Why Sleep Matters More Than Biohacking

Drew Griesel: [00:00:00] All of a sudden, people know about all the stuff that was kind of fringe before. They know about the red lights, and they know about the cold plunges, and they know about the the glutathione and the NAD and the peptides. They know about all of these things, but how much water do you drink every day? How do you sleep?

Peter Bowes: [00:00:21] As we grow older, our bodies change. Less energy, poorer sleep, slower recovery. But are these and other changes an inevitable part of aging? Drew Griesel is an executive performance coach and founder of Primal Wellness Coaching. He believes many of us are paying what he calls the hidden performance tax, a gradual decline in energy, focus and resilience that creeps up over years until feeling less than our best simply becomes normal. So how does that happen? Drew, welcome to the Live Long podcast.

Drew Griesel: [00:01:01] Thank you Peter, it is a pleasure to be here chatting with you today.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:04] So you’re an executive performance coach. You coach executives?

Drew Griesel: [00:01:08] I do, yes, and I have my own background comes from the corporate space. And so it really was a natural byproduct of being in that space and seeing this decline all around me while going on my own journey of, of learning what that is and how to mitigate that. And then bringing that back to the people that I had been surrounded with for decades.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:28] And as we can see by the logo in your background, you’re the host of the Superhuman Blueprint podcast. That’s quite a mouthful. What does superhuman mean to you?

Drew Griesel: [00:01:39] For me, honestly, it means the version of ourselves that we should be. So we have, as a society, become sicker and weaker than our human body was intended to be, as it ages. And so it’s almost like becoming superhuman is really becoming the human that we were meant to be all along if we had not strayed from the primal needs of our human physiology.

Peter Bowes: [00:02:05] And coaching executives, is that…. And you say that’s in part your background, but is that a different kind of audience in some respects? If you want to call your clients, your audience, to maybe the general population, have they got different needs, goals, ambitions?

Drew Griesel: [00:02:21] They don’t have different needs. We all have the same needs. So what I teach, anyone can apply. The executive audience is really it’s more geared towards the message that I deliver. And it’s, it’s very career related. So I really brand myself as a performance coach. So the people that are deep in a career, you know, they started out, they were hot and heavy going strong, chasing promotions, getting deals, you know, just killing it in the boardroom, whatever. And over time they just get slower and heavier and foggier. And, you know, two decades later, three decades later, they are not the person they were. And most people just chalk that up to the inevitable decline of aging. And certainly there is something to be said about, you know, the natural byproduct of aging. However, a large percentage of what they’re experiencing, they actually have control over, and they can mitigate. They can even reverse.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:17] And you said that this is all part of your own personal journey. Just give me a flavor of what that journey has been like so far for you. In other words, what what’s brought you to this point in your life?

Drew Griesel: [00:03:28] Yeah. So over two decades in corporate finance, just very, very career focused, very focused on chasing that promotion, chasing that success in the corporate space and kind of seeing my own motivations and my own presence decline over time. And then really seeing that very strongly with the people around me, with the leaders around me, the people that I had looked up to for years, also seeing them not show up the way that they used to show up concurrent to that. I’m a long time martial artist. And so I was, training for many years and a friend of mine opened up a self-defense school and asked me to come teach for him. So I said yes. so I became a teacher, which kind of got me back into some accountability for, for maintaining my own, health and physique so that I could show up well for my students there. And then that sort of morphed into people came to me and asking for, some fitness and nutrition coaching. And so I went and got credentialed in that journey of body composition specifically. However, I quickly realized that you can do whatever you want for body composition, you can exercise, you can do all the right things. But if you don’t have the supporting infrastructure in place, it doesn’t last. If you’re exercising like crazy and you sleep like garbage, you are not going to get the return on investment from your workouts. If you are eating extremely clean, but you don’t exercise, or you don’t move or you don’t, allow yourself any type of hormetic stressors in your life or all of these little things. It only moves the needle so far. And it was just this sort of, this journey of, of this evolution of what it means to actually be healthy. And well, that kind of drove me to that space with my, my clients seeking physical transformation to then looking at the corporate space and saying, okay, well, what if these people were doing all of these little things that I’ve discovered? How would that change how they’re showing up at work? How has that changed how I show up?

