674 – Bio Upgrade Method Episode 1 – It’s Time To Become The CEO Of The Business Of YOU

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Anita Chaperon

In the episode:

03:05 – Kaizen for your health
07:31 – The real paradox
09:47 – The business of YOU
12:54 – Taking ownership
14:21 – Your body as a system
18:10 – Why tape your mouth shut
22:14 – Five subsystems of your health
24:19 – Two things you can’t separate
28:27 – The Inflammation Bucket analogy
35:23 – Conversation about CBD
39:43 – What’s coming next…

Find more tips for improving your life and your business inside JamesSchramko

Part 2 of the series

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 674. And it’s the first of a five-part series with my good friend, Anita Chaperon. Welcome back.

Anita: Hey James, it’s good to be back. It’s been a while. So I’m happy to be back.

James: It has. We were in the four hundred last time we spoke. We had Episode 453, 454, 455 and then 495. We’ve talked about all sorts of things like morning power routines, DNA. So as you’ve guessed already, we’re into a health topic. And you’ve been doing a lot of research and developments in the meantime, and you’ve come up with this thing called Bio Upgrade Method, which neatly shortens to BUM. It’s hard to forget that one. It’s kind of like the program that helps you get less of the acronym or at least strengthens it. And we’re going to just dissect the various components that you’ve put together. And you’ve generously offered to come along and share some highlights from this.

We will make a redirect from SuperFastBusiness.com/Anita. So we’ll make sure that that is there for if you’re listening to this on your phone, you can type that into your phone and find the program. Over this series, we’re going to be talking about how to get in charge of your own health. We’re then going to go into the food component, then we’re going to talk about the recharge and energy repair component. And then we’ll talk about movement and cleaning up, I guess. And then the last part will be about enjoying your life and having some enthusiastic focus-type activities. So we won’t get too deep into those areas. For now, we’re going to focus on episode one. And it’s time to become the CEO of the business of you. So why don’t you give us a little intro to that, Anita?

Anita: Yeah, you’ve already done a great job of the intro and what we were thinking of. So, we’ve covered DNA, habit formation, and morning power routines, and all of those kinds of health focus and, you know, peace of mind focus, but they are all just tools. So since the last time we spoke, I’ve been working quite intently and intensely on creating a methodology that’s easy to just pick up and implement into your daily life and focusing specifically into the daily life of entrepreneurs like us. Because we tend to be quite absorbed in our businesses, and we spend a lot of time in building them. And typically, the health side of things falls unnoticed until something goes terribly wrong.

Kaizen for your health

And in the past few years of, without scaremongering or anything like that, but it’s become very, very urgent kind of mission of mine to bring something simple to people like us, so that we don’t have to wait until our schedules are so clear. You know, clear you schedule for a month, so you can get healthy and start to eat better and all that stuff. I wanted to bring something that we can start doing bit by bit every single day. So the Bio Upgrade Method is basically something, you love your metaphor, so the way I usually presented is it’s like Kaizen, but not for your business, for your health. So it allows you to build your health, one small step at a time, pretty much. So yeah, so with this series, what I see us doing potentially, is to give a few in each area of health, and there are five of those and I’ll introduce those in a little bit more depth in this first episode.

But what I wanted to do in the series is to give people at least three very, very easy to implement tactics that give you the 80/20 in terms of gains for your health. So then you can start working on your health even tomorrow with very little prep. And with relatively small effort, because by now, we all know that diets don’t work. So we’re not expecting a magic bullet or a push-button solution. So we all understand that we have to put in a bit of effort. And this effort, what I’m trying to do is to minimize the effort put in and maximize the output. So basically, that’s the overview.

James: I think the general concepts here that are interesting are that we need to be proactive in our own health. Often, people leave it till it’s too late. I actually recently spent about five hours sitting in emergency ward for a family member who had a severe headache. Luckily, it wasn’t me, but it’s still never pleasant to be in that place. But I could hear the conversations in the beds next to us and they were frightening. Like, the discussions between the doctors and the nurses and the patients blew my mind. One guy is there and he can’t breathe and he’s telling them that he’s going through a Ventolin inhaler every few days. And he’s habitually using it. And he confesses that he doesn’t know how to use it properly. And he’s not getting a good peak flow score on the blowing assessment. And they’re encouraging him very strongly to go and see a GP and to take preventative inhaler to stop him actually needing it, to break that habit. But it didn’t sound like he was going to go and make that visit. The bed on the other side, there was a lady who was born in the 20s. And she was getting all sorts of things, you know, contrast dye going through an IV, tests, and catheters, and you know, she could hardly communicate, as well.

