In this episode of the Smarter Not Harder Podcast, Thomas DeLauer gives us one-cent solutions to life’s $64,000 questions that include:

• How does activating the parasympathetic nervous system before and after exercise affect performance, recovery, and overall training outcomes?

• What roles do CO₂ tolerance, breath training, and posture play in optimizing physical and mental performance during workouts?

• How can substances like caffeine, nicotine, and ketamine influence workout efficiency, and what are the considerations for safe use?

• In what ways do nutrition strategies — such as carbohydrate timing and targeted supplementation — support parasympathetic balance and training adaptation?

Who is Thomas DeLauer?

What did Thomas and Dr. Scott discuss?

00:00 Welcome to the Smart Not Harder Podcast
01:29 Guest Introduction: Thomas DeLauer (Fitness and Nutrition Expert)
05:07 Thomas DeLauer's Evolution in Fitness
08:58 Pre-Workout Strategies for Parasympathetic Activation
22:56 Post-Workout Recovery and Parasympathetic Activation
31:01 Balancing Caffeine and Nicotine for Optimal Performance
34:37 Understanding CO2 Tolerance in Workouts
35:59 Wild Breath Training Techniques
36:32 Understanding Fartlek Training
38:35 Ketamine and Breath Holding
45:35 Posture and Breath Efficiency in the Gym
51:38 Meditation During Workouts
57:23 Carbohydrates and Workout Performance
01:03:54 Supplementation for Parasympathetic Activation
01:07:11 Ways to Live Smarter, Not Harder

Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thomas DeLauer: I do firmly believe that getting yourself into that recovery state as fast as possible is how you can get into the anabolic mode as fast as possible. How you can get into recovery mode as fast as possible, and how you can signal to the brain, most importantly, that you're safe, right? Because if you're stressed out from your training and you recover quickly, your body's gonna signal that the threat is done, right?

[00:00:21] Thomas DeLauer: The threat is done, and now we can just grow and adapt, right? If you're not. Allowing yourself to recover, and you're continuing to be stressed, you're rolling right into stressful work or you're doing, then what is the brain supposed to do? It's going to continue to think that you're threatened, right?

[00:00:38] Thomas DeLauer: Right. So it's gonna dump all its resources that it can, you're gonna pull from, you know, everyday life. You're gonna pull from the energy you can give your family, that you can give yourself. And it's just, it's truly is a stacking disaster Eventually.

[00:01:02] Dr. Scott Sherr: Welcome back to the Smart Not Harder podcast. You're home from 1 cent solutions to $64,000 questions. I'm your host again today. My name is Dr. Scott Sherr, and it's a pleasure to be back with all of you. Today's podcast was a really fun one to record with Thomas DeLauer. Thomas has become a good friend over the last couple years.

[00:01:19] Dr. Scott Sherr: I've been on his YouTube channel a whole bunch talking about things related to his transcriptions, health optimization medicine and practice our nonprofit. And today I got the chance to interview him, which was super fun. So here is a bio for Thomas. So Thomas is renowned for his evidence-based approach to nutrition and fitness.

[00:01:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: Through his own a hundred pound transformation, he developed a scientific results driven perspective that has helped him even in the. Even the busiest individuals from top athletes to special operations operators make small sustainable changes to their diet and lifestyle. His practical strategies for achieving peak health performance have made him one of the most trusted health educators in the digital space, and he's leading health and fitness expert with over 3.8 million YouTube subscribers.

[00:01:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: He specializes in weight loss and inflammation reduction protocols, and widely recognized for science-based content on metabolic optimization. And this is really true for Thomas. He's one of the guys that I really do think cuts through a lot of the noise out there and creates great, amazing videos, tons of great scientific based content.

[00:02:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: And I really do think that he does change the game when it comes to understanding fitness from a really cool way. And so in this podcast, Thomas and I spoke about parasympathetic activation for performance. So this is the idea that you have to relax before, during, and after workouts to truly optimize your performance Anabolic.

[00:02:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: Activity happens after your workout. You don't actually make your performance gains during your workout. You make them after. So Thomas and I talked about strategies on how to optimize your parasympathetic nervous system before, during, and after workout. We talked about breath work, meditation, posture, CO2 training, so carbon dioxide training.

[00:02:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: This is based on some of the work by [00:03:00] Brian McKenzie Oxygen Advantage, the Pate Method and things like that. We also spoke about supplementation as well, and how this can help leverage the parasympathetic nervous system. We did this in a very holistic way. We talked about why the parasympathetic nervous system is so important for anabolic growth and for heart rate variability and for vagal tone and things like that, and how that's also important.

[00:03:21] Dr. Scott Sherr: During the workout, after the workout, even before. And then how it's so important for you to recover from a sleep perspective. And Thomas also spoke about carbohydrates. He's a relatively low carbohydrate guy, but he did talk about how he uses them intra-workout and after workout. And as far as the timing, that can be best, both pre-workout if you're gonna use it, but not necessary, but definitely intra-workout.

[00:03:45] Dr. Scott Sherr: And then post-workout, whether you do it right afterwards or you have it a couple hours later, depending on if you're on a weight loss journey versus a elite athlete. Or you don't need to lose weight and maybe you can use carbs right afterwards. So if you've listened to Thomas's stuff, you know, he's a fantastic educator.

[00:03:59] Dr. Scott Sherr: He does a great job in this podcast at the end, we also talk about how he's going to be one of our speakers at the Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Symposium, October 17th and 18th in Boulder, Colorado. You can check it out at homehope.org. He's gonna be one of our speakers along with many other amazing speakers.

[00:04:15] Dr. Scott Sherr: Come check it out if you're. A health enthusiast. If you're a practitioner, it's going to be a fantastic event with so many great speakers in an amazing location, right? Close to me here in Boulder, Colorado, in the change of seasons in the fall when the leaves will be changing and it'll be beautiful. So come check it out.

[00:04:30] Dr. Scott Sherr: Without further ado, check out this amazing and far reaching scientifically backed podcast, parasympathetic activation for performance with Thomas DeLauer. Take care, Thomas. It's good to see you, man. 

[00:04:43] Thomas DeLauer: Likewise, brother. Thanks man. 

[00:04:44] Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, thank you for taking some time today. Uh, you and I have become friends over the last year or two, and it's been so much fun to be on your podcast, your YouTube I should say, and talk about multiple topics.

[00:04:54] Dr. Scott Sherr: But I'm excited finally to get you on here to talk a little bit about parasympathetic activation in workouts. And this is something that you and I are gonna be talking about pretty soon, actually, in a couple weeks in, in Vegas. And I know something very dear to you. So tell me about your evolution, man, I, I know like it used to be like.

[00:05:10] Dr. Scott Sherr: Push hard, push hard all the time and, and like as much as you could do, as much as in a shorter period of time as possible. When did you decide, or when did you start realizing that there was something about this parasympathetic nervous system that you needed to care about? 

[00:05:23] Thomas DeLauer: I mean, truthfully, it really became something that was drilled a little bit more into my psyche after I met you.

[00:05:28] Thomas DeLauer: But prior to that, it was, it observationally. I would, I would see it and I wouldn't necessarily grasp what was going on, but I could, I could see this happening mainly. Um, I sort of drank the CrossFit Kool-Aid for a little while. I, I spoke at the CrossFit games a few years ago and I kind of got interested in it just because I tend to immerse myself in whatever I'm.

[00:05:50] Thomas DeLauer: Speaking engagement, or I wanna be familiar with what they're doing. So I kind of got addicted to CrossFit a little bit, um, now barring some injuries as a result. But anyway, point is, sure. I got, I got [00:06:00] into it. I thought it was kind of fun and I, and in observing the top athletes, I would notice that they would always kind of, uh, in between these monumental sets of, you know, hypothetically, let's say front squats going into a 2000 meter row or something like that.

[00:06:14] Thomas DeLauer: There's these crazy anaerobic feats. There would be these micro pauses that I would notice that they would do. They would, you know, finish their set. They would sometimes flop to the ground for five or 10 seconds and then hit the ground running and just go balls to the wall. Wow. And then you'd watch sort of the lower level athletes, and I mean that with respect, but the ones that weren't, you know, maybe top 10 or so.

[00:06:35] Thomas DeLauer: And, and they would. Sprint and they'd try to grind to the next one or they'd, and it was just, I could observe that the ones that were winning, the ones that were doing well, maybe they didn't flop to the ground and completely rest, but they had a really good finger on the pulse of their parasympathetic tone.

[00:06:51] Thomas DeLauer: Like they knew how to regulate. I would even observe some of them doing breath work practices for five or 10 seconds before moving on to something else. And they would take that dedicated time. And I was looking at that like, wow, you guys are in race mode. This doesn't make a lot of sense that you'd actually take the time to stop and do that.

[00:07:06] Thomas DeLauer: Like don't you just want to go, go, go. So that was my first time really observing it and I don't think I understood it a little bit more until I retroactively looked back at it, you know, after, you know, meeting you and some of these others that kind of in our space that talk about this and it's really just made a big difference.

[00:07:23] Thomas DeLauer: You know, in fact, I've realized that training volume can kind of come down. It doesn't need to be nearly as much as I thought it needed to be. Uh, especially if you're preserving for performance. So there's kind of a fine line, or rather a bold line, I guess, between training for body composition or hypertrophy or this and training just for, for performance.

[00:07:41] Thomas DeLauer: It's like all you have to do is dip your toe in the water for performance to kind of keep it up, uh, and really optimize the rest and recovery more than anything. 

[00:07:49] Dr. Scott Sherr: Hmm. Yeah. And so that's really interesting. So you saw these guys taking like the time in between like these massive anaerobic sets and even like flopping to the ground at certain points.

[00:08:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: Interesting. 

[00:08:01] Thomas DeLauer: Totally. And it would be something like, or they'd, uh, I remember seeing a meme a while back where it was, and it was like, I don't know if it was Brian McKenzie that posted it or something. It was someone kinda in the breath work world. 