Peter Bowes: [00:05:34] So what you’re saying is everything is connected. This is the holistic approach to life that if we’re not sleeping well, if we’re not eating, to an optimum level and other aspects of all those inputs that go into our physical being, that it’s going to have a knock on effect in the boardroom and in the corporate setting and in our personal lives as well.

Drew Griesel: [00:05:55] Yeah. And, and, you know my branding is largely around the, the executive, the corporate space, but the message that I deliver is for everyone. You know, and I, I have a two young kids. So I think specifically about parents, right? It’s being a parent can suck the life out of you. And it is very hard to, to self prioritize when you have other people that you absolutely must prioritize. But self prioritization is extremely important. And so trying to also sort of drive this misconception away that self prioritization is selfish. It’s not selfish. You have to take care of yourself if you want to take care of anything else.

Peter Bowes: [00:06:34] And you, you just referred to sleeping like garbage to use your words. And I think that’s something that many, many people, as they grow older especially can relate to. And there were some other factors that I mentioned, just the fact that you, you recover more slowly as you get older from physical exercise, for example. And I posed the question in starting this conversation, are these things inevitable. And I think a lot of people of a certain age, or perhaps at a certain point in their careers, will experience these physical changes and think, well, maybe it is just inevitable.

Drew Griesel: [00:07:08] Yeah. So cellular aging is inevitable. As you get older, your cells are going to age. However, there is a lot you can do about that as well. So you can even slow down cellular aging. And there’s a lot of really interesting tests that can quantify what that looks like. but I would say realistically, no. I mean, if you look at the general population of any age, people are slower, fatter, sicker than they used to be, than they were maybe 50, 60, 80 years ago, a hundred years ago. However, there are still plenty of outliers, right? You can go find an 80 year old that is fun and spry and sharp and looks amazing and has energy and works out. And is that person’s a freak of nature, or have they just taken care of themselves in a way that allowed them to get there? And so that’s really what I’m trying to drive, is building that future self that didn’t let the decline of age take over. And by that, we just incorporate in simple lifestyle things like moving more, eating more, sleeping better, hydrating, better, you know, having good relationships, practicing some mindfulness, allowing your body to be stressed out in very, you know, minor but, but meaningful ways.

Peter Bowes: [00:08:27] And I mentioned the hidden performance taxes as you refer to it. And essentially all you explained to me is that the feeling sometimes that this has become the new norm and we all pay taxes, and perhaps we’re paying for some aspects of our lives as we grow older and maybe feel different.

Drew Griesel: [00:08:46] Yeah. The premise behind that is that the decline is hidden in that it creeps up. It’s very insidious thing because you don’t just drop off after, you know, overnight. Right. It’s this, you know, year over, year over year, you have this maybe 1 or 2 or 3% decline in your energy and your cognitive sharpness and your physique. And maybe 1 or 2 or 3% seems pretty insignificant. But add that up for 20 years and all of a sudden it’s not so insignificant. And so I called out the hidden performance tax because every year you are slowly paying that tax on your performance, how you perform at work, in life for yourself, for the people that care about you. And over time, you know, the you’re going to realize how much tax you’ve paid on that and it’s not insignificant.

Peter Bowes: [00:09:40] So where do you start with with a new client who comes to you and is experiencing a lot of the things that we’ve just been talking about, and perhaps a sense that, well, I’ve got to this stage in my life, 40s 50s I might be successful at work, but I don’t feel at my best. What is the. From your perspective, the best starting point to. To regain that energy and that youthfulness that so many people seek in middle age.

