[Luke] So funny thing, right before you got here I was telling my wife, "Oh, my guest is almost here." She never keeps track of who's coming or who's not, and she's making her lunch, and right on the counter is some Primal Kitchen mayo. I was like, "The guy that founded that company is the guy that's about to come over." She's like, "I'm obsessed. I buy two at a time." Like, so you have a fan of your former work-

[Mark] Awesome...

[Luke] Right here in the house. Yeah. Great. Love

[Mark] It.

[Luke] Yeah. and I think when I first learned of you back in probably around the time I started this podcast, you know, you had the Primal Blueprint book and Primal Kitchen- Yeah And then, you know, I observed that company just blowing up, and then eventually you exited. Yes. Am I correct?

[Mark] Yes, yeah. You did. It was what, seven and a half years ago now.

[Luke] Wow, that long.

[Mark] Yeah, that long, yeah.

[Luke] And so what what was it... I, well, I'm curious, you know. We're gonna talk about a specific niche topic today, which I'm really excited about, which is, like, how to deal with your feet, maybe the most important part of your body-

[Mark] Yeah

[Luke] Especially as you get older, but what was it like building and scaling that company? You know, you're one of the success stories in the, in the wellness space. Yeah,

[Mark] It was amazing. it's something I've done my whole life. I mean, I started... My first business was mowing lawns at 12 years old. So in the summers I had a 40-hour-a-week lawn mowing business. Made money. Felt good to have, you know, that self-sufficiency. Started painting houses at 14. Made more money painting houses than mowing lawns, so I moved over to that. painted houses for a number of years. Even through my athletic career, I supported myself as a house painter. Shifted into writing books and being a personal trainer for a while. Started a frozen yogurt shop in 1982 in Palo Alto, California. Really? Yes, one of the first into frozen yogurt.

[Luke] I used to hang out in Palo Alto.

[Mark] Yeah, on Emerson. A couple

[Luke] Years after

[Mark] That. On Emerson, right off of, Oh, wow... University, yeah. As I got more and more into human performance and thinking about ways in which to as an athlete, to improve my performance- Create a supplement company. So I had a fairly successful supplement company that lasted from I think I started in 1995. And that supplement company is what begat Primal Kitchen. I just looked into-- I'd been talking about performance, and I'd been writing about health and fitness for a long time. I'd been writing about diet on Mark's Daily Apple and in "The Primal Blueprint," and had come down to this realization that you know, really what matters is sort of what you give up when you stop eating the bad food and start eating the good food. But when you start eating the good food, it's kind of a short list, you know-... a little bit of meat, chicken, fish, whatever.

[03:24]

[Luke] Especially back then.

[Mark] Especially back then. Yeah. Interestingly, you know, my second book was "The Primal Blueprint Cookbook," and it did fairly well. So I thought, "Oh, this is really interesting. Now that I've identified what people wanna eat and how they operate with with this short list of healthy foods, it's clear to me that the differences in the methods of preparation and the, and the herbs and the spices and what people put on their food that make it sustainable."

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] So I did a book called "Primal Blueprint Healthy Sauces, Dressings, and Toppings." And because I self-published and I'd done so well with "The Primal Blueprint," I printed 40,000 copies of this book. That was 2010, 2011, and I think we sold 8,000 copies so far. So what I, so what I gathered from that was that people, they want the sauces, the dressings, and the toppings, but they don't wanna do it themselves.

[Luke] Yeah. So

[Mark] That's-

[Luke] I would, I would be one of those-

[Mark] Yeah... candidates A lot of people, clearly. So that's how I wind up starting Primal Kitchen. And then with Primal Kitchen, by the time I started it -- and I was in my 60s when I started Primal Kitchen. I'd already had, you know, careers and done a lot of things, but I'd always been an entrepreneur. So for me, the risk-taking had been mitigated by years of, years of failures, too, by the way. I've had a number of failures, and that's, you know, cliché, but we learn from the failures. So when I started Primal Kitchen in 2014, and we sold the first product in 2015, and by the end of 2018, I had a really firm offer to buy it. So three and a half years later, it looks like it's an overnight success story, but it was basically a 40-year overnight success story. Right. But yeah, it was incredible to have that exit and then to sort of be able to take a step back and go, "Okay, I think I'm set for life now. I don't need to do anything else," but I chose to do some other stuff.

