The Real Reason You’re Not Healing (Even If You’re Doing Everything Right)

Achieve Optimal Health Through Emotional and Physical Biohacking

In this episode of the Body Mind Biohacker Podcast, host Ryan Kimball, a certified ketogenic fasting health coach, explores the intersection of biohacking and life hacking to boost your overall health and happiness. Ryan explains the significance of maintaining a balance between 'fight or flight' and 'rest and repair' modes. He delves into how chronic stress can lead to various health issues and provides actionable strategies for engaging in activities that induce positive emotional states. These activities can help regulate your endocrine system and improve your body's ability to heal, ultimately leading to better memory, increased energy, metabolic flexibility, and overall well-being. 

Ryan also shares a simple yet effective hack to integrate these positive activities into your daily routine, helping you achieve a healthier and more enjoyable life.

EMAIL: support@innateabilityandhealth.com 

00:00 Welcome to the Body Mind Biohacker Podcast

01:16 Understanding Fight or Flight vs. Rest and Repair

03:22 The Impact of Stress on Hormones and Health

06:40 Actions and Emotions: The Mind-Body Connection

09:54 Practical Tips for Achieving Rest and Repair

13:43 The Power of Oxytocin and Positive Emotions

15:48 Simple Life Hacks for Better Health and Happiness

18:36 Conclusion and Invitation for Questions

Disclaimer:

This podcast is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose, and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, prescription, or recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

Transcript

 Hello and welcome to the Body Mind Biohacker Podcast, the podcast for purpose-driven individuals want to become a master biohacker. This show is designed to empower you with actionable, proven biohacks to improve your health, optimize your body. And achieve happiness and success. Hi, I'm Ryan Kimball, a certified ketogenic fasting health coach, serial biohacker and personal counselor, and I'm the host of this podcast.

Today we're gonna talk about a combination of biohacking and life hacking that leads to improved ability by your body to be healthy from improving its immune system strength, to improving your metabolic flexibility that allows you to have a lean, strong body, or the ability of your body to react in stressful situations or produce hormones that help you feel satiated and happy in life.

This biohack is. All inclusive. It actually can influence anything that you might have going on, and it's pretty amazing. So let's get right into it. I wanna give you some background about how the body operates on a very simple, basic level, and then we will tie this into a life hack you can use to influence the body's ability to heal.

So first off, your body is often in one of two different states, fight or flight. Or rest and digest, sometimes called rest and repair. In the fight or flight state, this is where you are feeling some anxiety about something. You're feeling a little nervous or you may even be fearful about something. And historically, ancestrally this would've been when you were in danger physically, you were being attacked in the wild, and you either had to stay and fight or you had to flee.

This is where it got its name, fight, or flight. Now in modern day, we are not that often, most of us anyways, in a situation where we're physically in danger, where somebody is attacking us or something. However, we are often emotionally and mentally under stress. And this causes the same reaction on a physical level and a mental and emotional level.

Whereas if you are in life and you have something stressful going on, you're, maybe it's a financial stress or a relationship stress, or a job stress or whatever it might be. Let's say you have to do a big presentation that determines. Whether or not you'll make enough money in the next quarter to be able to support your family in the way that you want to.

This would be a very stressful situation for many people. And their body would go into fight or flight mode because emotionally they were feeling anxious or fearful. And there's a whole series of. Domino effect situations that occur that lead to your body not being able to repair itself because it can chronically get into this fight or flight mode.

Unfortunately, it's less common for people to be in a rest and repair mode due to what's going on in their life usually. People aren't exposed to a lot of soothing self-balancing comforting situations that cause them to be chronically in rest and repair. That is not the common situation, so. What we're biohacking is how to keep you from getting into a chronic fight or flight state and not being able to operate in a way that is healthy.

So what occurs is when your body, when you emotionally in life, are in fight or flight, when you're fearful for something, when you're feeling anxiety, when you're feeling disappointment. Any of these less than optimal mental or emotional state. There's an interface that occurs and it's the endocrine system.

Actually what happens is you start to feel these emotions and your endocrine system responds by giving out certain hormones. For many people when they're under stress, they have an increase in cortisol from the adrenal glands or adrenaline in, in a acute state of stress where they feel very. Jacked up and, anxious and feeling like they have to do something.

So you know, you're going along in life and all of a sudden something stressful occurs and bam, there you go. Now you're having this injection of these hormones and these hormones then tell the bodies nervous system to go into fight or flight. This injection of this hormone tells the body what to do.

It's the hormones that really run the show on a physical level. So what you wanna do is learn how to use what's going on and mentally and emotionally in life to improve the hormones that are being released by the endocrine system into your body so that you're not always telling your body to be in fight or flight mode.

Because in fight or flight mode, you're not able to rest, you're not able to repair. So you can have your body degenerating from years of not being able to get into the rest of repair mode just due to what's going on in your life. Nothing. You may be eating well, you may be, resting enough, having enough time, quote unquote, to sleep.

