Wellness Dysmorphia

Every beauty and wellness founder and every longevity doctor knows the same thing: getting someone to try a protocol is easy. Getting them to keep it is the whole business.

Series 4 of Beauty Biohacks goes straight at that problem. First guest: Dr Brent Ridge - geriatrician, former Mount Sinai faculty, former VP of Healthy Living at Martha Stewart Omnimedia, and co-founder of Beekman 1802, the goat-milk skin health brand built around the microbiome and kindness.

Brent argues we've optimised nutrition and training and made people neither healthier nor happier and that the culture has produced a genuine dysmorphia around how we should look, feel and perform. His counter-position is mechanistic, not soft: kindness raises oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine and lowers cortisol; those neurohormones act on inflammation; inflammation is the thing that ages you. Kindness as an ingredient, listed on the label.

He also gives his full routine, unedited. Up at 4:30. Fifty pushups before anything else. One coffee. A tablespoon of peanut butter. Thirty minutes of varied training, deliberately never the same. A three-mile weighted-vest walk where he greets every single person he passes, universally, because selective kindness is just judgement with better manners. Water and one moisturiser for skin. Ten minutes of yoga to close the workday. Eating done by six. Asleep by nine.

Iryna brings the other side of the arena: the gym she didn't want to go to, the ten-minute rule that fixed it, the walking pad, the journaling that keeps lapsing.

What you'll take away

• The one question to ask before starting anything new — and why most protocols fail this test on day one
• Why ecosystems beat single biomarkers, and how "senescent cells" loses a room that "balance" holds
• The reward loop behind Oura and Apple Watch, and how to build it into a product
• Continuity of care as the gap in both longevity clinics and beauty brands — with the DTC email cascade that solved it
• The only longevity lever with hard evidence behind it, and why it's the one people find hardest
• Brent's three rituals if he lost everything tomorrow

Chapters
02:26 When longevity stopped being academic
04:55 Better ageing begins at birth
07:58 Leaving New York, rewilding, and the farm
09:00 Ecosystems over single biomarkers
11:36 Kindness as a growth strategy
12:33 The neurochemistry: oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, cortisol
15:11 Wellness dysmorphia
17:09 The full morning routine
20:34 The good morning walk
22:33 Why embarrassment blocks kindness (kindness.org)
25:01 A skincare routine of two products
27:57 The ten-minute marker that ends the workday
31:56 The question to ask before starting anything
33:33 Continuity of care — what brands and clinics both miss
36:56 Small wins, rings, and why the reward has to be visible
43:04 Three rituals he'd rebuild first
45:00 The luxury product of the future

