Hi, guys, welcome to today's episode and we have Shawn Wells, who's got a new book coming out called The Energy Formula, we are going to be talking about all kinds of issues with auto immunity. We're going to be talking about chronic pain. We're going to be talking about biohacking, all things intermittent fasting. Ketel, we've got a full plate for you. So, Shawn Wells, welcome.
Thank you for having me on Chantel. I'm excited.
So I know that you've personally suffered from some countless issues like chronic pain, auto immune issues and some depression. So talk a little bit about your personal journey and how it led you where you are.
Yeah, 100 percent. And I think you'll find that the reason that anyone is really good at what they do, really passionate or what they do, there's a way behind that. And that's certainly true for me. I've been through a lot physically, mentally. I had a pretty chaotic childhood. I was bullied quite a bit. I was morbidly obese and laughed at and definitely the last pigs to play any sport, the last guy that would ever get a girl. And it was difficult growing up under that lens and and moving into college. I finally started working out and and seeing some improvements in my body and getting more self-esteem from having lived with a lot of severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. And I was talking to my physician and between myself, my junior year, like I said, working out, reading magazines, like taking some supplements like creatine and protein.
And I was telling them how I'm seeing these changes. I'm feeling better about myself, like I'm thinking that this is something I truly enjoy.
And I was expecting that he was going to tell me it was all stupid, like the supplements especially.
And and he actually drew out the lifeline between 20 and 80. And he said, why not be happy between here and here?
As I was talking to him about my business school that I was in and it was it was a little bit of a drag to me, but like, I was really lit up about the supplements stuff and and dieting and working out and all that stuff.
And that literally changed my life. Path like that gave me permission from someone who I had a lot of respect for and thought was quite brilliant to pursue my passion. And I ended up finishing up business school. But with that in mind, getting a minor in chemistry, knowing that I could go get prerequisites to get into a master's program. My dream school was Chapel Hill in nutritional biochemistry and I wanted to be a formulator. And so that was my dream. But when I finally got to a finish with business school and I got to the school where I was going to do the pre Wrex UNC Greensboro, I talked to the guidance counselor there and told him I need twenty six credit hours of sciences a semester. I need to do all this stuff to get into Chapel Hill. He laughed at me and said, I'm a business student and I'll fail and I'll fail miserably. And he said, I didn't even have that good abody. And this reinforced, like a lot of my body dysmorphia, my eating disorders that I had at that point had not only dealt with being morbidly obese, but even strong all the way to anorexia, going from three hundred pounds to one hundred and fifty pounds. When I was weighing myself after I peed to see if I was lighter. And I thought about killing myself that night because he took away my dream that I had for two years, my purpose that I thought I had. And that was soul crushing. But I ended up not doing that and thinking of that guy every single day when people wanted to go out and party, go out to clubs, go out to bars, whatever, I was working hard every single day, got straight A's, got into Chapel Hill and and I thought of that guy every single day. But it's it's interesting how one person really gave me my life path and one person could have taken it away. That's something I'm very cognizant of. But ultimately, that guy who was the discouraged of me ended up being reinforcement to me, giving me more resolve on my passion. And then while I was at Chapel Hill. I was working 80 hours a week along with school. I was burning the candle at both ends and I was pushing myself too hard. And I got Epstein Barr virus, chronic fatigue syndrome, Hashimoto's fibromyalgia. I was in bed for six months with pain and inflammation. Again, thought about taking my life because I didn't think I would ever be a productive member of society. I didn't think that I would ever finish up my masters. I thought all this sacrifice was for nothing. I thought my body was betraying me. And again, like that, when you have body dysmorphia, like you just grow to hate your body in all ways, not just the way it looks in a mirror, but you constantly think it's it's betraying you. And these were thoughts that I had. And I was always looking for Hack's with supplements, with diets, with workouts, with. So I got very good at all the things. But at no point did I love myself in that process. I ended up stumbling into the ketogenic diet that ended up changing my life pretty dramatically. I was able to get out of bed, get back to class after the six months and regain my whole life. I've been doing for over 20 years since. And I've spoken to kids all over the world. I