From Biohacking to Bioharmony: The Longevity Shift Nobody Is Talking About

Hey, welcome back to Cell to Systems episode 15. Today's topic is biohacking versus bioharmony. We've all been talking about biohacking for years, and let's face it, 4:00 a.m. ice baths, 72-hour fasts, and a myriad of different ways to train along with a whole bunch of other things like supplements, etc., and the like. But is 2026 the year of BioHarmony?

It's interesting. There's a study that came out or a couple of them that talked about how cortisol can age you by up to 50%. And I think there's no one better to talk about that than Dr. Suzanne Ferree. So, here we go.

Thanks so much, Jock. You know, it's interesting. This is the client that we see a lot of, right? They're coming in, they're so excited. They've got all these things, their wearables and their devices and their trackers and everything. And they're getting up in the morning and they're doing their cold plunge and then they're going to their HIIT class and they're doing their—and it's just this whole day long, this sort of boom boom boom stimulation of their autonomic nervous system all day long.

And I think we have to kind of backtrack this a little bit and realize that we're talking about the whole process of hormesis. Like, what are all these things for? And you know, hormesis is designed to be giving a tiny amount of a stressor, just enough to trigger the adaptive response and then allow the body to do what it's naturally going to do with that small stressor. So cold is cold, you know, heat is heat shock proteins are going to come as a result. Fasting is going to do autophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis.

But if you're not—if you're stacking these up on top of one another, and I've seen these patients, Craig, I'm sure you see—have you guys have seen them all. Maybe we've been that person. I would say I've been that person where you're stacking these things on top of each other and not allowing for the recovery that you need to in between the episodes. You're adding this little hormetic stimulus to an already stressed system.

And so I think we've talked on this podcast several times, all of us, about what we do, what happens when you add hormones or peptides or whatever to a system that is already without margin, and now you're really struggling to get that back to functioning well. And so, you know, Craig, I'm sure you have the same thing. Do you—is there a sign, is there something that we see when people go, you know, there's too many things that they stack on top of each other, or you know, we don't usually see the sign ahead of time because you're like, "Oh, cold plunge, this feels great," and then you go, "Oh, so and so." But at what point do people—where do they see this come in, and where do you see them coming in with that?

Yeah, I think that's a great kickoff. You know, we have to think of hormesis as really—and the factors that are going to provide that hormetic stress as really being on a U-shaped curve where more is not necessarily better, right? We know that there's a Goldilocks zone for these things and that as you really push towards your physiologic limit, you're going to start having more and more of those symptoms and signs of autonomic dysregulation. We've talked about these things, you know, over and over on the podcast thus far, but that's going to include things like insomnia and anxiety and, you know, poor vagal tone and reduced HRV.

And so we really have to focus as clinicians on the context, you know, and what the context involves is the dose and the timing, right? So many people get into this situation. And I think that the earlier era of biohacking was really focused on, you know, "How far can I push my body to force adaptation?" You know, and so people were incorporating things like fasting, high-intensity interval training, they were working towards ultra-low carbohydrate diets, they were exposing themselves to thermal extremes, and they were doing these things, as you mentioned, in combination with each other, stacking. And you know, all for the justification that independently these things have shown some benefit, right?

But the key thing to note is that the body and the brain are not categorizing stressors. They are going to look at thermal stress, exertional stress, psychological stress, sleep deprivation under this overarching umbrella of physiologic stress. And that is exactly how somebody locks themselves into this dysregulated autonomic pattern. And they're really adapted to this stress physiology, and it's very hard for them to break. So, you know, it's an area that we have to be vigilant of throughout the duration of someone's treatment.

Absolutely. You know, I think that from the standpoint of HRT, this is a major issue. We know that as cortisol elevates and cortisol signaling becomes more and more abnormal, that we often encounter this phenomenon of pregnenolone steal, and the circulating sex hormones are going to be in decline as a result. So within the context of hormone therapy and hormone replacement, you know, just sort of willy-nilly adding hormones into the mix and trying to like chase numbers and things like that before you really address the underlying issue, this is where you can actually make a problem worse and provide the spark to the tinder or fan the flames of someone's dysregulated nervous system and create more issues. So, have you guys been to a biohacking conference before?

I think there was just one like—what was what's that guy's name? Yeah, Dave Asprey. I have not been. Have you?

Yeah, I was there once and I had to find the exit quick. Yeah, it was overwhelming, you know, the amount of stuff that people are trying to sell and stuff like that, you know, and it's fascinating, right? Because most people there—so we used to, you know, for us, we used to work with physicians, people in the health profession, so that was us. They're usually directed to consumers getting into this new world. So it's like, it's very interesting, you know, people's journey.

