[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, and personal development. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. So, here we are, Kristin, we finally got down to it.
[00:00:28] Kristin Weitzel: Yes, we did. Thanks for having me, I'm so stoked to be here with you, to have some conversation.
[00:00:32] Luke Storey: I am, too. I was binging your podcast for the past 24 hours or so, so just what I typically do, so I feel like I know a lot more about you. We've met a few times, but I'm like, this is going to be super cool and also something that's really needed, because in the space of alternative health, healing, biohacking, I'm sure they're out there, but I haven't found a woman who seems so well-versed as you and is just like full-on into this stuff. You've got the guys, the Ben Greenfield, Dave Asprey, you've got male leaders in this space, but you're kind of taking this shit to a next level for the ladies. And a lot of women have requested that, so thank you for joining me.
[00:01:10] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a journey for sure, right? You know it well, because we learn from success, we learn from failure, and I've been doing it for a lot of years. And just also watching you, and honor the growth and all the things that you continue to bring to the world yourself, because I saw it in the early days, and you hustled, you really hustled in ways that were super beautiful to bring people information.
[00:01:33] So, yeah, I'm happy to be here, and I'm also happy to always, always represent the females in the biohacking space as best I can. It's been 15-plus years, probably, since Dave coined the term of leaning into different things, and I like to talk about myself as an aggregator of data. So many people are out there working on their own health, their well-being, optimize, optimize, optimize, and you're absolutely right, what you were talking about just a moment ago, that there have been a lot of men in the segment of biohacking in our vertical, and I learned a lot from those men.
[00:02:11] I think that's important to say as well. And then, there's been some divergence in the data and the research or we're left out of research as females. And quite often, I'm digging into it to try to find out what we can do better or I'm doing the N equals one experiment of, will this work? Is this too much or too little? Am I going to fry my hormones or what's going to happen? So, I've had so much fun, and really, I feel connected to the term biohacking. I think a lot of people I speak to, including women, are off-put by that term, because it sounds sort of edgy and risky or something even now.
[00:02:46] Luke Storey: Yeah. It also sounds kind of geeky. It's not really cool. So, like when people refer to me that way, and this is just my pride and my ego, but like, oh, you're that biohacker guy. I'm like, oh, I always get cringy. I'm like, no, I'm not. I think before it was called that, you were just called a health nut, right? You're just like the person who hangs out at the health food store and reads every ingredient, every supplement, and spends like more money on that than rent. That was me.
[00:03:15] Kristin Weitzel: Totally, like your super granola or whatever.
[00:03:17] Luke Storey: Yeah, totally. But, yeah, there wasn't really a term for it. So, God bless Dave coming up with the term, and I guess it's the best we've got now. Health enthusiasts might be apropos. But in my research of you, I want to get a little bit of your back story. So, you were a ballerina when you were younger, and then you went into becoming a yoga teacher. So, it sounds like you were someone who was in your body, right?
[00:03:42] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure.
[00:03:43] Luke Storey: Because you're using your body. So, at what point did you start to really get into the deeper elements of alternative health, and healing, and stuff? Do you have an origin story that includes you having some physical ailment that you couldn't fix through Western medicine and went to this, or was it just like wanting to feel good and be vital that gave you this passion?
[00:04:01] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, I love that you asked the question that way, because I have always said, people have these beautiful comeback stories in our segment, and there are so many things that they've learned, and they can teach, and their passions grow through that. And my origin story is that I was a dancer, so the twofold path of my origin story is I didn't really have a major issue. I had a reasonable upbringing. Sure, we all have a little bit of trauma of kids, divorce, all of that.
[00:04:30] But I was dancing since five and I had this vision like I wanted to be a prima ballerina. And what I noticed really quickly as I was getting to the ages of 10, 11, 12 is that bodies are changing, right? And the way that dance, and specifically ballet, back then, was really around the less you eat, the smaller you are, the more you can get cast in the roles that you want and the more that you'd be sort of treated with like, oh, she's a ballerina. It was just a very physicalized component of dancing, and I thought, but I'm hungry.
[00:05:07] Luke Storey: Right.
[00:05:08] Kristin Weitzel: I'm hungry and it felt kind of like unhealthy in the way that people were either feeding or not feeding themselves. One lettuce leaf. I have clients who would come to me in LA and be like, but I'm having four iceberg lettuce leaves and one piece of chicken, and that's plenty of protein for the day, and that's not the case, we'll get into that later, but I just got nerdy about food and figuring it out. And I was like, vegetarianism, okay, let me try that.
[00:05:33] And then, I read, so husband and wife, the Diamonds, they wrote a book about food combining, and I was like 16, 17. And I was like, oh, and it was food combining. I was like writing menus and doing that protocol. And then, I was like, oh, I'm going to juice. And I was like the 16, 17 year old that had this green juicing, and that's weird back then. Like let's be real, right? It's like the 90s. And so, it felt like a health nut. And then, the next trajectory for me was to sort of follow that. And so, how could I get my body strong enough, keep it lean? And quite frankly, I'm sure that I had a little bit of like an AB mindset, like anorexic bulimic mindset.
[00:06:14] There was a period of time that I was like taking laxatives and just trying to fit the mold of what a ballerina looked like. And it seemed like overnight at 16, I just fully developed. Like I woke up one morning and I had breasts, and I was like, what do I do? And in that year, the woman who was my teacher, my instructor, my mentor for ballet was like, maybe it's time we do like a pivot to tap and jazz for you. And for me to hear that felt just like crushing, right? It was like a crushing blow to this big dream I always had.
[00:06:47] Now, you look at American Ballet Theatre, you look at the primas, and they have strong legs, and shapely, and it's really changed, which is, thank goodness. But for me, that shift was kind of a challenge, to say the least, and it sort of set me on a trajectory of having curiosity around, I want to say food, which was like the first frontier for me. And I was already physical in fitness, because I was dancing and I was trying to figure out how to power turns, how many turns you can do in a row, all these things that you want to learn, and then layering in just the hacking piece started really early 20s, coming out of reading a book by Junger called Clean.
[00:07:25] And that book was really about, how do I clean up my diet in 21 days? How do I have one meal, plus some juices, and soups, and smoothies, and really, lots of reducing inflammation in the body? And in the end of the book, he says, if you want to tell me this is bullshit, you can tell me it's bullshit after you do it, and we'll go out to dinner, you can tell me all the ways it sucks and it doesn't work. And somehow, that just really felt authentic. And I was like, okay, I'm doing this.
[00:07:53] And so, I was doing bulletproof coffee and I was doing this book Clean for 21 days, and I felt amazing, and I thought, oh, my goodness, have so much energy, I'm a little bit leaner, it wasn't even really about my physicality in 21 days. You can't see that much shift, but everything about the way I was in the world felt so different. And that's when I was like, oh, there's something. And then, I was following Dave a lot, Dave Asprey. I think before Dave, even I was following Mark Sisson. So, listen to the Sisson, he's sort of the godfather of the paleo diet, and talking about how you work out, and how you can train, and how you can eat, and all of that.
[00:08:35] So, John Durant was in Brooklyn, I was in New York, and he had a big meat freezer, and people were like, newspapers were writing articles, like who's the weirdo in Brooklyn with a cow and a freezer? And so, all of that just sort of spun into, what else can I do? It was a fun adventure. I've always been very curious about how I can optimize, and to me, it hasn't always been around. Time efficiency, it's just been around exploration. I'm a big explorer background in my family, that's a story for another day, but for years, and years, and years in the Navy.
[00:09:11] And I always felt like, am I so interested in exploring all these different things? Because that's kind of been in the men in my family or something, and I've always heard these stories about going to foreign lands, and sailing, and all these things. And so, I just like rocked with it, and said, what's next? What can I try next? And I don't know. Eventually, you get a reputation of being a little bit of the weird one and you start to embrace it.
[00:09:33] Luke Storey: You're the weird one until your friends get sick, and then they come to you, and say, what do I do?
[00:09:38] Kristin Weitzel: Totally.
[00:09:38] Luke Storey: I experienced this so much. I mean, yeah, a few of my friends are into the stuff I'm into. I wouldn't say that anyone's as into it as I am, which totally makes sense because I'm just obsessive and totally nuts. But yeah, I noticed that, some people are like, God, why do you do all this stuff? Like if you see me get on a plane, I mean, that's ridiculous. Alyson and I were watching this dating show, it's called Married at First Sight.
[00:10:02] Kristin Weitzel: I've seen it.
[00:10:03] Luke Storey: Alyson watches, God bless her, I love you, Alyson, if you ever hear this, but she loves watching like the corniest TV shows. I always want to watch something super deep or dark. I was watching the John of God documentary series, and I just love stuff that's super creepy. She likes light stuff that just kind of like pass the time and just lets her forget about her life. Anyway, we're watching that show, and it's the first time, they're married, and then two days later, they take a flight for their honeymoon to go to Mexico.
[00:10:30] Kristin Weitzel: And I turned to her, and I was like, can you imagine someone like knowing me for two days and getting on an airplane with me? And she's like, no one could hang, no one could hang, until you take a couple of flights, and you're like, damn, you got a lot of energy, you're not smoked after that flight, what are you doing? It's that kind of thing. It's like in the recovery programs, they say attraction rather than promotion, right? Don't proselytize, you just live your life, and eventually, there's going to be a beacon for people that are seeing that you're getting results. And ultimately, a few of them are going to come to you for support. But anyway, I want to back up a little bit.
[00:11:02] Luke Storey: You talked about the food combining thing. And I had that book and I totally bought into it. It made perfect sense that if you eat a steak, whatever that takes, four hours to digest. And if you eat a peach on top of that, it's going to ferment and cause all these problems, because the peach goes in 30 minutes, et cetera, and I just have a lot of heartburn, and digestive problems, and things like that. And so, I try to be mindful of that, but I never really could nail it, and I didn't know if it was totally legit.
[00:11:28] And then, the weird thing happened. I think just all the work I've done on myself in healing my gut, which is still not perfect, but infinitely better than it was, I can kind of like combine whatever foods now and it doesn't bother me, whereas it used to a lot. I mean, even like if I ate, I don't know, Chinese food, and I had some rice, and some beef, like even just mixing that starchy carb with protein, I would get heartburn. And then, I don't know, it just kind of went away, and now, I pretty much ignored. Did you find that to be a valid teaching or framework? And do you pay any attention to that anymore?
[00:12:03] Kristin Weitzel: I think the interesting thing that happened with that, first of all, I love that you read that book, because I never meet anyone that like read that book, because it's been around a long time.
[00:12:10] Luke Storey: Dude, I mean, in the 90s, it was like the food combining book, and then eating for your blood type, that was another one.
[00:12:16] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, totally. I'm not as much of a fan of that. I think the Diamond book was interesting and great, and it was a foray into a lot of the things we're doing now, but a lot of the books that we read and I hate to even use the word diet, that's called the eating lifestyles that we choose, when we choose something that we are paying more attention to our food, generally speaking, I think we get healthier, our guts heal a little.
[00:12:38] I see that happen a lot. Even when I was practicing vegetarianism and all of that, like I felt healthier in some moments, and I do a lot of lab testing, too, so I'm checking in what's really going on. And so, getting more greens, getting more micronutrients, balancing food, and separating it in the food combining diet to say, well, how does this make me feel you? You start to get a sense of how it makes you feel from a food standpoint.
[00:13:03] So, I think that there's some validity in that. I think we've sort of moved past food combining a bit and we've moved past, not everybody, because I have clients who come to me saying, I'm going to do the blood type diet, but we've debunked a lot of the components of that. And yeah, it's like food is fuel, and N equals one, right? Like your body is different than my body. What serves it? So, everyone, I'm a big freedom of choice person.