[00:08:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:13] Thomas DeLauer: And it was saying like, you know, when you're a kid, your coach used to tell you to rest like this.

[00:08:18] Thomas DeLauer: Like you put your hands in your head and rest and breathe. And the actual way to do it is more so like, you can't really see my whole body, but you're kinda like resting with your hands on your knees 'cause you're opening up so that you can get that full diaphragmatic breath. Yeah. You're kind of restricted like this.

[00:08:30] Thomas DeLauer: Right, right. Um, so you'd see a lot of the CrossFit athletes do that. Right. You'd see, and you see that in professional sports too, and it's something that isn't taught. I mean, I think from the breath breathwork perspective, you're seeing, uh, some of the NFL teams bringing in breathwork coaches and stuff now, which is great, like on the sidelines, which is really cool.

[00:08:44] Thomas DeLauer: So we're seeing that. Um, but it's something that wasn't taught at all. And these guys naturally do it. They, they know how to regulate, they know how to put themselves in a, a literal physical position. That's gonna optimize parasympathetic tone. 

[00:08:57] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. And so [00:09:00] let's talk about some of the things that we can do sort of pre-workout, because if you can downregulate your sympathetic tone before workouts, this could be potentially very, very powerful.

[00:09:09] Dr. Scott Sherr: And a good example of this, uh, that I could think about as I was talking to a Olympic athlete that when he first started skiing down mountains, he used to listen to Metallica and like wanted to get really pumped up. But by the time he got to the highest levels of being an Olympic athlete, he was listening to Mozart and Beethoven.

[00:09:27] Dr. Scott Sherr: And so what have you found to be helpful in this capacity and, and the respect of trying to down regulate your nervous system before getting like too amped up and that could potentially even be a detriment to some of your workout. Right. 

[00:09:39] Thomas DeLauer: Well, I think the music thing is a very big piece because there's, there's a lot of people that talk about that's intra sort of an intro workout thing.

[00:09:45] Thomas DeLauer: So, uh, you know, put a pin in that. We'll come back to it when we talk intro workout, but pre-workout. Yeah. One of the hardest things that I think any athlete minded person, myself included, can do is dedicate five or 10 minutes to, you know, doing some sort of parasympathetic activation, whether it's breath work, whether it's even some mobility movement, or something prior.

[00:10:03] Thomas DeLauer: Hmm. 

[00:10:04] Dr. Scott Sherr: Uh, 

[00:10:04] Thomas DeLauer: you know, because most of us are on a time crunch. I mean, you and I both have young kids and, you know, it's like all the, all the feelings that kind of wash over you when you go into the gym. And especially for me to train in the morning. It's really hard to get it outta my mind that, oh, like, you know, I'm, I'm being demanded at home.

[00:10:20] Thomas DeLauer: I gotta get home. I gotta get through my workout quick. Uh, or I've got an hour to do this. The last thing you consciously wanna do is take five or 10 minutes out of that one hour to prep yourself for your workout. You know, so it's a really difficult thing, right? Um, but I almost can guarantee that when someone takes the five minutes to really set the tone prior to the workout, it makes a significant difference in your actual workout, even if the volume ends up being less.

[00:10:46] Thomas DeLauer: But I would argue that you're gonna end up with just the same amount of volume, if not more, by setting the tone. And that kind of comes back to the music thing. It's like I was the same way. I would, you know, on the way to the gym, I'd listen to, you know, death metal or something to just kind get me amped up.

[00:11:00] Thomas DeLauer: And that was just sort of like. That's no different than loading up on a bunch of caffeine. I mean, you're gonna build up a tolerance to it. There is a dopamine hit that you're getting from that, and you are elevating your dopamine baseline. So then you just need more and more. So then it was like, okay, then I needed coffee plus death metal.

[00:11:14] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. Okay, then, then I needed coffee, nicotine and death metal. Then I needed coffee, nicotine, death, metal, and maybe half an energy drink or something. It was like, okay, you see the pattern here? So how do I, how do I reverse that and lower my baseline? So for me, I usually listen to like jungle tripper music or something when I'm working out.

[00:11:31] Thomas DeLauer: I kinda like it, but nice, nice. It sets the tone. And then it's funny 'cause if you look at the intensity, the intensity that I'm training subjectively is significantly less, even if the heart rate is, you know, close to the same as it would be if I, it, it's like sometimes having that intense music is artificially stimulating this periphery that's not actually getting to the core of what you're trying to train.

[00:11:54] Dr. Scott Sherr: Got it. Yeah. And so, um, I love the, the change in music and the, the jungle actually I worked [00:12:00] with back in college. I don't, you don't know this, but I actually, I was in a band and my drummer was a jungle drummer and it was the best music ever to jam to because it had such, like, such this groove to it, right?

[00:12:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: It's not overstimulating, it's not like, it's not under stimulating. It's sort of just in that middle ground. And so we would do jam rock music to uh, to jungle. I love it. 

[00:12:21] Thomas DeLauer: That's awesome. Yeah, that's all. It's been my jam for a while, but then I just really rediscovered it for working out. It's just, it is that, it's like finding that, well I think there's something there too.

[00:12:29] Thomas DeLauer: 'cause even the kind of metal I used to listen to would be like this, this metal that would have a groove, you know, like this certain like not hair metal type music, but the ones that had kind of a deep undulating kind of where you can just get into this rhythm. And I think there's something there. I think that your body kind of pulses to that and you, you know, you pull that, it probably even has an effect on heart rate.

[00:12:47] Thomas DeLauer: Um, 

[00:12:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. For sure. Yeah. One thing I was thinking is that if you can, like pre-workout parasympathetic activate, right? You're probably going to be able to increase your sympathetic reserve in the sense that like if you're coming from a lower baseline, you can probably increase the amount of weight that you actually can lift because you have like a, a larger sort of delta from being like, if you're too sympathetically active already, right?

[00:13:13] Dr. Scott Sherr: You have less potential power and, and, and sort of delta from where you're starting. Right? 

[00:13:19] Thomas DeLauer: That's definitely true and I think your risk of injury is probably going down as well because you're, you have these periods of time in between your sets where. Let's say you're just for visual purposes of people that are, you know, watching this rather than listening.

[00:13:35] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. You know, let's say you're, you're up here and this is, you know, during your working set, you know, if you are coming down just to here before your next set, you're only getting to capitalize on a small amount of that, you know, parasympathetic tone right before you're coming right back here. And then consequently you're gonna need longer rest between your sets.

[00:13:56] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. And after that, you're gonna end up having less sets in a total workout. Right. And that's just a very simple way of putting it. But if your baseline's a little bit lower already, then you allow yourself to have these peaks and troughs that you sort of want. Um, and I think it's. Like the orange theory culture and a lot of the high intensity interval training type culture that really leads us to believe that, you know, you shouldn't be dipping back into this low heart rate zone.

[00:14:22] Thomas DeLauer: You want to keep it elevated all the time. Um, and I mean, the literature's pretty clear that you only really get a cardiac benefit from that. And even then it's not that much if you're not getting the true metabolic benefit that you're after if you're just zoned 3, 4, 5 all the time and never coming back into that.

[00:14:38] Thomas DeLauer: So the lower your baseline, better your sym or parasympathetic tone before going into the workout, the more likely you are to tap into that. But in addition to that, it's the injury piece, right? Totally. This 

[00:14:49] Dr. Scott Sherr: whole, yeah. 

[00:14:49] Thomas DeLauer: I don't have the studies offhand, but I mean, they're very, very prevalent. I know even, uh, even some of the most evidence-based, uh, fitness people out there, I say that [00:15:00] just people that only live by like what is published in a paper, no anecdote whatsoever.

[00:15:04] Thomas DeLauer: Even some of the most staunch evidence-based people will tell you that there is a very, very clear correlation between. Sympathetic tone and like lower back injury, right? Yeah. It's, it's the quintessential, I'm stressed out, I threw out my back. Right, right, right. Okay. Well you may not be, quote unquote stressed out in the sense that you're having relationship trouble or you're stressed out from work, but you're still in that fight or flight and it's still, the body doesn't know any different really.

[00:15:30] Thomas DeLauer: So you're in this workout, you're already in a stressed position, like you're gonna be vulnerable and then the lines get blurred because you're already vulnerable and stressed out going into your workout. So you might as well just add more stress in your workout because the lines are blurred, but you're not able to actually listen to your body 'cause you've just got this static of sympathetic buzz going the whole time, if that makes sense.

[00:15:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right? Totally. Yeah, it does. And then at the same time, when you're sympathetically overdr, you're also causing vasoconstriction, right? And so as a result of the vasoconstriction, you're gonna get less nutrient and oxygen delivery to tissue too. So that probably just compounds the issue I would imagine.

[00:16:08] Dr. Scott Sherr: Part of the interruption. This episode is brought to you by transcriptions, make us of precision dosed, physician formulated and pharmaceutical grade formulas in a form of a buccal troche. For this episode, check out our tro com. Thomas talks about how he uses tro com to relax before pool workouts when he's holding his breath for long periods of time with LAD Hamilton and others.

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[00:16:45] Dr. Scott Sherr: Check it out@transcriptions.com and use code pod 10 to save 10% on this order or any order on the the transcription store. Now back to the show. 

[00:16:53] Thomas DeLauer: Oh, for sure. And, and what do a lot of us do when we work out too? We kinda do the opposite thing of probably what we should just like, well, we will check our phones in between sets, right?

[00:17:00] Thomas DeLauer: And we'll, we'll, uh, open our email and we'll get, you know, an email in the middle of a set or in the middle of your rest period, and you just don't even realize what that is doing, right? You like, you're, you're just, you're taking this finite amount of time that you have to recover and you're spiking it with something that's emotionally stressing you, or, or, you know, so it's, uh, all these different things and then you're getting a massive, like, hit of, uh, you know, maybe cerebral blood flow versus where you really want it at that point in time.

