#40: What They Don't Teach You in Med School: Biohacking and Rapid Recovery Tips

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Wade Lightheart (00:00:00):

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. It's Wade T. Lightheart with the Awesome Health Podcast, and I am excited, delighted. We're here at the Bio Home with Dr. Barrett a world renowned, I would say, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, who just worked on me 13 days ago, and we're going to get into that in a minute, but he specializes in aesthetic and reconstructive surgery of the face, nose and body. His passion is providing natural results with minimal downtime, utilizing holistic approaches.

Wade Lightheart (00:00:33):

He has developed detailed scar management protocols and closure techniques to reduce the appearance of scars for his patients. What's really unique is you're kind of like at the crossroads. I'm going to just put this away. You're kind of at the crossroads of where biohacking side of things, and these people trying to accelerate healing and recovery and reduce anti-aging from an internal side with an external kind of aesthetic look that you're kind of combining those two things and it's really unique, and it's one of the reasons that I chose you as a surgeon. How did you get there?

Daniel Barrett (00:01:11):

You know, it's kind of interesting. I went through a good standard medical school, Western practice of medicine where we would learn all about the pharmaceutical ways to like treat certain diseases and then you go on and you pick your specialty in surgery and you don't really learn anything about nutrition. You certainly don't learn anything about like biohacking. You know what I mean? None of that stuff was around when I was in medical school, cold therapy, antioxidants or the benefits of sauna. None of that stuff was even published by that point when I was in medical school, and then you go on, you go to a surgical residency and you really just talk procedural things. What I realized is when I do surgery on people, there is a whole process that happens before and a whole process that happens after that affects the outcome of my surgeries.

Daniel Barrett (00:01:59):

I typically do a lot of cosmetic surgeries, some reconstructive surgeries, but what you'll notice is that someone who's prepared for surgery ahead of time with the appropriate nutrition, rest, lifestyle is going to do much better actually in surgery. I can even tell when I operate on somebody that's high inflammation, they bleed. It's very hard to stop bleeding during surgeries. If I'm doing a tummy tuck so forth, I'm struggling, and I'm like, "Gosh, this is really annoying, or the higher rate of complications with infections or bleeding afterwards, and I was like, "You know what, I need to kind of back up a little bit." Yes, of course these people, they don't have heart issues. We don't do any major risky surgeries for people if they have like previous heart attack, stuff like that, but I'm just talking like general overall wellness. Huge difference.

Daniel Barrett (00:02:45):

Then I get somebody like yourself that comes in and it's like beautiful. It's just like things just kind of line up perfectly. There's no real major bleeding, and you can tell the difference and nobody really talks about that. There's nothing that's published about it. You know, this is all just me and observational kind of studies that I'm witnessing. So I decided, I was like, "You know what? I need to take a step back. I need to kind of like look at the whole process so that we can kind of optimize the whole experience for our patients." Yes, I'm passionate about surgery and cosmetic surgery. That's kind of where my focus is, but these other things, especially some of your products, make a huge difference, and especially after surgery.

Daniel Barrett (00:03:30):

How did I come about that? I read a, it's a roundabout story, but I read a book called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. I don't know if you read that.

Wade Lightheart (00:03:40):

Oh yeah. I love David Goggins.

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Daniel Barrett (00:03:40):

Yeah. Then I was like, "This guy's really hardcore," and then partly, somehow there's a podcast and I listened to some podcast he was on, and then Ben Greenfield popped up and then your name popped up. So I just started listening to podcasts and your podcast and I was just like, "Wow." I was like, "There's this whole other world," and people were talking about fasting and the benefits of fasting. I was like, "That's crazy. That makes no sense because we're never taught that in medical school." I was like, "How does that make sense to deprive the body of nutrients? How is that supposed to be a good thing?"

Daniel Barrett (00:04:09):

We never really learn all the other stuff that goes along with why we should. Humans never evolved to eat three meals a day. So sometimes it's good to go to little feast and famine and stuff like that. So this whole world kind of opened up to me. It was like, "Maybe I can apply this to my patients to start getting better outcomes." As you know, that started to turn the dial in terms of my results and patient experience, the recovery times, rapid recovery techniques and things like that that we started incorporating. Even like your magnesium product, magnesium, we all know that I mean, you could talk about this product, but we don't get enough of it anymore because our diet is depleted.

Daniel Barrett (00:04:49):

Okay, yes, there's other magnesium forms out there, but yours is great, because it has all these seven different versions that get absorbed. I mean, tell me more if I'm missing anything.

Wade Lightheart (00:04:57):

You got it all.

Daniel Barrett (00:04:58):

Okay. I noticed the difference when I started taking yours, but I was just like, okay, why does someone get pain after a surgery? Especially, let's say a breast augmentation where we put an implant underneath a muscle. It's stretching out that muscle and you're getting muscle spasms. Why are we getting muscle spasms?

Daniel Barrett (00:05:15):

Maybe there's an acute or chronic depletion of magnesium. So we started giving our patients magnesium for breast augmentation, they wouldn't even need the opioid pain medication. Anytime you can kind of reduce your patient's need or pain needs for opioids, it's a great thing because opioids cause nausea and vomiting, they delay your healing, they cause constipation, all those bad things. So a simple, simple thing like magnesium really just gets people like feeling great and they sleep better because it helps with sleep, and then we talked about this previously, but it also helps with bowel function as well. So those three things is what I found. That just a simple thing like a good quality magnesium, how that makes a difference for patients.

Wade Lightheart (00:06:00):

It's so interesting because I went through surgery and walked myself through that, and I remember we go through standard procedures and you go to the pharmacy and they say, "Okay, you need a stool softener. You need an antibiotic and you need a pain opioid component," and I'm like, "No, don't need the pain thing. No, don't need the stool softener." I'll take the antibiotics. I believe in that. You're in a surgery, okay, I'm going to go run through the course like you suggested, then I'm going to get back on my probiotics after. I just breezed through the surgery and I have to put a caveat in there. So a couple years ago, my girlfriend, who's also a world champion in jujitsu, she came in for surgery. She had done all her researchers, really researcher, and said, "This is the guy. He's biohacking."

Wade Lightheart (00:06:46):

So I went to the office with her and saw how much different you were from, say, other plastic surgeons. You're also athletic on your own side. We can talk a little bit about that.

Daniel Barrett (00:06:57):

Sure.

Wade Lightheart (00:06:57):

So I'm like, "Okay, that's a guy that's talking my language outside." I don't know all this stuff in surgery. Yeah. I'm trusting you with that, but you get it on the other side, and I think you're kind of where the future is. I was at the Metabolic Health Summit a few weeks ago in Santa Barbara and it's literally the leading cutting edge research. It's hosted by Dominic D'Agostino. He's very famous, works with NASA, special forces, all this sort of stuff. All of these hardcore researchers bringing research to the summit, showing how medical doctors can actually get better outcomes for their patients, better outcomes, short-term, long-term and preventative side. The question that comes up for me is how many years did you spend to get to the position just to first be a doctor and then to be a plastic surgeon because surgery is a big deal, right?

Daniel Barrett (00:07:53):

Yeah. So, let's talk. So we had to do college, right? We had high school, and then we got college. College is four years. You got to do some prerequisite to get into medical school, and then medical school is four years on average. I did five years because I did a master's in health administration as well. So I got a master's and I got MD, and that was out of Virginia. I grew up in Virginia. Then I did an additional master's degree in physiology prior to getting into medical school, so most people don't do that, but I didn't quite have the caliber at that time coming out of my college to get straight into medical school. So I did four years of college, two years of master's and then five years at MD and master's. So I have two master's degrees and one MD degree. I know it's kind of a lot.

