Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

The Science of Mental Health: Blood Biomarkers, Genetics, and Lifestyle with Daniel Tausan

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 53

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In this powerful and thought-provoking episode of Overcome – A Mental Health Podcast, Travis White sits down with Daniel Tausan, founder of Timeline Sciences, to explore the science of mental health through the lens of biology, blood biomarkers, genetics, and lifestyle choices.

This conversation challenges everything we think we know about mental health. Daniel explains how the science of mental health goes far beyond the brain and into the body — including blood chemistry, metabolic health, emotional regulation, and daily habits. Together, Travis and Daniel break down how blood biomarkers can offer real insight into mental health, longevity, seizure disorders, inflammation, and overall wellbeing.

If you’ve ever wondered how the science of mental health connects diet, genetics, emotional health, and purpose, this episode will give you a completely new perspective. From predictive blood testing to lifestyle-driven healing, this conversation bridges hard science with human experience in a way that’s practical, empowering, and hopeful.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking deeper understanding, real tools, and a more holistic view of the science of mental health.

What We Discuss

  • What the science of mental health really means beyond psychology
  • How blood biomarkers can predict mental health, longevity, and disease risk
  • Genetics vs lifestyle: which matters more for mental health outcomes
  • Why emotional health and metabolic health are deeply connected
  • The role of diet, insulin, and ketones in brain health and mood regulation
  • How language, belief systems, and identity impact mental wellbeing
  • Why extended blood panels can be life-changing for long-term health
  • Rethinking depression, anxiety, seizures, and emotional regulation
  • The future of predictive health analytics and personalized medicine

Learn more about Daniel Tausan and his work connecting people to meaningful, actionable science:

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Hello and welcome to Overcome a Mental Health Podcast. I am your host, Travis White. This is a place for you to speak about your mental health stories. I'm very excited for tonight's guest. I am speaking with Daniel Tao-Shon. Daniel is the founder of Timeline Sciences. Welcome to the show, Daniel. Thanks a Travis, it's pleasure to be here. Oh, it's great to have you on and let's not waste any time. I'm just going to hand the microphone over to you and have us tell you little bit about yourself. Yeah, so like you mentioned, I am a founder of Timeline Sciences. So I am a scientist that has gone his own way. I'm a rogue scientist here on the loose. And I love the nitty-gritty biology. I love the biotech, but I didn't like working in biotech. Your hands are quite handcuffed and you're trying to put together things in which might not be the best interest of individuals. But I still love communicating information when people participate in any kind of molecular profiling, whether it's genetics or blood tests. and we have some very, very novel blood tests that can give you a lot of information. So I thought, why not be the guy to connect you to that science? There is an unbelievable amount of science and a lot of stuff that looks like science, you know, like 40 to 60 % can't be replicated. What's going on? So I'm there as that bridge to be able to connect you to what I would say is the science, the real science, subjective facts that you can pull out and you don't know how to separate it from the story. Now this is a skill. If I was to hand over a manuscript and say, you separate the science from the story, what would that look like? The science would be stuff you can build on. And the story, it's okay if it's wrong. I think people have to understand that part of it. That's not the part you're gonna die on the hill. Because as best you can, you're trying to put together some data to make it coherent and interesting and engageable so that somebody else might be able to take the reins and work with it. So what am I talking about? Well, 100 years ago, We had exercise experiments, we figured out, there's lactic acid as a byproduct when you exercise, and we put people through these exercises. Now the idea at that time was, this is the stuff that's causing soreness. We see people getting sore, and we detect the lactic acid. Now that part turned out to be wrong, so that was the story. So what was the science? Well, I can still use that science today, and I have, in order to be able to say, hey, what was the concentration value of the lactic acid? Where do we pull it from? What was the method of us actually quantifying, giving you a value of lactic acid? And is it the same with the people today? If we take a 26 year old today in comparison to 100 years ago, will we still have the same range? If there's the same level of fitness, if we adjust for other variables. And in that case, there you go, you're building off of something that's I'll say foundational to life, to biology. You've got to know the molecules that are playing the part so that you know how to interpret it, you know how to make the best. how to work with it to get, I would say, the easier, the better outcomes rather than going uphill constantly. That's really cool. And that leads me to a question though that I have, and this is more like of a curiosity thing. What role do genetics versus lifestyle choices play in predicting health outcomes? So in terms of predicting your health outcomes, the genetics gives a little bit of an edge in just the idea that if there's something wrong, like you can really narrow in on it. You know, for example, I can metabolize caffeine very quickly. So we know that. However, you have the same genome when you're born and when you die. So if you have a real genetic problem, you know about it usually from birth or around the puberty age because there's a kickstart of certain genes at that age. But after that, It's just how are you using your genome? So the entirety of lifestyle depends. It's like how are you playing your instrument? That's what DNA is, that's what your genetics is. You can think of it like a musical instrument. How you play the instrument is how you use the genome in order to get the responses of life in order to be able to have the best life. So 95 to 98 % of people, you have all the superpowers. How you're using it is everything. And I know the feel, this is why I moved away from it little bit. really wants to put this risk or this fear into you. So I'll calculate something like, oh, you have a 40 % increased chance of risk of arthritis from your genome, from your results. That doesn't mean anything. If I sample, let's say, a thousand individuals from a population that no one has arthritis, listen, I'm not gonna tell you that this genetics is associated with arthritis. But if my population is majority people with arthritis, I'm gonna over... estimate your transfer arthritis. So in a short sense, genetics is very, very, very lagging from what it was promised. Now there is a whole sweep of scientific infrastructure that's come as a result of it. So tools for how to study animal models, tools for how to be able to link up the proteins and everything else that comes from the DNA. But in terms of transforming people's lives, It has been a little bit of a letdown. It's interesting, it's fun, and I do like it when people bring some DNA my way. In some cases, it can be very useful. Here's one of the best cases I've found is for metapause. So for metapause, it's a great example. It's not terrible to know maybe some associated with, let's say, your mental state. There's a few genes in, say, you have faster or slower dopamine uptake or dopamine production. But the reality is that even if you have the worst call it allele, the one that says it's very high with depression or let's say high with some other