[00:17:25] Thomas DeLauer: And it, it's a, it's a recipe for either injury or at least the very least a crappy workout. 

[00:17:31] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Well, how do you think about like lactate in this case, right? Like, if you're able to get more parasympathetic, how is that gonna affect like your lactate clearance overall compared to if you weren't during a workout?

[00:17:43] Thomas DeLauer: Well, I think from the vasoconstriction side of things, that's definitely gonna affect it. Right? Yeah. I mean that's a, that's a pure one. You have to kind of, um, you know, lactate clearance, lactic acid being the disassociated form of it, essentially. It's really just hydrogen ions, right? So it's like when you, when you lift, you are creating this, [00:18:00] essentially this influx of hydrogen ions and the body has to buffer that.

[00:18:04] Thomas DeLauer: And for one, all that buffering is gonna end up taking a backseat if there's something that's a higher priority. Right? Right. If there's something that's, so it's sort of like if you're stressed out and you're running from a tiger, I. You might be able to run from a tiger from for a short amount of time, but it's not something that's really kicking you into this endurance overdrive where you're gonna run for a long time.

[00:18:26] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. It's a really good shot in the arm. So you start to kinda lose that lactate clearance effect. You start to diminish that. And I think we're seeing with, I can't remember the sprinter's name. Uh. I can put it in the show notes. I can look it up later. I can't remember his name. Yeah. Okay. But he's this, uh, either Norwegian or Swedish Sprinter and they've been, you can stop me if you've heard this, but it's still really cool, the guy 

[00:18:46] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, please go.

[00:18:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

[00:18:47] Thomas DeLauer: He has been setting like four by four records, uh, nonstop. The guy's crazy. And his training is so different where they will have him run his 400 or an 800 and they will actually pull, you know, a lactate reading and they will have him go until his lactate reaches almost that threshold point, and then they just call it quits for the day.

[00:19:10] Thomas DeLauer: Right. So, okay. They're actually using lactate as a way to guesstimate, like when he should stop his training based on his ability to clear it. Hmm. So I don't know if we have solid evidence to say like, Hey, when you're stressed or not stressed, this is how much it's affecting it. But we have very clear anecdotal and very clear observational at this point that like when you're overtrained.

[00:19:32] Thomas DeLauer: IE In that fight or flight mode, you're not clearing lactate. Got it. And lactate clearance isn't like, Hey, you're flushing, lactate out. I mean, that's part of it. But lactate clearance is actually more about lactate coming back in through the pyruvic acid cycle and getting converted back into a usable source of energy.

[00:19:49] Thomas DeLauer: People think right? Lactate. Oh, clearing. Clearing lactate's, getting rid of the burn. No, not really. The burn is just the hydrogen. If you buffer the hydrogen one way or another, the the fatigue is gonna dissipate. But your ability to take that lactate and turn it into something that's literally a usable, it's like a perpetual motion device.

[00:20:05] Thomas DeLauer: It's fricking cool. Right? It's like we take it is byproduct and like it's still somewhat of a mystery in many ways. Like we take a byproduct and we reconvert it into fuel. That's why when I look at that, I'm just like. To think that calories in, calories out is the end all, be all is is insanity to me when you say we can take this molecule and we can, you know, turn it into literal energy.

[00:20:22] Thomas DeLauer: The point is, is that we know that that diminishes. So like the mechanism, I'd have to really dig deep. I don't know if we know the mechanism, but it's clearly there. So the long and the short of it is this runner is like, he's setting records left and right, and his training volume is ridiculously low.

[00:20:37] Thomas DeLauer: It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And some days he'll do one 400 and they'll be like, no, you're not clearing, you're, you're out. 

[00:20:44] Dr. Scott Sherr: It's amazing. They can just use this one marker. But it's a very powerful marker, as you said. And I, and I agree with you. Like there, there used to be the thought that lactate was this waste product, this byproduct of, of metabolism, of, of energy production, of anaerobic respiration.

[00:20:59] Dr. Scott Sherr: But now we know that [00:21:00] it's a fantastic way to recycle and make more energy overall. And so you've seen this probably real time in, in your own training over the years that would imagine. 

[00:21:10] Thomas DeLauer: For sure. And it's, uh, I think some of the most fascinating stuff with lactate is its purpose as a, uh, as a signaling device.

[00:21:16] Thomas DeLauer: Right? So it's, I think hopefully, I think we're getting there. I think within the next couple of years we're gonna have continuous, uh, blood lactate monitors, which will be Yeah, I've seen those. I'll be the first in line for that. Like, that's so cool. And, uh, 'cause I think there's a lot of things that, that can tell us just about our stress state in general, like independent of workouts, but as a signaling device, the, in essence, you can draw a pretty clear line with your hydrogen ion buildup and your lactate, even though they're not one in the same, you can draw a pretty clear line with it.

[00:21:45] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. Obviously it's a disassociated form, but what that tells us is that when you start building lactate or you get that burn. It's essentially a rite of passage for your body to start triggering a cascade of different things to induce muscle growth, induce recovery, um, you know, even mitochondrial efficiency to a certain degree.

[00:22:04] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm Actually to a large degree. Yeah. So it's operating as a signaling device. It's actually communicating with the brain and you know, we've seen it in a lot of different studies that you've probably seen, even like with ketogenic diets, when lactate levels are higher, how it can influence the brain.

[00:22:16] Thomas DeLauer: There's even been trials with using pure lactate for TBIs. And so lactate is definitely more than just this energy source and, and muscular kind of expenditure thing. It's a literally communicating to the brain being like, Hey, this dude did work, trigger this cascade of whatever we need to recover. 

[00:22:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah.

[00:22:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: And we know the brain, one of the main fuels for the brain is actually lactate as well, and it can use it as a primary fuel if needed. So yeah, it's very cool. Um, when it comes down to, I. Things. So what I'm gonna do is gonna ask you about like the post-workout parasympathetic activation side of things.

[00:22:50] Dr. Scott Sherr: And then what I'd like to do is talk about some actual strategies overall that I know you're using and that we're gonna be talking about as well. So the, the things that, what do you think the benefits are from like get getting down regulated on your nervous system, like as soon as you can, like after you finish with a workout.

[00:23:05] Dr. Scott Sherr: Like what, what have you found to be so helpful and like, what have you noticed from like a recovery perspective, soreness perspective overall, being ready for the next workout, if you can get yourself parasympathetic sort of after the workout as soon as possible. 

[00:23:20] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, I, I'll start off by saying, I think getting parasympathetic after the workout is the most achievable for people and probably the most important for most people.

[00:23:28] Thomas DeLauer: Right? For right. 

[00:23:29] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. 

[00:23:29] Thomas DeLauer: Uh, getting parasympathetic pre-workout is probably very important for like an athlete or someone that is experienced. I think for someone that is a beginner, that could be, that could be a tough one to even articulate, you know, because maybe they're not the type of person that goes into the gym like.

[00:23:45] Thomas DeLauer: Raring to go anyway. Like maybe they're, you know, so Yeah, 

[00:23:48] Dr. Scott Sherr: true. That's not always forcing themselves to the gym kind of thing. Yeah. It's 

[00:23:50] Thomas DeLauer: like, well maybe there's sympathetic tone just from the stress of going to the gym 'cause they don't want to go. Right. But it's uh Right, right. But I'd say post is the most directly pragmatic for most of the [00:24:00] population and the wide variety of people.

[00:24:02] Thomas DeLauer: Uh, and I can't really think of a situation where you would want to be sympathetic post-workout. It just seems counterintuitive unless you really are trying to train for something specific with that. It's why I've never felt that there is a point in cold plunging right after a workout anyway. I know that there's obviously, we have the studies now that say at blunt hypertrophy and there's things that even though they're not the strongest anyway, but it's just never made much sense to me.

[00:24:26] Thomas DeLauer: It's like, why would you want to add a stressor at the end of an already stress, like just push it a little harder in your workout. Or do you know, don't add this artificial stressor, wait a little while and use it as a recovery agent rather than just like tacking and stacking these stressors. Right. So. I do firmly believe that getting yourself into that recovery state as fast as possible is how you can get into the anabolic mode as fast as possible.

[00:24:49] Thomas DeLauer: How you can get into recovery mode as fast as possible, and how you can signal to the brain, most importantly, that you're safe. Right? Because if we just go intuitively and we even go just, I don't know, from possibly a, a very logical perspective. Mm-hmm. If you're stressed out from your training and you recover quickly, your body's gonna signal that the threat is done.

[00:25:09] Thomas DeLauer: Right. The threat is done, and now we can just grow and adapt. Right. If you're not. Allowing yourself to recover, and you're continuing to be stressed, you're rolling right into stressful work or you're doing, then what is the brain supposed to do? It's going to continue to think that you're threatened, right?

[00:25:26] Thomas DeLauer: Right. So it's gonna dump all its resources that it can, you're gonna pull from, you know, everyday life. You're gonna pull from the energy you can give your family, that you can give yourself. And it's just, it's truly is a stacking disaster eventually. So being able to get yourself into that parasympathetic state.

[00:25:42] Thomas DeLauer: I firmly believe can kinda signal this entire cascade to just happen faster. Right? The delayed onset muscle soreness for me, anecdotally, I've noticed it comes on faster and goes away quicker, whereas the, again, kind of standard 48 hour delayed onset muscle soreness that most people get where it kind of builds.

[00:25:59] Thomas DeLauer: We've all had those situations. You do a hard leg workout Yep. You feel fine throughout the day, and then it starts to creep in around, you know, five, 6:00 PM and you're like, oh shit, this is not gonna be good. And the next day you're, you're sore and you're like, okay, maybe it's not too bad. And then the second day you can't sit on the toilet and it's like terrible.