shifted from my focus on supplements from being sports nutrition to immune health and and energy, because those are now my my life. My immunity was impaired. My energy was zero. So that's where my new focus was. And then. To wrap up, like with my health journey probably about eight years ago when I was working for a company called DeMatteis, and I was formulating for them now having my dream job, but again, working 80 plus hours a week, the company was trying to sell in a three year turnaround to a big company that didn't sell to post foods for four hundred twenty five million. But the pace around the company was breakneck and intense and stressful, and they ended up getting a pituitary tumor. And now I was worried about cancer. I had all my hormones and and neurotransmitters messed with, you know, and it was I was getting very sick for that reason. Headaches, lack of sleep, losing muscle mass, all kinds of libido. And so that was crushing. And and that's when I shifted another time into like mental health and looking at, like, exogenous ketones and nootropics. And I had just come out of long term care where I was looking at Alzheimer's and dementia. And so it kind of evolved with my health attorneys. And most recently, this is the finish is just over the last year and a half is when I've had my massive shift into self-love, where I've had the realizations that I was pushing all of this time because of insecurities that I've had since my childhood. And I wanted to hit a certain level of achievement so that people loved me and I would then love myself. And I finally realized that it's not an achievement to be sexy, to be happy, to be successful. Those are just states of being that you can have now. And I realize that from plant medicine journeys and working with therapists and taking that step back, especially during covid, it totally reformed me. I ended up rewriting my book about three times. I recorded my book and rerecorded my book because I kept shifting into more and more self-love and seeing less about the science of like bioethics, because I had been using all those things this time to survive, to survive what I was doing to my body, I became the expert in how to survive all the damage I was doing to myself. And then I finally shifted into literally states of being and loving myself and then having deeper relationships. And that transformed me. And now I'm so proud of where I'm at with the message that I'm talking about. I talk a lot about depression and suicidal thoughts and self-love and that now these Biomax are more optimizations on the solid foundation of self-love. And it's it's been transformative for me. So that's my story.
Awesome. Well, I'm going to start with a question from a listener. And this is from a guy named James in New Haven, Connecticut, which I'm happy with. Like, I feel like we never get any questions. I haven't seen any questions from Connecticut. It's like probably the first time I've ever gotten one from there. But he says, I need some help with energy and Biomax. I'm trying and supplementing with some magnesium, but sometimes it makes me constipated. Sometimes it gives me diarrhea. I feel like I don't have it down. I'm also doing keto and doing intermittent fasting, but I'm lacking a lot of energy. I need some good HACS to help with my energy to make it skyrocket. James in New Haven, Connecticut.
Oh, I love New Haven. Those are great questions. And by the way, I'm a biochemist, registered dietitian, certified sports nutritionist, formulated over five hundred supplements, patented ten ingredients. And I've been speaking on biohacking, Kaito and all the things for around twenty years. I was ten years as a chief clinical dietitian. So just so you know who I am and what I'm talking about. But as far as his question, that's a great question. With regards to energy, I think some people run into this with both Kaito and fasting.
They they feel like there's fatigue on keto. They feel fatigue on fasting. There's some reasons for that. Typically, there's there's a couple of reasons that could be I'd say the biggest one is that you're not getting deep enough into ketosis. A lot of times when people are doing keto, they're doing net carbs. They're doing, you know, at least 50 grams of carbs a day.
They're eating things that are potentially low carb, but they're having lots of protein which can lead to glucose, neon genesis. They're having the net carbs, which some of these short-change, fibers and sugar alcohols can actually be fairly close to sugar in the body, so.
There are some problems there and some people need a lot lower amount of carbs to get into ketosis, especially women I've found is I think muscle mass is really important. How much muscle mass you have and how active you are with it, because there's something called Glueck for translocation where it's taking glucose, the cell, the more muscle mass you have in, the more active you are with it. So some women I've seen instead of 50 grams of carbs a day, they need 20 grams. And so that can be very different, preventing them from getting deeper into ketosis.
But I would say just guessing or, James, that that he needs to look at being on a very strict ketogenic diet.
