Optimizing Wellness from the Inside Out | Dr. Gil Blander

Gil Blander (0:00)

It's very important for us to understand that we are the most important and sophisticated machine that we have, and we need to take care of ourselves as good as we can, and we need to start doing it as early as possible.

Michael Gervais (0:22)

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people, to pull back the curtain, to explore how they've committed to mastering both their craft and their minds.

Now, our minds are our greatest asset. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, this is just a quick little reminder here to check out the online psychological training course that we've built where we pull together the best practices to meet the unique intersection of high-performance psychology and the psychology of well-being. And we walk through 16 essential principles and skills for you to train your mind in the same way that we train world-class athletes. And you can find it at findingmastery.net forward slash course.

I want to take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I want to pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just want to get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular, for what it takes to excel in today's high-heat, high-stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change. And our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do, but it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

And that's why I'm so thrilled to invite you to a special event. It's a free virtual event that we're offering, and it's called The Power of Embracing Stress. It's on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. So to sign up, just head over to findingmastery.com/training. Whether it's advancing in your career or improving your health or cultivating stronger relationships, I think a new approach to stress can be one of the most powerful unlocks for you in your life. So join us for this free virtual training, The Power of Embracing Stress, on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up. Once again, it's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Gil Blander, and he has expertise in nutrition, biomarker analytics, biochemistry, and aging research. He received his PhD in biology from the Wiseman Institute of Science and then undertook postgraduate research on aging at MIT.

He holds numerous patents and has published peer-reviewed articles in all the fields mentioned above. He's got a deep understanding of the science here. He's also the founder and CSO, chief science officer, of InsideTracker, which is a personalized health and performance analytics company that was created by a team of scientists and physicians and nutritionists and exercise physiologists from MIT, Harvard, and Tufts University. InsideTracker has been a longtime partner of ours, and I love the actionable insights that I've gathered from using their testing kits. And there's things on their assessment that you don't get when you go to your internist and ask for a blood draw. There's things that are specific to your performance aspect of being vibrant. And so things like, let me just pull up my test here, like my liver enzymes, which you don't normally get if you don't ask for them, C-reactive protein, which is a really interesting inflammation indicator and also indicates other things as well. Ferritin, for example, like how iron is being stored. We're looking at creatine and obviously there's a hormonal panel testosterone as well. But things like vitamin B12, omegas, to see how you're doing with some of the essential fatty acids as well. Magnesium is something they take a look at. What I like is they're looking at these and then they give you actionable insights about what the test looked at and then what you can do if you need some work in that area. It's the actionable insights that really pays dividends here. Because of that, I wanted to have Gil on to take a deep dive on longevity.