[00:26:15] Thomas DeLauer: But yeah, I've noticed that everything gets a little bit accelerated. It's like I can feel soreness kicking in a few hours after my workout and then it's kind of gone by the end of the day. So everything's just expedited. Uh, and I believe that it's like, because I'm allowing, my body probably has to do with blood flow.

[00:26:29] Thomas DeLauer: It's late onset muscle soreness, go down that rabbit hole. That's in a lot of ways a mystery still. People don't know exactly what's causing the domes, but there's different theories. Point is, is it's accelerating it in one way. The other piece is, and this is speculative, is the entire like myokine piece, the myo or myokine Myokine, potato.

[00:26:47] Thomas DeLauer: Potato, but you know that. Mm-hmm. The excon, exer Keen myokine, again, if you're stressed out, your body is going to secrete some of them, but you get a flood of them right afterwards. So if you can get yourself into [00:27:00] that restful state, then you're gonna get that cascade of these mykines that are going to preserve muscle throughout the course of the day.

[00:27:07] Thomas DeLauer: They can affect appetite, their regulatory for the metabolic system. So a lot of different benefits that happen there. 

[00:27:14] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I mean it's really interesting, right? Because I love that you can have, maybe this even. Very specific indication of how parasympathetic you got after the workout, depending on how fast your delayed onset muscle soreness actually happened.

[00:27:28] Dr. Scott Sherr: So you actually noticed like a direct correlation there? 

[00:27:31] Thomas DeLauer: Oh, for sure. I mean, and that's just me, anecdotally, I can't say, you know, of course I'm pretty in tune with my body doing this for a long time. So I, I, I recognize these things because, you know, I would find myself literally sandbagging my own workouts.

[00:27:44] Thomas DeLauer: 'cause I didn't wanna be super sore two days later. Right, right. But if I can predict it a little bit better, I mean, again, caveat being soreness is a little bit of a mystery sometimes. It can come on after two sets and sometimes it won't come on until after, you know, 20 sets. It's, it's, 

[00:27:57] Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. 

[00:27:58] Thomas DeLauer: But I think your systemic recovery plays a role there too, which again, comes right in line with what we're talking about.

[00:28:02] Thomas DeLauer: Right, right. Your total CS load that entire, entire equation. 

[00:28:06] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Do you think it's still pretty prevalent for people to believe that they're making the most muscle gains during exercise or more people more in the know that you make most of your gains after you exercise compared to when you're actually exercising?

[00:28:20] Thomas DeLauer: I'd say in the, in the fitness community, I think most people know that you're making the gains post. But even then, it's hard to actually put into practice, you know, because how could it not be? I mean, you're, you're, we we're conditioned as humans and this, that like hard work equals the result, right?

[00:28:38] Thomas DeLauer: That's like a pretty natural thing. And it's like this constant movement away from, um, from pain. And that's gonna equal pleasure and that's gonna equal benefit and growth. And that's every like, egoic principle you can think about is like, how do we move away from the pain and constantly adapt and ship that adaptation there?

[00:28:54] Thomas DeLauer: So I think even as an experienced athlete, you find yourself being like, well, okay, if I work out harder, then I'm gonna get a better result. And yes, I'm gonna have to. So you can consciously wrap your head around it, okay, I'm gonna have to rest harder because this workout was harder. But it's really hard sometimes to be in a workout and say, this is enough.

[00:29:15] Thomas DeLauer: Like, I'm listening, I'm li truly listening to literally my body, not my ego, and I'm getting out of this and that's fucking hard, right? Like that's really hard. 

[00:29:25] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

[00:29:26] Thomas DeLauer: So yes, I think I'm very well aware of it, but am I guilty of, you know, still pushing it those extra 20% in my workout that maybe I shouldn't have that day?

[00:29:36] Thomas DeLauer: Absolutely. 

[00:29:37] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. It's really interesting. Um, well, I think what would be helpful is to talk about some, some practical ways to train, like more smarter and, uh, less harder overall. And the idea here is to kinda give people some practical strategies, because you're right, it's not intuitive. It's not intuitive, especially, you know, pre and intro workout to think about parasympathetic, sym, [00:30:00] sympathetic activation.

[00:30:01] Dr. Scott Sherr: But post-workout, it's much more, I. It's an easy way for people to get started overall. But anyway, I think it might be fun to talk about some strategies. One that I wanted to chat with you about that you and I have spoken about before, and our friend Brian Mackenzie has spoken about before is, is CO2 tolerance.

[00:30:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: So, um, is there anything you want to add here as far as how you do this or maybe some of your strategies and maybe we can talk a little bit about what that is part of the interruption. This episode is brought to you by Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Association, a nonprofit organization, training practitioners how to optimize health rather than treat disease.

[00:30:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: For this episode, check out our Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Symposium happening October 17th and 18th in Boulder, Colorado. Go to home hope.org. Thomas is speaking Thomas DeLauer, who is on this podcast with me today, along with Jill Carnahan, Elizabeth y AB Hussein, myself, Dr. Scott Sherr, uh, Dr.

[00:30:52] Dr. Scott Sherr: Ted Oso and many others. Check it out@homehope.org. Find the symposium October 17th and 18th in Boulder, Colorado. We hope to see you there. 

[00:31:00] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. Yeah. And before we move into the CO2 time, there's one other thing that I, um, I meant to say on the pre-workout piece, I should definitely note, um, I will alternate days and this, you know, thanks to you guys, I will alternate days where I use caffeine versus nicotine.

[00:31:15] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. And I found that it's helped me not have to increase my caffeine dosage because I would find these patterns. And I know a lot of people that do this. I think we're all, it's sort of like I mentioned earlier, I'll be, I'm gonna have a cup of green tea. Okay, well I'm gonna have a cup and a half of green tea, and then a week later I'm having a cup of green tea and then maybe like a third of even an energy drink or something just 'cause I need that extra boost.

[00:31:36] Thomas DeLauer: Right. And then it's a half energy drink and then it's, you know, and then a month later, next thing I know I'm drinking a full energy drink. Right. And it's, and that's when I'm like, wait a minute, no. Like, gotta stop and I reset, take a few days off or a week off and then it's like a slow, like three month process where your caffeine's building up again.

[00:31:51] Thomas DeLauer: And I found that just alternating, like I'll still have green tea, but alternating a higher caffeine dose and then another day do a little bit more like blue canine and have more. Like a nicotine hit, um, and even a small dose, right? We're talking less than a milligram for me. And that way I'm getting the focus.

[00:32:05] Thomas DeLauer: I might not be as like, amped up as I would be with caffeine, but I'm getting the focus. So I try to alternate that, and that prevents me from getting into this like high cortisol, super sympathetic state that I can get if I just load up, up a tummy. And I love caffeine, don't get me wrong. Like I, I love messing around with all kinds of different, like stimulants and different things.

[00:32:24] Thomas DeLauer: I have fun with it, but caffeine just gets a little old because after a while you're just fricking shaking and you're not really having fun. So, yeah, so I found that the nicotine makes it so that I can actually, you know, we've all heard this saying like, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That's what I feel like with low dose, and I'm talking again, really low dose for me, less than a milligram.

[00:32:43] Thomas DeLauer: It's, it's a smooth and fast feeling. I may not be jacked up like I would be if I had like a pre-workout, but I feel focused and I feel calm and my heart rate's not going through the roof. So I think that that's, I think we're gonna see a lot more research coming out there, and I'm happy to see that. Like, more people in the [00:33:00] fitness community are, are recognizing that actually and not bashing like a low dose nicotine.

[00:33:05] Thomas DeLauer: So anyway, 

[00:33:06] Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah, putting that aside, that's a, that's a good question. Just, just a thing on that. So that's a balance, right? Because we're talking about nicotine and caffeine pre-workout as something that helps you focus, that gives you a little bit of a boost and a little bit of a sympathetic edge. But at the same time, you're trying to balance that between being, being, be, be like not too overstimulate at the same time, right?

[00:33:25] Dr. Scott Sherr: So how do you, how do you kind of figure that out? What's your strategy there? 

[00:33:29] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, I mean that's largely based on feel for me. So if I can articulate it, um, caffeine feels scattered. It's the difference between like the music we talked about, caffeine feels like heavy metal, right? Whereas, got it, the nicotine or like a blue canine sort of thing feels a little bit more like, um, you know, deep jungle rock or something like where you're just getting a groove, right?

[00:33:54] Thomas DeLauer: It's like you can still go, um. If I had to really pinpoint it, I would say I'd probably elect for caffeine more on a day when I'm doing like sub maximal lift, I would go for blue canine on a day when I'm doing more of, uh, what I call a grind. Like I met a Metcon style like Imam every minute on the minute.

[00:34:13] Thomas DeLauer: I just gotta go for 45 minutes and not lose focus. Uh, got it. That, that's a good application. Whereas the nicotine would help in that too, for sure. But like the nicotine's just, it's slow, it's steady, it's smooth, it's fast, and I can just kind of groove. Whereas the caffeine, I mean, yeah. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, you know, probably the most studied genic aid.

[00:34:32] Thomas DeLauer: It freaking works, but I just don't wanna do it all the time. 

[00:34:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: Got it, got it. Cool. Okay, so let's talk about, uh, CO2 tolerance a little bit and how you think about this sort of either before, during, or, or after workouts and how it's potentially affected how you work out overall. 

[00:34:48] Thomas DeLauer: So I first got turned onto CO2 tolerance actually by, uh, Dr.

[00:34:52] Thomas DeLauer: Dom Dino. Right? Yeah. That was, uh, very interesting with him because we were talking about, uh, how ketones can actually augment CO2 tolerance and, uh, which is pretty interesting. We were talking about in the relevance with, um, high altitude training. I think I sent you that video. It, it totally flopped. It didn't go anywhere on YouTube because it's like such a niched audience.