I like for the first 90 days being below 20 grams of carbs a day, not the 50, so that you can adapt to ketosis, you can be fat adapted and you can get used to what a high level of ketones feels like so that when you do net carbs, when you do increase your carb amounts to maybe 50 or whatever it is that you have a sense of, this is what ketosis feels like and I'm no longer in it. And of course, you can measure you can do urine strips, you can do a breath meter, you can do a blood glucometer that look at ketones. So that would be something I would look at is going on a stricter ketogenic diet, definitely being more active, which helps helps lower your blood sugar, helps you get deeper into ketosis and then finding some ways of measuring to see where you're at and ketosis. And as far as the magnesium, probably magnesium glycine is probably my favorite form in terms of bang for the buck. It's very cheap. It's an mormile bioavailable form, better, better absorbed. And so that's the one that I would use. And of course, if you do go to high and magnesium, you can have that laxative effect and that's where you want to spread it out through the day. Like maybe take one capsule three times a day instead of three capsules all at once.
So those would be my recommendations.
OK, and what would you say for someone who as far as the the measurement that you would take, like listening to your body of like taking too much, like kind of walked someone through where they say, OK, I'm going to try start with one pill, see how I do, then add on. Can you talk a little bit about that to so that their balance that it's because I have heard that in the past that some people, you know, they might hear on a podcast to take calm or, you know, this much magnesium, then they go to extreme. Now they have diarrhea, then they go back. And it's. Any tips for that?
Yeah, yeah. And that does happen. And certain forms are much more bioavailable than others. So you may think that it's just an elemental thing. Oh, I'm getting this much magnesium, magnesium oxide or carbonate, for example, are very low bioavailability, whereas something like magnesium citrate, magnesium, glaciated, magnesium, three and eight of those are like amino acid clades with glycine or threatening, and they're much more bioavailable. So you have to be aware of that. That's good in terms of you're getting more in your system, but you have to be aware of that. So form to form, it's going to vary. And that's where I do recommend starting slow to figure out like what is this feel like?
And yeah, I wouldn't go like hardcore into your column at once. And then there is some of your body adapting to it over time. You could probably just like with machetes and other compounds like that, that you may get GI distress early. Berberian is another one. There's a lot of things that are like this that you get GI distress early, but as you adapt to it, as your body gets used to it, you can titrate up. So, yeah, it's just go slow and and see where you're at.
So give us I'm so excited about your book that's coming out. Can you give us two or three of the hottest tips to get us excited about reading it?
Sure. It's called the energy formula. It comes out April 1st. It's ninety nine cents. You can go to energy formula dot com. It'll be ninety nine cents through April, then it goes up to ten dollars. And that's for the e-book. The Hard covers. Thirty nine, ninety nine. And that's because it actually costs me about thirty nine eighty to make and it's full color front to back. It's pretty awesome. I has 60 full color diagrams, over one hundred scientific citations. I get into all the supplements and the brands and the doses and what's called formulators, corners and every chapter resource packs that go into all the devices, all the tips and apps and all the things that you can use that that are amazing. And each chapter and all the other brands like I don't take any affiliate money. This is all just legit stuff. And there's surveys in each chapter to to show where you're at in terms of baseline and how you progressed. So a lot of cool stuff. And I just a lot of usable stuff, practical stuff that you can flip through. You don't have to read the book front to back. Like, you can just jump in and grab stuff like in two minutes. So it's really cool like that. I'm proud of that. But my top bio hag's from the book, let's see, there's some well, I think first and foremost, people know me as the world's greatest formulator, as a supplement guy. So I'll get into a few supplements that I think would be really cool. One is called a brand new one called El Baiba, and it's under the trade name might open. This is an exercise mimetic, meaning it mimics exercise, literally exercise in a bottle. So there's been some compounds in the past that are pharmaceuticals that have been patented for this one is called a car. I see are another one's called GW five oh one five six. But this one is a naturally occurring peptide that it happens in the body naturally when you exercise intensely, intensely. So when you're going through intense exercise, your body breaks down some of its muscle for a branching amino acid called leyline. And then Mei-Ling converts into LBB. And then baiba tells the body there's intense exercise that's happening. We need to do all of the things associated with that so it will improve your endurance, your vote to maxilla, improve your neuroplasticity in your brain, your bone mineral density in your bones, your muscle mass and the hypertrophy and recovery of your muscle. Reduce fat mass, like all of the things we associate with intense exercise, are going to be augmented with LBB. So a really cool ingredient. Just taking like one to two grams prior to work out is going to augment every rep, every step that you're doing. So that's a really cool one that I'm pretty excited about that I think is going to be really, really popular. Another one would be a one called Grains of Paradise. This is an herb from Africa that's been used as a spice and food and beverages. There's a Sam Adams beer that has it. And it's like it's just got like a gingery peppery flavor. So it's really great to use on food. But what's cool is there's a compound in it, six Parador, that that there's a standardized form of, if you like, grains of paradise.
