Optimised, still depleted

Hosted by us, Tess Brouwer and seven-time world champion, Layne Beachley. We're the founders of Awake Academy. This podcast mixes raw life lessons, expert wisdom, and practical tips to help you stop

sleepwalking through life and start living it on your terms. You ready to wake up and thrive? Let's go.

Let's go. Season three is proudly brought to you by AIA, a leading life, health, and wellbeing insurer, supporting healthier, longer, better lives.

Protect what matters most, and AIA will help you to do it for life. Welcome back, dream team, to another episode of A Wake Up Call. Today we are stripping back one of the most overcomplicated ... I can't even say it ... overcomplicated

words in health, biohacking. It's so complicated, we can't even say it. When you hear biohacking, you probably think of cold plungers, expensive wearables, red

lights, supplements, and people with very elaborate morning routines. Cue Layne Beachley. Oh, come on.

My morning routine's not that elaborate. It doesn't need a spreadsheet. No, it doesn't.

But what if the most powerful biohacks are actually the boring things you can do for free? They're not boring.

Yeah, they look beautiful. Yeah. Camilla Thompson is a nationally recognized nutritionist, executive ICF coach, founder

of Biohack Me, and author of Biohack Me. Her interest in this field became deeply personal after burnout, sepsis, and years of chronic illness that she has connected to living in a mold-affected home.

Is that where the sepsis came from? No. We will dig into that.

That was after. Okay. God, you had the full remit, didn't you?

Today, her work is about making biohacking accessible, affordable, and achievable, the three A's. We love it at A Wake Academy.

So we are asking what works, what is hype, what is worth your money, and what can you do to start doing today for free? Camilla, welcome to A Wake Up Call.

Thank you. So good to be here. Okay.

So we are going to start with a rapid fire of a different sort today. It's called keep, skip, or depends. Okay.

We're not even going into a wake up call. No, we're going... We're skipping that too.

Skip, depends. Okay. Morning sunlight soon after waking.

Yes. Keep. Coffee straight after waking.

Skip. Oh, mouth tape. Yes.

Depends. Electrolytes. Keep.

Cold shower or cold plunge. Cold shower. Yeah.

Sauna. Sauna. Yes.

Keep, keep, keep. Traditional or infrared? Either.

Keep. Okay. Red light therapy.

Keep. Intermittent fasting or long fasts? I think intermittent fasting.

Keep. Yeah. Keep.

Keep. Keep. Keep, keep, keep.

10,000 steps a day. Keep. These are easy.

Oh, wearables. Oh. Look, I think we'll talk about this a bit more detail later on, but it kind of...

Depends? Depends. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. We've got to come back to that.

Biological age testing. Keep. Alcohol.

Skip. Oh. Oh.

All right. Party, please. Camilla, we love to start every episode with a wake up call.

What was the moment that changed your life? Well, yeah, I think we just sort of mentioned it, but sepsis was the moment that changed my life.

woken up, and my organs would have slowly started shutting down. And I had sepsis. I had no idea how serious sepsis was.

And no symptoms, no signs, so... Well, I did, but I ignored them. Feather.

Feather. The feather. I blamed it on the full moon.

And mercury bring in retrograde. I was like, "I feel really weird. I feel heavy."

I had an infection, so I had a kidney infection, and I just kept pushing on through. I was still working. I'd been at work two days prior to ending up in hospital.

And I was just pushing. I was in survival mode, I was a mom of two young kids, perfectionist, was working in a media job, and was just pushing myself way too hard, disconnected with my body, thought

I was doing all the right things because I was eating healthy and going to the gym, but I was working out like a maniac as well. And that was my wake-up call.

And I just went, "What the hell have I done to myself? What have I been doing?" And it was like this bubble burst.

And I read a book in hospital called The Rushing Woman by Dr. Libby Weaver, which changed my life. And I read the book, and I was like, "Oh my God, what have I been doing to myself?"

I thought she'd written it for me. I was like, "This is me. This is me."

And I had no understanding of what I was doing to my nervous system, my immune system, and how I was operating and yeah. And it was a real moment of like, "Why am I doing this?"

And it was self-worth issues, it was trying to prove something. It was survival. In that period, did you take the time to reflect on the embryonic stages of that?

So a lot of people say, "Show me the adult, I'll show you the child." Were there childhood issues that were coming through? Absolutely.

Oh, okay. Yes. You were aware of that?

Yeah. Or you just saw those aspects of yourselves when you read the book from... I think what the wake-up call for me was, was that my role model, my dad, who's 80 and

still works full-time. What? Yeah, he's amazing, but he's always prioritized work over everything, and it's what keeps

him alive. It's his thing. It's his passion.

It's his purpose. And I grew up with that as a role model. My dad left when I was nine, but I very rarely saw him, and he was always working.

And I found myself, I fell into that trap of that workaholism and perfectionism and feeling like that was my self-worth. If I worked hard and I hit my targets and I was working for a media agency, I was the

only person with young kids, I'd left the boy's dad, he was an alcoholic, I'd been on my own with the boys financially. So I got myself into this survival stuck, fight or flight, and I just didn't prioritize

my own health. And after that happened, I was like, "That's it. I'm at the top of my to-do list."

And I changed what I was doing, so I'd been studying full-time as well as working as well. Wow. And collecting diplomas in health coaching and coaching, and I was like, "I need to go

and do the coaching." Are you enough yet? Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Oh, don't. Yes.

Yeah. I've stopped doing that one now. I'm like, "Yeah, enough."

But I'm so grateful for it because it got me into the work that I'm doing now. And then I lived in mold for many years and got really on well, and that's kind of got me to the point now where I'm working in more on the preventative, the longevity, the biohacking

space and health optimization. So all of these things, the adversity brings us into where we're at. It's incredible, the stories we hear over and over again in this field is like every

breakdown leads people onto a path that they're probably more designed to be on. Yeah, 100%. So the path you landed on is biohacking.

You're not the biohackers that the world's used to is sort of like the Brian- The Daves, the Brian. Yeah, who almost look lack of life.

Yes. You vibrate. Yeah.