[00:35:10] Thomas DeLauer: But sometimes I like to do those videos 'cause it's like I'm personally interested in 

[00:35:13] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. In 

[00:35:14] Thomas DeLauer: augmenting CO2 for high altitude work. Um, and there's some, there's some military applications that are there too, so it's kind of cool. So we, anyway, I first got interested in that and I was like, wait, my mind was blown.

[00:35:24] Thomas DeLauer: I'm like, you mean to tell me that my ability to hold my breath or withstand hypoxia has a huge part just to do with literally how my brain receives a signal from CO2 telling me that it's time to start gasping for air and that I can override that. Um, so then, you know, turn into, you know, Brian McKenzie's work and good friends with Larry Hamilton and kind of that world.

[00:35:45] Thomas DeLauer: So it got like opened up to that. And then there's the, the oxygen advantage guys, which, you know, some of their stuff I buy into, some of it I don't. But the part that I think is very interesting is it's purely mechanistic stuff. Talking about augmenting CO2, uh, tolerance. [00:36:00] So for example, they'll do things like sprint uphill while holding their breath, right?

[00:36:05] Thomas DeLauer: And then just, and they'll, uh, and then they'll do things like, uh, put their body in a position where they can just get maximal amount of oxygen afterwards. So like, run up a hill like. It's kind of, it's kind of wild stuff. Or they'll like plug their nose so that they're like, it's just interesting stuff.

[00:36:20] Thomas DeLauer: Also mouth taping, all these kinds of things. But from a pure CO2 tolerance, one of the things that I do, I don't do it intro workout because I prioritize my workout quality too much to do it Intro workout. Yeah, sure. But simply, uh, have you ever heard of fart like training before for, um, it's a funny name, but it's a Swedish term for speed work.

[00:36:39] Thomas DeLauer: Right? So it's it's a great name. FAI know it's very weird. F-A-R-T-L-E-K. And it's, it's, it's, I think it's speed play is what it translates to. And it's like where instead of, so it's all subjective. Sprinting. So you go out for a run, you do your speed work, rather than saying, I'm gonna do two minutes of sprinting or one minute sprint.

[00:36:57] Thomas DeLauer: It's like go telephone pole to telephone pole or telephone pole to two telephone poles. And it's very subjective. So you're gauging your RPE. Uh, you can do the same sort of thing with breath holds while you're walking. Okay. So what I'll do is like light posts or trees or I'll say, okay, I'm walking. I'm gonna take a couple deep diaphragmatic breaths and I'm gonna do an exhale and I'm gonna hold on the exhale until that light post.

[00:37:20] Thomas DeLauer: And what you do is, I mean, you, the first time you do it, you're gonna get like 10 steps. And you just realize that when you're under load you're like, holy crap, not, it's much different. Yeah. Not, it's not that you're building up so much CO2 because you're moving, it's because you're just in this different state where you're stressed out because you're moving, you know you need oxygen.

[00:37:40] Thomas DeLauer: Now, counter that with say breath work where you're lying on the ground, which is wonderful. I do it every day, but still. You're in a safe situation. You know you're safe, you're laying down. So your nervous system's saying you're safe, you can hold your breath a lot longer. So yes, it's about the exertion, but it's more, in my opinion about the safety thing.

[00:37:59] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. I think when you're moving, your body is telling you you're not quite as safe, you're more vulnerable, you're in need of oxygen. So if you hold your breath, it's gonna tell your brain to force you to breathe sooner, which is a great way to gamify it and get yourself to that CO2 tolerant state faster, because not everyone has 15 minutes to lie down, make themself, you know, do holotropic breath work, and get to a point where you're gonna do these long holds.

[00:38:26] Thomas DeLauer: And even then it begs the question, if you are condition, it's all, it's all relative. Right. So like if you, I mean, a good example is like. If you use something like even, um, ketamine where you are shutting down your default mode network, people will find okay, they can hold their breath longer. Sure. I miss it significantly.

[00:38:45] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. Like it's Sure. Yeah. So that really makes you wonder. You're like, well, when my brain is calm, how come I can hold my breath twice as long? Like, we're not talking a little bit, but twice as long, telling me this isn't the need for oxygen. [00:39:00] It's my brain not shutting the hell up, telling me I need to breathe.

[00:39:03] Thomas DeLauer: Right. So when that, you know, d nm N is shut down and you all sudden you hold your breath, it puts things into perspective. So. When you're doing breath work and you're doing holotropic breath work, you are shutting down your DMN eventually or quieting it. It's just taking you 15, 20 minutes to get there sometimes.

[00:39:19] Thomas DeLauer: And that's just, I love it, but I don't always have the time to do it. Sure. But my point in making it all relative is like if you first flop down on the ground and you start doing breath work, your holds are not gonna be very long. That's the part, it doesn't matter 'cause it's all relative. So you need to train that CO2 tolerance that when you get that stress, you're okay and you're safe.

[00:39:42] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. And that can happen the first time you lay on the ground. But it can happen even more accelerated if you do it like while you're walking. You know? So you 

[00:39:49] Dr. Scott Sherr: found that the fastest way is to do it with walking and holds and, and just take your time with it. And I think that's, that's fantastic. But there's a lot of different ways.

[00:39:57] Dr. Scott Sherr: You talked about a couple, you talked about, you know, the gear system that Brian has, Brian McKenzie had the oxygen vans, the KO method. There's multiple different methods, but I think in the end with the physiology here right, is that we're desensitizing essential and peripheral chemo receptors in the brain, right?

[00:40:11] Dr. Scott Sherr: Which actually is gonna boost your vagal to, and, and make you feel safer. Overall, so you can, you can withstand a higher CO2 level knowing like exactly you just described, right. Your DMN when it's shut down, for example, with ketamine, you can hold your breath for longer. It's because it's not, it's, it's a thing where the body is, is reacting to something where it could just be a fear response because most people are over-breathing anyway.

[00:40:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. That's kind of the idea here. 

[00:40:37] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. Yeah. It's very, it's very, very interesting. That was my first eyeopening experience with it. I mean, I'd done a lot of breath work. I've done the, the pool work with Larry Hamilton, which is awful, but awesome at the same time. Crazy. Yeah. And it's, um, you know, one of the things that he taught me that really, no pun intended, opened my eyes is he said, when you're down underwater, you know, he noticed that I'm a pretty muscular dude, which means that like, I'm gonna soak up.

[00:41:04] Thomas DeLauer: Oxygen really quick, right? So like in, in theory, I wouldn't be able to hold my breath as long, but, and in some ways it's true, but eventually you get past that, you know, when, so he was seeing me sort of like gassing out really quick underwater because I just couldn't calm down. And, uh, he's like, okay, when you're underwater, he's like, and you're holding your breath.

[00:41:23] Thomas DeLauer: He's like, pay attention to your, your periphery. He's like, you'll notice that you just start looking tunnel vision ahead. He said, open up your periphery and try to look out to the sides. And you get this wave of expansion, this expansiveness that just comes over you when all of a sudden you, you stop looking like this and you're underwater holding your breath with dumbbells and you just all of a sudden expand and look and you're like, you feel everything come down and all of a sudden you've got another 30 seconds in you.

[00:41:49] Thomas DeLauer: Um, you know, and the saying that they always say, and this is metaphorical in some ways, is. You know, there's air at the top. Don't worry. You can, there's air at the top and it's a safety thing. [00:42:00] So, and then, you know, flash forward to kind of the ketamine thing and you're just like, okay, well that's not doing anything to my, my physical body as far as like my oxygen utilization as far as I know.

[00:42:10] Thomas DeLauer: So it becomes very, very clear that you're just, it's all, for lack of a better term, it's all in the head, right? 

[00:42:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:42:17] Thomas DeLauer: yeah. So, but the CO2 thing. It's, it's a little bit more than just all in the head. It's all in the nervous system too. Right? Right. So yeah, you're, 

[00:42:24] Dr. Scott Sherr: I mean, and we know that people that are more stressed, hyperventilate and they have a lower CO2 tolerance in general, and it becomes like a, like a vi, like a virtu uh, a vicious cycle, right?

[00:42:34] Dr. Scott Sherr: Where people, you know, have a harder and harder time even tolerate any CO2, the more stress that they are. Hmm. And the interesting thing is like when you can actually train your CO2 tolerance, you're actually gonna improve the amount of oxygenation that's gonna get released into your tissues because of something called the bore effect, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

[00:42:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: This is just how much oxygen gets, um, gets taken off your red blood cells depending on what your CO2 levels are in your body. So for example, if your CO2 levels are higher, you're going to drop more oxygen into your tissue, versus if your CO2 levels are lower, you're gonna hold onto more oxygen, even if you have your red blood cells saturated with with oxygen.

[00:43:12] Thomas DeLauer: So does this happen at altitude? Is there an effect with. 

[00:43:15] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, there is. And so when there's, when there's less oxygen in the air, you have a dissociation of your, your, your, your oxygen dissociation curve is what it's called. There's certain things that will allow your O2 to unbind faster overall compared to, um, to binding tightly.

[00:43:32] Dr. Scott Sherr: And so if you're alkali, meaning that you're holding onto, you're, you're breathing awful lot of CO2, you're gonna hold onto more oxygen on your red blood cells and not let it come off into the tissue. But if you're acidotic and which means that you're, um, holding onto more CO2 or there's more CO2 compared to oxygen in the air, relatively, you're gonna actually unbind more oxygen from your red blood cells.

[00:43:53] Dr. Scott Sherr: So red blood cells carry, like hemoglobin carries four oxygen molecules. There's actually 250 million hemoglobin molecules per red blood cells, like a billion oxygen molecules per red blood cell. It's a lot. But the idea is that we don't typically unbind more than two from a hemoglobin. And it's actually very uncommon unless you have certain conditions where.

[00:44:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Uh, hypoxia is one of them, of course. And increased CO2 is another. So by allowing yourself higher CO2 levels with CO2 training, you're actually gonna dump more oxygen into your tissue and have more oxygen utilization as a result of that. 

