I'll get a team. It's the project that's you, of course, it's the You project. Craig Anthey Harper. It's a Wednesday in Melbourne, but it's not a Wednesday in the States or in Las Vegas. It's a Tuesday? Is it?
Am?
I care? It's still Tuesday? Isn't it Tuesday night?
We just can't get away from Tuesday.
I don't want to say the the you know, the obvious, but you're you're always going to be behind us. So that's okay, that's okay. Let me tell you Wednesday, Wednesday, the nineteenth of November. It's pretty good. It's pretty good over here anyway, so look forward to that. Yeah, how are you? How have you been?
Fantastic? Thank you yourself? How are things there?
Oh? Good? A few little challenges on planet Craig with some very old parents, but you know that everybody goes through that, so I'm trying to navigate that. That's a first for me. And are your parents still around either or both or neither.
My mother and stepfather are alive and well and they come in for some of our regenerative anti aging attention and yeah, young, active and independent.
So what's your mum? Benching these days.
She's benching her body weight.
You know, yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what she deadlifting one point five body weight for reps issue?
Yeah yeah, yeah, I've heard.
I've heard she's an animal. I've heard she's an animal. Before we jump in, like today, I wanted to ask you a few things because I was kind of praising you before we started recording, and I mean it, it's like what I what I love about you and why I love having you back is because you know, you have a high level of expertise and knowledge and understanding and skill in your space that virtually none of my listeners. I would think none of my listeners do. They might
know more than I do. But like, but your capacity to be able to share complicated ideas and messages in a kind of a user friendly way is It's not unique, but it's certainly not common. How much are you aware of that? Like? Is communication connection building rapport? Because you're constantly talking to people who don't have your knowledge or your understanding or your medical insight and you can't just talk psychobabble to them. How much are you aware of
communication and helping people? Have I guess a capacity to embrace what's actually going on without being overwhelmed.
Well, thank you for that. By the way, I'm acutely aware of. My job is to educate, So if you're a patient sitting in front of me, I have to explain it to you in a way that connects with you. And I might be different for different people, and I have to be aware of the cultural difference, language difference, the contextual differences, because I need someone to feel like they got it before they leave. And the important doctrine of informed consent means a patient needs to be able
to agree to a treatment knowing all the options. And they can't know all the options they don't understand some explanation behind them, and that's a time consuming process, but as rewarding for the patient and for me. The system doesn't allow for that, which is why you know, we don't work inside the institutionalized, watered down, insurance driven system here.
Yeah, and that gives you, I guess, the freedom and the flexibility to be able to do the things that you do the way that you want to do them without you know, those kind of barriers and restrictions.
I did I one further, Yeah, to allow one further. It allows me to follow the Hippocratic oath best because health insurance forces institutions and people that work for them to to skirt that oath.
Yeah, that's so, And I mean it is the hippocritic. First do no harm? Is there a bit more?
First do no harm is a was a concept from an anonymous name Galen, probably in around sixteen hundreds. Some people have added it to a modern version of the Hippocratic oath, but it was not from Hippocrates.
Right, can you can you give us a snapshot of the Hippocratic oath and I'm more accurate than me.
Yeah, Hippocratic oath is about you know, service first to your patient, uh, and to help relieve suffering and help to you know, cure those that try to cure those that are ailing. There were some other more political nature to it that's kind of dropped off the modern version. But yeah, it's an interesting read. It's not very long.
Yeah, what do you think like I'm always encouraging people to this sounds this sounds shonky at the start, but basically to do their own research. I don't mean watching YouTube videos or jumping on the internet, but by that I mean and E calls one kind of figuring out at the very least, being aware of how your body responds to different things. So, Craig, when you have seven hours sleep, how does your brain work versus eight hours sleep?
Or versus five hours? Craig, when you eat dinner at nine o'clock at night versus six thirty, do you notice anything? Is there any difference in terms of sleep or disruption
or energy? Or you know, when you drink a leader of water versus three leaders of water, you know, when you have two coffees versus four, when you like, all of this kind of just being aware of the stuff that we do, either consciously or unconsciously to our body, and then you know, without you know, pretending we're medical professionals, but at the very least navigating life with this awareness of, oh, when I do this to my body, this seems to
be the outcome. You know, that's almost just building a different kind of self awareness, physiological self awareness, you know, operational self awareness. I feel like that's something that's not really spoken about a lot or encouraged a lot. We kind of in Australia anyway, it's very much oh you know this happened. Now I'll go and see a doctor and then they will give me a pillow. They will tell me what to do, rather than saying what am I doing to contribute to this thing? Like what do
I know? Well, I drink alcohol seven days a week, so that you know that could have something to do with this issue that I'm having. Or I spend twenty two hours day sitting on my ass lying in a bid that could be a contributing FACTA no, I.