Well, I probably don't do all the crazy shit that those guys do. Like they're so extreme and I think I was listening to one of your pods talking about optimization and I don't think Brian Johnson had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease

by then, but I've always said, how can you take that many supplements a day? The same with Dave, who's an absolute legend and I've met the guy, but it's like, wow, this is extreme.

I think that's what we think about biohacking. We think about these kind of tech bros, we think about millionaires spending loads of money and they've got all this time and they're all trying to reverse their age and live to

180. It just all seems really polarizing. To me it did.

I was just like, whoa, I didn't realize I've been biohacking for years because I've been so unwell. I had to take control of my health and unfortunately there's more education now about mold and

black mold, but there wasn't back eight, 10 years ago when I was going through it. I really had to go, okay, what can I do to try and reverse this chronic illness that I had, which was SIRS, which was chronic inflammation, which scared the crap out of me because as

we know that leads to all disease in the body. I was like, what can I do? I've got to look at all these things that are going to help support me, but it's the

basics. It's the foundations, you know, and that's where nutrition and sleep and optimizing all those key sort of foundations is really what's important, but biohacking is about bio-individuality.

It's about understanding our uniqueness and not following what the latest trends are on TikTok or Instagram or what Caleb Barnes is up to or whoever biohacker it might be. It's intuitively knowing what your body needs and learning to trust yourself and then finding

what those specific hacks are that are going to support you and your lifestyle. At Awake Academy, we really talk a lot about prevention as well. We want to help people find that path before they hit rock bottom.

We don't want to end up in hospital in an induced coma or having to rebuild your life after a severe neck injury. We want to help people beat that crunch, you know, we don't want them to find themselves

on the floor before they rebuild. During our research and looking at our own data, we realized one of the barriers to entry is not knowledge, it's actually the permission to do it because, as you explained, you know,

you are the do-it-all machine, much like Tess was in the early years of her career, but when they don't have the permission to do it, then they don't give themselves the permission to do it.

But where I'm coming from is cost and time tend to be the two biggest things that they claim to be barriers to going in and doing these things. And I think these tech wizards, these Brian's and Dave's that spend millions of dollars

and have all the time in the world, I don't think they actually sell it very well to me. No. But what you're saying is it's actually very simple and it's individualized, but you have

eight core principles that you'd like to focus on. If we wanted to just break it down and make it as simple as possible, what would be the one most important thing people can do today to biohack their own lives?

that if you go to bed a bit earlier and you create a bookend with your day where you're reading a book, you're breathing yourself off to sleep, you're getting your nervous system into a much better place, and the body can heal and repair and you're fasting through

the night and you're giving yourself 12 hours of not digesting food, and you're optimizing your sleep, you can have more energy the next day, so then you're going to feel like you want to move your body, you're going to feel like you want to get up and get morning light,

and you're going to make better decisions around your food, so it has that beautiful flow on effect. So I think it's looking at, but it's different for everybody.

Some people might be sleeping amazing and going, "I don't need to optimize my sleep." It might be their nutrition. But mindset is so important.

Having a positive mindset. We talk about anti-aging. I talk about pro-aging.

Yes. You embrace it. Yeah, and Jogo, the joy of growing old, right?

I haven't heard that one. Yeah, I kind of made it up. Joy of growing old.

I like that. It's in my book. Jogo.

Yeah. So Fogo is the fear of growing old. Yeah.

And I have Jomo, which is the joy of missing out. Which is a great one. So now we have Jogo.

We've got Jogo, the joy of growing old. Brilliant. We are going to have to write a dictionary or a glossary of all of the things that we

come up with. Yeah. All the abbreviations.

Yeah. But the mindset piece is so important. Having a positive mindset, you get seven and a half years on your life.

There's been a study that's shown that, which is incredible. But I think having that positive mindset and knowing you've got that sense of purpose and passion in your life is really important.

I would like to add to that, I don't think it's even just seven years. I think it's more years in your life, or more life in your years. Yes.

I love that. And I learned that so many years ago, and it keeps on coming back. In fact, I had therapy last week, and I realized it was more around missing out on the moments.

It was getting me unstuck, because if I'm so optimised, you're missing out on life, and you're connecting, and living, and you get ... We're small business owners, so you get stuck into the doing rather than the being.

It's stuck into the optimising. Yeah, exactly. It's exhausting.

And it's overwhelming. I mean, I go onto my social media feed, and I'm just being shouted at constantly, "Do this.

Don't do this. This is going to kill you." And I'm like, "Oh, my God.

It's too much." It is too much. It's too much.

Yeah, it's too much. I just want to go back to the sleep thing, because I am a sleep optimiser, for example.

I like to read before I go to bed. I have a wind down routine. And then last night, because I just got home from interstate, my Kindle was downstairs.

I'd gone up to bed upstairs. I was super tired. I had two nights of really bad sleep, so I thought, "I'm not doing my routine tonight.

I'm just going to bed, and I'm going to get as much sleep as I possibly can." And then at three something, I woke up, ping, and it took me almost two hours to get back to sleep.

I attributed that to the fact that I didn't do my regular routine, that I just thought, "I'm so depleted. I'm so tired.

I don't have the time, or I don't have the energy to do that." How do you encourage people to maintain the motivation or the momentum to do the things, especially when they don't feel like it?

It's that consistency is key piece, and I think it's exactly what you just said. What is going to be the outcome if I don't? And I think we mentioned alcohol earlier as well.

And it's like you kind of go, "Do I really need this drink? What's going to be the outcome?" Yes, I do.

Yes, it's going to impact my sleep. Connection, number one factor of happiness. Sometimes you do want the drink.

You're at a beautiful lunch. You want to have a classic margarita, fantastic, or a spicy mugs, whatever your thing is, or a glass of white wine.

And it's like, "Do I need this?" Yes. And am I going to be okay?

But am I going to have a glass of wine at eight o'clock at night that's going to impact my sleep? So I think consistency is key, and also just attributing the emotion to it.

So how does something make us feel? So when we look at behavior change and habits, it's not necessarily the repetition all the time.

It's the emotion that's associated with. I know that if I do my evening routine, I'm going to feel X, Y, Z. And I'm talking about cortisol, which is probably that 3 a.m. is just you haven't ... the body

hasn't gone back and gone down into the parasympathetic. So- It's pretty stimulated all day. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to go into energy, and you just beautifully mentioned it then. It's about how you feel.