[00:13:26] Luke Storey: Did you find shortcomings eventually in eating as a vegetarian?
[00:13:32] Kristin Weitzel: I did, for sure, for me, especially like with my hair and fingernails, it was falling out a little, very weak, brittle. There's also something to be said for when you're a vegetarian, you have to make very clear choices with your food to get enough of the macronutrients that you need. And I think that when I first started playing around vegetarianism, I was like 17, I was in performing arts high school, I was dancing and doing theater, and I was like pizza, French fry, vegetarian. It's like, what can you grab that's easy on the go to the school bus or whatever? I didn't do a good job of weaving in healthy food as fuel. And so, that is a point of differentiation I always like to bring up. I think you can do it if you pay attention to the macronutrient profile that you put in your body.
[00:14:18] Luke Storey: I appreciate that honesty, because I always clown, not on people that are vegetarian, I really don't give a shit like what people eat. I think there's a lot of self-identification in terms of like, I am my diet, that I think is super weird, and I'm sure I did it at some point, too. But I do clown on the period in which I ate as a vegetarian, because I had all of these health problems.
[00:14:40] But if I'm really honest about it, I was eating a lot of grains. And I mean, I wasn't eating like pizza, and fries, and stuff, per se, but I wasn't eating like nutritionally dense food a lot of the time. There was like tons of carbs, and grains, and inflammatory foods, so of course, my digestion was wrecked and I had pain in my body all the time. And as soon as I started eating meat again, it was like, oh, I mean, it's just so many problems went away right away.
[00:15:06] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, my body responds best to eating high protein, high veggie, relatively low carb. I mean, eat carbs, carbs are not the devil, especially if you're working out a lot.
[00:15:16] Luke Storey: Yeah, personally, just finding more balance with all of it. Last night, I stopped at the liquor store, and I got like two mango ice cream bars, and they were fantastic, and they were probably like full of corn syrup and God knows what else. It's just like, I don't know. I think sometimes, with the food piece being extremely rigid and controlling about it all the time, at least for me, kind of the neurosis of that maybe has a more deleterious impact on my biology than just kind of doing the best I can and being moderate about it. And knowing there are certain foods like a couple of nights ago, I had a snickerdoodle cookie.
[00:15:54] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. Well, it's so good to have a treat, like I won't let people call it a cheat, because it's a treat, you're allowed to serve yourself.
[00:16:01] Luke Storey: It was delicious and it also hurt my stomach really badly. So, it's like, hmm, as those things happen, I think, alright, so I can bend my rules a bit, but there are certain things I know there's probably going to be a bigger price to pay. Going back to women in this space, you mentioned a couple, Mark Sisson, Dave Aspirin, and these guys, have there been any women along the way that you've looked to for inspiration that you've really learned from, too?
[00:16:27] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. I'm big into sort of like the fitness training working out thing, and Stacie Sims is amazing. She's an amazing woman who's been around talking about women cycling, not spinning, but using our reproductive cycle in our years, and then talking about menopausal women and how we can really train to stay strong. And then, someone who's really near and dear to my heart, who I just love, who changed a lot of my life from the standpoint of, I carried around a lot of anger from, I think, earlier years in my life in thinking, it's a self-worth thing or something.
[00:17:01] And I spent time training, and spending, and hanging out with Emily Fletcher and Ziva, and Ziva meditation, and you know her, and she just showed up on the scene, and as a yoga teacher, I was meditating and not really being able to stick to a practice for so many years, and she's the person who really got me to be able to stick to meditation. She made it approachable and understandable. She was wildly charismatic. She comes from Broadway, so she really knows how to speak the language without making it feel like to archaic, or too confusing, or too, I think, woo-woo is the wrong term, but you know, I like to say I'm woo-adjacent, I want science, I want some woo, but I may not be able to get as woo as you, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there.
[00:17:48] Luke Storey: Yeah, I'm like sticking my head in a quantum block every morning and I'm pretty out there, but I have to say like as out there as I am, I do like to see some sort of quantification or studies on things before I just buy into it. I mean, I want to see like live blood cell analysis, or HRV, or something that indicates there's a positive impact on biology, especially when it comes to like the quantum, and energy things, and all that, because there's no other way to prove that other than just someone subjective testimonial, oh, I put this thing in my house or I wore this thing and I feel great. It's like, well, placebo is also very powerful.
[00:18:27] Kristin Weitzel: Super powerful. Oh, it's a great stat for—I have to talk about this stat, because it's important. So, Dianabol is a steroid, and so women in like double-blind studies against, were told that we're given Dianabol for this training bout of, I want to say it's 30 days, but I won't get that right. So, given Dianabol, not really, the placebo, they're told it's Dianabol, they train those women, and those women gain 321% more strength versus a control group.
[00:18:57] And so, it's like, how? Like if that doesn't prove that placebo effect is real, and I like to quote that study a little bit because—I can send it to you to put it in the notes, but I like to quote that study because what it says to me is how impressionable females can be, specifically, because we are told quite often that we don't have enough testosterone to be able to like get the lift, do the weights, or we hear that or it's socialized around us, and we sort of have lived in that space.
[00:19:26] And so, it's part of the reason that I follow Stacy Sims, she'll talk about things like that. And it's part of the reason. I mean, I learned that specific study came from a gentleman who is a mentor of mine in nutrition, who's in training, which is Dan Garner. And then, even like with the red light, like working with FlexBeam, our chief medical person is Zulia Frost, and she just has every protocol on the planet.
[00:19:47] Luke Storey: I listened to your interview with her, and I was like, damn, homegirl knows a lot about like photobiomodulation. I mean, she was dropping stuff, I was like, what? I've never heard of that.
[00:19:59] Kristin Weitzel: Zulia works with us, and then Sarah, who used to work with us, she did a lot of consulting with us, is the one who I interviewed.
[00:20:04] Luke Storey: Oh, the British lady.
[00:20:05] Kristin Weitzel: Sarah Tuner. Yeah. And she's rad. She's like, she's the woman behind the woman behind the red light. It's amazing.
[00:20:13] Luke Storey: Yeah, she was very impressive. So, I've noticed over the years that I've recommended things that I do to women, such as, I remember when I first started drinking bulletproof coffee, I was like, this is incredible, I don't have to eat all day. I will have that fatty coffee in the morning, and I'm like, what? Why is everyone else obsessed with lunch? I had a company and we had maybe three or four employees, and everyone's like, when are we getting lunch?
[00:20:37] I'm like, what? Let's keep crushing, what's wrong with you? And so, I would recommend that to female friends and things like that, and it just did not work for them, just adrenal issues and just things like that. So, I know one thing that is different in the way that your average female would approach biohacking has to do with how you fast, intermittent fasting, and things like that.
[00:21:00] So, I'd like to maybe dive into that, because I know a lot of women listen to the show and we're always recommending these things. And as you said, the studies are based on males, oftentimes, the experts that are coming out and recommending things are working on themselves and other male clients. So, in the biohacking world, what are some of those things, like fasting or intermittent fasting, that are just way different in how a female would approach it and find success?
[00:21:26] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. I mean, fasting is a great example. I'm conservative on fasting, because of some of the challenges we deal with hormonally, and the environment, and stress levels, and anxiety being so high. Women are typically prone to depression, anxiety, and stress a bit more than men. That's typically what the studies are showing. And then, also, recovery.
[00:21:44] Like when I talked earlier in my origin story about this like twofold path, I really learned that the biohacking conference that just happened, I learned a really valuable lesson, which was I had COVID, I moved over the course of the two weeks I had COVID, I pushed myself super hard, and when I hit like the day before the conference, I hit my hotel room and I had what I would call is a nervous system failure, just working with breath and the nervous system so much.
[00:22:08] I hate to call it like a breakdown, because it feels self shameful. But I had like sort of nervous system failure. And the point of that is to say that as women, we really need to focus on recovery. Like you are only as fit as what you can recover from. And the thing I learned, which is like two weeks ago even, is I'm coaching, and I think I'm impervious to it, and I can keep going, and I can crush it, and I coincidentally had 18 men in me in my division in my corporate years.
[00:22:39] And I learned the communication and the work style of someone who's in a male embodiment and what doesn't serve me as well. So, recovery is a really big thing. And so, we are only as fit as what we can recover from really applies not just to recovering from training, but recovering from stress and recovering from like traumas in your childhood even, right? How do we dig into those things even more to be able to recover well? And does that go for men and women?
[00:23:05] Of course, it does, but because we tend to be more sensitive creatures in female physiology, even more so, we need to figure out how to get ourselves feeling safe and feeling recovered from whether it be a fitness training or something that happened to us, a fight with our spouse or whatever's going on in our life, and the levels of stress we're coming off of. Because right now, people are more anxious, more stressed, more sad than they ever have been after two years of us living in the unknown, right? This crazy world that we're in right now.
[00:23:38] And so, I think fasting conservative, I tell women 12 hours, 14 hours max, we can't do it as well, our bodies don't do it as well. Ice baths, very different. We can talk about that later. And using tools like red light therapy, I use the FlexBeam at night to calm my system down, so it gets a little warm, it's nice, and it gives me a moment to be able to recover. The last thing I will say is women need a little bit more sleep than men, 35 to 45 minutes on average, our bodies function better on more sleep.
[00:24:07] Luke Storey: Really?
[00:24:07] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And so, that's what the studies say. The science is always changing, but when you look at a huge smattering of hundreds of hundreds of studies, we typically need more sleep and we have to make more HGH. We have to make more specific things to be able to keep up with—or maybe it's not keeping up, but just our own bodies versus you having testosterone in healthy individuals. So, what are we going to be able to create that's going to keep us strong, and keep our bones thick, and keep all the parts of our body moving forward in the way that we do as women, and sleep helps with that.
[00:24:38] Luke Storey: Wow. Interesting. I'm thinking of the woman in my life. It's like I definitely sleep more than her, and she seems fine. But sometimes, I'm like, how are you not tired? Like, if I don't get at least seven hours of good sleep, like my performance goes way down. You mentioned HGH or human growth hormone. I'm going to throw this out for my friend Nina Todd in LA. She's the wife of a good friend of mine named James. She texted me a couple of days ago, and she's just a regular person, has a healthy lifestyle, but isn't into the stuff like we are.
[00:25:10] And she said, have you ever heard of HGH? I'm like, yeah, I used to inject it years ago, and then it kind of went out of style, and everyone's like, you don't want to do that. So, there's other ways you can boost it. And she was like, yeah, I hear it's really good for your skin, and this, and that. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's great, but there are ways that you can encourage your body to produce more. I think I've heard things like deadlifts or fasting and different things. I'm not an expert on HGH, but I have heard enough people say, yeah, you probably don't want to use exogenous injections of HGH. Do you happen to be aware of any ways I can answer her question of like how a woman could increase HGH production?
[00:25:47] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. There are like three ways that I use. One of them is highly specialized tech, so I'll talk about that last. The first thing to boost HGH, ice baths.
[00:25:58] Luke Storey: Oh, really?
[00:25:59] Kristin Weitzel: So, that will help. Yeah. So, that's great, especially if you like an ice bath. And if you don't, you better learn how, because we're going to talk about all the amazing benefits of that. The second thing is I will utilize—when I'm training or when I'm going to the gym, I'll utilize red light therapy before I train. And especially for men, I know we're talking a lot about women, but I always want to talk about this with men, utilizing red light therapy on your body, whether it's a whole body panel, whether it's something like FlexBeam that you're like, I'm going to put it on my shoulders, wear to the gym when I'm doing an upper body workout or an overhead pressing workout, that gives you the capacity to boost HGH when it's red light before, right? You're firing your mitochondria, you're sort of priming your system and your cells to do the thing they do best when you work out. And for men, it's like 200-plus increase in testosterone when you do red light before.
