Body · 21 episodes
Longevity & Biohacking for entrepreneurs
Longevity work on this show splits into two camps that mostly complement each other but occasionally clash. One camp says the fundamentals are unglamorous and already known: sleep consistency, strength training, VO2 max, alcohol reduction, and blood work. The other camp is more experimental, pushing breathwork-induced hypoxia, cymatics, algae, gene therapy jurisdictions, and EMF mitigation as levers most people are ignoring. Both camps agree on one thing: almost nobody is genetically doomed. The recurring number, cited independently by multiple guests, is that genetics explain roughly 10 to 25 percent of healthspan outcomes. The rest is behavior.
Where guests disagree is on emphasis and confidence. Diet gets treated as the single most important lever by some and dismissed as an overrated 'limiting belief' by others, who point instead to sleep, movement, and screening. Caloric restriction, once treated as a near-certain longevity hack, gets walked back by a researcher who says the animal-model evidence hasn't translated cleanly to humans. Biological age clocks are praised by one guest as an actionable diagnostic and treated with suspicion by another, who worries people will game the test without changing the underlying biology. Even hormone replacement therapy, buried for two decades by a flawed study, gets rehabilitated here as an underused tool for reducing dementia risk.
What holds all of it together is a shift in framing: longevity isn't the goal, healthspan is, and healthspan isn't the goal either — joyspan is. Living longer while miserable, isolated, or physically fine but joyless is treated as a failure mode, not a win. The practical throughline for entrepreneurs specifically is that energy, not time or intelligence, is the actual constrained resource, and most of what erodes it — chronic inflammation, poor sleep, alcohol, toxic exposure, unmanaged stress — is invisible until measured.
What holds across every conversation
- •Get baseline blood work and a DEXA scan before buying any supplement or biohacking device — visceral fat and glucose variability tell you more than body fat percentage ever will.
- •Treat sleep latency, post-10am cortisol, glucose swings, and HRV as your four early-warning biomarkers for executive burnout, not just how tired you feel.
- •Don't assume caloric restriction or a strict diet is your highest-leverage move — strength training, VO2 max, and alcohol reduction have stronger, more consistent human evidence.
- •If you try breath-hold or hypoxia training, treat it as respiratory physiology with a dose-response curve (60-90 second holds, 3 minutes of prep breathing), not a vague wellness practice.
- •Remove sources of chronic low-grade harm first — phone charging near your head, mold exposure, ultra-processed additives — before adding new interventions on top of an already-compromised system.
- •Track relational effort (Grow, Connect, Adapt, Give) as deliberately as you track biomarkers; proactive connection, not passive hope, is what correlates with longevity in practice.
Breathwork, Hypoxia & Stress Adaptation
Controlled breath holds and hormetic stress show up repeatedly as a fast, drug-free way to trigger mitochondrial renewal, altered states, and nervous-system resilience.
“So intermittent hypoxia is the magic of breathwork. When you hold your breath for 60 to 90 seconds, you invoke a positive state, a positive stress on the body, and it creates an adaptive change to having less oxygen in the body.”
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 9:45· listen →
“When you hold your breath, right, for a long enough time, we create intermittent hypoxia and you reduce the oxygen supply to that mitochondria. You will make that mitochondria wake up and go, oh my God, I'm running out of oxygen. I need to do a spring clean.”
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 13:00· listen →
“The idea of hormetic stress is consciously and intentionally inducing stressors in order to make adaptations. If you think about it in simple terms, it's what happens when you really strength train. When you lift weights, you're inducing a stressor to the muscles and to the fascia. There's a bit of inflammation because of that, and then you get stronger.”
Reset Your Nervous System for Peak Performance · 23:27· listen →
“3 minutes of deep breathing, strong, and you have to focus on it a bit, it can't be very passive, followed by a maximal voluntary breath hold increased circulating human growth hormone in the blood by up to 550% a half hour after that was done.”
Reset Your Nervous System for Peak Performance · 37:45· listen →
“You'll notice that your resting heart rate— it's measurable— your resting heart rate will drop by about 10 points after doing 2, 3 minutes of this breathing, which is like amazing if you think about it. It's faster than taking a Xanax.”
Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets · 33:53· listen →
Biomarkers Over Guesswork
Guests converge on a diagnostics-first approach: track cortisol timing, glucose variability, HRV, DEXA body composition, and VO2 max before adding interventions.