It was just like, you know what? The less time I can spend in the hospital, the better and the more focused and determined I am to take control of my own health. Because you either spend the time and the money on the way through the journey, or you’ll cop it at the end in a big way. And it’s not going to be pretty and the health is just so important. And I think you suggested earlier in this call, that a lot of entrepreneurs start to sort of push it to the side. And I see people chasing every dollar on the table, they talk about it, they’re leaving money on the table. But I think some people grab the money, but they leave life on the table, time with loved ones, time with themselves even. I’m so thankful for the time I get to have every day with my surf activity. To me, that’s like living. It’s the actual interpretation of living, feeling alive, and the enjoyment and the engagement, but the actual ability to paddle around and stay fit and to be able to do that for an hour or two. Whereas I really struggled to do that five or six years ago. In fact, if you recall, I could barely even turn my neck. I was so seized up from inflammation and stiffness and getting some pretty ordinary advice from the traditional GP advisors who, when you look into the research, generally, they’re on a pretty low wage, massive stress, high levels of dissatisfaction in their job, massive levels of sickness. And I just wonder, how they could possibly stay on top of the best technology when they’re in that environment?

Anita: Talking about expecting somebody to take care of you, you know, the general medical practitioner, the GP, they get something like two weeks nutritional training in their entire tenure. And from what we’ve heard, there was a recent book published on sleep, they get less than a week training on how sleep can help you be healthier. And these are the two most leverageable areas that you can execute on to create good health. So to expect them to give you some advice that is going to turn your life around.

The real paradox

This puts me on to, you know, the urgent message and I’ve never been a scaremonger before. In fact, I used to prove to people that created too much hype around the inevitability of stuff. But the issue and the reality is that we’re getting sicker, and then we’re also getting sick in very different ways than we used to get sick. Like, your grandmother would get sick, she’ll get influenza. And then it’s easy for the doctor to just go and treat that. But at the moment, we are getting sick in chronic ways. And those chronic conditions are typically multifactorial. It’s not like one thing that’s causing it, and therefore you take a pill and it fixes it. And that’s the scary part. And it’s something that we’re seeing globally. And it’s something that’s perpetuated by toxicity in the air and the environment. And then also incredible amounts of stress – social stress, stress from work, stress from over exercising, stress from over dieting or eating in a way that’s not really good for you specifically. And you know, it doesn’t have to be this way. Like I keep saying there’s small interventions that we can start doing right away.

And the real paradox here, if I can get it on for a few seconds. The paradox is that, even if somebody came to you and said to you, this is everything you need to do to create good health in your life, you can’t possibly execute in it all at once. So that is a ridiculous aspiration to start with. And then the way I’m proposing, and it’s not just me, I’m not the first one to talk about tiny habits. The way I’m proposing we do it is instead of waiting for this perfect one month where we don’t have any work, we don’t have any family commitments, nobody’s visiting, nobody gets sick, nobody needs to be carted around (which is never going to happen), just start implementing one little thing at a time. The Kaizen way, you know, the 80/20. And just pick things that you resonate with emotionally, right? The changes that you’re eager to create, because that’s how you’re most likely to stick with them. And then the next month, build another one on, and then another one on. And all it takes is using exactly the same tools that you use to build your business; you use the same principles to build your health. That’s it. I wanted to present in this episode, three global kind of elements that will shift the way we think about our health. And once you reframe how you think about your health, that should make it easier to implement the small changes later on the ones we’re going to talk about in episodes four, five and three, and two.

The business of YOU

James: Great. Well, I contend that the health of you is very strongly linked to the health of your business. Even though, strictly speaking, a business is more of a business to the extent that it works without you. However, it’s hard to get it to that point of leverage if you are overtired, stressed out, adrenal gland fatigued or constantly visiting practitioners. So two points here. One is, let’s make a decision, rather than to wait until something fails and we end up seeking medical help, because we’re broken, let’s do some preventative stuff first. So that’s one.

And the second one is, if we accept that our personal health is quite directly linked to the health of our ability to run the business, and therefore the business’s success, there’s a tremendous benefit. Aside from just health and living, you can actually have financial benefit from being so much more active and healthy and acute and aware. And I would say that’s been my experience. I’ve been able to constantly increase my profit, and significantly decrease the amount that I’m working and the amount of stress and the amount of drama in my life through exactly the concepts I talked about in Work Less, Make More, where I’ve stacked you, with your business, and your team. And you know, those three things together, can create such a tremendous outcome. And in this business of you, of becoming the CEO of the business of you, I just love that concept. It’s about responsibility. And it’s a very easy to accept and understand metaphor. So I’m really excited for you to roll out the framework that we’re going to build upon in the next episodes.