[00:26:51] Luke Storey: Really?
[00:26:52] Kristin Weitzel: Same with ice. So, I know we're talking about women, but specifically with testosterone, because we have a different cycle of how it works in our body, typically, men will ice after a workout quite often, or like the next day, or whatever, but if you ice and you're taking like 10 or 15 minutes, and you probably know this because we go to ARX, right? You ice before, it's like T scores through the roof.
[00:27:13] Luke Storey: That's cool. I didn't know that. I just know that I'm way, way stronger if I work out right after an ice bath. And when I go to ARX on Sundays, incidentally, I do red light in the SaunaSpace sauna, and then I do the ice baths, and then I work out. That's my formula. Way stronger.
[00:27:31] Kristin Weitzel: Love that protocol.
[00:27:31] Luke Storey: But that's interesting. The HGH piece, too, that's really interesting. So, maybe I'll send this episode to Nina, and if you're listening, Nina, thanks for the question, keep them coming.
[00:27:40] Kristin Weitzel: And then, the last thing, she said she's in L.A., right?
[00:27:41] Luke Storey: Yes.
[00:27:42] Kristin Weitzel: So, get on a Vasper. Oh, my goodness.
[00:27:44] Luke Storey: Oh, really?
[00:27:45] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. You've been on it, you know what the machine is.
[00:27:47] Luke Storey: I've seen them. They look terribly painful. Don't worry Nina or anyone else, I don't mean painful-
[00:27:52] Kristin Weitzel: It's not painful, just it's a recumbent stepper with compression and chilling so that your body, your back, your arms are like you have leg cuffs, arm cuffs, the seat, and your feet are all chilled while you do this recumbent stepping intermittent sprints workout. And it's 21 minutes and it lets your body think, well, that's about two-and-a-half hours worth of lactase that goes to your pituitary gland.
[00:28:16] And they're finding, definitely, with men, it's boosting testosterone, but I'm the woman who always calls. So, anyone who's listening to this podcast should know, I'm the person who calls, writes info out, calls the owner, doesn't get off the phone until I get an answer that feels appropriate for females, and then I test it on my body. And so, I was nervous about getting on the Vasper, because I thought, oh, I don't want to boost testosterone in my body, but the HGH benefits and the reregulation of your hormone cycle as a female, like women getting on there, and going home, and being like, oh, my period came like two days early, but it's like reregulating your cycle in a way that from dysregulation to regulation.
[00:28:54] And they're running trials right now in New York to say, yo, can we get these women on a cycle of Vasper that have gone into early perimenopause from just, let's talk about block pathways or environmental things, can we get them back into normal cycle? And they're having success with it. Like we only have so many eggs. So, let's be honest, at some point, our cycle is going to stop, but really getting women out of the state of early perimenopause can be helpful, because there are other things that live in that, fertility, maybe you want to have kids, there's shame around it sometimes, we don't talk about it all the time, when our bodies are shifting cycles. And so, those are three cool tools.
[00:29:31] Luke Storey: Thank you. Yeah, that was way more than I bargained for. Where could a woman in LA or anywhere find one of these Vaspers? Some of these technologies that are-
[00:29:41] Kristin Weitzel: They're like harder to find.
[00:29:44] Luke Storey: Yeah, they're gym equipment-ish, but they're $60,000. It's not like the type of thing someone could typically have in their home, but there are now like Upgrade Labs and these different centers.
[00:29:55] Yeah, there's a couple in New York.
[00:29:57] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, it's like, I'm sure, on Vasper's website, they have like a locator, but there isn't one in Austin, so we need to find someone in Austin who's going to put it in a facility, yeah.
[00:30:04] Luke Storey: Alright, I have one super rich friend, I'm going to text after, because people, sometimes, Luke, I want to spend some money, like what should I buy? And I'm like, hahaha, funny you should ask.
[00:30:15] Kristin Weitzel: I bet it would monetize. It's like one of the number one searched Google things, is like, how to boost testosterone. So, between men using the Vasper and women who want to like check out that system, like I would monetize here.
[00:30:27] Luke Storey: Super cool. I love it. Yeah, that's one thing that I think is encouraging is out of this whole mess we've been in for a couple of years, I've noticed a huge increase in interest in biohacking centers, and wellness centers, and things like this. I mean, it's becoming a viable entrepreneurial venture for people. And I know because I get so many questions, hey, I'm opening up this thing, I'm like, wow, everyone's doing that, cool. Float centers, all this kind of stuff, and people are integrating all of these different technologies, which is rad, because as I said, a lot of these things are so expensive, and not everyone—I mean, you could go buy a freaking Porsche for the same prices, some of these devices, maybe not a Porsche, but a used one at any rate, right?
[00:31:08] Kristin Weitzel: Still, it's a choice, right? It's like, do I have a sexy ass car or do I stay alive longer and take good care of myself? I know what I would choose, but it's like, fine, I mean-
[00:31:16] Luke Storey: But it's cool if someone else is going to take on the investment and create a viable business around it, and then you go pay your membership or a per user fee, and then you don't have to have all the stuff in your house, but you can still go do it. Speaking of technologies, I think what I wanted to get into next here, oh, by the way, we've mentioned tons of links here, so I want to let the audience know, I'm really getting in the habit of making the show notes easy to find, because so many people reach out.
[00:31:42] This episode will be lukestorey.com/kristin, and that's K-R-I-S-T-I-N. Lukestorey.com/kristin. So, if you guys are like, wait, what was that thing? It's all going to be in the show notes, go to that link and you'll get them. Let's get into the red light therapy, because I know this is something that you're super into. I've been into it for a long time. I've done shows about it in the past, but it's been quite a while and I think things have evolved and you brought it into the conversation in terms of recovery, but there's so much more that it can do.
[00:32:14] So, let's kind of start getting into the weeds on the red light therapy, because, A, it's just interesting and awesome, and there's so much research behind it, but this is one of those things I get a lot of questions from women about, too. And I think that might have to do with the fact that you go into a lot of these beauty spas and things, and they have these red light things over your face. It's great for collagen production, and skin, and things like that. So, there definitely is an application for aesthetics, but there's also medical uses and all kinds of things. So, let's start getting into some of that.
[00:32:45] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. I mean, red light therapy, it's really my jam. It's like, it's why I fell in love with FlexBeam, too, because I move at a pace that's really quick. And look, I love a panel, and then I have the time to hang out in front of a panel. And because I'm on the go a lot, I wanted something that was different and would serve me. And because I'm training in a gym a lot, I wanted something that felt like I could kind of wear it there.
[00:33:11] And little did I know that this existed until two years ago, where I found this company, FlexBeam, who has this portable, targeted, doesn't have to be plugged in device. And probably like you, I've tried lots and lots of devices. Specifically, if you want to talk about devices to help women as well, like there's a lot of femtech coming out that are like intervaginal red light devices.
[00:33:33] Luke Storey: Really?
[00:33:34] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And there's something called the vFit.
[00:33:37] Luke Storey: Okay. Let's just talk about that.
[00:33:41] Kristin Weitzel: We're going to talk about all the things. And also, men are using red light—this is the thing I always said is like Ben Greenfield's out there being like red light on my testicles, get after it, and this is a thing that women come to the table naturally, and this is, of course, a generalization, but with a little bit more risk aversion. And so, we're like, you're injecting things and you're putting stuff on your sexual organs, maybe I need to take pause. And I think this is why we had so many men in that vertical first, right?
[00:34:16] People were like, you're going to freeze to death in the cryo machine and there was a lot of like this biohacking and scare tactic feeling or fearful, feeling things that women I think didn't lean into right away. And it's like, why I use the word biohacking a lot, because I want it to be more approachable, even when people, even when men in the CrossFit world say to me, I hate that word, that word just sounds like you're hacking it, and it's like BS, this is human performance. It is human performance, and it's a term that was coined, let's use it, it's not going away, right? And so, femtech, because that's what you really want to hear about right now.
[00:34:48] Luke Storey: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Only for the audience's benefit. No, I'm fascinated, actually, because as someone like Ben and others, looking at the studies and research on testosterone production and as it pertains to not only red light on your wedding tackle, but also just being naked in the sun, getting lots of sun. I mean, the sun and the spectrum of light photo biomodulation has such a profound impact on our hormones, but I have often wondered as like, how do women get in on this? And like could you put the light on the outside of a woman's sexual organs? I'm like, I don't know. That's not really where their stuff is. It's up inside. So, I thought with the FlexBeam, actually, sometimes, I'll put this on Alyson. I haven't tried it if she has cramps or something, but-
[00:35:31] Kristin Weitzel: It's amazing for PMS.
[00:35:34] Luke Storey: See, I intuited that it would be.
[00:35:37] Kristin Weitzel: I wear it on like the lower belly, or sometimes, on the back, right? So, I'll do a 10-minute cycle on the front, a 10-minute cycle on the back. Women feel PMS in different places. Endometriosis, you feel in different places. So, super helpful.
[00:35:47] Luke Storey: And even so, you're saying, even if it's on top of the skin, still, the light is powerful, the wattage is powerful enough, where it's going to penetrate the skin.
[00:35:54] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, I would do like a setting three on the FlexBeam specifically, because you're getting to that like 10-centimeter mark and you're getting more internal, right? As the settings go up on the FlexBeam, that gets deeper into the tissue, and they're all combos of red and near-infrared light. So, super beneficial ways to use that. And also, the number one thing that everybody asks me about, I get DMs from the FlexBeam with people that say, what's the protocol to put it on my nuts? What's the protocol to put it on-
[00:36:25] Luke Storey: I texted you that.
[00:36:26] Kristin Weitzel: I wasn't going to call you out.
[00:36:27] Luke Storey: I texted you that, and I was doing it way too long and on the highest setting, of course, like a dumbass. Sometimes, I kind of push things too far, and then reel it back in, but I'm glad you told me that, because I think you told me it's like two minutes. I was doing 10 minutes.
[00:36:42] Kristin Weitzel: I mean, on the record, there is no official protocol for you to put the FlexBeam on your testicles. And I think I've heard many people who are having success with using the protocol that I said, I've heard this works.
[00:36:55] Luke Storey: Right. And we're not making medical claims on behalf of the FlexBeam, let's make that clear. This was like two friends texting each other.
[00:37:02] Kristin Weitzel: Two friends texting, and I was like, don't send me a picture, but here's the protocol I've heard about.
[00:37:06] Luke Storey: Yeah, I would not do that respectfully.
[00:37:07] Kristin Weitzel: People send me pictures.
[00:37:11] Luke Storey: I mean, I don't know, even men that are sort of daring like myself, when you start to put things like close to your body, wherever, including, obviously, more so probably your sex organs, that's the kind of thing where even I'll be like, you know what, I should probably check in on that.
[00:37:25] Double-check.
[00:37:25] I mean, let me just check in on this, make sure I'm not tripping.
[00:37:28] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And so, like let's talk about a couple of things. Like of course, if we're talking specifically about women, and cramps, and ovaries, and things like that, red light therapy can help any of those things as long as you're getting the right wavelengths to penetrate the skin to the depth that you need that support. And if you're helping even the cellular structure, and the mitochondria fire, and everything work optimally in the area around that, it's still going to help up-level the things that are inside the tissue that you're affecting.