psychiatric condition, not everybody that has the gene has that problem. So that again, what does that tell us? It tells us how you adapt. What's everything else that's going on really plays the bigger picture. So it's an interesting part. It really isn't the end all be all. So even if you get some bad news, heck, you can get back to think brilliant state of health and thrive. yeah, for sure. And I really liked how you used the metaphor of playing an instrument because I'm coming from a of a side I don't know much about this type of stuff. So that actually really made it click in my head. So thank you for that. Yeah, you know, let's put it this way, it's the most complicated storage system in all of existence. It is the most amount of information that you can take and pack into a unit space, literally in physical space. So that's what DNA is, it's a storage information system. It's not the brain, right? Genes do not control life. This is a big thing that's still taught in med schools, it was taught to me in universities, but it's wrong because as you go and participate in being, you call it, access to techniques in which you can go and play around with biology. You can, for example, I can take a cell, put it in a dish, I can irradiate, so just completely nuke its genetics. It doesn't have a functional genome anymore, but if I drop some sugar, it'll swim to the sugar. If I drop some bacterial toxin, it'll swim away from the toxin. So it's still alive, but only for about a day to three maximum, because it can't replenish, it can't renew. So it's constantly getting signals. So it's almost like fingers coming to play the guitar. If there's no more fingers to strum, there's no more music. That's That's really cool. So what do blood biomarkers really tell us about health and longevity? Yeah, so this is where we get into the good stuff, where your blood is dynamic. It's there on a day-to-day basis, responding to what you're doing in life. So if you get a blood test, and the basic blood tests from the clinics might not be the best, they're like alarm bell biomarkers. So biomarkers, pretty much anything that you can put as a measurement that you can use for some predictive value, right? Hey, are you becoming more fit? Hey, are you becoming more prone to, let's say, you know... a metabolic condition or you're prone to cardiovascular condition or cognitive decline. And so in that sense, that's really where your time and your money is best invested. Because it's useful, especially when you're healthy and you're a good state or even an okay state, it doesn't have to be caught, I'm thriving and feeling phenomenal, where you have an idea of where some of your blood markers are. And there's a lot of tests, especially in the States, there's actually quite a few companies that offer a little bit of extended what you wouldn't normally have access to just from your clinic. And in so doing, it gives you, from years down the line, some baselines that you can work off of. And targets so you can say, hey, you know what, I spent a year, let me check where my insulin growth factor is. Let me check where some of these really obscure ones are. But then I can estimate how well I'm aging. And there's still not, call it the golden ticket. Because, for example, I have a gentleman, he's 91, he's got Alzheimer's, and he's got blood. And when I calculate his biological age through my... own methods, he comes at like 180. It doesn't make sense anymore when you use that comparison. So obviously it doesn't fit for him, but he's still around and he's still out competing individuals that have call it way better health. And they're in their 60s, 70s, heck they didn't make it to 91. So there's always a little bit of guess and check in biology, right? The unique circumstances individual really are what's worth investigating and trying to understand. And maybe it's purpose. Maybe it's called, maybe there's better metrics, right? Maybe your respiratory or ventilation, how you breathe, your lung capacity. Maybe that's a pretty predictive value than blood, but I always enjoy the complexity and the novelty that blood can bring. And it really comes back to one of the events when I was, know, a decade and a half ago, I was a personal trainer and I had one of my favorite clients have a stroke in front of me. Fit guy, really, you know. You would never imagine that something like that would happen to him. But I guarantee you if I had an extended blood panel, I would have known that his risk for a stroke would have been very high. And we could have addressed it. We could addressed it with making sure his blood has a certain viscosity, making sure that he supports liver and kidneys. We could have done more, right? But we didn't. And I didn't know how to ask that. Heck, I didn't even know how to assess it. And I think most coaches, most trainers, most people in health You're going in blind. You're doing your best you can with what's in front of you, but you don't know until the person really puts their best foot forward in how to adjust it. Yeah. And I actually have had like seizure problems for years and years now. And last year I had a, so they died down for a long time. And then last year had a cluster of them and I actually went to a functional health doctor, kind of got away from the Western medicine. And it was probably the best decision I ever made because they actually did an extended blood panel testing. And they told me, you know what, your levels are low here. this is what you're looking like right now. You need to take this. They got me on a bunch of supplements to help me, my body improve. And I'm gonna toot my own horn here. But I did all this and changed my diet and I ended up losing 40 pounds in the span of three months because my body was so inflamed with garbage. And it was all because of the blood panel stuff. So I would imagine you've shifted more to keto lifestyle where you're actively participating. yes and no. what I did was I didn't take sugar completely out. I kind of go off like an 80-20. I stopped eating as gluten and instead of eating sugar, we have sugar substitutes like alulose in our house. And it's like I've been seizure free since last December. So I'm coming on a year. I completely stopped drinking soda and it's like the blood test was well worth it. Excellent. mean, soda is complete rubbish, right? It's one of the first things I would take out of your system. And what I would say and suggest to you here, especially for seizures is a really good example of cognitive health, mental health here. The body really likes ketones and especially the brain. And so when I say keto, I don't mean like, just start eating butter and bacon. though, yeah, yeah, doesn't. my mother-in-law has is on the keto diet. every, every Sunday we go and eat with her. So I call it my keto cleanse diet, my keto cleanse day. nice. So really the idea here, just to make it as simple as possible, is that the moment that you go away from carbohydrates for about eight to 16 hours, your body will start producing ketones. It might take you a day, two or three to get to a certain concentration. But what we're really interested in is in just turning on that enzyme. So no carbohydrates, and more importantly, it's not necessarily carbohydrates. it's an extremely low insulin response. So when the insulin response is low, we turn on ketones. And ketones do something very important for the brain, is they turn on a certain level of gene expression. And the gene expression is neuroprotection, hey, protect the brain. Hey, turn on membrane protecting programming. That's so for the heart as well. And so if that never happens, let's say you're going for years and years and years, and you're constantly. eating in the morning, eating in the evening, eating high amounts of foods that spike your insulin, lot of refined carbohydrates or carbohydrates in general, then your body never kicks that on. And so years go by where glucose, people, even some of the most esteemed, some of my heroes in and call it the science realm, even they still say glucose is the preferred energy for the brain. It's not. It's