But your body's not actually in a state where it can rest and repair. And this can lead to all sorts of other. Things you may not think of, like poor memory, people say their memory gets worse as they get older. Well, it's probably 'cause they've been in stress this, fight or flight mode for so many years.

The, system that helps us have a good memory in our body, the hormones and the electrons that fire in our nervous system, et cetera. These are all not able to repair and they're constantly berated by a, onslaught of toxicities in life and. Let's face it, most of us don't eat perfectly and do live and get exposed to different toxicities.

So we need to have maybe even extra restroom repair time. But if we're not getting any because of chronic, fight or flight mode, then it can lead to, cognitive. F degeneration. It can lead to not being able to, retain muscle and putting on a lot of body fat. And you may be doing everything right.

It has occurred that I've had clients who work with me and they're really eating pretty well, and they're exercising regularly. Like sometimes impressively, and their body state is still about the same. It's not really improving. Then we take a look at, well, what's going on? With your hormones are you in this constant state of fight or flight, and is your cortisol and adrenaline high?

And as a result, is your insulin spiking regularly? And is this causing your body not to be able to absorb nutrients? The, all these things work together, so the idea is to learn how to live a life that makes your body healthy, and it's actually more simple than you may. I believe so I'm gonna go over another concept now.

So that was the physical side of it, and this is the mental, emotional side of it. How we. Respond. So a person in life can become, for example, fearful of something because it's scary. Maybe they're walking down the street and all of a sudden a big dog, teeth beared comes charging at them, looking like it's about ready to take off their leg or something, and you run.

That's the normal reaction, fight or flight. Or maybe if you have a weapon, you stop and try to fend, fend off the dog, but you either get into fight mode or flight mode when something like that. That threatening, physically threatening occurs. So you got scared and you went into fight or flight mode.

Now, it can also occur that a person starts to perform actions which lead to their emotional state, for example in this example, a person could become scared and run away, or one could start running away from something and then become scared because you're involved in the activity of running away.

Let's say it's not really a scary situation that's going on, but all of a sudden you, you just start running away from things because you're worried. You've had experiences where dogs chased you when you were running and you start to feel nervous when you go start to go out for your run.

So you start feeling like you're running away from any potential dogs and you just feel nervous 'cause you're involved in the activity of running away. So it can either go, one gets afraid. And then runs away, or one runs away, and because you're in the activity of running away, start becoming afraid anyways, this could occur with other things.

For example, getting angry. Someone could get angry about something and then, hit somebody. Or someone could get involved in a fight when they weren't really angry, they're defending themselves and they hit somebody and all of a sudden they start to feel anger at that person when they really had no reason to feel angry.

But they're involved in the activity of fighting. And they start to feel angry. So I'm sure you can see and think of other examples and you should of how this could apply so that it, makes sense to you and it's real to you. But that said, take a look at that. The action somebody is involved in can lead to an emotional state.

And we've already gone over how emotions do influence the body. It's common. For a, even mainstream medical doctors to say, you have too much stress, it's causing high blood pressure, or it's raising your cortisol levels and you're not able to, repair. This is pretty common.

Even with those that might not think this way normally. So we understand that emotions do influence our health. So if you can have an action, cause an emotion that can then influence your health. So by taking a look at this, we could go, okay. What actions do I need to engage in to lead to a healthier response in my body?

So if you take a look at the actions that cause a person to be interested, happy, excited about life, strongly engaged in life, able to pursue a purpose that they like. We're able to engage with people that they enjoy. All of these things will lead to emotional states that tell your body it's okay to rest and repair.

It's okay to operate in a level that your hormones are balanced. You don't have to be in fight or flight mode, so the idea is to look through your life and go, okay, good. What can I be doing? This has nothing to do with what you're eating. Or whether you're exercising or not  or doing other healthy things, it's all about, okay.

I know that by having some time with my family, for example, I feel the emotion of happiness and I feel more interested in. My life because I am being rewarded by being able to have time with my family. That engaging, figuring out a way to do that on a weekly or daily, or as often as you can basis, will tell your body it's okay to rest and repair, and allow you to get more benefits from whatever you're doing health wise.

Whether you're trying to eat a certain way to make yourself healthier, or you're fasting, or you're exercising more, or whatever you're doing, it will be exponentially more effective. If you can figure out ways to engage in activities in your life that put you in a happy, healthy, emotional and mental state, this is really important.

I've had clients who get completely stalled. They're doing pretty much everything and then all of a sudden we, we figure out what's going on with them in life and handle some stressful situations or handle something that emotionally was affecting them and bam, all of a sudden their body's improving, they're getting better, and they didn't change anything in what they were doing.

I. So the concept is that if you want to improve what, what's going on in your life, then you need to take a look at what are the things for you that create happiness, which leads to health. And it doesn't have to be, some really significant activity, right?

It could be something simple just having a coffee in the morning from your favorite. Place to go and get a coffee, right? Or it could be, having 10 minutes to yourself at the end of the day to take a little drive when you end work or, being able to exercise a couple times a week beyond the benefit of, exercising.