Wade Lightheart (00:08:36):

Then you got to get surgery specialized.

Daniel Barrett (00:08:37):

Then you have to actually match into surgery and plastic surgery's the most competitive. There's only 90 spots in the country for plastic and reconstructive residency. Yes, a lot of people-

Wade Lightheart (00:08:45):

There's only 90 spots-

Daniel Barrett (00:08:46):

90 spots.

Wade Lightheart (00:08:48):

... in the country?

Daniel Barrett (00:08:48):

In the country, yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:08:48):

Wow.

Daniel Barrett (00:08:49):

So just to give you an idea, my board scores were two standard deviations above average. That's how well you have to do on your boards.

Wade Lightheart (00:08:56):

That's a tough group of people to work [crosstalk 00:08:59].

Daniel Barrett (00:08:59):

Yeah. That's average in medical school. So you're already in some smart group of people. So I remember really studying hard for those board exams. So if you're thinking about going to medical school, or if you're thinking about going into residency, make sure you do well on your boards. That's one thing I'll say. So then thank God I got into plastic surgery. I came out to USC. I did six years in plastic and reconstruct- and I went straight through. A lot of people will take a couple extra years to do research, which is great if they're like that. I was more into the hands on. I love, I love doing surgery and so forth, and the county hospital's a great place to train.

Daniel Barrett (00:09:32):

A lot of people don't realize that plastic surgery, we get trained in general surgery before we kind of get into the finer elements of plastic surgery. So I mean, I was doing trauma cases. Gunshot victims get, we call them the homeboy drop offs. They drop off five or six of their buddies who all got shot and they all come in at the same time, and it's like a war zone. You're doing triage. I used to spend time in the burn unit. The L.A. County burn unit is the only major burn unit in this area.

Daniel Barrett (00:09:57):

So lots of crazy experience I had in terms of major, urgent, life threatening kind of things and reconstructive stuff, and then the finer elements of plastic surgery kind of evolve later in the training. There was no point that you would actually learn about optimization, I would say, except for one field and that was burn surgery and they focused intently on pre-albumin levels in humans in terms of their ability to heal from burn wounds. So they will do a test called the pre-albumin test. I don't know if that's something you've ever heard of.

Wade Lightheart (00:10:30):

It's interesting. It's used as a way to increase anabolism for body builders.

Daniel Barrett (00:10:36):

Oh, interesting.

Wade Lightheart (00:10:36):

So you use albumin, and of course that goes way back to Vince Gironda who figured that out back in the 40s, but then now that's one of the elements that will add for people who have difficulty increasing muscle mass.

Daniel Barrett (00:10:48):

Interesting. So that's kind of that-

Wade Lightheart (00:10:50):

So there's some recovery carryovers, I think, from performance-based athletics that can be applied also pre and post-ops.

Daniel Barrett (00:10:59):

Right. So here's the thing. So fast forward, we're doing, we're doing plastic surgery and I'm doing let's say a mommy makeover surgery where we're doing a breast lift or putting implants and doing 360 liposuction. That's a huge deal. You're going in, physically removing fat out of somebody's subcutaneous tissue, there's blood vessels, there's nerves involved. There's a lot of electrolyte abnormalities that happen when you do something like that, and then you can put a tummy tuck on top of that. So you got to be really careful when you do these combination surgeries. If the person's not really healthy, they don't heal so great, or sometimes they could get admitted to the hospital if they're having hypertension and stuff like that.

Daniel Barrett (00:11:42):

So you got to be careful if you're going to undergo a major surgery like that on somebody. A lot of people don't realize what's involved with that, and then the amount of nutrition that you need to heal after that is intense. I tell people you need at least 20% more calories to heal after surgery. One of the things that happens after surgery is people, they stop eating. Excuse me. That's the last thing you want to do is stop eating. You want be able to get nutrition so that your body can heal. Just like if you just ran a marathon or you did a major weightlifting session, you need nutrition right after.

Wade Lightheart (00:12:16):

You need recovery.

Daniel Barrett (00:12:17):

Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:12:18):

You need recovery. That's that's very interesting. So let's fast forward to you moved out of the traumatic care kind of zone and kind of cut your teeth in that very intense environment. Then you made the transition to aesthetics. So we have three things that we talk about Bioptimizers, aesthetics, performance and health.

Daniel Barrett (00:12:38):

Nice. I didn't know that.

Wade Lightheart (00:12:39):

It's kind of a mixture between those three things. Usually most people get started in aesthetics. Then their career goes on and they're just like, they got to perform. Then you kind of focus on health and if you get all of those, you kind of go back through the cycle again, and so that's how we ended up together is like, okay, I got aesthetics down on my body building career. I've worked on my performance side, now on my health side, but I had a lingering condition of say what's called gynecomastia, which about one in 10 men have that case.

Daniel Barrett (00:13:07):

Very common. I actually had it myself. I don't know if I told you that.

Wade Lightheart (00:13:10):

Yeah, you did.

Daniel Barrett (00:13:11):

Yeah, yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:13:11):

Yeah, I remember at the office. For those who don't know, well, how would you describe it?

Daniel Barrett (00:13:17):

Well, traditional gynecomastia is just overgrowth of glandular tissue. It could be in one breast or chest area or both. Most people are both. For myself, when I was like 16 years old, I noticed this breast growth tissue, I was like, "Oh, what the hell is this?"

Wade Lightheart (00:13:32):

Me too.

Daniel Barrett (00:13:32):

Yeah, it's just like this is super annoying. For me, it was so obvious at a younger age, it was when I wore a tee-shirt you could see it, and especially because it was asymmetric. It was definitely noticeable. When I grew up, we didn't have a whole lot of money at the time, we had Kaiser and they're like, "You should maybe go see a plastic surgeon to get this removed," and we couldn't do that. So I went to general surgeon at Kaiser. He made a big incision to kind of cut it out, left kind of like a shark bite there because he just takes a chunk of tissue. It did the job. They left a big, gnarly scar there, which at first I was kind of self-conscious about because as a man, sometimes you want to take your shirt off and first thing you do is someones like, "Oh, what's that on your chest," it kind of makes you self-conscious, and it did for a little while.

Daniel Barrett (00:14:16):

Kind of over it now. I don't really care, but later on in life, when I became a plastic surgeon, I was like, "There's got to be a better way to do this than making like a big incision." So I even learned the way that plastic surgeons do it and yes, we can confine it to the border of the areola, but there's still a scar there. So I actually did a lot of research and kind of implemented a technique that maybe only one other doctor was using in Texas. It's kind of a micro debridement technique, meaning we make a tiny little hole with a port on the side and we go in and we just kind of core out the glandular tissue. It's basically we go in there with like a drill that just kind of drills holes in the glandular tissue enough so that it just kind of sinks down and it doesn't create a shark bite and then gets rid of the tissue and you don't have a big scar.

Wade Lightheart (00:14:59):

If we want, we'll maybe show the surgery that he just did on me 13 days ago. Amazing. [crosstalk 00:15:04].

Daniel Barrett (00:15:07):

I know. I called him the night after he's like, "Yeah, everything's cool. Nothing's wrong." Most of my patients are like sleepy. They're like out of it from anesthesia, but I don't know, you probably have done a bunch of squats or something by that time.

Wade Lightheart (00:15:19):

I actually came home and I started moving the furniture in my living room. I think I was still coming off the anesthesia, and my girlfriend's like, "Hey, you probably shouldn't be moving the furniture around the house," [crosstalk 00:15:33].

Daniel Barrett (00:15:33):

No. Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:15:36):

I just kind of feel like doing something.

