in others, knowing that there is no other.

[01:56:29] Luke Storey: Damn, son, mic drop, boom. It's a great closer. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced you, Ted, that you might share with us?

[01:56:37] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Old or new?

[01:56:39] Luke Storey: Any, what comes to mind, first thing comes to mind. Teachers or teachings, a concept, a principle, a person, a book, a philosophy.

[01:56:50] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, I'm more into disciplines, right? Teachings in various disciplines. So, the first one that I think should be taught to everyone is evolutionary biology, evolution, your evolution and everything else, because there, you could see what I want people to see there that I've seen, is that you know how you were constructed, and therefore when you expand of how the mind works, you know how you're programmed.

[01:57:27] So, there are two things, and I say these to people, there are two things that you have to be mindful of in your programming. One is a bioevolutionary program, right? For example, thirst, right? You need to drink, et cetera. And then, there is the cultural program, where the thirst becomes a thirst for justice, right? So, those are our programming and they are programming that are put in there by evolution, put in there by our families, our teachers, your attitudes, you examine your attitude towards money, towards other people, and so on.

[01:58:03] You could see there are programs in you that are running, that are programmed in there, and that's why you have to study your evolution and see how you're wired. And the important thing in there that I actually emphasize is know your cognitive biases, right? Your confirmation bias, your sunk cost fallacy bias, and all of these cognitive biases out there.

[01:58:26] They are how the brain work, right? We're not immune to them, we make them all the time, we make the mistakes all the time, but at least when they're there, you're able to recognize what they are, right? So, that's one field that I wish people would actually take a look at more closely, not just evolution of the body, but the evolution of the programming of us, how we're programmed.

[01:58:54] And the second thing that I actually would like people to take a look at is ecology or deep ecology. As Fritjof Capra used to say deep ecology, meaning our fundamental relationship with the environment and everything else in it, right? If you begin to know that you are just one species in this, you begin to see how insignificant you are and stop taking yourself way too seriously. 

[01:59:23] Luke Storey: Absolutely.

[01:59:24] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Way too seriously. And the third is statistics, rational thinking, Bayesian thinking even, Bayesian statistics, because that is more difficult, but I think it should be thought like in high school already, because it's the basis for rational thinking. Basically making decisions based on your emotion is easy, because that's intuitive, that's knee jerk, right? But when you have to make decisions that are data-based, which we have now with expansion of AI, and this is preparing our youth for the world that we're creating, right?

[02:00:02] You should know statistics. You should know statistics and probability. You should know the various statistical models that are out there. You should start early. A simple example there is a seatbelt law, right? Before, we didn't have it, but when we found out that because we have cars in our technology and that they found out that people with seatbelts actually reduce their trauma, the intensity of trauma or deaths by X percent.

[02:00:32] So, that's a rational decision, right? And the example that I gave, Massachusetts is one of the last states to adopt it, because it wrinkled their clothes, right? If you take a look at it, I remember these things by funny examples like that, but it can be applied to your life, right? There are certain decisions in your life where you actually have to make the effort, because it requires energy to do rational decision making, right?

[02:01:04] We do it all the time in medicine, right? We are essentially looking at data all the time of what's coming in, but the problem is that I thought statistics for almost 20 years, and even now, when doctors read articles, it is scary for me what kind of conclusions they draw from it by not understanding exactly the models of statistics that they're looking at, right?

[02:01:32] So, we should start this early, so we could have essentially a love for how we evolved and knowing how we're programmed as organic robots that are walking around here on Earth, the Earth that we're in, the ecology that we are, and then how we make better decisions by exerting a little effort, by taking a look at the data points, and how they might be related to one another. That's the more difficult part, it requires more energy.

[02:02:04] But we need more of that right now because of the issues that we have for climate change, for example, and all of these other things that are happening to us. Those cannot be revealed by intuition. Those are revealed by the data points in our studies. So, those are the three things that have influenced me a lot. I know they general classes of knowledge, but they have served me well in being able to understand myself and being able to make decisions, immediate decisions on something, on things that need to get decided on, that are based on using your terminology now, that when you decide it's based on love, it's based on abundance, it's based on health, it's based on happiness, it's based on bliss, right?

[02:02:56] So, you're able to make those automatically, but it does require some study when you do that, right? Yeah, like for example, yeah, I'm able to provide for my family, but at what cost? Right? At what cost are we doing this? Right? So, these are the things that when we actually have a decent, when our kids even have a decent understanding of this fields of knowledge, they grow up being more conscious that they're not really separate from their environment.

[02:03:35] And one of the things in health, for example, that we always forget is our vitamin D levels, right? We are yoked to the sun, man. You go out every morning and get some sun. You're yoked to the Sun. And vitamin D gene is what, about 750 million years old? So, the receptor of that, about 750 million years old. We did not yet exist. We're only 250 million years old as a species. So, you see how all of these are actually serving to remind us that we are the environment itself, right? We are not separate from it. We're actors in it. Yeah.

[02:04:16] Luke Storey: Love it, dude. Thank you so much. That's maybe the coolest answer to my closing question ever, by the way. Usually, it's like, oh, shoutout to Gandhi, Jesus Christ, whatever, and authors, and that's deep stuff, man. Wow. Thank you so much for being able to go to the depths with me today and thank you for doing the work you do. In closing, just give us your websites, where people can find Troscriptions, any of the other stuff you're doing.

[02:04:41] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. If you want to check out Blue Cannatine and Just Blue, which is all methylene blue, it's at troscriptions.com, that's like prescriptions, but with a T-R-O, because we use troches. And then, if you're interested in having a framework for biohacking or helping others biohack, or if you're a physician who would like to use the new omics sciences in your practice, you can train with us. It's a nonprofit, homehope.org. 

[02:05:16] As you know, Troscriptions, actually, is a major donor that allows homehope.org to be able to do its charitable work educating physicians. There's a program for physicians, which is health optimization medicine. There is a program for health care practitioners who are not physicians called health optimization practice or hope. That's what it's called homehope.org. Our slogan is let's bring medicine home, right? 

[02:05:42] Luke Storey: Cool, man.

[02:05:43] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. And then, of course, our main website, which contains nothing but our mission, which is to democratize enlightenment, is snhlife.com. And for those in Asia, there is biobalanceinstitute.com and metametricslab.com.ph, which is essentially in the Philippines.

[02:06:09] Luke Storey: Cool, man. Wow. Goddamn, you're managing a lot of stuff, my friend. You must be doing something right if your brain is able to do all that. 

[02:06:15] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, if I can maintain this epigenetic age, I must be doing something right.

[02:06:21] Luke Storey: I barely manage my one website, and that's a lot. So, yeah, man. Thanks so much, Ted. Great to see you, dude.

[02:06:26] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, thank you.

[02:06:27] Luke Storey: Thanks for spending time with us.

[02:06:29] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Always, always, Luke.

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