And what I realize is like everybody there is going through something. It's always like going through some type of journey in wellness and longevity, and they're starting, you know, at 60 mph right away, right? And they're trying to figure out what's the fastest way to absorb all those things and do all those things at the same time. And it makes them take some very questionable decisions in what they're doing. You know, some people obviously are taking advantage of it financially and selling a bunch of dreams to people. It doesn't, you know, it just does not align with really what the goal is.

But I recommend not going to a biohacking conference. If you are listening to this, I recommend talking to your doctor first. And then really kind of understanding what do you need to do yourself first, right? You know, before you start getting into cold plunge and sauna and other interesting things that people are selling out there, for sure, you know. But yeah, that that's just very interesting. Just very, very, very interesting.

The whole idea of like, you know, biohacking, it sort of conveys this idea about like circumventing what is normal, you know, and trying to take shortcuts and sort of cheat the system. Um, you know, if we think about biohacking as sort of like forcing the adaptation, and bioharmony as much more in sync with, you know, "Okay, well, what season of life is somebody in? What is their current ability to tolerate stress? What is their current recovery potential?"

Then, from the standpoint of nutrition, we can start to look at things like, okay, well, maybe we're going to focus on meal timing, right? As opposed to exaggerated fasting windows. We're going to focus more on incorporating more of our calories into the earlier and middle portion of the day as opposed to heavier meals later in the day, as opposed to these, again, exaggerated windows where we're restricting calories.

Supplements are a big area of biohacking, and I think there used to be this big focus on things that were stimulants and nootropic agents and so on and so forth. Well, now if we start to focus more on things that are going to help regulate the nervous system, that are going to support the cell membrane and increase cellular resistance, you know, in and out of the nervous system, then there's so much that we can do to really encourage bioharmony. And again, we need to take into account where that individual is in their unique journey.

Yeah. It's interesting, you know, like you think about it, all of those things—as I thought about sort of my own personal journey through, I guess, quote-unquote biohacking over the years, it's been kind of interesting. Leonard, we talked about the creatine thing back in, you know, the '90s. Frank, we talked about that. Leonard, I'm curious, what do you—what do you see as bioharmony when you hear that biohacking versus bioharmony? What's your version of it?

I didn't know what it meant honestly when I heard bioharmony, but as I started to understand it a little bit better, it's kind of the phase of life that I'm in right now. So, it makes total sense to me. Early on in my—when I wanted to make a change in my own health, it was biohacking. I wanted to try a lot of different things. And you know, people like Dave Asprey and these conferences had great information that kind of was like the gateway drug of me knowing there was a different world of medicine, talking about fasting and talking about supplements and just everything, right? And it was a cool journey to experiment with what was working for me.

And I definitely took it too far. And I realized that some of the stuff I was going—kind of like the example that we talked about before, is kind of taking it too far where, you know, just overlapping too many different things and being too kind of obsessive about them, and it goes from beneficial to not beneficial.

And I found myself now in a place where, luckily, I think we've talked about this a couple times in the podcast, I lost my Oura Ring. And Frank introduced me to the world of nice watches. So, I took off my Apple Watch and I've really started to enjoy it. You know, I really started to just listen to my own body on did I get enough sleep last night or did I not get enough sleep last night, and not having something tell me if I'm going to have a good day or a bad day. Being comfortable going out for a run and not knowing what my heart rate got to, or just knowing how I was feeling. And I'm feeling really great right now.

Now, I'll probably go back to it. I got an Oura Ring. It came in the mail. It's sitting there still in the package. I haven't ripped it open to get it on, but I will go back to it because I do want to know how things are changing. And I think it's just kind of periodic to know what's happening. But I'm just much more comfortable in being okay with not tracking these things and listening to myself.

For me personally, where people—I think where people or patients can get misled is that you try some of these biohacking techniques and they work for you really well. Like for instance, for me, fasting changed my body composition. It changed my metabolic health. It changed my biomarkers. And so for years, every time I wanted to get myself into good shape, I would just go into extreme fasts. And then once I was in a different phase of life where I had lost a lot of weight, I realized that it was very counterintuitive or counterproductive, what I was doing. Because I lost the weight, but now I wanted to work on performance and I wanted to work on muscle mass.

And I struggled, you know, going to the next level with that because my go-to was always very short eating windows, making sure I had no carbohydrates, because that's what worked for me in the past. But it took me a while, even me being in medicine, to realize like, you know, I don't have to focus on those things anymore. Now, the things that I focus on are a little bit different, like making sure I have enough food and enough energy while I'm working out so that my exercise is more meaningful, so I can get the results that I truly want to get.