Daniel Barrett (00:15:37):

Sometimes you feel good after it, but-

Wade Lightheart (00:15:39):

I feel great.

Daniel Barrett (00:15:39):

Yeah, and you did fine.

Wade Lightheart (00:15:41):

No issues. No narcotics. Very little pain. The pain that I've experienced is not even commensurate with if I train my legs really hard and I got that torturous pain in my legs way worse than anything I experienced in the surgery that I have with you, and for people that don't know I've had this condition since I was 13 years old, I think I remember when it first started to come up. When it got to a certain part of my body building career, it was detrimental because they're very particular about aesthetics and assymetry and things like that. When you have that, it's often indicative of abuse of steroids will also accelerate it. Now I didn't have that issue, but it was still present, which gives you the illusion that maybe he's cheating or something like that.

Wade Lightheart (00:16:29):

So I wanted to get that out of the way. I'm going to do some competitions as an old guy real soon. So I waited. I was in the Canadian medical system as a former Canadian. They said, "Oh yeah, I just refer it out and get this done," and I had seen a lot of guys, because I was subjected to a lot of people getting plastic surgery as a bodybuilder, because it's quite common and it's an aesthetically driven sport. Most of the jobs were bad. I remember going, "The technology's going to improve. The technology's going to improve." Then after I saw such great results [Adalita 00:17:09], when she went, then I was like, oh man, this is the guy, and now I'm finally ready to do that at 50.

Daniel Barrett (00:17:16):

Right.

Wade Lightheart (00:17:17):

I waited until I was 50. So I was like, I waited. I'm slow to the game.

Daniel Barrett (00:17:21):

I wish I had the operation that you had. You know what I mean? So I'm glad you came around and or you waited because some of those scars and those things, they can cause major disfigurement, as you saw. So I'm glad it worked out. Speaking of [Adalita 00:17:36], I mean she's also one of the people that just is these magic recoverers, you know what I mean?

Wade Lightheart (00:17:39):

Correct.

Daniel Barrett (00:17:40):

Again, I see all spectrums of people and this is just observation. I don't do any studies on this, but she's clearly got it figured out with what she can do with the sauna and everything else, and she was on it and literally two or three days, she was like, perfectly fine.

Wade Lightheart (00:17:53):

That's what was remarkable for me because I'd seen also on the other side, I used to coach fitness competitors, lot of them do breast implants, things like that. There was a whole laundry list of potential complications, multiple surgeries, infections, disfigurement and she goes through this thing and it's like done. She's recovered. I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing."

Daniel Barrett (00:18:14):

So there are a lot of good surgeons out there, but you definitely, I try to incorporate a lot of the other stuff that goes with it, but there is some skill that comes to being meticulous in surgery and it makes a difference. Like how many layers are we closing incisions in? How precise are we with dissection? It's like, are we going in there bluntly if we're just trying to speed up and do things on the rough or are you really taking your time? I always kind of like to really take my time to make sure things are like done just meticulously, perfect because I like to go home at the end of the day and really feel good about what I did. It's like is this the best work that I could have done every single day?

Daniel Barrett (00:18:47):

I'm passionate about that. I'm passionate about each individual person that I get to kind of touch in their lives, and I think you want to find a surgeon that does that because it's going to translate into higher quality work. But yes, there's also the other stuff that you want to, pre-optimization and then post-surgical optimization as well. All that stuff makes a difference too. I'll tell you about the pain thing. One thing we've learned from anesthesiologist is that if you pre=inject numbing medicine into any surgical site, it's kind of like it prevents a lot of the postoperative pain. So this is something that most surgeons should start to be doing. It's like an easy thing. If you get a splinter in your finger, it doesn't hurt right away. Then it starts to hurt a little bit later because of the up-regulation in the pain fibers.

Daniel Barrett (00:19:25):

So when you're under anesthesia, your mind's asleep, but your body still feels the surgery. So if you're going in to get a knee replacement and if they were to numb up your knee first before they did the knee replacement, your spinal cord doesn't feel the trauma because your spinal cord is still active during anesthesia. It's just your brain that's shut off. So if they were able to numb up the knee or, like I do, I numb up the surgical site prior to doing surgery, spinal cord doesn't feel it, your body doesn't feel it. You don't up-regulate your pain fibers afterwards. That's the key to taking a two-week breast augmentation recovery and shortening it down to like three days.

Wade Lightheart (00:19:59):

Wow.

Daniel Barrett (00:19:59):

Same thing with gynecomastia too.

Wade Lightheart (00:20:01):

Wow. That's a real breakthrough then.

Daniel Barrett (00:20:05):

Well, yeah, I mean it's well known. It's like the anesthesiologist talk about it all the time. They're like, "Hey, this study says, if you pre-inject a site with numbing medicine, postoperative pain goes way down." That's an easy one.

Wade Lightheart (00:20:17):

I'm so curious. So you moved into the plastic surgery area, opened a place and probably the most plastic surgery oriented place in Beverly Hills.

Daniel Barrett (00:20:25):

The harshest place [crosstalk 00:20:27].

Wade Lightheart (00:20:26):

In a very difficult environment. People make their living on how they look. Let's face that like. Cameras are unforgiving. The Hollywood scene is unforgiving, that whole industry, and of course it influences not just with the people in the acting field, but all the people that are associated. So there's a trickle down effect. You go to Beverly Hills, you can see everybody looks perfect and you're like, what's going on here?

Daniel Barrett (00:20:51):

Right.

Wade Lightheart (00:20:52):

You're one of the guys in there.

Daniel Barrett (00:20:54):

Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:20:54):

What was that like kind of breaking into that market as a plastic surgeon, moving over from you said the trauma side, but also bringing in these other elements that are kind of unique to accelerating the results, both preoperative and postop.

Daniel Barrett (00:21:09):

Yeah. I think there was a kind of phase, right? So the first phase is like survival. You're the little kid on the block, new kid on the block, this guy from Virginia that's self starting, self-funding. I'll tell you, I was moonlighting at Kaiser. I'm always grateful for Kaiser, even though they did my gynecomastia surgery way back when, but I'm very grateful. I would Moonlight when I first started for at least the first two years, three years of my practice. I would go to Kaiser at nighttime and moonlight in general surgery, and during the day I'd go in and I'd see patients in my practice and work on little things like the Google ads or work on the Yelp reviews and work on all these little things to start because it was all self-funded. It wasn't until like two or three years later, I actually could sleep in my bed at home every single night. I didn't realize until later how detrimental that is really to not really sleep at night.

Wade Lightheart (00:22:03):

Want to know the importance of sleep, go be a surgeon.

Daniel Barrett (00:22:05):

I know, I know. So I got really good at it, but eventually I was just like, I need my focus during work. At that point, there was enough revenue coming in. When you first get in, you develop a reputation, and you're not going to get A-list celebrities. Randomly I got a couple, but it was just by working really hard. They say if you survive the first six months in Beverly Hills, then you can make it. So I made it in the first six months, but it didn't end there. We still work really hard and we believe in excellence results, but your reputation takes years to kind of develop before you start getting celebrity clientele and people like yourself.

Daniel Barrett (00:22:44):

I think what you want to try to do is be yourself and bring into your practice things that you think are important. For me, it is that kind of holistic approach. It is natural looking results. I don't feel good at the end of the day if I go home and I make somebody look unnatural. If someone goes to the beach or the pool and someone can pick out the work that they have had done, then I feel like I've failed. My job is to kind of make things kind of be in harmony with the person's body, whether it's a rhinoplasty, make it match kind of the overall look that they have versus giving somebody from Saudi Arabia a Christie Brinkley nose. It doesn't quite work, which there are doctors that do that. That's one kind of thing that they do.