a very easy way to say glucose hijacks the metabolism of brain. It forces a certain type of metabolism in brain. And when you keep it in check, it actually shifts you to what I would say is the preferred state. One of focus, one of clarity, one of productivity versus this quite, I think, go, go, go mentality that's unsustainable when it comes to high amounts of you ingesting these types of sugars. this idea of what I... what I would call metabolic flexibility, that you're going in and out of ketosis, the fact that you're watching what you're eating, that you have times, clear times set where you're not consuming food. That's one of the biggest principles today that anyone can adopt to get quite a transformational effect for their health. And you actually just made, so I've known little bits and pieces of the keto diet since my mother-in-law does it, but you made it make more sense because I had this guest come on and she suffered from really bad depression and that type of stuff. She went on the keto diet and said that, I think she was only like pretty new to it. But she's like, I can already tell a difference in my moods. So what you just said hit right on that, on how it like protects the brain. And I was like, this. sense of why you'd want to do that in that state of mind. Yeah. you can still over consume even if you have keto diet. But for example, if you're eating just meat, if you're on the carnivore, that's keto still. You're still in ketosis for the majority of time. If you do intermittent fasting, where you eat once a day or twice a day, where you have about 16 hours of a break, that's pretty easy. Say if you eat at 10 and if you eat at six, that means 16 hours you haven't actually consumed food. And in that sense, even if you have carbs in your evening meal, You'll actually make it so that every day you're entering a little bit of ketosis. And that part's really important. Really important for the long run. And in a lot of ways, what we have going on for the majority of people that are in little bit of a rut is that your hormones have been hijacked. Your hormones have been hijacked by extremely brilliant science that was used to make food unbelievably addictive. And the food is engineered for you to want to eat more of it. Knowing this helps a little bit because you recognize, okay, look at the habit. Once you can say that out loud, look at this habit. I'm so drawn to the Krispy Kreme or the whatever else that people really gravitate towards, the wagon wheels or all this kind of stuff. That's not food. And some of the most destructive stuff is really difficult to explain. For example, there's a compound called malodextrin. Malodextrin is is a sweet taste in your tongue, but it's a metabolic destroyer. It will really, really shift you towards problems. And you experience seizures. Here's a weird thing I'd say, you're lucky you get to experience those seizures. Why? If your body wasn't able to showcase anything, you could really push your state of health to such a point where there's really hard, it's extremely difficult to swing it back in the right direction. So when we have these health problems, I think that's something that people have to take a moment to learn, hey, what's going on with my body? What am I actually in? What is this thing? What is the most, this is the most complicated piece of biotechnology on the planet. I'm given an opportunity or I have come to experience something in which this is a challenge for me to understand what I have to do in order to get to a thriving life. Because there is rules. I gotta make them up. I'm just here to communicate some of them. And if you don't follow them, it's like a tree. You want it to grow upright. You don't want it to grow sideways and down into the ground. It's not going to be, you know, there's not the right way. And the same idea, there's a right way to live. the over consumption today is a big part. So a small part, but a big part to I think what's plaguing North America. Yeah, I totally agree. mean, like our obesity and mental health statistics are off the wall. I believe it's just getting worse. And I look back to like when my seizures first began, it's like, why can't anybody just tell me to change my diet then? And it's like, instead I was being put on all these pharmaceuticals to help calm them down. But I'm saying. I'll say it over and over again, the diet was the best thing that I ever did. So it's a big criminal in my eyes and why, again, I got a little bit dismayed from participating in this type of enterprise because you can come in for heartburn, you can come in for, let's say, have seizures, can come in for what something might seem as small or benign, and the doctor will give you a drug so you can continue doing what's causing the problem. And now you can't even sense or feel it anymore and you can continue doing it. But the valve and the pressure is gonna pop somewhere else. And I don't think that's right. I think that's quite problematic. And something that is swept under the rug, a lot of people are talking about it. And there's a pull away from, think, what I would say is this mainstream type of medicine, which is a bit of a shame because when... things get bad, it's phenomenal to be able to have that as a place to saying, hey, what drugs can actually stabilize me? And some of the drugs that are present, they're phenomenal. They're like miracles to keep you alive. But when they become food, that's now, think business has really taken over something that needs to be kept a little bit outside of where business is allowed to turn into an enterprise of sorts. There needs to be a level of call it safety net for those practicing, kind of like the politicians, where you can't let them have the opportunity to try and make an insane amount of money. You need to give them least appropriate conversations or support. Otherwise, they start turning into practices in which are extremely exploitive or they just turn a blind eye. They don't care. It's like a number turning through the wheel. It becomes a job rather than having that connection with people. Right. And I think a big part of the mental health, as you mentioned, is connection. It's connection to your purpose. It's connection to other individuals. It's connection to things that you wanna see prosper in this world and there is a restraint or a cutoff. At least we believe there is and so we don't act. And the more that we're taken away from those things, the more that we find coping mechanisms. So I never blame a substance. People say, marijuana or some type of drug or. alcohol. So alcohol isn't the problem. Alcohol is the solution to what? What is alcohol solving? It's solving a deep problem where the individual is disconnected from whatever it is they came here to do. You came for a reason. So why I say this is almost guarantee the case, because we have this idea of chemical dependence, this chemical theory of addiction. It's always talked about as that's the first, that person's addicted because there's a chemical addiction. But the reality is you can give the most powerful, by far, hydromorphines to an individual in a hospital under grave circumstance where they broke their bones or come in through traumatic injury. They can give you for quite massive doses. And once they're good, once they are back to their life where they're stabilized and they have things to go back to, they're not addicted. So for the majority of people that go through that experience, There's no chemical addiction to a substance. But if that theory was correct, then heck, you would have to be super cautious and worried. How are you gonna wean them off of it? Now, if you do have issues, but then that goes back to what life are they coming back to? And so this comes now to the real question is that if you have something that's purpose, that's pulling you, whether it's kids, whether it's hey, I came here to write, I came here to tell stories, hey, I came here to play around with something. If you have that, it's very easy to pull you through the dark times. But if you don't, let's say you don't have family and for