Drew Griesel: [00:10:07] Yeah, I’m a big fan of baby steps. I love very subtle changes to lifestyle. but that incrementally increase. And so for example, I used to have, I have a program, a wellness transformation program called the superhuman blueprint. So I named my podcast after the program. It started out as a ten day transformation. And it was a massive failure because you can’t transform in ten days. You can go do some crazy habits and lifestyle. That is exactly how you should be living. But in ten days you built no habits. And what happens on the 11th day? You’re like, cool. That was hard. I’m glad I did it going back. And so it evolved into a ten week program, and now it’s really just a whole lifestyle program. but so if someone comes to me and they feel terrible, so there’s a, you know, there’s a whole audit process. Why do you feel terrible? Why do you not have energy? How is your health? How do you eat? How do you move? How are your relationships? How is your relationship with yourself, with the people around you? What are you putting of yourself into your career? you know, what are your goals? What are your aspirations? How long has this been happening? What stage of life are you in? Particularly for women? That’s important. There’s, there’s very specific hormonal life stages. and then from there, it’s okay, just fine tuning. So what, what aren’t they getting right? What is suboptimal from their lifestyle. And, and so I call myself the foundation guy. I don’t do anything fancy. If people don’t move, I just get them to move a little bit more. Okay. You let’s let’s have you track your steps. Cool. You move 3500 steps a day. Let’s have you try to move 4000 steps a day. It’s an extra 500 steps. That’s maybe a four minute walk. Not a big deal. Most people can figure out a way to do a four minute walk. And so How much water do you drink? Right. Okay. You drink 30oz of water a day. Cool. Let’s try 45. Right. It’s not a big deal. It’s two more glasses of water. You can do it. And so just trying to find these subtle things that they can do that don’t feel like a big deal, that aren’t intimidating, that can quickly become their new normal and then increasing those. You know, if someone drinks 30oz of water, I need to get them to 100. I’m not going to tell them to go drink 100oz of water. We’re going to increase that bit by bit by bit by bit, week over week so that it’s normal. It’s doable. It becomes just what they do. And that’s really my approach. It’s just change your normal.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:30] And I wonder, do you find these days that people are impatient and perhaps influenced by what they’re seeing on their phone, on their small screens in social media, some of the amazing transformations that people can do, and then reality hits. And as you say, ten days isn’t enough to really change anything significantly in the long term. Are people do you detect? And certainly I noticed this, that people want quick fixes.

Drew Griesel: [00:12:57] Mhm. Absolutely. I will tell you, it is much easier to sell a ten day transformation than it is to sell a ten week transformation, because people want that quick fix. And so the people that end up working with me are the people that are. I don’t want to say resigned, but they’re accepting of the fact that they spent years getting to this place, and they’re going to have to put some work into getting out of it. And so there’s, yeah, you have your two groups of people, the people that are going to understand that transformation requires time and effort, and the people that really want that quick fix. And there’s a lot out there right now, right? We got all these cool peptides and interesting longevity medicine, and I’m a huge fan, but start with your lifestyle. Don’t go and take a GLP for weight loss. If you still eat like garbage and don’t move your body and you’re going to continue to do that. Like first move your body, eat a little bit better, then think about the GLP.

Peter Bowes: [00:13:52] Well, I have this conversation so many times these days that if exercise probably at number one. Well, actually I put sleep at number one because if you don’t sleep well, you tend not to exercise well and you tend to eat too much sugar because you need some energy. So sleep number one. But exercise is crucially important. And probably all of those three factors nutrition, exercise and, and sleep probably account for maybe 80, 90. You can’t put an exact number on it, but a very high percentage of the things that you can do to vastly improve your, your health and potential longevity.

Drew Griesel: [00:14:25] Yeah. My protocol has, I don’t know, six different mediums of, of lifestyle and habits that we incorporate, but the top three that are the ones you just listed. I say sleep well, eat well, move well, not necessarily in that order, but those are the most important things. And to your point, you got to sleep. Sleep is actually my gateway into more of the wellness space from the, the fitness and nutrition space because I was coaching people. And if they, it became obvious after a very short period of time that if they were not sleeping well, they didn’t have good sleep habits in place, then they were not going to get the gains that they that I should have been seeing in the work that we were putting in.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:03] And there are so many views on this question, but what are healthy sleep habits in your view? What works for you?

