The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
238. Gary Brecka, Dr. Will Cole & Dr. Tara Swart Bieber Live at the Wellness Oasis Event
22 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the significance of sleep in our wellness journey?
If you don't master sleep, whole food, diet and mobility, nothing else matters. All of the chronic disease in America is preventable through diet and lifestyle changes.
So in functional medicine, we have to have a both and not either or approach to dealing with the physical, but then dealing with the mental, emotional, spiritual and the interconnection between both.
Mood and emotion have direct effects through the gut on how we manifest disease and pathology.
The basics like sleep and diet, particularly taking care of your gut, but also understanding where stress shows up for you.
The research is clear. Things like shame and stress, they raise inflammation just as much as a food that doesn't love the human body back. What extends life is the absence of processed foods.
You have to be sleeping enough, eating well, hydrated.
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Chapter 2: How do thoughts and trauma impact our physical health?
Things like spending time in nature, immersing yourself in the arts and culture. That's gratitude to the next level.
So much could be solved in our life by just getting back to the basics.
How can our thoughts and our beliefs biologically impact the way our bodies heal or perform? The single critical factor that will impact your longevity is... Huge thank you to our presenting partner, Chase. So today's panel that we're kicking off with, how to achieve whole health. So we just learned what some of our barriers are and what stress can kind of do to our bodies in the last workshop.
Chapter 3: What are common misconceptions about biohacking?
And now we're gonna have a chance to explore that even deeper. We are ready to move into this first conversation, one that invites us to look at what it really means to feel whole in mind, in body, and in your personal energy. These three thought leaders are bringing together biology, neuroscience, and functional medicine to help us rethink how we nourish ourselves from the inside out.
So please join me in a round of applause, grateful hearts, in introducing Gary Brecka, human biologist, longevity expert, and founder of The Ultimate Human. Dr. Will Cole, my favorite doctor, who is the leading functional medicine expert, best-selling author, and host of The Art of Being Well. And Dr. Tara Swart-Bieber, neuroscientist and author.
Chapter 4: How does emotional stress correlate with inflammation?
welcome welcome how are you great to be here how are you wonderful i'm so excited to dive into this because i just have so much respect for each of you and i'm obsessed with optimizing my human experience and my human biology so gary i want to get started with you you know you've built a career that's at the intersection of human biology and optimization so for those in the audience that are really focused on longevity which i think is all of us right like how do we live
the best fullest life possible that feels good. What is one daily behavior that can dramatically improve overall well-being, but most people seem to overlook that or just not be able to really lock into it?
I would say the most overlooked thing on most people's longevity journey is drawing your attention to your sleep.
Chapter 5: What role does neuroplasticity play in overall well-being?
You know, we have big data on this. We knew this from the mortality space. We know it from the Blue Zone studies that if you don't master sleep, whole food diet and mobility, nothing else matters. You know, and so many people ask me whether I should start their wellness journey. Should I get a red light bed? Should I get a sauna? Should I get a PMF mat? Should I do transcranial light therapy?
And until you've really drawn your attention to your sleep and mastered sleep, mastered a whole food diet, not a dogmatic diet, there is no evidence that dogmatic dieting, carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food extends life.
Chapter 6: Why are women more affected by autoimmune diseases?
What extends life is the absence of processed foods. And sleep is truly our human superpower. If you look at the correlation between sleep deprivation and early onset cognitive decline, neurodevelopmental disorders, mood disorders, hormonal disruption, so much could be solved in our life by just getting back to the basics.
What do you think, you know, collectively our beef is with sleep? Like I think about, you know, because it's the first thing all of us want to like take off the list.
Chapter 7: How can wearable technology enhance our health metrics?
And, you know, if you're Gen Z or millennial, I think we're so used to those things like sleep is the cousin of death.
Chapter 8: What are the essential components of good sleep hygiene?
I'll sleep when I die. I'm grinding. You know, what do we have against it that kind of keeps something so easy yet feels so far?
It's because it's the most mobile thing in our schedule. It's the only thing that we control that we can actually schedule around. Six years ago, I decided that I would schedule all of my meetings and travel around sleep and exercise.
So if you actually look at my phone right now, you would see that no matter where I am in the world, the first thing on my schedule is sleep, and the next thing is exercise, and then everything else falls into the calendar around that.
I think the majority of the reason why most people don't draw attention to their sleep is they're unaware of the impact that this has on really true human function. About half of this audience has a gene mutation called CompT. And so when you go to bed at night and your environment quiets, your mind wakes up. And you lay there body tired, but mind awake. And this is called rumination.
These are very easy issues to solve. There's targeted supplementation that quiets these catecholamines and quiets the mind. The same neurotransmitter cascade that leads to anxiety, anxiousness, ADD, ADHD, OCD. So I really think we haven't emphasized the importance of having a sleep routine. If we went around the audience and I asked you, what's your routine to go to sleep?
Most people just haven't developed one. We have a routine to get our kids to school. We have a routine for exercise. But we actually don't have good sleep hygiene. I don't know if I answered your question or I just rambled for five minutes.
Yeah, no, it's important because it is one of the things we have to change it, right? If you want better health. Dr. Cole, your work in functional medicine really emphasizes balance over bioperfection. How do you help patients shift from chasing the metrics? Because we can get obsessed with anything, right? Chasing those metrics to cultivating actually, you know, sustainable wellness habits.
Yeah, so I also love that we talked about the COMT gene variant at 10 a.m. in the morning. It's a great way to start the day. Thanks, Gary.
We went right after.
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