Ronnie Landis: Greetings and aloha. Ronnie Landis here. Welcome to another edition of the Life Mastery Podcast, where we tackle the subjects of health, wealth, wisdom, and spirituality. And in this episode, we have an incredible interview for you. It’s with a good friend of mine. His name is Matt Gallant. Matt is the co owner of both bio optimizers and new topia.

Both of these companies are incredible bio optimization and neuro optimization supplement companies. I’ve known Matt for many years. This was the first time that we’ve had a one on a 100 percent one on one drop in, especially in a recorded sense. I’m very good friends with his business partner, Wade Lightheart, who I’ve had on the show many times.

And I’m going to have on the show in a couple of weeks to do another deep dive in this episode. We went really deep into a number of different subjects. We were originally going to do an entire episode on sleep up into optimization, sleep optimization. And we got so deep into the subjects of nootropics, which are brain supplements, cognitive enhancing brain performance, and also neuroprotective supplements.

I just decided to just keep going deep on that. And so we’re going to do a part two very soon entirely on sleep optimization, which Matt is a world renowned expert in. He’s also an incredible expert in all things that have to do with bio optimization, bio hacking, health optimization, um, especially when it comes to supplementation and brain supplements.

So I’m not going to speak too much about that because we go really deep into it in the podcast. Another thing that was really fascinating about the podcast is that we diverted from, or we digressed from the topic of brain health and nootropics into the subject of creating an alter ego. This is something that I recently became aware of.

Exactly what Matt was talking about in the book that he was referencing creating the alter ego or the alter ego effect I think is what the book is called and we talked about how we all have multiple Subpersonalities to our nature. In other words, we’re multi dimensional beings. There’s different aspects to our nature to our personality And it’s really helpful to both integrate those pieces, all those pieces of the puzzle into our kind of operating system, if you will.

But throughout any given day, we can toggle and switch between different personalities, or I should say different alter egos is the best way to put it. Um, not multiple personality syndrome, but different alter egos that we can utilize for specific areas of our life that would function the best and also using nootropics as a way to enhance the particular identity and the function of that identity at any given time, um, specifically throughout your week on any given day.

It’s super fascinating. It’s a really great conversation. You’re going to get so much out of it. And by the way, I want to let you know, I have a coupon code for both bio optimizers and new topia. Those links are going to be in the show notes. Those are two of my favorite companies for health optimization.

Bio optimizers specializes in a lot of different things related to digestive health, hormone health, nervous system optimization, things like proteolytic enzymes, proteolytic probiotics. HCL hydrochloric acid, which is basically stimulates stomach acid. It’s great for fighting pathogens, microbes, um, parasites, fungal conditions, um, viruses, bacterial infections, that kind of thing.

It’s also very important for digesting fats and proteins. One of the best magnesium supplements, if not the best magnesium supplement in the world, called Magnesium Breakthrough. Seven, seven distinct types of magnesium that all work in synchronization, in harmony with each other. And many other products as well.

There’s Sleep Breakthrough product I’ve just started using. Is really amazing. Those products are all in bio optimizers and the new topia is by far without a doubt, without any possibility of comparison in my mind, the best nootropic brain supplement, cognitive performance neuroprotective supplement company I have ever come across in my life.

I’ve been using the products for about a month now. They’re literally changing my, the way that my brain operates. And um, it’s literally changing my life. It’s truly profound. So go to the show notes below. The code is health mastery. And then they’re going to give you a discount on whatever it is that you order.

And then you also have a lifetime money back guarantee. So if you don’t like the products for any reason, they will refund you. No questions asked, but I doubt that that’s going to happen. I think you’re going to get hooked on them just like I am. And you’re probably going to save a lot of money and start omitting a lot of the other supplements, the random supplements that are in your kitchen counter.

I know they’re there and I know you haven’t used them in years. You can get rid of all that and upgrade your, um, upgrade your supplement regime and probably save a lot of money in the process. So that’s bio optimizers. com and new topia. N O O T O P I A dot com, Newtopia dot com, coupon code Health Mastery.

Okay, now, without further ado, let’s jump in with Matt Galant. And today we have a really special guest, his name’s Matt Galant, and Matt is a colleague of mine. We’ve had a lot of interactions over the years through our Mutual friend and your business partner, Wade Lightheart, who’s like a big brother of mine and, um, just an incredible human being, someone I love dearly and has been a really an inspiration and mentor for me.

And that’s how you and I connected many, many years ago. And, um, every interaction that we’ve had has been really fun and amazing. I don’t think that you and I personally have had like a really good drop in just like one on one. So that was one of the reasons I was excited to do an episode with you. And then another reason is because you have really gone extremely deep into one of the most important topics that so many people are talking about now, maybe not so much before, like many years ago, but now, which is sleep and sleep optimization.

And, um, I remember one of my colleagues, Sean, uh, Sean Stevenson wrote the book, sleep smarter, and that, that was kind of like one of the, uh, whatever you want to call it, postmodern sleep optimization books. I don’t think too many people were talking about it that much at the time. And, um, and, and, you know, it was a great book and it was a great kind of reminder and great set of like, um, You know, insights into monophasic sleep and all that kind of stuff.

But I just listened to an episode that you did with Dave Asprey on sleep, and that you just took it to a completely different stratosphere. So I’m excited to dive into this topic because I know for my audience, this will by far be the most comprehensive episode anyone’s heard on sleep to date. So I just want to preface with that.

There’s a few other things that I want to dive into, but, uh, before we do, I just want to, you know, introduce you to the show and to the audience. And, um, maybe if you could share a little bit of your backstory to get us started. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Started lifting weights when I was 12, when my father bought me a weight set for Christmas.

Got obsessed with bodybuilding at 16 after seeing two bodybuilders on the beach and feeling puny. So, you know, went from. 147 to 235 in three years training twice a day. And that was a really powerful experience. And I’ve competed once, which is the first time I ever saw Wade was at night that I competed.

He won the show. I was in the juniors and I lost 64 pounds in 14 weeks, did all kinds of mistakes, which is another Story for another podcast, but yeah, then I helped my best friend lose 191 in 18 months, which was really what got me on this journey because I saw the entire transformation, not just with his body, but his psyche.