Drew Griesel: [00:15:12] So first of all, I do want to distinguish, the difference between sleep duration and sleep quality. A lot of people simply think I need to be in bed for eight hours. And that is a misconception. So there’s sleep quality is your ability to fall asleep, stay asleep and move through the sleep stages in each sleep stage has its own benefits to you physiologically, mentally, and for your recovery and so on and so forth. My primary focus is in creating quality sleep. You know, some people just can’t get a lot of sleep. You know, I can’t help that. My four year old wakes me up at six in the morning every day. And so if I want any time for myself in the morning, I have to wake up at five in the morning. I can’t help that I have some more control over when I go to sleep, but there are some things that I can’t control. so just driving quality of sleep and they have all these amazing sleep trackers out there. And the data is, you know, it’s usually okay. directionally it lets you know how your sleep quality is.

Peter Bowes: [00:16:14] Do you use the trackers? Do you use the rings or the I do or the other devices?

Drew Griesel: [00:16:18] I have my little ring. I have a hum band as well, which I’m a huge fan of because I also have the hum scale and they, they talk to each other and give you some really cool data points. but yeah, so I do look at that and it is important. It is very important to me, like I said, but for me, it’s, it’s trying to have a consistent bedtime and wake time, you know, within reason. And then of course, those trying to reflect how much time you really want to be asleep. So if you want to sleep for seven hours, then you got to try and be in bed for somewhere between, you know, seven and a half to eight hours because there’s that time it takes to fall asleep, and the time it takes to get into a nice deep sleep.

Peter Bowes: [00:16:56] For me, it’s still it’s always a work in progress, getting the best night’s sleep. And yeah, what the conclusion I’m coming around to is just based on personal experience, is that a better night’s sleep always follows a very active day, and inevitably, some days we’ll be in the office. It’ll be a lot of sitting, and it just doesn’t give enough time to go on the long hikes or to go for the swim or the bike ride, or all those great things that I like and would like to do every day. But on a very active day, it is quite tangible. It’s quite noticeable that that sleep is generally better that night.

Drew Griesel: [00:17:29] Yeah. And, and I one thing that I like to do is clear up a misconception that having a busy day means that you have to have an inactive day. There’s always opportunities for activity, even if it’s not, you know, heart thumping, sweat pouring activity. You know, I can, if I’m on a day where I have meetings and, and wonderful calls like this all day, I could still get 13000 steps in like it is possible. You know, you just have to build habits around it. You have to be intentional about it on the front end. And then those just become habits. And then it just becomes normal. And it’s not even hard to do. But something that surprises people in a core part of my protocols is the morning routine morning when you wake up, you’re setting the stage for your sleep that night. As soon as you wake up, you’re preparing your body to sleep at night. And a lot of people, it doesn’t really make sense to them. But there’s a whole, you know, we have our circadian rhythms, which is our sleep wake cycle, but it’s, it’s a hormonal thing. And so we’re always influencing those hormonal rhythms. And we start doing that when we wake up in the morning by getting natural light, it tells our body, hey, this is time to wake up. And it starts that clock of, okay, X number of hours later. That means it’s going to be time to start producing that melatonin, preparing the body for sleep. And so morning routine is really important to have a good night of sleep at the end of the day. And then to your point, just making sure that you’re doing the right things throughout the day, primarily moving well and hydrating. A lot of people don’t hydrate well, and it’s a huge disrupter to everything, but sleep included.

Peter Bowes: [00:19:00] This is the Live Long podcast. Our guest is Drew Griesel, executive performance coach and founder of Primal Wellness Coaching. I’ve actually become a little obsessed by the concept of habits and morning routines recently, because I see the benefits that you can get from just these tiny little changes. And I think until you, you try these things and acknowledge that you are trying to grow a new habit and then see the benefits of it, it’s maybe difficult for some people to get the concept of of morning routines. I think that the phrase is sometimes seen as a little sort of biohacking and a little, you know, extreme, but it really does reap benefits, doesn’t it?

