The Optimization Blueprint: Biohacking Your Health and Performance with Jason Persaud (#155) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 155
Jason Persaud joins Dustin Serviss to discuss his approach to health, testing, environment and performance. The conversation explores the questions behind health optimization and the guest’s perspective.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Jason introduces his view of modern health
[00:03:45] A holistic approach to testing and performance
[00:07:18] Dustin describes his gut-testing experience
[00:14:04] Jason discusses environmental exposures
[00:17:09] Food sourcing and individual responses
[00:23:30] The conversation turns to plastics and daily habits
[00:26:27] Distinguishing fitness from wider health
[00:29:49] Traveling while running a business
[00:33:19] Jason describes his retreat work
Guest & resources
Related episodes
Transcript
[00:00:00] Jason Persaud: And the problem that I am trying to get people to understand is, like, in order to be healthy these days, you actually have to be a little bit of a health freak, so to speak. You actually have to actively work on it every single day. Because if you're not working on it every day, then, unfortunately, if you live like a normal person, you're just gonna be laden with toxicity. And next thing you know, you're gonna wake up with, unfortunately, an autoimmune condition or cancer, which is happening at younger and younger rates these days.
[00:00:28] Dustin Serviss: Before we dive in, I wanna share something with you. Now these are brands I actually use in my own life. They aren't sponsors yet, but I believe in what they represent. If you're the kind of person who listens to T Pal Labs or The Picture of Wealth, chances are you're already dialed into a few of these. But in case you're not, I have a few creative brand mentions. A g one. One thing I believe in, stacking small wins. That's why every morning I start with a g one. It's a routine that keeps me dialed in. Jay, I I did legs today. And I wanted to know from you when the last time was that you had a good leg workout.
[00:01:06] Jason Persaud: Oh. You know what? You know what? Being down here in Austin, there is... It's cool. This compound has an outdoor gym, an indoor gym, and a co working space, and a grocery store in the same, like, block. Such a vibey spot. Sauna, cold plunge, like, I'm loving it. And so I had a good leg workout the other day. I did a German volume training. Are you familiar? Ten by ten. Give me a question. Okay. So German volume training. It's like a training style. And, essentially, it was started by Charles Poliquin, who's passed now, but it's ten sets of ten reps. And, basically, it elicits large amounts of growth hormone.
[00:01:42] Jason Persaud: And you want to put someone in the ground as a trainer, that's what we would do. If you want to, like, really supersaturate a muscle and they're more of like a... I don't wanna say beginner, but intermediary trainer or training client. We would do things like that. And so to answer your question, I did German volume training the other day, and I've been doing that style since I've been down here for the last, like, three weeks. And I've put on, like, ten pounds of... I wouldn't say muscle. It's glycogen, really, but Yeah. Really drives a lot into the muscle tissue. So, like, I was hobbling for a few days there.
[00:02:13] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I was gonna I was gonna ask you. So listener, Jay has a qualified personal trainer and a bunch of other things, which we'll get into. But the bodybuilding background is very common to us both. And I've been skipping leg days, which lately lately, I've been starting to bring them back, but for a number of months, I can't be leg day yet. And then, you know, you do something else. But I remember back in twenty years ago, it was when you did legs, you just... So what's the science behind activating such a big muscle? And... Because I remember this testosterone thing, and I remember it was like, you can't
[00:02:46] Dustin Serviss: miss leg day because if you're hitting everything else, like, it's gonna help everything else.
[00:02:51] Jason Persaud: Totally. Yeah. The concept of that is essentially when you're training big muscle groups, like legs, for example, or, like, utilizing back muscles in, like, a deadlift format or something like that. The more muscle tissue that you activate, the more testosterone is gonna be... Like, come up in circulation because testosterone and growth hormone go hand in hand. Right? So the idea was, like, you want guys to build their arms and build their shoulders and build their chest, hard leg day, because it's going to pump up growth hormone... Serum growth hormone and testosterone, which is only gonna amplify all
[00:03:22] Jason Persaud: the other muscle groups that you're trying to work. And I remember that in the men's physique days, it's... You guys want a big upper body? You need to train legs. Like, it has such an important role in it. This is why a lot of guys will actually train legs on Mondays instead of chest Mondays, which everybody does, because it sets them up for the week. And typically, you'd be sore for a couple days. And so by the time you get to the weekend, you're not hobbling around and you do what you wanna do.