“I always look for what I call the 4 Horsemen of executive burnout. So the first one is sleep latency extending beyond 25 minutes... The second one is cortisol staying elevated after 10... There's also how your fasting glucose is going to vary during the day... The last thing is your heart rate variability when you sleep.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 16:23· listen →
“You have 2 women who have 26% body fat. One might have 1 pound of visceral fat, one might have 3 pounds. They're the same weight, the same percent body fat, but the amount of visceral fat they have is dramatically different.”
Longevity As a Competitive Edge: Jesse Levey on Health Strategy · 18:09· listen →
“The 2 things I think are most foundational are blood work and DEXA scan... they're not expensive, it's like $50 to $100.”
Longevity As a Competitive Edge: Jesse Levey on Health Strategy · 38:55· listen →
“Longevity, you can look at it at a lifespan, basically the length of time that you live from birth to death. And there is what we call the healthspan, how long that you live in good health. So I assume that everyone wants to live better longer.”
Biomarkers, Biological Age & the Science of Healthspan · 1:16· listen →
“The difference in literally the years you will live, but also the quality of those years. They can actually predict based on your VO2 max when you can no longer live independently and you're going to have to have somebody help.”
Fitness for Busy Entrepreneurs with Eric D'Agati · 15:27· listen →
Epigenetics, Diet, and Biological Age
Randomized trial data on biological-age reversal and the limits of caloric restriction and diet dogma push against oversimplified nutrition advice.
“We could see that our research participants in 8 weeks' time got over 3 years younger using the clock as compared to the control group.”
Reverse Biological Age: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald on Diet & Sleep · 11:02· listen →
“You know, depending on the statistic you look at, maybe 10% of, you know, our healthspan and lifespan is genetically determined, maybe 10%, perhaps less than that. So yeah, 90% of how well we live is on us.”
Reverse Biological Age: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald on Diet & Sleep · 15:27· listen →
“One of the most extraordinary learnings for me in my journey in this science was how potent stress is as a pro-aging phenomenon. It may be the most— I've described it before as just like gasoline on the fire of aging.”
Reverse Biological Age: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald on Diet & Sleep · 19:45· listen →
“But again, if you would ask me about caloric restriction 10 years ago, I would be very bullish. Right now I'm a bit less bullish about it because I'm not sure that this is the best intervention, especially in humans.”
Biomarkers, Biological Age & the Science of Healthspan · 12:03· listen →
“The number one thing I think that is maybe a misnomer in this space, I think personally, is that diet is 80%, 90%, the most important thing you can focus on... it's not to say diet isn't important because it is, but this sometimes becomes a limiting belief.”
Longevity As a Competitive Edge: Jesse Levey on Health Strategy · 24:45· listen →
Muscle, Movement, and Physical Resilience
Strength and flexibility are framed less as aesthetics and more as insurance against the falls, fractures, and immobility that actually shorten life.
“Hip fractures, if you look at the medical studies out there, it's a 90% mortality rate at the end of 1 year.”
Dr. Mihir Patel: Muscle Strength, Longevity & Joint Health · 5:45· listen →
“The number one predictor of longevity is muscle strength and partly because you keep your balance, you don't fall over, everything stays upright.”
Dr. Mihir Patel: Muscle Strength, Longevity & Joint Health · 44:03· listen →
“When you get older, it's much harder to build muscle. So if you have a younger audience, go to the gym. And I see it a lot when you go to the gym, you see much less women, especially in our age, lifting weight. And it is important.”
Biomarkers, Biological Age & the Science of Healthspan · 25:24· listen →
“It's not like getting your haircut where you do get it done and you can come back 2 weeks later. It's cumulative. And that's what most people don't get. They think of it in isolation and in a silo.”
Fitness for Busy Entrepreneurs with Eric D'Agati · 3:26· listen →
Hidden Toxic Load: EMF, Mold, and Chemicals
Several guests argue that biohacking should start with removal, not addition: cutting radiofrequency exposure, mold, and everyday chemical toxins before layering on supplements.
“Your body is an electrical system. And, when you have this man-made radiation that literally couples with your very gentle delicate electrical system, You get all sorts of interruption. And charging your phone next to your bedhead is one of the biggest mistakes that people can possibly make in their health journey.”
EMF Exposure & Sleep: The Hidden Bedroom Health Risk · 1:54· listen →
“So, the AirPods while you're sleeping are the same situation as people using vagal nerve stimulators while they're going to bed or there's all these sleep masks that play little visuals for you or sweet dreams meditations or all these things, they have a biological cost.”
EMF Exposure & Sleep: The Hidden Bedroom Health Risk · 16:38· listen →
“Well, the first thing is you've got to stop putting it in the body. Yeah. The body will do it. With enough time, the body will just do it. You don't have to do anything. If you get out of the moldy environment, you don't have to do a thing.”