Daniel Barrett (00:23:24):

So that's what I feel good about. I feel like it speaks to the people that come and see me. They want natural looking results, and then more recently, I was training in, I started in 2018, we had our first daughter and my brother came out to visit me. I was 200 pounds, and I was feeling like crap. Back in the day, I used to do some weights and run and stuff like that, but I was just like, "I got to get my health in shape." The L.A. Marathon ran right by, and so I downloaded an app. I was like, "I'm going to do this marathon next year," and so I did it and it felt great.

Daniel Barrett (00:23:55):

So I want to keep going, and that's when I was like, "I'm going to do an Ironman triathlon." That's when I started getting into more of the podcasts in terms of like health and performance. Then I was like, "You know what? Some of this stuff is actually really good for general health too." That's where I started kind of bringing in some of that stuff as I learned more about it to my patients. It was kind of a personal fitness journey that spurred it, and then that kind of brought into my awareness of it.

Wade Lightheart (00:24:21):

One of the things that was one of actually the hooks for me is that you do have an athletic background. You're out running marathons and doing triathlons. What was the journey like on that side of things? Because being a medical doctor, I think a lot of people underestimate the demands that are made on medical doctors. Then being a surgeon is another level because, literally, people are on anesthesia. A lot of things can go wrong in a surgery and you got to be really detailed and the level of precision required is extreme, and yet here you are also on top of that. My question is how did you find the time to run a clinic, do surgery and do triathlons, and how did that journey evolve and what were some of the things you learned?

Daniel Barrett (00:25:11):

Yeah. So it was kind of a breakthrough when I started that running. So I remember I would do surgery. I'd do eight, nine hours a day for surgery. Sometimes up to 10. I never really tried to stretch it because that to me, it's like an athletic performance.

Wade Lightheart (00:25:26):

It is.

Daniel Barrett (00:25:26):

You need to be focused. You need to be dexterous. It's not so much like a sprint. It's not so much like shooting hoops, but it is in some ways, you know what I mean?

Wade Lightheart (00:25:34):

There like a flow state or rhythm to it?

Daniel Barrett (00:25:36):

Yeah, total flow state. I'll get quiet during a surgery. I'm kind of specific about the music I like to have.

Wade Lightheart (00:25:41):

Think we got a little fly here that joined us. He's interested in getting some augmentation.

Daniel Barrett (00:25:47):

Yeah, getting some Botox. Can check him out. So definitely, I'll listen to music that is kind of just beats, no lyrics, because I don't engage my mind other than my motor control and everything else. So I'll get into flow during surgeries and then I'll have a break and then we'll go into the next surgery, and by the end of the day, I realized I was exhausted, I'd have lower back pain. When I started running, I all of a sudden had more energy and I was more focused during my surgeries. I was like, "Oh, this is cool." Yes, I'm taking more time to do running, but now it's giving me more time with my capabilities at work. So doing that training with running increased my ability, my efficiency in surgery. I also did a couple other things. I know.

Wade Lightheart (00:26:30):

That little fly is getting to me.

Daniel Barrett (00:26:34):

I also started doing some meditation as well. I did trance ... I don't know if you-

Wade Lightheart (00:26:36):

Transcendental.

Daniel Barrett (00:26:37):

Transcendental meditation. That kind of helped me in the flow state as well, helped me kind of stay focused, keep my mind off things. So that immediately impacted my ability to work, and then also the business side of things as well. I could be more focused and get more things done. I also have three kids now and that was the other thing.

Wade Lightheart (00:26:56):

How old are your kids?

Daniel Barrett (00:26:56):

They're four years old, two years old and seven months now.

Wade Lightheart (00:27:01):

Oh wow. So relatively new.

Daniel Barrett (00:27:02):

Right. So then I learned a lot about discipline and I was like, once I had my first daughter, I was like, I became so much more efficient with my time. It was incredible. So I was just like, you know what, it's like, we have all this time in a day, and then I just became way more efficient with my time. I'd wake up at 4:30 every morning and I'd get my fitness done before the kids even wake up and guess what? That gives me energy for the rest of the day. So it does get a little draining when I'm doing a four hour cycle session, which I was going to ask you is like, where do you draw the line when it comes to performance and health and longevity? Because they crisscross, right? Because if you do way too much exercise or something, isn't it bad for you?

Wade Lightheart (00:27:41):

It is. So Peter Attia talks about this specifically, of course. He was a high level endurance cyclist and got completely bagged out from that whole thing and started looking at it, and so when you get to about the top 2.5 percentile, in that top range, that's when the benefits start to diminish because the cost of performance at the highest level starts to have a deleterious effect on the body. So the three areas that I share with people that you want to get to is you want to get into that top 2.5 percentile of muscle mass. That's an issue for longevity. You want to be in the top 2.5% in your cardiovascular health, and you probably want to be in the top 2.5 range for flexibility because that's going to increase your range of motion.

Wade Lightheart (00:28:37):

Then if you have those, the likelihood that you're going to be in the top 2.5% of bone density is going to be there, and those are the elements that are associated with not just living long, but having a very high quality. We call it the biospan. It's like, I don't know how if we can extend the life beyond say 120. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. There's lots of people working on that. That's not my field. I'm very confident we can extend the quality of life for the time that a person has, and we could probably offset a lot of the preventative stuff. I think it was Olshanky in The New England Journal of Medicine back in the early 2000s. It was during the Bush administration. He released a paper and said that the disability adjusted life expectancy of America was now 60 years old, even though the life expectancy was 80.

Wade Lightheart (00:29:29):

So that means you're spending a quarter of your life in some sort of compromised condition where you're not able to do the things you want, play with the kids, be with the grandkids, have fun. Maybe you're on some sort of medication, and there's a whole range of consequences there. It doesn't even talk about the impact on how you view life, how you see life, how you experience life, your capability to contribute to society. So if you look at the real cost, it's probably trillions of dollars and who knows how much you lost a happy time, which I think everybody wants to be a happy person. Also, the things that you found overall on your day to day schedule that have contributed to you're being able to perform at the highest level, both as a family man, as a surgeon and as an athlete, what are the things that you've picked up along the way. [crosstalk 00:30:29] time management obviously.

Daniel Barrett (00:30:31):

Yeah. I mean, it all started with David Goggins and the book Can't Hurt Me. I highly recommend it. He is a little bit intense.

Wade Lightheart (00:30:34):

He's very intense. Yeah. A little bit intense [crosstalk 00:30:36].

Daniel Barrett (00:30:36):

Yeah, I know. I just realized it's like, you know what? I was like, I have no damn excuses. I don't have any. So I just stopped making excuses for stuff. I said I'm just going to wake up at 4:30. I read a book, 5:00 AM Club, it's like, look at all the really successful people. They get so much done in that first hour of the day that most people are still sleeping. Then I would go on these runs, and I still do where everybody's sleeping in their houses and I'm out there getting a good run and listening to an audio book.

Wade Lightheart (00:31:03):

How often do you run?

Daniel Barrett (00:31:05):

At least two to three times a week, and then other days I'll cycle, and then I swim as well. So I mean I'm full on in triathlon. I have the Kona Ironman World Championship coming up in October.

Wade Lightheart (00:31:14):

Wow. That's the biggie, right?

Daniel Barrett (00:31:15):

I know. That's the big one.

Wade Lightheart (00:31:16):

Have you done that one before?

Daniel Barrett (00:31:16):

No, I haven't done that one.