[00:03:45] Dustin Serviss: Right. So back us up to what you're doing, what you're studying, what you're working with people, and taking a very holistic approach to wellness and health. And and, again, I've been... This isn't a sponsored episode, but I've been in to use your services and found not just good results, but also the way you approach it in a form of learning and deep understanding of the body. And so what is this emergence that's happening with people? You know, pick whatever vein you wanna go down of people don't wanna use the public health care system or Yeah. People are ultimately optimizing for things like, what is wellness or what is
[00:04:19] Dustin Serviss: holistic fill in the blank of what you're actually doing for people?
[00:04:23] Jason Persaud: Alright. So we'll take a step back and be like, yes. Bodybuilding was my life, like, ten years ago. I'm... Genetically, I'm a skinny Indian kid, and so that naturally got me beat up a shit ton. And, of course, that led to me wanting to be a bodybuilder. And I got up to two hundred and ten pounds, stage weight one ninety two, and I was like Superman shredded. But, of course, world of steroids led to essentially a lot of gut issues, toxicity, things of that nature that the coaches that I worked with didn't really focus on or talk about. And so I ended up developing, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, and
[00:04:56] Jason Persaud: I had some pretty intense nerve inflammation that led to a lot of, like, suicidal thoughts, depressive patterns, and things like that. And because of how physically fit I was, and I think this is where it can relate to a lot of people, I was physically fit, and so my blood metrics weren't bad. I didn't have any blood... Bad blood metrics. They're like, oh, you're depressed. Take an antidepressant. There wasn't antibodies. I wasn't in an autoimmune state. I was in that I feel like shit, but my blood's fine. And so the doctors look at you, they're like, oh, everything's okay. Right.
[00:05:24] Jason Persaud: And, unfortunately, that is where a lot of people live these days. Right? Many people live in this space of, I don't feel good. My doctor is really only looking at blood metabolites, but blood metabolites are only gonna be bad if I'm dying. Right? And so I'm not dying, so nothing is wrong, and they have no drugs to give you, and then you get stuck in this loop. So I had to go into this world of functional medicine and gut health and hormone health and environmental toxicity and heavy metals and chemical residues. I had to learn all of those pieces to essentially get myself out of this IBS chronic depressive loop.
[00:06:00] Jason Persaud: And coming from the world of being a strength and conditioning coach, essentially transitioned myself into this. Okay. I was a bodybuilding fitness coach, and then that went into online nutrition health coaching, and then that progressed even further to now the deep, like, medical work that I do. I'm not a doctor. I'm studying my PhD in natural medicine. I'm a board certified holistic health practitioner, holistic nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach, so I blend the worlds of holistic medicine with strength and conditioning. And then I have a background in something called neurosomatic therapy, which essentially
[00:06:34] Jason Persaud: is like osteopathy and massage therapy put together where I do a lot of the soft tissue work. And a lot of people right now are in this space of, I just don't feel good. I have no energy. I can't sleep. I can't poop. And the problem that I am trying to get people to understand is, like, in order to be healthy these days, you actually have to be a little bit of a health freak, so to speak. You actually have to actively work on it every single day. Because if you're not working on it every day, then, unfortunately, if you live like a normal person, you're just gonna be laden with toxicity.
[00:07:07] Jason Persaud: And next thing you know, you're gonna wake up with, unfortunately, an autoimmune condition or cancer, which is happening at younger and younger rates these days. Hopefully, that answers. That... There's a lot more pieces we can go into.
[00:07:18] Dustin Serviss: No. You gave me a lot. And, close to me is... Again, you've worked with me for a little while, so you understand. It's like blood testing, gut biome, body scans, different things. But one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had is having my gut biome analyzed, going through the report. They give you a forty eight by taking a sample of your poop, and, yeah, send it away. And they analyze it, and they give you all this data, forty two pages. And so it wasn't enough. So I phoned the founder of the company, and I said, I don't care how much it costs, but I need to meet you, and I need to meet the scientists, and I I want to go through this.
[00:07:51] Dustin Serviss: And we had this great conversation. And due to the time change, it was like four in the morning. But after going through it because here's... And we can go any places, but the report recommended certain biome, and certain biomes of mine were optimized or optimal already good. When you go to the store and you look to buy probiotic, it's very hard to... I'm like, I don't wanna jack up the probiotics that I have already to get these other ones that are low. And so that's what I was visiting with involved. So I won't go into that. But I will say that when I did find a strain that, you know, outside of going to a custom by... Prob...