you, it's been absolutely atrocious start where you'd never had that bond and you don't have a skillset to go and build it. Not only that, but everyone around you is being cut off saying, can't go outdoors, don't talk to your neighbor. That's not gonna bode well for anybody's mental health. so, Would you agree with that or do think that there's a little bit of uh mischaracterization there? no, I agree with that. Because there's, I think that there's so many different ways you can almost like interpret mental health. But no, for what you just said, I agree with. So I would say for what we're talking about, even though we call it mental health, and I think it's appropriate to use that as an entry term, but if we step back and just take a look from the science perspective when we're characterizing, trying to make things as, call it, as true to the word as possible, right? Extremely important that we're sharp with our language, that we're clear with our language. So we're looking at the same thing. So if I say, hey, take a look at memory, we know what part of the brain we're talking about. Hate to collect identity, we know what idea we're talking And when we talk about mental health, well, what are our mental faculties? It's that, it's memory, intellect, comprehension, speech. So when we say mental health, those are all functioning. So what part of the mental health are we talking about for the majority of it? We're really talking about one subsection, and that's our emotional health. Because that's the issue. If you give the person, say, I need to do some math, I need you to focus, they might have a little hard time focusing. But if it's something they like or they care about, they could probably focus for eight to 10 hours without any question. Heck, you can sometimes give autistic children who have issues with focus, put them in front of a game, and all of a sudden, four to eight to 10 hours, they're glued to it. So there's this very important thing of what gets us excited is very easy for us to be able to place our mental faculties on. And so, we say mental health, but the reality is it's an emotional state. It's an emotional health, it's emotional wellbeing. And that's the part that is tanked, never lower. I would argue that both mental health, know, this emotional state, and metabolic, just us actually existing on planet Earth, in the majority has never been worse off than ever in history. There's never been more chemicals. There's never been more substances in your food, in your laundry detergent, in your air, in your water supply than ever before. Heck, we've synthesized chemicals that nature can't degrade. And in so, it is one of the most challenging times for a human being with the sheer amount of volume of things in which the majority of our ancestors never had to deal with. On top of that, you have the best psychology ever known that's being employed against you. Take a look, you have the food industry hiring the best, most successful individuals because they can pay the most to be able to come up with the most addictive. foods for you to be able to buy the same things so that these companies grow. And so I genuinely think it's never been harder to be a human being. From a young age, never harder to be a younger kid. have an idea of what's going on, heck, your only chance is if you have a good family or a good social circle to protect you long enough for you be able to be introduced one thing at a time. So this idea of emotional health, what's going on? How come so many individuals have retreated from the world. And I think there's an obvious answer is that you're slowly being cut off from what you can participate in and from what you can earn. And there's never been a more changing landscape. What we're going, what we're doing in school today, that's not gonna be a job in three, four, five, six, seven, 10 years. You talk about genetics. How are you gonna learn genetics today in the classroom? when the computation for genetics is extending such a rate that if you're not participating in it now, there's no way you're gonna be a leader in it. So I think this is the part where it really comes in is that, what's the take home from all this? Well, at least now there's a recognition or realization, right? Oh, okay, here's where we're at. There's a reason why I'm feeling this low, this crappy, right? I'm not the only one. And I think that's a good thing to know that there's a lot more individuals in that state. And the fact that we put ourselves in these belief structures is ultimately, I think, what puts us in this state. So in all instances where I've participated in helping transform people's health, the information's been useful. Of course, knowing physiology, knowing what enzymes, knowing how to interpret blood tests, that's all been great. The information's one part, but the belief structure is ultimately the part, if we just take a look for your example. hey, consuming these foods is causing you problems. Okay, I won't consume anymore. But you probably knew somewhere along the lines that soda and other stuff wasn't great for your health. for sure. But the experience allowed you then to be able to change your beliefs. Okay, this was more destructive for me. Maybe the other guy can get away with it, but I can't. So as our belief structure, now that's a very crude example. Sorry for picking at you, I don't mean to... Yeah, so very simple example, but we have a complete... The universe exists inside your brain. Outside, it looks very different because you're limited in what you're experiencing. So the fact that you're reconstructing it, the belief structures that you put in, the fact that you might say, well, I don't have anyone to connect with. But do you know that or do you believe that? Because the moment that you step out and you ask, you will see how many individuals are like-minded. Now, maybe within your community, no one cared about what you cared about. That's okay. Today's day and age, you've never been more blessed. Through technology, you can connect with individuals that care about what you care about. And if you care about something, whatever it is that most excites you, I guarantee you someone else on the planet will also be excited by that. Now, you might not overnight turn into the Leonardo da Vinci or the Cristiano Ronaldo or the Messi of that specific or particular topic, but if you continue down that path, one day you will become so competent in that field that you'll be able to charge a hefty price for it. And if you know that, then you will always have confidence to able to move in the next step. You'll have excitement behind what you're doing. You'll look forward to wake up and to do something because you're following your highest excitement. And it's okay if you go to your highest excitement and you say, hey, that thing isn't that great. know, whatever, that's okay. Now you know to be able to shift your attention somewhere else. And in so doing, you will always have a purpose here on the planet. Remember, the majority of things are set up for human beings. And so, To participate in a sense as an owner, as a creator, is utmost importance. To just sit back to this idea of I'll get a job, it's not even feasible anymore today. It's not these jobs that people have had at certain time. There was a glory era. There was a glory era, and not everywhere in the world, mostly just in North America, that you had this opportunity where I'll go do a bank teller job or something very basic and then I can get ahead. I can actually save money to have something for the future. You can't do that today. People are working three of these jobs and they're still barely able to just make ends meet, not save for the future. So how's that gonna change? It has to change by having a stake in the game. And I think that part is something that's not taught in schools. What is taught in schools is the way of the dinosaurs. So I do, I have a... a bit of a soft spot for parents today and like, do you do with your kids? You know, they take, require a lot of attention. The human being is the hardest thing to raise on the planet. And