He literally went from being a virgin to being married shortly after that. And, you know, I got my degree in kinesiology, got my degree in science and physical activity, built two very successful personal training companies. One of the East coast of Canada, one of the West coast, um, worked with some pro athletes, which was a lot of fun.

They’re, they’re the best clients. They’ll just do anything you tell them to do along that journey. I met Wade, um, again, I’d seen Wade when I competed at 19, but we didn’t really talk, but he came back to visit his parents and I was a trainer at the gym and we just. Struck up a friendship and then moved to Vancouver and Wade hooked me up at World’s Gym.

And then we just started hanging out and Wade was winning natural bodybuilding championships as a vegetarian, like 20 years ago. And I was already, You’re building businesses online and studying marketing. I’m like, that’s, that’s really unique. We should try to package that and see what happens. So our first product was called freaky big naturally, which was a natural bodybuilding product.

And it was successful. We, we sold over five figures the first month. And then fast forward a little bit, like the year after that, we met Dr. Michael O’Brien who taught us about enzymes and probiotics. I’m sure you’ve heard that story. And then, you know, that inspired us to build mass signs, which is still our second best selling formula.

Of course, we’ve continued to iterate for those of you that don’t know what mass times is. It’s the strongest protein digesting enzyme formula on the market. And by the way, 4. 0 is coming out this summer. We’ve, we’ve made it better. But yeah, you know, that was the first kind of phase of our journey. And then in 2014, we, we just decided that bodybuilding wasn’t our real passion and health was, so we rebranded to bio optimizers.

It has been a rocket ride ever since. You’ll see the plaque above my head there. That was Inc 2000 plaque. We’re the third fastest growing supplement company in America over the last three years. And yeah, we’re just getting started, you know, and our first, you know, Phase really to focus on digestion and now we’re really focused on brain optimization and sleep optimization.

And, uh, later this year, we’ve got the ultimate nutrition book coming out in September, published by Hay House. We’re really excited about that. So, 

Ronnie Landis: okay, that, thanks for that. That actually opens up a few threads that I think will be helpful for both myself and the audience. Um, there’s a lot of context to this, this conversation to the mass enzymes.

I remember 2011 when me and Wade, something like that, we met at a raw food festival, of course. Um, and so the mass enzymes was kind of like this introduction and this, this connection between the two of us. Because I’ve been studying enzymes for many years and, and, you know, Edward Howell and his famous enzyme nutrition book.

And like, I was really, that’s something in the raw food world. You kind of get tuned into this whole thing on enzymes. And I don’t know, it’s just like a lot of things. I became obsessed about random niche things and nutrition enzymes was one of them. And so that, that’s how I kind of, I found out about mass enzymes and then, or mass enzymes.

And then, then when the company became bio optimizers, it became more of this like bio optimization Kind of menu board, which I’d love to talk to, talk to you about a little bit more in this, this proteolytic probiotic idea that you guys came out with, just like that whole smorgasbord of things for digestive health, I think was your guys’s focus.

Um, yeah, I’d love to just touch on that for a second for the audience, enzymes in, in proteolytic probiotics, because this thing around digesting protein particularly. is so important for so many things. I’d love if you could just touch on that. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Why is breaking down proteins so critical? Because, you know, of course, protein in my opinion is the king macro nutrient, but what you really want is amino acids.

And why are amino acids so important? Because they’re really what repairs the body primarily, of course. Essential fatty acids are also important for certain aspects of the, of the body cell walls and skin and some other aspects. But amino acids is the number one building block in the body.

Neurotransmitters, muscle tissue, organ repair. The list goes on and on and on as people get older, their hydrochloric acid levels decrease their digestive enzymes decrease. So, yeah, I think it’s really critical as you get older, probably starting in your late thirties, forties that you start using digestive enzymes.

And in our opinion, protein digesting enzymes is where it’s at. It’s called proteolytic enzymes. So we’ve, we have a lab. Uh, in Bosnia with 20 full time biologists, chemists, and literally people, the head of the lab has a PhD in bacteria and biofilm. We’ve been testing every commercially available probiotic on the market, and there’s only two probiotics that we’ve found to be proteolytic and proteolytic means protein digesting.

One of them is P3OM and there’s another one. So protein digesting probiotics are really rare. And they’re essentially operating like an enzyme. Here’s a couple of other data points that you don’t know about because we haven’t shared it with P3OM. One is, so we bought this half million dollar machine, it’s called the HPLC machine.

This machine allows us to actually measure what are the probiotics producing. Like everybody’s talking about probiotics, but the key. Is what molecules are they producing? They’re like these little molecule factories and we’re, we’ve been measuring neurotransmitters, which we can, it’s a good segue into nootropics later, but yeah, P3LM is the number one GABA producer that we found.

So it’s really unique in that aspect. Um, it’s also the most powerful. Killer of E. coli, which we knew because anytime anybody’s ever had food poisoning and they’ve taken a lot of P3LM, it’s resolved that usually within an hour. So, but we prove it in the lab, like we’ve literally taken E. coli versus P3LM and did a battle in the lab and it kills E.

coli. So it’s incredible for food poisoning. It’s incredible for GABA production. It’s incredible for Digesting protein and a bunch of other benefits. So yeah, P3OM is really the more and one more, one more piece. It’s the most resilient strain we’ve ever tested. So when we bring probiotics in the lab, we’ll try to kill them a long variety of ways from bile tests, acid tests, salt tests, um, antibiotic tests, and it is the most resilient.

So, yeah, it’s a really unique strain. It’s a single strain product. And, you know, we’ve been selling that for a long, long time. It’s an incredible, uh, formula. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is. And we could, we could do half a podcast just on the subject of probiotics, prebiotics and all that whole, that whole thing.

Um, So we’ll digress because we have more to get into, obviously, but I’m glad we could just touch on that for a moment. Um, let’s move into nootropics. Um, I got into nootropics like so many people, um, 2012, 13, I think it started to become popular, this idea of nootropics, brains, um, brain supplements, um, neuro optimization, this, this kind of became popular and then the Bulletproof idea and, you know, butter coffee and all that kind of thing.

Um, so I got into nootropics. I have to say for me, there were a few things that ever felt like they either worked or that they didn’t hyper stimulate me or make me a little too on edge, just like excessive caffeine or just poor combination of things, or they simply didn’t work or they worked for a couple of days, but then tapered off.