Anita: Cool. So I mean, this is a perfect segue, actually. So the business of you implies, to me it’s obvious, it implies that you will be using strategies and tactics that you’re familiar from your business. So, it kind of flattens out the learning curve to start with, and makes things a little bit less intimidating. Because the problem I’m seeing in people that I work with, is they perceive taking care of themselves as this massive mammoth mountain that they can never possibly climb without becoming a doctor. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

And then they see that they’re going to do everything or nothing. And it’s not that either. So the tactics and, actually, the tips we’re going to present to you guys, to the listeners, over the next few episodes, they’re going to sound unsexy. And that’s the whole point of it. Some of the most effective things in the world, are simple as, I’m not going to say it. It’s a word with an S. They’re not sexy but they’re effective. And I just want to kind of appeal to everybody listening, just try them. Even if you think you’ve tried them before, try them in this context. Try them with the three-step method that I’m going to share with you. And just forget about thinking, Oh, it has to be something sexy, it has to be something new, it’s got to be in a research study indicating that it works. This has been tried and tested, and it works. Hands down, it works. And it will create massive changes for you. And the point is that once it creates the first good effect for your health, you’re going to want to do more for yourself because our bodies and our brains are wired to want more of the good stuff. And actually, that’s kind of one of the hidden pretext of the entire method is that it creates small wins so that you want to do more. And it doesn’t seem like you’re giving up all the stuff that you enjoy. You’re giving up tasty food and all that stuff.

Taking ownership

Okay, so there were three concepts that I want to present to you guys, that will hopefully shift the way you think of your health and then help you along the way. The first and the kind of the very important one is that you are your own knight in shining armor. And I know this sounds simplistic, but basically, it means that what James you alluded to earlier is the times have gone where you had a choice before to go and say, “Here, doctor, I’m broken. Fix me.” Because even doctors, the medical profession is going through a transitional period at the moment, because we’re getting sick in different ways and we’re getting sick, so fast. Plus, we’re finding out a lot of new medical discoveries. The medical profession is kind of in the middle at the moment, and they’re having to regroup themselves and re-engineer themselves. It’s no longer about fixing the broken medical system. It’s now having to recreate it in a different way to serve the patient, rather than to serve the stakeholders, like the insurance companies. So, even they don’t know what they’re doing at the moment.

So you have a responsibility and if you want to live a productive, focused energetic life long enough to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you know, putting in so much effort into your business, you have to take care of yourself because you’re the one that has the most vested interest in your own well-being. Your doctors are never going to have more than that, and you can’t afford them if you wanted them 24/7. So that’s kind of the main concept that you need to take ownership, you need to become responsible and decide that you’re going to do this for yourself. And also, you’re going to do this for your family. And for your business like, James, like you were saying earlier. All of that exists in the same 24 hours.

Your body as a system

And this leads me to the second concept, which is start to think about your health and your body as a system, right? It’s a system that’s part of a larger ecosystem of your environment. And your business is part of that environment, your team in your business is part of that environment. Then you’ve got the obvious ones like you know, the air that you breathe, the people you socialize with outside of work, where you live, what you do for entertainment, etc. And this is kind of the primary mistake we’re seeing with conventional healthcare is that everything is a specialism. If there’s something wrong with your kidneys, you go to the kidney doctor. If there’s something wrong with your heart, you go to the cardiologist, and so on and so forth. And the truth is that none of them exist by themselves. Your kidneys, if you took them out of your body, they’re no longer that useful. Same with your heart, you know, if you remove all of your veins from your cardiovascular system, again, they’re not going to do their function.

So, the reason why I’m bringing that way of thinking to your attention is that when you understand that your body is a system, you understand that it doesn’t exist all by itself. Or if you get a headache, like James, you had to go to the hospital with a family member. If somebody gets a headache, you can’t just expect to treat the headache and then forget about everything else. You’ve got to ask yourself, why is this headache happening?

James: That’s such a good point, because it relates to one of the points you’re saying about new ways that people are getting affected. The headache, in this case, was related to excessive screen time on computers and tuned with not updating eyesight prescription, which is most likely deteriorated because of excessive screen time. And so all this flickering lights, the closing in of the world, the shutting out of daylight, the upset sleep routine, and lack of physical exercise has just caused the body to go into shut down, basically. And it’s just, 80, 90 hours of throbbing head is your body’s way of saying this is not good and we can’t sustain this.