And so, I think biohacking is like a cool process for everybody to go through and try and experiment with what they like. But you could take it too far. And I think—I think it has a lot to do with personality, right? Sometimes we just shift our addictions. You know, the same person that might have been addicted to drugs or a workaholic or obsessive-compulsive about the wrong things can decide to be obsessive-compulsive about the right things. And those are your people that are just shifting their addiction over to waking up at 4:00 in the morning, doing the ice bath, doing all these things. And I think it has a lot to do with personality. And I found that I'm—gues I'm maturing in that world. But I think it's okay for people to come into that biohacking world because it's kind of like the gateway drug of our world. And so it's a fun conversation, but yeah, we're all going through our own journey in learning throughout the years.

I think it's a question of like getting the right information from the right people at the right time. And Frank, your point of like, "Don't go," and then Leonard, you saying, "Hey, it's kind of the gateway to all of this," is kind of interesting, right? There are these people that are seeking information, they don't really know where to get it. It goes back to what we talked about—should we have a directory for these things, or where are the directories, and how do you really know who the right people are to talk to about anything, who's just shilling a product?

It's really tough out there because it's not only the biohacking communities, right, Jock? Like you can go to biohacking communities and there might be some good things happening there, but you can go to one of the biggest longevity conferences in the world and they're selling research peptides there, right? And they're selling stuff that doesn't even work and stuff that's, you know, so it's tough. It's really tough out there for not only the patients but also the physicians that are trying to learn this world. Because there's—there's a lot of people trying to sell you things.

And so to Leonard's point, that's why for me, you know, when I say don't go, obviously it's more out of protection, right? I want to protect the customers. I want to protect the patient. Because I know what's out there, you know, and then I know how easy it is for them to kind of get confused and people taking advantage of it, you know. And why for me is like, you know, if you get into this journey, is to find the perfect practitioner that you trust that can guide you through this journey first before you go into into the next level, right?

I don't think somebody should be spending, you know, $10,000 in a sauna without really truly understanding what it's going to mean for them or anything else. You know, red light therapy, for example, at your house. You know, it's one of those things where you really want to protect people, you know, and make sure they understand really what the value is. But, you know, listen, if you want to go to one of these things, please do. You know, there's no problem there. But I suggest, you know, go with your guards up, you know, and trying to dig and understand exactly what those people are trying to sell, you know. Because once you get into this journey, like Leonard said, yes, it all depends on your level of addiction. You know, if you tend to go crazy on things, yeah, you can go really crazy pretty quickly, you know, with a $20,000 bill in 10 minutes around this bio conference I went to. So it's really kind of out of precaution and protection for a patient.

You know, Frank, you've got me really questioning whether or not I need to cancel some orders here. You know, 1.3 atmospheres on the hyperbaric bag. Maybe—maybe I needed to get the hard shell. The red light panel may not be as good as the red light bed, and then there are those—those other things.

He said spend less, not more. Yeah.

I think deep down inside you wanted to spend more. I know what it was like—it was like a Ferrari, or you know... I think doing some really good breathing techniques morning and night and then just breathe in the morning for 5 minutes and breathe at night for another five minutes. You know, I love what you guys are saying like, "Hey, focus on talking to your provider, stay focused in on what do your labs say? Where are you? What season of life are you in? Trying to figure out how to do it the right way." So valuable. And yeah, if you go into that biohacking thing because you just want to check out what Bryan Johnson is doing, I value his journey. I mean, I think that he's doing, you know, some pretty remarkable things. He's got the resources to be able to explore all these different avenues that he wants to go down to preserve his health and even reverse his aging process and whatnot. And I think that we're ultimately going to have a lot of interesting data and science from what he's uncovered and what his journey has revealed.

Did you see his umbrella that he was wearing at the Enhanced Games? I didn't. I didn't.

Yeah. So, they were interviewing him at the Enhanced Games and he was wearing an umbrella because there was too much sun out and it was against his protocol, and so...

Wait, did you just say protocol or protocol?

No, protocol. I'm in protocol, but that sounds funny though. Yeah. So, he had the umbrella because of the sun and I heard he like broke his ankle when he was dancing at a wedding once. So, not sure exactly how truthful that is, but it's an example of, "Hey, you know, when you're when you're too much, do you lose some resilience?" Because that's what we're really all trying to build is some—is some resilience. But if you get stuck somewhere, you know, can you handle the heat?

So, yeah, but I am, to your point, Craig, I do think it's interesting the things that he's doing. I think it's great marketing.

The one thing I would say about him—the only thing from my perspective is like, yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly that that's really interesting and there's, you know, I think there's an interesting journey. He has some pretty interesting things in his like employment agreements about the things he can and cannot do around him or what he can do around you, which I think is questionable, but that's another story.