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:27

Welcome everyone. This episode kicks off a new series of the Bayhacking for Beauty and Longevity and Beyond podcast that trackled the one problem every brand founder and longevity doctor is quietly struggling with getting people to stick to their routine, not just try it once. So instead of polished brands stories, we dive into the raw and filter reality of commitments, the habits that survive real life, the protocols that fell apart, and the emotional messy middle where the most people quit. So through honest conversations about devices, skincare, supplements, and lifestyle changes, we ask what genuinely makes someone show up for themselves day after day that's worth trying again, and what's just a noise. So if we are going to build better products and protocols, we have to understand the human side of consistency first. And that's exactly where this series begins. So our first very special guest is Dr. Brent Reich. He is a geriatrician and longevity expert, co-founders of Big One 1802. A very successful goat milk-powered skin health grant built around kindness and sensitive skin. So Brent brings a rare perspective as a former Mount Sinai physician and VP of Healthy Living and Martha Stewart on the media, who now design real-world routines and products people can actually stick with. So welcome.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Well, it's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Because you have this scientific background and founder, and as far as I uh remember that you became interested in logistics before we start talking about it. My first question is when did longevity stop being academic for you and become personal? When you thought that I have to live this, not just teach it.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Oh, okay. This is a great question. Um, you know, it's interesting because when I was growing up, um, I even before I knew I was going to go into medicine, I always had in my head this goal that I wanted to live to be 100. Like I just did. You know, there were there's an American TV show, uh morning show called The Today Show. And um every day they would celebrate people who were turning 100 and they would show their picture and tell where they were, you know, lived in America. And I was just fascinated by this idea of centenarians. And so that has always been, that had always been my goal. And it's interesting now, being in middle age, that it's no longer my goal. Like my goal is to not think about the year that I'm going to live to or the number of years, but to how to make the very most of the years that I have on this earth. So my my personal approach to longevity has evolved over time.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Interesting because I I would say mine too. I'm particularly interested when I turn 50, and the number did not fit. It doesn't feel like that's fitting me. And I start dig deeper. I was thinking, like, I am not happy. I need to find a way how to be happy. And and then I would start thinking about why I'm not happy about this number, about getting older. And then I think, okay, when you think about old people, what do you think? Fragile, no energy, slow movement, and things like that. And I thought, this is what I don't like about old people, this is why we don't like it. And then it came to me, okay. So if I can do anything I can in my power to keep the energy flow and feel and look the best I can for my age, it will be much more acceptable. And this is sort of was a ha moment for me.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Mm-hmm. Well, I know when I, you know, I'd been on faculty for at Mount Sinai for several years before I met Martha Stewart. And um I remember the very one of the very first meetings that we had, we were sitting at dinner together, and she asked me, you know, how, you know, we were talking about longevity, and she asked me, like, well, how can you live longer? Um, and I said, Well, it's not something that begins just at the age of 50. Like a lot of people start thinking about it in midlife.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Too late.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Too late. Yeah. Better as I think you've heard me say this before, and I told her that. I told her this exact line when we were sitting there at dinner. I think it may have been the first time I ever said it. I said, Martha, better aging begins at birth. And everything that, maybe even before birth, because every decision that your mother made for you when you were in the womb, and every piece of nutrition you took, the moment you come out of the womb, every environment you exposed yourself to, those are all things that are building up inflammatory damage throughout your entire life. So, you know, better aging truly does start at birth. I think that's a healthier way for people to think about it, particularly in Western culture, we are we're so eager for the quick fix. Even in, you know, in modern medicine, you go into the doctor and you have five minutes with your doctor and then you get a prescription. Like that's just how the system is built. Um, but if we could start teaching people very early on that your lifetime health begins from that first pediatrician visit, I think we would be in a much better place in the long term.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yes, for sure. And you know, when you see the uh hormone of aging, how our body is getting declined. And if you see the graphs, usually whatever it is, whether it's energy mitochondria or it's uh any kind of biomarker, it's usually peaked about 20, 25 years old, and it goes slowly down, and then the the older VI is going rapidly down. So it means you need to start already caring about the cell, actually, as you say, before the birth, but especially trying to slow it down this decline.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, and I think that the best time to do that is before you start seeing any type of reduction in your abilities.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Or before you have the first injury. You know, a lot of times, you know, you talk about the 25, 30-year-old age is when we first start noticing weight, something is different from where it was when I was 18. And I think that when you wait until that first, it first becomes physiologically noticeable, then it becomes very stressful, right? And so then you you're adding more stress into your health situation because then you start stressing about your health or you start stressing about the aging process. So it really is a mindset that we need to train people early on to start thinking about differently. Now you don't want to wait until you start seeing deficits happen to start doing something because then you're stressed about it. And then you kind of get into this loop of optimization, which becomes more stressful and it's just it's not healthy.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Tell me about the COVID times, because many people, I think, and for me included, this is where when I read a book of David Sinclair uh Lifespan, that was the time when the people start thinking about health. For you, that was a quite stressful uh time. Uh you move out of uh New York uh uh to this farm with the gods.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Uh yeah, you're you're you're talking about the founding of the brand and how we left New York City and started life anew. You know, I'm so fascinated, and I have been for years now with this you know idea of rewilding, and it kind of goes hand in hand with my interest in the microbiome. But, you know, Josh and I both grew up in very rural locations. We were exposed to nature that was the earliest part of our lives. We were always in nature and playing outside and things like that. And having lived in cities for more than a decade, we saw how we were becoming more and more disconnected from the rhythms of life, right? You were you were devoted to the rhythms of industrialization and not to the rhythms of nature. And so I think when we got back to the farm, when we got on the farm, it kind of was a mental reset for us on how we need to be more aware of ecosystems, right? Our mental, like how everything functions together. And I think that that's something that's really missing when we talk about longevity and wellness these days, is that we tend to think of one biomarker and try to fix that, or one deficiency and try to fix that, or one ailment and try to fix that. But we really need to get back to this idea of how do healthy ecosystems form? And you know, the reason I love the word ecosystem is because so often on social media you hear like a lot of very scientific terms thrown about, senescent cells or you know, peptides. There's a lot of science out there, um, which for the vast majority of people, it they just gloss over when they hear those that terminology. But the idea of an ecosystem is something that everybody learned about in their junior high biology class, right? Everybody understands that there is a balance and you have to hit that balance. And so I think our goal at Beekman HO2 is to re-educate people about maintaining healthy ecosystems. And that's not just only the ecosystem that's occurring on the surface of their skin with a microbiome, but their mental health, their physical health, the environments that they put themselves in. Um and I think that's really critical. I think it's where we need to go from a standpoint of wellness. Um, and I think as we're moving out of the kind of optimization era into whatever era is coming, that we need to start thinking about well-being and not necessarily wellness. But to get back to your original question, I think a a lot of that reset in our minds started when we moved to the farm. And, you know, we started growing our own food. We lived very seasonally, and it just made us appreciate the importance of that.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