[00:08:33] Dustin Serviss: So this is super dorky, but you can get custom probiotics, which Yes. The founder was like, be very careful because some probiotics don't even exist in synthetic form. So they might say you can, but be careful. So I get as close to the one as I can. And ironically, it's... I'm a pretty positive, kind of optimistic, kind of entrepreneur guy. But he said, your gut biome looks like someone who would maybe suffer from some anxiety. And I thought, that's not my personality, but I am a risk analyzer. And so maybe that fits. But I started taking probiotic, and within about three days, I started varying the diet.
[00:09:07] Dustin Serviss: So one of the things he noticed was, like, you eat a lot of the same things, and you're really high, which is fine to be protein forward and do crossbreed, all that stuff. But he's like, you need varying kinda staggers things. And so that little change, my family was noticing it. They're like, why are you so chipper today? And it actually was, like, at dinner time, I was way more... Not energy. I won't say that, but I say excited. Like, I was feeling better.
[00:09:31] Jason Persaud: You're not brain dead by the time you get to dinner time, essentially.
[00:09:33] Dustin Serviss: Is that what what can happen?
[00:09:35] Jason Persaud: Or is that... We're looking at it essentially the bacteria of our gut. Right? Our microbiology essentially feed neurotransmitters. Right? So a lot of neurotransmitters are actually made in the gut. So a lot of mental health. Right? This is why he said this. Right? Your microbiome analysis looks like someone who tend to have anxiety, and that's all because these microbes or lack thereof have issues with neuro... The issues in making certain neurotransmitters that can lead to certain emotional states. So it's... Again, it's not like you have more cellular energy, but if you're giving your
[00:10:07] Jason Persaud: body the microbes to create neurotransmitters, in essence, your brain has more computing power. So by the time you get to the end of the day, you're not trying to be chipper with fake stimulation like caffeine, but you're just in a better mood.
[00:10:22] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. No. For sure. So that was a major breakthrough. And I would like you to... In your studies, what have you seen in the... This is selfish on my part, but of knowing about heavy metals
[00:10:33] Jason Persaud: Mhmm.
[00:10:33] Dustin Serviss: In the old bodybuilding days, I used to literally do the can of tuna in the parking lot in my grad class and drink the juice right out of the can and then eat it. And then I would eat a ton of tuna. Is there something to be said about kind of the next layer? So someone does a blood panel, maybe at their doctor, which is never robust. It's... If they think you have strep throat, they get... They just test for that. So Yeah. Let's say we're tubing our
[00:10:56] Jason Persaud: blood They test for it. Usually, they'll just give you the antibiotics, and they
[00:10:58] Dustin Serviss: won't have a test. Yeah. So someone's tested their blood, they have a bit of a panel, but then there's a next layer of blood testing. So then it... Is there breakthroughs in that space now too?
[00:11:10] Jason Persaud: Yeah. So to answer your question, there are many layers, unfortunately. And fortunately and unfortunately. Okay. And this is where you can go as deep rest surface as you want. I think what you did with the microbiome analysis is amazing. I will add a comment on that that there's really two types of microbiome analysis. One is let's look at the microbiology of your gut where they're looking at, like, your microbial populations. Okay? The good bacteria. And you can see, do I have enough or not enough? That sounds like the test you did. A lot of people will do what's called the GI MAP, which is like
[00:11:42] Jason Persaud: a functional medicine test, which will look primarily for bad microbes, bacteria, yeast, parasites, and things like that. And I would say the test that you did is great because you were able to fortify your weaker populations. A lot of people will just do the GI map and be like, oh, you have yeast. So now they're gonna take something to fight the yeast. Right? Now that is a great first step. What I see in clinic... I'll give you an example. I had a client who... She did a GI map and some h pylori and strep came out, and I can tell you, I probably have ten photos of worms on my phone from what's coming out of her.
[00:12:17] Jason Persaud: So just because it doesn't show up on the test doesn't mean it's not in your body. Right? We have to think
[00:12:23] Dustin Serviss: about it.
[00:12:23] Jason Persaud: Right? You're sending an ACE sample just like you're sending in a blood sample. And so it's like a snapshot of time. And if something isn't in that sample, it's not going to show up. So these are all things we have to take into consideration. Now to go deeper to your point, yeah, after we start looking at the microbiome, we look at what are the things that can affect the microbiome. We're gonna be looking at things like heavy metals, chemical residues, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. Like, the... It honestly is a pretty long list of things that are poisoning us. Then to layer onto this heavy metal conversation, the question becomes
[00:13:01] Jason Persaud: more of, okay. How do we test it? Okay? And I don't want to upset any listeners, but there's blood testing for heavy metals. But if the heavy metals are not circulating in your blood at the current time, they're not gonna show up. There's urine testing. Again, if it's not circulating, it's not gonna show up. The... There's hair analysis, but it's only what's deposited in hair. Okay? So we have to understand that usually the body's gonna put toxicity into fat tissues or, like, some sort of adipose tissue. So It's a holding tank. It's a holding. It's how to protect your body. Right? So this is where a lot of people... Well, okay.