so how do you prepare them from what's coming on ahead? And, you know, I think some parts of the planet have a way bigger edge, you know, Japan, Finland, they're really on top of it, of having the basics, the foundations so that kids don't have, call it a fear of engaging in creating the world in front of them. Right? And you know, very simple, you gotta have good basics in math, language comprehension, that's gonna take you very far. Because no matter what, as fancy as these AIs and large language models that people are using, you still need to put content behind them that they can draw from. And so you gotta participate in that. And hopefully people see that as something to inspire and get them going, rather than, you know, now these are done, I can't do this, I can't do that. the negative polarity of the brain is something that's very difficult for it to interpret. So if you say the words, I'm not gonna be afraid. Unfortunately, as empowering as that statement sounds, the brain doesn't really recognize the not. What I mean by that is you've spent time, let's put it another way, with the idea of afraid. And so afraid is what the brain is going to recycle in the subconscious. I can't be afraid, I can't be afraid, can't, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. Versus have courage. I'm courageous, you know. And that's something because I've suffered from depression and uh anxiety as well. And so that's something like that. I've had to learn to do like self-talk and stuff is change out those fear words to something better. It's like, it's like you said, it's just something simple. It's like, I have courage. I can do this. As soon as I take out the word afraid, it's like it just disappears. I'm not afraid of that certain thing anymore. And it goes with that in a lot of contexts. I'm not impervious to having these thoughts. I might say, I'm not lonely. Hey, I'm lonely. Let's say I'm going to bed at night and I wanna engage with different states of mind, different consciousness. And I can invite them in and can say, I'm lonely, or it's still a negative way of attracting it. There's nothing inherently wrong with negative or positive. However, when you put attention to it, that's the part that becomes empowering. You will negate the, call it, consequential flow of where the negative or the positive will take you, just by putting your conscious in it. When we have a lot of these type of negative ways of attracting or constructing our reality, they really put us in a lower state. So we talk about depression, break that word down, depression, deep depression, like you're trying to get into a deep state of rest. That's pretty much the breakdown here is sort of a... uh you know, play on words, but the body is attempting to take a break in order to recognize what's putting it in that state and then being able to slingshot back into a better state. Right, because you've gone into a lower state, you can see, you know, they call it the midline and you can see what's an experience now, the opposite effect. So it's a very powerful and useful tool, you know, to be able to go through this type of experience. Life isn't just about being happy. Life is about experiencing what you can't experience unless you're in this form. And so there's a bit of a, you're always going at it alone. Everyone's always going at it alone. And the joke of it all is you're never disconnected. You know, through science we have something called the law of conservation of mass. In other words, we live in an atomic universe. Everything is made up of atoms. And those atoms are by way in which energy comes into a form and they're constantly shared among It's the plane of existence. It's a literal one plane in which everything is in a melting pot of these atoms. And so you have atoms from the Ardivinci, have atoms from Napoleon, you have atoms from Genghis Khan, because as they shed their physical form, those atoms are now recycled and used again. Heck, even they call it ethos in some way leaves and stays with us and we will to us pull in whether we want inspiration or some type of a stimulus from our day and age. So this, I think is a very important thing to keep in mind. This conversation that we have in our heads can be sometimes a little bit. that you're not actually thinking. It's just retrieval of memories that's happening again and again again. It's a mental faculty, and this is one of the mental faculties that may be a problem. So we talk about mental health here. Yes, the emotional one, I think, is the biggest topic of it all. But there are other aspects to it too. So the memory part being where you're recycling memories rather than taking a moment to actually think. And there's a part where the thinking brain, when you're given something, you're like, hey, here's something not in front of you. Well, that's the part of creation. And that's the part that will get you out of whatever jam you're in because you got yourself into that jam. Now, yes, you can play the game of poor little me. My parents told me here, I didn't do this, but stop playing that game. Where did it get you? How about the opposite? How about you as an infinite, indestructible being decided to have this experience and you very much so chose this. Out of all the things you could have chosen, like, well, I wanna see what it would be like in this state. and let me go through it. Maybe you wanted to experience what it was like to be in a lack and then abundance. Maybe you wanted to experience what it would be to be powerless and then powerful. And in so doing then allows you to be able to transform this state of very low into then something being of unbelievable power, not just for yourself. Because the self is something you can't really know. I think there's a little bit of a caveat there. I do like to sort of play on it. And I think biologically speaking, it's quite accurate, but it's for you to be able to extend out. And as you do so, it transforms other people's lives, which reverberates back in ways you can't really imagine with your conscious level. Because out of the ways in which the brain operates, the conscious states, just your conscious operating is the lowest state of consciousness. Though we call it subconscious, it's very much so higher state of operation. Very interesting. love it. I love all this. I do have a question for you. How do biology and mental health intersect in ways people might not realize? Yeah, so, you know, often I think when we say biology, we think of the flesh or the things that very much, so we say, the neurotransmitters or this or that. And so there's a very simple notion for if there is a metabolic condition, heck, magnesium is one of the biggest ones to help with depression. But if you're taking loads of magnesium and you're still feeling low, well, that's now purpose, that's life, that's experience, that's, you know, what we call it more on this. you know, as fluffy of a word, but on energetic plane. You know, what have you gone through? Now, I would argue that that's all still biology because you're experiencing it through a human being. You know, and I think they're very important to recognize that you are projecting your beliefs. Every single day, you're projecting your beliefs on it. So there's the screen, which is the body, and then there's the projector, which is the consciousness. And so as you project, your beliefs as you project your expectations of the world, your biology then unfolds and produces it. So the biology part is what you're channeling, what you're pulling in day to day. And it's an unbelievable circumstance today that you have two people side by side. One person's in heaven, the other person's in hell. One person sees a world that's thriving and flourishing and wow, look how many people there are. Yeah, maybe not the best food, but look how much we have to offer. Look how much access we have to technology. Look how much I can transform. within a minute versus my ancestors took their entire lifetime to do this thing. And another person is experiencing what I would say is literally hell on earth. Everyone they see, they think