And you are one of the few brands who really, really got it. The the the ecosystem part. Because I think that for the founders, if they are uh promoting the healthy skincare routine or like they need to leave it, they need to be authentic. You're adding to this, of course, uh, kindness, and uh you've been very, very vocal to promote that. Let's talk about kindness here. You call kindness as a growth strategy, basically. So, how did being kinder to yourself and others change your ability to stick to healthy rituals?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

I want to get back to my own personal routine too, because I I have something interesting to tell you about that. But um yeah, we and you know, we list kindness as an ingredient on every product. And the idea behind that originally started because I was so interested in the physiological benefits of kindness. Now, our company started from an act of kindness when we took this neighboring farmer who was losing his farm and had goats, and we took them in. Um, but you know, often to simplify it for people, I often say, you know, when you give an act of kindness or you you receive an act of kindness and it works both ways, um, that you kind of get that warm feeling on the inside. So it's like, oh, I feel it. And that's not just something that is happening spiritually, that is something that is representative of a surge of these chemicals in your blood. So your oxytocin is going up and your serotonin is going up and your dopamine is surging, uh, and your competently your cortisol levels are going down. And it's the combination of those things that are causing that glowy sensation. And that is your body telling you, oh, this is something healthy for me. This act of kindness is something healthy for me. Your body is creating the positive feedback loop. Um, and so, and if you look at all of these neurohormones, those things actually have benefits to your body on a cellular level, which ultimately help control inflammation, which is going to make your entire body ecosystem better, from your brain to your body to the cellular level. So we do think of kindness as a key ingredient, and we all often say kindness is wellness. And when we talk about building an ecosystem at B2N1802, we say, yes, these acts of kindness are good for your mental health. These acts of kindness are good for your physical health, these acts of kindness are good for your skin health. So it really is like we're building this ecosystem, and at the very center of that is kindness, because more than any other singular ingredient, that's the thing that is going to make every part of your health ecosystem healthier.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