[00:13:37] Jason Persaud: I'll do heavy metal testing, testing and, like, it won't come up. Similar to the example I just gave you for this girl with parasites. She does heavy metal testing. Nothing comes up. We do a heavy metal detox and she feels better. Obviously, there were heavy metals. Otherwise, it wouldn't... She wouldn't have felt better. So this is the tricky part about testing because if someone is only relying on the testing and not relying on looking at symptomology and, like, just using a brain and putting the pieces together, then someone would be like, oh, I don't have heavy metals. Do nothing about it.
[00:14:04] Jason Persaud: Focus on other things when meanwhile the heavy metals have been sitting there the whole time. And then you get further into... If we look at things like environmental toxicity and heavy metals, and we know that parasites eat heavy metals, if you're just parasite cleansing and you're not dealing with the heavy metals, then they're just gonna come back because the body's gonna use biology to try to clean up the environmental mess. Follow?
[00:14:25] Dustin Serviss: Interesting.
[00:14:26] Jason Persaud: Yeah. So it becomes this kind of, like, loop in essence. So you did a great first step. Okay. We're improving your weak microbial populations that are primarily weak because of the lack of food rotation, which which is common for everybody. We just... We don't rotate our foods because we have grocery stores, and we're able to eat the same type of food all year round, which is not how we evolved. Usually, we're gonna be eating food that is primarily grown in our environment based on the season. But who does that? We can eat the same thing all year round, and this is why we all have the same microbial and therefore mineral deficiencies. Right?
[00:15:00] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Yeah. It was it was... So between the blood test and the gut check, which, again, they're not a sponsor, but that was the company gut check, and they broke down certain things that it looked like I was deficient in. It was like, you have zero bacteria to break down gluten. About in August of last year, I went on a Whole30 nutrition program, and I've stayed there. So I've got no sugar, no dairy, no wheat. So I'm not surprised that there's no microbes. But... So here's the kicker. The reason I stopped taking those is because I get gas, and I've had gas for my whole life on those certain things. So it's like Yeah.
[00:15:33] Dustin Serviss: You're taking out things because it makes you feel uncomfortable and it's annoying, but then your gut is not as happy. And so when I was explaining to him, like, so if you start...
[00:15:43] Jason Persaud: What do I do?
[00:15:44] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. What do you do is honestly try it. So some pea... I don't have IBS, but it's if you did, it's like you maybe... You're gonna know. But it's give your gut a chance for maybe four days. So bring either some probiotics or give some... Take some food to eat some cheese, leave it for three, four days. You might have some extra farts. At the end of the day, if after four or five days, you're still not feeling great, then you might... But see if you feel better. And, ironically, whether it's placebo or not, I think I'm through those days. And now kind of, oh, I can eat some cheese. Maybe I don't have cheese every day.
[00:16:19] Jason Persaud: Right.
[00:16:19] Dustin Serviss: And you... And there's... Maybe expand on a day. There's some gut biome that, can... I envision it like a wave in my head where you can have a wave of... Eat the food and they're like, chew it down. Everything's kind of stable. It's like, as long as you don't keep hammering it with that, it'll get stable. But if you keep going, it can't overrun it.
[00:16:39] Jason Persaud: If we think about it this way, so, you know, you're referring to a bacteria that digests wheat, for example. Right? And if you're not putting wheat into the system, therefore, there's no bacteria because it's not being utilized. Right? If there's if you're gonna slam it, AKA have it every day, this is where basically the body doesn't have the tolerance to break it all down. And so you can pulse it, what you were saying, where it's okay. Can't have wheat products every single day, but if I can have it, like, three or four times a week, I'm okay. And then maybe you start to develop more tolerance.
[00:17:09] Jason Persaud: I think our main issue in relation to things like lactose and gluten is primarily sourcing. Okay? Because many people can go to the EU and eat gluten and have zero problems whatsoever. You know what I mean? I know a lot of people that I love that you're
[00:17:23] Dustin Serviss: going here. This is Yeah.
