#133 Biohacking Stress for Optimal Health and Success

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:03)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_1 (0:05)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:11)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

Control your mind.

Teemu Arina (0:16)

Many people in the health community who eventually wake up and they take their own health into their hands, they have to go through a crisis. It could be a personal strategy in terms of health.

That basically challenges them in such a way that they have to really change behavior. Can you tell about your own similar experience a little bit?

Olli Sovijärvi (0:40)

Yeah, there have been quite a few experiences. Basically, I've been very interested, for example, in nutrition for tens of years, even before actually graduating from high school. I was interested in nutrition, but the knowledge back there was quite different.

I was into more like bodybuilding and just a lot of protein and shakes and stuff. Actually, I did use creatine back in like 1997 or something like that, without actually realizing that it's been helping me cognitively also.

Well, that's a side story.

Well, the whole period of being in medical school, I was pushing myself. My calendar was from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. It was packed every day all the time. And I was working from the first year of medical school. I was doing DJ gigs already and doing like everything too much. Of course, not sleeping enough and having social jet lag all the time. Hanging overs and so on. So I keep on doing that kind of pace about 10 years until came the point of near breakdown. It wasn't I haven't had this like total breakdown that I couldn't do it. I've always been kind of like a functional because I had the state of mind that I've beep fucking do it. But it was on the verge of being burned out.

Teemu Arina (2:19)

And the recovery has been taking many years going through medical school is not going to be easy. So I guess there's a lot of other people study medicine and become doctors and they totally burn themselves out.

Olli Sovijärvi (2:31)

Yeah, that's typical. Actually doctors are the more the most stressed group of occupation there is.

Also in Finland, especially in the US, but also in Finland, and the amount of stress that you have to carry is, it's pretty enormous.

Teemu Arina (2:48)

It's pretty enormous. Yeah.

I want to bring in a young gentleman. I don't know if he's had his own tragedy. Tragedy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (3:00)

Tragedy.

Teemu Arina (3:02)

So Siim Land, he's our Estonian biohacking friend, part of our team.

Olli Sovijärvi (3:08)

Very omnikust.

Teemu Arina (3:08)

Very omnikust. Siim Landikus.

Olli Sovijärvi (3:11)

Kuidas kaskaup.

Teemu Arina (3:12)

Okay, we're going to stop our imitation of Estonian language.

Olli Sovijärvi (3:16)

It's actually real Estonian language, right?

Teemu Arina (3:18)

Yeah. How are you doing, man?

Siim Land (3:21)

I'm really enjoying a nice summer day here in Estonia. So what's up?

Teemu Arina (3:26)

Yeah, all good. So you have been very much into biohacking and done a lot of research and optimized yourself for sure. Did that come out of nowhere?

Like, just, you know, you were born like this, like a freaking biohacking child before you were speaking, you were already doing these biohacks or what?

Olli Sovijärvi (3:50)

You had an oar ring in the womb.

Teemu Arina (3:51)

Yeah, you had an oar ring in your finger when you were born. So or did you personally experience something in your life that actually made you methodologically and also unforgivingly start researching like how to get to optimal health or like is this a lifestyle thing for you or is this like something that you learned through a hard experience?

Siim Land (4:19)

Well, definitely I didn't have like any illness or serious condition back in my day. So I've never been like sick or obese. But at the same time, I've never been like at peak performance either in my childhood. So I was somewhat mediocre in terms of health.

But during my high school years, I just started to get interested in lifting weights, nutrition and the bodybuilding, et cetera, that kind of stuff. So it kind of grew out of that and evolved into trying to pay more attention to my health and longevity at the same time. So like in my family, family history, I don't have any serious conditions either. But there are a few instances of some people just dying prematurely. So I just didn't want to kind of go through a similar situation myself where I would put my family into like a really difficult situation of, you know, passing away sooner, et cetera.