[00:37:54] So, it can be beneficial in so many ways. And definitely, with PMS, and cramps, and sleep, and stress, I feel a big difference when it comes to just strapping the FlexBeam on me. I'm always like, I'm strapping it on and people are like, okay. But to depart from that just a little to talk briefly about intervaginal devices, there are two that I think are—and I don't have affiliations with them. There are two that I think have some good success, and you see testimonials, and you hear people, and you see stats, you hear women feeling a bit choked up about things that are going on. And one of them that is not red light is called the Yarlap.
[00:38:32] It's an electrostimulation device. Women who are postpartum, who have challenges with incontinence or like a lot of women I work with are like, I'm jumping up and down, I'm lifting weights, I'm doing all the fitness, and I'm peeing myself a little, this sucks. And we don't talk about it a lot. And so, there's a electrostimulation device that you can put inside your vagina and it will help. And I mean, if you follow people like Amy Killen, she has all the devices for all the men, and all the women, and all the erectile dysfunction, and all the vaginal leakage, and all the things we get to not talk about often.
[00:39:02] Luke Storey: Amy Killen sent me home from Docere Clinic with a penis pump. I get a super fancy digital penis pump. Admittedly, I did try it a couple of times, because she did stem cells on it, but the protocol-
[00:39:13] Kristin Weitzel: Oh, you did the P-shot?
[00:39:13] Luke Storey: Yeah. But the protocol, you had to be very committed, and I wasn't having issues that would have like motivated me to be consistent with it, per se. But yeah, she's super funny. I love her. She's all about the sexual optimization.
[00:39:31] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, she does it in such an approachable way. I think it makes it comfortable for people, which is great
[00:39:34] Luke Storey: Yeah, she does. She sort of diffuses any shame and weirdness around it, because she's just so comical and matter of fact, and she also has the scientific prowess to actually support what she's doing, so it's not too silly. But anyway, carry on.
[00:39:49] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. So, the Yarlap is great and you see women come out of that. It's like retraining the musculature inside the body, right? Just like we would use any kind of electrostim, or PowerDot thing, or whatever, and it's beautiful to see the changes that happen. I don't have children, so I haven't personally used it, but I want to out my sister, but there's other people in the world that I've either given the device to or had as clients, and it's been super, super helpful for shifting that. And then, the other one is like a red light device called vFit. That's an intervaginal device that you use every other day for 12 minutes, and it's red light, and it's warm and wonderful as well. It has 12 settings, you can take it whatever direction you want to go.
[00:40:29] Luke Storey: Oh, interesting.
[00:40:30] Kristin Weitzel: But that's really to help out with like internal tissues, and women, as they're aging, want to be able to be like lubricated and all the things. And so, red light is going to do the same thing on those inside tissues and it's specifically set up and made for that. So, if I can't get the FlexBeam in those areas, I can-
[00:40:47] Luke Storey: Definitely not, it would be quite uncomfortable.
[00:40:50] Kristin Weitzel: It would be a lot. I can use it externally, and then I have something I was excited to try the vFit. I thought it'd be super interesting.
[00:40:58] Luke Storey: I think that's awesome.
[00:40:59] Kristin Weitzel: People are always like, can I see it? Like guys, like Freddy will be like, what's the vFit like? I want to see it, and I'm like, I feel like I'm bringing my vibrator, like this is sort of awkward.
[00:41:08] Luke Storey: Yeah.
[00:41:08] Kristin Weitzel: I'll send you a picture from the website.
[00:41:10] Luke Storey: There could be a boundary there, something that's private. But it makes me think of something that I keep in my car, I forget if it's called the Violight or the V-light, but it's a little intranasal red light thing. And it comes in a little clip, and I think the one I have is 880 nanometers. And I keep it in the car just because I know that there'll be compliance. I'm just driving around.
[00:41:30] I see it sitting there and I think it stays on for 20 minutes or something. And the idea with red light in these different wavelengths with different things is that you want to get them in areas where there's blood flow, right? You have tons of blood flow up in your nasal cavity, the blood is going right to your brain. So, I think all of the light stuff is very interesting, because you have, like you said, the panels, like Joovv has been one of our sponsors for a long time, love my Joovv, but you do have to take dedicated time to stand in front of it.
[00:41:58] I'll try to stack, I'll sit on a—stand, not sit. That would be uncomfortable. Stand on the Vibe plate or meditate, do breath work, whatever, but I like the idea of these portable things, like the FlexBeam, where you can go do something else and you're still getting a targeted approach to the red light. So, I think that's very cool. So, whether they're going on the outside or inside, like it's all blood flow, it's all tissue, it's just a matter of what side are you hitting it from, right? And if there's things internally that-
[00:42:27] Kristin Weitzel: And up-regulating circulation, and scar tissue improvement, and all those things, it's like super beautiful.
[00:42:32] Luke Storey: I bet the internal stuff or maybe even the FlexBeam from the outside would be great for—I can never say that goddamn word.
[00:42:39] Kristin Weitzel: Endometriosis.
[00:42:39] Luke Storey: Endemetriosis, like I'm just thinking of the scar tissue that, sometime, women have issues with.
[00:42:45] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, and there's a lot of discomfort around that. So, like it's nice to have the extra—it gets a little warm. I mean, this is the big thing about having a targeted device. And when you look at websites of various different kinds and red light, a lot of times, of course, it's like a marketing, right? It's a beautiful model. They're not going to be naked. You talk about this a lot. It's like get as close as you can and get as naked as you can, as much as it's going to be cool for you to do in your house, and it should be everything you can do, because a lot of times, you see like a shot and it'll be someone standing like 10 feet away from the panel. We talked about this on that Sunday.
[00:43:23] Luke Storey: Yeah, I know. I feel bad.
[00:43:25] Kristin Weitzel: It's like, you don't have to like lay on it, but like you got to get close, because looking at the research, that's where the big boost of benefits comes. It's the same thing like you talk about EMF, right? The further it quickly goes, you can get it to go away from you by getting away from the thing, right?
[00:43:38] Luke Storey: Yeah, we're talking about radiation. I mean, red light, it's a radiation just like the sun, so the inverse square law, the power diminishes exponentially the further you get away from it. But sometimes, like someone will send me a picture, and they're like, Luke, I got my red light thing, and it's like set up in the sauna three feet away. And I'm kind of like, that's cool. I mean, it looks pretty, and maybe there's something happening in your eyes, but yeah, I mean, you want to be super close.
[00:44:03] Tell me about, and I don't know how much you know about this, and I don't know that much at all, but the different wavelengths, right? Maybe just break down kind of the spectrum of near-infrared to infrared and what some of the different spectrums are good for. Because when you're in the business of shopping for red light, I mean, obviously, on most of the websites and things, they're saying like, this is the range we're using, and why? And I kind of just do it all, but I don't really look into the specific wavelengths that much.
[00:44:33] And aside from the wavelengths, of course, in terms of your proximity to it, how much wattage you're actually getting. And this has been a big critique of some of the companies that are kind of all coming to the table with red light therapy. It's like, cool, it makes a red light, but the wattage isn't enough to get it in you, even if you're close. So, there's kind of a lot of nuanced stuff around what's going to be an effective method of delivery, and I want people to be able to spend their money wisely and not waste it on just the shiny thing that actually doesn't do the thing.
[00:45:00] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. I mean, so if we're talking about red light and near-infrared, which is really a lot around the FlexBeam, a lot around what we see in the red light category, we're typically looking at 630 to 850, maybe as far up as 1,200, just the near-infrared light, it's like not visible to our eye, right? It's like why we put a little red light in each one of those, because people who are buying the FlexBeam were like, this one's not working.
[00:45:24] And I think that happens with panels, too, someone would be like, did you know half the bulbs are burnt out on that? It's like, no, that's cool, that's great. So, 630 to 850 is the range that we play in a lot of research and studies for 50-plus years. Red light's not a new thing. Obviously, it's like when you go back to the Egyptians, there were people worshipping the sun and getting those wavelengths at the right time of morning and evening. So, if we're looking at red light, if you're looking at like 1903, Niels Finsen, Sarah talked about this with me a lot, I learned so much from her, she's a great educator, Sarah Turner, who was on my podcast.
[00:45:59] Niels Finsen was like, hey, this is like, let's start like getting patients out into the sun. We're seeing good outcomes with their health and faster healing as we like wheel them out, and wheel them in, and wheel them out, wheel them into the sun, and getting actual sunlight in the morning, et cetera, different times of day, and then pharmaceuticals come into play, right? It's a lot easier to give someone a pill, and their flickering fluorescent light, thanks for that post the other day, I was like, oh.
[00:46:22] Luke Storey: I know, it's brutal.
[00:46:23] Kristin Weitzel: It's just brutal to see the flickering light, but it's like, we're giving them a pill in a flickering light space. That's easier, but it's like it's 10X worse for us, right? So, that sort of fell out of favor that they were doing that a lot with various different, smallpox and things that were going on, and being, oh, we're having better outcomes when we have people in the light. So, putting two and two together. And then, it fell out of favor for a long time until like the ruby laser hit, which is low-level light therapy. And that's where we started to play with wavelengths again and red light again.
[00:46:51] And just like really understanding that when you're looking for a reputable device, which I think is part of this question, that there shouldn't be any smoke and mirrors feeling on a website, or a phone call, or email, and there should be specs that are listed and that you want to play in those ranges, 650 to 1200, depending on what you're looking to do, and typically, 600, 613 in some of the research to like 850, 900. It's like playing in that area is where we're seeing the most healing benefits, specifically from red light therapy, which is under the umbrella of all the beautiful colors that are existing in photo biomodulation, right? Which is what other colors can do for us as well.
[00:47:28] And it's just some things are visible to the eye and some things are not. And then, it's how people are producing these items, right? I think I like to deter people, if it's really, really inexpensive, chances are like it could just be like a red light bulb, which is different than what we're trying to do here. And if it has a name of a brand that feels like hard to read or understand, or you're just finding it on Amazon and somewhere in the list, I just don't trust those brands.
[00:47:53] Like I make sure that when I'm working with different brands, that I'm doing the research and I know that they're credible. And so, I think looking for a credible brand, playing in that range of like 650 to 850 or six to 900 nanometers is important. And I say this other thing, too, which is like understanding if there is like an EMF rebalance going on, just meaning, I'm going to do all this stuff that's really great with red light, and is the person making something that has a wild amount of EMF that feels really intense, right? And like maybe checking in on that, if that's something that you're worried about, right?
[00:48:28] Luke Storey: If someone has listened to this show before, they're not really worried about it.
[00:48:30] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, they know.
[00:48:33] Luke Storey: I think that's why one of the reasons I was excited for this conversation, there were a lot of reasons, because there's so much unique territory we can cover, but to me, EMF and our lack of relationship to natural light, I'm like, why aren't people talking about this more? And there are now, but it's still in the kooky conspiracy theory category kind of with EMF, right? Because a lot of the sort of truthers and stuff talk about 5G, and that they're trying to kill us, and turn us into robots, and whatever, and they might be and probably are.
[00:49:07] But to me, it's like, dude, the food, like once you get the food basics down and you find what agrees with your body, the way I look at it is by zooming out and seeing—before about 200 ago, every human being that's ever been on the planet was outside all the time, right? And if they were inside, they weren't behind glass, so they were still getting a natural spectrum of light, however limited it might have been. And so, to me, like our relationship with light isn't even a therapy.
[00:49:36] We've had to make it a therapy with something like the FlexBeam, because we're just not outside, right? You have a few generations now that are light-deficient. And so, now, we have to reintroduce that into our experience. But as you said, one of the downsides to reintroducing technology is, now, we have to make sure that things are being manufactured and there are extra precautions and engineering that are taking place so that these devices don't then introduce another offense in the form of EMF.