I just think, how much of that is really reasonable for the average person? Like, who could really do all of those things unless you were in that position? And I think today bioharmony is about taking the stress out of all of these things and trying to get down to what is reasonable. What can someone actually do? And I love what Frank just said. It's like, "Hey man, do some breathing." Dr. Ferree always says exercise. What are the things that we really can do to achieve like that sort of feeling of like, "Hey, you know, I'm—I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the best that I possibly can." Maybe it can get better as time goes on.

I think people like that are interesting and I think they're kind of—I don't want to call them a good example, but you may be watching someone like that just because it's interesting and none of it's really relevant to you, but all of a sudden they talk about something that is relevant to you. And out of their like 15 morning routine things that they do, something resonates with you and you take that. Because I'll follow people like this and I won't listen to 95% of the things that they're doing. But maybe I do find something that is interesting that I want to look more into. And so that's another angle is that you don't have to be as crazy or obsessive as they are. But it is decent information if you want kind of—it's kind of like the newspaper, like you're going through all the news that's happening in the world and it's like, "Okay, I'll dig into this a little bit deeper."

What about using your wearables instead of using them as a "every single day I am checking to see if I am like metronomically," rather you use it as a "Hey, I'm going to make this intervention in my life." This is one of the things I love about Lexi. Everything she does—everything she does she—she has a test for it to see what was the effect of that thing.

And so if you're going to do your whatever your biohacking things are that you're going to do, you wear your ring. Maybe if you do your five things that you're going to do, you take one of those out and you go, "I'm going to watch for the next four days to see what happens over the next four days." And then I'm going to go back and I'm going to either add it back in depending on my result that I get or I'm going to take it out depending on the result that I get. You know, am I seeing that my HRV improves? Am I seeing that whatever happens? You've got to use it as a tool, and that's like the way to ultimately biohack is to take your device or your whatever your measure is.

Maybe it's just how many hours of sleep did I get. Did I actually sleep all the way through the night or did I wake up in the middle of the night? Maybe that's your simple, simple tool. But whatever the thing is, you go, "Maybe I cut out that one piece of chocolate before I go to bed and see if that's what's waking me up in the middle of the night. Maybe I say no one more time to someone and that's what helps me to sleep through the night." Because there's lots of things that we are doing throughout our days that are keeping us from being able to have a healthy lifestyle. Saying yes to a lot of things. Someone said to me the other day, "You're only as good as the opportunities you say no to." You said that to me the other day.

I did.

That's awesome. And I was like, "Wow, that's really good." It was really good.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I think about that, too. I mean, there's so many things in the course of the day that we just go through that are, you know, constantly bouncing around in our heads, and I think making the time to actually kind of decompress from things is super important, which is why the gym or walking or riding the bike is so important to me and I can't get enough of it, even though you guys sometimes tell me that I'm doing too much of it.

Hey Craig, I'm curious from a bioharmony standpoint, when you think about having—well, I think you're not the only one, but having little kids, that's a lot. That's a—as we go through these, we talked about these phases of life. We go through these phases of life. How's your bioharmony?

Well, I think it's decent. It could always be better. One of the things that I try to focus on is gratitude, you know. Kids are only little once, and we have to always evaluate it in the setting of, you know, it being a blessing and something that we were gifted, this wonderful opportunity to raise these children and watch them grow and see them hopefully thrive as they get on in years. And it's not without its challenges, as we all know. And so there's certainly stress in that situation.

And one of the things that I always have to come back to personally is just try to be in the moment and try to be grateful. Because gratitude goes a long way, whether you're a parent who's with littles or you don't have kids and you're just trying to make it in the world. To me, gratitude is one of those major things that we can practice on a daily basis, like breathing or optimizing sleep to try and improve our bioharmony.

And sort of going back to last week when we were talking about cognitive decline and dementia, well, the research shows that people who are internalizing and sort of repressing their emotions and they're not able to process their emotions in full or effectively, they have increased risk for cognitive decline. And more and more internalization of that negativity can really facilitate that neurologic disease process. And so I think that practicing gratitude on a daily basis, just being called to ask what can we do for others and how can I give thanks and exemplify my thankfulness for the blessings that we've been given in life, is a good way for me to practice bioharmony. And it's not always easy, but if you put your mind to it each and every day, even for just a matter of seconds, maybe minutes, and focus on gratitude, it can be a new needle mover, for sure.

Somebody said to me the other day, "I always start my day with just sitting. The first thing I do, I get up and I write down 10 things I'm grateful for." Like, wow, that's pretty powerful, right? That's a great way to start. It's sort of like—I don't know for those of you who read the Bible, but you know, if you read James every single morning, I don't know how you could start your day on a bad foot. That sort of gratitude thing that you just said is so—is so amazing.