it's out to get them. Everyone has the demonic presence in them and they're constantly on guard. They're trying to dominate and take control of all scenarios. And it's like a terrified little creature in the corner lashing out, fearing that it's gonna get taken down. To me, that's an absolute, it's a phenomenon that your conscious state can shift the experience of life and it can happen within a fraction of a second. know, people say, I had an epiphany or I had an awakening and enlightenment. I think that part is a little bit, you know, call it storytelling in which how people share it. You are on the path of nonstop of enlightenment. And though some people have attained great states and understandings, You do that day by day by participating, by being open, by doing this thing called thinking, where you recognize, hey, wait a minute, if I do bad on to other people, they'll do bad on to me. Yeah, and which is funny enough, you look at all the religious texts that the golden rule has pulled from all of them. Do on to others as you have, do on to you. So I think this part is very, it's easy to say it's hard to do and see an action. And so myself, I'm very thankful that I don't have to pick up a gun right now and go, poke a sword into another human being in this era, I get to use my words and be able to spread a very different type of message or call it solve conflicts through language. And I'm extremely impressed with individuals that in these hard times, that even if they're taken advantage of, that they can literally turn the other cheek and still wish well upon the other. An example that comes to mind is a gentleman's filling up gas, locks it, kind of put it in the gas tank, down his car. somebody comes, takes it out, starts filling up their own gas and starts a conflict. And instead of the person yelling, getting mad, or starting a fight, he says, hey man, why didn't you just ask? And then throws the other individual off. He's like, are you struggling right now? Are you having a hard time? And he says, yeah. And he's like, okay man, can I pray for you? And the guy starts crying, just, because hard, stone cold dude just about to get into a fight. stealing someone else's gas and the way the other person handled it, they're in a good state. They can, I guess, afford 50 bucks a gas for someone. And I was impressed, because that wouldn't be my initial way of solving the conflict. And as I see that, I'm like, okay, I guess I can aspire to be better myself with all my knowledge and worldly wisdom. There's still the fact that you have to put in practice. Now, not everyone's gonna solve your problems in that regard. Not everyone has the means to do that, obviously, but. That goes to show that I think there's still a lot of very enlightened beings present among us. And they aren't wearing white robes or call it clear signs, but they're showcasing you through their action. Yeah, for sure. I love that. I love that story that you told, because I'm the same as you. It's a completely different approach than I would have taken. I don't know if I would have been so nice. I think part of my true self would have come out in that moment. Yeah, you never know though. There's a very interesting way of saying it. When you squeeze an orange, what comes out? Orange juice. When you're squeezed, what comes out? And if it's anger, it's frustration, if it's lashing out, that's okay, but do you want to be that way? You have a choice. And I think we do well when we have examples in front of us, when we know we're not the only one acting a certain way. And so the fact that there is someone else that's able to do that, it gives you a way of like, how else can I solve the problem other than just... The person's probably in a very low state. And so I do have a friend, he has a saying constantly, because he's quite obnoxiously kind. He says, kill him with kindness. And over my time, I've learned individuals that are very forceful with their belief system are often the ones that have the most fragile belief system. The reason they're trying to force it on you is because they themselves don't have confidence in it. And once you start learning some of these games of where people are at in their life. it's easier for you to be able to hold yourself, both in compassion and with an identity so that you're not just smushed, you don't just get smushed over or you don't even get riled up. And I think that's one big part. You mentioned anxiety. What I share for the individuals that I coach is your identity is what will allow anxiety to come or not. if someone, you're any religion, If you really associate with that religion saying, have to make sure that these beliefs at all times are protected and someone challenges those beliefs, you might feel like you have to take the mantle to protect it. Maybe it's even science or some kind of idea. And so you've taken that identity on, you know? And because you've taken that identity on, you might not have the skill set to articulate things. You might not have the knowledge to be able to pull all this stuff. Then anxiety comes in. But if you take a step back and say, I don't care what that guy believes, that's okay. Uh taken an identity where I'm not a preacher or I'm not a scientist or I'm not whatever. It's not my responsibility to be able to seed in their head, it a more fruitful idea, a better belief. And if it's so inclined to you where like, I really wish I could, then you're recognizing and seeing your identity. Hey, I wish I have a better identity as a scientist, as a Christian, as a whatever, or I am Buddhist, yada, yada. So identity comes first and foremost from where we feel like we need to act in life. And often our identity is given to us by other individuals. What do mean by that? Hey, you're dad to somebody, your husband to somebody else, right? You're gonna be son to somebody else. And so your identity is given and so that gets you to act and participate in life a certain way. And it's important for us to know which identities we take on. If you don't know the identities you take on, then it's gonna cause even more anxiety. And it's very nice at night. practice that I like to do is simply take off all your identities before you go to bed. It's easy for the mind. You get to come back to what you really are and in the morning you pick them back up. Don't worry, people remind you, you know, if you're a firefighter, if you're a doctor, if you're a podcaster, whatever it is, you'll pick your identity up, no problem. But in so doing, you get some freedom and you get to come back what I would say the self is. And this self, I intend this to be more so of a relief for an individual, not as a place of anxiety. But the self is not knowable. This is the catch. What do I mean by that? You can spend and pretend like it was an I like bananas, no, I'm this way, I'm very Taipei, or I need these things. It took you life experience for you to figure those out. And you might be wrong about some of them. You might have deluded yourself or used coping mechanisms to protect either a part of your identity. So in that sense, You never know how you're gonna act in a given scenario. You say you might have been a lot, maybe more harsh with the individual if they did that. But who knows when you saw the individual on the other side what you could have drawn from them. You don't know how you're gonna, that's the reality is. You can think you know. And when the moment comes, you're gonna then find out who you really are. And in that sense, I think is a very liberating or alleviating the fact that you just have to go and you're gonna do you no matter what. In the end, I like to think that I'd be the nice guy, somebody's doing something like you, yeah, but you like you said you never know until the moment comes. is a specific connotation in our, call it pop culture. Nice guys finish last, that kind of stuff. And often people confuse kindness with weakness. And so I think that's an important thing too, if you are a nice person, to still have boundaries, to still know how to communicate things. Still know how someone, when you show them