And what's need is it up regulates brown adipose tissue. So brown adipose tissue is very different from your ninety nine point five percent white adipose tissue on your body that you traditionally think of when you think of fat. This is brown fat and it's all around your your collar. Around your neck.
And what this does, you only have about six to seven ounces on your body, but it's highly thermogenic, it's brown because it's full of mitochondria and like your baby, before you have the ability to shiver and create heat, this is how you maintain heat is through brown adipose tissue. So it's highly thermogenic. And this may be the reason we're discovering that some people can eat as much as they want and not gain weight. It's actually such a focus in science right now that scientists are trying to figure out how to beige, white, fat as white adipose tissue to make it more metabolically active. And that's been a big area of research. But there's grains of paradise up, regulates a number of brown adipose tissue cells and the activity of them. And they've shown that just a super small dose, 40 milligrams, burned over one hundred calories a day without stimulation. And we don't know if you take 80 milligrams a day or take it twice a day, you know, does that equal four hundred calories a day? We don't know. But more research needs to be done. But a really cool compound, that's pretty exciting. And brown adipose tissue is a huge area of research. And probably my last one. This is a big one for for people that are fasting or people that want anti aging has been shown to be superior to metformin head to head, which is the ultimate anti aging drug, the the best glucose disposal agent that diabetics use. But an anti aging people have been using it for about 20 years because blood glucose being elevated, insulin being elevated, is associated with pro aging, pro inflammation, pro disease, et cetera. So finding ways to lower blood sugar, lower insulin, lower inflammation, improve dyslipidemia through birdbrain or metformin has been ideal. Birdbrain was shown to be had when compared to head to metformin was shown to be superior. The problem is Berberian takes three doses a day, takes five hundred milligrams. Some people get GI distress and there's a new form called Dihydrogen Burberry that Berberian converts into in the body. So this is the more active form and you only need to take about one hundred milligrams a day and only needed about twice a day because it lasts twice as long in the body. And so this is literally the most powerful anti aging compound. I know in one study where they use metformin for 90 days, they were showing that these people were had biomarkers of living two years longer.
So it's a it's a powerful compound. Metformin is being studied with three thousand study participants right now for anti aging. So literally, I think Bergreen is your better bet. And then dihydrogen brain is your best bet. It's branded as Khalikov antigen. You only take, like I said, about one hundred milligrams twice a day. So those are those are some exciting supplements that I talked about. And if you're Kuito, what's cool is when you're lowering blood glucose, you're raising ketones.
So there's glucose vantages going to increase ketone levels, whether you're fasting, whether you're having a card cheat or whether you're Akito diet or it's going to help and all those things to raise ketones and lower blood glucose.
All right. I have another listener question, and this is from Santtana in Fort Myers, Florida. I don't know if it's a girl or a guy. It says I have some skin issues and read a book called The Carnivore Cure. I did that for a couple a couple of weeks. But to be honest, I can't eat another steak. My skin is so much better. But I need some tips on how to transition to keeping my skin clear without doing Carnivore and how I can add other foods back in. I'm reading a lot of things about Antine nutrients like lecterns oscillates and how certain vegetables might be causing my energy issues and skin issues. I love eating keto and carnivore, but I cannot sustain it. I get my stopping point and then I'm just done.