And then it’s like, I needed more. It’s like my dopamine baseline needed more of a thing just to feel kind of at baseline or to feel normal. Um, so it just never really stuck with me and I just, I just didn’t think that anything really fully worked to what the marketing was. And then recently I got a hold of A company called Newtopia through some synchronicity with a friend of mine.

And I looked up the company and I saw you and Wade on the website. And I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. I had no idea about it. So I thought that was an interesting synchronicity. I started playing with the products. I felt amazing. Like it felt like, um, my brain waves, my right and left hemisphere, my brain synchronized.

I didn’t feel like sympathetically stimulated. I just felt like calm and focused, but I felt alert and like clear. And this, this happened every single day. And so eventually I reached out to Wade and I was like, dude, what the hell are you guys doing? Like, I need to, I need to, you know, I need to get on board with this.

So, um, I’d love to talk about your perspective on new tropics a little bit, and then, um, talk to us about new Topia. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. So I crashed and burned in 2009. On a very long binge of, of drugs and alcohol. And I got sober, it’s going to be 14 years, uh, the 21st of this month. And what was a little bit scary to me is as I sobered up, obviously, you know, the cobwebs started clearing, but even after a year, two years, I realized that my brain was compromised.

Like my brain was just not operating like it used to prior to, to going off the rails. So I was really motivated to start finding solutions. Probably the first thing that I found that really worked well for me, which is probably about 10 years ago was lines main and lines man’s incredible mushroom helps increase BDNF, which activates neurogenesis.

Which we have an incredible product. If you’ve been trying it, Ronnie, but it’s called call a genius. I mean, the, the BDNF off that is incredible, very experiential. So anyways, started that then did EFA is this or doing neurofeedback on all of these things, we’re really making a big difference, sort of doing photo biomodulation on my brain.

I still have the V light. It’s a really good device. And then, yeah, I started playing with new tropics. Uh, member. Buying a bunch of modafinil. I still have a bunch because I don’t use it and, you know, started playing with some of the stuff that’s available and, you know, some stuff worked. I think you did a good job explaining kind of my experience as well, where things like modafinil would certainly energize me.

the day of, but the next day I felt like I dropped a level. Like I, and I never liked that. I never liked feeling lower than my baseline. So Modafinil was like once in a blue moon and then tried some of the stuff that’s on the market. And yeah, you felt sometimes some STEM, um, but you know, I never felt like it truly gave me.

Yeah. What I wanted. So I kind of use it for mental endurance on really long days. Once in a blue moon, nothing that ever became a regular part of my life. And then a friend of mine, Brad Constanzo, uh, posted on Facebook. I’m not going to name brands, but he’s like, you know, a lot of people talk about this, this one brand.

And. They’re okay, but this stuff here is just another level. And he was talking about Mark Effinger, Mr. Knutson’s formulas. And I messaged him. I’m like, can you introduce me? So he sends me to the site. I think I bought like five grand worth of his formulas. I really wanted to, to try everything he had. He had a pretty extensive list of things and.

I started trying things and I literally had a spreadsheet where I was tracking what was happening and it was trying combinations and it took me like six months to figure it out. And after a couple of months I’m like, okay, this, this stuff is just another level. And, you know, made a deal with, with Mark.

We acquired his company called, it was called Web Nutrients. And Mark’s been doing customized personalized eutropics since 2008. His wife had passed of an oxycodone overdose. He, he became really motivated to try to find a solution for people. And yeah, he’s been working with, you know, some incredible athletes and actors and CEOs and things.

And I really felt like we could do a better job, more of the packaging and the systemization. And, you know, when I, when I tried Mark stuff. And, you know, I’m a pretty good formulator. We’ve got some good formulators, but Mark’s a different dimension specifically on the nootropics. Um, I’m like, it would take me 10 years to figure out what he’s figured out.

So yeah, it’s been amazing. I think we have, we’re up to 13 formulas and, you know, people can essentially fill out a form, an intake form. It’s a pretty in depth intake form. And then we, we customize the strength of the nootropics based on that. And then people try the new tropics, they can take out the ones they don’t like, as well as say that was too strong, that was not strong enough and then we can adjust the formulas and there’s, there’s a real learning curve with figuring out, you know, The, the stride piece, but also, you know, the timing of it, what works for you, what works for you for certain things.

Like today I had a couple of podcasts. I took an apex around noon, dry connector X, and you know, I’ve got enough energy for the next. Probably four or five hours. So timing things, figuring out what works for you for certain tasks, like ultimate focus is great for if you’re writing or if you’re trying to just, you know, work on spreadsheets and things like that, upbeat is incredible for social situations.

Brainflow is great for verbal fluency. So. You know, figuring out which stacks and combinations you’re using for different parts of your life is, is really a big part of the learning curve and the fun, you know, and now I wake up, I literally pull up my, my calendar and look at my schedule and figure out, okay, what do I want to take today to be optimized for certain events like a podcast or a social event?

And then, you know, you time it. Where you take the nootropics usually fits the pills. You take it like an hour before, because with the pills, you’ll start really feeling it 45 to 60 minutes. If it’s the powders and the drinks, they’re fast, like 10 minutes, you’ll feel the water based stuff. So power solutions and incredible pre workout, like if you’re going to go train hard in the gym, it’s, it’s really good for that.

Um, and Nectar X is just a great all around. So yeah, it’s been a game changer for me personally and a game changer for people that have been using them. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, that was a, that was a really beautiful rundown. One of the things you said that I really resonate with is that it was fun. That really caught me because I, I, I’ve been in the nutrition world for what feels like forever, but you know, like 12 years or whatever.

And, and I, I. The last three or four years, and I think it’s just the intensity of life itself with 2020 and just the reality of like what’s been going on in the world and just the kind of psycho spiritual upheaval that’s been taking place. I think things have gotten really real and, um. Which is a whole other subject, but for me, I think I just got really bored with nutrition, man.

I just have to be honest, like with everyone in my audience, I just got really bored with the supplement industry, all the, the, the doodads, the diet ideologies, like the whole thing. I was just like, this is just like, I’m over it actually. I’m completely over these conversations. And there was nothing that really was inspiring me about it.

So when utopia came back, not only did it feel amazing cognitively and drive wise and energy wise, it brought back like, Oh, I actually love this. This is actually fun for me. But I think for me, I actually lost a lot of the fun for, you know, many different life based reasons. So it actually brought back this like, Oh, this is fun.