[Luke] Well, that's kind of what I was, what I was getting Yeah. Yeah... 'cause I think many of us think of the idea of entrepreneurship, you know, yeah, you have some ups and downs. There's things you try that work and, Yeah... some don't, and, you know, you learn, and you keep building. but I think many of us have the idea if you just get that one big win, you know, whether it's an equity play or you found something, you're able to exit, that you're just gonna disappear and ride off into the sunset. You know? Yeah. But what I find with entrepreneurs like you and many others is there's still something that motivates them to start a new thing. Yeah. You know? And it doesn't seem to be so much dependent on age as just there's this kind of, I don't know drive or momentum in some of us that just... We just keep wanna build things even if we don't, you know, need to in order to keep the lights on.

[Mark] I, it's... There's a lot of elements to this. One is just being creative. I mean, I've always had ideas, and I've also recognized that what separates so many people from successful entrepreneurs are the number of people who said, "Oh, I had that idea a long time ago." Yeah, but you didn't act on it. And so having an idea is great. And we all have great ideas that somebody else eventually acts upon, but also the perseverance, the you know, the willingness to get in there and and roll up your sleeves. and I think the process... And to-- f-for me, the process is such an important part of the, of creativity, of building, and of having a goal and being willing and able to pivot if you're not really if you don't see the, an endpoint definitively ahead, but you know you're in the right direction to be willing to pivot. So the process is a really important part of this. You know, when I was when I exited Primal Kitchen I tell people it was like the, one of the greatest days of my life, and then the next day I was depressed. I'm like, "Now what?" Right.

[07:20]

[Luke] Right.

[Mark] You know, it's like, it's like... And I've seen this with athletes, with, particularly with the sports that I ran, the endurance sports where there's a single participant. Not a team sport necessarily, although that works too. But in the Olympic Games with swimming and cycling and running, you know, you train your whole life for a moment, and then you win the race maybe, if you're lucky, and you did all that work. And then the next day you go from the highest high and s-celebrating and shaking up the champagne and doing all that stuff to the next morning waking up and realizing, "Holy crap, now I gotta do this again? Like, now I have to top this?" So it's a, in terms of, you know, personal growth and introspection, the only way you can survive this, I think, without kind of driving yourself crazy, is to understand that it's a journey and there's a process, and to appreciate every day along the way while you're doing this. Appreciate every day that you're training in advance of this one possible victory that you have. And if you don't have the victory, by the way, to still go back and be able to appreciate the process.

[Luke] What are some of the mistakes that you made along the way in entrepreneurship that you think are the, th-the ones that were the hardest to overcome?

[Mark] I think it's always, in my mind, it's always the ones I gave up on too soon. I had an idea for a magazine in the late '70s, early '80s called Failure Magazine. And I th-- And to this day, I'm like, that would've been so epic to have a magazine that really dug into the essence of what went wrong when companies failed or when buildings failed or when stuff failed. And I came really close to launching it, and I just, for whatever reason, I gave up on that. That was a failure, you know? So-

[Luke] It came to fruition in a different way.

[Mark] Yeah. Yeah. you know, I was in the frozen yogurt business, and I had a very successful shop in Palo Alto. my partner and I borrowed forty thousand dollars on credit cards to build this shop, and then once it was open, we refinanced it with a bank. But we did three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in gross sales our first year and netted a hundred and twenty-five thousand bucks. It was a, it was a massive success. And instead of replicating that, we said, "Oh, let's get bigger. Let's build a, you know, a frozen yogurt emporium with a salad bar," and basically... And a And muffins were big in those days, healthy muffins, and healthy soups, and so we built a restaurant and lost all our money.

[Luke] Oh,

[Mark] Wow. So, you know, for a lot of reasons, it was it was right next to Apple Computer on Saratoga Sunnyvale Road in San Jose, but it was a bad parking and whatever. For whatever reasons, that failed. you know, I've had I had my first supplement company fail. There were... I eventually figured out how to do that. When my supplem-supplement company that I eventually succeeded, when it did succeed, it succeeded on the strength of my visits to a television show that was being broadcast out of Dallas, Texas, a show called Know The Cause. And I would go on and I would talk about health and fitness and diet and exercise. It was a talk show. And oh, by the way, I have this supplement line that I think you'd benefit from. It was very low-key sales. And I crushed it, and I grew, like, five, six percent a month for years, and that became my business model. Well, that model failed when the internet started being a thing, when there were... And then cable TV and Dish became a thing, and all of a sudden you went from a couple of channels that you could watch to three hundred channels. So I pivoted, and I thought, "Well, I'll do my own TV show. I'm good at this." So I spent a year creating a TV show called Responsible Health. I shot fifty-one half-hour episodes of this show. I had a set. I had a co-host, a charming co-host. We had a guest every week. I was the sponsor of the show with my supplement line. Lost a million and a half bucks doing that. It was a miserable failure From that, number one I learned that I'm great at pr-producing content so I went on to create Mark's Daily Apple, which became a very big success in the blogging world. So there was another pivot, a massive failure that turned into a success because I was, I recognized what worked in what I was doing, and I was able to pivot in that regard. And to this day, if I had not done that, I would probably beat myself up for something that I should have done, should have taken a chance on, regardless of what the outcome was. It's like the Failure magazine kind of thing. Who knows what would have happened, but I sort of regret not taking that. I didn't wanna regret not doing this health talk show.

