Episode Highlights

• Medicine’s focus on simply avoiding sickness rather than human enhancement
• Dr. Stickler’s experience with and expertise on integrative medicine
• Taking the biohacking “cure” mindset away from using optimizing supplements
• Supplements are not a health solution but the enhancer
• How you can naturally create new neural networks with dietary changes
• Altering your life through epigenetic modification (diet, exercise, meditation)
• The relationship between fat and the brain
• Everything you’ve learned about cholesterol is misinformed
• Where you can fit beneficial fats into your diet
• “There is no perfect human diet.”
• How Dr. Stickler came to realize how special Qualia really is
• How Qualia is formulated differently than other nootropics

Useful Links

• Apeiron Center for Human Potential
• Apeiron Academy
• Neurohacker Collective
• Ironman Executive Podcast
• Qualia Nootropic

About Guest

Dr. Daniel Stickler is Medical Director of Neurohacker Collective, bringing decades of forward thinking medical knowledge in wellness optimization and whole systems science to our team.

Dr. Stickler is a future-focused visionary and a thought leader in human potential. He is the cofounder of the Apeiron Center for Human Potential and the Apeiron Academy. Disheartened by our current “sick care” approach to health, Dr. Stickler created Human Potential Medicine- an integrated, biospherical systems-approach that combines the scientific grounding and expertise of modern medicine with leading-edge genetic/epigenetic science and neuro-psychophysiological modalities to expand human capacity. He also established the Apeiron Academy, which offers advanced education to a tribe of like-minded individuals determined to shift the health & wellness paradigm from the current sick-care model to one of optimized human potential.

Dr. Stickler entered medical school with a vision of helping people create an optimized life and found very quickly that the training focused predominantly on treating disease to postpone our stepwise progression to death. This realization was the catalyst for a several decade journey to create a new way of living. An opportunity to one promote youthful longevity and the potential for limitless life.

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Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Dr. Daniel Stickler, who is the co-founder of the Appiron Center for Human Potential, the co-founder of the Appiron Academy, and the medical director at the Neurohacker Collective. So, Dr. Stickler, that was just a crazy tongue twister, but it is it is absolute pleasure to have you on the show today.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, thanks. Happy to be here.

Zack Arnold: Now, one of the reasons that I’m super happy that you’re here is because, unlike many people that after a super long week at work at 9 p.m. on Friday night, driving home when they might be listening to music to unwind or talking to friends or thinking about the party they’re going to go to for the weekend, I listen to podcasts about brain neuroscience, so I’m a super crazy brain nerd, and this is going to be really really exciting today because a few months ago I discovered this product called Qualia, and Qualia, as far as I’m concerned, at least from my own personal experimentation, is as close as I have ever gotten to experiencing the quote-unquote limitless effect, and I have done a lot of experimentation with different nootropics. I’ve done unfair advantage, GABA Wave, Siltep, Alpha Brain, True Brain, Four Sigmatic, and I’ve had suboptimal results in the past. And then I discovered Qualia, and my entire world changed, but I don’t want to go too deep into Qualia quite yet. I want to go down there later on in the show, but first I just want to understand a little bit about your background, how you got into your area of specialty, and the two areas that I really want to talk about are obviously brain optimization, but more importantly, you say very clearly in your biography right near the beginning that you were tired of working in the sick care industry, and this is something I’m really, really passionate about as well. Even though I don’t even work in the medical industry, so let’s just talk a little bit about your background and why you’re so passionate about what you do now.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, it all started with medical school and the my motivation for entering medical school was really to to help optimize people to really present with a better quality of life because even back then before I understood it I I understood that the human potential is a limitless state and appearon actually means limitless it’s the Greek word for limitless, so it’s it’s kind of synchronistic that you you mention that. But I went into medical school with this idea of what medicine was about, and and the disenchantment was pretty pretty quick and profound. Noticing that the focus was so much on sick care and medication and pharmacology, and not much on really lifestyle factors that or or things that could optimize the human state. You know the performance enhancement type of stuff, which is what I was really interested in. So as a compromise, I ended up going into surgery because I loved working with my hands and I and I kind of saw that most medicine is about delaying death, you know, a stepwise progression towards death, and you just slow the process a little bit. I didn’t like that, so I went into surgery and really enjoyed surgery. Got into weight loss surgery because that was something that came close to what I was looking for. You know, better quality of life for somebody when they come in with a baseline, and then I realized over time that that wasn’t quite it either. I discovered anti-aging medicine through Cinogenics, became an affiliate with them, and and that was getting closer. And then after about two years with them, I stepped away to kind of create my own process, which was the human potential movement, and that has that keeps growing every year. I mean, it’s a it’s a dynamic process because we learn more and more, and we’re in an exciting time as this progresses. But I stepped away from surgery about nine years ago and didn’t look back and said, you know, this is the path I want to take. So we’ve been going down this path, and then finally, after some presentations I did at some national meetings, a lot of clinicians came up to me and said, “Can you teach me what you do? I’m very interested in this because there, you know, I didn’t know how big of an interest there was in human optimization and getting away from the sick care model, but it was huge, and so I started training physicians and chiropractors. And then I realized that what I teach is you don’t have to have a medical degree to do it. You just have to have a passion for understanding it and teaching it. I mean, look at all the biohackers out there. You know, I go into to consults with people, checking my ego at the door, understanding that a lot of them will know more than I do in certain areas. I mean, I’m sure you probably know more about some of the neurochemistry than I do, and you can’t come into it as a clinician or a coach with an understanding that you’re the expert. Because it doesn’t exist, you’re there to be a mediator to really look at things and say, you know, does this make sense or does it not make sense from your background standpoint? So that’s where I am right now.