When I was the most broken, and I see so many of my attributes in you as well, I had been driven off cortisol and adrenaline probably my whole professional career. Yeah.

Wow. And I never really understood what a grounded energy felt like, that taking care of your mindset, your nutrition, putting all of your eight steps, as a seven, putting it all together.

It's not that you become this energizer bunny. You just become a really grounded sense of energy, and I never knew what that felt like. And I feel a lot of people don't do these steps because they're, "I'm fine, I'm energized."

I'm happy. I'm happy. And there's an edge to it.

What did you find in yourself when you started putting everything together? You read the book, you learned the science. What did that change in you?

Because I think people struggle to feel it. Yeah. It's so true.

And I think it comes down to the nervous system and being dysregulated. And the body can't heal when the nervous system isn't regulated. How do people know when they're dysregulated?

Well, I think you can feel it in your body a lot of the time. Like you can feel it in your chest, you're not sleeping properly, you find it hard to wind down, you can't sit and do nothing or just stare into nature, or you're always constantly

doing stuff. And it's, you know, the nervous system, you can feel it in your body when you're dysregulated. And I, yeah, like breath work was really important to me.

I was like the Russian woman, I was doing high cardio and everything was high pressure and I had to stop and start doing yoga and slowing down and focusing on my breath and doing all the things that I was like, "Yes, but this isn't doing anything.

What am I doing?" You know, now I love it. And I feel when my body needs that type of restorative practice, but when we are the

Russian woman or the Russian man or whatever it might be, and we are so on adrenaline and cortisol, almost stuck in that sympathetic nervous system, it's fight or flight or freeze, then it's really hard to bring the nervous system down.

And we think that we're operating in this place and it's an okay place to keep operating, but it's not sustainable. And as we know, the body keeps the score, right?

So then something will happen like me, you know, like stupid ending up in hospital, like I couldn't believe it. Like I was like, "How have I let myself get to this point?"

There's a lot of shame in that moment, isn't there? Yeah. I was like, "What the hell?"

You know, and I knew about health. I'd grown up, my mom was a complete health nut. And so I'd grown up, I'd had this blueprint around health, but I got so stuck in this

kind of work perfectionism space that my nervous system was just running on, yeah, high on fumes.

If someone doesn't have that, because I think the world's obsessed, what's your morning routine? But we love the nighttime routine.

What would be someone who's high, like high functioning, they've got a big job, they come home, they've got kids to feed. What is a perfect wind down routine for someone in the shortest amount of time?

Yeah. Look, I think- A bath.

Yeah. A bath. But then if you've got young kids, they're normally like, "Mommy, mommy, I used to love

the bath." You can't even go to the loo without being interrupted. Yeah.

Now after kids, I hate the bath. Yeah. Because they're like, "Oh."

Yeah. It just screams work. Yeah.

Look, I think it really depends on what time you have and, you know, what age kids you've got. Yeah.

But I think trying to carve some time out for yourself. A lot of people that I work with say, "Oh, I stay up on my computer or my phone or doing stuff or watching TV because it's my only time for myself.

And I'll go back to back binging Netflix or playing games and stuff because that's just my time." And it's trying to reframe what that time looks like because when we're on screens,

we're being stimulated. And so the brain and the nervous system is then still on high alert. So it's looking at what are some of those things that we can do that allow us to sort

of come down a few levels. What are yours? So I do breath work every night before I go to bed.

Just simple hands on the belly, in and out through the nose, belly breathing. That just really helps to flush out cortisol. I think it comes back to a safety piece of just telling your nervous system that you're

safe, you're okay, it's time to rest. I always read a book, even if it's five minutes, six minutes of reading reduces your stress by 68%.

No way. Yes. How good is that?

The mutational took a take on my king in a bed last night. Yeah, see? You had the intuition.

I did. And also it helps you to switch out of your life and into someone else's. I try not to read self-help books at night.

Me too. It's like you're going into some cheesy novel in Italy or something. It's like you're just in another world and then you fall asleep into that sort of dreamlike

state. So I think the breath work, I have a beautiful sleep tea as well. Magnesium is just such an amazing supplement for calming the nervous system as well before

you sleep. Do you have one? A nighttime routine?

Yeah. So I have a really hot shower and I sort of vision washing stress off my body. I make sure that pajamas on, skincare in the mirror and I just say some affirmations.

Oh, beautiful. I love reading. I don't drink tea because I'm up, I'll be weaning all night and then read Kindle in

bed and then my husband and I always do what are you grateful for and why to each other. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

So that's my life. That's amazing. And it doesn't happen all the time.

It just happens at night. It just happens at my house. Yeah.

I'll come in cuddle with you. I normally have like a snoring husband who's fallen straight asleep. I know.

I mean, since I've gone into premenopause, my sleep has just been so all over the place and it's funny. I talk a lot about chronotypes and bio-individuality and understanding with our sleep that we're

all bio-individual as well and we've got these different, some of us are the wolf and we're up later and some of us are the lion and I'm apparently now a dolphin. So I used to be a bear, which most of us are, and now I've become a really light, sensitive

sleeper since perimenopause. Yeah. And so...

That too will change. Yeah. Yeah.

You'll go through those phases. God. And it's like, you're more on high alert.

And I was reading about it last night and it's like, your body goes into a natural survival place again. Yeah.

So I'm really focusing on my breath. I also do a lot of like, if stuff comes in my head, I'm quite good now at shutting things down and learning to kind of observe the thoughts, but really kind of challenging them and go,

no, it's okay. We don't need to go there. So I think that really helps.

That helps. And writing a list after I finish work really helps because otherwise I ruminate about what I need to do.

So the to-do list done, so I've closed the loop and I have one meditation that I think I've listened to maybe a thousand times and it's every time I put it on, my body goes to sleep.

Yeah. Because it knows that it's... Yeah.

And that's what I find really comforting. I do that with my eye mask as well. So I've got a silk eye mask, which is good for wrinkles too.

So as soon as I put that on, my body kind of goes, ah, we know what we're doing here. Yeah. And I've also found the nose strips are amazing.

I don't know if you've used them, but the mouth tape's slightly constricted. And obviously you only really need that if you're a mouth breather, but the nose strips just open up your airwaves and they're not expensive.