[12:12]

[Luke] I think the Failure magazine could still be a great book.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] You know, interviewing successful people about their failures. Yeah... I, 'cause I personally as an entrepreneur I find people's stories of failure and frustration more inspiring and educational than the wins, you know, because it shows- It's

[Mark] The hero's journey...

[Luke] It shows those pivots-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] Right, and it shows the perseverance that's required and the creativity to come up with the ideas and then having the blind faith to try and execute them. Right now I'm sitting on probably four or five ideas for businesses, you know? Yeah. And I don't tell anyone what they are 'cause I think, no, someone else will do it.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] They'll probably do it anyway- Yeah... if I don't, if I don't come around to finding a way to start something, you know what I mean?

[Mark] Well, that's one of the things I tell people is that if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. And sometimes you enter a business and you go, "Oh, shit, everyone is doing it." You know?

[Luke] That's kind of how podcasting is now.

[Mark] Yes.

[Luke] You know, when I started in 2016, the, you know, the, I felt like I was coming in late even at that point, you know. But now people that, you know, that I meet, "Oh, you're an OG. You've been doing this for 10 years." You go, "I don't know if that really helps you," 'cause now there's, you know, everyone and their mom has a podcast, so the space is so saturated that your ability to monetize it and pay for the production expenses gets harder and harder. You know, there's like a narrow margins- Yeah... because of the oversaturation, so that causes me to think like, "Hmm. Yeah, well, I want to do other things. It might get to a point where I have to do other things because, you know-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] This isn't what it once was in terms of, you know, the ease of funding it and keeping it together."

[Mark] It's, you know, it's it's interesting to find a way to cut through the noise. Like, if you want to start a supplement company, one of the great ways to do it is to go to Expo West, which is the biggest-

[Luke] Right, yeah, I've been

[Mark] To that... trade show for food and supplements in the world. And on the one hand, you get inspired. On the other hand, you get dejected-... because there's already 15 people doing what your, you thought Totally Big idea was.

[Luke] Totally.

[Mark] So you have to kind of have that faith that your concept is a viable business concept, number one, and that you can pull it off.

[Luke] Yeah. That's something I've noticed in the, in the product space, more so kind of in the supplement space, I guess you could say, is you know, going back almost 30 years when I got into all of this kind of alternative healing and whatnot, things like you know, medicinal mushrooms and Chinese herbs and that were kind of, you know, the fringe ideas that only the hippies in the health space kind of knew about. And then you have things come along, MCT oil or collagen peptides and things. Over the years, I kind of see these trends come and go, but I'm always shocked that someone comes out with a really great product, say, in one of those categories, like medicinal mushrooms. You know, they turned the West onto the-

[Mark] Yes

[Luke] The ancient secrets of you know, reishi and chaga mushrooms- Yeah... et cetera. And I think, "Oh, I'm not gonna bother doing that," 'cause the, someone already has that space, and then you see it starts to gain traction. All of a sudden, now there's probably 100 different medicinal mushroom- Yeah Companies or mushroom coffee companies or whatever. So it's interesting that the scalability is kind of deceptive, 'cause you see a few people kind of glom onto a particular space, and you think like, "There's no way they can all be successful." But then I forget there's billions of people on the planet- Yeah Who have never heard of reishi mushrooms, right? Yeah. So I think a lot of it has to do with your capacity for marketing and coming up with a viable product.

[15:41]

[Mark] Right. Branding. The branding's huge now. Yeah.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] Because in, especially in the supplement space, there's nothing new. Seriously, there is nothing new in the supplement space. It's all regurgitated from 40, 50, 60 years ago.

[Luke] Right.

[Mark] So you know you see some new uh, beta-glucan supplement.