Zack Arnold: Well, first of all, I can definitely say that I detest the word expert. So for anybody thinking that I’m an expert, they don’t need to worry about that. I’m very clear about that fact. And secondly, I guarantee that you know more about neurochemistry than I do because I’ve listened to you on podcasts. So trust me, anybody thinking, “Oh, maybe Zack knows more, oh no, I don’t. That’s why I’m having you on my podcast because I’m here to learn, just like my audience is. And like I said, I just geek out on this stuff, and I’ve got maybe a little bit more knowledge than the average person that doesn’t know how the brain works at all, but that’s only by necessity because of my vast experience dealing with depression and burnout and anxiety, and just having to learn it for my own personal well-being and safety. But then, once I started learning more about it, I realized, oh, I’m not the only person that works in a creative industry that lives in front of a computer in a dark room that experiences these things, so maybe I can share my knowledge with others. So that’s as far as my knowledge goes. So I’m I’m pretty sure that you’re going to be able to talk about neurochemistry at a deeper level than I will. So where I really want to start, first of all, we could go down the sick care road. That could be like a four part podcast, and I’ve actually talked about that with my integrative medical doctor, who I’ve had for over a decade now, so I can actually link to that episode because I talk all about this idea of sick care and why the modern medical system, the way that it’s constructed, really doesn’t work anymore. Especially if you’re interested in feeling good and you’re interested in well-being, basically they will just look at you and say, well, you’re not sick anymore, so I’ve done my job. So have a great day, and I believe in going much further than that. Clearly, it’s in the name of the podcast and the program, and I love that you’ve already helped name drop the word “optimize” like 10 times. So you and I are going to be good friends. But where I’d like to start to really dive into the rabbit hole of neurochemistry is before we go into qualia itself. I just want to understand how the brain kind of functions as far as nutrition for the brain is concerned, because that’s a big part of what nootropics, smart drugs, all these supplements are trying to do is provide much needed nutrition to the brain. And you do a great, great explanation of how this works on your brand new podcast for the Neurohacker Collective called the Collective Experience. But I just kind of want to take some of the the keynotes from that, and the first one would be understanding what are the main building blocks that we need to focus on if we don’t want to just barely function, but we want to optimize brain function, focus, and creativity.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, you want to start off with understanding that you know we’re a complex organism. We’re we’re not a complicated, predictable organism, and focusing on a nootropic to enhance brain function is really no different than the sick care model of medicine. It doesn’t work that way. It has to be a full systems-based approach to optimization. You, if you’re not sleeping, it doesn’t matter what chemicals or nutrients you load into the system. You’re not going to have optimal function. Just not going to happen. So we a lot of the the biohackers out there will take this approach and not realize they’re doing it. They’ll say, you know, I’m I’m not sleeping, so I take something to help me sleep, and then I’m drowsy in the morning, so I take something to help me concentrate and focus. That’s no different than somebody who’s saying I have high cholesterol, and the doctor says here’s a statin drug. It’s the same thing. So you’ve got to look at it from a complete human being systems approach. So when we look at people and we’re looking to optimize their cognitive function, is is one of the aspects of that. We look at sleep. We look at their stress responses. We look at their nutrition. We look at their supplementation. We look at their thought processing, the brain and the mind, how they function in society, their environment that they exist in. All of these things play into the eventual outcome. So you’ve got to look at every input into the system to determine the optimal output that you’re going to see. I mean, you know, the brain has 86 billion neurons, and when you look at a connectome with that, that connectome is infinite. That means there’s infinite possibilities of an outcome that’s not predictable in any way whatsoever. And so what you want to do is you want to make sure that that system is functioning in the most optimal state, and the body body really does strive for homeostasis overall. I mean that’s that’s its ultimate goal is to achieve homeostasis within that environment that it exists, and what we our role is to provide the raw materials to allow it. To achieve that, and you know that’s that’s the thing that a lot of people miss when they’re going for performance enhancement or cognitive enhancement or whatever it is, they’re looking at that one magic piece that’s going to do it, and and there is no magic piece. It’s it’s a matter of the combination of everything that is really going to provide that outcome.

Zack Arnold: And I love that you were very very clear about that from the top, and you’re not just some supplement salesman getting on a podcast saying, “Well, the answer is our our nootropic, of course, is going to solve it, because that’s not the case. And you didn’t like you’re not the inventor of qualia, so to speak, but you’re somebody that discovered it and said, “Wow, this is something that was really really making a difference in my patients’ lives, so I don’t want people to think that you’re just another show for a supplement. Which is exactly why I brought you on the show because I hate that stuff, and I love looking at the system first. And like you said, am I sleeping well? Am I eating well? Am I exercising great? If I’m doing all of these, then maybe I can take it to the next level, but you have to have that baseline foundation of health and well-being. You can’t just fill this giant gap in your health with a pill. So I really, really love that approach. So let’s just assume then that we are not doing any supplementation, and we want to do a little bit of brain optimization through diet. So let’s talk a little bit. What are some of those building blocks? Whether they be amino acids, cholesterol, glucose, ketones. Like let’s talk a little bit about properly fueling the brain and making sure we have the building blocks to create new neural networks. Well,

Dr. Daniel Stickler: The the first aspect of nutrition is going to be the minimization of the simple sugars. Huge huge impact there, and I’m not saying don’t eat carbohydrates. I like carbohydrates. They’re they’re not bad for the brain, but the simple carbohydrates are definitely a problem when it comes to cognitive function, and so you have, you know, I always say the diet de jour of of what’s out there. I mean, everybody’s on the ketogenic bandwagon, and years ago it was paleo, and before that it was Adkins, and Zone. So we we go through these processes of these extreme dietary patterns without understanding the fact that you know there there is a basic nutritional plan that works well for people, and it’s an individualized plan. You can’t look at and say this works well for everybody. None of this works that way. Everybody is a unique individual that needs to really work within their own genetics and their epigenetic expressions in order to identify things that are going to give them the most optimal outcomes. Now, when it comes to fats, I mean, I am not a big fan of saturated fats. I think there are many issues that occur with saturated fats, but that’s not to say I’m a low-fat person. In fact, you know my diet is probably 40 to 50 percent fat, but my fat is predominantly mono and saturated fats and omega threes, and a small amount, probably less than 5% of saturated fats. But those are all really amazing epigenetic modifiers of brain expression, and and this is where everything’s coming down to. I mean, people jumped on the genetics bandwagon pretty early on, and and we do genetics. I mean, we we run a panel looking at 500 genetic variants, but we don’t look at those as a predictor necessarily. We look at it as another biometric. It’s just it’s not unlike looking at blood work. So you’re not destined to the outcome of your genetic data, but you do have a lot of ability to alter that expression through epigenetics, and this is where our primary focus is in my clinical practice as well as in my teachings in the academy, is that epigenetic expression piece, which is the biggest part of the of what predicts outcome. I mean, the the brain is highly sensitive to epigenetic modifications, whether it be exercise or meditation, or the dietary patterns and the amount of fat and the mix of fats that you take in, but the the data on this, the the research that’s out there on the epigenetics is really coming on strong right now. I mean, 10s of 1000s of articles a year being being published on this change in the expression of our genes. I mean, a lot of people, they’re they’re big into the ancestral health movement, and I can tell you, if you took a person today and dropped them back 12,000 years ago, they would not function well at all. You know, they carry the same genetics from a code standpoint, but their adaptation through epigenetic modifications, through transgenerational epigenetics, have all adjusted to really meet the necessities of society the way it is now. I mean, every cell in our body is constantly assessing environment. Every single cell, the trillions of cells we have, think about that. Every single one of them is testing the. Environment and saying I need to make this adjustment, so it’s a dynamic process that’s ongoing. And you know, a lot of people want to test epigenetics, and it’s a hard thing to do because every organ system and every cell within every organ system is going to have a slightly different expression of that epigenetic piece. So that’s where the coaching model really plays well.