[00:50:05] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, or just mitigating it in the smallest way possible so that people feel like, okay, this is safe, right? Because some companies are just trying to make a bottom line, and it's why you and I are very prescriptive about the brands that we talk about, and we use, and we recommend. I feel a huge responsibility, as I'm sure you do, too.
[00:50:22] Luke Storey: Oh, my God, totally.
[00:50:23] Kristin Weitzel: And you're lie, hey, this is what I love, and that's why people are like, I know Kristin annoyed the crap out of that headquarter office, or that owner, or whatever, and they feel like, okay.
[00:50:33] Luke Storey: I'm that guy, too. First thing I do when I find a new product is I go on the FAQ, and I'm looking at like blue light, EMF, all that kind of stuff unless it's expressly stated in their marketing materials, but I'm kind of scanning that, and then I am the nerd that's going to email them, what wavelength is this? What's the exact wattage? Have you tested for EMFs? What type? Because oftentimes, too, with tech, they'll say, it's low EMF.
[00:50:56] Well, what kind of EMF are you talking about? Right? Like I don't think you can make something that plugs in and produces hot lights without it having some magnetic field, right? Electric field, you can shield pretty well. If something is not Smart, "Smart", which really means dumb, enabled and has wireless technology, like you can turn that off. Like my thing I was wearing earlier, the Hapbee, they designed it, so you can activate it using your phone in an app, and then you can turn the Bluetooth off. It's amazing.
[00:51:24] Kristin Weitzel: Totally. Just like Oura, Biostrap, all of these have toggle now, which is smart.
[00:51:28] Luke Storey: Which is smart. But like when a company is claiming low or no EMF, I would want to know what kind of EMF they're referring to. Like there's a lot of heated debate in the sauna industry, everyone—I mean, the mattress industry in the sauna industry are psychos, like I'm just going to tell you guys that work in that field like, relax, there's enough for everyone. There's a lot of weird competition, and scarcity, and name calling, and these comparison charts on their site, where they put the other brands down.
[00:51:53] It's super weird. But with the EMF thing with saunas, I mean, the only one that is zero EMF, I think, is SaunaSpace. And you can get the Faraday sauna, it's amazing, but like to me, I'm willing to take a hit on a little EMF if the net benefit outweighs that 20 or 30 minutes of exposure. But if they're not talking about it and like acknowledging, okay, there is a little EMF, we've done everything we can to make it low, if so, how low? And what type of EMF are we talking about?
[00:52:22] Because some of it is worse than others. I'm not that paranoid about like a magnetic field for 20 or 30 minutes, if you get in my car with a magnetic field meter, I mean, it almost breaks the thing if you hit the gas, like the whole cabin. Yeah, the engine's right there and there's no shielding in it. I mean, it's insane. And like, it's one of the reasons I think myself and other people kind of are susceptible to car lag and just getting fatigued when you drive. So, we're being exposed to so much more EMF than we're really aware of, but if you're going to spend money on a health technology, like look for the company that's at least acknowledged it and is making an effort to do something about it.
[00:52:57] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. And we have a video. I say we, because I work with FlexBeam so closely, because I love them so much, but Arjen Helder, who is the inventor of the FlexBeam, we'll launch a video in a couple of weeks where he's taking a couple of different brands, he's taking the FlexBeam, he's putting it in a box, like creating the Faraday cage that actually measures it so that there's like no Wi-Fi signal interruption and doing all that stuff.
[00:53:22] So, like he's cool and nerdy, and such an engineer, and the whole brand of this portable, targeted red light device called the FlexBeam is sort of born of his love of his wife, because his wife was having some liver issues and her health was not doing great. And he read a few articles and some research on just like red light therapy and how it would help, because the doctors were like, oh, just pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical. And he thought, I mean, he's a very special guy. Like he's not like you and me. He can read the research, and be like, oh, those parts, I can just order them from these five places.
[00:53:53] And so, he said, let me just order the parts and do the thing, and made sort of a mockup of, very different, but mockup of what the FlexBeam is today, used it on his wife, she was feeling better, neighbors are like, oh, I have some eczema stuff going on, like I heard you have this bulb, can I use it? And sort of spread like that. So, I love it, because I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot, and I think, oh, this is a man who loved his wife so much that he was like, I'm going to go to the ends of the Earth, and build this contraption, and back it by science, but then have it work, which just feels like a beautiful story.
[00:54:23] Luke Storey: It is, yeah. It's funny. I don't even think I looked into the EMF with the FlexBeam, because it's got a battery in it, and you plug it in, and charge it, and then it's not plugged in when you're using it.
[00:54:35] Kristin Weitzel: Totally. So, it feels like zero, but it does have fans and components, and it's important for us, and there's a battery in there, right?
[00:54:41] Luke Storey: So, maybe it's making like some DC current or something, but I don't know. Like again, to me, the benefits of it would outweigh. But if something was like plugged in and it's on my body, I would be a little more paranoid. Before I forget, because this thing is just super cool, and I forget, sometimes, like when we have the thing, I like to actually show, because I know people watch the videos, some do and some listen to the audio.
[00:55:04] So, those of you listening to the audio, sorry, you're not going to be able to see what I'm doing here, but I just wanted to like have you explain some of the applications of this thing. So, like I set it on setting one. Like you guys watching the video, you'll see this red light or the people that are watching the live stream. So, I want to see if I'm missing anything, because what I'll do with this is I'll take these velcro straps, which are hella strong, by the way, which is cool.
[00:55:31] And when I work on the computer, I'll strap it around like my stomach and I'll put them on my back when my back hurts, and I'll be damned, my back stops hurting. And then, I'll do like, I'll lay it kind of on my solar plexus, or I'll put on my belly or put on Alyson's belly. Are there like ways that you can get it around like your knee if you had inflammation or your shoulder?
[00:55:50] Kristin Weitzel: Totally. So, the cool thing is there are many straps that you have in your kit that go on this side and this side, so you can actually, almost like a suit of armor, like you can strap it around your shin, or you can put it around your knee, or you can wrap it around the knee this way. But this band is the long band. It's the shoulder, and back, and waistband.
[00:56:07] Luke Storey: See, this is where when I don't look at the manuals.
[00:56:10] Kristin Weitzel: You're just like, oh, it can work. We're all excited.
[00:56:13] Luke Storey: I could have had this thing for five years and never known, not until I ask you. But I had a feeling, I was like, I'm sure there's other ways you can connect it to yourself and get that really super close-up penetration of the light.
[00:56:23] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And then, I was playing with some, whatever, we'll just talk about it, I was playing with some SARMs and stuff, like not really SARMs, because as a woman, it can really mess up your hormonal system, but sort of like these almost SARMs things that-
[00:56:38] Luke Storey: What are SARMs?
[00:56:39] Kristin Weitzel: SARMs are just like something that you can take that will help you build muscle faster, right? It's a wannabe steroid. And so, Greenfield talks about them a lot, and there's only one or two that you can really take as a woman. They are short-term. They are also like not—I'm definitely not a doctor, I'm definitely a biohacker, and not something every woman needs at all, I just wanted to play with body composition and physical recomping of certain areas of my body and see if it would help, right? Because it's like something you take, you can't target fat loss, you can't target shape differentiation in many ways, you have to work out and eat well, right?
[00:57:12] Luke Storey: Right.
[00:57:13] Kristin Weitzel: So, I played a bit with SARMs. So, the point of the story is that I got this weird little thing on my neck. And so, I was like, I'm not going to take the SARMs anymore. It blocks certain things and sort of the way your body processes fatty acids. And I thought, maybe that's coming from that. Could be coincidence, too, right? I don't really know. So, I utilize the FlexBeam to sort of put, it looks ridiculous, like a renaissance color, but I even will like strap it around my neck, because I wanted to really target that space.
[00:57:40] Again, knowing this is close to my face skin doing a shorter clip of time, but that's the thing that's awesome about it is that I can like put it around my neck, I can put it on my tennis elbow, I can wear it whatever, and then I can be on the go. And for me, as a breath worker and someone who coaches breath a lot, to be able to like de-stress my system, calm down, and then use it like a makeshift breath belt so that I have tactile feedback.
[00:58:03] So, I'll make it a little tight, and then I work on diaphragmatic breathing. And that's like cool, because you're getting the red light right into this whole diaphragmatic area, and you're intercostal is all between your ribs, and you're like, oh, okay, this is rad. I'm like, there's a benefit, and I can do breath work, and it's, again, like stacking your hacks.
[00:58:18] Luke Storey: That's a cool idea. I like that. Thank you for telling me, Luke, read the fucking manual. Because I'm like-
[00:58:25] Kristin Weitzel: You have small bands. You have like bands for vertical and horizontal, like it's rad.
[00:58:29] Luke Storey: That's super helpful. What I used this for the other day, and I don't know why I'm surprised when stuff works like I shouldn't be, why would I buy something, or like promote something, or whatever if I didn't know it was going to work, but I just didn't know what else to do. I'm having this weird thing, and it might be from like wearing Earth Runners, like minimal footwear on concrete for a number of years, but my feet are getting super weird, and I'm like, really?
[00:58:54] I've solved so many problems, feeling awesome, I fixed my shoulder by injecting peptides and doing PEMF. I'm working on my back, my hip. I mean, I'm like always getting younger, more vital, more awesome, feeling much less pain than I ever have in my body, generally speaking, and then my feet started doing this weird thing where I almost like have to tiptoe, they hurt so bad. It's like an achy, weird feeling. Personal problem. I'll figure it out. So, the only thing I could think of was like shooting peptides between my toes, which I did. It was pretty cool. And then, I took this and I like kind of jerry-rigged strapped it around my foot, and it really helped with the pain. It really helped.
[00:59:32] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. It's going to help with circulation. It's going to help with—it's like mitochondrial health and our feet, they take everything in, right?
[00:59:38] Luke Storey: Right. But I was honestly like, this is probably not going to do anything, and I just was like, well, I got to do something, and I lent—I have like a proper like laser, but I lent it to a friend of mine who has tennis elbow, a guitar player. So, I was like, oh, shit, I don't have that. So, I didn't know if this is going to be powerful enough, but it actually really helped. I just had to kind of like, I couldn't figure out how to strap it to my foot, so I sort of set my foot on top of it.
[01:00:03] Kristin Weitzel: There are small straps inside the case, I swear.
[01:00:05] Luke Storey: Thank you. And then, I ran so many cycles that it like overheated, because it has like, for those listening, it has like fans in it, so it doesn't overheat and you're supposed to leave it with ventilation, which I didn't do.
[01:00:17] Kristin Weitzel: Cool. And lots of times, people come to me, and they're like, damn, that worked, because there's still a thing that's like, but isn't it just like a light?
[01:00:25] Luke Storey: I know. Well, even having used this stuff for a number of years, sometimes, I think something will work if I do it for long enough and there's like a repetition, but it's not that often where I experienced something like actually works in the first couple of times, and it's that noticeable. So, thank you for the information on the straps. Now, I can use it on my neck and other stuff like that. And also, the pre-workout thing is pretty cool, too. Okay. I like that and the breathwork.
[01:00:48] Kristin Weitzel: And that goes for like any red light. But like, why not—I'm like the girl who's, when I lived in LA, I'm like, I drive a purple jeep, and so I'm driving my purple jeep down the highway at 5:36 in the morning to go to the outdoor gym, and I'm wearing the FlexBeam, and I'm like wondering, would people just think I'm having a rave in here, because the whole jeep is red, I'm driving a purple jeep, like license plate says hurricane, and I'm like, I just look like a cheeseball, but like whatever, I'm just doing my thing.