Anita: Yeah, I mean, it’s basically saying to you, so in this case, when you think of the body as a system, you understand that there’s a cause. And then there’s also a signal to indicate that something’s gone wrong, which we call symptoms. So symptoms are just signals.

James: There are babies in China now who have had excessive screen time before the age of two, and they have permanent brain damage.

Anita: Yeah, I mean, we can talk about other scary stories, how babies are now born with excessive amount of lead in their bones already, because they’ve accumulated all of the lead that the mother hasn’t detoxed while they were carrying the baby. So literally, they’re lead babies. And, you know, it’s no longer a myth about toxicity. It’s now an absolute, it’s present everywhere. Even when I work with people about their toxicity, I don’t even bother to test them. Because I know that they’ve got toxicity, it’s just a matter of what they have, and how much.

James: It’s so eye-opening but it does link to that story. Like some of these things, the screen time wouldn’t have happened in the 40s, or 50s, right? Because it would be extremely rare, not everyone had a computer. In fact, in the MICA report that I was reading recently on the internet trends that’s published each year, the average American spends over six hours on the screen, watching videos. Six hours of videos a day, on average. And I asked the doctor, what is the recommended screen time per day? And she said, two hours. I can’t think of a single human I know who spends less than two hours on a screen in a day.

Anita: No, there isn’t. But again, thinking in terms of systems, right? It’s not just how much time you spend on screen time, it’s about not taking time to relax those eyes. It’s not taking time to go and take a walk in the wild so you can replenish, re-ionize yourself and all that.

Why tape your mouth shut

James: It’s so funny you say that. I break my workday, which is today, into two halves of the morning batch and the afternoon batch. And then during the day, that’s when I go down on earth and the sea. I was watching the waves rolling today. There’s plenty of research on the positive benefits of watching water, watching the waves. We have more waves than you have there in Gibraltar, I think. You know, it’s so good just to breathe in that fresh air.

And I also want to speak to one of your other points. You said some of these things might sound plain or boring. I have a fantastic friend, who I’ve sort of met on social media, who’s very into health and he’s from Germany. And he just said something so profound. He said, try taping your mouth shut and just breathing through your nose. It’s such a simple modification. But upon buying a book he recommended and researching breathing through your nose, I discovered that we all over breathe, we’re inefficient. It causes a lot of our problems relating to asthma because you’re blocking off the body’s natural dehumidifier and filter. And so focusing more on breathing through my nose, it actually made big changes for me in the way that I felt and the way that I could breathe. I used to always have a stuffy blocked nose. And now I can breathe through my nose and feel like I don’t really get asthma anymore. And I sleep better. But just remembering that simplest thing, just pretend my mouth taped shut.

Anita: And actually, this is a very good point to make as well, over here is that you were ready to hear this one simple point, right? Because we all hear a lot of health tips all the time, I mean, there’s no shortage of that. And that’s why I’m saying that with the information we’re going to dispense in the next few episodes, just choose one that resonates the most that clicks with you emotionally, and you feel excited about trying out and implementing. Because that’s the most likely one you’re going to succeed with. And for you, this just appealed at the time. And yes, it’s absolutely critical. I mean, your nose has got the equipment to filter out all sorts of bacteria, and viruses that make you sick usually, if you inhale them through the mouth. And also the mouth has a very different kind of composition environment that basically, you know, is the best breeding ground for any viruses and bacteria. So by inhaling through your mouth, you’re basically just incubating stuff that’s going to infect you and then make you sicker.

James: And I should point out that when I go to the Maldives, the dive instructor, he teaches us to make sure we breathe through our mouth, because it’s a much larger opening, and you get a huge intake of oxygen, and it’s vital for your survival when you’re getting pounded by waves and you’re held underwater. So there are exceptions to the rule, of course. So when I’m in a big hold down or in the surf, I use it as basically opening up the carburetor and getting maximum airflow.

Also, when you say words like dispensing information, I feel like at some point, we should be talking about how I’m not a doctor and you know, do your own things at your own risk. Because I definitely don’t pretend to know a lot about this stuff. And I’m sure that things would have to be tailored for individuals. And there could possibly be, you know, some risks or unknown side effects of some of the things that we talk about. But I just wanted to put that out there.