And when you're speaking about kindness for yourself, that's also a key element to think when you're building your own health routine. Because from my experience, and I consider myself a biohacker and try different things, and from my experience, I had some situations when I was too rough on myself and putting too much pressure, and uh then I had a failure and uh could not really uh succeed uh with whatever routine I'm building. And once you start being more kind for yourself and just allow yourself sometimes to have a break or to to not do all the time 100% and give it all energy out, but build these routines uh gradually, slowly. And that's about kindness for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Absolutely. And we say self-kindness starts the ripple. Um, and I I love what you're saying about trying to create the routine that works for you, that you can be consistent with, because ultimately it's it's the long-term value of all the choices that you're making that are going to be the most important. And I I was thinking about this this morning, right before we we opt on this podcast, that what I believe is happening right now, and maybe this is a new term, so get ready to clip to clip this, Arena. I believe we are experiencing as a global culture wellness dysmorphia. And we have these crazy ideas of what we should look like, what we should feel like, how we should be optimized. And any type of dysmorphia is not healthy. And I think we are we are in an era right now of wellness dysmorphia, and we've got to figure out how we can break that cycle. I think a lot of it has to do with social media, just the sheer volume of information and exposure that you have to so many different ideas without really giving people the analytical tools to decide which things are great for them. But, you know, we were talking, we were talking about your personal routine and how you got to your personal routine and your self-kindness. And, you know, if you just look at my personal life, of course, I have access to an interest in almost anything that is being done, right? Down to the medical journals where they're first being cited. And even still, I am not someone like Brian Johnson, right, who is like so interested in every single thing. Like I consider myself a very normal person. Like there, there are things I think I can stick to and things that I know I cannot stick to. I don't have the discipline for it or even the desire for it, motivation for it. And so, like for my personal health routine, I just set very easy goals for myself. And I have found that particularly over the past maybe eight years, I've been very good at sticking to those things. Now, sticking to any type of routine for eight years is an accomplishment for most people. And I think that what I'm most proud of is that I have found this routine that I can really stick to and it it integrates into my day very well. I feel very well. And I I'll tell you my personal routine in case you can pick up any tips. Yeah. So my morning routine is that um I get up in the morning and generally the very first thing that I do is I will do 50 push-ups. I'm like literally, I roll out of bed and do 50 push-ups because I like to get the blood flowing very, very quickly. And then I will have my first cup of coffee. My cup of coffee, I only have one cup a day. Have my first cup of coffee, and then I have something very, very light. Usually, I would say 80% of the time, it's a tablespoon of natural peanut butter, because that I have found is just enough protein energy for me to get started without feeling weighted down. Because I do my exercise in the morning. Um, because I found over my life that if I don't do it in the morning, I will not come back to it in. So I get it done in the morning. And what I have found my best routine for exercise, and this works like you, I have to travel a lot, is that I utilize my Apple Fitness Watch and Apple Fitness, because uh on Apple Fitness, they have a wide variety of different routines. So you can choose, oh, today I'm doing yoga, or today I'm doing strength, or today I'm doing hit. Um, and they also divide it. So under each of those categories, you can divide it by how much time you have. So they have 10-minute routines, 20-minute routines, 45-minute routines, and so it's very adaptive. And I like that because you know, you have to be flexible and adaptive in life. But also, I think that what happens to a lot of people is they get either very bored with a routine, you know, so they then give it up because they're bored with it. Or, and this happens with any type of routine, if you are doing the same thing every day, your body plateaus. And so I like to have a lot of variability because I think that variability, and this kind of goes back to this idea of rewilding and going back to the way the body was intended to work, is our body was intended to have different motions and different flexibilities and different balances and to stretch ourselves mentally and physically in different ways. Um, that's how you build resiliency. And so I like to make sure that I'm switching it up because I want my body to function the way that it was designed to function, not just be an aesthetic outcome.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