[01:01:13] Luke Storey: Well, you're like me, in that you like stacking things, and I don't want to like take time to do one thing, right? So, I mean, I did in the case of my foot, I was just laying there. Actually, I was watching TV, so I was doing two things. But if I'm going to meditate, I'm always like, well, I'll do the Nano V, or the hydrogen, or lay on the higher dose mat, or like five other things, listen to BrainTap or NuCalm. I'm going to do a bunch of stuff at once, so I could take that 30 minutes and pack in a lot. But the car thing is cool, because there's not that many things you can do that are passive enough for you to drive safely, so that's actually a good tip, too.
[01:01:48] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, I wear my FlexBeam, drive the car to the gym, and then at red lights, I use my breath device that's like a respiratory muscle trainer, which is like, probably, I shouldn't recommend that, but I'm like at a red light, and you just do 10 cycles ,and then like the next red light, so it's like almost gamifying it. If it's green, I go, if it's red, I do the thing on the way, and then I get enough cycles in that.
[01:02:09] Luke Storey: It's a good idea. I like that. You were talking about the importance of recovery for women, and I think that's super smart and something we could talk a bit more and we were going to get into one of your recovery tools, which is the cold therapy or ice baths. And I have to say, I have noticed there are far fewer women in my experience that are interested in or willing to explore the world of cold.
[01:02:34] And it might just be chalked up to another observation, which is, typically, you take same age man or woman in relatively the same shape, the guy's going to be running hotter, typically, just body temperature-wise than a woman. I've noticed this, I'm always hot, my partner is always cold kind of thing. So, maybe women are just more averse to cold in general, but help us and help our female listeners to be open to the idea of embracing things like ice baths or cryotherapy and how that really assists with recovery.
[01:03:07] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, for sure. There's a number of different benefits that come from ice bathing. I think our body temperature fluctuates, there's a whole world of things that happen when we're in our reproductive years, and they're amazing. And a lot of times, when we talk about our cycular period, we talk about it in a way that's like this unfriendly thing that we want to go away.
[01:03:29] And to me, getting my period has always sort of signified to me that I'm in a healthy space and that everything is going as it should in the 30-day cycles or 28-day cycles that I have. And it's important, I think, for women to really embrace that they have temperature change during the course of the month. And in the lifespan of having your period, you're getting your cycle or perimenopause menopausal. We're going to have lots of different temperature changes, right? So, maybe you'd say a woman who's getting hot flashes might be like, yes, ice bath, I'm ready.
[01:03:58] Luke Storey: Oh, right. That's interesting.
[01:03:58] Kristin Weitzel: There is that component, too. So, maybe it's about risk aversion. I don't exactly know where it comes from. I do see less women in the space, but I think that there are a number of tools and reasons we should be doing ice baths. I hate using the word should, but doing ice baths can be highly beneficial to females, and males as well. It's like put over a thousand bodies in ice at this point, coach people, so I feel adept to talk about it.
[01:04:22] Number one, there's a huge thing I see. And again, like I'm not a medical doctor and the research is hard, because with ice and with cold, it spans lots of different countries, ages, cycles of life. There are tons of men in the research. The temperatures are different. It's ice cubes, it's running water. It's really hard to kind of narrow it down. It's pretty vast research, but it's hard to figure out how much, how long, what temp.
[01:04:45] And I think groups I've worked with and certification bodies I've worked with have done a decent job of that, and that's sort of where I get my information to coach. Women specifically are coming to me more and more, and I don't know if you hear about this with like autoimmune, with Hashimoto's, it's on the rise, right? And again, doctors may say, getting in cold, that's a contraindication, don't get in cold if you have these things, right?
[01:05:10] And we have to be adept and self-aware enough to know how much our challenges are, our disease is holding us back, and what our relationship is with our doctor, and what's functional, and also, be daring enough to try some things. And it's a an important component, I think, of biological femalehood, which is like actually saying, I want to assess this risk, I want to decide in a sovereign way what's good for me, and then I want to make some choices to advocate for myself, because quite often, women at the end of their rope are like, I'm going to get any ice or I'm going to go do this thing, right?
[01:05:44] And that may or may not help them, but the ice, I am seeing, with other females that I coach with, with lots, and lots, and lots of women who are challenged, I don't want to say it's curing these things, but it is mitigating both symptoms and reducing, if not totally eradicating things like that, by having a frequent ice bath practice. And that, to me, is a big deal. And I also want to say at the same time that women are not as adept at going in the ice every single day. So, I'm very much a proponent of, I'll put a dude in the ice every day.
[01:06:15] Every day of the week, you can tolerate it. Because of our cycles, because of our physiology, we can dysregulate our hormones if we're getting in the ice too much. I learned the lesson the hard way just personally. It's my anecdote, but I did a 30-day that turned into 34-day challenge, where I did a six-minute ice bath every day in a row on Instagram three years ago, and I said, hey, I'm going to test before and after.
[01:06:37] And by day like 19, which is, I think, when I did the second test, I had already started to get my hormones whacky. And I only did 34 full days, because you say you're doing something on the gram, you better do the thing, and some days, I was like, okay. And then, the last four days, people had caught on in the local LA neighborhoods so much, they're like, I'm coming over, do one more day. And so, I was doing it with other women, and that was cool.
[01:07:00] But we can dysregulate our hormone cycle, and why take the chance? Like ice baths three times a week, awesome, you're awesome when you're doing that. And then, the one thing that always gets women in the ice, just when I speak about my clients, or people I talk to, people who DM me a lot, because they see pictures, and they're like, how are you doing that? If you're trying to recomposition your body, and you're eating relatively well, and you are doing some kind of fitness training, there is nothing better to recomposition your body than getting in the cold.
[01:07:29] Nothing. And that is because we are making brown adipose tissue like much more metabolically active fat tissue. So, we have white adipose, we have brown adipose, we also have visceral fat, which is around our organs, but leaving that off the table now. White fat is the stuff for like, oh, I want to lose some body fat, right? Typically. And brown adipose tissue, we used to think that at 20 years old, we stopped making it, because we were like cute little babies, we got a ton of brown adipose tissue, densely populated with mitochondria, really metabolically active, and maybe we just grow out of it at 20, right?
[01:08:02] We were in our full form and we're cool, but what we've realized is that putting ourselves in cold gives our body the capacity to make brown adipose tissue again. So, before I even go through the first or second sentence and I tell women they can lose body fat, because they're in the ice, before I finish that sentence, they're in the ice. Like that's what happens, because sometimes, women are like, what's the answer? Right? Bottle it and I'll do it. And just the long-term benefits. Like you mentioned, cryo.
[01:08:28] Cryo is amazing. In LA, it's like 50 bucks a pop for three minutes, and I always felt like, I don't know, I can go get bags of ice, have some friends over, or I can find other ways to do this, or cold shower, cryo, those benefits are good. Their short-term benefits are amazing from a cold shower practice or cryotherapy, for sure. And start where you're at, right? If bath is scary, then start somewhere.
[01:08:52] And also, you could do an ice bath first and the long-term benefits of ice bathing from like ice plunging, or cold plunging, or deliberate cold exposure, or cold water immersion, whatever we're going to call it, those benefits are tenfold, just cellular health, cold shock proteins, activating brown adipose tissue, brain chemistry. And then, specifically, everyone gets this, but for women, I notice, too, like the mental toughness/confidence piece, when you're like, I can't.
[01:09:22] And then, you do the damn thing and you get out, and you have what we call a parasympathetic response so all your brain chemistry, oxytocin, adrenaline rush, like you feel incredible. Like I have executive women from making movies in Hollywood that show up, and I'm like, oh, she's like badass and pretty stoic. And then, they get out of the ice bath and they're singing like The Lion King on the top of my roof.
[01:09:44] It's beautiful. It's like a beautiful moment to see people's joyful nature when they get out of the ice bath. Part of that is I conquered that and you carry that into the rest of your day. I just did a post that was like, we don't get in the ice bath to get good at doing ice baths, we get in the ice bath to get good at life. That's what we're training for and I see so much direct correlation to the way a woman holds her head high as she walks out of my doorway or out of the space I'm coaching in.
[01:10:16] I see body composition changes. When I was working at a gym called Deuce doing some performance breathing, like using breathing cold and heat as a variable within training, and you get to see people through an eight-week program, just like the whites of their eyes get whiter. Their health improves, they're sleeping better. Like nobody's sleeping well right now.
[01:10:38] The ice bath around 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM sunset, and then like it just unwinds you with that like oxytocin parasympathetic response right into sleep. And so, I have studies like this with red light, too, but it's like better sleep scores, better latency, better deep sleep and REM. And so, why not do those things? I'm super excited about ice. Can you tell?
[01:11:00] Luke Storey: No, me, too. I just did one on my way over here in my Morozko Forge, yeah.
[01:11:04] Kristin Weitzel: Love it. Two more weeks. Mine comes in two more weeks, and then we can be Morozko buddies.
[01:11:09] Luke Storey: It's the best, honestly. Well, I've already done a show on it, so I won't bore people, but what's cool about that one, and I'm still just in love with it, is that, A, it actually makes ice. There's like cold plunges, they make cold water, and I'm sure there's benefits, but it's almost like the effect of a weighted blanket. When I get in and it's full of ice, I just kind of sink in. There's this pressure on me. It's a weird thing. Other people have shared this with me, too, but the ice, and then, oh, my God, to not have to change the water, dude.
[01:11:39] Kristin Weitzel: Or buy ice, it's just like-
[01:11:40] Luke Storey: Yeah, I would have paid like what—it's because they're not expensive. I would have paid whatever, I literally have never changed the water, I've had mine, probably, I don't know, five months.
[01:11:49] Kristin Weitzel: But if you love ice, they're pretty penny, but that's worth it.
[01:11:52] Luke Storey: I keep waiting like to go in there one day, and be like, okay, I finally have to change the water. I'm like, no, and it has an ozone, for those listening, ozone gas runs through the water. And I only put the ozone on when I'm in there, because I don't want to like leave it running all the time and forget about it, might wear out or something. That's the only time I ozonate the water and it's like pristine, clear, beautiful, like non-funky water.
[01:12:13] But yeah, I think people ask me why I do it, and I don't even know all of the data you just shared, so thank you for that. I think for me, if you had to boil it down, it's like the most potent anti-anxiety and antidepressant medicine I've ever done. If I had to like just bring it down to like core benefits, it's mood regulation. Like today, I was running around, I got all kinds of crazy shit happening in my life right now. Like everyone does, and it's next level.
[01:12:43] Like literally, I sit down on my computer every morning, and I'm just like, whoa, like this is a lot. This is maybe too much. And it doesn't seem to come to a conclusion, it's full-on life right now. And today, I knew I got to do this interview, almost that I had to do it, but I had the opportunity to do this interview and have this conversation. I was like, there's something missing, what is it? I feel a little off. And I was like, I have to go get the ice. And I ran over to the house where I don't live currently, but the ice bath lives there, and I got out, and I was like, oh, that was it?
[01:13:13] Kristin Weitzel: Reset.
[01:13:14] Luke Storey: Yeah, I was like, that's literally all I needed. I was a changed man. And then, everything's just been perfect ever since. And especially when you live somewhere like here that's super hot, I mean, people warned me about Texas heat, and I was thinking, I'm from LA, like what are you talking about? Oh, no, it's a whole other thing.
[01:13:30] Kristin Weitzel: It is like a blanket of heat.