Concur with you. I think that my best patients are those that are really self aware, because they can into it their problems and their reactions to different things, and they can give me more useful information for me to help figure out a pattern of what's wrong. Sometimes I've noticed this too. Sometimes people will say, oh, I can't I can't take much of that supplement or do that it sets off this and you know they've seen a doctor and the doctor's like, well, that's not possible. That's
not a thing. You know, Well, you know, when you're taking data from a patient, it is a thing. It is an an equals one and to try to extrapolate that to a study of a thousand people is not useful. And that's why a lot of the medical research out there is horrible. It's horrible because it's it's it's for
epidemiologic or population type issues. They often use the wrong kind of statistics when they look at it, you know, they take it, they take a situation that is nonlinear and they try to force it into a linear setting. And the peer reviewers in the journals don't understand this. The peers aren't very bright. And there's so much of that. So so, and now in the US we're reversing some dogma, right this this Women's Health Initiative. Did you guys hear about that over there?
I didn't. I'm sure my listeners did.
But you go on, for years, based on a single study called the Women's Health Initiative, doctors were telling women that hormone replacement would harm them, they would cause them cancer. It turns out the statistics were completely wrong on that and the opposite may be true. So they finally just officially denounced it. So something that was you know, peer review dogma for all this time. They looked back and said, oh, yeah,
I guess we did mess that up pretty bad. And you know, we've got decades of women who have suffered significantly because they weren't offered, you know, what they should be having. And that's just the beginning of hopefully looking back at things in the past that were just wrong and admitting they were wrong and moving forward into something new.
Yeah, it's been an interesting journey doing my own research, which is a very different space to you but because I ran my own studies and I also did what you know is a systematic literature review, where I started with thirty one hundred and fifty papers which totaled over two thousand different studies, and to try to distill it into some kind of meaningful outcomes and messages and blah blah blah ah that.
But one of the.
Really interesting things I didn't know is that in psychology anyway, I don't know what the exact number is, but the majority of psychological research is done on students because because it's like, well, I'm a PhD student and so I can access students easily, right. But then, you know, so what you've got is you've got all of this research which gets extrapolated to everyone from zero to one hundred
years old. But the vast majority of people who are being researched on in many cases is like a four year window of eighteen to twenty two year olds who are being compensated or rewarded for doing this research or being involved, like they're getting academic credits. Fortunately, most of my actual research that I did was with the general public. But then when you look into it, you go, well,
how much does this even mean? These conclusions that are drawn from this research when the vast majority of the people involved in the research were eight en to twenty two years old, and they were academics in this certain context, in this certain environment, being incentivized to participate this in the first place. They didn't want to do it. They were just there because they got fucking academic credit, And
you're like, well, what's the quality of this? Then it's like people don't think about the actual methodology or process. They just go, oh, this is what the research tells us. Well, yeah, but if the protocol or the methodology is dogshit, then the outcomes the findings are also dogshit.
I agree with that, And that's funny because you made me remember something I probably haven't thought of for decades. As I had to do that. We had to do the research too. To pass psychology class in college. We had to sign up for a few studies and participate. So you're right, that's a very select demographic, right, young, probably healthy, mind's not fully developed, ideas not fully developed,
you know. So that's that's a great concept. They need to do studies in different, more more diverse, you know, demographics one percent.
Well, what I mean, we're taking those findings and then extrapolating to the entire population, different cultures, different religions, different different demographics, and then we're going, oh, because this group of you know, teenagers and young adults, this is the data we got from then, and then try to apply that to my eighty five year old moment in some capacity. It doesn't really doesn't really make sense. What is speaking of all of this? What is something that.
You you.
That you believed or that you embraced that you've changed your mind on. I might have asked you this once before, But is there something that you went I got that wrong, or there's way more to this this story than I was led to believe.