Wade Lightheart (00:31:17):

So that's like your first time. It's not easy to even get qualified for that, right?

Daniel Barrett (00:31:21):

Exactly. Yeah. It's not an easy one to even get into, and it's one of the hardest ones to do because the heat and humidity. So just doing a marathon is one thing, and then to do a marathon at the end of a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike ride, and then a marathon all in 80 degree weather, high humidity. So it's just like, that's a 10 to 11 hour race depending on how fast you are. That's why I think this is going to be it for me, and then I'm kind of back down. So the top things. So I think reading, trying to get as much new information, listening to podcasts, just always keeping an open mind to some of these things. When you came into my office with your girlfriend and you mentioned some of your stuff, I was like, "All right, let me just check this out."

Wade Lightheart (00:32:08):

That's what was so unique about, was so impressive. I said, "Hey, you know what? There's definite better outcomes if you use proteolytic enzymes like [crosstalk 00:32:18]-

Daniel Barrett (00:32:18):

I know.

Wade Lightheart (00:32:18):

... and some of these elements. "Here, why don't you try these out," and boom, you get incorporated right away.

Daniel Barrett (00:32:23):

I know, but you don't understand, the implications this has for mainstream health is intense. There's another podcast that I think is Isabelle Wentz who talks about, she's called the thyroid pharmacist. She talks about how digestive enzymes cured her Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

Wade Lightheart (00:32:37):

That's right.

Daniel Barrett (00:32:38):

It's like, a lot of people don't realize that many of these autoimmune disorders, they get caused in the gut, and I get so many patients that come to me, they have thyroid, they're on Synthroid because their thyroid's burnt out. I'll ask them, I was like, "What are you doing for your thyroid?" They're like, "Oh, I take Synthroid." I was like, "Has your doctor ever tried to figure out why your thyroid burnt out in the first place?" You know what I mean? She's like, "No." How come people don't even want to ask that? I was like, "Why the hell did this even happen?" It's because your body produced antibodies most likely against your thyroid and attacked it. It's like, "Why did that happen?" Well, probably because you had a leaky gut and you let all these proteins in that mimicked proteins in your thyroid. That's probably what happened. So, I actually had myself, growing up in Virginia, we eat Pop Tarts for breakfast. Nitrites in hot dogs. It was like horrible. Coca-Cola.

Wade Lightheart (00:33:31):

I get it.

Daniel Barrett (00:33:32):

I don't know if you had the same thing.

Wade Lightheart (00:33:34):

I think a lot of people in [crosstalk 00:33:34]-

Daniel Barrett (00:33:34):

White bread.

Wade Lightheart (00:33:36):

I was a little bit lucky that my mom had an organic garden, but that was pretty common amongst my friends and things like that. My mom was unique. So I got lucky.

Daniel Barrett (00:33:43):

Amazing. Oreo cookies and milk, like regular pasteurized milk from God knows what, that was what we had for dessert. I had horrible allergies coming out of Virginia. When I came to California, it got some improvement, but then like even out of residency, after I got past all the sleep, I was focused on that, I still had like 20 food sensitivities. I started testing that and I was like, "What the hell's wrong with me?" I think we chatted about it, and you're like, "You should check out IgY Max and see what that can do for you." I was already doing the probiotics and prebiotics, and I was like, "All right, let me try that." So I started taking this, I started doing morning and night and then I incorporated some fasting with it. I think December of last year, after taking this, all my food sensitivities went away except for two, and they're only moderate.

Wade Lightheart (00:34:27):

That's amazing.

Daniel Barrett (00:34:28):

I know. So it went from 20 severe down to like two.

Wade Lightheart (00:34:31):

Biome Breakthrough.

Daniel Barrett (00:34:33):

Yeah, so Biome Breakthrough, folks.

Wade Lightheart (00:34:34):

I'm not saying it, the doctor is.

Daniel Barrett (00:34:34):

Yeah, exactly. So I have an advantage in that I am a doctor and I have a master's in physiology, that I can actually kind of pierce through this stuff and find research and it's all there. I was like, "God, this makes so much sense," but nobody talks about this.

Wade Lightheart (00:34:50):

Well, you talked about your training.

Daniel Barrett (00:34:51):

Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:34:52):

It's not present in the training that you went through. How many years was your whole schooling?

Daniel Barrett (00:34:57):

I don't want to get in trouble, but it's all pharmaceutical brainwashing. It's only a small piece. I do believe there's a role for some pharmaceuticals.

Wade Lightheart (00:35:03):

Of course.

Daniel Barrett (00:35:03):

But I think it's overly done. They don't talk about your gut health, your gut and brain. So there was a study that came out about a year, a year and a half now ago, it said that if you take a single course of antibiotics, your rate of depression goes up by 50% six months later, no matter what. I'm like, I'm giving my patients a risk of depression by 50% if I just give them antibiotics, which I need to do because of the surgeries because I'm making a big possible thing happen for bacteria.

Wade Lightheart (00:35:29):

I took antibiotics after my surgery as instructed and then went right onto the probiotics.

Daniel Barrett (00:35:35):

Exactly. I'm like, now you're getting right back on it. I recommend the Biome Breakthrough for that because it does have the prebiotics, probiotics in the IgY Max. Then I had another, and so a lot of people don't realize that the autoimmune stuff is coming from the gut. So whether it's psoriasis, it's attacking your skin. Whether it's ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, it's attacking your gut. Whether it's diabetes, it could be attacking your pancreas or it could be attacking your self-surface markers, or it could be lupus that's attacking your blood cells, which I was starting to get lupus antibodies by the way. They all went away once I healed my gut. I had a patient who came in and I think I told you this, she's like, "Dr. Barrett, thanks for the great boobs. They're fantastic, but you cured my rheumatoid arthritis."

Daniel Barrett (00:36:13):

I was just like, "That's awesome." I'm just like, I feel good when I give people great boobs. I mean, because I want people to feel confident about their body, and that's what we get high off of, and it's kind of light and fluffy and energetic. The fact that I help cured, and you through your product, helped cure this woman's, or reduce her flares for the most part, to the non-existent point where she doesn't have to take these-

Wade Lightheart (00:36:33):

I'm not saying cure.

Daniel Barrett (00:36:34):

Yes. Yeah. So she doesn't have to take these ridiculous immunosuppressant medications that are just horrible for you, horrible for cancer down the line, which we know, which are all the side effects. She's like, "This is great." Just digestive enzymes and Biome Breakdown. So it's like, God, am I an alternative doctor now? What the hell, what's going on here? Or am I a plastic surgeon? So I don't know, I get pretty stoked about it, I teach people about intermittent fasting. Because I get a lot of people that want to feel better about their bodies, but they need to lose weight too.

Wade Lightheart (00:37:05):

Correct. That's what's unique. It's not just about, hey, we can do this surgery and get things done, but you got to deal with the things that got you there in the first place a lot of times.

Daniel Barrett (00:37:14):

Right. I'm different and, yes, it takes time, and my coordinator's like, "All here, he goes again. He's going to go on a spiel about him and fasting and gut health and all this other stuff," but I feel better when I do that because people actually listen to me and they're like, "You know what? I've lost 20 or 30 pounds and nothing else has ever worked for me, except for when I started doing intermittent fasting and starting to get control of my gut health and all this other stuff." There's no awareness of that. Maybe that's why we're getting on the podcast and we're kind of trying to preach about it, because the more people know about this, they could start doing these little basic things that can make a huge difference and get them through those roadblocks. Then of course I can come and take care of all the extra skin because that's-

Wade Lightheart (00:37:55):

That what you do.