Zack Arnold: To go back a second, one thing that I definitely want to clarify is that you’re saying a pack of Oreos at 2p.m. in the afternoon not good for cognitive function. I just want to clarify. Okay, that explain that explains so much of of my earlier career. Well, I’m I’m glad that we’ve we’ve definitely talked a little bit about sugars already because if you hadn’t hit that, I would have hit it because for me, I’m a bit of the canary in the coal mine. Where if I slip at all as far as sugar or snacking or even bread, sometimes like having pizza for lunch, it will kill my abilities to be creative and my ability to focus for hours and hours, sometimes even into the next morning, the next day, so I’ve experienced that very much firsthand. I don’t need research to tell me that simple carbohydrates will destroy my creativity, but to go further, I would like to talk about the relationship of fat to the brain because the brain is primarily made up of fat as well as cholesterol. And as soon as most people that have just a basic understanding of the standard American diet. They hear the words fat and the words cholesterol, and they say, “Oh, but there’s no way I can do that. I’m supposed to be eating nothing but rice and whole grains and cereals. But then they can’t figure out why they feel this state of constant brain fog. So, can we go a little bit deeper into how fat works for the brain and some examples of some of the fats that you would recommend in your diet that are actually healthy.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Yeah, the one of the things I want to start off with is the cholesterol aspect and understanding that dietary cholesterol is different than blood cholesterol, what we call blood cholesterol. So when we’re measuring blood cholesterol and we say this is your total cholesterol, we’re not measuring the same thing as dietary cholesterol. What we’re measuring is what we call lipoproteins, and we’ve grouped them under the the heading of cholesterol. So we look at the lipoproteins, which are a mix of proteins and a mix of lipids. They’re saturated fats, monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, cholesterol, all mixed together in a particle, and we call this blood cholesterol. And it’s it’s not a it’s a very confusing term for the general public, and in fact, a lot of physicians are still confused about it, to be honest. But cholesterol itself, I mean, it’s a building block of hormones. It’s a building block of cell walls and and other lipoproteins throughout the body. It’s it is inflammatory cytokines are they use fats and and cholesterols. The cholesterol is just ubiquitous in the need in the body. It’s not a negative thing, you know. Even LDL, they call it bad cholesterol, but you would die without LDL. You need LDL to transport cholesterol, considering it makes up the majority of your cell wall. When we talk about what’s delivered from those LDL particles, so it’s not a matter of a good or a bad in this aspect. It’s a matter of the type that you have that that are generated that that creates this outcome. You know, one of the things that they say about saturated fats is it doesn’t have any double bonds in it, so it can’t oxidize, which is true. But it’s an argument that doesn’t quite meet the true outcome that you’re looking at because higher saturated fat intake allows polyunsaturated fats, which contain double bonds, to circulate in the system longer, exposing them to more potential for free radical oxidation, and so the saturated fat itself isn’t causing the problem, but is contributing to it, and and so people will say, well, you know, if it doesn’t oxidize, it can’t be bad for me, but it can be. You’ve got to look at the entire system and not just really isolate that down to that one piece like that. But in the brain, the the most important fat is probably DHA, one of the forms of omega three. So our body takes in omega three in a vegetable form in the form of ALA or in a animal form in the form of EPA and DHA. But we also have certain genetics that allow for that conversion, and you know we hear about that omega six to three ratio. Well, the reason that’s so important is because we have an enzyme that is responsible for metabolizing both of these. So taking ALA into the first usable form of omega three, which is EPA, is the same that works on arachidonic acid and other omega sixes. So if you have a lot of omega sixes, if your ratio is really high, that enzyme is going to be occupied using the omega sixes versus the omega threes, and you really need to get that same enzyme to convert EPA to DHA, which is the. Really important one in the brain. You know, I think there’s 300 times more DHA than there is EPA in brain, and DHA has profound effects on the brain function, cognitive function overall. I mean, it’s probably one of the most important nootropics that that I can even mention is DHA. One aspect that I see a lot of is that people will consume fruits thinking, well, you know, that’s a natural sugar, so it’s okay. But fruits contain a lot of fructose, and fructose has a very negative impact on neurons in the brain. And epigenetically, it shifts expressions in these neurons. But DHA will actually reset that network. It actually mitigates the effects of fructose on brain cells. So you know we’ve got to look at this from a from a whole systems approach. It doesn’t mean don’t take fructose, but make sure that you’ve got a good amount of DHA circulating to to kind of help mitigate those effects.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and for anybody that’s getting really, really lost in the EPA and the DHA and ALA and the this and the that, like a really, really simple way to think of EPA DHA is fish oil. That is something that I have talked about extensively on past podcasts. That basically, and again, I’m not the doctor; you’re the doctor. But having spoken with a lot of doctors, the whenever somebody will ask me, like, listen, I am not really into supplementation, but I just kind of want the bare bones basics, and I work in a dark room all day long, and I say, vitamin D and fish oil is just such a super great bare bones basic place to start. So for all those crazy acronyms and numbers and letters, like I will supplement with fish oil in the morning and at night simply because of brain health. So is that a recommendation that you would agree with as well?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Yeah, in fact, those are two of the basic supplementations that we actually have everybody do: is vitamin D and fish oil. Now, a lot of times we will add an additional DHA with fish oil because DHA is is really in most fish oils it’s the lower amount but like I said in the brain we really need that and and we look at genetics so we’re looking at like FADS one which is a gene that converts that EPA into DHA and a lot of people have variants of that that don’t allow good conversion so the safest thing to do is it doesn’t matter whether you have it or not. Just take some additional DHA. So what we do is we usually do two capsules of fish oil and add one or two DHA capsules as a bonus. And the DHA you can obtain from algae, which is really nice. We have a lot of people that are vegans and vegetarians. Sometimes they don’t like to do any animal sources, and so we there are some non-animal sources of EPA and DHA, but really the algal form of DHA is the way to go.

Zack Arnold: And I definitely do not want to go down this rabbit hole because we could do this forever. But I just want to very briefly mention that if you’re thinking, oh well, Kirkland’s signature fish oil at Costco is super super cheap right now. I’m going to buy a giant vat of it. There is a lot of crappy fish oil out there, and you have to get something that’s super super high quality and low in mercury content. So I just want to make sure and drop that, and I’m sure that you wouldn’t disagree with that as well.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: No, and and in fact, most of the the large commercial fish oils are actually not pure fish oils either. It’s the other the downside of it, but you absorb fish oils at a different rate. I mean, if you’re eating the actual fish, then you actually have the highest absorption of the DHA and EPA. Whereas if you take supplementation, you have to look at is you know is it cold filtered is it triglyceride form, most of the fish oil is is purified and reconstituted, which takes out all of the all of the mercury and the heavy metals. So I’m not too concerned about the heavy metals, and and I do recommend a triglyceride form of fish oil, but in the triglyceride form, what they do is they ultra purify it, and it takes out all the heavy metals, and then they reconstitute it. And people think, well, it’s a lot of processing, but it actually turns out it’s it’s pretty good, and it’s it’s the second best absorbed as opposed to eating the fish itself.