And I love the notion of conscious breathing, Frank. On my other show, The Pathway to Peak Performance—which we definitely have to have you on and Dr. Ferree on—we had Dr. Richard Lewis Miller, who's a guy that's been practicing for, I don't know, 65 years, and he's just talking about conscious breathing and how important that is. And it made me really realize that sometimes I'm holding my breath. And then there's also the stuff—have you guys heard about this recently, this notion of holding your breath for like 90 seconds releases stem cells or some sort of reaction? Have you heard anything about this?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's so—I started breathing better. I used to have asthma as a kid, fought my way—still probably have scar tissue in my lungs because of that, I don't know, anyway. And starting to talk to Jock, you know, he went to Calm—he's a pretty amazing guy. And he told me to breathe differently, and he gave me some ideas at Calm about breathing. And ever since I started to breathe differently—doing box breathing, things like there's so many different ways that they have those guys—but it's 5 minutes of commitment morning and night.

And I've been tracking—I was tracking at first how well I was sleeping, and when I was doing the breathing techniques that he was talking about, my sleep score was always constantly higher, and my ability to recover was always better. But my ability to deal with stress was even better just by doing the breathing techniques, you know? And for me, that beats any biohacking tricks out there because you're just leveraging your own body to do that, right? And it's free and it's the cleanest way to do it, you know?

And there's so many studies out there and research around just breathing techniques, right? And it's becoming such a big deal now because obviously, you know, they realize people that are performing better in sports, in the classrooms, in surgery—talking about surgeons tend to breathe better. And for me, and I know we're talking about biohacking here, I think it's a perfect biohacking skill here is to learn to breathe again. Because I played sport for a long time and nobody ever told me that I wasn't breathing right, you know. Nobody told me that I was not breathing through my chest, I was breathing through my neck. Nobody ever said anything to me like that before, you know, because it's so simple like, "Hey, you're supposed to open your lungs, not open your neck to get more air in it." I'm like, "Huh, okay. Yeah, it makes sense, right?"

Yeah. Yeah. But you got to practice it and open your chest. But it's not normal for you to do so, right? But when you start doing that, you're like, "Holy smoke, well, I feel way better just from doing this simple technique, right?" So that is for me a powerful hack. And we keep talking about breathing because it probably balances everything downstream for you naturally, from the cortisol to calming yourself down to reestablishing your hormone balance to just calming your brain, calming your gut, calming everything. You know, you're not taking a pill. And just adding that element, it changed the game. So I can go on and on about this, but that was pretty powerful.

So would you call that bioharmony or biohacking?

Oh, harmony, absolutely. Because there's so many fun things happening when you're actually focusing on breathing, you know. It means that you shut down everything, you know, and you're really kind of in true harmony, you know. You're not thinking, you're not processing things. You're just focusing on one thing which is just bringing oxygen to your body, you know. And which—you have to do it for 5 minutes. Imagine blocking your brain for this—that's what meditation is all about. So I'll call it harmony, right? Because for me, bioharmony—you asked Leonard that question, I was thinking, I was like, "Man, what is that?" I think bioharmony is the absence of stress.

Yeah, you know what? I think that was really profound. I love it. The two pharmacists on the show that are always coming up with the things where you don't have to take a pill. I think you said that last time. So, I'm just ripping that off from you guys.

You brought up a good point, Jock, with kids. It was actually something really interesting that I looked at when I was looking at a lot of biohacking data—or a lot of data—is that I had data on obviously my Oura Ring data and all my DEXA scans and body composition, and I was looking at them for like the last seven years. And I realized that my body composition, my metrics were always best during the summer. And I was like, "What is this?" I was like, "Is there some type of circadian rhythm thing that I don't know about, that I just get more motivated in summers or something like that?"

And I realized it was because—I'm feeling it this week. This is the first week that my kids are out of school. And so I don't have to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to get my things done in the morning. I can spend an extra like hour to hour and a half in bed, or I can just wake up and kind of relax. And that one hour changes everything. Because if I go to sleep a little bit late, it's really hard to wake up at 5:00 in the morning, so I skip more days in the gym. And so I feel definitely a lot more bioharmony in the summers where I get that one extra little hour from having to wake up and get the kids ready for school. So it's funny how something as simple as that can kind of change—change things.

Gosh, you are spot on with that. Because we still have one week left of school with the kids, but my wife and I made the decision to actually homeschool our kids next year. There's a myriad of reasons why we've made that decision, but one of the things I'm looking forward to is really just the ability to not start the day with a dysregulated nervous system. Because all too often, my son has a little bit of like ADHD potential and whatnot, and so, you know, it's like, "Get your uniform on," three, four times. I'm reminding you, "Get ready." Where's your water? Put your shoes on. Yes. Yes.