Drew Griesel: [00:19:39] It does. And 100% of the people that I have build a morning routine report feeling better from having done it 100%. There’s nobody that I help create a morning routine that didn’t have one before that says, this doesn’t do anything for me. This didn’t change anything. You know, some things take a lot of time, right? It takes time to lose weight the right way. It takes time to to create certain transformations. But some things you can feel pretty quickly. One of, one of the most surprising things for me, when I started going on this journey as a coach was in getting people to hydrate properly. It’s such a simple thing, but the energy that people have when they’re properly hydrated versus when they’re dehydrated is incredible. And most people are chronically dehydrated. I’ll ask people, do you drink enough water? They’ll say, yes. How much do you drink? Oh, probably about 40oz a day. Cool. You weigh 200 pounds and you drink 40oz a day. You are severely dehydrated, my friend. You are drinking about a third of what you should be drinking.

Peter Bowes: [00:20:35] That’s a tiny amount as well. Yeah. Yes, exactly. But you’re right. I mean, some people I’ve heard recently of people that say people actually working in the medical professions, even who say, I just don’t like drinking water. It’s kind of boring. And it’s as simple as that for some people. But you’re right, the benefits are huge. I wanted to just to backtrack, one final question on morning routines for you. What’s the difference between a routine and a habit?

Drew Griesel: [00:21:00] Mhm. Yeah. And there’s, there’s a few different. Words that we use right. Habits, routines, rituals. A habit I would say is just is something that you do without really thinking about it. Okay. A routine I would almost say is a series of things that you do without thinking about it or just that you do. Maybe you have to think about it, but it’s just something that you do. You stick to it, right? It might be your routine to when you get to work, you turn on your computer, you go grab a cup of coffee, you check your email. You know, that’s just a routine. That’s what you do. That’s the order in which you do things. A ritual has a little bit more meaning to it. So and you can almost say like a routine in a ritual could be interchangeable, but a ritual usually has a little bit more of a kind of an emotional connection to it. But if we’re just if we’re distinguishing habits and routines, I would say the habits are the individual makeup of the routine.

Peter Bowes: [00:21:54] Now I mentioned and we can see the logo behind you. You host a podcast in some respects similar to this podcast. You talk and I’ve listened to lots of your episodes. You talk to experts in the field. I’m just wondering, what do you feel as if you have learned through talking to many, many experts over the time that you’ve been doing the podcast that perhaps you didn’t appreciate before? In other words, what what kind of energy do you get from people that helps you?

Drew Griesel: [00:22:19] It’s, it’s so much, you know, and I kind of cover two different fields of  focus. One is really wellness. So health and wellness. And then the other is performance. So I talk to people that actually talk about like workplace performance, cognitive performance, things like that. I’ve learned so much, you know, a lot of my protocols, a lot of what I teach is based on what I’ve learned from the subject matter experts that have been kind enough to come on my show and talk to me. And so my, my understanding, well, one of the power of just a foundational lifestyle and routine and habits. Is is greatly improved from folks that I’ve spoken to, because it doesn’t matter what the field of expertise is. You know, I’ve talked to dietitians and fitness specialists and people that run supplement companies and, folks that do peptides and stem cells and exosomes and EBOO, where they clean out your blood and run, run longevity and wellness centers and all of that. And then the workplace performance people and all that. The one thing that every single one of them agrees on is that you have to have a good lifestyle with foundational habits in place. They all agree with that. You know, the, the supplement, the, the, the cool regenerative medicine people, they’re like, yeah, our products are amazing and everyone should take them, but you need to sleep well, move well, eat well, you got to do those things. Otherwise you’re not going to get the bang for your buck. And a lot of this stuff is not cheap. And so that was kind of cool. I mean, that was sort of just affirmation of what I was already thinking. But then just talking to these experts, right? Like learning about all the different peptides and learning about exosomes and learning about, hyperbaric oxygen. And then on the cognitive performance side. I mean, I’ve talked to some, some neuroscientists, like so many cool things I’ve learned about how the brain works, about building habits, about caring for yourself from a mental health perspective with just, you know, simple things that you can bake into your lifestyle that support your cognitive health. So I, it’s a massive range of things. I’ve learned so much. I try to come to every conversation, as, you know, a child just trying to learn, you know, not not as a peer, but as someone that is really trying to tap into the expertise of the person in front of me.