Zack Arnold: Got it. So to continue along this conversation about just basic nutrition that’s going to optimize brain function, focus, creativity. We’ve clearly spelled out simple carbohydrates are definitely not going to help. Even though people think, oh well, I’m low on energy and I need to perk me up, so I need sugar because that’s going to perk me up. We’re very clearly defined that’s not going to be the case. We’ve talked a little bit about the effect of fats and how fats are good for you, and you’ve mentioned fish, and we’ve talked about fish oil as well. But before we go to the next level, which is talking a little bit more about amino acids and proteins, can you just give like maybe three to five simple examples of other healthy fats that somebody could have as staples in their diet that are going to help them stay more focused and avoid brain fog?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Don’t like to look at fats as a large macronutrient overall. You know, people say, “Well, you should be taking this percentage of fats in the diet. We focus more on the types of fats that you take in, and you’re going to break those down into your saturated fats, your omega sixes, your omega threes, and your omega nines. So that’s our group, and the cholesterol is a is a different category as well. But overall, cholesterol I don’t have any issues with. You take take that, eat your eat your eggs, and make sure to include the egg yolks. But the omega nines, which are the mono unsaturated fats, this is the avocado oils, the olive oils. That is truly the nectar of the gods. And the more I read into epigenetics, the more I understand how important monounsaturated fats are. That’s those omega nines. They are amazing with what they create as far as outcomes for for epigenetic shifts in a very positive way. I mean, 1000s of genes are altered in a way that is extremely positive. We see the same effect with omega threes, but you you don’t want to take a lot of omega threes because of the nature of the double bonds that they have, and omega sixes are required too. I mean, they’re essential nutrients because the body can’t make them and the body needs them. So we don’t want to completely eliminate omega sixes, but we want a nice ratio of those in there. Saturated fats, on the other hand, is is one of those ones that I could do with or without. I do like it kept in a lower side, and and believe me, I love my bacon and sausage and things like that. I love coconut oil, but you know what? The saturated fat component is extremely high in those. Now, MCT oil is a little different, so they’ve taken the actual saturated fats out and created the MCT oils. And there’s nothing negative about MCT oil. Like a lot of people will carry genetic variants that predispose to Parkinson’s disease with a high saturated fat diet. Those are the people that we say, you know, don’t do the coconut oils, but it’s okay to do the MCT oil. So MCT has some very positive effects on the brain. I have not seen much on the epigenetics of MCT oil, but I’m sure those will be coming very soon.

Zack Arnold: And for anybody that is unfamiliar with MCT oil, this is the super super popularized version of oil that people are using in bulletproof coffee. Stands for medium chain triglyceride, and I can speak firsthand that that my first experience with MCT oil was kind of my awakening, so to speak, to not just being not sick, but actually starting to optimize brain function. Where it was, and I think it was maybe about four years ago now, and I’ve talked about this on past podcasts, but I was dealing with having a brand new baby in the house. So we had a two and a half year old, and we had a newborn. And I was working like 60 hours a week editing a TV show, and I could barely function, barely stay awake. I was drinking coffee just to keep my eyelids open. And then I heard about MCT oil and bulletproof coffee, and it was like somebody had turned on a switch in my brain, and all of a sudden everything just started to look and feel different. And I said, “Wow, there is another level to living that’s not just barely functioning. And that started with MCT oil and has now taken me down this path to where I’m talking about much more advanced nootropics like qualia, which we’ll get into in a minute, but MCT oil was a game changer just for the way that I thought and the way that I worked doing a creative job. So on that note, then where I want to go next, this is going to kind of be the the last level before we dive into the actual neurochemistry and ingredients and quality and how it works. But I want to talk a little bit about amino acids, and I heard on one of your podcasts what I think is probably the most fantastic analogy ever used to explain what amino acids actually are and how they work in the brain using this kind of idea of building a house and using supply. So, can you talk a little bit about what amino acids are, where we get them from and how they function, as far as the the brain chemistry is concerned.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Yeah, amino acids, proteins. We we have essential amino acids, and essential means that the body can’t make them, or they can’t keep up with the need to make them. So we have amino acids that are required to be in our diet in order for us to have adequate amounts, and and what you’re referring to is an analogy I use that you know we we have these 20 amino acids, and we say okay we’re going to build a house and we need all of these, but there are ones that are essential. That if you don’t have them in the diet, it’s like you know you’ve got all your bricks, you’ve got all your wood, you’ve got all your shingles, you’ve got all your doors and windows, but you’re missing nails. So you’ve got plenty of everything else, but that one piece that you’re missing is not going to build a stable house, and. That’s why you need to make sure that your diet or your supplementation includes an adequate mix of these essential amino acids to allow the body to create the proteins that it needs to create, or it you know you you put it into a compromised state because it says you know I can make 90% of this protein, but I can’t complete it because I’m missing these these little pieces. So that’s why it’s essential to to make sure that your amino acid profile is fairly diverse and includes all of these. And this is what we run into with a lot of our vegan and vegetarian clients: is that it’s hard for them, from a pure dietary standpoint, to obtain a complete mix of the essential amino acids at a level that is going to be adequate for optimal human function. So supplementation is necessary in those situations.

Zack Arnold: And I think one thing that I just want to put out there to make sure that anybody listening understands my personal approach. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going vegan or vegetarian or paleo or well Atkins, I definitely have some issues with. But for the most part, I don’t believe there’s a perfect diet. I think there’s a perfect diet for each individual person. But you’ve highlighted what, which was basically going to be my next question, is just from a biological level. If you do go vegan or vegetarian, there are certain things you’re just not going to get in your diet that are contained in animal proteins, and it sounds like if I want to build a house, those nails are pretty important, right? And

Dr. Daniel Stickler: You know I don’t judge people for their dietary choices. That’s one of the things that, you know, if I honor what people come to me with and what they want to do, now my choice would certainly not be a vegetarian or vegan diet because physiologically, from a systems basis, not what the human body is designed to optimize with. But in those situations, you can actually thrive doing those kind of diets by making sure that you’re replacing those things that you need. And I agree completely. There is no perfect human diet. That’s one thing I learned in the years of doing weight loss surgery and doing medical weight loss on the side. I mean, we had a program that included two dieticians, two exercise physiologists, two health psychologists, and you know we would have such diversity in the outcomes based on a cookie cutter approach to dietary patterns, and we tried about every one that you can imagine, and I completely stepped away from that until I got into genetics and started understanding how the the differences in the genetics, those polymorphisms that only make up a less than a half a percent difference between every individual, can actually predict a much better outcome based on certain dietary patterns. So we utilize that as a guide for what we recommend with dietary patterns. But again, it’s all about what’s working best for you, and and the key is really understanding, looking at biometric data that that gives you adequate feedback on what you’re doing because relying on subjective experience is typically fraught with with false outcomes. So we really focus on you know what is it we’re trying to measure here. What what can we measure that gives us an idea that the outcome is ideal?