It's such a good hack. And I've noticed actually ads now they're doing it for kids online as well because a lot of kids are mouth breathing.

I know my son does, like teenagers, they're like... So it's like for like 12 hours, but the nose strips are amazing. Literally you're like, oh my gosh, is this what breathing's like?

Yeah. That's a really good hack. And then it's not expensive.

So I think it's working out what you can do at night. And I like bookending, you know, what's your sort of morning rituals, evening rituals. And it just needs to be simple.

Whatever works for the individual.

Oh, that's very close. Yes. You're the poster child.

You really do it so beautifully, with grace. With gray. With gray grace.

Gray grace. And I want to touch on that from a mindset point of view, what it took you to age pro-gracefully. And then I'd love to get from you, Camilla, is just your, how we biohack, because you

reduce your age by how many years? 16. Okay.

So let's talk about mindset with LB, and then I want to throw to Camilla about how you did that within your bio-individuality. I've reduced my bio age by 10 years, so yeah, I'm 44, not 54.

I'd say it's predominantly a mindset thing. So I detach from the judgment. I think that's the first thing for women.

They're so worried about what others think of us and what they're going to say about us that we get caught up in that minefield, and there's no safe place to step. Sooner or later, you're going to step on a landmine.

Into the mirror. And you're going to get blown apart. I think also I just, with my hair, for example, and then that was one of the ways I was trying

to maintain my youth was I was getting my hair colored. And then just before COVID, I thought there's so many better ways to utilize my time than to sit in a chair and have my hair colored.

I'd much rather be focusing on other aspects of my life. Just a longer surf, really? Much preferably, yeah.

I mean, everything comes back to surfing. Yeah. That's a great longevity hack, is surfing.

It really is. It really is. It's everything.

And then everything else. I had to surrender because in early 2021, I think it was, I did a speech and they gifted me clothes and it was a swimwear, actually it was a surfwear brand.

Anyway, I went into the change room to put on a bikini and I walked out and I cried because my body had changed so much and I was able to hide it until I couldn't hide it any longer. And now I was standing in front of friends going, "What's happened?

Why have I got a gut now? Where'd this visceral fat come in?" As a surfer, I've prided myself on looking good in a bikini.

That'd been my motivation to do intermittent fasting and all of the things and none of it was working anymore. None of it works.

None of it works when you hit perimenopause. Perimenopause, you can still manage it. Yeah, I've managed it through perimenopause, but once I hit menopause, I was dusted.

Anyway, long story is my friend Brooke literally said to me, "Just be grateful for what your body has allowed you to do. It's pretty amazing what you've done and you just now need to embrace the fact that it's

changing." And I thought that's really sound advice, so simple, hard to do. When you've got such a, I don't know, well, look, honestly, it's such a judgment of myself

and I had to detach from the judgment of myself and by doing that, it's helped me detach from judgment of others and now I just embrace who I am, what I am and how I feel and come all the way back to the start of our conversation, which is that grounding pace, knowing how

you want to feel helps you take action towards making you feel better that way or getting you closer to feeling that way. If I want to feel empowered and I want to feel confident and I want to feel courageous,

then I have to continuously and consistently do things that help me get that way or feel that way. We have a quick favor to ask.

If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people.

And it shows, I mean, look how bright your eyes and your skin and your hair looks. Yeah, you look incredible. Thanks.

I haven't brushed it today.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I think we confuse aging and decline and not the same thing. And in Western culture, we hide people away as they get old, right?

We're like, "Oh God, they're aging, put them in a home, get rid of them." Whereas in other cultures, wise, elderly people are revered, right? They're elders.

They're indigenous cultures. Exactly. But even in other countries, they bring the older people into the family and they learn

and that keeps them young, right, because they're around younger people. But I went back to the UK in March and it was my great aunt's 100th birthday. And my dad's 80 and my mom's 80, well, she'll be 80 in December.

And I have the most amazing aging role models, right? My mom still does yoga, she climbs up mountains, she's super healthy. My dad still works full time as a TV producer and director.

And he deep sea dives around the world. He drinks a lot of vodka and doesn't eat that healthy, but there's more to this, he calls it Russian water because he doesn't actually drink water.

I don't know how he's doing it. Anyway, it kind of made me go, "Gosh, we've got to rethink this biohacking thing a little bit because it's not just about all of these other things, it's about passion and purpose

and mindset." And my great aunt's 100, she is sharper than most of my girlfriends in their 50s going through menopause, right?

She is like on the ball and she's got this incredible sense of purpose. She bosses everyone around in her, she's an end of life care, but she just keeps living and going and she almost died and now she's just, she's refused to die.

And she keeps going and she's like the ambassador and she's got this amazing community. So that's really working for her. And then I look at my dad and I go, "God, what's going on here?"

So it's made me really rethink, and I think decline in aging are two very different things. And our lifestyle, so our epigenetics is really important. Genetics play a small part, right?

And I do a lot of DNA methylation testing with my clients. I think it's a test everyone should do. And just find out what you might be predisposed to, what's your APOE gene, what are we looking

at from an Alzheimer's perspective, what do you need to do to support your brain health, your heart health? I mean, we all need to do that anyway.

We're going to do that with you and we'll report back. Yeah. And so dementia is now the number one killer in Australia, which blows my mind.

And a lot of that is linked to lack of sleep, 63% of the dementia cases are women, right? So estrogen issues in our brain, when we look at what happened for years of women being feared into not doing HRT.

I was one of them. Yeah. My mum is that generation.

It seems I told her I wanted an HRT, she went, "Oh my God, you're going to get breast cancer, you're going to just fear monger." And I was like, "Mum, it's okay."

I think there's a new study that's just come out that's showing it's actually protective. Yeah. Yeah.

Where you think about what's worse too. Yeah. And our bones start crumbling.

Yeah. This is the thing I think about women is we start becoming irrelevant biologically and we don't have to be.

Right? I feel better now at 49 than I did in my 20s and 30s. And I...

That's right. Yeah. I know I'll go into my 50s feeling amazing.