[00:17:25] Jason Persaud: This is my world. Yeah. So it's... I have celiac clients. They'll go to Europe, and they're like, I just crushed a pizza in a croissant. I feel great. And so a lot of this comes down to... We're going way beyond now just like a food type and a probiotic. We're going into the genetically modified foods and the manufacturing process of these processed foods. And, like, a lot of the grain world, they add, like, bromine into, and then bromine and iodine actually fight for the same receptor sites. And now we're seeing so many people with thyroid issues. What does the thyroid need? Iodine.
[00:17:58] Jason Persaud: So if you start to go down that rabbit hole, to answer your question, it's... Yeah. I feel like the work that we do with clients, we get them to a place where they can tolerate certain lactose products. They can tolerate certain grain products. Typically, it's more like sourdough, homemade sourdough, like, just not your typical, like, garbage white bread stuff. But the main thing for a lot of people, in my opinion, is going to be quality and, like, the genetically modified sources of most wheat products and then just what they have to do to preserve food, unfortunately, and the effect that has on the microbiome.
[00:18:32] Dustin Serviss: Pivoting a little bit, but what is an area of life or work that you're becoming dangerously good at?
[00:18:40] Jason Persaud: We're talking about it, man. I started in the strength and conditioning world and, like, the world of, like, chronic health issues. And there's a lot of people out there that really focus on a specific niche being like, oh, I'm the gut guy or the hormone guy or whatever. And I would say that I'm a bit of a unicorn where I can really blend the worlds between the physical all the way to the systemic, like organ systems all the way to a wrist problem or like a back problem. I could do the whole gamut, and then more importantly, look... Help clients navigate their chronic health issues.
[00:19:12] Jason Persaud: Because it doesn't matter whether you have IBS, a hormone issue, you can't sleep, you can't poop, you have an autoimmune rheumatoid arthritis. At the end of the day, all humans have the same organ systems, and we live in the same toxic environment. So Right. The same pins... Principles that I use for someone with an autoimmune condition is the same principles I'm gonna use for someone who's working in, honestly, some sort of, like, mental health issue because it's the same organ systems. It's just showing up different. For one person is primarily in the brain.
[00:19:38] Jason Persaud: The other person it's in the joint, but there's still environmental toxicity, heavy metals, chemical residues, pesticides. There's still gonna be a messed up gut biome. There's still gonna be having to deal with all the plastics in their environment. Like, it's the same thing.
[00:19:52] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Yeah. And in the... I think the messiness in the commonplace in today's world is I saw something on Instagram. I better go buy it and start doing it, whether it's vitamin e, whether it's do this, do a cold plunge, do... It's just Constant. Things. Right? And it's... The formula might be different for certain people. And, again, back to this expert scientist talking about the gut, it's like, you're... The way you eat your food, it's have a little bit of fat first, let that get in there for a minute or two, and then hammer your big steaks and, like, your... So it's okay.
[00:20:27] Dustin Serviss: But for somebody else that doesn't have this kind of makeup that I have, it's like you would do it different. But getting the listener, like, back from... Holy shit. This is a lot of...
[00:20:37] Jason Persaud: It's overwhelming. Yeah.
[00:20:38] Dustin Serviss: So what are, like, the core things that somebody who's looking has been... Is, I would say, the active person who actively tries to feel better. And is intentional about that. Yeah. What is the base layer of some of the stuff we've been talking about to getting... Going in the right direction as, like, a start... If you do nothing, start here.
[00:21:01] Jason Persaud: Yeah. I would say gut check would definitely be like one. What was the name of that company that you did all your blood work through? Is this the same company? InsightTracker. So it's... They
[00:21:12] Dustin Serviss: just had their lead scientist on the podcast. So they'll be getting it soon.
[00:21:16] Jason Persaud: Yeah. Sounds great. So it's get, like, a real blood panel. Don't just get something like a CBC count and what's going on with your lipid panel. It's just useless. You need way more information, and you can get that. So I would say get a really good blood panel, right, inside tracker. I really like self decode. Okay? It's a genetic test. It's a one time thing. Right? One time, you're doing it once. I really like it. I've actually learned a lot, like, of clients' inherent genetic weaknesses through that test. So for me, it's get a good blood panel.
[00:21:47] Dustin Serviss: What's an inherent weakness?
[00:21:49] Jason Persaud: Inherent weakness, like poor methylation pathways, in which case you would need good methylated b's, or maybe you suck at holding on to copper, or maybe you aren't very good at holding on to vitamin d. These types of information are important because let's say someone comes to work with a practitioner and they get feeling good, but they don't know what their inherent weaknesses are. When they're done with that practitioner, they go back to living normal life and then they circle circle back around to where they started because they're not working on the weaknesses. You know what I'm saying? Good blood work, self decode genetic data.