The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin · 19:58· listen →
“A lot of the harm we're doing to ourselves costs more, right? Like, I'm paying you to poison me. Like, it's just unnecessary to do that.”
The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin · 24:13· listen →
“The way I describe it is it's like giving your body a shower from the inside. You take a shower on the outside every morning. Chlorella will pull all the garbage that you've interacted with in the air, your food, your cosmetics, and pull it out.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 25:21· listen →
Joyspan and the Aging Mindset
Physiological optimization is treated as necessary but insufficient; belief about aging and active relational effort turn out to be measurable longevity variables in their own right.
“And my patients who put their head in the sand and think, oh, if I just work out enough, I'm going to be able to not grow old and avoid all this stuff. I'll never be sick. I'll live forever. I mean, that's toxic right there.”
Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well · 2:40· listen →
“So when you expect what I call the decline aging mindset, which has a beautiful acronym of DAMN, when you think, damn, I'm getting older, everything's going to be worse. I'm going to be less relevant. I'm going to be less quick. I'm going to be less effective. I'm going to be less attractive. When you believe that, that is really— that comes to pass.”
Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well · 15:00· listen →
“Every one of my patients who has maintained connection in longevity has been the proactive one. Every time I have somebody come in and say, nobody reaches out to me, I don't have anyone, I'm entirely alone, we then say, okay, now tell me about your habits of how you are reaching out to people? And invariably they go, well, nobody reaches out to me. I'm like, exactly.”
Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well · 20:10· listen →
“Yeah. First of all, if you think about it, if you're out there building a business, you're scaling up, you're doing everything you can. Ultimately, yes, you have a company, you have people that are doing the work, but you're the leader. And leaders spend a lot of energy driving their vision and realization of their vision. So a lot of people think like their greatest assets, it's intelligence, which is true. Their capital, yes, and strategy, no question. But really, your true currency is energy.”
Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets · 15:35· listen →
The companion guide
Reading about longevity & biohacking is one thing. Changing it is another.
John’s companion guide turns what these conversations cover into something you can actually work through.
More moments worth hearing
Everything else these conversations turned up on this subject.
“It was in 2010 I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis, and that's what left me housebound for almost a year, shitting blood like 40 times a day. It was hell.”
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 2:20
“The responses were as profound or more profound than the kind of psychedelic insights you get, um, like oneness, connection, feeling like you've been channeled by God and all that stuff, as you would from a big dose of psychedelics.”
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 15:31
“When you hold it to as long as I was saying, intermittent hypoxia, you produce ADOSE. ADOSE standing for anandamide, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So this makes you feel naturally high.”
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 30:37
“A very easy scientific test you can do at home is put the powder on a plate and add some iodine to it. And if that powder turns black, purple-black, then that shows up for starch.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 8:16
“When you think you're buying a lion's mane capsule or powder, you're actually buying 68% of blended rice, blended grain. So that's almost criminal and it's really bad for the industry.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 22:52
“It's the discipline for the morning routine is easy. The discipline for the evening routine is the one everyone needs to nail.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 13:46
“It never makes sense until you look backwards.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 28:18
“Why win one prize and then lose 3 others, whether it's your health, relationships, friendships? I'm more of a pro the balanced entrepreneur, not the extreme entrepreneur that burns other boats that are actually really valuable for a meaningful life.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 35:37
“Business people is that they get a second chance or a third chance and you can reinvent yourself in your 40s and your 50s and your 60s. As an athlete, you have a finite window.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 38:54
“Provide the master chef with the ingredients and let the master chef do the cooking.”
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking · 43:06
“I had shown up and fixed this exact problem I was having for so long here in Central New York, but I fixed it for everybody else. And I was very much building, the founder of a startup company, and I was not prioritizing building a support system for myself and making sure that my own social-emotional needs were being met by the people around me.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 5:46
“The beauty of events is that if your guests didn't plan the event, they don't know what's wrong. So, if something goes wrong, just cover it up with a smile and ask for forgiveness if you have to. At that point, there's nothing you can do.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 10:19
“If I don't move every day in one way or another, things get bad, so I always make that a huge priority.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 14:12
“I eat the same thing every day. For the most part, like down to a T. And that might sound like a little much, but honestly, it's made my life significantly easier and less stressful.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 19:55
“As a leader, as an entrepreneur, you're constantly having to make quick decisions all day long. You're having to solve everyone's problems. And it's just nice to have one less problem to solve.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 23:28
“There's just something so therapeutic about getting your thoughts out on paper and just leaving them there, you know, and not letting yourself ruminate on anything. It's been huge for me.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 30:07
“None of it matters if the relationships in our lives don't feel good. So that's something that I'm very proud of, that I can say that I've made that a priority.”