[00:44:26] Thomas DeLauer: So do you dump that oxygen? Is that a, a general thing, or do you dump the oxygen while the CO2 is high?

[00:44:32] Thomas DeLauer: So, and I'll, do you dump it while the CO2 

[00:44:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: is high? 

[00:44:34] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. Okay. So that's why you get kind of high when you're on a, a breath Hold on. Empty. 

[00:44:39] Dr. Scott Sherr: Exactly. Exactly. So you get this high especially, and they, they talk about doing the breath holds and then exercising afterwards, like you talked about. So you do like your breath hold and you CO2 rises and then you do pushups or something like that.

[00:44:51] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. That when you do the pushups, all that oxygen that's in the system is gonna get released more into the muscles as a result of that higher CO2 level in the [00:45:00] system, that kind of thing. Interesting. 

[00:45:01] Thomas DeLauer: I did not know that's how it worked. That's really cool. 

[00:45:03] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I mean, but you're, you're reducing, you know, anxiety, you're rewiring your threat perception, you're improving breathing, efficiency, all these things with CO2 tolerance.

[00:45:11] Dr. Scott Sherr: But it, it takes time. Right. It's not something that people, and this is something that Brian told me a while ago, uh, that I thought was helpful. It's like you shouldn't be forcing it as much. It's more, you know, training it over time, doing it slowly. Um, because you want to sort of, you know, slowly shift that, that curve and not try to bludgeon yourself because you could, you know, it's gonna cause a fear response if you're not careful.

[00:45:32] Yeah, 

[00:45:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: that 

[00:45:33] Thomas DeLauer: makes a 

[00:45:33] Dr. Scott Sherr: lot of sense. Yeah. So another one that we want to talk about was just basically, um, you know, posture, right? You talked about a little bit about this before, um, with, uh, with holding on your knees. What have you found to be like the biggest problems in the gym? Like from people using posture as a way that's allowing them, you know, more sympathetic drive and not letting them, you know, down regulate their nervous system either before or, you know, especially during or even after, uh, doing a workout.

[00:46:01] Thomas DeLauer: I'd say, uh, you know, this is gonna sound like it's outta left field, but this like heavy anterior pelvic tilt. That's first of all like something that I think once corrected kind of helps align some of this stuff. I learned this from a good friend of mine, Vinny, who's actually be a good guy for, uh, for your show as well.

[00:46:18] Thomas DeLauer: But he is, uh, basically when you become like extremely shoulder driven, which happens with a lot of people in the gym, it was definitely a big problem for me. You get to this point where. Your, if your hips aren't underneath you, you're always in this like trapped position where you're, you're not actually getting truly a full breath and you feel like you are, but you're not, right?

[00:46:38] Thomas DeLauer: You're just, you're compacted. So I still, I lead with that because that's a really common thing that you're gonna see, especially with guys in the gym, like training, a lot of chest training. These, like, first off, you gotta unwind some of this and you have to train in a way that's gonna be conducive to making you more parasympathetic.

[00:46:54] Thomas DeLauer: Like if you're tight and your traps are tight and you're tight in the upper body all the time, or you're restricted, you're probably not getting those breaths the way that you want to. And we've all kind of experienced where when you first start a workout, it's like breathing feels kind of forced and difficult, and it's actually those intercostals aren't working and it's, so there's like this physical element of just loosening that stuff up, right?

[00:47:16] Thomas DeLauer: Mm. So for me, like. Myofascial release, doing things like that. Uh, if you don't wanna do breath work before you work out, at least do a little myofascial or foam rolling or something. Not because it's amazing for mobility and whatnot, but because it's going to at least loosen that tissue up. So I, if I'm gonna be doing anything that's gonna require heavy ventilation, I will roll out my lats and I'll roll out my intercostals.

[00:47:37] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. And it makes a significant difference in how I breathe because if you're, if you're restricted when you're in between your sets, you're gonna find yourself doing all kinds of weird contorted things to try to get a breath like you just do. But if you can loosen that stuff up and actually like just get some blood in there, also hydration being super hydrated, like that's so those muscles and the fascia can move.

[00:47:58] Thomas DeLauer: 'cause we're all just one [00:48:00] giant meat suit. You know, it's like with covered in fascia, really, like I don't even know what's inside when you really get down to it. Um, use that. We're a meat 

[00:48:08] Dr. Scott Sherr: suit covered in fascia. 

[00:48:09] Thomas DeLauer: I love it. It's perfect. Yeah. With you really want to get weird on it. You keep going inward.

[00:48:13] Thomas DeLauer: You're like, okay, well what's inside our organs? And then what's inside that and what's inside that. And it's kind of empty at the end of the day. 

[00:48:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: Indeed. 99% of it. Yep, for sure. So 

[00:48:20] Thomas DeLauer: it's, uh, sometimes that feels hopeless, but it's also kind of cool when you think of it like that. So anyway, so this, this meat suit that's wrapped in fascia, it's like it's all one piece of fascia.

[00:48:29] Thomas DeLauer: And I know we're going a direction that maybe we weren't expecting, but like, you know, we're all Love it. Yeah. It's basically one giant piece, right? So it's like when you loosen up fascia, even on your IT band, it can have an effect up here. So just take five minutes and do a little foam rolling and use a roller that hurts.

[00:48:43] Thomas DeLauer: Like, don't do one, like, it's not like miserable, but use one that hurts. Not some soft pansy foam roller that just feels comfortable. Like you gotta, you gotta loosen that stuff up a little bit so that, but I think there's also a neurological thing that happens there. Like you're starting to communicate, you're kind of waking up in a way.

[00:48:57] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. But now to your actual question, like in terms of postures. One of my favorite ones is if I take a, uh, you know, a flat bench, I will put my, see if I can demonstrate this, I'll take my elbows up over the bench, but I'll do both elbows over a bench, and then I'll kind of come back down into a position where I am almost doing a cat cow position, if you know that position.

[00:49:18] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, sure. But with my elbows up on a bench. Um, so kind of getting the spine into a good, uh, good extension and getting my c-spine into as much of an extension as I can, and then nasal breathe in that position. And that is sort of one of my, uh, SOS positions. Like, I find that, like I can bring myself down really quick there.

[00:49:36] Thomas DeLauer: Now, if you're working out at, you know, Gold's Gym in West Hollywood, or it's, you know, just, you probably end up with a staph infection being on the floor. But yeah, it's, uh, you know, if you have the luxury of working out at home or something like, like, it's a great SOS position. And again, another, uh, another one from my friend Vinny, who's, who's, he's got a lot of these good ones, but one of his SOS positions is.

[00:49:59] Thomas DeLauer: You take like two blocks, yo almost yoga blocks, and you just kind of get on face on the floor in this position and with your toes sort of pointed out or point, uh, straight out so you're not, you're actually like, you know, extension there. Okay. And you're just kinda laying in that position again, your face would be on the floor, so you don't wanna do it in a public gym, but it's these s os positions that you just kind of can lay in for 30 seconds or a minute and just kind of, again, communicates to your body that you're safe and just get yourself out of the mindset that you need to be turned on in between sets.

[00:50:29] Thomas DeLauer: So think of it as these, that's a big one. Macro scales and these micro scales, right? These different, we, we don't, we know that we shouldn't work out every single day. We know we need rest days. So we have no problem turning that off. But how come intra workout, we have this hard time really understanding like, you should be on, you should be off.

[00:50:49] Thomas DeLauer: And literally even in, in a given set, you could find a way to meditate into it to actually find the stillness mid set too. Right? So [00:51:00] now granted you want to keep tension on the proper muscles for stability, but you can find those moments of stillness and you know, usually are happening at the end of your breath, right?

[00:51:07] Thomas DeLauer: And then you find those, and I'm a firm believer, I, and there's no evidence to back this up from a, a literal mechanistic sense, but those little micro microseconds, nanoseconds of finding that parasympathetic activity, like here's a moment of calm and recognizing that mm-hmm. Uh, you know, you can squeak another rep or two is you're not just like, switched on in this like crazy go, go, go mode.

[00:51:28] Thomas DeLauer: So finding those little moments of, you know, of stillness that are always there and it's almost like meditating through your workout. It's a pretty. Fun thing once it clicks. 

[00:51:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. You and I have spoken about meditation through workouts, and this is an interesting one, and you kind of just talked about it briefly there, but maybe talk about how you think about meditation during a workout.

[00:51:50] Dr. Scott Sherr: And this is not your, there's d there's, there's obviously different types of work, uh, meditations and, and ways to think about this, but how do you think about meditation as an active way to relax, you know, pre, you know, during workouts or maybe the end of the set? Like, what are you, what are you thinking about or what are you doing there?

[00:52:06] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, as a, as kind of an overall strategy. 

[00:52:09] Thomas DeLauer: My Hallmark strategy is, and my phrase is, this is what's happening right now, or this is what it feels like right now. And that is, that's just how it is. This is what it feels like right now. Right? Because every single one of us, when we are lifting, when we are working out, we are future tripping.

[00:52:26] Thomas DeLauer: We are. 'cause we're in a little bit of pain. So we're future tripping and we're thinking about that next second. We're even thinking about the next half second, we're even thinking, or we're thinking about the next five reps. We, if we're doing a set of 15, we are all counting to that set of 15 and we are going with nine.

[00:52:39] Thomas DeLauer: And we're thinking in our head, we have six more. And it sucks. And so, yeah. Yeah, tac tactically I stopped counting reps. I just go to failure, like I just, or, or my proximity to failure. I still count reps in some cases, but generally like how, how come nobody does likes to do 13 reps or something? Like they'll always have to go 15 or 12 or like, what, what about 13?

[00:52:58] Thomas DeLauer: What about 17? Like, they're perfectly good numbers and it's, so a lot of times I'll end up there, but you know, the only time I'll count is if I'm doing unilateral stuff and I want to. Keep it balanced, but even then it's questionable, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I mean, you gotta train the way you gotta train, but you know, if I'm in this immense amount of pain, there's like this kinesthetic awareness.