[00:22:18] Jason Persaud: I like it way better than twenty three andMe. And, again, I'm not sponsored or anything like that. And then some sort of, like, microbiome test or getting into my world, bioresonance. Okay? And I like the bioresonance test because it allows me to essentially use biofeedback to get a lot of data out of someone's system without needing to do a heavy metal chemical residue, like all those tests. Right? So Mhmm. It's... If anything, get a good blood panel, get some genetic data, start with the gut. Like, that's like... Just know what your gut's telling you. And then from there, the gut is amazing because they can go the direction
[00:22:53] Jason Persaud: that you did, in which case, okay. I need to feed these bacteria, and here are the food shifts that I need to make accordingly. And with that set of information on top of a symptomology questionnaire, such as, okay. I experienced these things, and now I made these changes, and now these things are changing. Yeah. Exactly. And that's an amazing place to start, and you're gonna get really far. Unfortunately, our world is so toxic that we do need to look at toxicity profiles. Okay? Because just living a healthy lifestyle does not remove heavy metals from the body. It does not remove BPA from all the receipts we've held on to for our entire life.
[00:23:30] Jason Persaud: It doesn't remove microplastics from the body, which gets in there from... I remember years of microwaving plastic food and Tupperware being a bodybuilder. Like, how many of us do that? How many of us go to the coffee shop and buy coffee out of their cups that are paper, but how does it not melt? Because there's a lining of glue and plastic on the inside. All that stuff is leaching into us. So it's not about being fearful. It's just being like, I work out, I eat well, I'm health conscious, and I know that our lifestyle is unfortunately toxic, and we have to do something to get these things out because this is where breast cancer
[00:24:05] Jason Persaud: is happening way more. Prostate cancers have... Like, all these cancers are happening because the body cannot deal with the metabolic dysfunction of environmental toxicity.
[00:24:15] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. And I think there is, we founded this out of a space of wealth and money. And one of the things I realized was I do my AG1, that's about one hundred and thirty a month. We buy a half cow and that's however much, and where we eat a lot of meat, and so it's a lot of expensive. In my gut profile, it came back that I don't absorb vitamins very well in my gut, so that's depressing for how much AG1 didn't get utilized. And my protein synthesis is about twenty five percent. Wow. So meaning all that protein you're putting in, you're only... So I'm... I feel good that I'm able to, like, get in shape, but I...
[00:24:51] Dustin Serviss: In this changing of the gut biome, I feel like I'm getting more from spending the money. So for people like you that... Where people say, oh, like, we gotta pay for that? Or let's just... Yeah. You do. But then it's a lot cheaper because you might be taking something you don't need. You might
[00:25:05] Jason Persaud: be Totally. It's just you can actually direct your efforts. And, like, further to that point, you know, the the... It's cool when you do genetic data versus, like, functional data. So the example would be, I'm looking at someone who's over overweight, for example, and their genetic data says that they're a fast oxidizer and they can metabolite carbohydrates really well based on their genetic data, but their epigenetics are completely different. So now you need to look at, okay. You actually should be a fast metabolizer, and maybe they were ten years ago. So what the heck happened functionally over the last ten years to change this?
[00:25:38] Jason Persaud: It's not like I'm gonna tell them go eat a bunch of carbs if they're insulin resistant. So first, we have to actually show them. It's, hey. Here's where your genetic potential actually is, and how do we reverse that? How do we reverse age you and actually bring you back to, like, your genetic potential, so to speak. So for you, it's okay. Yeah. Your gut microbiome says that these things aren't working well, but, like, on a genetic level, is that also true, or is this more of what you functionally have created for yourself through the way you've lived life?
[00:26:08] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. What is... What's the dumbest thing you used to think was smart?
[00:26:12] Jason Persaud: The dumbest thing I used to think was smart.
[00:26:15] Dustin Serviss: I have a method to... I have a... Where I'm going with... I just wanna know if there's anything that pops to mind. In the day and age of we find information, and then we have to evolve with it. And so I mean something over the years that you
[00:26:27] Jason Persaud: The thing that comes to mind the most is... And this goes back, like, I don't know, ten to fifteen years where it's all physical fitness is the key. Push harder. Push harder. You know? You're gonna be healthier. Physical fitness equals health. And it's no. Like, I learned that so hard. Oh my god. Physical fitness and systemic health do not equate to each other. You know what I mean? Like, the idea of overtraining. Do you know how hard you had to work out back in the day to overtrain? But now our systems are so overridden where our nervous systems are so technology dependent. Like, they're just so burnt that, unfortunately, having one hour of
[00:27:06] Jason Persaud: intense workout every day is enough to actually derail your systemic health because it burns out your adrenals, burns out your thyroid, so on and so forth.