Any tips, Sanja? Mushrooms. Yeah, those are great questions. I'm friends with Dr Sean Baker and Dr Paul Saladino that that that speak heavily and research heavily on the Carnivore diet. And I do think it is a great reset and autoimmune reset. But same for me. And I've had autoimmune issues like I discussed. I can do it for a month or two, but it's hard to maintain for longer than that. So I understand that. And with keto I do is cyclical and targeted ketogenic diet. And that makes it very easy to maintain where you cycle in carbs for certain purposes or at certain times, but I would say for for him, I would look at the auto immune protocol from the paleo diet, the AP diet with paleo.
They have all the Antin nutrients and inflammatory trager's all covered.
I also have a guide on my site, Shawn Wallace Dotcom, that goes into all the Antine nutrients and and how to look for those and be aware of those in your diet and not include those. He mentioned a bunch of them lecterns and oxalate and being aware of my chains and gluten and all of these different things, that can be an issue. That's where that autoimmune protocol diet is going to be helpful.
And then what you do is you start at the most restrictive in IP and then you add in some of those things over time and just see how your body reacts and then you can be in a good place there.
So that's what I would do with that. But I still would use Carnivore from time to time. There is a less restrictive form of Carnivore that I've used called the Sapience Diet by a friend of mine, Brian Sanders. That adds in some fermented foods and some things like onions and mushrooms and some things that are definitely not triggers. But you're eating mostly head to toe meat or hoath to snout or tail to nose to tail or, you know, all the different terms where you do eat organ meat, you do eat all that kind of stuff. It's important to not just eating the the muscle. So hopefully that helps.
Awesome. All right. This next one is from Samantha from Norfolk. This question says, I want to talk about Lihe God. I've seen some different causes of leaky gut and I don't drink I don't eat sugar. But there's some other things that might be an issue. I feel like I do eat gluten, but sometimes I can eat gluten and I feel like a million bucks. Other times I eat it and I feel terrible thoughts on what we can do to improve. Ackerly leaky gut.
Yeah, that's a great question. And the leaky gut means that there's we normally in the gut wall, there's what's called tight junctions and these cells are actually have a tight connection to each other and they're not letting these toxins or food particles get directly into the bloodstream. If that happens because of leaky gut, because of inflammation, because of something called Sunnyland, like, then then these things can get directly into the bloodstream and cause a ton of inflammation because they're not supposed to be in our bloodstream, period. So that's something to be aware of. But I will tell you, with gluten.
One, you can get a genetic test to see if you are someone that is gluten sensitive or celiac, non, non celiac gluten sensitivity is a thing as well. But I would say that that it's been heavily disputed for the reason of that. In America, we have what's known as an obesity genetic strain, a modified strain that actually promotes obesity of our gluten, of our wheat that they don't have in Europe. So it may happen that sometimes when you have higher quality gluten or wheat that you aren't experiencing these things. That's been that's what's been debated. Is it gluten? There's another component called gladdened or is it that is genetically modified and it has glyphosate and it's this this strain that causes more inflammation or so it's super complex.
But I would say and to experiment with a really high quality source of bread or something like that, like a European very expensive bread, and see if that causes the same problems as having Wonder Bread or having something like that. So that's something to explore.
Yeah, I have tons of friends who tell me that when they go to France or they go to Germany and they go to other parts of the country, they can eat gluten like no problem. They have absolutely no issues.
But when they eat here in the United States, it causes all kinds of all kinds of issues. So I want you to talk a little bit about magnesium in our foods. And just, you know, different people say that, you know, the magnesium in our foods has lost, has been lost. And I just got back from Costa Rica. I'm planning on going back. And when I go there, I feel like a million bucks and just the food that I'm eating. So what is your opinion about kind of some of the food that we have going on? And some I want you to dove into magnesium a little bit more.
Yeah. You know, when we get organic foods, for example, that haven't been sprayed with, as I just mentioned, like glyphosate, which is also known as Roundup, which is carcinogenic and highly, highly harmful to our bodies. But also there's there's herbicides, there's pesticides on these things. The soil is leached of all of the mineral content and nutrition in it, the natural probiotics that are in soil, all of these things are gone. So when these when these soils are over farmed and then they're over sprayed with the herbicides, pesticides, you know, the roundup, et cetera, we get very unhealthy food. And then it gets to the point where it's ultra processed, where you're adding in artificial sweeteners, flavors, different hormones, antibiotics. They're GMO on and on and on and on. So it's is definitely a case of one. When you maybe go to Costa Rica, the. The soil is much more natural, not over a farm, that there's plenty of minerals present that can then go into the plant, but too, they're not getting like these GMO over sprayed crops that we have. So it's really like a tale of two countries, if you like. It's a huge variance. And that's why I'm buying. Organic is critical for your food. You do want to avoid, honestly, the mainstream food supply because of all those reasons that I mentioned.