Well, there are many things, and I would not be a decent physician if I did not, you know, have the ability to look at those things and open minded to consider new data to change my mind. So you know, the Women's Health Initiative. You know how we approach that is one item where we were scared about giving estrogen
to breast cancer. You know, our patients at risk for breast cancer were now thinking, well, whoops, the estrogen may actually be keeping those cells more normally functioning and not cancerous. So that's why how I approach the use of corticosteroids quarter zone type injections for joints and spine. We used to use them ubiquitously. You got an inflamed joinner, You've
seen a courtizone shot. Now we're looking back and saying we've done those repeated shots actually are have accelerated the degeneration of the joint, and we've got other options now. So this is this. I'm sure my list goes on, but those are probably two common ones.
Well, there's all of us in it. It's like I think, well, I don't think. I'm pretty sure I've gotten as many things wrong over the years as i've gotten right. And it's just like I think, part of like, if you want to be authentic and real, and you know, you really want to walk your talk, you have to And I just mean in general, me included me at the
front of the queue. You've got to own up to the things that you got wrong, and like nobody was intending to do anything wrong, or at least ideas that I so much of the stuff that I used to think to be absolute gospel. I'm like, oh, well, that's even The idea is that, you know, if this is the problem, this is the solution, and we know that that's effective for this and that, and then you go, that's effective for a lot of people, but not for all people. I was talking about this the other day
day with somebody. We're talking about this idea of relaxing and calming and switching on the parasympathetic nervous system and getting out of that anxiety and that stress and that hypervigilance and that overthinking, fucking chaos, and how for some people, you know, sitting in a quiet room with their legs crossed and a bit of en you're playing or whoever, and doing some kind of meditative is like, that's beautiful for them, and it does all the things that their
body needs. But I'd rather punch myself in the face than do that. Like me sitting in a room like that doing that, my response is not calm I don't enjoy it, which is not say it's bad. It's not bad at all. It's just not for me versus me riding a motorbike, which I've done since I was five and I still do pretty much every day of my life. When I'm on a motorbike ime in my happy place, I actually feel joy, I actually feel surprisingly, I feel calm.
I don't know if I should, but I do. But for other people that would be an episode or an exercise in absolute terror.
You know.
But it's not so much about the thing that we do as it is our relationship to or response to the thing that we do. It's like, well, how does that thing, whatever the thing is, how does that affect your physiology and your psychology and your emotional system? You know, And that's back to that end equals one.
It is back to that, and there's so much we don't know and we're learning. I encountered some new technology this past weekend and we were at a health and wellness event in Tampa, Florida. Yeah, very nice, and met some people with a company that they call it Informational
Nutraceuticals or Infoceuticals. So what they do is they they take advantage of and I haven't done the deep dive, but I'm very interested of the quantum state of molecules that communicate throughout our body and can retain that quantum state.
And they've looked at the quantum state of people who are relaxed and the quantum state of people who are who need this or need that, and they've they've been able to use a quantum generator and take like a salt water and imprint, imprint the solution, the quantum information into the you know, the protons of the wall water.
Wow, it's like right.
And and then that that solution you put under your tongue and your your body then communicates with your body's quantum state of the water and your and you can achieve that quantum state. This is called quantum medicine. It's very new to me, but being a nerd, I like all the science stuff. So this is this is very good. And so in essence, if you are, you know, anxious, you could take one one of these solutions that calms you. And so they had one that's called dream that supports sleep.
So I took it last night. It's my second night now. It just knocked me out really yeah, I don't know if it's a placebo effect or what I'm gonna I'm gonna look into this with more, you know, fervor, but it's very interesting. And they have a set of these, you know, they have some for infection and this and and and that, and it puts us on a whole new level when we can not treat with medications or surgery, but we have we have ways of informing the cells and our body through quantum entanglement.
Yeah, yeah, do you know. Yeah, it's so bloody, it's it's so fascinating. You said they're place ebos. Right, I'm
just going to jump around a little bit. I did an episode last week on place Ebos and No Cibos, and I thought, rather than me just bang on about the potential power of the mind over our physiology and the capacity that we may or may not have to heal ourselves or resolve issue whatever, right, I thought, I'm going to do some research and find documented cases of you know, some of these kind of events and stories.