And so I'm hoping—it'll be another experiment in the Mullen household—but I'm really hoping that it pays off. And something else is like the beauty of engaging with kids on a regular basis, too. Like, so those summers where you really get to have those precious moments that the kids grow up and they'll always remember, and you'll be able to remember and cherish as you get older. So you know, it's that back-and-forth relationship between parents and kids too that I think really can help facilitate bioharmonics, so to speak, and it's a beautiful thing. So I'm all for summertime, for sure.

Yeah. And then you're going to come to the point in time where your daughter's home for a month from college and she's like, "I've got to get back to school because I need to work on getting ahead so that I'm ready for graduate school." And yeah, it's rough. So, did you guys do summers—when you were younger, did you do summers abroad or like a summer trip where you went away?

Definitely did summer camps. Like I would do—I did Cal Ripken camp once, I did several soccer camps, and those were like two weeks away at a college and whatnot, and I was young. I was like 10 through 12 when I was really getting into those camps, and it was always a good time. You know, it's a good way to dip your toes into time away from mom and dad and a little change in the routine, get to learn some new skills, something like that. But it's definitely the type of thing that I feel—I don't know, maybe there's not as much, maybe there is, I don't know. I haven't seen as many parents sending their kids away to like sleepaway camp as maybe, you know, I felt like I was sent away to sleepaway camp or my friends were back in the day. So I don't know if it's still as much of a thing in society, but a pretty cool experience.

You sparked my memory. One of the things that my partner and I do is what we call a "ta-da" list. So, it's, you know, our tendency where we live is to go through the day and as sort of achievers and high-functioning, doing all the things we're doing all the time, running businesses and doing podcasts and all the things, we have a tendency to get to the end of the day and be like, "Uh, I have so many things to do again tomorrow." And to not stop and take the time to look at the things and appreciate the things—sort of along with your gratitude list—look at all the things that I accomplished.

So, my partner will sit down at dinner at night and go, "Okay, tell me five things you're really excited that you did today or five things you accomplished today." Because it's so easy to just forget about all the things you accomplished and be like, "Oh god, I have so much to do." And instead to reframe it like, "Hey, look at the things I accomplished today. I finished this. I did that thing, it was worthwhile."

Fantastic way to approach it. Absolutely.

Really cool. Did you go away during the summers?

Yes. But mostly, I'm old enough that we were watching soap operas and then playing outside, right? You'd go play kick the can. You'd play street tag or hide-and-seek or whatever in the neighborhood. So yeah, we did like band camp and cheerleading camp and those sort of things in the summertime, but most of it was playing with your neighborhood friends in the street.

One of the things that I saw—and this is just again like an aside related to kids and whatnot, and sort of unfortunate when you evaluate it versus how things were 25 years ago or whatnot—but I just saw on social media there was this Nickelodeon show back in the day called Little Bear. And I don't know if anybody knows Little Bear here, but it was just a clip of this show and it was very calm and not a lot of noise and not a lot of flashing lights and extraneous things happening at once.

And if you evaluate that aside, you know, like what kids are exposed to now on YouTube or on Nickelodeon nowadays or something, it's just so diametrically opposed to what they have now that's just geared towards short-term focus and, "How can we ramp up this kid's energy and their dopamine and their cortisol and whatnot?" So, you know, getting outside like we all did when we were a kid, that's, you know, I tell my patients that. I'm like, "Listen, when you wake up in the morning, first 20, 30 minutes of being awake, try to get outside and get your feet on the ground and get your feet dirty. I want you to see a little bit of dirt come off, you know, in the shower when you get in the shower." And it really does help to calm them down and center you, you know.

You know what's so crazy is if you guys weren't all medical professionals, I would basically say my—like, this is another big win for me. My new protocol is going to be the breathing that Frank is going to teach me about and a little bit of Little Bear that Craig's going to show me where to find before I go to sleep at night. And I'm batting a thousand.

I'm embarrassed to bring that up. But you know, hey, you know what? I appreciate the honesty. I mean, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's wild. You know, you see kids' TV nowadays and it's just totally, totally crazy.

They just said that what, Gen Z has the attention span of 8 seconds or something like that? Something that just came out. I don't know if it's true or not. I just heard that.

We had the same conversation. I sat down and I was watching something that the girls were watching, and me and my wife were just talking about how different TV was. It's just like you notice that it's always a very punchy scene and it's like a punchy line, and then the scene changes very quickly. It's just like bam bam bam, just like if you're on TikTok. And that used to only live on social media, but now it's just on like a regular TV show. And yeah, who knows what the impact is going to be on them. What is your guys' plan, or do you have any protocols—or even Frank with your older kids—anything with watching with social media or watching television or that sort of thing with your kids?