[Luke] There are the green powders, you know?

[Mark] Oh my God. The grass clippings.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] Yeah. No, those have been around forever.

[Luke] I know. You know? Do you remember the company Green Magma-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] Back in the day? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. My aunt was like a sales rep for them. Yeah. And this is way back in the early '90s, and I was still very unhealthy. Yeah. but I would take that Green Magma, and then I watch over the years, you know, that particular niche industry is like everyone has a green vegetable superfood powder.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] And I think, "No one's gonna keep trying that." And then a new company comes out. I see them all the time Better... "You guys are still hitting that?"

[Mark] They're still hitting that, and it's still not that good. colostrum's another great one. Colostrum's become huge. That's like one of the original supplements, going back 60 years ago.

[Luke] Right. Right.

[Mark] Anyway, I just, I laugh at, uh... Look, everybody is creative, and they're finding new ways to to get people to take supplements. God bless them.

[Luke] Here's what's up. The longer I've been in the health space, the more I've realized that the environment around your body is just as important, if not more important in some cases, as the things you put into it. You can eat clean, sleep eight hours, take all the right supplements, but if your body's swimming in a sea of wireless signals twenty-four hours a day, that stress can sabotage a lot of that hard work. And that is why my Quantum Upgrade subscription is still active after all these years. It's pretty incredible. It creates a coherent quantum field around my home that harmonizes EMF so it's less disruptive to my biology, and I can even take it with me when I travel. There's no pills to take, nothing to track, no devices, nothing to remember. It just runs in the background while I get on with living my best life. And what I love about these guys is that they're always innovating. They recently added a growing library of boosters that let you personalize your experience, from recovery and deep sleep to creativity, travel, and even meditation. So you can log into your account, set your booster, and run. So to upgrade your life, get over to lukestory.com/quantumupgrade and use the code Luke fifteen to start your fifteen-day free trial. 'Cause if you're gonna invest in your health, don't ignore the environment in which you live. That's lukestory.com/quantumupgrade All right, so now on to your latest venture Oluva. Yeah. You're now dominating the you know, the healthy footwear space. I'll start by saying it was probably 2010 or '11 or so, someone turned me... I was kind of getting into the ideas of primal health and paleo- Yeah... sort of understanding that we've, you know, our domestication has kind of diverted us away from our natural lifeways, and a lot of our health problems are a result of our domestication and whatnot. And so I got ahold of this book I think it's called Born to Run. Mm-hmm. Is that the name? Yes. I'm sure you know the book. So I got that book, and I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe we're all walking around in shoes." So I got... I think I had the Earth Runners at that point. I was like, "I'm never wearing normal shoes again." So, and I was living in the Hollywood Hills behind the Hollywood Bowl, and I started running, you know, in my flat sandals. I was like, "I'm gonna be like those Mexicans in the book," you know?

[19:17]

[Mark] That's right.

[Luke] And next thing you know, my knees are blown out. Yeah. You know? And I didn't, I couldn't put it together at the time. I just remember like, ah, this hurts, so there's something, I'm missing something here. And then later sort of figured out in a rough idea that, you know, the ancient peoples of the world weren't living in a world that is asphalt, concrete, wood floors, tile. They're on a varied topography, right? Yes. And so there's, you know, there's more-

[Mark] Every step is different. Yeah.

[Luke] Right. Right. There's no two steps are the same kinda thing. So that kind of put the piece of the puzzle together. Obviously, I stopped running in minimal footwear, but ever since have been fascinated with the idea. And it's interesting because that industry, to me, has been a little slow-moving. You know? There's a few, like, wide toe box shoes and minimal shoes and things like that now, but not as many as I feel there could be for the need, and maybe it's just because the public isn't educated on how important it is. So that's what I'd like to accomplish here today is say, like, "Hey, this is-"

[Mark] Yeah..."

[Luke] This is really something we need to pay attention to." And if we're going to get out of the old cushiony you know, foot coffins that have totally deformed my feet, by the way, from wearing, like, pointy shoes my whole childhood and, you know early life, is that there's a transitional kind of piece that's important so that you don't make things worse by trying to make them better.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] So I'm excited to talk about this.