And there's so many of them, and it's like there's one, there was one which I won't bore the audience, but I forget the I've got it written somewhere, but the doctor's name escapes me. But he was a doctor slash surgeon working in the NBA with NBA players, and like the players would often at the end of the season go in for a knee kind of you know, scrape scope whatever, and they'd like to and they would do
these three incisions. Then they would do this operation where they would take out all the crap a bit of like wear and tear or anyway. He thought that the operation basically didn't do anything, but the players thought it did, like they believed in the operation, and they believed that anyway, So he ran this experiment. I don't know how he
got ethical approval for this. It was in the It was in I think two thousand and three or two this and he had three groups, one who had the actual operation, one who had a partial operation whatever that means, and one who had nothing. But they did go in.
They all went into the operating theater. They're all put under anesthetic, and they all had three incisions made in their knee the same right as though they so And when they came out the the medical staff didn't know who had had the operation, so everyone was treated the same. They're all rehad the same and you know what I'm going to say, like the outcomes were better for the people who didn't have anything done in the short term
and the short term and the long term. And one of the guys who had a placebo operation went back and played professional basketball having had nothing done, but the issue had been resolved so it couldn't play. Then he had the operation, nudge nudge, wink wink, back playing all good, no pain issue resolved. Like that stuff fascinates me. And I know there's a lot of bullshit around that, and you've got to be careful about that and don't believe everything.
I get all of that, But could you imagine, I mean, there's so many companies and businesses that would not want that to be Imagine if we could understand, imagine if we could open that door on really starting to understand how we could heal ourselves if we if we have that ability but we just don't know how to access it or operate it. There's so many companies that don't want that to happen.
Agreed, Oh absolutely, I mean we see this all the time and it drives my practice right because I'm a surgeon trying not to do surgery and explain to people they come here for a second opinion. Oh, but they told me that surgery is the only way, and explain, no surgiers the next thing on that doctor's menu, there are other options. So it's it's it has to do with appetites. So people don't have an appetite for, you know, things that aren't in the mainstream.
Well, if you go to you know whoever it is. You go to a dietitian, it's going to be a dietary problem. You go to a natural path, they're going to turn to Nat Dropery. You go to a surgeon. Of course you're going to need surgery. You've got do you know what I mean. It's like there ain't too many people talking themselves out of business when you do. You have an awareness when you're talking to people like, okay, let me hear the pause button, then I'll ask you.
So I had an awareness when I was talking to clients over the years. Remember I owned multiple personal training centers and I did tens of tens and tens of thousands of hours of PT on the gym floor, and often you would have people who would come in who would be never been in a gym, not in good shape, often terrible shape, insecure, very self conscious, very fearful, very anxious, and all of that. And for whatever reason, I had an ability to be able to make them feel really
safe and really seen and really okay very quickly. And I would often just talk to them about, you know, the fact that I'd trained many people like them, and many people in worse condition than them, and many people. You know, I'd say to some people, you look like in a limb compared to some of the people I've worked with, and that'd laugh, and that feel better, right. But I realized that, you know, what I could do or how it could help them with their body was
secondary in that moment. It was more about how I could, you know, make them feel okay psychologically and sociologically and emotionally in that place. So when you're talking with somebody and you're consulting somebody, and I guess some people would come to you that'd be very fearful, how much of that is you just trying to build connection, report trust and respect before you even open the medical door.
A lot of it is the right answer, but sometimes you're not sure, and you're you have to sort of test the system, you know, talk to someone and ask them questions, you know, see where they are anxiety wise, or what they're really looking for, what the real problem is, because sometimes it's some people are not you know, very well, call it somatically tuned in. They don't they just come
and say, yeah, I just have pain. Well where is it? Well, I'm it's in my back or where yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it takes a while to sort of help them, help you help them, you know, yeah, so but but yeah, I mean sometimes they just need to know it's okay. And sometimes they're not seeking treatment, they just want to be heard. Yeah. Yeah.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about today. I don't even have a specific question, but I want you to talk to me about pain. I want to talk about a bit about you know, because we talk about pain threshold and we talk about you know, how people I don't know. It's like if I get massaged, for example, I want the hardest possible massage of all time, like you could drive a truck on me. I'm like, can you get a bigger truck? Like other people you
just touch them and they scream. Now, I don't know if that's just because I don't feel the same. I don't think I have an abnormally high pain threshold. I don't think on some kind of alpha, by the way, But talk to us a little bit about the individual experience, personal person of pain and whether or not I don't know, is that on some level psychological.