You're switching, you're still exercising, but you're switching different uh parts of the body out.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yes, yeah, correct. And different, even different um, people teaching the routines because every instructor has a different thing that they tend to focus on just naturally, or they have a different way that they build their routines. And I think it's very important to always keep your body guessing and your brain guessing what's going to come next. I think that's great for cognition as well as your muscles. So then I do that and then I go for a three-mile walk. Um, if I'm not traveling, I always will use a weighted vest because I think that's it's a very efficient way to get your heart rate up to target heart rate and maintain it for the the most of the duration of your walk. Um but here is what I recommend for everybody because not everybody's gonna do a weighted vest. And certainly when you're traveling, I don't have a weighted vest. But I think the key thing to my daily walks is that I call my good morning walk. Because one, I think getting light exposure in the morning is very important. But also I think that social connection is very, very important. And so when I'm doing my walk, no matter if I'm traveling and I'm a city I'm completely unfamiliar with, or you know, wherever I happen to be, and I do this good morning walk, is I will say good morning or hello to every single person that passes where we are coming face to face.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Um, but I will also be in the gym, this might listen into my podcast, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Right. So what I have done is I will like, if I see someone coming, and I know I'm gonna say my hello or good morning, I see that they're I will say, okay, in my my head, I'm like, okay, they're not gonna hear me. So I'll make sure I'm gonna wave or I'm gonna smile. And I think that that's important because as you know, and we I think we've talked about this before, the only scientifically proven thing to contribute to longevity thus far is the amount of social connection that we have in our life. And so I make sure that I'm going out every day and connecting in this way. Um, but I also feel like it's it's central to this idea of kindness, that human connection is a central idea to this kindness because I think so often people feel invisible, right? They don't feel like they're part of the world, and you just don't understand how powerful it is. If you go by Someone and they just happen to be that one person that day who was having a bad moment or having a negative thought. And just by acknowledging as you are passing them, hey, we are two people and we are existing in this world at the same time. And I am acknowledging your existence as I pass you. It's a really powerful thing. It's a powerful thing for me personally, uh, and it's a powerful thing thing for them as well. And Irina, this is not something that I grew up doing. This is this is a realization that came to me maybe five or six years ago when we started really doing a lot of supporting a lot of work in the science of kindness. And you may know I'm the chairperson of a nonprofit called kindness.org that really looks at the scientific underpinnings of kindness. And one of the things that they had understood in their research was that the thing that keeps people from giving or receiving kindness in their life is embarrassment. And they are embarrassed about the reaction that they're going to get from an act of kindness. And so then I just started examining my own personal, the way I have personally approached the world. I'm like, you know what? That's absolutely true. Because I could count multiple times during the course of the day where I did not say something or tell someone something because I was afraid of the reaction that it was going to get. And I'm like, I've got to work on that. This, I've got to work on being more kind. And so this idea of, and I noticed on my walks too, when I would do my walks, I would like, I would say hello to some people, and then some people I wouldn't say hello to. And so then I started having to go through my mind, well, why didn't I say hello to that person? Um, so I'm like, oh, we make all these judgments about people, and that prevents these inter, you know, kindness from flowing. And so I'm like, the only way to get around that is to make it universal. Like you're going to treat every single person you pass in the exact same way. And that made me bring more kindness into my life. It made me more comfortable with being kind because it made me not embarrassed, you know. Um, because you know, sometimes you know you might think, oh, I'm not going to say hello to that person because they're like this big athlete athlete, or they're, you know, maybe they are of a different race and I'm not used to interacting with that person or I'm making judgments about that, or it's a pretty woman who's like, you know, you know, people make judgments all the time. And I'm like, the only way to overcome those natural prejudices that we all have is to treat everybody universally. And that had it's made me overcome so much of my fear and hesitancy of being a kind of person. So it's it's very important. I think that's an important aspect of my morning routine. And then after I do my exercise, I come home and um, you know, take my shower. And my skin, and we have to talk about skincare, of course. My personal skincare routine is very, very basic. Most days I just wash my skin with water. If I have used sun protection or something, I've put something on my skin like that, I will use one of our cleansers, you know, pH balance cleanser for the barrier. And then I'd use one moisturizer and I use one of our moisturizers, and that's it. That is my routine. Now I will say I do think exfoliation is is important, particularly as we get older. But because I am a person who shaves every day, um, I don't need to exfoliate because the act of shaving is exfoliating my skin at the time that I'm shaving. But I think I try to keep it very, very simple. And um, because I think anytime you try to do too much, you are running the risk of starting an inflammatory cascade, not just on the surface of your skin, but that runs throughout your entire body. Um, you know, and I, you know, as much as possible, we try not to start inflammatory processes anywhere that we don't have to. Um so that's my routine. And then I I I try to eat, I try to eat whole foods as much as possible. That's that's it.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

How long does it take you in the morning? Because I also go to the gym. This give me this energy and feeling I have done something and uh I'm ready for the day. But also walking, how long? An hour or more than an hour?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

It's about yeah, I do three miles and it takes me about 45 minutes. So I would say my and I do um my Apple Fitness. Generally, I'm doing 30-minute routines. Um now, if I have something early, an early morning meeting or something, sometimes I'll have to shorten it into a 10 or a 20-minute routine. Um, but I would say generally I spend about two hours in the morning, like really devoted to self-kindness. Um and um yeah, and that you know, I get up very early. I get up between 4 and 4:30 in the morning, partly because I've always been a morning person. And then also like going through medical training, you, you know, you get up very early because you have to be at the hospital and on the wards, you know, very early. So that's just been always been part of my routine. And now, you know, as a founder, I find getting all of this kind of self-kindness work done in the morning helps me do it without the distractions of things that are going to happen during the workday. Um, and so I can focus on that. And then when I'm done with that, then I can really focus and be present for the workday. Um, and then at the end of the workday, and I think this is really critical for all founders, or even no matter what work you do, I think this is critical because as you know, we have gotten into this terrible cycle of being on working 24 hours a day, right? That's and I think you need to have a clear separation between what was your work day and what is your own personal time, your time you're fit, your time you unwind, or whatnot. So I have a late afternoon, early evening routine where I will do 10 minutes of either Pilates or yoga. So something very low impact. And that is a very clear delineation for my mind and for my body that the work day has concluded, and now I am into another part of my day. And that's all it takes, 10 minutes. And you know, people can do lots of things. It could be 10 minutes of meditation, it could be 10 minutes, whatever, but have that 10 minutes so that you know that your it's part of your routine where your body knows I am entering a new phase of the day. Um, and I I find that very helpful. And then usually I'm in bed by nine o'clock. You know, I try to I try to eat no later than six o'clock, and then I'm usually in bed by nine and then start it again before 4:30 in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Do you journal?