kindness, how they can reciprocate or at least acknowledge. And so the big idea. because I think life is really divided in two parts. First is getting to know the self. And once you figure out a little bit of, okay, this is what I'm connected to in terms of identity, in terms of what I've recognized, and the fact that I get to keep exploring what the self will be, then the second part comes in is what are you gonna do about it? What brings you excitement when you come here on planet Earth? Right now, as you can tell, I love to talk. I love to talk about biology, I love to talk about health, I like to talk about what connects us. I like to talk about planes of existence that might not be so easy to articulate or to know for certain. And to me, that brings me joy. It brings me excitement to able to share that with you. Heck, if any of this inspired you in a little bit, then I feel like I've done my due diligence or part of my duty. And so I look forward to doing this. I step out and as best I can, connect so that, well, one, I have to have good stuff to say. So I have to do some work beforehand. So I actually have something of value to share. or at least observations of, call it, it. And it's kind of funny thing in language, it's very hard. Look how cumbersome it is for us to able to communicate ideas and there's tons of ghosts in the language. So what do mean by that? I say, look, it's raining outside. What's the it's? So in the same way I can ask if a person's with it, if they really know of how weird and how strange and how. mysterious life really is of how little we know but play like we know a lot. When someone's in that state, once they're guess in the chapter two of their life, I can ask how much have you seen of it? And they know what I mean. Because from my vantage point, it's very different. And there's no way I would get to see all of life has to offer just from my vantage point. It's my advantage to be able to take your perspective. And in our very slow cumbersome language form, we have to. Share as best we can. Now if our language sucks, I'll have no idea what you mean. And that's why I do love science. And science is super simple. Unfortunately it's becoming a religion. People are becoming to trust science. You should never trust science. You gotta know your science. It's not something to believe in. It's something to know. You know the science. Just like you would. How much calcium's in steak? How much calcium's in broccoli? How much calcium's in... you know, spaghetti, you gotta know this stuff. Not that much in spaghetti, but a lot in meat and broccoli. So that's the science. There's no belief there. If there's an argument, we go and check the way in which we measured, and then we come back to it. And there we have something to work off of. Because there is an objective reality, and that's the only belief in science. That's the only belief, is that tomorrow when you wake up, it's not different from what it was today. Yes, there's growth, there's change, all that kind of stuff. But there's a progression to it. There is causality. Causality exists even though you can't really prove that principle. What are you gonna do to prove causality? It's an assumption and a concession we make in the way we practice life because that's what we're all experiencing. You don't have to prove time. You say, do mean? You're late. Does time exist? I had to show up here at a certain time so we can have this conversation. So it clearly does exist for us in a utility sense. So this is a part I think science is an incredibly important tool for us today. It's probably never been more important to be good at science so that you don't get bamboozled and conned, but also so that you don't get put in a state where you're disconnected from things that really matter to you. Very well said, I love all of it. And you've, you have kind of opened up, not kind of, shouldn't use the word kind of, but you've actually made me think of mental health kind of in a different plateau than I have before. And it's very interesting like to, cause it makes me connect things in a different way that I've never thought of. I feel like language is that stepping stone. It opens up to say, how have I been using it? And for the life of me, I've never understood when people say the word I. You oh, I'm this, that, whatnot. And I have no idea what they're referring to. Or if they refer to themselves in the past. And so I think there's a disillusion for many of us that we think the I is somewhere two inches between the I's. And I would guarantee you that it's not. You you require every part of your being, from your liver to your kidneys to your guts to your heart, to work in unison so that we can have this state of higher order operations. And it's all you, right? In the classroom, something very deceiving or disingenuous is done. You know, where you say, it's the microbiome and you, right? The microbiome is something separate from you. However, if there's no microbiome, you're dead. You don't live, it's like another organ. And the only classroom, or only call it discipline, field or faculty, whatever we call it, was anatomy that didn't do this. We would do this duality or the separation of the self into compartments in which is deceiving in ways it's separating what you really are. And so in anatomy, it's all you, it's your bacteria, it's your movements, it's your thoughts, it's your cognition, all of it is you. every single part, there's no separation. And every other field I've been in, from genetics to psychology to molecular biology, there's this duality that emerges. Whether it's just a way in which language forms, a ghost in language, kind of like the it's raining, or whether it's deliberate from whatnot, I doubt that is, because it's so ubiquitous, it does a disservice in people understanding what they really are, and really puts them in a state of thinking that they're somewhere two inches between their eyeballs. And so all of this is something to share and bitch is to give a set of call it tools so that we can come I think to more of a place where we can start sharing, hey, you what I'm feeling awful today, you know what it is? I just couldn't write. And I can say that to you. And then maybe you give me some wonderful thoughts being like, well, what would you try to write about? Yeah, why didn't it go so well? Yeah, were you? Were you busy on your social media? I know you put your phone away. Were you thinking about your phone? You can go through this stuff. Is there someone that pissed you off? there is. Oh, who's that? Were you thinking about that? Well, who cares? Is that really, you know? Then we can get to what really matters and to get us back on track, I think, in which. in which we'll empower you to be able to do the thing you came to do. Awesome. love it. So I have a question here for you. kind of going back to your athletic training and training others, what are the biggest differences between training for athletic performance and training for general wellness? Yeah, awesome question. The big difference is specificity. If you want to train for particular performance, let's say it's Jiu Jitsu or maybe MMA, that's something that me and my brother trained and started as the first part of the training system, almost two decades ago. But we trained, for example, ski cross, high level national athletes for ski cross. In that sense, we focused extremely specific to what parts they needed to excel at. So start, explosive starts, being able to launch themselves, reaction times, and helping tune nervous system joints with as much of the information, the science that we had at the time, employing the best type of exercises and ways to adapt so that you get what you want. In terms of general wellness, what I think is a good way to explain it is that at different parts in your life, you should try and adapt your system, build out your system so that you get the benefits for life. So maybe take three years and think of it in the long term. I'm gonna build out my cardiovascular system. Build out as best you can your lung capacity of how much oxygen you can huff and