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**Wade Lightheart** (0:00)
Carbs are bad or fats are bad or seed oils are bad. Caffeine reduces your ability to absorb minerals like magnesium. What I realized is a lot of that's dependent on your individual genetics.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (0:12)
But how do we know where we are as individuals with absorption?

**Wade Lightheart** (0:16)
At least 80% of the population is deficient and sufficient levels of magnesium. There's no single magnesium that will deliver everything.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (0:24)
Most people who are really wanting to optimize their wellness routine, but are overwhelmed. Where does somebody start when it comes to the minerals that truly help us live a better life?

**Wade Lightheart** (0:37)
Yeah, I would say.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (0:44)
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Live & Well. We're talking with Wade Lightheart, the founder of BIOptimizers today. He's going to tell us about the simple mineral habits that separate people who age well, from those who don't. Thank you so much for being here today, Wade.

**Wade Lightheart** (1:03)
Great to be here. Feeling great, and delighted to be on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (1:09)
Tell me about your background, but also I'm really curious to know from you, because the idea of wellness has, I'd say somewhere between blossomed and exploded in the last 25 years since you've been doing this. What is the most profound change you've noticed and maybe embraced, and maybe something that has stayed the same, that is fundamental to true wellness and true optimization?

**Wade Lightheart** (1:40)
Okay. It's a lot to start with.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (1:42)
First you, and then-

**Wade Lightheart** (1:46)
Just a kid growing up in Canada, rural Canada. My parents were caretakers of a private resort, so it was a beautiful place, I did not want to be there as a 15-year-old boy. Simultaneously, my sister was four years, my senior was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer of the lymph nodes, and I watched her go through the medical model over the next four years before she died at the age of 22
And that had a profound impact on me in the semblance of, first I was living like a monastic lifestyle, in a reclusive area.
So that required or forced a lot of quiet time and a lot of self observation to begin with at a formative age when you're usually not that way. Second, I was faced with the illness of my sister. And when people are in a fight with death, oftentimes I would say the family and friends and people around them tend to take on a bit of a Pollyanna type behavior because of their own uncomfortability with death and disease. And I was able to witness that firsthand. And the beauty of it, I guess, was that I got to have really strong heart-to-heart conversations that were based in reality with someone who was about to lose their life at a very young age. And so I got a crash course in the inevitable that we all face. A lot of people in the health industry and in the spiritual industry are actually motivated by the subconscious drive for that, what happens if I die or not exist. So the health industry oftentimes is trying to push the delay of that reality.

**Melissa Magsaysay** (3:32)
Of course.

**Wade Lightheart** (3:33)
And then the spiritual world is trying to prep one so that you have good merit, assuming that consciousness retains on some level after. I find that entertaining because at the end of the day we're all going to die. And it's a question for me came up with, well, how am I going to live my life while I'm here? And watching my sister get sick from the treatments, in my naive self I was like, it seems like the treatments are actually worse than the disease. So at the same time, my sister, again, profound influence, she had given me a bodybuilding book, magazine, and had all these bodybuilders on it, had a guy, Troy Zuclata on the cover of the magazine, One Mr. California, had all these muscles and pretty girls around him, and driven wild with testosterone as a 15-year-old boy. And certainly not with that kind of physical presence, I was like, man, I got to get into this program. And of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest name in the world at the time.
He was, you know, dominating the movies. He was a Mr. Universe winner. So there was a lot of common elements in a difficult life. His brother died at 22 as well. He had a very difficult upbringing. And I could relate a lot with his story. He said three things that were very profound. He said, you could achieve anything you want in life with self-discipline, a positive attitude, and hard work.