[00:53:14] Thomas DeLauer: I used to have this thing where it was the pain switch and then that was like the wrong way of thinking for where I'm in that in life now. It was a kinesthetic awareness where I could like see a visual red switch when I was in pain and it was sort of David Goggsy, which is not what I want to be like now.

[00:53:28] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. And now it's much more, this is what it feels like right now. And you can feel that burn, you can feel it. And it's amazing how much more you've got in you when you just do that. But you don't know how much you got and you never will. Because if you're not, if you're really in that moment, you're probably not counting anyway.

[00:53:44] Thomas DeLauer: The point is, it's all relative and you're gonna it, it's just the workout is going to get you the desired result much better. And then you're also having the secondary effect of getting this, you know, meditative aspect too. And also, I mean, one of the things that you brought to my [00:54:00] awareness, which was pretty cool, was I.

[00:54:02] Thomas DeLauer: Remember that it's all happening right now and like when that hap when you do that during a workout, it's really cool. So I was doing it this morning, I was doing front squats and I was trying to, and I, I was just, there's a lot of, you know, busyness coming into my mind at the moment. And if you submit to the fact that like, hey, all of this is real and all of this is happening, but it's not.

[00:54:26] Thomas DeLauer: There's always gonna be one thing that's standing out more. Mm-hmm. That you're gonna identify with, I'm anxious or I'm stressed. The reality is, is that's always happening all the time, and it goes back to our discussion. We had a while back about the thalamic gate and it's like it's, this is all happening.

[00:54:41] Thomas DeLauer: And when you realize that, you almost give yourself a license to feel that I. But you also give yourself a license to feel all the other stuff. It, it sounds woo wooy, but man, is it freaking cool when you actually put it into performance application. So, and it's, you just forget, time kind of stops and you just do your set.

[00:54:58] Thomas DeLauer: You feel the pain, you feel it, you're done when you're done. And that's that. 

[00:55:02] Dr. Scott Sherr: Uh, I love it because one thing I, I often like to remember is that nothing's happening in the future. Nothing's happening in the past. It's all happening right now. Even if you're thinking about the past or the future. It's all neuro network depolarizations that are happening right at this very moment.

[00:55:17] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Uh, but I think what you're really doing, if you wanted to kind of give it a name, Thomas, would be a focus practice awareness kind of meditation, right? Where you're focusing on. The actual thing that you're doing right now. And by doing that, your motor control is gonna be better. Your, you know, your focus is obviously gonna be better, your control is gonna be better, so your sets are gonna look better.

[00:55:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: And I love that you're thinking about it as a, this is something that's very common, right? You work with a trainer and all of a sudden you can do 10 more reps than you would've been able to do on your own. It's the same kind of thing, right? Where your mind is sort of getting in the way. But if you just focus on that feeling at this very moment, it's, it's transformative.

[00:55:56] Dr. Scott Sherr: And this is something that actually, that you've actually been very helpful with as well for me as, as my own practice. But I didn't think about it this exact way until you said it, because you know, this is what you do. Right? It's so, it is super cool overall to think about it in that capacity. And I think it'd be very helpful for those that are listening, that it's not like we're trying to, you know, make you like meditate and be, have no thoughts.

[00:56:16] Dr. Scott Sherr: That's not the idea. The idea is just to focus on what's happening now. 

[00:56:20] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah. Well, I mean, you, you know that I'm a, I'm a big fan of, uh, uh, a Ashanti if anyone knows who he is, but he's, you know, and he's like, his words always rain through my head when I'm training. I'm not a meditator. Like, don't, you know, I don't wanna be the meditator, like, life is meditating through me, right?

[00:56:35] Thomas DeLauer: So, like, when I'm working out, that's how I feel. I don't want, it's meditation for, for, for gain or for betterment is like a, a tactic and a tool. That's not necessarily what I'm after. I'm, I'm right. I guess in a way I am, but it's just, I'm also just trying to be, so it's like when that happens, it's like feeling the energy move through me.

[00:56:53] Thomas DeLauer: I. It's not like, okay, I have to do this meditation thing while I'm working out. No, you're actually just working [00:57:00] out, but you're working out to truly work out. The meditative aspect is just vocabulary you put on what you really should be probably doing anyway. 

[00:57:07] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. It's the, it's the lack of suffering.

[00:57:09] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right? The idea is that you don't have to suffer, even if pain is, is ongoing, right? Pain is, is inevitable and suffering is optional. When you're more mindful of these things, it becomes more of the, the situation becomes the ecosystem, and it's all, it's all good. But wanted to also ask you, I know we're kind of getting to the end here a little bit about nutrition and carbohydrates, and so how do you think about carbohydrates within or pre post intra-workout?

[00:57:32] Dr. Scott Sherr: Like what is your, what is your typical recommendation here? How does it change for you depending on what you're gonna do? 

[00:57:38] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, definitely. Um, my relationship with carbohydrates is confusing for most people, and rightfully so because, uh, I would still consider myself a, a relatively, if not a. I'm definitely a low carb guy, but I treat carbs as a supplement, uh, rather than like an imperative fuel source.

[00:57:55] Thomas DeLauer: And that's where, you know, I differ from a lot of athletes and I'm definitely not saying that carbohydrates are bad for athletes at all. There's. In fact, I think it's probably the people that are in the top of 1% of are probably using copious amounts of carbohydrates. So clearly it, it works, but for me, I am much more of a fan of keeping it lower carbohydrate and then using carbs as sort of an exogenous supplement when I need them because the body doesn't need them to survive.

[00:58:19] Thomas DeLauer: But when there's heightened brain demand, things like that, it does kind of make some sense in ways. But from a parasympathetic perspective, carbohydrates are definitely something that puts you into that calm state, right. Now, when you look at it from a cortisol perspective, one of the only things that we can see in scientific literature that truly blunts cortisol is insulin, right?

[00:58:41] Thomas DeLauer: So, and there are unique situations where insulin and cortisol kind of coexist, but they're usually very like adipose, hypertrophic states. Like those are the kind of states you don't want to be in, right? Where you're, you're really gaining fat, but carbohydrates can be used to bring yourself to a calmer state, right?

[00:59:00] Thomas DeLauer: So we've all kind of heard, maybe we all haven't heard it, but a lot of us have heard about having carbohydrates at night to help induce sleep, right? Mm-hmm. So that is simply the carbohydrates, like the large neutral amino acids, not having to compete anymore. So you're getting more of these carbohydrates into the actual brain and the tryptophan into the brain, ultimately converting into serotonin for sleep to melatonin.

[00:59:21] Thomas DeLauer: Sure. But still, uh, there's a calming effect that happens pretty instantly. Also, people don't understand always that insulin. Binds to these different, uh, you know, orogenic neurons in the brain that actually turn them off and it can actually, so it basically can reduce all this like excitatory, stimulatory activity in your brain.

[00:59:40] Thomas DeLauer: So sometimes the strategic use of carbohydrates, pre or intra workout can actually help calm you down. And that's how I use them, which is so opposite from what I think a lot of people use 'em for. Like, oh, I get my carbs, I want to get amped up. Unfortunately, the scientific literature is very clear. They did this with, uh, unflavored, malted [01:00:00] dextrin, and they did this where they had like, uh, basically and water.

[01:00:03] Thomas DeLauer: They basically told people they were giving them carbohydrates and didn't, and they performed the same as the group that did have the carbohydrates that they told. They had the carbohydrates. So in essence, carbohydrates and Dr. Tim Nos did a lot of this stuff is like, it, it really is a psychological aid in a lot of cases because we see carbs as energy.

[01:00:19] Thomas DeLauer: Um, so you don't need them, but the part that is true and is documented is how it kinda shifts your state. So intra workout carbohydrates, like maybe some watermelon juice is like one of my favorites if I'm going to do it. Multiple reasons why I like watermelon juice. One, it's uh, you know, it's a nice ratio of glucose fructose, so you're not getting a heavy insulin spike.

[01:00:41] Thomas DeLauer: Uh, in itself also, uh, you're getting pretty good vasodilation 'cause of the citruline in it. Uh, it's also one of the best sort of minerally balanced fruit juices that you could have. So you're getting a good, nice kind of mix there. But the reason that you have an intra workout is there's this thing called the insulin, independent glucose uptake.

[01:00:59] Thomas DeLauer: So insulin can help you out from a parasympathetic state, but also just having some glucose on board can help you out from a parasympathetic state. So when you're actually moving your muscles and you're contracting your muscles themselves, you can take up glucose, still fruit through what's called glute four translocation through the primary means in which you draw glucose in.

[01:01:19] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. But it's happening independent of insulin. So this is really cool for people that are dealing with metabolic dysfunction or insulin resistant because you can actually start. This is getting off a little tangential for a second, but you can condition your body to be able to utilize carbs at a cellular level without dealing with insulin.

[01:01:35] Thomas DeLauer: So it's a great way to sort of introduce carbs in. So people that are insulin resistant will say, you know, if you wanna have your cake and eat it too, like bring your cake to the gym. Like that's like, you know, right. Literally wanna do cake. So that's what makes it fascinating, but also just immediately post-workout.

[01:01:50] Thomas DeLauer: Right. So that's gonna put you into that sympathetic state or parasympathetic state a little quicker. Sure. Help you calm down. You just have to look at it, you know what works for you. Because if you're overweight, you're trying to lose fat. There is really strong evidence that like waiting a little while after your workout, before you eat is gonna be more advantageous for body composition.

[01:02:11] Thomas DeLauer: Mm-hmm. So you kind of have to balance it. Right. So I would say if you're overweight, carbohydrates. With your last meal of the day make the most sense. It's gonna help you get your sleep, which is gonna help you be more parasympathetic anyway, right? If you're already lean and you're an athlete, I encourage you to maybe just have like a small bolus of carbohydrates immediately post-workout.