SPEAKER_01 29:22

I have, you know, I I go in and out of journaling, you know, because there are periods in my life where the ideas or the the creativity are maxing, or maybe there's a science science issue I'm working on, like for a formulation, and like I like my mind is racing, racing, racing. And the only way that I have found to deal with that successfully is to write it down and like get it all out on the paper. And that keeps my mind from going through, you know, all the different iterations. And so I use journaling more so in that way to kind of like vomit all of the thoughts all at one time. And you know, I think the act the act, and I was just reading a study about this recently, the the physical act of writing it down, no matter what the idea is, whether it's your emotional ideas, whether it's a creative idea, whatever, the physical act of writing it down is actually a valuable health practice. And so I do think that there are been definitely mental benefits and probably physical benefits to journaling.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

When you're writing it down, you it's sticking your memory also better.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

If you if you want, like I'm studying right now in Geneva College of Ingenuity Science, you know, so I'm reading and reading, reading, and I'm writing the most important parts and it's making me remember them better.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Well, correct. That's what I would do when I was in medical school. That's exactly because you know, in medical school, you are having to take in so much information so quickly. Um, and so you have to come up with these kind of hacks to figure out how you're gonna remember it all. And that's exactly what I would do. I would try to think of how many different ways I could lay down that information in my brain. So I would first read the information, I would highlight the information, and then I would write, then the things that I wrote down, like the things that I highlighted in the text, then I would write them on note cards. And that's how I ended up memorizing that vast quantity of information.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yeah, there are so many things you can do, and so many things I have tried to implement in my routines. And I'm also like exposed to many interesting products, and and I read a lot of uh listen to podcasts, I'm reading books, and uh there is uh I always like all the ideas of doing everything, uh, but it's very hard to commit to everything, yeah. So it's uh when you uh lay down like a simple routine for yourself and then see what you can stick on top of it, then I think it's uh it's the way to implement. But uh, you do you have like a secret uh because in my life I try to do sort of certain things like daily, like journaling daily. I also I do it and I have these moments when I journal and I just love on it, and then I'm a little bit forget about it, and some other uh routines, it's a little bit hard sometimes to keep the consistency.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Well, again, it comes down to when you're thinking about incorporating anything new, as you said, you know, and I think this happens to not just you, but most people, particularly with social media and the amount of stuff that we're exposed to, when you're before you start doing anything new, first ask if I start this, do I think it is something that I can be consistent with? Because if you can't be consistent with it from the beginning, then it's probably not worth starting it. So make that part of your criteria before you start something. Like, is this something that I have the time in my day? Do I have the financial resources to continue this? Because otherwise it's not, you know, it's not going to ultimately provide you anything long term. So I would make that part of your initial criteria. And then also I think it's so important to set very small milestones and take those wins and acknowledge those wins because that's what keeps you motivated to keep going. And so if you're starting any type of new routine, map out, like, okay, in the first week, I'm hoping to achieve this. In the second week, I'm hoping to achieve this. In the first six months, I'm hoping to achieve this. And then you can monitor yourself that way. And those little wins and those little low, those little goals are so important. And I think, you know, I was talking to a person sometime last year who had a supplements company. And it was a DTC direct-to-consumer-based supplements company. And we were talking about this idea of motivation. Like, how do you motivate people to continue utilizing your product? And I was talking about, you know, when I was, you know, on the wards at Mount Sinai and in the clinics at Mount Sinai, how I would try to motivate my patients with these kind of little wins and by helping them understand what to expect, when to expect it, so that they could see progress or anticipate progress. And he said, yes, that's exactly how he had grown his business. Because, as you know, with a supplement, you may never understand if there's actually a benefit to it, right? And he said, you know, the way I built my direct to consumer company, and he grew it to a very, very big lucrative company, he said, I knew that this was going to be a point of friction, you know, and people would give up because they weren't seeing the results as immediately as we are kind of trained to in Western culture. And he said, So I developed this kind of cascade of emails where after they received the product for the first time, he said we knew from our customer data that people would receive the product and it would sit on their shelf for probably two weeks before they even took it for the first time, because it's hard to get people into a routine. And he said, So after about two weeks, we would send our first email that, of course, was not trying to sell a product. This was just encouragement. It would say, Hey, just checking in to make sure that you started, you know, the product. And then um, once they got that email, then like a few weeks later, they would get another, or maybe I think it was a week later, they'll get another email and say, Hey, you know what? We hope you started. We know you haven't felt anything yet, but we want to encourage you to keep going because you're gonna notice the first change in 30 days. And you know, so they just had this constant communication with their client, the same I would have with my patients, of encouragement. And I do think that that's what a lot of modern medicine misses out on. It's what a lot of the longevity clinics that you know you you investigate so much. I think that's what they miss out on is the continuity of care. And I think it's what a lot of brands miss out on too. They're they're so focused on making the sell that they're not focused on the continuity of that care. And, you know, we consider ourselves a skin health company. And so continuity of care is really important to us. And so we try through our social media to constantly be encouraging of people, hey, keep up with it. You know, health is a long-term thing. Um, it's not something you're gonna, you know, just getting glass skin for your one photo is not healthy, it's not synonymous with healthy skin. Like that's it's not the same thing. Um, and so we just are constantly trying to educate people on what to expect, when to expect it, and just encourage them to keep going.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