Zack Arnold: And when we talk about amino acids, it’s for somebody that doesn’t really spend a whole lot of time learning about nutrition. You don’t look on the back of an ingredients label and it says, “Oh, fantastic! This has seven grams of amino acids, so I’m all good. I’ll just get this. So help me and help the audience understand a little bit more. Where am I actually getting these 12 essential amino acids that I need that are the mortar and are the nails and are the the pieces that bind together all of the the neurochemistry that I need to function optimally.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, what you want to do is you want to look at the completeness of the proteins you take in, and you know protein powders in general have a pretty good mix of the essential amino acids in them. It’s the foods where you should be predominantly getting your amino acids from, and the the best source of amino acids is going to come from whole eggs, or it’s going to come from more meat-based proteins because they tend to be complete because they’re coming from something that that you’re actually creating. You know, when we look at protein intake, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. The body doesn’t really pay attention to that. The body pays attention to what crosses into the blood, and what’s going to cross into the blood are di and tripeptides. So they’re just combinations of a couple of amino acids, and it doesn’t determine whether that came from soy or whether it came from cow or where it came from, it just looks at what amino acid mix is coming across into the blood, and you want a food that is going to contain the most diverse amount of the essential amino acids, the quantities that the body is going to need, and and you know you have these ones that are essential, which means by. I can’t make them at all. But then we also have conditionally essential ones like, like glutamine. Glutamine is one that if you exercise, you’re going to get deficient in glutamine. The body cannot keep up with production in somebody who is exercising. Or in another situation, if you’re boosting cognitive chemistry, you will very quickly get short of glutamine, and you’re going to bonk because you need that, and you’re going to suddenly become deficient if you’re not getting adequate amounts in your diet or supplementation.

Zack Arnold: So, actually, speaking of that, you totally derailed my next question, but you just piqued my own personal interest, mentioning that you know having this deficiency in glutamine either through exercising or through cognitive chemistry causes you to bonk. This is something that I’ve been experiencing recently, where I find that when I do both on the same day, if I’m doing like a super intense hit training workout in the morning, and I supplement with qualia, I’ll find that around 678, o’clock at night, all of a sudden my energy really starts to die down for a little while, and it’s something that I don’t experience on a normal day. And it seems to be independent of dietary choices. So, what can I do if I find that I’m deficient in glutamine? What can kind of be a go-to way to make sure that that doesn’t continue to happen?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, in your situation, the symptoms like that. I mean, you’re going to look at some a wide variety of areas that could potentially be involved there, AMD one deficiencies or polymorphisms of an AMPD one that leads to elevated adenosine levels from exercise. That would be one that I would look at first and foremost. But the glutamine is something that we see a lot of people that are sensitive to glutamine too. You have to be careful with it because there are people who carry genetic variants that don’t convert glutamine into GABA, and so in the brain, glutamate is our primary excitatory neurotransmitter. I mean, it it turns the brain on, and so that’s why a lot of cognitive enhancers use things that boost glutamate levels in the brain because it really does turn things up, whereas GABA, which is our our sleep neurotransmitter, it’s the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain, is designed to turn things down. But people that have problems with with that conversion of the GAD one gene, where they they don’t convert the glutamate into GABA, they’re the ones that will eat MSG or high protein intakes or glutamate containing foods in the evening, and then their brain is wired and they can’t sleep. Whereas people who exercise in the evenings and really tank after the exercise, or exercise in the morning and experience brain fog, you’re looking more at deficiencies of AMPD one, where you get excess adenosine, which is something that builds up during the day to turn things off in the brain, and you can really build that up pretty substantially with that. So, what I’m getting at here is that you know, looking at one symptom, one intervention is usually not going to pan out for most people. So you’ve got to look at this again from that systems-based approach, where you’re taking a bigger picture of of what you’re looking at, so you pull back that microscope to get a wide-angle view of everything, and say what makes sense here, what can I do, and then you test it, and you say did this make a difference or did it not, and then you move forward and you reassess. So it’s it’s really a process of trial and error. I mean that’s why we’re biohackers, be because we try this stuff and we see what works, what doesn’t work, and we reevaluate and take next steps.

Zack Arnold: Well, speaking of biohacking and next steps and getting into the weeds, I think it’s that time that everybody’s been waiting for, which is actually talking about what is this limitless drug that we keep mentioning called qualia. So now that we have a basic understanding that there are building blocks, there is nutrition you need to focus on. You can’t just continue to eat pizza and drink Red Bull and say, “Oh, I want to focus, so I’m going to take a pill. Like I’ve made it very clear, and you’ve made it very clear, that’s not the answer. But if we have all these basic building blocks, and we’re already taking care of ourselves, but we’re ready to go to the next level. Let’s talk a little bit about Qualia.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, I think a good start there is how I got involved with Qualia. I’ve been using cognitive enhancers in my medical practice for years. I deal with entrepreneurs, executives, professional athletes that are looking to take their their function to the next level, and cognitive function is a huge, huge part of that. I mean, it truly is the the base to build off of is that cognitive function when you talk about performance, and like your experience, I experienced using all of these cognitive enhancers over the years, where I would see maybe 50-50. So 50% of the people we would put on, you know, such as Onnit or Cognazine or something like that, even even in the in the prescription cognitive enhancers like Adam. Or Vyvanse or Modafinil, I would see mixed results in what I was getting, and I expected that. So I would tell people, you know, it’s about a 50-50 chance that this is going to make a difference for you. You may have side effects that that really don’t work for you, and and that’s what I saw was about 50-50. Now, back about a year ago, I had these clients coming to me asking me about this product Qualia, and I hadn’t heard of it. I started looking at it online, and I was like, “Wow, it’s a pretty nice mix. I like their approach. I like the mix. And I said, “Yeah, it looks like something you should try. And so, I had about a dozen people trying it. This is before I even tried it myself, and I was amazed by the fact that I was seeing 90 to 95% positive results. And I thought, okay, this is really this is really bizarre because this is not something we see. So I reached out to to the company and I said, I want to get on with the the product designer, the scientists, and and find out more info on this. And they they set me up with Daniel Schmachtenberger, who is head of R and D there, and he’s not a scientist, but man, the guy is brilliant. I mean, he has a mind that just blows me away with the way he thinks, and his systems based approach impressed the hell out of me. I mean, this was what we were doing in our medical practice, and here he’s done this with a cognitive enhancement tool, and so I said, you know, this is this is the real deal. So we started really marketing, well, not marketing it, but really recommending it to our clients, and and continued to see the positive results. And then they approached me to come on as their medical director, and I was I was thrilled about that. I mean, to to come on with such an awesome company, and even before that, we were planning on running this trial. So we ran a nine-person pilot study, and again, there’s not this is not a solid research study, but it was just something that we wanted to get an idea of what was happening because we had never seen this before. And and we run QEGs on all of our our clients. We look at brainwave patterns. We look at psychophysiologic stress profiles and how they do dealing with stress, and we run cognitive function tests. So we said, let’s do this with nine people using Qualia, and we even had an independent person who reads our QEGs. She reads for performance based. It’s not disease model based, but performance based. But she’s a national trainer, and she she read the the cues on all all of the patients, and we did 32 lead cues at baseline, then at four hours after the first dose, and at 30 days after being on it. We were blown away by what we saw. I mean, my my personal experience, I have a lot of frontal alpha activity in in an eyes closed state, and and so it’s a I call myself a functional ADD, and within four hours, not only did I subjectively feel the improved focus and concentration, but my QEG brain map showed the alpha had normalized in those frontal lobes. I was like, wow, that that’s just amazing. But here’s the other thing: we had some people that we we refer to them as beta heads. They’re they’re constantly on. They’re the they’re the ones that are vigilant all the time.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: They have a lot of anxiety, a lot of nervousness, and they subjectively noticed improvement. And we saw their beta activity actually normalize after four hours after the dose, I mean, this is four hours, and the psychologist that was reading reading the cues for us said she had never seen anything like this. It was something she had never expected, and we also saw improvements in stress profiles. We saw improvements in cognitive function in the 30 day period, just consistent with what we were seeing the subjective reports from our clients, but to actually see this in objective data was was pretty mind-boggling, and so it’s prompted us to we’re we’re doing a large clinical trial that’s going to be double blinded to to see if we can replicate those kind of results in in a well well organized trial for that’s going to start in January.