I want to research again. I want to work on my book again. I want to get out there and study. Speak again, like, cause I’ve been, I’ve been away for a couple of years. So that’s, that’s actually a personal testimony. I just want to share with you and my audience that came up when you, you said that you have fun with this because I haven’t had fun with supplements or super foods or nutrition for a while.

It kind of just got really boring and bland. 

Matt Gallant: In your chemistry, optimization is one of the most fun things you can do. And, you know, back to when I was. Lost on drugs. I mean, that’s essentially what drug do is they’re increasing certain neurochemicals like dopamine or serotonin or GABA and et cetera. And of course, with a lot of the recreational stuff, um, there’s severe consequences, you know, your dopamine will actually get compromised over time, but what’s a lot of fun with the nootropics is.

We’re optimizing our neurochemistry in a way where we’re improving our performance and there, there’s no degradation of our baseline. In fact, your baseline’s improving because of the neurogenesis that’s occurring as you’re activating certain parts of the brain. And that’s, that’s something we’ve seen.

And when people get on Utopia, I would say within like three to four weeks, they’ll notice my baseline is kind of a new level and they would call a genius, which is incredible, um, hyper concentrated mushroom blend, which is more of a, on a BDNF booster. So, yeah, neurochemistry is a fun game and it could be a dangerous game when you’re playing with recreational drugs.

And I think what we’ve done with Utopia is put together some really well designed formulas that. allow people to, to, to truly kind of switch gears on demand, but switch gears in a way where, again, they’re just performing better. They’re not lost in some drug haze. 

Ronnie Landis: Okay. So look, I know we want to get into sleep, but I would be remissed since I have you and your, your, your wisdom is super on tap.

I have to probe into this. So Neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, and something called synaptic pruning. Like these are things that I talk about a lot of my work, particularly in my, my most recent book I put out a couple of years ago called the addiction free lifestyle. I talked a lot about. Like synaptic pruning, for example, like people that deal with PTSD and recirculating trauma, which like memory signatures within their their brain, the nervous system, their hippocampus that gets damaged through stress.

That’s your emotional processing, memory consolidation, all these kind of things. Um, and I’m thinking about trauma in particular and its effect on the brain and kind of like the looping cycle that happens for us. We keep recirculating re looping. Um, I don’t know how this fits into, well, actually, I, I think I do, but I was, I was thinking of synaptic pruning where like literally neurons are old fi uh, file cabinets.

I like to think about it. Old, old tabs get prude synaptically. then that gives way to something called neuro neuroplasticity, right? And so this is what is actually making this fun is that I’m actually able to experience the neuroplasticity of when I engage with say the new book on dopamine that I’m writing or I’m talking to somebody or I’m listening to a podcast I’m noticing that that that that my brain is responding and engaging with my external stibuli.

In a new way. So I just wanted to touch on that and get your take on that.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. So There’s different parts of the brain that get turned on or off depending on, you know, what you’re consuming as well as what kind of mental processes you’re running. I mean, for an example, when you’re meditating, if you do a brain scan, you’ll see a lot of different parts of the brain will actually kind of shut down your default mode network and can shut down and same thing when you’re taking certain substances.

So. You know, from a neurogenesis perspective, when you’re taking certain new tropics or blends, you’re turning on certain parts of the brain by, by simply turning them on, you are essentially creating neurogenesis. Obviously when you’re doing new things, new activities, you’re turning parts of the brain on that have to engage in order for you to learn.

Or to do that task, which also increases your genesis. So anytime you’re learning a language, learning a task, doing things that neurofeedback, um, You’re, you’re going to be turning your brain on and you’re going to be on some level increasing your Genesis. Now, when you feed your brain. Things like lion’s mane, especially like I used to take 10 grams a day, 10 grams is a high dose, but I feel more neurogenesis with the extracts we’re using, which is like a 50 to one extract in the call of genius, like more BDNF.

And again, you’re feeding your brain, this brain derived eutrophic factor, which activates. The neurogenesis. So when you’re combining feeding your brain and I’ve done like nine weeks of my life doing neurofeedback and one of the strategies we do to maximize our results is we, we hyperdose our brain with every growth factor.

We can, you know, cerebral lysin, dihexal lines, main, like all of it. So that when we’re stressing it with neurofeedback or we’re trying to learn and rewire our brains that are, our brains have essentially. You know, all the resources it needs to hyperadapt so we can do an incredible workload and recover and adapt at an incredible pace.

And that’s just been a magical. Formula. So, you know, if you’re learning a language, learning a skill, uh, trying to get better at anything, it’s a really good strategy to increase dopamine. And we have like dopa drops, which is really good for that. And increase BDNF and lion’s means phenomenal for that. And we increase dopamine and BDNF while you’re learning something, your ability to, to retain it and to hardwire it, go to a different dimension.

So those are some really, uh, practical strategies people can use. 

Ronnie Landis: Anyone that’s dealing with addiction of any kind. Um, I really want you to rewind what Matt just said, because ultimately that that is like philosophically and practically how you solve the issue of addiction, you have to break apart or disassemble the old circuit, so to speak, which is like the synaptic pruning.

And the only way you could do that is to disengage and then re engage. So it’s like breaking old habits, you have to disengage. But if you don’t re engage with something new, then the disengage process is near impossible. Because you can’t live in a vacuum, right? You can’t just take something out and then Expect nothing to come in, right?

So that that’s it. So like the cognitive support when your dopamine system goes below baseline stimulus response, you remove the stimulus, then your brain is going to go through a withdrawal process. So. If you’re dealing with addiction of any kind, I recommend that you really look into Newtopia. We will have all the links in the discount code because this can help get your brain back on baseline naturally and give you that the motivational neural networks to engage in the habits and patterns and productive, um, you know, action steps that maybe you don’t feel like you have the cognitive energy to pursue because your brain is not functioning optimally.

Matt Gallant: Yeah, if you’re Dopamine deficient. If you’re low on dopamine in general, it’s going to be really hard for you, for anyone to, to be motivated. I mean, dopamine is really the molecule of motivation and anticipation. It’s it, it moves us forward. And of course, you know, Neurochemicals don’t live in isolation.