Peter Bowes: [00:24:34] Yeah. And I agree with you. It is often the common themes that come out of these interviews that suddenly strike you. You actually think, well, I’ve heard this before from this expert and this expert in very different fields and one area of common agreement often comes to the answer to this question, which is often what gets you out of bed in the morning? What drives you? Why do you want to live a presumably a long and healthy life? Why are you aspiring to a great healthspan? Why is it in so. Why is it so important to you?

Drew Griesel: [00:25:07] So there’s, there’s two things. One is, I want to help people. That’s it’s, it’s always been a mission of mine and working my life in corporate finance, I didn’t find that fulfillment. There was a point where I took a two year hiatus. I went and traveled. I lived overseas for a while. I came back, I thought, okay, what am I good at? What can I do that can help people? And, you know, I was a martial artist. I was taking Krav Maga, learning self-defense. Like, maybe I’ll go be a police officer. And, I started to pursue that journey and it didn’t pan out. My, my wife wasn’t interested in me, going down that career path. And so I, I started teaching self-defense and okay, there’s fulfillment in that. And then, you know, going on that journey that I’ve already described of, of fitness and then health and wellness and now performance. It’s like I find immense personal spiritual satisfaction in being able to help people to self optimize in a physiological way. And I’ve seen people improve relationships and mental health and all kinds of amazing things through the work that we’ve done. And so that gives me a lot of personal satisfaction. The other side of it is, so I have a child that will be four in a few days. And when he was born, I was just about to turn 40. And so as I was thinking about it at that time, and I was already into this space at that time, but this is where it kind of set me on a path. I thought about it. I’m like, okay, he’s zero. I’m 40 by the time what if, what if if he has kids? What if he doesn’t have kids until he’s the age that I am now I’ll be 80 and he’ll have a new child. So that child will probably want to play, you know, a few years later. So if I want to be playing with my 5 or 10 year old grandchild at that point, I’m already 85, 90 years old. So if I want to be a happy, fun, energetic, spry, involved grandfather at 85 or 90. Well, that’s going to require some intention. But the good news is I’ve got 40 or 50 years to become that person. So I better start right now so that in 40 or 50 years I am that person.

Peter Bowes: [00:27:21] So, Drew, without any prompting, you just gave the answer that I was kind of expecting and have heard time and time again that people do this, think like this because they a want to share their wisdom and principally share their wisdom with their families, but to be around for their children and their grandchildren, which is a classic reasoning for wanting to live this kind of healthy lifestyle. And what strikes me is that that isn’t a selfish motivation. It isn’t about you, per se. I mean, clearly it’s about you to be around to help you children, to be with your children. But it is it is a sharing kind of philosophy to be around to make sure that they’re having good lives.

Drew Griesel: [00:28:05] Yeah, yeah. The, the idea of, I mean, I’m still at an age where I haven’t really had to necessarily face my own mortality. but the idea of, as I look at, you know, 40 or 50 years into the future of not being there to see that, you know, it’s very unappealing to me. I’ll just say that.

Peter Bowes: [00:28:24] It is. And, you know, I, you know, I’m living in a world now where just in the last few weeks, I am aware of several people that I know who have died in their 60s, all men and in some cases some some high profile people that receives a lot of attention. And it just brings it home to you, doesn’t it, that we’re all vulnerable. We’re all fragile in ways sometimes that we don’t even realize until something hits us. And it really is what we can do. We can’t do everything. We can’t prevent every disease, but there’s a heck of a lot we can do just to try to optimize our years. And clearly, that’s what you’re trying to do.