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout · 35:19
“Not many people know that, but Ozempic, for example, GLP-1s, they're actually delayed by several decades. The first approval for it was in 2003. And that was for diabetes and later it was used off-label for other things, which is a whole story on its own. And the science is even older. The first trials happened in the 1980s.”
Niklas Anzinger: Building Prospera & Infinita City · 7:48
“The mini-circle gene therapy, for example, costs $25,000. But it's actually really cheap in relative terms because most gene therapies in the United States cost upwards of $500,000 or $1 million, right?”
Niklas Anzinger: Building Prospera & Infinita City · 16:22
“So Khloe Kardashian has been treated with a gene therapy that started in Prospera, right? So when you're a company that starts there, you can have different options in terms of distribution and go-to-market.”
Niklas Anzinger: Building Prospera & Infinita City · 38:01
Every episode on longevity & biohacking
21 conversations, oldest to newest.
Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs
Intermittent hypoxia from breath holds triggers mitochondrial renewal and stem cell release, improving cellular energy and healing.
Julian Mitchell on Functional Mushrooms & Biohacking
Mushroom supplement quality varies wildly because many mycelium-based products contain high starch/grain filler, which can be tested at home with an iodine test.
Alex Canavan: Building Community Without Burnout
A dance background instilled discipline, self-accountability, and the ability to perform even when things go wrong, which translates directly into entrepreneurship.
Niklas Anzinger: Building Prospera & Infinita City
Prospera is a special economic zone in Honduras with its own legal and governance system based on common law principles, designed to catalyze development the way Hong Kong or Singapore did.
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition
Spirulina delivers complete amino-acid protein and B vitamins that feed mitochondria, producing steady energy without the crash of stimulants.
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs
Traditional Western medicine is siloed and reactive, treating symptoms after disease develops, while functional medicine looks at the whole body and root causes.
Jerzy Gregorek: Hard Choices, Easy Life Explained
Hard choices produce an easy life through delayed gratification, while easy choices that feel good now often produce a harder life later.
Reset Your Nervous System for Peak Performance
Pain is an output created by the brain's processing of threat signals, not an input from the injured body part, so changing sensory information can change pain perception.
Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well
Joy is a stable, inside-out sense of well-being and satisfaction, distinct from happiness, which is circumstantial and fleeting.
Biomarkers, Biological Age & the Science of Healthspan
Longevity should be measured by healthspan, the years lived in good health, not just raw lifespan.
Longevity As a Competitive Edge: Jesse Levey on Health Strategy
Most longevity advice is overly individualized or dogmatic, but reducing alcohol and optimizing sleep benefit almost everyone.
Dr. Mihir Patel: Muscle Strength, Longevity & Joint Health
Muscle strength, mobility, and flexibility are the most important factors in preventing orthopedic injuries and staying out of the OR as we age.
Dr. Lynn Anderson: Proactive Aging & Naturopathic Health
Health rests on three pillars—sleep, nutrition, and movement—and it takes roughly 120 days to replace an old habit with a new one, both cellularly and mentally.
Reverse Biological Age: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald on Diet & Sleep
Fitzgerald's randomized controlled study showed men reduced biological age by over 3 years compared to controls in just 8 weeks using a diet and lifestyle intervention.
Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets
Energy, not time or intelligence, is the entrepreneur's true currency, produced through mitochondrial ATP, regulated by the nervous system, and channeled as qi in Chinese medicine.
Sound Therapy & Cymatics for Entrepreneur Health
Cymatics is the science of making sound visible through mediums like water, sand, or powder, where pleasing sounds form organized geometric patterns and dissonant sounds create chaotic ones.
Fitness for Busy Entrepreneurs with Eric D'Agati
Physical health works cumulatively like compound interest, not through occasional intense bursts, so consistency beats intensity.
The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin
Toxic mold exposure can cause severe brain dysfunction that mimics other conditions and is often misdiagnosed by conventional doctors.
Richard Blank on Phone Communication & Soft Skills
Small talk and genuine curiosity about the person on the other end of a call disarms defensiveness faster than any sales pitch.
The ROI of Health and Fitness for Entrepreneurs
Exercise and nutrition act like a natural 'smart drug,' boosting decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility for leaders.
EMF Exposure & Sleep: The Hidden Bedroom Health Risk
Cell phones, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth devices emit pulsed non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation that couples with the body's bioelectric system and disrupts deep, restorative sleep.