And a lot of it's mindset, it's energy, I really give a shit about my food and where it comes from. I go to my farmer's market, I make the effort on a Sunday to spend an hour and a half driving

to a farmer's market, meeting the local farmers, getting amazing produce. And things like that are important to me, and sleep and natural light, and just making sure that you're focusing on those foundations.

I think that's how we pro-age. And not getting negative about it and assuming that, "Oh my God, I've hit 40. My body's going to start crumbling."

Because things are happening. Our mitochondria is being damaged, but there's stuff we can do to protect that. We've got zombie cells, we've got our telomeres, all of this stuff biologically starts happening

as we age, but we now know there's so much we can do from a prevention strategy.

Yes. A lot of people, and we have this from our own research, it's not that they don't want to know, it's they don't have...

And they do at some point know that they don't have the time to do anything about it. So can you give a quick overview, mitochondria, telomeres, H hormone, just give the top three that impact our aging.

So look, telomeres are a bit like the shoelaces, on the ends of your shoelaces, right? And as we age, they shorten. And there's things we can do to extend that telomere length.

So things like intermittent fasting, exercise. To be honest, exercise is the biggest longevity lever. It pretty much supports everything.

And also I have to say intermittent fasting really, when I researched it for my book, all roads led to fasting with a lot of the sort of reversing of aging. So telomeres, there's lots of going to sleep.

Having good sleep helps to extend telomere length. So mitochondria, so that's like a bit like our internal battery. It was the force in Star Wars was inspired, George Lucas was inspired by the mitochondria.

So it's like we've all got this amazing energy, this force within us. May the force be with you. May the force be with us.

That sounds so good, may the mitochondria be with you. May the mitochondria be with you. The energy cells be with you.

Bit of a mouthful, that one. But things like red light therapy, I mean, amazing the research into red light therapy now.

I know Parkinson's New South Wales did a big study and putting people in beds in the really good medical grade beds. And it reduced the symptoms of Parkinson's.

And the byproduct of that study was it also helped to improve gut microbiome. So we know that red light is amazing for so many different things, but it also really helps to charge up that mitochondria, that battery.

And we produce something called ATP out of our mitochondria and that's our energy. And our energy comes from fuel, right? So it's food, it's oxygen, it's water.

And that's why it's so important that we nourish our bodies and that we're hydrating properly. We are literally like the ocean inside. We are water and salt.

When we cry, our tears are salty. When we have a saline drift, it's water and salt. That's how we hydrate.

So we need to make sure we're getting the right minerals in our water. Like amazing when we're drinking filtered water, but often it's demineralized. So we need to re-mineralize with good minerals and Celtic sea salts and hydrolytes and things

like that. Well, not hydrolyte. Electrolytes.

Hydrolytes. Pull the trigger. From my point of view, that's where it gets a little bit overwhelming because there are

so many hacks. There are so many things we can and can't do, we should and shouldn't do. There's so many things that we need to focus on.

Let's keep it as simple as we possibly can. Let's keep it simple. Look, I really do think hydration is important.

I know I've just touched on it, but the brain is made out of fat and water. So we really, for long-term brain health, hydration is important. And so that does not include alcohol, coffee, black tea, energy drinks, soda drinks.

Well, look, there are lots of benefits to coffee as well. And look, alcohol in moderation. And when you have alcohol, then you drink water and coconut water and things like that

with it. But I think focusing on making sure you are hydrated every day, that's a simple thing. And what are the symptoms of dehydration?

Well, headaches is a lot, and they've seen sodium deficiencies linked to migraines and things like that. So we need the right good salts, not your table salt, but good quality salts, Celtic

sea salt. There's some great brands that do really good, there's one in WA, SODI, and they do great hydration salts.

Use it every day. So do I. It's simple, one sachet, bang, done. That's going to give you...

I just put everything of Celtic sea salt next to the coffee machine. Yep. Same.

I have it next to my sink. Okay. So that's a really easy one.

Hydration, our body needs it, and our brain needs it. And a minimum, sorry to talk over you, a minimum of two to three liters a day. Yeah.

Yeah. So just making sure we're hydrating properly. You'll find when you're hydrated properly, you don't go to the toilet as much because

you're holding onto water as you should. The cells, often if we're not hydrating, the cells aren't getting the water in, which is why the minerals and the salts really help.

So that's good for your mitochondria as well. Yes. Yes.

It is. May the flow be with you. Yes.

I guarantee you. May the flow in pools. Don't go to the toilet that much, but I guarantee you.

I know that you do. Number two. Okay.

So hydration. So number two has got to be nutrition and making sure you're eating the right foods. Mediterranean diet.

It's a really simple diet to follow, like good fats, avocado. We are so blessed here in Australia. We have the best avocados.

You know, olive oil, really good quality olive oil. Great nuts. Macadamias.

Like, come on Australia. We really rock when it comes to good fat food. So I think thinking about the body and the brain and fat.

So nutrition is important. Making sure that we're getting the right complex carbs. Fiber is so underrated.

And good quality protein. I mean, we all know we're being pushed protein, like we were pushed drugs when we were teenagers. It's our next level.

Next level proteins. We haven't had enough anxiety. Now it's fiber.

We'll have like a, I know there's like, you know, we've got orthorexia around clean eating, orthosomnia around sleep anxiety. We're going to have something around proteins soon.

It'll be orthoprotein or something. That's too anxious for them to have enough proteins. I think nutrition.

And when, just on that nutrition thing, when you talk about intermittent fasting, because that would tie a little bit into nutrition, that doesn't actually have to be during the day, does it?

No. Like we need a minimum 12 hours where the body is not digesting food. Yeah.

It can't do all the magical work it needs to do to heal. So, you know, if you're having dinner at seven o'clock and really you want to eat at least a few hours before you go to bed so that the body isn't digesting food whilst you sleep

and that can impact your sleep, but seven till seven, like most people must be able to do that. If you can't metabolically, there's normally something if you wake up and you're like,

Oh, so hungry. However, you know, there's nuances around this for women. When we start going through hormonal changes is that we probably do need to have some protein

within a certain time of waking. I'm not hungry in the mornings. I can't eat.