Anita: Yeah, definitely. We’re both not a doctor, and we don’t want to play one. And the responsibility is entirely with the listener to make sure they do their due diligence and consider all the different factors that might be affecting their ecosystem.

James: Yeah, so I think the main point is, look, I’m interested in optimizing me so that I can have a great life. It does help my business. That’s why I want to bring this to the audience. We’ve had great feedback on all the episodes we’ve had before. They made it into the top episodes for the year. There is a strong following. I can’t tell you how often someone comes up to me and says, “Where do you get your DNA from?” They’ve heard the episodes; they know what a difference that made for me. So my personal experience made it worth me being passionate to talk about. And having done that for some of the people who I love, it actually helped us tune things like our diet, and understand more about the way that we recover. And our tolerances for things. It was just very insightful. So what else is left in this episode one, an introduction to becoming the CEO of the business of you?

Five subsystems of your health

Anita: Okay, so very briefly, we’ve covered that your body is a system within an ecosystem of your environment. Your system has five and this is in the Bio Upgrade Method, I’ve talked about the five subsystems of your health. And this is, if you can imagine the letter H for health. In the middle, you have the main holding factor, which is to eat well so that’s your nutrition. Then you’ve got, in the vertical axes at each point, you have the second subsystem is rest daily, which includes sleep and also recreational time and resting throughout the day, taking breaks. Then the third one is move often and that means exercising, but also taking time in nature, going for walks, playing with the kids, etc. And then the fourth subsystem would be make happy, which I’ve intentionally named it that way. Because happiness and focus and energy and the right mindset doesn’t just come to you on a silver platter, you’ve got to actually make it happen. And then the final one is the one that very often gets overlooked, but it’s coming more and more to the forefront in terms of healthcare is the cleaning up. And that means cleaning up whatever’s accumulated over the years in terms of toxins and heavy metals and parasites. But also cleaning up on a daily basis through the foods that you eat, through the actions that you do, for example, exercising or meditation or sauna. So we’re going to talk about all of those five different subsystems in more detail over the next episodes.

The two other concepts I wanted to briefly introduce on this one, so that you guys can think about them in the meantime, while the next episode is coming out is that knowing that your body is an ecosystem or system. Understand that every single manifestation, every symptom that you get has a cause and the symptom is just an effect. So, make sure that you consider both and you treat for both when you are healing. And then if you’re working with a healthcare practitioner, make sure that you press them. Use them as a consultant, because that’s what they are. Your doctor is a consultant for your health, in the business of you. Just like you would hire a marketing consultant for your other business, right? So make sure you bring it to their attention that there’s a cause and effect, and you need to consider and treat both.

Two things you can’t separate

Now the second principle that I want you to keep in mind is that business and personal, and James, you said this before, so I’m not going to spend too much time on it, but understand that the business of you and your other commercial business or your revenue-based business, those take part in the same 24 hours of the day. So, you cannot even think of separating them. So if you’re going to be getting healthy, you need to schedule some self-care time. Schedule it in the same calendar that you schedule your other appointments for your business because, as we know, what gets scheduled gets done. You’re going to show up for those appointments more readily. It’s forefront of your attention. And when you’re scheduling personal, you know, self-care appointments, use the same principles you do for your business appointments. Be descriptive, use active language and pile as much of the necessary information inside your actual appointment schedule. Let’s say if you are planning on taking a recreational break, put the details inside there. Instead of just saying take a break, say go out and play soccer with the kids. I don’t know if it’s soccer or football but whatever it is.

James: It depends on the country. In the UK, I think they call it football. In Australia, they call it soccer because we have Australian-rules football. We also have Rugby League, Rugby Union. And they even play NFL, the American football, Gridiron.

Anita: So be specific, right? Going out to play with the kids and then put a reminder for yourself, you know? Decide depending on the activity. Do you need to prepare for it half an hour before? Do you need to know about it a day in advance? Literally the way you would prepare for your business appointment, put the information in there because the more information you’ve got right up front, psychologically, and subconsciously, you’re going to be more ready to act on it as opposed to if you just put some vague description on there, with no helpful information, no numbers that you need to call, no instructions or directions. You’re just basically going to keep putting it off and then it’s less likely you’re going to do it.

James: Hopefully, it gets installed as such a strong routine that it’s just the default. For example, I know I’m going to surf every day. I check my surf apps for the local beach breaks, my equipment is right next to the door, my wetsuit is on its coat hanger ready for the next session. I have an SOP and it’s just automatic. And I’ve built my schedule around making sure that I have that time.

