Summary:

This episode is a little outside of our regular content, but I’m really excited to bring it to you today. Dr. Jones is a leading expert on the Health Model, and in this episode he talks about how to maximize brain performance for entrepreneurs so we can get more done, be more focused, remember more while living a healthy and balanced life.

Links:

• Find Issac Jones at SuperHumanEntrepreneur.com
• or DesignerHealthCenters.com
• He also recommends the Bulletproof Diet by David Asprey. He mentioned taking Vista, Spectra, G-Cell, and Bind.

Transcript: Maximizing Brain Performance for Entrepreneurs with Dr. Issac Jones

Welcome to the Project Ignite podcast, this is your host, Derek Gehl. I’m really excited about today’s guest, because we’re diving into a topic that’s definitely near and dear to my heart, but it isn’t really in the vein of regular Internet marketing that we’re talking about.
So we’re taking a bit of a shift here, and we’re focusing today on how to transform our bodies and our brains to get more done as an entrepreneur while making sure that we don’t sacrifice our health.
Our guest today is known as the doctor of the future, he’s a very successful entrepreneur that owns three companies including Designer Health Centers, which have received certification from the United Nations for excellence in healthcares, and for his work with the royal family in Saudi Arabia, and the owner of a very cool website which I highly recommend you check out called SuperHumanEntrepreneur.com.
He specializes in making entrepreneurs superhuman, making us more productive and giving us more energy without sacrificing our health.
So without further ado, I’d like to welcome Dr. Issac Jones to the show today.

Issac, thank you for being here.
Hey, thank you so much Derek. I’m really looking forward to giving as much value as I can.

Awesome, awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this! Before we jump into the long list of questions I have for you today, take a minute to share your story–how did you get to where you are today, and specifically focusing on entrepreneurs and their performance.

Well when I was growing up, I’d always wanted to be an entrepreneur, as the leader of a company. I always had that leadership mentality. I was kind of sideswiped in high school when my brain just started to take a nosedive.
I wasn’t focusing like I used to be, I wasn’t as productive, and I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d had some challenging illnesses the year before, and had been in and out of the hospital for antibiotics, and if anybody has been studying the human microbiome, the gut impacts the brain quite dramatically.
So I’d wiped out all of my healthy gut flora, and my brain was definitely affected in different way. I wasn’t eating very well. I wound up having a teacher come up to me after I couldn’t finish a test, and I didn’t feel like my brain was functioning properly–so they suggested that I go to a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, which is good if you’re an entrepreneur, because almost all of us have ADHD, but that was something that I carried with me for a long time.
My mom looked everywhere for a doctor that would be able to help me transform my health. She wound up finding a functional health doctor, and I also worked with a chiropractor, and a naturopath, and between working with these different doctors, my health completely transformed.
I went from being in special needs to getting straight As and effortlessly getting through my work. It impacted me so much that I realized I really wanted to help people the way I had been helped. So I moved away from being that kind of “entrepreneur” to becoming a doctor.
I grew up in Canada, and wound up with an international scholarship to study at the most prestigious health and wellness university in America, and I went through the doctorate program with flying colours. I learned a lot more than a lot of the other students did, I really delved into functional medicine, and environmental medicine, and nutrigenomics, metabolomics.
I found myself an expert in this area of different human performance, and I realized that I needed to start working with entrepreneurs. They were the ones that needed it most, and were willing to work with me. So I work with a lot of Internet marketers, to some of the most popular podcast hosts like John Lee Dumas, just yesterday. There’s a lot of really cool things happening.
It’s all about helping people maximize their physiology so that they can get more done in less time, they feel great, less stress, and really be able to accomplish the things that are their core purpose on this earth.

I’m that classic entrepreneur. I started early, completely neglected my health. When you’re young you feel like you’re invincible, so you work those 60-70 hours per week, it’s a pretty common thing.
Eventually, though, combining the ADD with abusing my body, all of that stuff led to various prescriptions which compound on themselves.
My first question is how is your approach different than traditional western medicine.