I do 16 and eight. You know, I was very lucky to meet Dr. Michael Mosley when he was here in Sydney and I love that man and yeah, bless him, but he, he just inspired me around fasting and I've, I've

done extended fast too, but yeah, so I think the nutrition piece is really important. So we've got hydration nutrition. I think, look, natural light is so important and most biohacking technologies are trying

to replicate nature. So I love red light therapy, but also getting the sunlight at the right time. I talk about being a plant, you know, and that's one of my hacks is the plant hack.

Plants need water, they need hydration, they need beautiful fresh air and they need light in order to grow. And so do we as humans, you know, we really do like people used to convalesce in hospitals

when they were sick and they used to be put out in the sun so they could get vitamin D, you know, and we've become so scared of the sun and rightly so, you know, we have the highest rates of skin cancer, but the sun is like, it's, it's there to heal us.

And so I think that natural light in the morning is so great for our circadian rhythm and just setting us up for the day. You know, as soon as our eyes open, we're trying to work out how we're going to go back

to sleep. That's like literally what happens all day. The body's preparing to go back to bed.

So yeah, I think natural light, nutrition, hydration. I love it. And if you want to dig deeper, what's the best thing you can do?

Because knowledge is power. Data is power. We don't want to overdo it, so I think testing's really important.

Data is so important. I think we can go the other way where we're like Brian Johnson where he's testing 24 hours a day.

And even Kayla Barnes. I saw her last year at the, there was a biohacking summit that WonderLusted, which was fantastic. And Kayla, we all just sat there, all of these women in the audience and we just went, holy

shit. Like this is so overwhelming. Like this woman is literally testing everything from every inch of her life.

And it's too much. Who's living? You know, like we've got to have fun and be silly and eat the dessert and do stuff and

have the glass of wine. And I love that she's testing it for us. She's the guinea pig.

And she's enjoying that. Yeah. And her poor husband, he's dragged into all of it.

My husband just, like there's certain things he'll do. Like I'm kind of, he's edging round to my way, but he loves his Guinness, he's Irish, you know, and, but he drinks less than he used to, but it's, it's quite meeting people

where they are. But I think the data thing is really important. Gut microbiome, our gut health, there's so much going on there, particularly if you've

got low energy, you know, find out what's going on with the gut microbiome testing. Your DNA methylation testing is just so brilliant for women, the Dutch tests, for hormones, the urine test.

I really recommend that.

they're just the environment, like it's, it's everywhere and it disrupts so much. Like, I mean, I had it growing in my nose, into my brain and my body. So you have to get swabbed and it goes off to America.

I don't know if it's different now, but we can't even test properly for it here in Australia. It's called mark-ons. And so they swab up and they see what's growing up here and then swab up your nostril all the

way up. Yeah, it's pretty high up. Yeah.

Cause they're trying to see what's. Yeah. I can't remember at the time.

I was overwhelmed. It would have been so much pain. I was just like in, so the whole thing, the whole mold thing, cause we, we lost our home,

all our belongings. I spent 18 months in treatment. Like it was like being in a natural disaster, but we were sick as well.

Where were you living? In Rose Bay. Wow.

In Sydney. Yeah. So 10 years.

The nature of living close to the ocean. Yep. Yep.

And also we lived in an old apartment and we had all that, it was all the storms and the rain damage and like we, and our landlords were in their like nineties, they'd gone through like the Holocaust, they were Polish Jews, they were like mold.

Yeah. God. You should hear our story.

Yeah. Okay. But then, so we had like big holes in the roof and then some, another 80 year old mate

of his would come and sort of plaster it up. And what we didn't realize is the whole house was so ridden with mold, but I think there's a urine test you can do for mold just to see if it's in your system.

And. What did you notice was the difference when you were free of mold? Look, it took me a long time to come free of mold and mainly because of what was going

on up here was the fear. The fear I couldn't go anywhere because I was so scared of getting infected again and going to people's houses, going to cinemas, going to anywhere where there might potentially

be mold. I couldn't get well because I was so stuck in a fear mindset. And I talk about PTMD, there's another one, post-traumatic mold disorder, and it's a thing.

Anyone that's been through it will be like, "Ah, excuse my friend, that is insane." But the only way I got to heal was when my nervous system was more regulated and I was like, "Trust my body.

I know that I can do this." And our bodies are amazing. You know, once we switched that one on, and I don't know if you follow Dr. Joe Dispenza

and his work, but I just, it's very powerful. And so yes, I was taking so many supplements, which is why I don't take that many anymore because it was too much.

But the power of the mind, you know, knowing that I trust my body, we've got this. And even now when I'm in black mold, I'm like, "It's all right. We know what to do, body, let's," you know, like I just kind of taught myself around.

Trusting my body was one of the biggest lessons I got from my health journey. So it doesn't matter what you do, you can't out supplement a bad mindset. You can't.

And in that was, I think when your body has, in my case, it had let me down, where really I had let it down, but to trust it again was just such a big part of that journey. And I still come back to that now because I, I think anytime I try and outrun it or

out chase it, it will just, it will red flag me straight away. Me too.

We're all about shortcutting the struggle here. Yep. As much as we can.

Yeah. So that you don't have to get severe mold issues. PTMD.

Yeah. But no one needs that. Okay.

So your best free bio hack, one that we haven't listed. Best free bio hack, I love a cold shower. Oh, why is that?

It's just, it builds resilience. It makes you feel like you can do anything. Like it raises your dopamine by about 250%.

So you feel good. 250%. Yes.

It's nuts. So it's a really long period of time. Is it like 12 hours?

It's, it's insane. And at 30 seconds is all we really need. So have a warm shower and then turn it to cold at the end.

And this is a little another one. You can also scream whilst you're doing it, which activates your vagus nerve, but you can gargle or sing or just be like, ah, whilst you're having a cold shower.

So that activates that vagus nerve, which is your parasympathetic nervous system. So the cold shower and a bit of singing or gargling or whatever, or going, oh, oh, I often do that, especially in winter, I'm like, what am I doing?

But it builds resilience and you feel like you can do anything. It creates that power that you go, actually, I've got this today, because I've done my culture.

I can do heartbeats. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

And I think they've done so much research into mental health issues with cold showers as well. Incredible.

Helping with depression. So yes, cold shower would be one of my free ones. Awesome.

Okay. What's your biggest return for sleep? Biggest return for sleep?