I just try and regulate. I mean, you know, if it's a beautiful day and I see that my kids are sort of zoning in on a screen or tablet or something, I just take it and hide it, you know, and a lot of times it's getting hidden for a week or two. If it's a rainy day, then it's, "Hey, listen, let's dive into some art supplies." And you know, so for birthdays and holidays and things like that, we're getting things that we can do together as a family, whether it's a tabletop game or some sort of kit that we can all work on together. Maybe it's got some sort of scientific undertone or something like that to it.

So, how old are your kids, Craig?

My daughter is 10 and just turned 10 in April, and my son is seven. And yeah, they're—they're a lot, but I mean, my daughter wants to be like a YouTube star, you know, so she's always in front of like a camera or something, dancing and doing like voiceovers and this, that, or the other thing. And my son just is huge into Minecraft and building, and he's very, very good at it and is able to sort of like teach his friends how to do this, that, or the other thing. Which is admirable, but it's not how I grew up where I was outside playing Star Wars for three and a half hours before dinner time and make-believe and using my imagination. And I really want to try to facilitate that in them, but also be respectful of the fact that times have changed, you know, and their friends are going to be doing different things and they're going to want to engage more in the way that their friends are participating in various activities and such. So just, I guess, try to regulate and try to impose some moderation in their life.

Frank, have you gone through that period now where they're like starting to go off and do their own thing, and you're trying to get time with them and it's getting harder and harder to get that?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, we try several protocols. So, my daughter is 16 now and my son is 14. Well, let's start with my daughter. You know, it's definitely—remember when she was 10, you know, heading into 12, then 14, and now 16. It's like four seasons, you know, the different seasons that we have to kind of navigate.

But at 16, you know, flirting with 17 is getting tough because now she can drive, she's got freedom. And then creating—Suzanne, the question you asked about protocol—creating a protocol around mental wellness is becoming the key right now for her, to kind of understand that things are moving fast around her, especially on social media, but learning how to balance that, right? Because at 16, 17, it's really difficult to say, "Hey, bedtime is 10:00 p.m., no more social media," right? Or getting her phone shut down. It's very difficult, you know. Taking her phone away is difficult because she's 16, so she needs her phone to function, even because kids nowadays don't even know the roads anymore. There's no map; the map is her phone. So, you take her phone away, she don't even know how to drive. And so it's very complex.

And what I've seen with the protocol that we established now with her that seems to be getting some traction is around doubling down on her interests, things that she likes, and our ability to give her motivation around doubling down on some of the things that she enjoys doing. And if the vector to get her excited and happy to engage more outside of just snapping and TikToking does involve social media, well, that's what you're going to have to do, right? So the protocol is different. The protocol is more, "Hey, let's do more of the things that you like to do, utilizing the things that we don't like you doing," and keep you aligned with the right balance of fitting in with your friends and at the same time increasing your chances to not depend on social media, right? So it's very complex, I hope you understand that.

But my son is different, so I'm lucky with him because he's very motivated. He's an athlete, so he plays sports and that's his drive. But at the same time, on the social media side, what we did with him was he actually created his own business. You know, he created his own online business and he's selling clothes online. He's doing all those things leveraging social media, leveraging TikTok, leveraging AI. So we channel his love for things like marketing and selling and things like that and had him leverage AI, because there's nothing we can do, he's got to do it, right? He's got to know how to do those things. And that seems to be working in our protocol because then he gets tired at one point of working, you know. So when he's done with working, he doesn't want to really go on social media and do TikTok and snap people because he's just done that for two hours trying to sell clothes. So that's been working for us.

But it's tough, man. I know Leonard's got two young ones, and I think he's coming up to that right now, right? I think, how old is your youngest one?

I got 10 and five. And Frank always warned me, he's like, "Keep them away from the phone as long as you can." And it's getting harder because like my one daughter likes to just edit videos, and so I'm like, "Oh, that's great, play around, edit videos, make funny stuff." And then things that you don't think are social media platforms, like CapCut, are social media platforms now. It's like an editing thing, but all of a sudden they're scrolling and you're seeing other—you think they're looking at different templates, but they're looking at other people's content, which is scary at 10 years old. You know, you don't know what they're watching. But this is great advice. I'm lucky that Frank's kids are just like one level above mine, so he gets to warn me about all the things that I'm going to go through. And I don't want to be in his shoes. I can't imagine one of my daughters starting to drive right now.