You also mentioned uh diagnostic. I think for me, what works to keep it consistent, it's uh diagnostics. Once I start measuring my sleep, my activity level. I, you know, when I see when I'm working too much in a computer and I don't don't walk enough, I immediately see a couple of days, it's everything is like red, red, red. It's really motivates me. I know that I need to step up. Yeah, the same things with sleep or anything. Until you try a very continuous glucose monitor, you don't really understand the damage you do with uh with your diets.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yes. Um and not necessarily diagnos it it's not necessarily diagnostics. Um, it is what you're talking about are it goes back to those small rewards. Because, and I talk about this all the time, I was so successful about the Apple Watch or the Aura Ring. Is that, and if you know, did you ever use the Apple Watch?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

No, but I want it right now. When you were speaking about these through teams, I thought that I'm not sure I need another bearable, but I think now I let me do this.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

But what you're talking about are simple rewards and simple goal setting. Because what Apple and Orat does as well, very simply, is that they will say, Oh, you have closed your three rings, and they'll do like a little celebration of that closure or you have done this for seven days. Yay! You know, and it's amazing, Irina. The simplest thing, seeing a red ring pop up on your watch saying that you did something, that is all the motivation that our mind needs. Um, because for the most part, these things, you know, you're gonna see the benefits over decades, right? Of making these changes in your health. But you need those small motivations every single day to keep you on the track so that ultimately you can see the outcome. Um, and so yes, I know tracking your steps, very easy, your VO2 max, heart rate, you know, target heart rate, these are all things that are small rewards. And so the more that you can visualize these small rewards using these devices, the better. Because it's gonna say, hey, I'm accomplishing something. And that sense of accomplishment is so powerful to motivate people to stay with something for the long term.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

By already, you saying it time to stretch your legs when I'm working too much in the computers. And by the way, we were speaking about like morning, evening routines. The one of the things which I am really trying to do that during the day, and I'm not a sitting desk, I'm standing desk, but it's still not healthy. And I have a walking pad under my desk as well. So I'm not all the time working, but like half of the time I'm walking, half of them standing, but still it's not moving. And one of the uh things which is I hear it's really, really good do during the day when you're working too much with your devices, is every hour to uh jumping rope or I do sit ups, ten sit ups, ten sit ups, not so much. So uh have a little bit of movement, ten of movements in between. And if you do it across the whole day, it keeps your body engaged and it's incredibly important. But it's very difficult sometimes. Like I was putting the alarm clock every hour. I got annoyed because I'm working in the middle of working, the alarm goes on. But I find the way that maybe it's not every hour, maybe one and a half hour, but I do this occasional breaks, and in the beginning, it's always difficult. It's always hard in the beginning to remember about it. But once you do it for a certain number of days, it's easier to do it naturally. And this is why I'm saying also about how one of my rules, how to stick to the habit. For example, starting from the gym. It's not was was not naturally for me waking up in the morning and I want to go to the gym. I'm not always want to go, especially when I'm travel a lot and I'm tired and I come back and not in this routine. I don't feel like going to the gym. But you know, what I have did to myself, I say myself, like I'm go there for 10-15 minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, no matter how much. So I don't put much pressure on myself. I'm I'm going for and in the beginning, sometimes it's 10-15 minutes. And I'm saying, okay, feel good, I've done it. But once you're getting more often, then you start feeling you want to do more and more. But I do not commit myself in the beginning when I try to go to the gym, it was not sticking. I would go for one hour, one and a half hour, and I suffer, and it was hard, and then you don't want to come back.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