Anita: Yeah, absolutely. But it’s, you know, you’ve been doing this for quite a while, and then you’ve paid attention to it as a central thing for your health, which is great. It’s just in the beginning, you would need all the help that you can get.

James: Well, in the beginning you might need lessons, for example. And you would definitely, you’d have to go out of your way. When you get to the point of obsession, like I have, then it comes first and then the business has to fit around it. So it actually moves through the pack of business duties and then takes position.

There was this funny situation I had. I’ve been running webinars for my members now every month for a long time. I don’t know, six or seven years. And on the last call, it seemed like I didn’t show up. And it was because we added an extra call, we now do two a month for my high level. And the webinar link for the second call was very similar-looking to the first call, which I’ve subsequently changed, but I’ve logged on to the wrong link. And everyone’s logged into the forum and said, “Where is he?” “The waves must be good.” They automatically knew exactly what I should be doing if I wasn’t going to be there. So it wasn’t even a question. It’s not, like, ‘Oh, he’s forgotten,’ or ‘He’s got the wrong link.’ It’s like the waves must be amazing. It’s so ingrained. And I think the best way to get something done is to make it as joyful and habitual as possible. Not like the guy in the bed next to us with his Ventolin inhaler. That’s the wrong kind of habit and it’s not going to get you anywhere. But a good healthy habit can get you a long way down the track.

Anita: Yeah, that’s a very good point. And this is why I keep re-emphasizing that it needs to be something you have an emotional pull towards. Whether it’s because, “Oh, I can’t wait to feel that way” or if it’s “Oh, this would be so good to implement” whatever, you know? It has to have an emotional pull, otherwise, you’re not going to carry through and you’re just going to waste your time and your effort and possibly your self-belief if you do fail. So these are, like, very basic habit principles. If you want to go and re-listen to the habit podcast, go and do that. That would be very helpful. And it is part of the Bio Upgrade Method as well.

The Inflammation Bucket analogy

I just wanted to very quickly introduce the last concept because I think that, not I think, but the people I work with usually find this as one of the most powerful reframes for the health. And it allows them to relax about it a little bit more. So the third principle that I wanted to introduce was the Inflammation Bucket analogy. I’m still not very good at distinguishing between analogies and metaphors. But James, this should be appealing to you, as well.

So basically, the Inflammation Bucket analogy is not something I came up with. But what it says is inflammation is one of the biggest catchall for chronic disease. And the medical research is now showing that the more inflammation you have in your body, the more likely you are to get ill and to suffer chronic conditions, etc. So it makes sense that the lower your inflammation, the better your health will be, and you feel better, you have more energy, more vitality, etc, right? And so on the basis of that inflammation bucket is, if you imagine you have this one bucket for the day, and every morning, you wake up. If you’re relatively healthy, you will wake up with a little bit of inflammation at the bottom of the bucket, imagine there’s a little bit liquid, right? So you wake up because you’ve restored through your good night’s sleep, you’ve had enough deep sleep, REM sleep (and we’re going to talk more about sleep fixing in the next few episodes). So you wake up with this little bit of inflammation in your bucket in the morning, and then by the time you have to get yourself out of bed, that takes up a bit of willpower, then you’ve gone and you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to wear for the day. And so your inflammation bucket is a little bit more full. Then let’s say you’ve got a bit of difficulty getting the kids up and then feeding them and getting them off to school or wherever they need to go, and that fills up the inflammation bucket. And then, let’s say, straight after you drop them off at school, you go and you do a yoga class. Now yoga classes typically restorative if you do it at the right level. And because it’s restorative, it diminishes the inflammation in your bucket. So now you end up with a slightly lower level. So you get the idea, basically.

Everything you do within a given day either adds to the inflammation in your bucket, or subtracts from it if it’s a restorative thing. So if you’re taking breaks every hour, which is away from the screen time, then you diminish the inflammation. And if you don’t take breaks, then the inflammation just keeps on adding up. And that’s how it goes to the whole day. And then imagine, you come to the evening, basically, and you’re sitting down with your partner and you’ve put the kids to bed, your inflammation bucket is now pretty much at the top of it. Why? Because you haven’t taken any precautions to deplete the inflammation yet by doing restorative actions. So it’s right to the brim and you’re sitting down for supper, finally. And you’re going to have this nice, healthy baked salmon with a lovely green salad, with all the best things that are recommended for good health like nice fresh veggies. And you have that with a tiny little glass of red wine, which is also fine. I mean, depending on who you speak to, but generally it’s fine. And you have this amazing reaction of bloated stomach, you get a headache, then you go to bed, you struggle to fall asleep. When you eventually fall asleep, you get up halfway through the night to go wee, and then basically really rubbish sleep. That’s because your inflammation bucket by the time you hit that supper was really at the brim of it. And then maybe you were slightly intolerant to one of the ingredients, which usually your body will notice. But because the inflammation bucket was so full, now it overflows. So you’ve exceeded your limit of what your body can create or what your body can handle.