[Mark] Yeah. Same. Let's unpack that. So you know, first of all, just to comment on your experience with minimalist footwear, having read that book that was a very common experience. There are a lot of people who said, "Oh, I'm a great runner. I already..." Or, "A good runner," or, "I put in a lot of miles. I read this book. It feels like, you know, humans are born to run. I feel like I'm born to run. and we're born to run barefoot. Clearly, we're born barefoot, so I'm gonna buy some minimal shoes and go out and run." Tens of thousands of peoples did that and ran four, five, six miles the first day or within that week had incurred horrible injuries like plantar fasciitis and Achilles, pulled Achilles, and metatarsal stress fractures because They were encased in these foot coffins, as you say, with cushions underneath them running on clouds with their intrinsic muscles in their feet basically atrophying with every step. Furthermore, with the big toe being scrunched up against the rest of the metatarsal head, with the arch being supported, unburdened of having to do any work, so that arch piece, the plantar fascia piece atrophying, with the raised heel causing the calf muscle to shorten because the calf just shortens when you raise the heel up, putting more pressure on the Achilles. It's no wonder that when you read a book and then you go, "Oh, I'm gonna transition immediately to barefoot running," it's no wonder that you get hurt because your feet have atrophied for... People have been running for, you know, 10 or 15 years, putting in all their miles, but under the constraints of these tight cushioned shoes with atrophied feet, and then they go out. It's like going to the gym the first day if you haven't worked out for 10 years, and you say, "All right, we're gonna do 350 curls today with 90 pounds," and, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna pay the price So what it, what it really points at is this notion that, and not just runners by the way, everybody in society has been at the effect of footwear that has been designed primarily for fashion that does exactly what we just said, whether or not it's a cushioned running shoe or you know, a tod for a driving shoe or a fancy Italian leather shoe to go out clubbing or a high heel for women. All of these shoes tend to restrict the feet and cramp the feet and push that big toe over and support the arch and do all... and raise the heel, do all the same things. So after a lifetime of doing this, after decades of doing this, we see like 70, 80% of people have deformed, misshapen feet

[23:32]

[Luke] That hurt. Yeah. I would, I would be one of them.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] You're never gonna see me barefoot on the podcast- Yeah... doing a video.

[Mark] Yeah. And-

[Luke] I'll always be on my way up here, I'm like, "Put your socks on. Like, you cannot..." I mean, it's just, it's bad.

[Mark] That's funny.

[Luke] Toes all going different directions. Yeah. You know, bunions. It's not pretty.

[Mark] And when you think about it, our feet are our connection with the universe. It is our feet that anchor us to the ground, that ground us, that are the primary, not just point of contact, but origin of every force. Every step we take, every time we jump, every time we change direction, every time we dance, every time we run, every time we go for a hike set up for a golf shot or a hit a baseball. Everything we do the power starts with that connection with Earth. So if we don't pay attention to that, the rest of this wonderful kinetic chain suffers as a result. Let's unpack that. So feet are supposed to be... We're supposed to be barefoot. But, you know, as you've mentioned, we're surrounded by concrete and pavement and hardwood floors and glass and tile and marble and-

[Luke] Yeah

[Mark] Everything else.

[Luke] Needles, dog shit.

[Mark] Yeah. All of that, too. Exactly.

[Luke] I used to walk around barefoot in LA, dude, and people would, you know-

[Mark] Oh my God...

[Luke] Yeah, it really... People did Yeah... seem to enjoy that. Yeah.