[00:27:15] Dustin Serviss: Expand on that.
[00:27:16] Jason Persaud: Like Yeah. It's... It... We... Okay. So if we think about all of our sensory information, okay, all... Anything that comes into the brain is called bits of information. Right? Bits. Now if I'm looking at nature, there aren't a lot of bits of information. Right? It's, like, pretty relaxing, everything like that. What does everybody do literally probably at least twelve hours a day? TV, technology, all of the things. Right? TikTok, social, like, all of that. And so all of this is dopamine, bits of information coming into the system that the neurological system is processing. So our brains are working way harder than they
[00:27:54] Jason Persaud: did ten years ago, twelve years ago, like, completely. So we're demanding way more of the system than we did before. Right? This is why old people struggle with technology. It's like their systems literally can't handle the information highway that's happening. And this is also why we're seeing more neurological conditions coming up in the baby boomer generation because they haven't made their systems robust enough to handle this technology influx. So now we're seeing Alzheimer's and dementia and everything like that because it's like burning out the nervous system. Look at guys like Bruce Willis, like the guys in front of white lights
[00:28:30] Jason Persaud: for thirty years, blue lights for thirty years, and now his brain is shot. And we're just... We're starting to see that trend, unfortunately, more and more on top of what we know Alzheimer's to be, like, stage three diabetes, type three diabetes. The idea as it pertains to training is if we go back to the nineties, like, you could work out twice a day, go to work, do your calls, whatever you gotta do, and would you overtrain? No way. No way. I remember two days was a thing in bodybuilding. So you wanna put on mask? Like, two days, go eat, take a nap, blah blah blah blah. Yeah.
[00:29:02] Jason Persaud: I could not imagine working out twice a day and running my business and working with six clients and talking high level like this because it is... It's just I... My nervous system does not have that capacity. And then it's okay. How are we supporting the nervous system? We can go through magnesium. How much magnesium we're gonna take because there's not enough in the soil, and it just starts to go on and on that this is what happens is I'm really... With my clients particularly, like, mineralization is the key, and the... And and it's like, how do we get the minerals into you? So for you, it's okay.
[00:29:32] Jason Persaud: You can't digest minerals very well through your gut lining. Okay. How else do we get minerals into? Liposomal is gonna have to be the way or transdermal. There are companies that are making transdermal vitamin patches now or simple IVs because of the fact that you're just not absorbing it as well as you're supposed to.
[00:29:49] Dustin Serviss: Mhmm. I'm... We're coming... We're closing in. We're gonna land the plane as Tim Ferris calls it, but you are f three fifty and, Winnebago per se tied to the back, and you're traveling the US right now. So you're in Texas in a co workspace and a cool greenhouse office, actually, for anyone who can't see. But what was the impetus to get that trip started? Did you and your wife just... Let's get going, or we did it...
[00:30:16] Jason Persaud: Man, we got a two year old, and it's always been... Being a health chiro that's had the chiro office for thirty years. Like, that's a trap. And I've been in the industry thirteen years now, started as a trainer conditioning coach, and it's like you leave the office and you don't make money. That's just what happens. You leave the gym, you don't make money. And I... It's important to me to build a business that can reach more people than just the people that live around me. And it's... I gotta do a little reverse psychology where it's okay. I have the brick and mortar. People come in, and you're just busy in the doing and serving of clients.
[00:30:50] Jason Persaud: But when you go to leave the office, then you're like, okay. I got this amount of online, and I lost all this in person. So it actually gives me time and space to create more of that online content, online format to reach more people. So it's twofold. It's like our baby's two years old. My wife works completely virtually. Let's just travel and get out of the winter. So we did that. And it's also reverse psychology for me of, okay. Let's build more systems to reach more people so that I can act... We can actually travel and see the world, whatever that means, and not be stuck in one place like most of my colleagues, unfortunately, are.