Good question. Western medicine just treats effects with drugs, surgery, or some other type of tincture. This is very similar to the alternative model as well, which treats symptoms with homeopathics and supplements.
I differ from both of those approaches. I call this new model The Health Model. There’s the Alternative Model, and the Medical Model, but if you want to properly address high performance, brain function, and overcoming disease pathways within your body, you have to take a multi-factorial approach.
The research has been done on double blind controlled studies on what one drug does versus what it doesn’t do. There are no studies however that take into consideration exercise, nutrition, and healthy sleep.
They don’t look at all the different factors. You can spray paint the leaves of a plant green, or put medicine in the soil, but at the end of the day, a sick plant needs water, and sunshine. It needs micronutrients. If you double-blind study with just water, and the plant still wilts, then the conclusion is that water isn’t really that good for the plant.
You could do that just with sunlight, and when the plant doesn’t perk up, the conclusion is that sun isn’t really good for the plant. Or there’s no conclusive evidence that sunlight IS good for the plant.
The real magic in transforming this plant is giving it water, sunlight, and micronutrients. That’s why it’s so exciting to live in the 21st century, because these approaches are so much more powerful than medicine, and the research to back it up is all there. It addresses the underlying causes, removes interferences, and then teaches how to live a life of high performance in a multi-factorial approach to sustain it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So here’s one of the challenges that I see, though. It’s the future of healthcare, but if you look at the standard food pyramid, we’re so far from that. The other side of it is, pharmaceuticals are not motivated to actually cure–they’re motivated to treat. How do we go as a society from where we are today to the Health Model?

That’s a great question. The same question right now is being asked about GMOs, and organic foods, but if you really look like why the pyramid is the way it is, it’s because Big Food is paying millions and millions of dollars in lobbying to keep things the way that they are.
Pharmaceuticals will always be there, because lower-class America and blue collar workers, and even white collar workers as well, are only seeking to relieve pain. They’re not actually wanting to do all of the work that’s required to live an extraordinary life. Those companies will always be there.
What’s great right now is the movement of people becoming more and more educated, with the Internet, and it’s not the media anymore that dictates how we learn. It’s us reading and listening to podcasts, like what you’re doing right now, but this is a new approach to media and it’s exciting because people are now asking better questions and making changes.
I believe that how you change the industry is through education, and then making it profitable for health companies to take on these bigger companies through advertisements and helping them get into mainstream grocery stores.
As far as pharmaceuticals, it all comes down to the way the medical system is set up. Doctors essentially perpetuate the system that’s been around for all these years.
My ultimate vision is to transform healthcare globally. That’s why I’m over in Japan educating doctors, there, and I have my mastermind group here in America as well–it’s exciting because there’s a movement taking place. This is how I think it’s going to happen: the doctors will start recognizing that they don’t want to treat symptoms anymore. They’ll realize it’s actually more profitable to help people get healthy and stay healthy.

Right. I completely agree. I think it’s that transition as people begin to have access to information, and also start advocating for themselves. I’m that classic story, throughout my twenties, following that western medicine, and eventually realizing that I have to make a change. In my thirties, I started cycling, doing endurance racing, all of that.
That said, as an entrepreneur, our biggest asset is our brain. I look at how hard we push ourselves mentally everyday, we’re always looking for a hack. How do we get more out of our brains? What we’re faced with is there’s so many gimmicks out there. And now there’s this huge swing towards getting more out of your brain.
I’m seeing people taking all of these new supplements, Bulletproof Exec, where do you start? The big question I want to ask today, is how do we get more out of our minds, and how do we keep it consistent? Where do we start?

I think that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I can probably answer it pretty efficiently and effectively, actually, and David Asprey, a very good friend of mine, wrote the Bulletproof Diet, and if anyone hasn’t read it, it’s a really great book with a lot of really valuable tips on nutrition and healthy living.
In general, you need to ask yourself the basic questions. Am I getting eight hours of sleep per night? And most entrepreneurs will laugh at that. But then, if you’re not getting eight hours of sleep per night, you need to be going to bed at the same time. If you wake up at different times, it’s not a big deal, but you have to create a good circadian or biological rhythm. Your body needs consistency.
If you can go to bed at 12 at night, go to bed at 12 every night. The earlier you can go to sleep, the more rejuvenated you will feel. My entrepreneur groups will be on our Facebook group, and there’s a few really incredible people that will go to bed at 9 o’clock, and then they’ll wake up at 4 or 5 o’clock, work until 8, take a little break, work until noon, and then take the rest of the day off.
They get more out of those few hours than most people do throughout the entire week. Thinking about your sleep is essential.
Some sleep hacks that everyone needs, is that if you’re not getting deep, rejuvenating sleep, you should use some kind of magnesium product before you go to bed. It helps relax the muscles.