Look, I'm going to go magnesium with this one. I really feel like it has such an impact on sleep. I have worked with executives that have not slept through the night for years and they

start taking magnesium glycinate at night and magnesium best through our feet, right? So you can rub creams, the sprays are good, the baths, magnesium salts, drink it, a good quality powder.

Again, quality of supplements is so important, we don't want to be consuming loads of fillers and crap. But yeah, so I think magnesium for sleep, you know, there's also, yeah, I mean, there's

so many other things with sleep. Yeah. That's okay, just one.

That's a really good one. Magnesium glycinate helped you a lot. I take it every night.

Yeah. I take the three magnesiums in the morning as a powder in water and then at night I take magnesium.

Yeah. Beautiful. What about the habit for energy?

Energy, energy, energy, I mean, sleep links to energy, I think, so that's a big one. And moving your body, like that's a non-negotiable for me. That is a non-negotiable.

30 minutes a day, even if it's like just, I've got a rebounder at home, which I love, putting on some fun music, having, you know, a bit of a bounce on there is good. Rebound, is that like the little mini trampoline?

Mini trampoline, yeah. Oh. They're so much fun.

They're so 1980s. Yeah, they are too. Yeah, I'm so 1980s.

I'm proud of it. There are days where I have no time to exercise and then when Benji gets home from school, I set up like a little exercise thing at home.

Like a circuit? Yeah, so acute. Jumping on the trampoline, playing soccer with him, running up and down the driveway

for my sprints, so that whole reframe, I don't have time but I want to play with him, so that has been the biggest switch for me with actually enjoying hanging out with him at the end of the day because I was finding I was like wired, like I don't want to kick

a ball 50,000 times but now I've reframed it, so it's been really fun. Oh, that's cool. I love that.

Yeah. And that's like habit stacking. Habit stacking.

Yeah. And joy, like a nature of me. And joy, so that is one of the biggest things, like what brings you joy?

Like do one thing every day that brings you joy. Yeah. Watch the sunrise, watch the sunset, be near the ocean, go for a surf.

Yes. You're like, I know you're like, I want to go surfing. Well, it's just one thing that we wanted to touch on before we finish up is there's one

And someone had just informed me that she's broken up with her oaring. Gone. Yes.

Still on. Please. Still on.

Still on. A great finger it's on as well. Still on.

As long as that's not directed at me. Exactly. Talk to us a little bit about the...

Look, I... Is there a word that goes with the wearable orthorexia? Yeah, orthosomnia for sleep.

Orthosomnia. So that's... What about just tracking the obsessive...

Yes, but it can become obsessive, you know, like my husband's a classic example. Like in the morning, I'll say, "How was your sleep?" And he won't be able to respond until he's looked at his woot.

And then he'll go, "Uh, yes, it was this, this, this, and my recovery was this." And I'm like, "Oh my God, just tell me how you bloody slept." What was your score?

Yeah, exactly. I was just slightly talking scores. But look, I think they're great to use short term.

I think they're brilliant to track what's going on and look at your REM sleep and your deep sleep because that's really important. That's where all the repair happens.

Make sure you get in the right amount of that. They're not always 100% accurate as well. So we do need to be mindful of that, that it's giving us a baseline.

The biological age on woot, I'm not quite sure how I love woot, but I'm more of a blood tester when it comes to things. I was just going to say, my aurorean thinks I'm doing yoga when actually I'm just trying

to figure out what to wear for the day. So it's not always accurate. I think because I'm constantly doing housework, it's just like, "Housework, housework, housework."

Mine is housework too. And I was like, "Is this a female thing?" Wayne actually realized she has a lot of stress picking out clothes.

Because I have too many of them. Oh, gosh. Isn't that interesting?

And I realized I was more stressed doing bedtime than I was on stage in front of 400 people. And it really made me look at how I need to regulate for that moment. Otherwise I'd stress myself out too much.

See, that is fascinating insights. And I think that is where they become gold because that's behavior change, right? And I think the great thing with whoop, I mean, going back to alcohol and aurore is

that you see how much alcohol affects your sleep and- Not if you don't look at it. Well, this is, yes.

I know people who drink and take their reading. Yeah, of course they do. Of course.

Because they don't want to know. That's what you want to know. They don't want to know.

And it can change your habit. So it's not that you're not going to drink, but you don't drink as late in the evening and you don't have as many drinks.

My husband knows after two pints that it's going to affect him. So he's like, "That's my cutoff point and I can't drink after this certain time." So I think it's great for changing those behaviors and supporting, you know, health optimization

from that perspective. But we can get so anxious, you know, and I've had people that I've recommended getting a wearable to and they've said, "Oh God, you know, it's ruined my day.

I've woken up in the morning and I thought I had a good sleep and I haven't and now I'm grumpy and I'm like, whoa." So it's personality driven as well, right?

So those perfectionist A-types, you know, and I'm like that. So I get quite irritated with my HRB is not good and I'm like, "Hang on, I'm doing all the things.

What's wrong with my HRB?" What that triggers then again is like how quickly we go into self-criticism, like for not being enough, not doing all of that.

Always creeps back in. It's an ongoing work progress, life progress. That's where it got me.

It was giving me another reason to whip myself for not doing that thing. So I just thought that is like root cause for me. So I needed to separate myself.

The other thing that it did for me, which was really good, I used to get up at 5 a.m. and go for it. Like I'd want to go to the gym first before the kids wake up, but I realised I get a really

good amount of REM at five, like from 4.30 to 5.30 and I get up at 5.30 now. Amazing. So that was really helpful.

I also liked, like on Saturday for me, it showed major warning signs of distress or you know, there was something going on that was stressing my body. So I just...

You should know that though, right? But sometimes you don't. But sometimes you don't.

But look at what happened to me. I had no idea. Yeah, yeah.

Like it's sometimes you don't. I knew I was tired. And I think that's the problem that we've got, is like we are now so busy and so stimulated

that we need something to tell us major side. Well, I knew I was tired. I'd had a big night the night before I was exhausted and I'm whelmed, but it also reinforced

the need that I needed to rest. I needed to drink coconut water to hydrate myself. Yeah, nice.