Could be that's something you like to do and you want to engage in. So being able to do that would help you get into this rest and repair mode. So it really is worth looking at if you just take a look at your life very practically and go, okay, good. Here's what I do. Just lay it out quickly. It doesn't have to be written down, but it could.

That always helps. And then, okay, what do I like to do? What creates interest for me? What do I find interesting? What do I find? What causes me to be happy or cheerful or enthusiastic? And then I'm gonna go do those things for some period of time, every day or every week or once a month, or. Once a year even, would be better than nothing.

And this will create the state where you're starting to feel more interested in life in other areas. Maybe you are working on a project at work that's very stressful. It could be more beneficial actually to. Take that extra day that you have set aside for putting in time on that job. You know you're gonna go in an extra day and work on the project instead, break that day into and do half of it doing something that you really enjoy and get an increase in your ability to feel happy.

Now, one of the great things and about the hormonal system is that it's divided into echelons where there are certain hormones which influence other hormones. And certain hormones, which kind of don't have that much influence on other hormones as much. And by targeting the hormones that create the most influence, we can actually produce profound effects on your body's health, which will lead to increased energy, increased memory, cognitive ability, increased ability to have metabolic flexibility where you can get rid of excess body fat, et cetera, et cetera.

So one of the most dominant hormones, the hormones that influences other hormones the most is called oxytocin. And this is the happy hormones one that you get when get a hug from your new puppy, or, you get to go home and, get greeted by your family, or you do something at work that you weren't even expecting to happen, but it did, and you feel great about it.

Oxytocin, the hormone will surge through your body. Because of what has occurred in your life on a mental level. So I don't think we need any more evidence than that, that what's going on mentally and emotionally affects your health. It's very plain here. So that said, you can do things that create positive feelings like that on a regular basis.

Just talk, think of it as getting your daily oxytocin dosage so that you can be healthy and happy. It's not just. A nice thing to do. It's something that is vital to do so that you can actually have a healthy body and you can be successful in life. You need that oxytocin. That's just from a physical level.

Obviously doing things that enjoyable in life makes life enjoyable, and that's what it's all about. But if you wanna take it down step by step, you have something positive happen in life. Your oxytocin goes up, your cortisol levels go down, your body goes into rest and repair. And then you are able to have a healthier, more optimized biological state, which leads to better memory, improved energy, improved ability to heal itself or fend off illness, not get ill in the first place, or have an ability to have better physical fitness, better body composition, and just look at that.

That's a snowball of success. You will be more successful in life just because you've decided that. A priority is doing things that you enjoy. A priority is finding things that make life positive for you, that make you able to have things that you enjoy in life. Now, I wanted to go over a little hack that I've often done with people and it seems to really help them engage in this activity.

'cause there are things that are going on. In life that are so stressful, they make it hard to even engage in this type of activity that make us go into an apathetic state of mind or an apathetic approach to life where we think it maybe really doesn't matter or it's too much effort anyways, or whatever else might go through your mind personally for you.

So the little hack is to just take five minutes, write down on the sheet of paper. As many things you can come up with really, but maybe five or 10 things that you know you can do that are easy to do, that produce a effect of you feeling good about yourself, you feeling happy, even if it's just for a little bit, it could be whatever it is for you.

And this is just for you. So write down whatever that is. And then you take that list and you put it in your pocket and you keep it with you at all times. Or you put it someplace where you'll see it regularly throughout the day. Maybe at the bottom of your computer, if you're on a computer a lot, or inside your truck on the dash.

If you're driving a lot or in your pocket if you're outside doing things or walking around an office and you can just pull it out and look at it and just decide that every day you're going to do one of these things. S and make it something simple. It's not okay, go climb the mountain that I've always wanted to climb that I'm probably never gonna be able to afford the trip to.

But that's something that would make me happy. No, that's not what we're talking about. Talking about getting an extra hug from your kids or from your pets or, saying something nice to your wife that, that makes you feel good or your spouse or. Maybe it's going for a walk and a key thing.

Another little hack. When you're going for a walk, don't think, look around the environment. Enjoy the moment that you're in. Don't try to rationalize what's gone on for the day or walk yourself through it or something else. No, you want to get your attention out of that mental maze and onto the world around you.

Because you will naturally engage these positive responses, both mentally and physically by putting yourself back into present time and putting your attention back onto the world around you and or the people around you. So these are some really simple but super effective life hacks that are also really biohacks because of the way they influence the body that you can do anytime very simply.

And you can just, improve your long-term ability to be healthy and your long-term ability to enjoy life. And it will actually influence your success in life because you are engaging in activities that snowball towards greater ability and greater health, and improved ability to do what you want and get what you want out of life.

I hope that's super helpful to you. Of course. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.  I would be more than happy to let you know some more hacks or go into how to apply this information specifically to your life.

I look forward to hearing from you. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to this podcast episode. As a biohacker and health coach, I am always interested in helping others improve their lives. This is my passion. This is what I do. I help others, so I'd like to extend this offer to you. Send me any question about your health or your life, and I'll send you back a sincere answer.

With an actionable strategy that you can apply, no obligation. I've enjoyed bringing you this podcast episode today. Thanks and have a great day.