Like in contrast to that, you go through the same day, but you’ve been to the yoga class so that’s reduced inflammation. You’ve spoken to your friend that you love talking to you, and that’s reduced inflammation a bit more. Then towards the end of the evening, you decided to take a bit of a meditation for 10, 15 minutes, that’s reduced inflammation. So now you get to the evening and you eat exactly the same meal that you ate in the other scenario, which was salmon and salad. You have a nice conversation with your partner, you go to bed, you sleep like a baby (sorry, a baby doesn’t sleep through the night).

James: Babies don’t sleep so that’s a funny metaphor.

Anita: I know.

James: But sleep like a log, maybe?

Anita: OK, there you go. Sleep like a log because sleep like you did, it also doesn’t really bode very healthy. You have a good night’s sleep, and then you wake up refreshed and ready to meet the next day and you’re happy. And that’s it. And in both situations, right, you’ve had exactly the same dinner with the same ingredients with the same glass of red wine and pretty much the same environment at the moment at the time of jesting the dinner. And the reactions were totally, totally different because of how you handled your day, how you handled your inflammation throughout the day.

So that’s why the inflammation bucket analogy for me is like a vessel, excuse the pun, for caring about yourself. And it’s a really easy thing to think of because we all know, to some extent, maybe not in the nuances, but to some extent broadly, we all know what’s good for us and what’s bad for us, right? And then if we just learn to respect and notice those signals, and then have that visual of, am I adding to the inflammation in that bucket or am I subtracting from it with what I’m doing? Then we’ve got a real time feedback loop where we can actually say, okay, you know, I’ve had a lot of stress today. The kids have been playing up, and I had to fire somebody at work because they weren’t pulling their weight. And now we’re going to go into this whole renew recruitment process, it’s so stressful. But let’s go and have a nice light yoga workout so that I can reduce some of that stress and let some of those toxins flow through my body and eliminate them through sweat. Or go and take a nice sauna or go and have a massage, you know, any of those activities that now depletes the inflammation and ensures that you get to the end of your day, with an overall balance of good and bad influences. So yeah, that’s kind of the last thing that I wanted to put out there.

James: I just want to say that for me, that’s the highlight. I don’t think that inflammation was on my radar until a few years ago, when I started to get into it. In fact, the doctor who I went to see when I couldn’t move my neck and she did an MRI and declared I had osteoarthritis, she gave me this packet of tablets. And they were like all-day long, anti-inflammatory tablets that I think would probably melt your gut into, like, ulcer, ulcersville. They looked toxic. And they felt toxic when I took them. And I said, “What other options do I have?” And she goes, “You don’t really have any. You can’t reverse osteoarthritis.” And boy, oh boy, did we get a completely different result over the oncoming years with, you know, inflammation is absolutely critical. And that’s definitely a battle that I’ve taken on and had significant progress with. The themes that kept popping up for me these days, after we got to the DNA, I’m hearing more about meditation, sleep, breathing, gut and inflammation. These are like all the hot points that I think are definitely not being taken seriously.

Conversation about CBD

I wanted to just ask you something that’s not on our agenda. But I’d keep seeing, especially in America, where the market is kind of become unregulated. I’m seeing a massive amount of conversations around CBD oil, cannabis oil. And I’m also seeing a lot of them are taking performance enhancers and brain supplements and so forth. And I wonder what you feel about those things?

Anita: So all of those have their places, and they have correct and incorrect uses but they’re just tools. They’re just tools and they don’t really reach into the foundation of health. And to me, and I say this in Bio Upgrade Method, as well, is that you cannot work on applying tools that, you know, if you apply tools to a bad foundation, you’re just going to get more bad results. Because just to, you know, simple example, CBD, depending on who you speak to, is not specifically addictive. But my point is that some of these things can be and if you don’t get addicted to the actual substance, you can get addicted to the produced effect. So if you, for example, you know, burning the candle at both ends to use a lovely metaphor.

James: Well, I like the, the candle that burns brightest, burns shortest. Twice as bright for half as long.