puff. So VO2 max. At another point in time in your life you can think, okay I'm gonna spend the next two to three years putting on an incredible amount of muscle. And maybe I'll consider. some cycling and try to refine it so that I'm not just blowing up like a bodybuilder, but I'm just putting on muscle. And in each part of your journey, there's a benefit for long-term health. know, muscles act like batteries, like energy stores, like silos in which just you gain benefits for the rest of your life. Your lung capacity, I'm biased to think, is one of the best predictive measures for long-term health, for longevity. And then... There's a time and place for things. So if you're 60, you have to train a little bit different than if you're 45 or 30. And why I say that, if you're 60 and you're like, I'm gonna start with cardiovascular, you're just pumping blood through your system. You're just like blood circling through your, you need to be able to stimulate a hormone response so that you can actually start adapting rather than wasting a lot of precious time. Some always movement is better, no movement. We're designed to move. But there are a lot of principles that you would have to employ to get the most, call it, bang for your buck, the most amount for your time. And I'm a guy who's inherently lazy. When I go someplace, you think, he works incredibly hard, yeah, because I only want to do it for 45 minutes. Then I want to get on with my day, right? Yeah, I'm inherently lazy as well. Like, I used to make the joke back to some co-workers. This was years, probably five years ago at least. They're like, hey, Travis, we're going to the gym today. Do you want to go? I was like, no, I've been on a seven year streak of not going to the gym. I don't want to lose that. It's like, it's just, yeah. Well, I would shift the laziness in a way in which you do things that are good for you, but you try and optimize it. The joke there is that you always give the hardest task to the laziest guy because he'll figure out the fastest way to do it. But obviously, you have to keep a standard, right? Don't just let him, yeah, yeah, yeah. So where do you see the future of predictive health analytics in the next five to 10 years? They're only getting better. It does depend on who you go to. There is very much so a over diagnosis happening and whether we're gonna still accelerate into that field, it all depends on who you're seeing and what you're seeing them for. And getting a different set of eyes, different set of ways to interpret it is gonna be key. A lot of the algorithms, I've created algorithms for biological age to interpreting it. Anything that's automated is... is limited to the application of how many people it could be useful for. So at best, maybe 70 % of population might do well with some type of, call it predictive health analytics. Until you can have a human brain as a way of, call it a generative AI, you'll always benefit more if you have someone being able to look at a large amount of data, whatever you can string for yourself, because through their experience, they'll be able to string together things that aren't yet. fully completed and presented. And what I mean by that is that you might be the first person ever to showcase this, but you might have had, you know, a hundred people beforehand have slightly things that in which you can compare to, but no one had your combination. So in this sense, you know, 10 years time, you're going to have a lot of algorithms that you can use, but you'll have to know how to be able to figure out whether you can trust them or not. Yes, big word trust right there. Yeah, and how to apply it to yourself, right? Whether you're saying like, hey, do I believe this one? What was the limitation of this one? And you won't know it unless you have someone, unless you're in the field or having someone help you alongside of it. But what will get you far is knowing how to ask the right questions, right? Knowing, hey, how did you measure this? Hey, what are you comparing to? What's the comparison here? This is very simple science. Observe, measure, predict. What are your observations? What's your knowledge base? What are you measuring and comparing it to? So that's testable. And then what's the predictive model? Meaning give me some type of percentage of where you think you're describing whatever it is you're trying to describe, whether it's a disease, whether it's a health outcome, give me a percentage. And if they're not willing to give you that, if they're like, no, no, I would give you a biological age of 36, and they're not willing to say a percentage for how accurate their model is, then you can step away from that for now. makes sense. So very interesting. So if listeners walk away with one actionable step to take better control of their health today, what would it be? sharpen up your language, know what the words mean, observe yourself in the language that you're using, and be impeccable with your word when you put it forward. It's okay to say things wrong. Don't take it personally if someone says something. Know that they're also playing and testing language, but if you're very sharp with your language, at least you can share from your perspective, and your perspective is valued because no one else has that perspective. Knowing how to share it is valuable. So get the skill set to be able to share it. I love it. Now this is just a pretty general question. What would you say is the biggest stigma when it comes to mental health? The biggest stigma. Well, I think the biggest stigma is that it's part of your identity. That, he has mental health issues, she has mental health issues. She's crazy. I think that's a big, stigma. And so letting that go, I think, is a big part. And a very simple exercise you can do is you can pick up some rocks, put in your pocket, put everything that you have in terms of those stigmas, those identities, and as you go for your walk, just take the rocks and put them out and feel lighter. That's really cool. I've never heard of that exercise before. I love it. So where can people find you? Timeline Sciences, that's my handle, that's my website, TimelineSciences.com. You can find me on Instagram, you can find me on Twitter. We have one timeline we share. We use science as a tool to describe it. I'm here to help you connect with the science that matters. Awesome. And I'll make sure that all those, the links are in the show notes for you. And we covered a lot of ground here tonight. Is there anything that you'd like to discuss that we did not bring up? We went very deep, way deeper than I thought we would initially from our initial talk. And I would like to, I guess, put a little bit of a positive spin on things where I would say we're coming from the bottom. I think bottom has been hit. If not, we will hit it within the next year or two. And it's coming up. But it requires your participation. That's the most powerful thing you do is you can show up and simply speak your mind. And I think it's pretty obvious, you know, what side to ally with, right? The side that's against hate, the side that's for people to be able to express themselves safely, comfortably, for people to be able to learn, for people to participate in life, right? We don't wanna take away people's appreciation. We want more of it. Heck, we want more trees that have food planted around our cities, not a whole bunch of nonsense and towers that are preventing. life from growing. So take part in it, be part of it. I think there is a beautiful world that's coming forward, but it'll only delay if you don't take part in transforming what's around you. very well said. Well, Daniel, it's been a uh pleasure speaking with you tonight and you gave me a new perspective on things. I appreciate you being on the show and I absolutely love what you're doing. Pleasure guys, thank you so much for the kind words. Thank you to all those that are listening. If this hit you in any way, please share it and pass it to a friend that you think will enjoy it. You can find us on any major podcast platforms and thanks again for listening. Until next time.