[01:13:31] Luke Storey: It's a whole other thing here. I don't know if it's the humidity or what's up, but I know that it's a real thing here, because when I get out of the ice bath, I'm warm in like 10 seconds.
[01:13:41] Kristin Weitzel: You're like, contrast.
[01:13:41] Luke Storey: Yeah. Back home, I'd be like, oh, I got to move around, do some tai-chi, warm up, I'm here, it's later, I get out, I drive, and I'm like, I'm hot again already. It's like, it doesn't last. Let me see what else I want to cover with you before I let you go. This has been great, by the way. Like we've covered a lot. Again, I'm going to remind people to go to lukestorey.com/kristin, that's K-R-I-S-T-I-N. Lukestorey.com/kristin, where you get the show notes. Okay. We got the ice baths in there. You talked about cryotherapy. I agree, like better than nothing, but kind of meh when it comes to cold therapy. I guess in closing, I'll just ask you, what's the latest and greatest? What areas of research or experimentation are you kind of looking into now for yourself?
[01:14:30] Kristin Weitzel: I think the thing that's-
[01:14:31] Luke Storey: As it pertains to being a female.
[01:14:32] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, being a female, for sure. I think the thing that I'm dabbling in, I mean, there are two things. The first thing is still a little bit on the fringes. It is like peptide world, which is not totally on the fringes, but I've been taking cycles of bioregulators. So, it's like desiccated animal parts that are targeted towards those areas.
[01:14:52] So, it's a way to be able to morally take them, because, look, I'll take a needle, but I don't want to give it to myself. And so, having that is really interesting. I've been taking cycles. I take a blood vessel cycle with the ovary cycle, and I'm doing a few different protocols, because post-COVID, I wanted also to like do lungs, do things like that.
[01:15:11] Luke Storey: Yeah, these are like desiccated organs and stuff?
[01:15:14] Kristin Weitzel: Organs, yeah. And so far, I'm like 60 days in. So, like so far, I feel pretty good on them. I've recommended them to some friends, male and female, but different parts of the animal for different parts of your body. The thymus, I work with them with some clients. Some clients who are like, yo, what is the thing that you're doing? I want to do it from the get go and that they're willing to spend on it, because it's not inexpensive, but there's some decent research and that the great thing about these bioregulators is it's like no contraindications. This is like molecular hydrogen, right? It's like we don't really find any contraindications with anything that's going on, which we should also mention that if you have heart issues, diabetes, or anything major going on in your blood flow circulation at ice baths, check with your doctor first.
[01:16:07] Luke Storey: That's a good point.
[01:16:09] Kristin Weitzel: So, that's a good point to make. Pregnancy, if you just haven't done it before, probably not the time to start, but bioregulators, I'm really like-
[01:16:15] Luke Storey: Baby's in there like, what is happening? That's funny.
[01:16:21] Kristin Weitzel: But bioregulators and the other thing I've been playing with in the biohacking space for women is, so we don't talk about this a lot, and I don't know if you've heard this before, so maybe this is like old news to you, but I work with clients and I work with my own body in a way that is like training and eating according to my cycle.
[01:16:43] Luke Storey: Oh, wow, I've not heard of that.
[01:16:45] Kristin Weitzel: So, some people might say like syncing with your cycle or there's a lot of different names for it, and people are trademarking things, but the reality is this. there are hundreds of studies, hundreds of studies, since the '80s that showcase that based on the time of our cycle, that there's about eight days that we can build 33% more muscle than the rest of the month.
[01:17:07] Luke Storey: What?
[01:17:08] Kristin Weitzel: Yes.
[01:17:09] Luke Storey: That's huge.
[01:17:09] Kristin Weitzel: Is that crazy?
[01:17:10] Luke Storey: Yeah.
[01:17:10] Kristin Weitzel: And there are also times based on our progesterone or estrogen in the month, like the luteal phase, where like we have capacity to sort of manage flexibility better, right? Like we have different things going on in our cartilage based on what's going on in our hormonal profile during certain kinds of the month. So, if you look at. I'm going to become the day one bleed girl, but like day one of your period, day one bleed is day one of your cycle. that's how I'm numbering right now. So, if I say day one, that's the first day of your period.
[01:17:40] So, let's just call it day one to day four or five, every woman cycles a little bit different, at different length overall, different time, different length of their period. By the time we get to day six, you're starting to see an estrogen spike in the body. And so, what we want to do by day six, seven, or eight is we have estrogen at a really high level, which gives us some capacity for two things. It actually gives us the capacity to eat a few more carbohydrates. Awesome. And it gives our muscles to uptake glucose, is really what it gives us.
[01:18:11] Luke Storey: Put in the calendar, chocolate cake day.
[01:18:11] Kristin Weitzel: Totally. But like our muscles can uptake glucose better when we're in the specific area of our cycle and we can lift heavy weights without overstretching. So like slow, steady, heavy max lifts using the anti-catabolic nature of estrogen, which means it's anabolic, which means it's muscle building, promotes muscle building, we can take those eight days and we can train really hard. So, for me and lots of my clients were in-
[01:18:37] Luke Storey: These are the eight days following your cycle?
[01:18:38] Kristin Weitzel: So, it's day six to maybe day 16, right? That's 10 days, but for some women, there are probably eight days in there where the estrogen is high. And like I'm the goofball who's at the gym, where they like playing music and I'm like doing pushups or lifting big weights, being like estrogen, and I'm just like cheering myself on, but it's a real thing.
[01:18:56] And there's a lot of conversation just starting to bubble up about it, and then the soapbox I have is I know so many trainers, and 50% of their clients are women, and especially male trainers are not talking to the women about this magic thing, which is that if men knew about this and it existed for you, there would be the Luke Storey 10 Days to Muscle Building Madness program that would exist, we would be talking about it.
[01:19:24] And because maybe there's a veneer or a mask of like, I don't want to ask her about her period, it's like you ask her about food, you ask her about nutrition, you ask your female clients, I ask my female clients about everything, their favorite color, their microtraumas. I ask everything, because I want to be the best coach possible to the women that I work with, right? And so, especially when I'm working with women one on one and in my online course, I give a whole breakdown of like how we can train with our cycle, and nail it, and build muscle.
[01:19:53] So, it's like, that's a biohack. We're becoming more time-efficient and we're becoming more effective, because the studies say like, they say up to 44% more muscle and maximal strength, maximal power, just depending on the different studies, but it's undeniable and been around so long. And I wish someone had told me when I was in my 20s, because I could have started then. And so, that's why I talk about it a lot.
[01:20:15] It's why a lot of times, people are like, like I was in LA, speaking to a group of 100 women in a boutique fancy ass studio, and I was like, who knows about this? I just want to reiterate that women know this, and no one in the room raises their hand, and half the room doesn't know what day of their period, what day of their cycle it is. And like not to be on the soapbox too much, but we have a personal responsibility as women to know what's going on with our bodies.
[01:20:45] We check in, we are so sensitive, like why not know where you're at, train like a warrior, and then recover that way, too, because I just had this whole experience, where I powered through everything, and had to rerecognize, and get up when I did my talk at the biohacking conference, and say, I'm going to tell you all about how to biohack like a warrior woman, yeah, but I'm going to open with four new slides I just made in the last 24 hours, because I failed.
[01:21:16] And I need you to know I don't want you to fail, and the way we can work as women together, to talk about all these things, to make these the goal of all the females that I work with and the goal of me loving being here to talk to you is to say, how do we talk about it more openly? How do we get Luke Storey, who has a beautiful platform, to know that there's eight days a month I can train better and that there are ways that I can use red light therapy to calm my system as a woman, because you're going to run into so many females and so many people in your audience are going to listen, and say, oh, my God, Luke's educated on this, and he's sharing this story, and he's really telling me how I can treat my body super well.
[01:21:55] My friend, Kayla Osterhoff, as just a quick thing, does a lot of research around brain, the woman's brain, but she talks a lot about how, for a very long time, for hundreds of years, the most researched thing around women was hysteria. It was like, women are hysterical, how can we stop it? And so, times are changing, and I think we're far away from that, but I also think it's like, you know a woman, like you have a mother, you have sisters, you have girlfriends, you have lovers, you have fiancee, wife, all the things, like men have all these women in their life, and just like, I don't know, I heard this podcast and this woman was talking about this stuff, like you should just go listen to it.
[01:22:36] That's all they have to say. And there's a responsibility of anyone who's training anyone else around food or fitness, especially and specifically, I think, to say to their female clients, where are you at with your cycle? How are you feeling? Do you have endometriosis? Like just ask the question, let them share what they're comfortable sharing, and then when women get to the place of perimenopause or menopause, it's like, oh, I guess shit's downhill from here.
[01:23:01] And the reality is, there's a lot of wives tales out there. If we put heavy weight on us, we can continue to build muscle, we continue to stop the slowing process of muscle development in our bodies, right? We want to fight sarcopenia. So, how can we do that with blood occlusion training? And how can we do that with lifting heavier weights? And what does heavy mean? Right? Because I see women on Instagram super chiseled like, yeah, on a bench, and that weight is like three pounds in pink. And you know that's not how they got that body, right?
[01:23:33] Luke Storey: Yeah, that's funny. No, because when I was prepping for the interview, I was looking at your Instagram, and I don't know, I can't identify the weight of like barbell weights, but you were dead lifting some big ass weights, and I was like, fuck, I think she probably deadlift more than I do, but you don't look like a female bodybuilder, but you must have been using some of this information like-
[01:23:56] Kristin Weitzel: Heavy weight helps, yeah.
[01:23:56] Luke Storey: You have like inner strength, right? It's not like, oh, I want to build puffy muscles so that I'm bigger, it's just like that vitality.
[01:24:04] Kristin Weitzel: Totally. And it's like, I say a lot to women, because women don't want to get—I don't want to get big, I don't want to look like the stage competition, and cool if you do those stage competitions, you can get however you want, but the real truth is you'd have to spend hours targeting heavyweights and specific protocols, and just doing different phases in the gym to get yourself to that, like so much dedication. You would know if that's starting to happen.
[01:24:32] And so, because women are built with like a—we have strong glutes, and we have legs, and we have a wider hip span, and we have the capacity to do almost as well or as well and lift heavy shit with our lower half of our body much more than with our upper body. So, it's like I know that I can go crush it on like dead lifting or lifting heavier weights, and that will not necessarily—I'm strong and I pride myself on being strong, and I'm not afraid of getting a little bit thicker, but we don't have to get that way at all and we can still lift heavy. It's like you can make strong, dense muscles, is what you're saying, you're strong, inner strength, you can make strong, dense muscle.
[01:25:08] Luke Storey: Yeah, I'm so glad we touched on this thing, because I think that's a huge bit of information. I've never heard of it. I mean, I've never thought of it, right? I don't have a menstrual cycle, so it's just like, oh, okay. I'm going to obviously learn about what's going to work for me, but that's really valuable.
[01:25:23] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And then, women will say, I want abs, how do I get abs? 4,000 crunches, it's like abs are made in two places. Everyone knows this one. They're made in the kitchen and the second place, I say, they're made under the barbell, or dumbbells, or whatever. If you're doing back-squatting, front-squatting, and some of these things, it sort of assumes flexibility, functional movement, strength, whatever, and you're going to have to hold your core in place, right?
[01:25:47] And so, like you can make a strong, really strong core by doing all these other types of lifts and movements. And I think, sometimes, maybe it's social or it's media, and people are like, I say this all the time, I love Peloton, they're super fun, but like 17 Peloton classes a week isn't going to get you there, right? It's chronic cardio. It's like pick up some heavy stuff and push your body to a place that feels like that might be my edge.