Yeah, of course, I mean you and I have touched on this a little bit in the past. But of course there's a genetic variations and how we perceive pain. There's a neurotransmitter or brain perception, cognitive perception, and depends on your state of minor mood. The pain can vary with the psychological aspects of how your neurotransmitters are made up, and depression sort of aggravates pain and the and it
depends very much on your neuromuscular status. Yeah. You you know, most people with the most severe pain, I look more debilitated observationally, and I don't know if that's a cause and effect, But you know, muscle is protective. Muscle releases endorphins and causes the release of endorphins, which are small internal opiates. Muscle releases the myo kinds or extra kinds, the peptides that that help the body in so many
and the brain in so many ways. Yes, you know, so I think that the answer here is there's huge variation and pain and perception and listen, the brain's powerful. Like you can hypnotize someone out of pain. You can. You know, when you put people in sedation, they don't feel pain turning off their brain. But the physiologic stimulus that was there in the first place causing pain is still there.
You know.
Let's say I put a knife in your leg and it hurts, and then we say you're not gonna feel it, but still there, Yes, some damage. So the brain has a lot to do with pain.
Yes, so interesting do you reckon? We I feel like we talk more and more with longevity and health span about managing our body, which is good about you know, bone density and neuromuscular kind of function and coordination, balance, walking, gate,
staying strong, lifting weights, moving. We don't talk so much about how do we keep our brain working optimally because that's obviously you know, like how do I actually keep my focus and attention and my shortened, medium and long term memory, and how do I be able to solve problems? And how do I think critically and how do I keep this thing, this three pound thing, in the middle of this danger alert thing in my head? How do I keep that working as well as I can for
as long as I can? We don't It's spoken about in like you and I would talk about it, but it seems like the general public don't think about it so much, or it's not something that when we talk about health and longevity, we don't talk about brain optimization.
Well, there is a lot at least on you know, there's a lot going on in the logevity space which I'm you know, involved in, And I can tell you this. Taking care of your muscles is taking care of your brain. You've got to exercise, You've got to maintain your muscle mass. That is the single best thing you can do for your brain. You know, the muscles communicate with the brain. The muscles are still moving, They're telling the brain this
organism is doing great. It's adapting and surviving. Continue to think and act youthfully to allow that to happen. We are we serve our ability to move and hunt and and and you adapt. Once we start adapting, then the brain has no reason to continue. That organism is deciduous. It's going to fall off the tree.
Yeah, isn't that in interesting When you see somebody who's otherwise healthy and they are they're for whatever reason, usually medically, they're confined to a bed for two weeks or they can't you know whatever, and it's like, oh my god, you look I wouldn't tell them, but you look five years older in two weeks. Like your face is different, your energy is different. You just lost like twenty five percent of your muscle mass in two weeks. It's like
your quads are shrinking by the fucking minute. It's like, oh that being like truly immobile, where people are not moving, as in they're not they're not walking, they're not ambulating, they're not getting in and out of bed or in and out of a chair or and that it just disappears so rapidly. It's fucking terrifying.
Yep, it does, especially when you don't support the hormones that maintain it. And I know where you are. It's very difficult to get. That's very important and necessary youthful optimized hormone replacement for both men and women.
Yeah, that's not happening anytime soon. Here, I'll give you the tip. There's a lot of h history around that, Like but over here, if if people basically test austerlie and replacement therapy for you know, men or women, it's analogous to taking steroids and being a drug cheat. Do you know what I'm saying? That's kind of almost the mentality around it, just so much fucking stupidity and ignorance.
Yeah, I'll guarantee you that the billionaires in your country, yeah, are going somewhere to get it. Yeah, not because it's expensive, because they're not going to stand for it. So I don't know, you guys are close to other places where you can get it. Maybe Singapore.
Yeah, well there's a there's a lot of a lot of people that I know go on extended, extended holidays to Thailand and come back looking like a fucking Olympic athlete three months later. And yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, well, Doc, it's always good chatting with you. I just looked up it's already been Nelly Nelly three quarters of an hour. Time flies.
I know, it does, it does. Thank you, thanks so.
Much for chatting with us. Tell people how they can find you and follow you and connect with you, if you'd be so gracious.
You find me once a month on the U Project podcast That's the That's where you should find me, and followed Craig there. He always has good people, good information and sometimes sometimes witty people. I wasn't very witty today. I apologize and then there we We can found at re clebrate r e c E l l E B r a t E re clebrate dot com, at re clebrate on Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, you name it, we're there.
Get the up, butt a cup. All right, you stayed there, We'll say goodbye our fair Thank you, sir, appreciate you, thank you,