[00:31:26] Jason Persaud: Like, I don't want to be in an office for thirty years. That will make me sick. It will. No matter what, it will. So if we can pulse in and out when we want because we have these these systems built, and maybe we wanna go to Portugal for two months of the year. It's like, boom. Let's do that. That's my dream and vision, And this was a bit of a longer test run. We've gone away here and there, but this was like, okay. Let's just go to the states, see how it is, take our home with us, and it's been fun.
[00:31:53] Dustin Serviss: You... You're there now mentally, but a year or two ago, did you get an email that says you're approved to take this trip and it's, like, totally all the ducks aligned and now that... Now's the right time? Or a year ago, what was this? Like, I know that you've got it logically thought out now because you're in it. But it's like, what was the know this is gonna happen moment?
[00:32:16] Jason Persaud: Yeah. Honestly, we... So we've been running... We run health and wellness retreats for our clients, and our clients would fly in from basically a lot of Ontario clients somewhere are local to BC, but a lot of Americans. And so we're like, hey. Let's just run a retreat in the States. And so that was the start of it where we were like, okay. Let's try this out. Let's run an international retreat. Most of our clients are international anyways... Or Americans, I should say. So we planned that in Joshua Tree. We ran that March nine to twelve. And so... And and then it was, like, end of winter winter and salmon arms dreary.
[00:32:48] Jason Persaud: So So we were like, alright. Let's just go. But, yeah, it wasn't an email. It wasn't anything like that. It was, like, me setting forth the idea of this is where we want to be, which is being able to travel and have more of this online business and continue to help people in that format. And so let's give a reason for it. And honestly, if I didn't set up a retreat in Joshua Tree, California, probably wouldn't have left because we wouldn't have had a reason to.
[00:33:12] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. You've gotta force it. What what... To close us out, taxi us up to the the gate. What happened at the retreat?
[00:33:19] Jason Persaud: Yeah. So the retreat was a four day retreat. And, specifically, when we work with clients, it... They've generally worked with myself. They worked with my wife who does a lot of mental, emotional, somatic type work with clients. And so these individuals who are coming here are primarily coming for a psilocybin style retreat. So it's a plant medicine retreat, and the goal is to help them unlock patterns that they're stuck in. Right? We know about the subconscious mind, the power of the subconscious mind. It's all about set and setting. A lot of other retreat centers have twenty, thirty, forty people at these retreats,
[00:33:51] Jason Persaud: and there isn't a lot of one on one care, so to speak. Essentially, this is... I don't wanna say the end, but, like, a pivot point in the client journey where some people have never worked with us, but they work... They've, like, never seen us in person, but they've worked with us for six months.
[00:34:04] Dustin Serviss: Right.
[00:34:05] Jason Persaud: And it's, wow. I know you so well, but I've never actually met you. And so, essentially, we start with a Native American sweat lodge. We progress into bio resonance testing, which essentially looks at environmental toxicity. It looks at the microbiome. We're looking at the nervous system HRV assessment, heart rate variability assessment. We obviously have the psilocybin ceremony, and a lot of it is is emotional and nervous system like nurturing. A lot of these clients are people who have suffered with autoimmune conditions or cancers. But with that being said, this retreat specifically, we had some health practitioners,
[00:34:42] Jason Persaud: like health practitioners such as myself that are also in the space that are looking to expand beyond the, like, wounded healer, so to speak. I'm sure you understand that there's a lot
[00:34:52] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. The whole subset for... Of those people.
[00:34:55] Jason Persaud: Exactly. And so that's essentially the... Those are our retreats. That's who comes to us and how we work. And the goal, in essence, of our entire business is take someone from, I don't know what's going on with my health, to I know what's going on. I know what to do about it. And, like, we're literally changing the trajectory of someone's life. Like, we had one client who, you know, very, like... She's a mom, very to do list, very, like, survival masculine energy. And, like, all of her relationships have changed by the softening of her nervous system. And we see it. Their face literally changes as as funny as that sounds.
[00:35:31] Jason Persaud: Your kids noticed it in you from a probiotic. Yeah. So that's cool.
[00:35:36] Dustin Serviss: Jay, thank you for coming on the show today. And where can people find you online?
[00:35:41] Jason Persaud: Yeah. So bioenergetica dot com. If you look at my Instagram, it's jason persad dot bioenergetics, and, essentially, that my school community is where you're gonna have all that info. I'm putting up a ton of information on how to essentially go from what we talked about. I don't know what's going on to, like, here are the tests we should do. Here's how to, like, read those tests, and what are some basic pieces that you can start to put in place without necessarily consulting with a million doctors.
[00:36:08] Dustin Serviss: I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
[00:36:10] Jason Persaud: Thank you.