[01:26:15] And heavy's relative. like don't hurt yourself, of course, as a woman, but like somehow, there's like the risk aversion quotient for men being like, I liken it sometimes to investing, because I went to Chris Kessler at one point, and I was like, I want to invest, but I have no idea, and I feel really nervous, and I'm so not smart about it, and can you recommend a book or tell me?
[01:26:36] And he was like, yo, you know how men start investing? They're like, I don't know, Luke invested in this thing, I'm just going to put my money in that. Like there's a little shooting from the hip that is sort of like granted in the mix. And so, he was like, don't be so stressed or worried about, like start small, here's a book, et cetera, et cetera. So, like it's the same as weights in the gym, it's the same as the way that we biohack, and I think that we can lean into it.
[01:26:57] Luke Storey: Well, that's interesting with the heavy weight. And obviously, you could look at me and know I'm not like a bodybuilder, but there is something very different about picking up a heavy ass weight and like you can only do three reps or four reps. Like that's a different experience than something that's like, oh, I can do this and you go for 25, or 30, or whatever it is, right?
[01:27:17] I've leaned more over the years into something like ARX, for example, or my X3 Pro, where I love that. It's like, A, I want to get it done fast, and I want to know that I just did something quickly, right? And the heavier weight that I work with, I just feel the impact. It's like my body's going, what just happened? It's having this kind of totally reaction to it, which is much different than just like, oh, yeah, I'm just doing this repetitive motion that's relatively moderate or easy.
[01:27:47] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, it's less hard. Like I'm such a fan of the ARX, but I'm also like, like I'm so down for it, fitness variance is like a major important point that, sometimes, we skip over in the biohacking scene, which is like, what's your mobility practice? What's your cardio practice? Because hands down, ARX is going to get me stronger, faster so efficiently, and also, what happens to my mobility?
[01:28:14] What happens? Do I just have like a 17-inch range of motion when I'm doing like squats, presses, and rows, or like what happens to my mobility? How am I using that? It could be yoga. It doesn't need to be some crazy FRC, I'm going to Kelly start myself. I love you, Kelly, but Kelly start my myself into mobility. It can be anything. Yoga, pilates, like where is your range of motion going, because that will eradicate over time?
[01:28:34] Luke Storey: Great point. It's funny you mentioned that because my younger brother, Cody, was in FRC and like super into the functional movement, and he was always like ragging on how dangerous it is to lift weights without doing mobility and stuff, so I'm kind of indoctrinated into that, but I'm also lazy as fuck, sometimes, because like I don't want to do like 45 minutes of mobility every day, which I think why—yeah, exactly, I think why I've gravitated toward the X3 Pro Bar and ARX is because relatively speaking, for the amount of weight you can push, you're in your range, like a safe range of motion.
[01:29:08] I think it would be very difficult to injure yourself, whereas if I try to move that same weight on just free weights, I mean, I would have already torn something or been smoked and had a wrecked elbow, or hip, or joint, whatever. So, I kind of like that. It's my way of like wiggling out of having to actually focus on the mobility, so thank you for reminding me of that balance.
[01:29:27] Kristin Weitzel: And eccentric load, like let's just say that last thing, which is eccentric load is that's the money when it comes to muscle.
[01:29:34] Luke Storey: Like when it's coming back toward you, rather than when you're pushing.
[01:29:38] Kristin Weitzel: You can't in the gym do the same thing with weights that you could do like in the ARX. The word can't is kind of wrong, you can use bands, you can find ways to do it, you can do tempo, there are other things you can do, but from an efficiency standpoint, yeah, that machine just crushes you.
[01:29:52] Luke Storey: One thing I want to touch on, I keep thinking I'm done, and then I'm like, we got to do this one thing, and I don't know this much about this, you hopefully will know more. It seems that women have these issues with bone density later in life. Osteoporosis seems to be more prominent with women. Have you messed around at all with the OsteoStrong bone density stuff? And what do you have to say about just bone health for women in general as it differs from men?
[01:30:15] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah, it's an important thing to focus on. A lot of the things that I've noticed, OsteoStrong, I've definitely messed around with, and I really dig their system. One of my mentors who I mentioned is Dan Garner, and he's like Coach Garner online, but he trains lots of MMA fighters, and body competition, stage competition participants and things like that, and I said to him after I mentored with him a little bit, I said, hey, I want you to treat me like I'm a professional athlete and train me for four months. He wrote programming, I went to the gym and did it, and it taught me a lot about also how to write programming.
[01:30:50] So, it's very meta. I was like, I want to be a better program writer and a better coach, so I'm going to do the learning while you do the stuff for my body, and then I'm actually playing student. And so, I did those four months and it was a lot heavier lifts, different styles of lifts, things I might even look at, and sometimes, be like, I see like pros at the gym doing that all the time, like I don't do that T-Bar thing, or that squat rack, or whatever.
[01:31:15] And I trained for these four months and this phase system with him, and then I went, and was like, I'm going to OsteoStrong, and to see, because I'd been a couple of times just to see like what it felt like the difference, all of that, and I went in and worked on all those machines, like if you've been to one, you'll see the different machines they have.
[01:31:32] Luke Storey: We have them here in Austin, too.
[01:31:33] Kristin Weitzel: Oh, you do? Oh, amazing.
[01:31:34] Luke Storey: I haven't been there yet, but I missed that. I was going pretty regularly in LA. I love that, yeah.
[01:31:38] Kristin Weitzel: Yeah. And that resistance is really important. But I went to OsteoStrong and the women were like, what the fuck are you doing? This is insane. We don't have people come in here and be this strong. And so, it's like, yes, if I can do it, you can do it. But what, really, women need to know is like every moment of our—this is like we go to the gym, we tear a little muscle, it repairs, that's how we get stronger, that's how we create hypertrophy, which is like dense muscle on our body, per se.
[01:32:04] And when we step off of a curb, just walking normally, we have a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little, like there's a little microfracture, like in the bone is just getting used to. And as that heals and seals, it continues to get stronger and stronger. It's not like you're breaking a leg, right? That is our body moving in space, understanding it has to continue to use the bones and the joints in a way that are going to get stronger and stronger for those activities. So, the more that we're doing jumping, the more that we're lifting heavy weights, it's pressure on our bones in a way that is then making our bones more dense and strong.
[01:32:36] And there's a number of other nutritive things, right? Making sure we're getting calcium, and magnesium, and the things that we need from a micronutrient standpoint. But lifting heavy is something that can help, and places like OsteoStrong, machines like ARX, which are really safe in Upgrade Labs in Santa Monica, you can see quite often generally an older woman, a white-haired female getting on the ARX, because it's safe and OsteoStrong is safe, and that's a way that we can apply a lot of pressure into our structure to be able to make our bones as dense and healthy as possible, and of course, correct that stuff.
[01:33:10] Luke Storey: Cool. Wow. So much great information. Thank you.
[01:33:14] Kristin Weitzel: You're welcome. I've been doing this for so many years, and I've been making so many like wins and fails that it's nice to share it with you, yeah.
[01:33:22] Luke Storey: It's awesome. And it's such a gift for our female listeners, too, because obviously, I don't have the answers to these questions and we've had so many requests over the years like, yeah, all you dudes, like what about us? Like what can we do? So, I think we've added a tremendous amount of value today, and it's the exact conversation I wanted to have. Like I wanted to dig deep into red light stuff. I wanted to cover ice baths, things that are very specific to you all. So, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, it's super cool. You got a lot of great information. Last question I have for you before I pee my pants is-
[01:33:57] Kristin Weitzel: You made me go to the bathroom, but you didn't.
[01:33:59] Luke Storey: Yeah, I know. I'm going to rethink that next time. Well, I think like, oh, it's going to be like an hour, and it's like, when are my podcasts an hour? Never. They're too interesting, I can't stop, there's more info I want to extract, but I'm going to ask you a quick one here. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life and your work in general that you might share with us?
[01:34:19] Kristin Weitzel: I mean, the first easy one, I already mentioned, that Junger book made a big impact in my life. Clean is the name of the book. And it's not that the book itself is so profound, it's just that it was a thing that I was like, oh, this is a moment that I really recognize, that I can use like food and find other ways to do things that are totally outside of the realm of comfort zone or normal human behavior. I will say the second thing that it's not really a book or a person, and most of your audience is going to know, but I went to Burning Man for 13 years.
[01:34:52] Luke Storey: Oh, wow.
[01:34:53] Kristin Weitzel: And so, the first year I went and all the consequent years, I think I really started to open up to the possibility of what energy is and can do, because I showed up as a, it's a story for another day, but I went to Burning Man alone the first year, which is like sort of a rarity. Normally, you're like, already know your group and all the things. And I thought, oh, I have some friends there, I'll just find them.
[01:35:17] It doesn't work like that. But it was a big life lesson in when a large number of people get together with a beautiful intention and really like a relatively clear intention to hold space for both themselves, and sovereignty, and other people that magical things can happen. And I don't care what anybody says about if it's woo, or it's not, or whatever is going on there, it's drugs or it's music, it's not that, right?
[01:35:42] It is a gathering in the desert that showed me that people focused on positivity can really create energetic space that shit happens that is unexplainable, not just coincidental. And it could be anything from like the magical thing appearing or I met a partner of mine of 10, 12 years on the playa, as they say. And the first year when I talk about the going to Burning Man alone, there was a moment in time that it was like a woman said to me, a stranger who is wonderfully helping me, took me in the first night, and said, look, you can borrow my bicycle, and you need to pick a time, and you need to agree to pick a time with me, and take the bicycle out, go find your friends if you can.
[01:36:28] There's like 25,000 people in the desert. And I need you to bring the bike back at that time, and if at that time, you haven't found your friends, you need to let that go, right? This like yogic practice of aparigraha, like non-attachment to the outcome. And that moment has like lived on in lots of my Burning Man years and lots of my life, including what I talked to you about earlier, which is like my moving truck just disappeared off the face of the planet.
[01:36:56] And that moment in Burning Man, which takes up two of the three you're asking is like, something I get to hold on to is a bit of a mantra, because it turns out in that year, I actually did roll up on my friends as I was bringing the bike back to the woman, which was a beautiful trajectory, but I had already given up. I had been in the ice and surrendered. I had given up. I had said, okay, I'm going to turn it over to the energetics here or the non-attachment piece and bring the bike back to the woman.
[01:37:29] And sometimes, in that give up, we have the most beautiful moments of life. And that, to me, was like, if that's not a lesson that I got to carry forever, if that's not a lesson with the moving truck, a lesson with the biohacking conference, a lesson with fails, if you want to call them that, where I've tried to experiment and it hasn't worked, then I don't know what is. There's a moment of really deep, beautiful surrender where we have to let the universe be what it's going to be and the things are going to come for you, you can't go get them. And like I feel like you really believe that and you really live by that, that code
[01:38:04] Luke Storey: That's everything. I'm having simultaneously maybe four or five things in my life right now that are requiring a depth of trust and surrender, so yeah, I relate. That's beautiful. Give me one more, or you can end on that, too, because that was a good one.
[01:38:26] Kristin Weitzel: I mean, that's a good one. I think profound effect on the trajectory of who I am, I just think it's like, I'm going to say the last thing.
[01:38:40] Luke Storey: I'm legit going to pee my pants right now.
[01:38:43] Kristin Weitzel: Okay, so make it quick.
[01:38:44] Luke Storey: I'm like, please don't say no, like I'm on the Facebook Live, I'm going to be my bands like I-
[01:38:50] Kristin Weitzel: Great. We did a great job. That was profound and beautiful to end on. You should go to the men's room.
[01:38:53] Luke Storey: Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show.