Daniel Barrett (00:37:56):

We don't have a solution for that yet. Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:37:58):

What would you say to medical doctors, practitioners, people who have gone through a similar training that you've gone through and have heard about this stuff and are kind of concerned about it, they don't know how to interact in the clinic? What have you done? What were some of the challenges and maybe say, what were some of the benefits that came with that?

Daniel Barrett (00:38:18):

I get, because I'm on TikTok a lot, I get 1.9 million followers on TikTok and it's Barrett Plastic Surgery if you want to see it. It's mostly light funny stuff that we do, but I'll go after some people, and some of these doctors that are just, they're drinking the Kool-Aid. That's what I tell them. It's like you are drinking the pharmaceutical Kool-Aid. Snap out of it. I can say that because I'm a doctor. I've been through it, and I have the certifications of the crap that they were brainwashed and it's not their fault.

Wade Lightheart (00:38:43):

Right. It's not their fault.

Daniel Barrett (00:38:46):

It's not their fault, but this is what we're taught as dogma. You go through this ritualistic process of medical school and you're like, I have this special knowledge that the layperson or Wade Lightheart doesn't have because they didn't get to this point to learn all this stuff. You think, okay, this is the only way to do this, and then you're taught that all these Eastern medicine practices and all this other stuff is just quackery because there's no evidence-based papers that say this stuff works, but guess what? Now they're starting to get some evidence.

Daniel Barrett (00:39:15):

There's a lot of evidence-based papers out there, but you're just not taking the time to read it because you're kind of doing a self-bias. So you got to get out of that self-bias cycle and open up your mind to some of these things that, hey, this might work, and just like I thought about intermittent fasting, how I thought that was total nonsense, and then I actually looked, I was like, "Oh, there actually are some really good studies that say there's a lot of benefits to doing this in certain situations, in many situations."

Wade Lightheart (00:39:41):

Where are the studies and information that you source out as a medical doctor that you see credible as a way of saying, hey, that's something that solid, it's a well done research with good outcomes, it's a well designed study that's defensible, and I can say, you know what, I can experiment with this enough to give something to try. What's the standards for a medical doctor?

Daniel Barrett (00:40:04):

So it does come with years of reading papers, and I do have a research background, I can look at a good study. I can look at a study that's poor. A good study is a double randomized controlled prospective study that's taking two groups of people and they're both getting different interventions and they're being followed over time. The structure of the methodology, that's why if you look at a paper, you got to look at the methods and it's like the least fun thing to look at, but it's like, "All right, how do they actually select their control group and everything else?" So I think people just kind of need to ... I mean, I search on PubMed, but again, the problem with the internet is you Google anything, you're like is magnesium good for you? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Is magnesium bad for you? Yes, it's bad for you. It's bad for you.

Wade Lightheart (00:40:52):

Correct. You get this variance in your-

Daniel Barrett (00:40:55):

You'll find an article that actually says exactly what you want to do, but I think the key is show me this study. So my advice to people is find an actual study that looked at a group of people, and then, okay, how many people were in that study.

Wade Lightheart (00:41:10):

What's a good amount minimum?

Daniel Barrett (00:41:12):

I mean, it's hard. It's like there was a medication that just came out, a immune modulation medication, I think it was called [DAP 00:41:21]. It was just in the news. It cured some forms of rectal cancer, complete remission. I don't know if you've heard about this.

Wade Lightheart (00:41:27):

I've actually heard, I've seen some of the research on that. I don't know how to determine-

Daniel Barrett (00:41:32):

I know.

Wade Lightheart (00:41:33):

... is this going to get a traction trend or is it something that's a marketing agent coming out of the pharmaceutical industry, right?

Daniel Barrett (00:41:39):

I think it's real, but it's very specific into the type of cancer that it actually does, but the study had five people with this particular type of rectal cancer. It was really aggressive, and there really wasn't much other option, and it put it into remission where they had no evidence of it. So that was actually where the study was only five people, but it's like how are you going to get 500 people with this type of rectal cancer? You know what I mean? You're not going to get it, so you kind of have to look at that, but if you have something like, okay, what's the rate of depression with somebody who takes a probiotic and a prebiotic on a regular basis versus somebody who doesn't? That should be an easy study to find somewhere, and you can see that.

Wade Lightheart (00:42:16):

We did that with Cognibiotics. That was how we leveraged some of our research with our lab team, showing that about 95% of your serotonin, for example, is produced by your bacteria in your gut. So if you use an antibiotic, which it just strip bombs everything to make sure that you want to kill the bad guys, the good guys, whatever. Post antibiotic treatment, a lot of people don't think about as I need to replenish my probiotics, otherwise I could run into a variety of complications and I'm not here to discredit antibiotics. They've saved millions of lives and most of us are here because of them over the last 80 years or so. The thing is prior to and after, what can we do to enhance our microbiome? I'm happy that we're in that conversation now on a wider scale and medical doctors are getting into that conversation.

Daniel Barrett (00:43:10):

Yeah, the are.

Wade Lightheart (00:43:10):

Which was not the case when I started this company 18 years ago.

Daniel Barrett (00:43:14):

Right. I can't imagine what it was like 18 years ago.

Wade Lightheart (00:43:16):

Well, a lot of the criticisms are warranted. There's a tremendous amount of me too companies using pseudoscience or very flimsy claims and white labeling hopes in a bottle. I would say upwards of 90% to 95% of companies would fall under that category. Then usually what will happen is people will go to the store, they read an article on Google or they read an article in Men's Fitness or they read an article, whatever their source of information, Vanity Fair, who knows it.

Daniel Barrett (00:43:51):

Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:43:51):

X nutrient is good for you. They go, "Oh, I have that. That might be beneficial for me." They walk into their commercial nutrition store, and there's three different types of products on that. One's at $100, one's at $50, and one's at $20, and they go, "Wow, looks the same to me. I'll take the $20 one," right?

Daniel Barrett (00:44:13):

Yeah.

Wade Lightheart (00:44:14):

So there is a capture component in business that captures the low hanging fruit. In other words, they're looking to make a buck on margins. It's based on what the shareholders need to make, and the dominance, the shareholders, it's not about the individual person. So when Matt, my business partner and I started Bioptimizers and I had worked through all levels of the nutrition industry and there was a common trend, and this is what I find. You see this in disease treatment and you see it also in the best nutrition companies. Usually there's a founder's story, had some sort of challenge tried to solve that challenge, went through the hero's journey and that challenge, solved that problem and started sharing it with other people who had that journey.

Wade Lightheart (00:45:01):

They became the mentor at that point and built a company around it to serve the needs of those people and grew. That's exactly what we did. Almost all the companies that I advocate, because I don't just advocate my products, there's a variety of companies that I say, hey, they make great vitamin C, they make great, essential fatty acids, they do whatever. That story is across the board in all of them because when you do decide that you're going to make a superior product that has the efficacy, the margins are not the same. You can't spend as much money on marketing, but you're hoping to get to the right people who are doing their due diligence, and then as they experience the benefits of the product, either stay on the product or they start sharing the product or both. That's literally how we've built our business over 18 years, and now we're kind of well respected around the world.

Daniel Barrett (00:45:55):

I feel like if you're really passionate about your work and your product, you feel better at the end of the day that you're delivering the best product that you possibly can.

Wade Lightheart (00:46:01):

Exactly.

Daniel Barrett (00:46:02):

That's the feeling that I got when I met you and I learned about your products. I remember I had a person in the office who helped with a lot of products that we carried, and she's like, "This magnesium that you have from Bioptimizers, there's a less expensive version that we can white label." I'm like, "All right, well let see what it is." I was just like, "All right, it's just got mag citrate in it." I was just like, "All right, that's not going to work."