Your brain is really like an orchestra. So that’s why when we formulate stacks, it’s not just dopamine, it’s dopamine and serotonin and acetylcholine or, you know, GABA and a little bit of a noradrenaline or adrenaline. So finding the right mixtures of these different neurochemicals is really What creates a state.

So if you, if we talk about state creation, which is one of my favorite personal things to think about, you know, cause if I’m thinking about. How do I optimize my performance in life? And, you know, there’s different parts of my life. You know, there’s, there’s Matt, the father, I’ve got a baby girl. She’s nine months old.

There’s Matt, the podcast or, you know, speaker. There’s Matt, the business leader. There’s me doing deep work in my opinion, to be. At my peak performance, I need to shift my state based on what’s demanded. And optimizing your neurochemicals for each task is an incredible strategy. It’s, it’s just, you know, that’s an incredible strategy.

I think having alter egos, my friend, Todd Herman wrote a great book called the alter ego effect. Yeah. Um, there’s a few strategies people can use to craft a state and be able to shift on demand and shift throughout the day. So you’re not just a single channel or a single dimension human being, right? And if you can learn to build four or five different modes and shift based on what your life needs, I think that your performance and your enjoyment of life goes to a different level.

Ronnie Landis: I know I’m really wanting to get into sleep with you. And I’m also, every time you open up another, another like cubby hole, I’m just like, ah, it was your, like you and I have been on the same tip on so many, so many of these things, this alter ego thing. Um, I don’t want to get too deep into it, but personally, like, okay.

Well, I guess what I want to ask is like, what, what, what is your process? Because everything that you just explained, like this, this show is called life mastery, right? It’s health, wealth, wisdom, spirituality. These are all the topics that we, we seek to, to tackle and integrate because that’s ultimately what, what this is about.

It’s not about one thing. It’s about integrating the holistic spectrum of what it is to be an optimal human being. So what, can you just like share with, with me and us?

Well, I guess what is your alter ego? What, what is that process like for you to create an alter ego? You, you just mentioned you have all these different hats that you, that you wear in your life. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. I think before somebody can effectively. Kind of position their minds to create alter egos. There’s a paradigm shift that needs to occur.

And, you know, my old, um, self defense hand to hand combat teacher helped me with that, and he was explaining that most of the world sees their personality as one thing. And he was telling me that, you know, Russians actually naturally see having multiple personalities as a more effective, natural way of being.

Like for an example, again, there’s the father, there’s the father personality. There’s the work personality. And to some degree, everybody’s doing that, but they’re not really conscious of it. So I think the first paradigm shift is. It’s okay for you to have multiple personalities. We’re not talking about. A schizophrenic multiple personality disorder where you don’t know who you are, but these are crafted personalities that you resonate with that you want to be.

And that it allows you to more easily shift characters. And 

if 

you look at people like Beyonce, um, a lot of top pro athletes and performers, they’ve crafted these alter egos that allow them to go on stage and just completely shift into this incredible performer and allows them to take over and dominate whatever their field is.

So. I’ll talk a little bit about Todd Herman’s process because I think it’s a really good one. Again, his book is called The Alter Ego Effect and he’s worked with a lot of pro athletes. So, you know, this is one of his main techniques he’s used. So it starts with something that most of us have heard, which is like, what would Ronnie do?

You know, like, you know, what would David Gopkins do? And you’re starting with The question is, okay, what aspect of my life or what alter ego would I like to build and who represents that the best? So for an example, if you’re a naturally undisciplined human being, people like Jocko Willink or David Goggins could be really good role models to be inspired of.

And don’t be afraid to even combine both. multiple people into one alter ego, right? You can use Jocko’s extreme ownership and discipline with somebody else’s personality traits and craft something that feels good to you, that excites you. So I think that’s the first step is really thinking about. What is this alter ego?

What does it look like? What does it feel like? And, you know, even meditating and visualizing what are you going to look like, you know, stepping into that alter ego. And I think that in a lot of ways, that’s the hard part is visualizing yourself. Um, being, thinking, feeling, and operating with a new mode, you know, a new personality, because most people back to kind of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, most people are really, really stuck in kind of one personality.

And they, they almost feel like it’s, it’s. inauthentic to shift from that. But it’s not inauthentic if you crafted that personality, if you chose what that is and you feel good with it and you, you decide that that’s going to be a part of who you are. So that’s, I think the first step. And then you can go further and say, you know, What does the neurochemistry of that state look like?

And that’s kind of where the new tropics come in, where, you know, if you want to be David Goggins, yeah, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of neuroadrenaline, a lot of dopamine, a lot of acetylcholine, there’s an intensity there, you know, formulas like ultimate focus can really help you tap into. So, and what happens over time.

As you do a task and the task is, is kind of the thing that I think hardwires it. So for an example, if you say, let’s say I’m going to go do squats, which I’m actually going to do after this workout. So if I’m going to do squats. And like Tom Platts, and if you know who Tom Platts is, he’s probably the hardest, the most hardcore workout guy of all time.

Like, I mean, even guys that train hardcore will tell you Tom Platts was just in a different dimension. You know, he, he did squats 10 minutes straight with his body weight. They had to drive him to the hospital for oxygen deprivation. I mean, all kinds of things like that. And he was my idol for a long time when I was like lost in bodybuilding.

And it allowed me to. I literally wrote Tom Plats on my weight training belt, and I would just, you know, try to channel him as much as possible. And it would just, you know, we, we, we’d be collapsing on the floor and have a hard time walking out of the gym. So, you know, by hard wiring, you know, by thinking about Tom, by trying to channel Tom’s spirit and training, I hardwired that, that hard.

Training state into my my nervous system. I mean, it’s become part of me. So whatever your task is, and of course, the hardest is going to be in the beginning, but the more you do it. And again, if you’re optimizing that state with new tropics, and you’re really thinking about it. And you’re activating that state is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.

And over time, it’s just going to become second nature and you can just kind of switch into it on command. So it takes, it takes effort. Again, it takes a lot of thinking and crafting and mindfulness, but. And my recommendation is just start with like one new state and it might take you a few months to be able to really shift on command, but It’s an incredible tool.

And, you know, I, I recommend reading Todd’s book, alter ego effect, and then playing around with the new tropics. Cause I think the combination of the two is really magical. 

Ronnie Landis: 100%. I mean, I, I really got that download from, from listening to you about it, but I’ve gone into these different dimensions of, of, you know, studying archetypes and also studying the alter ego effect.