Drew Griesel: [00:29:05] Yeah. My my father passed away at, just shy of 72, about three weeks before my, my son was born. And so, you know, he missed that. And in some ways, I kind of resent that. And I don’t want to, but I kind of do, you know, he, he didn’t care for himself like he, as far as I’m concerned, could or should have. And so he declined and he got very sick and then he passed away. And, you know, I don’t I don’t want that for for my future.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:39] No, I understand that fully. I just want to ask you about this word optimization that I hear a lot, and I think you mentioned it already, and I’ve seen in recent weeks a bit of a sort of a pushback from people saying that we’re becoming too obsessed with optimizing the human body and that perhaps we need to maybe just relax a little bit. And that life isn’t always about maximizing our physical strength. You know, the number of hours we spend in the gym or the optimum diet that we never have something that’s maybe tasty and maybe not 100% great for us. But I’m just wondering, especially as you’re dealing with your clients, how you help people reach that kind of balance in their lives.

Drew Griesel: [00:30:23] Yeah. So I am not the you need to go crazy with workouts. You need to eat a crazy strict diet. You need to be very rigid on all of your routines kind of guy. I am a firm believer. Well, one in the 80/20 rule, like just do, do, do right 80% of the time and relax 20% of the time. But even building up to that takes time. And that’s why I say it worked out well that I work with very busy people, because the things that I do don’t require massive swaths of time to put in. It doesn’t take time. Massive amount of time to take a few 5 or 10 minute walks throughout the day. I’m not asking someone to go spend 40 minutes getting ready to go to the gym and driving there, and then crushing an hour workout, and then cooling down for half an hour and then getting back. I’m not asking for a three hour commitment just for a workout. I’m asking you to take a few ten minute walks throughout the day. If that’s not normal for you, then cool. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to look at your schedule and we’re going to find times for you to take your ten minute walks. It’s not a big deal if you eat very poorly. No problem. We’re going to start by introducing a very subtle eating window. So maybe you’re not eating the second you wake up and you’re not stopping eating the second you lay down for sleep. We’re going to minimize that just fractionally, and we’re going to focus a little bit on what you’re putting into your body, and then we’re going to improve it over time, but never to the point where it’s it’s super rigid, because I do believe that everyone gets to a point where they need to have their own tailored protocols that are unique to their needs, right? And not everyone wants to be super muscular. Not everyone wants to be crazy lean. Not everyone wants to. Not everyone cares about eating really clean all the time, but they just want to eat better, right? And so it’s for me, it’s about figuring out what someone’s goals are and getting them to that place in a way that is very doable. I like being, really strict about certain things. I think it’s really important for some people that particularly like have a problem with, with self-control when it comes to very specific things, but everyone’s got to be met where they’re at.

Peter Bowes: [00:32:38] And do you think there is these days more of an understanding of ‘healthspan’ in particular, which is a word that I use a lot because I think it encapsulates beautifully what we’re aiming for. It’s not necessarily as long as our heart is beating, it’s how we can live optimally without those chronic diseases.

Drew Griesel: [00:32:58] I think it’s still it’s still a work in process to get it to really catch on. As far as Healthspan goes, people, people have more awareness on it at a, maybe a service level, you get into this space and yeah, everyone’s talking healthspan versus lifespan. or as in support of lifespan. However, one thing that I’ve noticed that’s really caught on, which is almost backwards, like it should be healthspan. But I’ve found as I meet with people and start talking to them about some of the things that we’re going to do, like all of a sudden people know about all the stuff that was kind of fringe before. They know about the red lights, and they know about the cold plunges, and they know about the the glutathione and the NAD and the peptides. They know about all of these things that they want to talk about, right? Tell me about vibration. Tell me about sauna. Like, okay, cool. All those things are amazing, but how much water do you drink every day? How do you sleep? And so the, the foundation is still, I think, a big miss for a lot of people out there.

Peter Bowes: [00:34:00] Drew. It’s been really good talking to you. Fascinating conversation. Thank you very much.

Drew Griesel: [00:34:04] Thank you Peter, it’s been a pleasure.

Peter Bowes: [00:34:06] The Live Long podcast is a Healthspan Media production. I’m Peter Bowes. You can contact me through our website, Livelongpodcast.com, where you’ll also find show notes for this episode.

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