That's right. And I and I do think that that is part of the problem with optimization culture is that people get so focused that I must do this XYZ every single day. Um, and uh it's burning people out, and you know, it's not it's not healthy in the long term, and you're not gonna get your long-term health benefits if you burn out and it can't stick to the routine. And I love it, and I I do the same thing. I love exactly what you're saying is that yes, you have to be adaptable and you have to be flexible, but you can still take the small win. So, you know, say your your overall goal is I'm going to, I'm gonna do some movement every single day, right? Well, some days you're gonna have more time and more energy to do an hour workout. And I think for a large number of people, once if they have that in their head, I'm gonna do an hour every day, and then life happens and they can't do the hour, then that gives them them an excuse to say, well, I can't do this, I'm not gonna do it. But if you just have grace with yourself and that self-kindness, you can say, you know what? No, I can't do an hour today, but I can do 10 minutes and I'm gonna do 10 minutes of yoga, and then you're gonna take that win. And that the thing that that does to you mentally is so powerful uh to say, you know what, I I could make time for 10 minutes. It it makes such a difference in terms of being able to stick with something for the long term, those small wins and not being so hard on yourself. My whole goal, even you know, when I was on the in you know in the clinics dealing with patients was to help people figure out the ways that they are going to age better. Um, and that's gonna that's gonna vary from person to person. And as much as we can, we can customize um, you know, how we're gonna inspire people and give them different ways to to be inspired. And yeah, that's that's part of what we're trying to build at Beakman 1802.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

The last one maybe like if you uh lose everything tomorrow and keep your knowledge, which three rituals will you uh rebuild first? What is the most important three?

SPEAKER_01 43:43

You have three. My three rituals, it would be to um try to eat whole foods as much as possible. Which I pretty much keep a raw diet. I could re eat on a raw diet, so I try to do that as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

I would keep the good morning walk and say hello and good morning to anybody that I pass. And I would probably keep my sleep routine as close to possible as it is, like truly try to follow a circadian rhythm, like get up when the sun comes up and go to bed when the sun goes down, and not try to change my biology, depending on workload, just to really try to keep that circadian rhythm. So what everybody says about longevity eat better, social connection, get your sleep and your exercise, like that's that's really all you need.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Yes, absolutely. I'm listening to a lot of uh podcasts and watching shows on longevity and reading the books, and lately I heard more and more about the importance of the social connections, like almost above all the others, which is in the beginning it was like afterfood and exercise, but now it's getting more on front.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

That was weird. We have optimized everything else, like we have told people how to optimize nutrition, how to optimize physical activity, and people realize that that has not made them look or feel healthier. And again, the only scientifically validated thing um that contributes to longevity thus far is social connection. And oddly, it's the thing that people have the most difficulty with social connection, and you know, our computers have trained us to be more and more isolated. You know, I was talking to someone in retail the other day, luxury retail, and I said, you know what? What I believe from a company that creates product is that the luxury product of the future is anything that makes the customer feel cared for. Because I think we have overly commercialized everything to the point that we only feel like we are being sold to. Um, and I think that people really are hungry to be cared for and feel that they are being nurtured in a way. And, you know, that's I think that's gonna become worse with AI.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Um and I just was thinking about that. Yeah, because like AI is supposed to make the life easier, but we're getting more and more addicted to the technology, and we're just doing more in the same amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Yes. I think the power of human touch and human connection, that's gonna be the luxury good of the future, and people are going to be willing to pay a lot for that luxury good just to feel cared for.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Oh, thank you so much, Brent. It was very, very inspiring. Great start. I really appreciate your knowledge and sharing your expertise. And uh yeah, congratulations again, this very successful brand, and uh you do an amazing job with uh helping people to improve uh the way how they feel. We'll be in touch and for more. Thank you. Yes, thank you.