Zack Arnold: Well, I definitely want to talk about what it’s made of, but before we do that, I just want to kind of add on to what you’re saying. I’ve done my own study with a experimentation sample group of one. That sample group is me, but what I can tell you is that in doing those past nootropics, sometimes I would yeah kind of feel a difference. Oh yeah, I guess I’m a little bit more focused. I was a little bit more productive. But then a lot of them would just make me tired. And I have been diagnosed with adult onset ADD, which was a huge revelation for me in my mid to late 20s because I am super type A. I was valedictorian of my high school class. I always got my work done. I always finished projects. I’m like, what do you mean I’m ADD? That makes no sense. And they’re like, well, you have all the symptoms of the hyper focus. You just weren’t experiencing the other end of it until you became an adult, and I started experiencing the anxiety and the lack of concentration and the. Brain fog, and I realized well, maybe I just you know need to take something. So they gave me Adderall, and it was the first experience that I had of saying, “Wait, this is what it feels like to be normal. This is unbelievable. However, the side effects I just would not accept, and I didn’t want to be on Adderall long term. So that was really when my journey started in saying, “All right, how do I feel like this, but naturally? How do I do it just through using food or exercise or sleep or meditation? Or how can I maintain these great levels of focus and creativity without having to be on something like Adderall? And I’ve been able to do that, but then I’m always looking for that next level. And then I tried Qualia, and I mean it wasn’t even remotely like the other nootropics that I had tried. I found immediately just the ability to focus on a project for longer periods of time, the ability to generate more creative ideas to the point where I’ve had to create an entire external brain workflow to capture all of these ideas; otherwise, they’re just they they have to come out. But I don’t want to forget them, so I’ve actually created a collection system to make sure I can keep all of these ideas. But the other thing that was really really interesting that I’ve never experienced, and you can talk some about this as well, was the increased emotional connection and empathy that I’ve had with other people, and the patience that I’ve had. Whereas in the past, I’m not known to be a terribly patient or empathetic person. I’m very focused on certain things, and if that focus is broken, I get a sense of agitation. But that has very much changed in using qualia. So, can you explain to me how this supplement is doing all of these things?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, the first thing is that this supplement is very different than all other supplements that I’ve ever seen, and the the reason I say that is that Daniel and the research team took a that systems based approach to creating this supplement, that’s why they spent, I think it was three years in development of this, and they trialed all different mixes and and everything until they actually ended up with this this individual product. And what happens most most nootropics out there, they will they’ll find something in the research that says, “Oh, this product works really great for focus. This product works really great for attention and alertness, and they’ll just throw them together. They won’t look at how they interact with each other. And this was one of the things that I talked to Daniel about when I first interviewed him. Was you know what is it? Why why do you have lower levels of this one component when the research shows that this does better at this higher dose? And and he comes back and he says, well, the reason we did that is because that we’re we’re inhibiting some of the breakdown of that product, so we didn’t want to overdose somebody and get at them too high on this, so they took it and they looked at how every single ingredient interacts with the other, and it’s about bringing that brain into a state where anything’s possible. That’s something that you don’t see people doing when they’re creating a supplement. They they create a supplement and say, you know, here’s what we’re trying to achieve, and this is a supplement that, or this is an ingredient that’s shown it works for that. But they took it and they said, you know, okay, so great, we we increase metabolism in the brain, we’ve raised glutamate levels, we’ve raised acetylcholine levels, and oh, wait a second-we haven’t supplied enough blood flow to the brain because now we have this energetic component that’s ramped up. I mean, 20% of our daily metabolism is is occurring in the brain, so we’ve got to have a way to supply the nutrients to that brain. So then they added things that were designed to improve blood flow to the brain, and then they said, “Well, if we’re upregulating metabolism, there’s going to be a lot of breakdown products, debris of metabolism that’s going to occur. How do we make sure that that’s cleared adequately? And I use the example of, you know, it’s great to to add the super booster to your car, but if you don’t add the right gasoline to it, it’s not going to matter. Or if you don’t have the gasoline flowing at a level that’s going to allow that performance to occur, it’s not going to happen. And that’s the way they took the approach to creating qualia, which just-I mean-it just really was unique in in that development process, unlike any other supplement I’ve ever seen. And not only did it make sense, but it worked. You know, looking at it and and the outcomes that we see with it, not only from the subjective, but even in the objective data, they hit on something here. And you know, the product is not cheap, and the. The ingredients that they use are not cheap ingredients. I mean, they’re high quality ingredients. I looked at their suppliers on this, and you know, I looked at how much it would cost to take this individually. And if I bought all of these products individually, it would cost more than what the product itself costs. And yet, it’s some of the top quality ingredients that I see out there, and they didn’t-they didn’t compromise on any of this stuff, which is really what induced me to to make the leap and say, yeah, I I want to be medical director because this was a kind of company that I could really resonate well with.

Zack Arnold: Well, and we could, I seriously, we could probably spend about 12 hours going through the ingredients list because it is massive, but what I do want to just highlight very very quickly on a very basic level because otherwise I’m going to get lost in the conversation and I’m sure the audience will as well. But I’m looking at kind of the basic categories, which I love that you guys break it down into categories and you don’t try to make it sound so overly complicated that people just give up and they can’t learn anything about it, but it’s basically a combination of neurovitamins, anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, adaptogen extracts, amino acids, choline donors, neuro minerals. So basically, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s kind of like a multivitamin for the brain in a sense, isn’t it? Oh, it