The problem I’d run into is that I’d be on my electronics late at night, and it would stimulate my brain and disregulate the kind of neurotransmitters that need to be stimulated before you sleep. I was finding that I had a neurotransmitter called glycine that was really high, and I would twitch in my sleep. My wife wouldn’t be able to sleep on the other side of the bed.
So I did a neurotransmitter profile, which is a really powerful test, and I found my deficiencies–I do a bunch of these tests for entrepreneurs if anyone is interested–but I wound up within a few days of getting those results back sleeping way better than I was before.
It’s a good habit for anyone to get into: gaba production before bed. It reduces the glycine and the norepinephrine, and all of these exciting neurotransmitters. You do this through meditation, or even a five minute stretch session. It helps to ready your body for sleep. It’s really important to have that nighttime routine, too. Blackout curtains on your windows, no light from your phone, you want to sleep in pitch dark and at the same time every night.
You should be aiming for seven or eight hours of sleep. You should be working to block out all blue light exposure before going to bed. Your pituitary that secretes melatonin understands blue light as though it were daytime. So you might still be able to go to bed, but your pituitary isn’t producing melatonin, so you won’t get into that deep delta-wave sleep.
To help prevent this from happening, download F.Lux on your computer. It takes away a lot of the blue light from your screen after the sun goes down. I also bought blue light blocking glasses, too. If you have prescriptions, you can go to your optometrist and get blue light blocking spray on your glasses.
I go to a website called Gunnars.com, and those glasses block the blue light. It’s been shown to increase melatonin production by 40% so you can get those deeper, more rejuvenating sleeps.
I know that sleep in general sounds pretty simple, but I just talked about a bunch of different hacks that will help you get into a better sleep, and will really impact your performance the next day. Your sugar cravings will drop drastically as well with those powerful sleeps.
I can get into several other really powerful ones as well.

First of all, f.lux, I discovered that maybe six months ago, and I noticed an immediate difference. I had no idea you could get glasses that do the same thing as well!
Okay, so we’re talking about gaba, and having more released to help us sleep. Can we just take a pill? Can we supplement with gaba?

You totally can. Anytime you take testosterone, for example, your testicles will shrink. Your body thinks, oh, well, I don’t need to produce any more testosterone, because it’s being injected into me.
That’s the premise around taking synthetic supplements in the long term. Some things, like melatonin, it seems that you can take it long term and it will not cause your brain to produce any less melatonin. That’s an exception. But if you’re taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors, like Prozac, what that does is prevent the reuptake of serotonin in the synaptic cleft, between the neurons in the brain, and the serotonin stays over time and continues to stimulate other nerve cells.
Over time, the other nerve cells are saying, this is way too much. Then they start downgraded receptor sites, causing you to need more serotonin to get that happy-response.
In the long term, you always want to find a natural way to improve your health that will allow you to sidestep the side effects that will inhibit long term health transformation.
That would be my response to you. Short term, I think those supplements are great. But once your body is back where it needs to be, I make up a personalized plan based on a person’s physiology to give them a pathway to maintain that health in a natural way moving forward.

Got it. You just mentioned that once you start supplementing to do something to your body that your body was already doing, your body will stop doing it because you’re supplementing it.

Exactly.

So what’s happened is you start this western medicine road, and they get you on all of these prescriptions–how do you get back from all of those medicines?

That’s a great question. My mom was taking Prozac for years and years. I had no idea. I was going through my doctorate program, and she said, my doctor has put my on Effexor because the Prozac wasn’t working, but I’m still not feeling very well.
I said, mom, you’d never even told me that you were depressed. I didn’t know. I started doing research, I didn’t know what I know now–but I said, you have to get off that drug. It’s causing all of these terrible side effects inside the body. So she went off of it, cold turkey, and it took her to her knees.
I immediately told her to go back on it, and calling up some top experts in the field, and talking to them about overcoming medications and getting off of them properly. Antidepressant Solution is a great book for anyone trying to get off of antidepressants.
But ultimately, I don’t take people off medications now. They come off of them themselves, or with their personal medical doctors. Some medications, doctors will take people off right away, or some people will have to wean down off of the medicine. There’s a whole process depending on how long you’ve been on your medication for.
I’m not saying go off of any medication, but the people that I work with will usually go off their medications once they’ve implemented the specialized plans that I put together for them when we work together. They’ll either take themselves off of it naturally, or the doctor will help them get off.

That’s a really important message. Don’t just stop. There are processes for taking those medicines out of your life.
So I’m going to change direction a little bit. I want to address one specific thing. We’ve shifted back to a high fat diet, specifically for brain performance. So I’ve seen a real increase in people using MCT oils and bulletproof coffees. Where do you stand in that whole diet-realm of high fat/high brain performance?

If you want to increase brain performance and get down to your goal weight, there are a few things you can do. However, a caveat to what I’m about to tell you, is that everyone is different and you need to listen to your body.
Some people do better as vegan, some people do better on a mediterranean diet. But what I’ve seen from a nutritional perspective, a very healthy, primal, paleo diet that is not high in sugar, focused on consuming healthy fat, healthy vegetables, and healthy but moderate proteins. I think it’s an incredible diet for you to be on. That’s how I eat right now.
I don’t even eat very much fruit, because I love being in a high-fat burning ketogenic state. If anyone isn’t familiar with that term, ketosis is using fat for energy. Your body has energy stores within it of glycogen, which is the energy packet inside your muscles and liver that gets broken down for energy.
Even for me, at 6% body fat, I have over 40,000 kilo-calories access for energy off of my fat tissue. It’s also a cleaner burning fuel than sugar is.
The book I’m writing focuses a lot on the importance of consuming healthy fats. I’ve integrated an intermittent fasting plan into my diet. If you want to access higher levels of performance, I think that fasting is a great way to maximize my brain performance to higher and higher levels.