Wade Lightheart (00:46:25):

Well, my deal with the stool issue-

Daniel Barrett (00:46:27):

Yeah, I know. Exactly. So I was just like, no. I was just like, "I'm not going to recommend something in my office under my name that it's not the best possible thing, and I wouldn't take it myself." You know what I mean? So that's, that's why we have a lot of your stuff in our office. I don't, is there anything else that you think would really work? Because what I do, I have my patients start, prior to surgery, I have them start on the digestive enzyme, just tell them take four with every meal at least two weeks prior and then take it for the rest of your life if you want.

Daniel Barrett (00:46:55):

Then the same with the Biome Breakthrough. One scoop in the morning, one scoop at night a week before, and then six weeks after, however long you want to do it, and then I'd have them do the magnesium twice a day, at least once or twice a day after surgery. I find that that helps them out a lot. Is there anything else out there that you think is kind of missing in terms of, in your mind, being that you've gone through surgery now, that might help with recovery that you guys could suggest?

Wade Lightheart (00:47:19):

Yeah. The P3-OM, it's a proteolytic probiotic, which most probiotics aren't.

Daniel Barrett (00:47:28):

I take that personally by myself.

Wade Lightheart (00:47:31):

I hope I'm not talking out of school or my PhD researchers are going to do ... we did some experimentation by using antibiotics on a variety of different bacteria cultures, and we're going to be releasing that paper in the future about what strains get wiped out and what strains are extremely resilient. What I can say is P3-OM, it's a next generation type of probiotic, and so it's a patented probiotic. Basically, we put it through a mutation process where it was subjected to a highly toxic environment. We ran a sign wave through it, and then you have a percentage that's left over and then you grow those on special food mediums. So different probiotics respond to different prebiotics. Then we'll grow and divide and create different results. So P3-OM, we call it the Navy Seals of probiotics because it is the toughest probiotic that we have found when subjected to all sorts of conditions that someone would be if they were going through surgery or going through care of antibiotics.

Daniel Barrett (00:48:28):

Got it.

Wade Lightheart (00:48:29):

We use it also because undigested proteins are one of the biggest contaminants that get into the bloodstream and cause all these inflammatory-based conditions. So we'll hook you up with some and you can play around with it with your clients and see what the outcomes are.

Daniel Barrett (00:48:46):

Cool.

Wade Lightheart (00:48:46):

That's what's really neat about what you're doing, is you're actually seeing people go through what I would say, a controlled trauma. At the end of the day, surgery is a trauma and the body heals itself. It's capacity to heal itself is largely determined, the health of the individual and the quality of the nutrition and the adherence to the things that will allow you to recover better. Some of those are what you do nutrition-wise and some of those are what we do in what we call the biohacking world. It's a lot of fun because I think we're at a breakthrough, and that's what I loved about the Metabolic Health Summit is here's hardcore researchers, people with the type of background that you have that are leveraging these type of things in the real world to produce better outcomes for their patients and just a massive amount of disciplines out there. It's neat.

Daniel Barrett (00:49:43):

There's also another interconnection there in terms of beauty.

Wade Lightheart (00:49:45):

Right. Yeah. Let's talk about that.

Daniel Barrett (00:49:47):

Yeah. So it's like you see, what's his name? Sinclair. I forget his name. DR. Sinclair.

Wade Lightheart (00:49:54):

David Sinclair.

Daniel Barrett (00:49:54):

David Sinclair, yeah. He's in his 50s.

Wade Lightheart (00:49:57):

Yeah, he looks amazing.

Daniel Barrett (00:49:58):

Yeah, he looks great.

Wade Lightheart (00:49:58):

Anti-aging guy.

Daniel Barrett (00:49:59):

Yeah, he's totally anti-aging guy. He's taking, I think, what's the name of that blood sugar medication?

Wade Lightheart (00:50:08):

Metformin.

Daniel Barrett (00:50:08):

Metformin, yeah. Stuff like that that I wouldn't take because I'm trying to train for a triathlon, but his focus is antiaging. One of the things is the things that help you prevent aging also help retain beauty and help with wrinkles and all these other things. There's a crossover there. So just by exercising, you're delaying gene expression that happens in your fourth and fifth decade of life that contributes to certain things like temporal hollowing, frontal bone loss, maxillary retrusion, these things that are delayed when simple thing, when you're just doing exercise. I think it's, I can't remember the NFR, one of the NFR pathways that is responsible for that. So there's little things of biohacking that can actually affect beauty. There's of course things we know about, like a lot of sun exposure on the face is not great because it breaks down collagen.

Wade Lightheart (00:51:00):

I got that one.

Daniel Barrett (00:51:01):

Yeah. I do think a little bit of sunshine is actually beneficial. You probably agree with me on that. There's a lot of things you can do, but I think if people get their inflammation in their body down, their beauty, you'll see people, their inner beauty will come through. They won't need to wear makeup as much. They won't get acne on their face. It all comes from internal health and wellness, I think.

Wade Lightheart (00:51:26):

Well, that's part of the recognition system, if you look at genetic replicability, which is what determines beauty is how symmetry, health, vibrancy, all that stuff-

Daniel Barrett (00:51:38):

Getting deep. You're going deep.

Wade Lightheart (00:51:38):

That's well known in literature and evolutionary biology, and if you look at what Brett Weinstein is talking about in evolutionary biology from a Monarch butterfly can determine variance in symmetry by like one ten millionth. You think, oh, how beautiful are Monarch butterflies? Well that's because of the selection process of a Monarch butterfly program.

Daniel Barrett (00:52:03):

I didn't even know that.

Wade Lightheart (00:52:04):

Yeah, and then if you look at what Dr. Jordan Peterson, the psychologist from Canada, somewhat controversial, I think he's great. He starts expressing these things about trait identification and these are precognitive determinants of how people respond to people. There's a reason why so many people, Hollywood celebrities or successful people in the cosmetically dependent world, they have those symmetrical portions. Now what you're able to do at your clinic is to course correct, I guess, some of those things and make people feel better about that and give them better outcomes. So what's that like?

Daniel Barrett (00:52:48):

Again, I take a holistic approach here because if you're going out and you're having benders every night at the club and you're drinking a lot-

Wade Lightheart (00:52:55):

Nobody does that in Hollywood.

Daniel Barrett (00:52:56):

Yeah, I know. You'd be surprised who comes in the office. I have people come in and smelling alcohol on the breath. I'm like, "The best thing you can do for your beauty right now is get some sleep. You know what I mean? You're going to pay me $1,500 to $2,000 to put some filler in your under eye? Where is your priorities here? It's just like, I feel like I'm putting a bandaid on your lifestyle. I get people that are like that. I get people that come in that have just wicked allergies. They don't even realize it's allergies and they, and they think they just need filler underneath their eye, and I'm like, "Have you checked if you have a sensitivity to dust mites? Have you put a dust mite cover on your pillow?" Because they'll have it on one side of their face and these things, they haven't even popped up in their mind.

Daniel Barrett (00:53:40):

People that never been taught that a diet filled with carbs all the time and processed foods is really inflammatory for their skin or especially young kids. Even women that come into my office that are 30 years old and they have acne. I was like, "There is no reason you should be having acne in your third decade of life. You guys shouldn't be having it.." it's like, "Have you looked at what you're doing, what you're eating, all this other stuff?" They're caking on more makeup and more makeup that's all comedogenic and is causing even more breakouts. It's just like, "We got to kind of stop this cycle, get your body healthy, get your skin healthy, and then we can kind of start doing some other corrective stuff on top of that," like micro-needling, which is great, which is basically stimulating healing response. It's taking tiny little needles, punctuating it into the skin and you can put PRP, which is platelet rich plasma, or even now, exosomes, which is actually even cooler.