And it really saying that I’ve been, Consciously and unconsciously doing that within my own life. I think that’s why we all grow up with an affinity towards superheroes. Like Batman is the ultimate example of that. Uh, you know, greatest superhero of all time without a doubt by far. That’s unanimous. And then there’s a reason why we have an affinity towards these things.

So what I’m hearing you say is that these are actually. Personally accessible states, but they’re also accessible identities that we can create. And a lot of people don’t realize that, you know, a lot of what we’re operating with our software programs are our identities or beliefs that shape our behaviors are adopted programs from the world around us from.

Parental programs, you know, from, you know, uh, religious institutions, government institutions, societal contracts and whatever else past life contracts, who knows what I’m saying is that it’s not necessarily ours. It wasn’t necessarily something that we bestowed upon ourselves. So what I’m hearing you say is that.

You have an opportunity to craft and create who it is that you want to be. And there’s multiple aspects of who you are in different areas of your life that you can create for yourself. And, uh, with the power of nootropics, particularly your guys nootropics, it gives you an ability to cognitively experience.

Experiment and explore what that actually feels like, not a fantasy of what it feels like projected in some future fantasy, but what it feels like in your nervous system, what it feels somatically cognitively, because you can actually feel the, you can feel the energy moving through you and it gives you an opportunity to put it into action.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Just to give you one example, I I’ve created, like when I go to events, I’m a naturally introverted guy, not hyper introverted, but somewhat introverted. And I’ve been able to craft an alter ego that I turn on when I go to events. And I’m able to feel extroverted, not feel the typical drain that an introvert feels when they meet new people and you’ll be in a great, great mood, great state, have good conversations, feel connected with people and the new tropics like upbeat is an incredible tool to help move me neurochemically to a more extroverted state so I can use things like a beat up beat.

And, you know, a little bit of Nectar X or Gabalicious, which is another really good one for to, to feel a little more extroverted. Um, I can use these nootropics and at this point, this, this alter egos has been hardwired where I’ll still take the nootropics, but I almost feel like. It’s, it’s a hardwired state that I can just access.

And then, you know, when the events over, I kind of go back to my normal, normal default mode of being slightly introverted. So it’s a really interesting thing. And again, it’s just an incredible tool. If you think about. You know, the top people in Hollywood, the top athletes, top singers, it’s something they’ve almost all done.

They’ve mastered, they’ve, they’ve cracked, they’ve crafted this persona that people find fascinating. And they just access it when they need to perform. And then, you know, when they’re off stage, they just go back to kind of being there, whatever their normal default is. So it’s a, it’s an incredible tool that very few people tap into.

And I wish more people did. So hopefully people will get inspired after listening to us. 

Ronnie Landis: I’m super inspired. I’m like, I’m ready to go into my own life laboratory and actually start crafting this out for myself. And I have a whole box of, uh, new topia to play with, uh, for the day. Um, quick question. It’s become obvious to me that I want to do a second podcast with you entirely on sleep.

So can we do that? Can we set up with your assistant after this and we’ll do it, we’ll do a part two and that’ll be on sleep optimization because that requires its own full podcast and we’re going deep into this. Um, so, uh, let me know when you have a hard stop, but for the rest of the time, I just want to, I want to, I want to just kind of finish out this, this train of thought on brain health, maybe even nervous system health and optimization.

Well, what is your perspective on coffee? 

Matt Gallant: Well, first of all, I think nervous system management and optimization is one of the most powerful things anybody can focus on, and I’m going to, I’m going to circle back to your coffee question. Oh, let’s just kind of cover the basics of the nervous system, and then we’ll come back to new tropics and coffee and other things.

So the nervous system. You know, people have heard parasympathetic, which is rest and heal and relax. And then you’ve got sympathetic, which is fight, flight, freeze. The reality is it’s a spectrum that we’re constantly moving into. Now, a lot of people their baseline is fundamentally in a sympathetic state.

I would say most people’s baseline most of the time when they’re awake is, is relatively deep, not, not super deep, but in the middle of a sympathetic state, which means there’s a constant level of stress that they’ve adapted to. That’s normalized. They’re not aware of it for these people. When they add a stimulant, like a coffee or any sort of stimulant, what a stimulant does, it essentially pushes you a little further into sympathetic, into the sympathetic zone.

So if you’re already up there. On the sympathetic range and you push yourself further, it can be detrimental. And it can be, you can burn out. I mean, that’s the most extreme case, which I’ve done many times in my life, which I haven’t done in a long time because of the things we can talk about right now, but for a long time, my strategy was literally.

To burn out every quarter. So my strategy was I’m going to work, I’m going to grind. I’m going to just keep pushing for 12 weeks. I know my performance is declining week on week, but a 13 week, I’ll take a week off, reboot, come back. And I did that for years and it worked to a certain degree, but when I really learned how to manage my nervous system, I just don’t do that anymore.

And I don’t need to take a vacation every quarter. So. Let’s talk about the apex performance zone, which relates to the nervous system and it relates to nootropics. So in the middle between the parasympathetic and the sympathetic zone is what I call the apex zone. And if you look at Yurky Dotson’s work, which I studied extensively, when again, I was doing hand to hand combat and fighting and all that stuff, you know, what happens is if you’re too stressed, your performance, you know, There’s this inverted U shaped curve where if you push stress up, your performance improves, and then if you push stress further, it crashes.

So if you’re not stressed enough, your performance sucks. And if you’re too stressed out, your performance crashes. That’s what the Yerkey Dotson research proved. And it was really fascinating research where they were like progressively stressing people and then people just couldn’t do it. Function anymore.

It was pretty wild stuff. So yeah, you can google it and find it and read it. It’s fascinating Now one thing that’s really interesting with pro Is that the more you train something that inverted U shaped curve actually moves, meaning that if, if you increase stress, let’s say with like a, an Olympian, they can handle more and more stress.

And perform better and better. And that’s really the difference between like the best people in the world and You know good athletes like the difference between good athletes and the world’s best Is they’ve trained more and they can handle more stress and it actually pushes them to a higher level of performance So one thing that I’ve seen specifically with the new tropics is that first you want to try to figure out where you are on that curve.