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Is, and and it’s interesting because it it replaced a lot of the multivitamins I take. Like one of my favorite supplements is Bacopa Monarium, and I would take that by itself. I would take Bio P Q Q by itself. A lot of these ingredients were already in there, so it actually reduced the number of supplements I was taking for for cognitive function and for general health altogether. I mean, you know, you look at the adaptogens that that are in this, and you know, the bacopa is probably one of my favorite. Mucuna, which supplies L-dopa to the brain, has provided some great outcomes when we’ve used that individually. Ginkgo, of course, and coleus, the different adaptogens, and adaptogens are-they’re really initially designed to mitigate stress responses in the brain, and it’s certainly something that’s going to be beneficial because that stress response that occurs in the brain can be detrimental to cognitive function. But these adaptogens go further than just being adaptogenic from a stress response, I mean, you talk about things like lion’s mane mushroom. I mean, you’re going to increase nerve growth factor with that. Not only is it an adaptogen, but it also has a direct effect. So even though these are broken into categories, it doesn’t limit them to what their potential is with with their individual function within the brain. But it’s important to understand that this balance and and and what we saw in the in the brainwave mapping is it really did bring the brain into a homeostatic state. Now most nootropics we take are designed to boost one one specific pathway, and what we’ve seen with this, I mean we saw this in the in the DARPA studies with the transcranial direct current stimulation, where they accelerated learning of these snipers by doing the the direct current stimulation, but then when they pulled back and they looked at a wider spectrum of cognitive function, they saw that they got a compromise of their automaticity in in utilizing what they learned, so the brain tends to do this. If you enhance areas of the brain, it’ll tend to compromise other areas of the brain, and that’s why we have to be careful with this. They they talk about the the cab drivers in London and how brilliant they are with understanding roadmaps and everything like that. But then you test them on other memory skills, and they’re compromised, so they’ve adapted to a very specific form of of memory that is outstanding, but they’ve also compromised other areas for that. So the idea is you want to give the brain the ability to be very plastic in what it does. So if I say, okay, I want to spend my time on focus today. My brain’s in an idle state that I can all of a sudden shift right into focus. Or if I need my attention ramped up, I can shift from that idle state into attention. It’s not that I’m ramping one up and compromising the others. It’s really an amazing process. The way this supplement works in creating that that kind of idle state where you’re ready to go with what you need to do.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s something that I’ve noticed as well. Is that with other nootropic supplements that I have found have some effect, and again, not even remotely the effect that I’ve experienced with qualia, but you just get a sense that I can only take it if I can lock my door and shut the world out, and I can just write or I can just edit, or whatever that creative endeavor is that you’re doing. You just shut the world out and you do it because when you’re in that state, you get highly, highly agitated when you are interrupted, and you are more impatient. And these are at least things that I’ve experienced. I don’t know if they’re general side effects that other people have, but I did. But I noticed that like. You said with qualia, it’s kind of like a switch. It’s like, well, I can kind of chill out and I can have a conversation with somebody and experience more empathy for their conversation, be more patient. But then, as soon as I do shut my door, it’s like turning on a light switch. Bam! I am in the zone. The tunnel vision is on, and I am in it. And time just seems to fly. And when I’m done, I’m like, wow! I cannot believe I just got that much done. But I still feel like myself. I don’t feel like I’m on a medication, so to speak. Like when I was on the Adderall, I felt like I was on medication, which is why even though I had that positive effect of saying, wow, this is what it feels like to be normal, it’s also what it felt like to be medicated, and I don’t experience any of that with qualia.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, and you said it earlier. You said you know you notice things like your empathy and your your anxiety levels, and what we find is that there’s a wide variety of what people experience because it does. It allows that brain to go where you want it to go. My wife, in particular, notices two things that are different than a lot of people experience. She knows sensory improvements, so she notices that her her smell, her hearing, her vision all improve dramatically. But she also notices more emotional blunting with it, where things don’t bother her as much, things don’t irritate her as much, and and she’s not somebody who gets irritated very easily to begin with. But she notices that it it almost gives her an ability to disconnect from the emotion and look at it from the outside, from a kind of a more cognitive standpoint than strictly emotional standpoint. So we see quite a range of outcomes, and I think it’s because it does take that brain into that baseline state where it can call on the resources that it really wants to to utilize at that time. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And that’s definitely something that I’ve experienced as well, where I can be amidst chaos, and anybody that works in the Hollywood filmmaking industry would say, “What? There’s never any chaos. But when I’ve worked amongst chaos, sometimes it’s kind of that that vision that you’ve seen in movies where the main character is in slow motion, but everything around them is just kind of flying and super fast speed. But you’re a little bit more zen, and you’re like, okay, well, I can just observe this, understand what’s going on, but not feel like I get sucked into the whirlwind as well, but the other thing that I experienced, and this is when I realized that quality was something different. This is going to be a little bit of an embarrassing story for me, but I think it’s worth sharing because it was a huge turning point for me realizing the efficacy of this product. I had started taking it probably I don’t know three four months ago, and my since my my children have been born, I’ve always been the one that was in charge of the mornings. I was the one that woke them up, fed them, you know, did the diapers, did breakfast. Once they got older, got them ready for school. And this summer was the last opportunity that I had to have the mornings with my daughter because she’s now in kindergarten, and it was the last day for summer camp, and I dropped her off at the bus, and I was really, really sad. I mean, that that’s a natural human emotion, but for me, expressing sadness is very, very difficult. Whether it’s genetic, whether it’s environmental conditioning, whether it’s the way that I grew up in my household, whatever the reason is, sadness is very, very hard for me to just experience on a pure level. But within about a week after taking the qualia, I remember sitting in my car after dropping her off for the last day that I would be in charge of the mornings, and I just cried. But it wasn’t this anger. It wasn’t like I was trying to hold it in or bottle it in. I just experienced it, and then five minutes later, I felt better, and I don’t remember the last time that I just had this pure emotional experience where there wasn’t something else attached to it or some residual feeling that I felt for hours or days. It was just out, and I was like, “What’s going on with me right now? I’m experiencing sadness, but it feels good, and it was really profound. And I said there is something different about this product because that is something I’ve never experienced on anything ever.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: And that was their idea in creating this product. It wasn’t about creating a product that necessarily was about improved productivity or anything like that. Their product philosophy was that they wanted to change the world. They wanted to provide something that allowed people to experience this state of consciousness in a in a in a higher level, a better way, and feeling like that kind of experience would translate into improvements in quality of life throughout the world, and and it really, I mean, it sounds very Pollyannish, but but it is their philosophy, and I love that because it’s not about hey, we want we want to create a product that gives you the ability to be super productive and make a lot of money. It’s not what it was about. It was. About enhancing the human state altogether, so that people could take that and create something very positive in the world.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s exactly what I experienced as well. And I’m always very, very-I’ll use the word cynical. I didn’t want to use that. I was trying to find a replacement, but I’m usually very cynical when it comes to supplement supplement companies. That it is all about well, I want to be more productive, which means that I want to work for more hours in the day, and that’s not the life that I want to lead. I want to experience better quality of all the things that are important to me. So, going along that line of being cynical, I want to make sure that the people that are listening right now and they’re thinking, well, this is clearly too good to be true. This is a total scam. Let’s talk about: Is this a natural supplement? Is it a synthetic supplement? What are the side effects, and how do I actually know that this thing is legit?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, it’s a mix. I mean, you have certain aspects in there that are synthetic. Very few of them. Most of the most of the products within there are natural. They’re very organically sourced and sourced from really sustainable cultures, which is really amazing that they did that. I mean, they pay a little extra for those products, but they it was something that they believed in. Now, for me, I think we need to step away from judgments based on things that are natural versus synthetic, because it’s it’s a gray zone anymore anyway. But two is what we’re looking at is how do we enhance the human system, and we look at inputs to provide a change in the system to create an output. So it doesn’t matter if the supplement is natural versus synthetic. It’s a matter of what it does and what outcome it creates, because there’s plenty of stuff that is more modern, more synthetic, that is significantly better for the human state than something that is more natural. I mean, you look at natural products, and there’s some very toxic natural products out there, but people tend to judge based on natural versus synthetic, and and I try to get people to step away from that judgment aspect of what is it. It’s a matter of what does it do, and are there consequences to it? You know, here we have this input into the system. These are the positives. These are the negatives. Does it create the outcome we want with a minimum of negative side effects? And and everything natural or synthetic is going to have that same same scenario. So you don’t look at things from that standpoint. You look at things and say, ah, this is this is a good thing for the system, and it creates the outcome I’m looking for. But the product itself, I mean, the majority of the product is is natural, organic, and sustainably sourced. So it’s an impressive array of ingredients.