Wade Lightheart (00:54:31):

Yeah, exosomes or VCells. My business partner, Matt just went through surgery using VCells.

Daniel Barrett (00:54:35):

Oh wow.

Wade Lightheart (00:54:37):

Dr. [Marcella 00:54:37] down in Austin, Texas. I had a conversation with her. I'm like cautious one. I'm like, "Well, let's see what happens and see [crosstalk 00:54:45]."

Daniel Barrett (00:54:45):

Like injecting exosomes?

Wade Lightheart (00:54:46):

Yeah, and they were doing micro-needling. So exosomes, they're running a laser at a certain frequency range. That seems to activate them even more so, so they call them these-

Daniel Barrett (00:54:57):

Oh, really?

Wade Lightheart (00:54:57):

Yeah. So she's having extraordinary outcomes. So he just got it done, and I don't think he minds me saying that because he put it on his Instagram account. Two things happened. One, he had torn his Achilles tendon and he recovered in record time-

Daniel Barrett (00:55:15):

Wow.

Wade Lightheart (00:55:15):

... after surgery because of all these things that we advocate. Then, as well as all the biohacking stuff that we advocate as well. Then he went in and got the VCells and he said he had a little bit of nerve numbness. They probably nicked it a little bit when he got his surgery done on the Achilles.

Wade Lightheart (00:55:34):

Within two days that was gone, but what was striking from the beauty standpoint is he got micro-needling around his eye. So he was similar to me, got all the wrinkles and all that sort of stuff coming up, and I know this guy. First, it looked like he was in a UFC fight the next day. I said, "Buddy," we love the UFC, and I'm like, "Wow, looks like you were in a UFC fight," and he's like, "No, I got this treatment." Then literally I think it was four or five days later, and I'm on Zoom with him all the time, I looked at him, I'm like, "Dude, you look like 10 years younger." He's like, "Yeah, that's what all my friends are saying." I couldn't believe the difference of outcomes.

Daniel Barrett (00:56:12):

Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about an industry, it's the beauty industry getting into this regenerative medicine type of stuff, where some people are even getting stem cells IV. I don't do that, but I found early on that for hair restoration. Some men's scalp, I'll actually transfer fat cells that have adipose derived stem cells and watch like 50% of the hair regrow.

Wade Lightheart (00:56:35):

Wow.

Daniel Barrett (00:56:36):

Yeah, crazy stuff, but now you can start to get some of that with just exosome injections. You know what I mean? You don't even have to harvest fat. So there's a lot of great regenerative stuff that's happening like that.

Wade Lightheart (00:56:48):

So, well, before we wrap things up, I want to ask you about, what do you see happening in the future, say over the next 20 years with the fusion between these? Do you think that's going to come together or they still going to stay separate in these camps?

Daniel Barrett (00:57:05):

So it's tough because here's the thing is you got a governmental agency called the FDA. I don't want to really kind of raise any flags on this podcast, but it's just like if something's not FDA approved, like this is not FDA approved.

Wade Lightheart (00:57:18):

Correct.

Daniel Barrett (00:57:19):

It's like this, in my opinion, is a better treatment for a lot of things than stuff that's actually FDA approved. Getting a cold shower is more effective in the research that I've seen or cold therapy once a day is more effective than any single antidepressant medication. There's a study that actually showed that. Just a single dose of cold therapy every single day is more effective than taking a single antidepressant a day. There's a study for that. I'm not making that up, but there is some truth to that because if you ever take a cold shower, you feel great afterwards, as you know.

Daniel Barrett (00:57:53):

So I'm optimistic, but I'm cautiously optimistic. I think with a lot of the media outlets that people have now where we can kind of get this information out, the more that we get this out, whether it's on Instagram, these gorilla tactics that we're doing where it's not taking up into these medical societies the traditional route, it has to be FDA approved and all this other stuff, I think we might be able to move to dial. Because previously people couldn't get this information out. Right now I can go on to TikTok and I can look up how to treat thyroid issues and you're going to get a bunch of different ways to treat it, including perhaps the way that's traditionally treated.

Daniel Barrett (00:58:33):

So I think it's going to get better, but again, there's some main roadblocks and our current government bureaucracy for evaluating products I think is heavily influenced by the big pharmaceutical players in this country that's mostly negative, and I don't think that's good. So when you look at like, well, the doctor's like, "Well where's double rise and randomized control study for this?" Well, it's very expensive to get these studies done and to get FDA approval is, nobody wants to do that. That's insane.

Wade Lightheart (00:59:07):

You're not able to achieve a patent on the natural health product where you can on a drug.

Daniel Barrett (00:59:12):

Okay. So there's no real financial incentive to do it.

Wade Lightheart (00:59:14):

That's right.

Daniel Barrett (00:59:15):

So there's a major roadblock for a lot of this stuff that we know that works. The funny thing is a lot of this stuff has actually existed in previous ways of herbal medicine and stuff like that. Just kind of in different ways, or maybe not everything, but some. So I think as we grow and we continue to kind of disseminate information more kind of organically, I think people are going to start to figure these things out. I hope.

Wade Lightheart (00:59:43):

We had Dr. Ted Achacoso, who's recorded as one of the top 10 IQ guys in the world, the Filipino guy, beautiful man. He's working in Washington right now to create a parallel system of kind of traditional or holistic health medicine. He got it implemented inside of the Philippines to work in parallel, the same way that our medical system works or the government kind of dictated systems because the Philippines, the economics are very different in the population, as well as the availability of healthcare facilities and stuff. He got that implemented over there because it was a cost effective way to produce positive outcomes for the population. He's hoping to do the same things he's lobbying in Washington. You do some really interesting things on social media and getting the message out. Maybe you could share with us where people can reach you and where they can find you.

Daniel Barrett (01:00:36):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my Instagram is DoctorDanielBarrett.com. I actually get back to a lot of people's DMS. I have a lot of your products, if you're thinking about getting surgery at postoprecovery.com. That's my website and half of it's spilled with Wade's products, I did come up with a CBD. I don't think you have a CBD yet, do you?

Wade Lightheart (01:00:53):

No, not yet. We're working on it.

Daniel Barrett (01:00:54):

I did do a CBD because I found CBD, it really helps with postoperative pain and preoperative anxiety.

Wade Lightheart (01:01:01):

I was taking it during [crosstalk 01:01:03].

Daniel Barrett (01:01:02):

Did you?

Wade Lightheart (01:01:02):

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Barrett (01:01:05):

Yeah. So CBD is kind of a breakthrough thing and that's another hush-hush thing, right? That's a whole separate topic.

Wade Lightheart (01:01:09):

Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's not hallucinogenic or anything like that, but [crosstalk 01:01:13].

Daniel Barrett (01:01:12):

I know, and it doesn't get high, but yet, there's some states that don't even allow it. You know what I mean?

Wade Lightheart (01:01:16):

Yeah, and that's the big issue right now, where it's available. California's great, so we're good that way.

Daniel Barrett (01:01:20):

I know. Yeah, their website, DoctorDanielBarrett.com, and then if you're into TikTok, Barrettplasticsurgery.com. We also have a podcast called The Natural Plastic Surgeon. So we talk about supplements. We talk about people and their journeys and what their experiences are like going through surgeries and stuff like that. If people want to know more information about surgeries, check it out.

Wade Lightheart (01:01:42):

Dr. Barrett, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Daniel Barrett (01:01:44):

Yeah, thank you.

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