That would scare Craig and Leonard. Imagine you have two 10-year-olds right now. Imagine what AI is going to be when they're going to be 16. Oh my god.

That's what I'm hoping for. Well, I'm hoping Tesla does its thing and I don't have to worry about them driving anymore because we'll all be going around in self-driving cars, you know? So, I'm hoping that's the scenario. But yeah, we're—I mean, I guess every generation has said it's like, "Oh, it's not like it was in my day," but boy, do we really have a chance to say that.

So yeah, we had an incident when I was on my vacation this last week. It was six adults, three couples, and one of the members of one of the couples—we were all sitting at dinner, we're all laughing and telling stories. We've been friends 25 years, all of us. And one of the people, one of the members of the couple, was on her phone most of dinner. And it was really tough because you were like, "Well, I appreciate that you probably have something important that you have to do, but we're actually human beings sitting in front of you, right, with things going on, and we'd love to share your company. We'd love to have you be participating with us." So, that's another place where we have to be aware.

You know, we have certainly a rule at our house where phones go down at dinner. They don't bring phones. I mean, most people bring them. It's, you know, the knife and fork and then the phone. And so, we have to put phones down at dinner.

And so, you know what we've done, Suzanne, that's really cool. We started something where we bring the phones to dinner and we put them in the middle of the table. So everything, all the phones, it's pretty cool. They love it. So when you have friends over and all that stuff, all the phones are in the middle and it becomes like this thing now. Nobody wants to take the phone because it's all in the middle. It's actually pretty cool to have it in the middle of the table because like you're sitting here and all the phones are in the middle and some of them are just going off and nobody's picking them up, you know.

That's great. Frank, you just created the BioHarmony dinner table. We can take that on the road.

We came across an old video of us on vacation in the, I would say, like 1990s-ish. And it was a family vacation and it was all of us at the beach, and it was so cool because it was like multiple generations. It was like my parents, my grandparents, like the neighbors, our cousins, and everybody was there. And I remember those times where there was no—I don't know, maybe there were pagers, but there were no cell phones there. There was none of that.

And there was also no going to like—on vacation, then going out to dinner at like the local place. It's like we used to just bring our entire kitchen on these vacations and we would just like cook up a storm and we'd hang out by the beach, we'd hang out by the pool, and you'd go to like your cousin's room or your brother's room or your grandparent's room and everybody had food and everybody was just eating the whole time. And then they would just like sit around telling stories and having drinks. And I was like, "Man, I still remember those vacations. I still remember those times." They were just great times as a kid.

And I was talking to my mom about it and saying, "Is that even possible to do again?" Because we try to recreate those things, but we go and then we're going out to the dinner of the restaurant that they have at the resort that we're at. You know, like our go-to place in the Keys that I know Frank loves, Islamorada, The Islander. It used to have a kitchen inside the rooms and they ripped them out once, like, the corporate people came in and bought them so that you go to the restaurant. But the world is just set up to have more of that bioharmony, more of that social atmosphere, more of just talking to other humans that we've kind of lost. So we try to recreate it as much as we can, but it's—it's tough. But isn't community one of the Blue Zone things, right?

Yeah, absolutely. We talked about that last week, Leonard. So we talked about the 70-year-olds. You're like, "Hey, have a glass of wine, hang out with your friends." Right, pretty important.

Well, we're at that point in time where we've got to wrap it up. Unfortunately, this is the point in time where I have separation anxiety and I look forward to the next week when I can spend this time with you guys. So, the last thing I want to do is take you through and ask you, okay, what's the one thing you can do this week? And in my view, I've got Craig first. So, Craig, what's the one thing we can do this week to increase our bioharmony?

Well, I'm just going to come back to what I said earlier. I'm going to take it easy on myself and practice gratitude. You know, once a day, maybe list anywhere from one to three things that you're grateful for. You can start your day that way. And it's getting the day started on the right foot. So, practice gratitude.

Awesome. Leonard?

I'm going to say it's intentionally work on your social atmosphere. A great group of friends and family that no matter how busy you are, you find time to go spend time with them. I think that's better than any pill or compound that we can talk about.

Frank?

I want to do something pretty counterintuitive. I want to say one thing you can do this week is remove something—remove something from your daily activities and track how well you're going to sleep and how much more time you're going to have back to spend time with the people that you love and be grateful.

All right, Dr. Ferree.

I would say meditation, deep breathing exercises, whichever of those mindfulness practices you're finding that are useful or persistent for you. Getting to a space where you can train your system that the parasympathetic is a tolerable place to be.

You guys are so awesome. This has been a fantastic episode. But I want to thank you all so much for sharing so much personal information and helping everyone out there. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe. And we hope that you find harmony at the end of the rainbow in this episode. We'll see you next week.