And I needed to stay away from technology, otherwise it would rise my quarters on the

It's like that permission to rest, permission to recharge, you know, to go actually, no, I need to stop and do this. Like even at weekends, like we all get so stuck in parts of the brain where we're like

always in to-do mode, like task, doing stuff all day and we just don't allow ourselves time to just be present and to just, yeah. So Kirk and I went out to lunch and I was sitting there and he was starting to come

alive and I was still feeling like, it was like a dead Pac-Man. And I thought, I need a hair of the dog. You needed your supplement.

That's what you needed. I needed a supplement. So I gave my self-permission to have a very small glass of rosé, literally peppering

back up. Not a shot of tequila. I'm sure that would have done the job.

Look, I don't always rely on alcohol to get me through a day. One of the health hack tequila. But it was really big to give myself permission to do that because normally I'm so health-focused

and like, come on, just nourish yourself. You had a better lunch, didn't you? I had a way better lunch.

But then I also knew I was going home to have a nap before I was going out that night. So making sure I didn't drink too much that would sabotage the quality of my nap to ensure that I was in good form for the evening.

But you enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. And that's so important.

And that's what we're losing with this health optimization piece is like, we're losing those beautiful moments of joy because everything's scrutinized, everything's measured, everything's like, can't do this, can't do that, can't eat that, can't, you know, and it's good to

have boundaries around stuff, but not to the point where it stops us living. And I think that's where the biohacking piece has got so extreme. I like to talk a bit more about healthspan.

Even though my book is called Biohatme, I can't get away from it, but I just think it's a softer way of looking at, and you said about, you know, earlier, about putting life in those years, right?

And I think that's really important is our healthspan and that we can be like my mom in her 80s and my dad in their 80s doing what they're doing and living their life to the full.

Your mom's in her hundreds now. My great aunts. Yeah, she's a hundred.

Did she get a letter from the king? Yes. Yeah, I was there.

We opened it together. I mean, it was honestly incredible. And she was drinking champagne and she cut her own cake and she was dancing to Queen,

like the, the band Queen. And Tina Turner. What was the song she did?

Oh my gosh. I can't, I've got a video of it. I'll send it to you both.

I'd love that. But honestly, it was amazing. I was like, wow, this is incredible.

You know, this is like living life to the full at 100. And what an amazing role model for you to continue your biohack journey. Yeah.

And we have loved having you on. We know you're going to be friends with us for a long time. I hope so.

We're going to do our DNA tests with you and then you can give us some insight into, we like to be the guinea pigs too. Love it.

Yeah, you'll love it. It's such a great day. Hey, wonderful.

So finish this sentence, Camilla. Your wake up call isn't a wake up call until you collapse, learn to love and trust your body again, in your collapse.

That was my wake up call was collapsing. Yeah. Don't collapse.

No, don't, do not. Yeah. I picked the signs early.

How can the world engage with you a little bit more? So you can find me on www.biohackme.com.au and @biohackme coach on Instagram. Yeah.

Thank you for having me. My, all my books on Amazon, biohackme as well. So you can buy it there.

Awesome. And I'm still biohacked everybody. Thank you for having me.

So dream team, gosh, what an amazing episode.

What's your takeaway? That I'm doing all the right things and that I don't need to over complicate it. Do you know what I've noticed in you?

No. You've flattened up. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank God for that, eh? Yeah.

I think you went through the, the intense focus driven, it's the athlete in you. But it's the athlete in you. This is, biohacking comes from elite athletes.

That's where it all comes from. All the recovery stuff, your, you know, hyperbaric chambers, cryotherapy, red light. This is all stuff elite athletes been doing for years.

There was no recovery protocol in my career. Was there not? Recovery protocol was getting absolutely smashed the night after a contest, then jumping on

a plane dehydrated and traveling to the other side of the world. Wow. And look how amazing you did.

Incredible. You know how you were talking about your great aunt before. Yeah.

And they say, what's your secret? It's like, oh, a cigarette, a glass of champagne and dancing on tables like that the older generation will give you that.

Lanes is, how did you win six-fold titles? Just at all costs. Yes.

No biohacking, no rest, no quality red wine. Mindset. Mindset.

Definitely a mindset. That's the same with all of them. 100%.

But I'm glad that you've noticed that I've lightened up. Yeah, you have. I feel like that's been my growth journey for a very long time.

And it's about not only lightening up, but it's about softening. Yeah. And when I soften with myself, I'm able to soften with others, but when I'm super hard,

super focused, super driven, I then project that onto other people, and it drives them away. I get it.

I've never really wanted to be that. So thank you. It was your moon boot.

Oh, yes. You've softened since then. I've softened since your moon boot.

Yeah. Slowed you down, literally. It sure did.

When I had to get my head, she had to get into a moon boot. Oh, wow. So dream team, what was your biggest takeaway today?

What was your biggest takeaway? I'm going to work on my sleep more. Okay.

Go ahead. Yeah. I know I'm doing it really well, but I do want to get into the data a bit more.

My biggest takeaway is I operate blind from many different inputs. So I get my blood done there, I get my tests done there, I get everything done everywhere. But what I'm really fascinated and what I really feel like I need is one person running

all of it. And I learned that in my hospital recovery too, is I had 15 different therapists all telling me different things, and it was tripping me out.

I was getting labels, diagnosis, you're this, you're that, you can't do this, you can do that, dah, dah, dah. And it really, really fucked with my head.

Yeah, that's a lot. So when I reduced that and I worked with one coach or one therapist predominantly, I could breathe.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually my biggest takeaway.

Beautiful. Yeah. All right, dream team, stick to the basics, hydration, exercise, and sleep.

Nutrition. Nutrition. Natural life.

I just added in a few more. Yeah, a few more things. You want to biohack me?

There's eight principles. Yes. If this episode resonated with you, please do something about it and share it with a

loved one because sharing is caring and it helps our little independent podcast grow. So from us to you, Camilla, you are a gift to the world. Thank you for coming on a wake-up call and we will see you.

We're going to have you back on. I think we'll go deeper when we get our results back, can't we? Yeah.

And we'll invite our audience to present some questions. Yeah. So we can go deeper.

Thank you. All right. From us to you, goodbye, dream team.

Have a good week. Toodles. Toodles.

Awake is a center of human performance. So if you want to bring more energy, motivation, and connection to your team, reach out to us at [email protected].