What that looks like, is this morning, I worked out, had a low-glycemic protein shake, with some really healthy vegetables and ginger root and turmeric root, and some berries. That is my post-workout shake.
Then I wait til around 12 o’clock to eat. Even on days that I don’t work out, I wait to have my first meal around 12 o’clock, and I eat my last meal around 6 o’clock. That increases human growth hormone, which helps your body burn fat and gives your body rest in between eating.
If you have some pre-diabetic issue going on, which is very common, fixing that is something that I think is a foundation for nutrition.
Some people work out in the morning, some at night, so their meals might follow their workout. Some people might be working to gain muscle mass, you can still do that with intermittent fasting, but you just need to consume more calories throughout the day. I would do 20g of protein after your workout, with 20g per hour afterwards.
If you’re really wanting to feel good, and work efficiently, and see you brain work at higher levels, I really recommend hacking that breakfast. Your body is going to crave sugars, like it’s been used to all of these years.
There’s a week to two week transition period where you transition into eating later. Most high-performing entrepreneurs now have a bulletproof coffee in the morning, eat two meals a day. David Asprey has a great brand that I highly recommend. I also love tea, as well, like matcha green tea. But I blend that up with some butter and coconut oil and it’s great.
David Asprey’s brain octane I think is great. If you have heart disease issues, or if you’re taking MCT oil and are not losing weight, you might want to monitor your cholesterol levels. Alternatively, you could have a shake. Sometimes I put coffee or green tea in with a scoop of goat protein or some kind of vegan protein powder and I’ll make it into a nice breakfast.
Hopefully that’s a nice overview of how you can hack your meals throughout the day. You’re going to see your performance increase, give it a week or so, at first, but once you get into the rhythm, it’ll be so powerful for you.

I just wrote like three pages of notes from what you just shared. One of the messages I want to reiterate that you said was that one size does not fit all.
I see that problem in the health space all the time, everyone has the miracle cure. I respect your approach, because you acknowledge those differences right up front.
The other message is that people don’t give it enough time for their body to adapt. As you said, it can take a couple weeks especially for extreme changes. You’re not going to feel great for the first few days.
Fantastic, we’re running out of time here so I want to wrap this stuff up here. How can our listeners connect more with you?

If you’re interested in working with me one-on-one, you can go to SuperHumanEntrepreneur.com, on the about page, there’s information on a consultation with me for $197. If you’re interested in doing some labs, we can consider what would be best for you to maximize performance. That’s the site to check out my podcast, where you’ll find productivity hacks, brain hacks, and lots of interviews with health and wellness experts. I’m going to be interviewing Derek soon too.
I’ve got a lot of great articles coming out every week on that site. Check it out to stay up to date with what’s happening in the health space, and that’s about it.

One more thing: you have a company that’s developing supplements, and I know not all supplements are created equal.

Most of them are synthetic. My advice is to find supplements that are as close to natural as you can manage. My supplements are all derived from those sources. The new technologies of extracting the proper molecular structure of the micronutrient is incredible. If you go to DesignerHealthCenters.com you can find out more. I take Spectra every day, and that is a multi-vitamin derived from organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and all you need is one little cap every day.
That’s a good one to jump on. Vista gets you access to a lot of fats that we’re missing in our diets. If you’re interested in increasing energy or brain function, look into Vista.
The last two are all about removing environmental toxins. We’re exposed to so many, we end up stockpiling a lot of this stuff in our bodies. So G-Cell helps to remove those toxins, along with Bind, so that you don’t cause a retox effect, where you remove the toxins from the cells but they are taken up again in the gut.
Spectra is one per day, Vista is twice per day, and G-Cell and Bind I would take two each per day.

Fantastic. For everyone listening, all of that information will be in the shownotes at ProjectIgnite.com/podcast.
Dr. Jones, thank you so much for sharing with us today.

My pleasure! Thank you.

Well everyone, that was a little outside our regular vein, but the fact is, if you don’t have your health you have nothing. I’ve had a real journey in my health over the past twenty years, and I can say right now that at 38, I get way more done now than I did in my twenties. This is such an important interview, and is so near to my heart.
We’ve got more incredible episodes coming up, so please leave us a review on iTunes or Soundcloud, and we’ll see you in the next episode.