Now there’s a lot of things that influences that, like, you know, how good are you sleeping? Do you have life situations going on? We talked a little bit about it, but the. For the podcast. So like you’ve had a lot of life stress occur the last few months. So for sure, your baseline is probably pretty deep in a sympathetic range.

You know, Wade, for an example, just spent 18 weeks dieting and competing. And, you know, like his baseline was pretty deep in a sympathetic, in a sympathetic range. So when people are that deep. It’s very beneficial for them to actually focus on maybe taking things like magnesium breakthrough, adaptogens, brain flow, zamner juice, where it’s going to help shift them a little more towards the parasympathetic zone so that they can be in that apex center.

Okay, they want to be right in that middle, which is. When you’re in that, and you described it beautifully earlier, which is like, you want to be calm, but alert, calm, but alert is a high performance state. Now I’m not saying you want to be there for everything. Again, if you’re, you know, squatting and training, fighting and doing really intense things, you want to be.

But if you’re trying to be present, you’re working with people, you’re in a meeting or in a podcast, being calm, but alert is a great place to be. I don’t want to be overly stimulated. Um, when I’m connecting with people now, what’s been interesting with the new tropics for a lot of women, they’re naturally parasympathetic.

So for them power solution, which is probably the strongest nootropic blend we have is their favorite. It gets them right. It pushes them into that center zone. Where they’re more engaged, they have more dopamine, they have more adrenaline and they feel they’re still, they’re not overly stimulated for them.

It gets them right to where they want to be. So there’s a lot of nuances around that. And, you know, I’ll just share some of my top strategies for. Nervous system management. And it’s some great data that came out literally, I think about six weeks ago that showed me the data that I needed to, to understand what was occurring.

So if you’re working nonstop, which I can do easily, like I can get into like a six, seven, eight hour hyper focus zone where I’m, I’m literally drinking and eating food while I’m working and it’s not, not taking breaks. Um, what happens is. The beta brainwave activity gets higher and higher and higher. And what happens is you wear out your brain.

Like you’re literally kind of wearing out the hardware. When you’re doing that and all you need to do is to take these mini breaks throughout the day. And one of my favorite books ever is the power of full engagements, great book. And, you know, that was kind of the first major upgrade. That I, that I did to prevent burnout.

Cause again, I used to just work 80, 90, a hundred hours a week. And that was not sustainable. And then I read that and it taught me, okay, yeah, you need mini breaks, but the, the next level from your time management to energy management, the next level is nervous system management. So really trying to, to do things that are parasympathetic throughout the day.

And my favorite one is non sleep deep rest. Which is really easy to do. And I, and I, you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time. I never had a name for it. I just, I’m not a napper and. I just close my eyes and basically try to do nothing for five to 10 minutes. And I just feel rebooted when I do that. I did it this afternoon.

For example, the other thing I try to do is, you know, get some oxytocin flowing, which is very parasympathetic. By playing with my daughter a couple of times a day, playing with my cats a couple of times a day is really powerful. Obviously nature, you know, going in nature in the morning or middle of the day, just, just taking five, 10 minutes, like a couple times a day to, you know, To spend in a parasympathetic zone makes all the difference in the world.

And, you know, taking magnesium breakthrough, if I’m a little toasty, if I’m feeling a little worn, magnesium is probably the most parasympathetic molecule, in my opinion, like it really, really helps shift you. And then we have, and you’re going to love this product, man. It’s the most powerful adaptogenic blend I’ve ever tried.

It’s by a new formulator. He’s a neuroscientist. It’s 17 Chinese herbs coming up probably may. Um, so that’s been another game changer to give me a level of resilience that is just another, it’s just another level of resiliency. You know, it, it, it, resilience is a really powerful attribute to prevent burnout.

You know, if you’re more resilient to stress and you’re not getting stressed out, what that really means from a nervous system perspective You’re staying in that apex zone. When things hit you that are stressful, you’re not getting pushed over to that sympathetic fight, flight, freeze zone and freaking out anymore.

You’re kind of just glued right into that center and yet things hit you, but. You’re able to handle them and internalize them and respond in a resourced way. So, yeah, I think that that’s where some of the, the new tropics come in. Well, 

Ronnie Landis: man, I just, there’s so many things coming up for me. Like I’m getting so excited and listening to you.

The term that comes up is anti fragility, right? Like you, you’re the whole idea is to become anti fragile. And the definition of anti fragile is not actually the opposite of fragility, which is just like robustness, but it’s actually to become like the, the best example is like watching Donald Trump do media interviews and to have a thousand poison dart shot at him.

And somehow he transmutes it in like Get stronger about it. I’m not saying I’m for Trump or anything. I’m saying that’s an example. It’s a phenomenon that I witnessed. It’s, it’s not just that you can deflect stress. It’s that you actually become stronger and more resilient and more capable. With the stress that is coming at you.

That that’s, that’s kind of what’s coming up for me when I think of like what optimization or the nootropic conversation, it’s like, it’s like we’re all going to deal with stress, but. But what’s that Goldilocks position between you stress and distress? That’s kind of what I’m hearing from you. The APEC point, I guess.

Matt Gallant: Yeah. The Goldilocks zone is a, is a good, is a good term for it. And I want to be clear that there’s certain States back to kind of earlier topic around high performance States. I think it’s good to have. A alter ego that’s deep in the sympathetic zone. It’s good that that’s the warrior spirit. That’s the let’s F and go mode.

That’s the savagery mode. That’s whatever you want to call it. Um, it’s good to have that mode for certain situations. Like I’m going to do squats today. So, you know, it’s a mode that I want to be in when I’m doing really, really hard physical things. And then I think it’s, it’s really good to have parasympathetic.

States where, especially if you’re doing spiritual work. You’re trying to meditate, you know, when you’re in a spiritual zone and you’re in a very deep state and you, you know, you’re meditating and you’re in alpha state or in your theta state, you’re deep in a parasympathetic zone. So, you know, those are really important as well.

And again, for most of the daily business activity, you want to be somewhere in that Goldilocks zone and, you know, having different ranges. Like if you’re on stage speaking, you want to be probably a little bit more sympathetic, energized, intense, and you know, you want to be able to switch that on. So again, it goes back to having a few different personalities or alter egos that you can kind of navigate.

But I think the nervous system model. Of these states helps you craft them. Like, where is this state on this? Continuum. Is it, you know, hyperintense on the sympathetic zone? Is it parasympathetic? Is it in the middle? Where is it? And I think that that can really help you craft it. 