Zack Arnold: And you brought up one word that I want to dive a little bit deeper into, and that is side effects. Are there known side effects or things I should be worried about? Because if I haven’t experimented with nootropics, this can sound very very intimidating. And even me having years of experimenting with nootropics, usually not successfully, I looked at quality and was like, “Man, I don’t know. Like, this thing sounds pretty serious. Like, is this something I want to get into, knowing that I can be a bit of a canary in the coal mine, and I have much more sensitive reactions to medication, to foods, to supplements. So, what are some of the potential side effects that I need to be aware of if I want to start experimenting with this?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, one of the the biggest things we see is sensitivity to caffeine. There are just certain people that that have a greater sensitivity than others to to caffeine intake, and you know, there’s step one has caffeine in it. You know, the the product itself has a step one and a step two. The step one has the caffeine component to it. It does have L-theanine in there, which is designed to kind of mitigate some of the anxiety effects with the caffeine. But genetically speaking, you’re going to have some people that are going to be highly sensitive to that, and that’s one of the ones that we we see the most people. And it’s not a not a large percentage of people. I have people that are intolerant to caffeine that can take the product, but in those situations, you could take lower doses of the step one. We have some people you have to be careful with step two because it can cause a little bit of nausea if you don’t take it with food because of the high dose of B vitamins that are in there. That’s the main ingredient that’s going to cause the the nausea if you don’t take it with food. But generally, the each person kind of determines their correct ratio. So step one is three capsules, and step two is generally going to be anywhere from two to six capsules, depending on the what the person likes. I suggest ramping it up, like doing two and three when you first start, and then gradually moving up with it, and you’ll find your sweet spot where you can work in between and. And say this is my ideal range of mix.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I have found that because I can be hypersensitive to many things, I don’t even need to take the suggested dosage to get all the benefits that I want. Which, from a physical perspective, is great because a bottle will last me a lot longer. But I find that the the effects have been so profound on such a low dosage that I haven’t even needed to go that far. But the other thing that I’ve noticed is that I can modulate it based on my day. So it’s not like a prescription medication where it’s take 10 milligrams in the morning and 10 milligrams in the afternoon or whatever the prescription is. It’s let’s look at my itinerary today. Do I have a day where I require hyperfocus? No. All right. I probably don’t even need to take it today. Oh, you know what? Today I need to write 4000 words of a blog post, or I need to be editing for eight hours. I really need to turn on the switch, so I’m going to take the full dosage. But I found that unlike a prescription medication, I really don’t see any side effects from whether I take it or whether I don’t, meaning I don’t need a consistent dosage in my bloodstream every single day, and I haven’t experienced any withdrawal side effects. So, does that seem to be the norm with your patients and with other people that use it?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: It does, and and the most most of the perceived effects, though, I have my my clients typically take it five days on and two days off, and they will tell me that usually the second day off of it, they start to notice a drag relative to where they’ve been when they take it. When I take it for five days straight, I don’t really even pay attention to what I’m feeling. I just know I’m super productive, things don’t bother me. I’m very stress resilient. My HRV is typically better, and then on the two days that I’m off, I see a little bit of a drop in the HRV. On the second day, I see a little bit of drag myself. That’s just the way it is. But taking it continuously, you tend to the brain tends to really feel very much adjusted to it, so you don’t experience it as well. So I do like to take the two days off to to really reset things,

Zack Arnold: And that’s that’s how I know a product is legit because they tell you not to take it because they’re in it for the money. They’re going to say, “Oh, you need to be using this seven days a week to get the full effects. And you guys are very clear in disclaimers on the bottle everywhere. You should not be taking the seven days a week to get the full effect, which clearly is not going to help you maximize profits, but it helps the user maximize the effect that they get from it. And I’m also very glad, on a side note, that you mentioned HRV because I just released or re-released a podcast that I did all about what HRV is or heart rate variability and how it’s pretty much an essential measurement that anybody interested in cognitive function or nervous system function needs to introduce into their just daily regimen, and it is practically free as well. So if it sounds super expensive and high flutin, and I can never do something like that, just listen to the podcast. It’s really really simple, and doing that in conjunction with something like Qualia, I too have noticed the numbers slightly go up and slightly go down, so that’s actual quantitative measurement of myself that says, “Wow, this is having an effect on my nervous system. And I’m glad that you brought that up as well. But on that note, I want to make sure to be respectful of your time because I already have run over. But this was so fascinating to me that I could probably go on for another hour, but I won’t. And maybe that’s the effect of the qualia, like the it’s turned on, and I’m just ready to learn and absorb all this information. You got to

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Get two people on qualia, man. You can’t stop them.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, this could be an eight-hour podcast. Like somebody stop us. We are on too much qualia overload. And I’m just right now. This is only a tiny bit of step one, so I haven’t even really gone into my day yet because it’s super early for me. But I want to make sure that my audience is aware that you guys have been nice enough to grant me a coupon code for my audience. So for anybody that’s listening that wants to give this stuff a try, you just need to go to optimize yourself.me/qualia, which is Q U A L I A, and you can use the coupon code Optimize to get 10% off. And on that note, if people want to learn more about Qualia in general, if they want to learn more about your background specifically, or about your center, where can I send my listeners so they can dive deeper into this topic?

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Well, the address for the website where you can learn more about Qualia is neurohacker.com, and to access my website, which is the appearoncenter.com, it’s just a p e i r o n apeironcenter.com, or appearon dot academy. So that’s not a.com; it’s just dot academy, and you can learn about what we teach.

Zack Arnold: Well, this has been fascinating for me. I hope that it’s been fascinating for my audience as well. And I cannot express enough my gratitude for you taking the time out of your day, doing the amazing work that you’re doing, to get in front of a microphone to chat with me. So I very much appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Dr. Daniel Stickler: Awesome. It was a lot of fun.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared and published by Jakin Rintelman. Special thanks to Krystle Penhall and Sarah Furie for helping to spread the love!

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).