Anita: But basically, if you are doing nothing to generate healthy energy for your body and to have a clear mind and focus and vibrancy through eating the correct way for yourself through exercising, regularly detoxing, etc, etc. If your brain is toxic with mercury overload from years and years and years of exposure, right, without you detoxing it and now you keep slapping on new tropics on that and CBD, you know. All you’re going to do is you’re going to alleviate the symptoms, but you’re not fixing the root cause. So it’s going back to that.

Now, there are circumstances. I’m not saying that’s the case for everything. But there are circumstances like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example, where you need to intervene with some of these, at least on a short-term basis. But you must make sure that you’re using it just as a tool, it’s not a lifestyle. And many people, if you’re not a doctor, if you don’t have in-depth knowledge, many people will address this and use it as a lifestyle. And then it becomes just a crutch. And this is something I wanted to say with inflammation, the most sinister part about inflammation is that if you’re not aware of it, you can carry on for 10 years, sometimes, creating the same chronic problem without it having any symptoms until it hits you. And then when it hits you, it’s hard, it’s hard to heal. So, yes, all of these substances have the effects if you are going to stand on stage and present to somebody very important, by all means go and take new tropics that you know you’re going to react to positively. So you can have enhanced performance for that one instance. But don’t do it as a crutch, don’t use it as people use caffeine, for example, to wake themselves up.

James: Like that movie, Limitless. It’s good until it’s no good anymore.

Anita: Exactly.

James: I often think well, they may be cut back on the Red Bulls and with vodka, and just have a good look at yourself, maybe there’s some other way. So I’m really keen for them to rollout wave pools everywhere. So then I can recommend people take up surfing. But until that time, it’s going to get awfully crowded in the lineup. So hold off.

Anita, wow, this was going to be a short-ish introduction episode, but we covered some amazing topics. And I’m actually really excited to unpack the next few episodes, because I’ve already discovered something and been reminded again, the inflammation buckets analogy was terrific. And by the way, I really do think that is an analogy, rather than a metaphor, because it’s a more complex thing. And it reminded me of willpower, it sounds like the exact opposite of willpower, where we start our day with a bucket full of willpower. And we use it up all through the day. And then we end up with none left at the end of the day. And that’s why we all have domains we purchased at 3am that we’re never going to use in the rest of our life. I’m sure you don’t have to look far around your household to find a few.

Anita: I’ve kind of imagine who you’re talking about.

James: Definitely not talking about Andre Chaperon because him and I used to laugh about how many domains he actually acquired. And I put my hand up and say, I owned over 2000 domains at one point. And some of them are purchased on an empty bucket of willpower. So it’s great. I’m really interested in the buckets, if we have the willpower bucket, the inflammation bucket and Ryan Levesque’s ASK bucket, we’re fully bucketed.

What’s coming next…

Let’s catch up on the next episode. And we’ll talk about eating and discomfort, and all those good things. So thank you so much, Anita. Again, check out Anita’s program if you’ve enjoyed this discussion. Go to SuperFastBusiness.com/Anita and you’ll be able to discover her program and how it works.

I have been lucky enough to have received direct help from Anita in taking control of my own health and turning my doctors from the bow-dow-and-praise-lord-gods-of-health to just being more of a consultant. And I’ve actually had to do some educating along the way with the help of Anita and I’ve been getting blood works and things, and being able to defy the medical system in certain cases with getting results that they said we’re not going to be achievable. So let’s keep it coming. A few more episodes from us, Anita.

Anita: Yeah, I’m looking forward, just to kind of to throw this in, our favorite topic, DNA, is going to be coming up in the next episode because I want to give you some ideas about how to use your DNA to design your bespoke nutrition protocol.

James: I love that. I just spoke at an event recently, and I explained, you know, we’ve got all these self-help books and information programs on mindset and spirituality and meditation, everyone’s talking about the software component. But what hardware are we? Like, what system are we actually running here? What’s this software in? And if we could find out what we are, like are we a Mac? Are we a PC? Like, what is our body? And the DNA was just such a lightning bolt for me, it’s like a reveal. It’s like, Hey, here’s what you’ve been running around in for the last 40 odd years. And this is where it’s most suitable, this is where you’re going to struggle a bit. It’s like the instructions on the packet where it says, you know, do not leave in direct sunlight. Like, you finally get some instructions or details or specs of what you actually are. It’s just such a powerful metaphor. Okay. I’ll catch up with you on the next episode and speak to you soon.

Anita: Thanks, James.

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