Ronnie Landis: This is so good. This, this is the best ever by far.

I love this conversation. Um, okay, so we talked a little bit. We, we basically covered. The spectrum of the combination of bio optimizers in utopia, which are like, I guess you would call it like brother, sister brands, like cousin brands. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. Bob’s a miser is, uh, is the majority owner in utopia. So yeah. 

Ronnie Landis: Okay.

Got it. Um, all right. I want to integrate this conversation and then we are going to do a part two and that’s going to be all on sleep optimization. We had to get through all this everyone we there was no way I could not get get into all this. I’m so glad we went in this direction, 

Matt Gallant: which, which to be frank, like, you know, State optimization, neurochemical optimization.

I mean, all this stuff we talked about some of my favorite topics in the world. So super, super glad we went there. It was awesome. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Beautiful. Um, so first of all, is there anything that you would say to like tie a, like a bow and tie on this conversation for people? And then obviously we want to direct them to, um, both bio optimizers and Newtopian.

It will also have the links and discount codes of the show notes. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, the question that came to my mind that kind of launched me in this journey, I was like during your feedback, which it was a great place to kind of download good questions and insights. Um, the question was like, what, you know, to accomplish what I want to accomplish in this world, what states do I need?

To maximize my performance. I think that’s the question that I want everybody to ask themselves. And obviously depending on people’s Dharma and journey and careers, it’s going to be a very different answer, right? If people, um, want to be a stage performer, it’s going to be different than if they’re a writer, it’s going to be different than if they’re a CEO.

If they’re different, all of these things are going to be. Um, obviously you’re going to shape the answer. So, but I think that’s the question to ask and, you know, don’t be in a rush. I mean, I think it’s, uh, I remember it took me a few months to try to get clarity around that, um, by Todd’s book, alter ego fact, it’s great book.

And then, yeah, buy a box of utopia and play around. I think when you start shifting your neurochemistry and you started like, wow, I feel, I feel different. I mean, When you feel different, I mean, it’s, it’s because you’ve shifted your neurochemical cocktail in the, in your brain and it allows you to kind of see differently, um, not to go too deep on this tangent, but.

You know, it’s really what a lot of plant medicine or just drugs do. Um, and I wanted to say this about plant medicine in general, like ketamine, psilocybin, like ayahuasca does as well. It drops something called your default mode network, and there’s a lot of things that’ll drop your default mode network.

Your default mode network is the hubs in your brain, the structural network that essentially creates your ego. So Anytime you can drop your default mode network, it allows you to create, like, that’s the ultimate space to create a new state, a new personality, a new alter ego, because a lot of people are really like their, their default mode network has been, you know, On for decades and decades, and they’ve never really dropped it.

And, you know, when you, when you do those things, I also think like going in nature for three, four days with no phone, that’s, that’s always does the trick for me, like there’s a lot of other ways doing when I do a week of neural feedback, I feel my default mode network dropping, so I’m not. saying that, you know, these plant medicines are the only way to drop your default mode network.

But anytime you can drop your default mode network, I would say that’s an incredible canvas to, to work on creating a new state, a new alter ego, and to craft something new because you, you don’t have that rigidity that the default mode network kind of creates, you know, and it kind of. Whatever OCD loop your brain is on gets dropped, you know, and that’s my favorite part of kind of when I drop my default mode network, sometimes my OCD loop is work.

It, you know, some people, it’s their phone, they’re just like trapped in a social media loop or whatever that loop is. When you drop your default mode network, it’s like, Oh, that loop’s gone. And it’s like, okay, you’re just really hyper present and it’s a really good place to be. So, you know, do whatever it takes to drop your default mode network.

And it’s a really good place to kind of work on all the things we talked about. 

Ronnie Landis: That was an incredible way to integrate this entire conversation. I’m really, I’m super grateful for this for me because this conversation has come at literally the best time for me to be talking to you about this. So thank you.

And then I know my audience is going to get so much out of this and I know that. We have some really practical, easily accessible resources in form of some of the greatest nutraceutical supplements ever devised, uh, by, uh, two human minds and an amazing team that you guys have there with bio optimizers and utopia and the Willy Wonka mad scientists behind the new tropics.

So, um, Yeah, the, the links are in the show notes for both bio optimizers and utopia, and I also am so behind both these companies, not just because I’m good friends with the owners and have been for many years, but I am fully on board with the products of the mission. So anybody can reach out to me personally.

If you have questions, certainly if, um, if people want to reach out to you or to your company, where can they find, find you? 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, but optimizers. com I’m not, I’m not big on social media. Like I really like to just create things and let the creation speak for themselves. So, um, I mean, people can find me on Instagram, but I’ll post maybe once every two, three weeks, a picture of my cats or something, so don’t expect a lot of content, but expect a lot of content and things from Bob’s managers.

By the way, we are coming out with the ultimate. Nutrition book. It’s been in the works for three years published by Hay House coming out in September. Um, I’m sure me, Wade, or both of us will come back to speak about that when the time comes. And yeah, it’s the ultimate nutrition book. We cover every nutritional strategy, every diet from, from raw food.

To carnivore and everything in between. We covered nutrigenomics. Um, yeah, the, the first draft was 800 pages. We got it down to 600. So yeah, we’re really proud of it. We’re really excited about it. And, um, you know, we’re, we’re also coming out with nutrigenomic testing and an app and you know, our next big mountain is nutrition, which is, I know is a big mountain that you’ve been on for a long time as well.

So, yeah, I think the world needs, um, some new paradigms around nutrition. You know, there’s been too much. Tribalism with a lot of people trying to convince the world that this way is the only way and it’s the best way. So we’re here to kind of bring a Bruce Lee paradigm and say, you know, find, find the best diet that works for you based on your psychology, based on your genetics and based on your goals.

And that could change over time. So, you know, we’re trying to give people kind of all the tools and all the ways that it can. Assemble together kind of their me diet, you know what I mean? So that’s that’s our goal with that book. 

Ronnie Landis: Okay. I am stoked Thank you so much matt pleasure and honor. I look forward to connecting with you again very soon.

Thank you 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, i’m gonna go and get in a high sympathetic state and go squat and channel some tom platts So it was a great interview, uh, probably one of my favorite interviews i’ve done So thanks, man. It was awesome