Awesome. Well, what have I not asked you that you want listeners to know, man?
Well, here's the thing. Like right off the bat as just a morning routine, which I get into in the book is so simple. I think a lot of people just wake up, they wake up tired, they roll out of bed. They need they need caffeine. They need sugar. They need something to get going. Their brain cells are exhausted. They feel stressed. They jump in the car. Maybe they go to work. Then they go straight into email. They go down that rabbit hole and their day owns them and they're exhausted. And meanwhile, as I discuss in the book, like a morning routine, which almost all successful people have, there's a book by Tim Forrestal's The Titans. That's one of the most common, consistent threads he saw with successful people is a dialed morning routine. It's almost all free. If when I wake up, the first thing I do is I do something called box breathing where it's it's like let's say if you do a six second box, it's six seconds in six seconds, hold six seconds out, six seconds hold. And you repeat that maybe four times and you're regulating your nervous system, you're relaxing into your day. And not only the Buddhist monks use this, but Navy SEALs use this going into a firefight. It's a very effective technique. And then I do gratitude talking to myself about all the things that are amazing in my life and then affirmations really getting into that self talk where because honestly, if anyone talked to you like you talked to you, you wouldn't be their friend. So I'm changing that inner voice from the inner critic to the inner champion. I'm saying like, I'm amazing. I'm going to do incredible things today. I'm going to have an impact on people. I'm going to be on a podcast and and really touch lives. And I'm so blessed. And and then I do some light stretching. Then I grab a glass of water and then I try and get out in the sunshine even early in the day to set that circadian rhythm and turn that on. It's really important that you actually get blue light in the morning. Yes, you should avoid blue light in the evening because it can impair the release of melatonin and impair that circadian rhythm, that sleep wake cycle. But you need it in the morning to turn that system on. So just what I said is, you know, maybe five or ten minutes. Another thing is like just not waking up to some, you know, certainly not the old school band and kind of alarm. But I mean, even just music may be too intense. Like, you can actually get clocks that have a light on them that gets slowly brighter and brighten up the room. You can get clocks that have chimes that you get slowly, louder and closer together and to wake you up gradually so that you ease in voices like a high cortisol, epinephrine, kind of rush of like, oh, my God, I need to wake up. You know, that's not a normal thing to do every day. We weren't involved for that to, like, wake up, panicked. And then I would say that last thing is getting to sleep on time. Having proper sleep hygiene is going to be critical to feeling well rested in the morning and and having that great day. So, I mean, it sounds obvious, but most people deprive themselves of sleep. We're the only species that does that, like will stay up for that Sex and the City Marathon or the Game of Thrones or the ball game or whatever. And it's like, you know, twelve, thirty in the morning. And like, we should have been in bed like two hours ago. Or we look at our devices, we look at an iPad or a laptop or a phone or whatever, or watch TV in our bedrooms. And the bedroom should be purely about two things, like just sleeping and and maybe sex with a partner. But that's it. Like there shouldn't be arguments and there shouldn't be TV and there shouldn't be anything in there that doesn't translate into me feeling relaxed and me enjoying that time in that room. That room should be what's called a sleep fortress like that. It should revolve around sleep and leave the devices out of the room. But some people do what's called social jetlag, where they stay up to three, four hours later on the weekend and then you feel exhausted. Come Monday morning, that's because your body literally just traveled to Europe, you know, like you're doing like this is like traveling across the world, doing essentially the social jet lag to yourself every weekend. So it's important that we go to sleep consistently. So we have that great morning.
That's awesome. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much for being on our show today. This was a blessing to everyone who got a chance to listen to it. So thank you for your time. And you guys stay tuned. We have another episode coming up in just a few. Bye bye for now.