[01:02:31] Thomas DeLauer: Don't even worry about having the protein just yet. Just get a little, you know, 20 grams of carbs coming from like either like a cyclic dextrin or a watermelon juice or something, and then kind of get yourself into that recovery state. In fact, um, Dr. Mike Israel, uh, ISEL and I talked about this too, and he's, you know, most people know him as, he's probably one of the leading hypertrophy channels, at least on YouTube.

[01:02:53] Thomas DeLauer: And he, he admittedly will say like, carbohydrates don't necessarily influence muscle growth too much except for the fact that they calm you [01:03:00] down, right? And, uh, so they're not going to, insulin's not gonna be like. In that way, a huge player for hypertrophy, it can be, but the carbohydrates in the totem pole of muscle growth are at the bottom, absolutely at the bottom in terms of like stimulus first, protein next, then you have calories, then you have carbs.

[01:03:19] Thomas DeLauer: So negligible impact, but from a parasympathetic stand, uh, parasympathetic side of things, very powerful. 

[01:03:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. That's good to kind of get an order of up operations there specifically. But from a, from a parasympathetic activation, the carbs are great, especially at night to help people sleep. So that's what you'd recommend for most people overall as opposed to working out and then having carbs right after, if you're already have a little bit of weight to lose, for example.

[01:03:44] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, I think it's, you know, you have to do a cost benefit analysis on that. 

[01:03:47] Dr. Scott Sherr: Right? Yeah. Like, makes sense. Yeah. You know, it's, uh, there's other ways to down regulate your parasympathetic nervous system too, as we discussed overall here, many different ways. Um, maybe to fi maybe to finish up, we can talk a little bit about supplementation.

[01:03:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: If there's anything specifically that you use either pre post intra-workout that you think is helpful from the parasympathetic side. I mean, there's many things like of course, protein that's gonna help with anabolic aspects of, of muscle building. Um, we know that the protein timing doesn't matter as much as we used to think, but is there anything from a, from a parasympathetic perspective that you found can be helpful for you?

[01:04:19] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, um, I mean I've had cool, one that's like very easy to tell is when I did the, the do the pool work with Laird versus when I did another round and I did the pool work out in, uh, when, when I say pool work, you're basically at the bottom of a pool with dumbbells, you know, like. Drowning yourself, um, working out.

[01:04:35] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, and I've done with some of the, some of the soft guys out in, uh, in Fort Bragg. I guess it's Fort Liberty now, uh, out in North Carolina, Uhhuh and a couple different situations where I actually tried using like a half a troche of TRO home before doing pool work. And it was a different ballgame. It really was.

[01:04:51] Thomas DeLauer: And that's purely anecdotal and who knows, I can always placebo myself, but that was pretty significant. Like, I don't know if I would do that on like a heavy resistance training day, maybe I would. Sure. I don't know. But for that, I mean, that was clearly. I was more parasympathetic, right? I was, my breath holds were significantly better.

[01:05:08] Thomas DeLauer: I wasn't panicking underwater, and it was like, go time. I could feel that. Definitely, uh, for like regular workouts, like I mentioned, the blue canine iss a big one for me. I'll usually do a low dose creatine. I don't. Um, and that's more for the nootropic effect more than anything, quite frankly. I, I'm really sensitive to creatine from a water retention perspective.

[01:05:28] Thomas DeLauer: Um, and I battle my own demons with body composition stuff, so maybe I'll just get over it. But when I have, you know, mm-hmm. Five plus grams of creatine. And I tend to hold water. So a lot of times, like first thing in the morning, I'll just have like two grams, which kind of, um, again, the literature's pretty strong.

[01:05:42] Thomas DeLauer: There's a pretty immediate effect, especially if you're sleep deprived. Uh, so, you know, that's kind of a part of like the pre-workout stack for me. You know, caffeine of some kind, which is usually negligible amounts on the mo you know, for the most part. I'll usually try to keep it like under 75 milligrams, usually just Gotcha.

[01:05:57] Thomas DeLauer: Small, like a green tea, tea type thing. Pretty small. Yeah. Um, methylene blue usually [01:06:00] three days a week, you know, and I don't particularly use it any specific day. I just take it three times a week. I just like, I just space out my doses. I'm already lean, I'm already metabolically healthy. Yeah. I don't feel like I need it every day.

[01:06:13] Thomas DeLauer: Um, but it does boost my mood a little bit, which probably has an influence on parasympathetic tone, you know, during a workout. Yeah. And then of course some intra-workout carbs. So like what I'll do is I. I do half of my workouts, probably more like two thirds of my workouts fasted. And then I purposely do a couple workouts a week fueled, usually with just something like a cyclic dextrin, uh, which is just a, uh, a form of carbohydrate that has quick gastric absorption, but is low glycemic.

[01:06:41] Thomas DeLauer: And I do that literally just because it's hard for me to do. It's hard for me to work out with carbs on board, which tells me that I'm probably glucose intolerant to a certain degree because I've, I've become peripherally insulin resistant by training fasted so much. So I almost wanna condition my cells to get better at it.

[01:06:57] Thomas DeLauer: But I also notice, unfortunately, for. Sort of my dogma. I am, uh, I'm stronger and more calm when I have some carbs pre-workout. So I don't know. 

[01:07:08] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, yeah. Always a balance here. I get it. Well, this has been great, man. I mean, we could talk about so many things for such a long time, but Thomas, at the end of the podcast, I always ask everybody that's on here, um, and we've talked about a lot of this already, like three ways everybody can live smarter, not harder.

[01:07:23] Dr. Scott Sherr: That's the name of the podcast too. Um, do you have some, like some simple tips, you know, from, maybe from things we talked about today or other things that it doesn't have to be, you know, about workouts at all, um, in life, in family, that you think that everybody can do that can live, help them live smarter, not harder.

[01:07:38] Thomas DeLauer: I'd say the first one is just stop and feel your feet on the ground. That's, uh, something that's just always a game changer for me. Always works every single time if I just stop, feel my feet on the ground. So whenever you're, whenever you're stressed, whenever you're not stressed, just stop and just come into your body for a second, you know?

[01:07:54] Thomas DeLauer: Okay. For people that are fitness minded, things like that, that's just always a, that kinesthetic kind of feel that you need. I would say, um, lemme think of a couple good ones here.

[01:08:13] Thomas DeLauer: Well, it's a little cheeky given everything we've talked about, but breathe, right? Just breathe. And if you know you're ever in a pinch, if you're even workouts, right? Just a simple box breath, going back to, uh, you know, something like that, right? Mm-hmm. And then the last one is don't be afraid to use a crutch.

[01:08:29] Thomas DeLauer: We have this mindset in our society that like a crutch is cheating, or a crutch is gonna always be addicting. And like, it's, it's sort of like the use of e even like psychedelics, right? Like, they can be a crutch, right? It's like these things are, but that's okay. Like a crutch is okay, especially if you're seeing it as a crutch and you're not making it your reality all the time, right?

[01:08:53] Thomas DeLauer: So, uh, and the same concept even with methylene blue, it's like, okay, 

[01:08:56] Dr. Scott Sherr: mm-hmm. 

[01:08:57] Thomas DeLauer: For metabolic dysfunction, like it [01:09:00] might be a crutch, but why is that a problem? Like, why, why do we have to do everything? Like, I always joke about like, I didn't get to like bi my biomechanical ailments. Naturally, what I mean by that is.

[01:09:11] Thomas DeLauer: Squatting 4 0 5 and doing these, that's not a natural thing. I've damaged my body in unnatural ways, and I might need unnatural help to get me back. I can't expect to just wear barefoot shoes and do yoga and correct everything that I've done with thousands of pounds on my body, right? So I just encourage people to change the mindset surrounding temporary uses of a crutch, because that's exactly what they are.

[01:09:34] Thomas DeLauer: They're not forever, they're not, you know, they literally can be a crutch. And it's a little bit of a liberating thought when you, when you put it like that. 

[01:09:40] Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, you don't have to worry about it. Right. You can just, you know, let it know it's part of your, part of your flow, part of your journey in that case.

[01:09:46] Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. Um, well Thomas, this has been awesome, man. I wanna just do a quick minute to introduce, uh, you as a speaker at our Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Symposium in October, October 17th and 18th in Boulder, Colorado. I'm really, for, really looking forward to having you be a speaker, man. Are you excited to come?

[01:10:03] Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, I'm stoked, man. Always awesome to go to Boulder and uh, I'm happy to be a part of it. It's gonna be sweet. 

[01:10:09] Dr. Scott Sherr: Awesome. And, uh, where can people find out more about you, Thomas, and your work if, uh, if they're looking for you? I know it's pretty easy, but you can get this from handles and things 

[01:10:17] Thomas DeLauer: I usually joke where, how do they get away from me?

[01:10:19] Thomas DeLauer: Um, but yeah, just, uh, thomas delauer.com or just on YouTube or Instagram just at Thomas DeLauer. 

[01:10:26] Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay, awesome. Well thank you sir for your time and I'll see you soon in Vegas and other locations and always good to have you and thanks for being here. For sure, man. Thanks bud. Thanks so much for tuning into another episode of the Smarter and a Harder podcast where we give you 1 cent solutions to $64,000 questions.

[01:10:43] Dr. Scott Sherr: This was a fantastic podcast with Thomas to record. We talked about parasympathetic ovation. We talked about performance, anabolic strength and conditioning, and how you can really do this using very practical tools and tips, breath work, posture, supplementation, meditation, carbs, and so much more. If you like this podcast, don't forget to like and subscribe below and check out our home Hope symposium@homehope.org.

[01:11:07] Dr. Scott Sherr: Thomas will be speaking there October 17th and 18th in Boulder, Colorado. Two days of amazing speakers. Come check it out. We hope to see you there. Take care.

Find more from Thomas DeLauer:

Website: https://www.thomasdelauer.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomasdelauer

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThomasDeLauer

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