[Mark] So feet want to feel the ground. They want to feel the temperature, the texture, the tilt of the ground underneath With the intent that these 20,000 to up to 200,000 nerve endings on the bottoms of our feet sense what's going on underneath. And by the time you weight that forward foot, when you take that step, and by the time you put a little bit of weight on it, the brain already has all the information it needs on exactly how to organize your kinetic chain. How much to maybe scrunch the arch around that, around that rock, or how much to sink into that divot, or how much to articulate the toes around that single little stone or how much to roll the ankle because it's on a tilted surface. And if you roll the ankle, which it's supposed to roll, it takes the burden off the knee. The knee is not supposed to go sideways. The knee is supposed to go in a single plane. But the ankle is there to be strong enough and resilient enough to roll with the sensory input that you give it from the bottoms of the feet so that you don't have to tweak your knee on a hike or on a run or stepping in a chuckhole running barefoot across or on cleats across a football field. All of this sensory input is required for the brain to be able to give you the tools you need to be pain-free and injury-free your whole life. Everybody's born with a perfect kinetic chain. Now you-- A-and by the way, everybody's born with perfect feet. You may say, "Well, I have flat feet. I have fallen arches. I have..." You're born with perfect feet, and you're born with a perfect kinetic chain, but it's perfect for you. It's not the same as somebody else. So you could say, "Well, I have big wide feet. I have knock knees. I have-- I'm pigeon-toed. I have wide hips." None of this matters as long as you're able to give that sensory input to your brain to organize your perfect kinetic chain in a way that avoids injury and reinforces a strong, powerful, balanced, symmetrical gait when you walk or when you run or when you dance or when you jump. So my mission now is to allow people to understand that foot strength, foot health, foot mobility, and resilience is probably the lowest hanging fruit in longevity. It's probably the single greatest thing that you can do to extend your life. Now that's a big st-- that's a bold statement, but if you think about all that you do in your life and the quality of your life and how much of it depends on this contact you have with the ground and your ability to move throughout your life Mobility defines-- is one of the defining characteristics of a quality life. So if you live to be eighty or ninety or a hundred or a hundred and five, you wanna be moving. You wanna be able to move throughout this world, whether it's to walk down the hall to visit a neighbor, down the street to go to a coffee shop, or to the airport and board a plane and go to Italy and do a walking tour. Whatever it is, you want to experience this world, this life, because you're mobile and your feet are the key to your mobility. You wanna be mobile enough to get to the gym to lift weights so that you can build bone density, and you can build organ reserve, so your heart gets stronger as a result of the work you're doing that starts with the feet, that your bones get more dense as a result of your ability to get to the gym and do this. And all of it kinda flies out the window if our foot health starts to get compromised, and then we get foot pain, and we say, "Well, I can't, I can't walk that much anymore because my feet are sore." and then of course, the typical new strategy is you go to a podiatrist, and he says, "Well, we'll get you softer shoes." Yeah. You know, you know, your shoes that are this thick and cushioned aren't thick and cushioned enough. We'll get you some more. That's where the industry has gone. The industry-

[28:33]

[Luke] Or insoles.

[Mark] Or We're gonna put insoles... and we'll get you insoles, sure, and we'll support that arch because oh my God, it's fallen and you're... No. The only way to combat this is to strengthen your arch. Now, there are foot exercises you can do. They're great. They're wonderful. We have a whole book on stuff you can do to manipulate your feet and work on your big toe strength and all of this. But the easiest way to do this is to walk in five-toed minimalist shoes, and walk with a, with a symmetrical balanced gait, and really kinda focus on getting, making every step count as a rep, and rebuilding your foot strength.

[Luke] Beautiful, man. You got the pitch down, dude. That was a really great comprehensive overview. I mean, that's... It makes so much sense. I don't know how you could listen to that and be like, "

[Mark] I don't-

[Luke] W-... that's not for me," you know? It's like, duh.

[Mark] Yeah, but what, you know what happens, so a lot of my customers are 50, 60, 70 years old, and they've hit that point where they've got the bunions, or they've got the plantar fasciitis, and they can't walk, and they can't walk in regular shoes, or they walk in regular shoes and their knees hurt because their knees hurt because the shoes are too soft, and they've lost that sensory input on the bottoms of the feet, so the brain can't organize the kinetic chain all the way up. Or they get lower back problems, or they get glute issues because their big toe is compressed against the rest of their metatarsal. And the big toe wants to splay outward. It wants to be the last point of contact when you walk, and when you put them in most shoes, the big toe is not the last point of contact. It's the front end of the shoe. Well, when your big toe is able to do what it's supposed to do, the big toe that is the most important joint in the foot that's what connects your... That's what activates your glute. So you'll see bodybuilders and weightlifters go into the gym, and on leg day, they'll take off their shoes.

[Luke] Oh, interesting.

[Mark] They do that because they know that the big toe needs to be splayed outward, screwed into the ground, contact with the ground, in order to activate the glute, in order to get the full use of all of the muscles in that kinetic chain up the leg. So if you, if you scrunch that big toe over in regular shoes, especially if you do it in cushioned shoes, you negate all of that big toe activation, and then you're not, unable to activate the glute, which in turn requires you to use some of the stabilizer muscles, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that if you're doing heavy weights, those stabilizer muscles then can... You can get you know, piriformis syndrome and a few other little nervous issues, sciatic and things like that because you haven't fully engaged the glute. So The big toe and this is the difference between, say, our shoes and the ones that you are wearing because there are a lot of minimalist shoes out there with wide, what they call wide toe boxes. But if you have been through a lifetime of deforming your feet in regular shoes in the interest of fashion-

[31:36]

[Luke] Yeah...

[Mark] Uh, or even in the interest of performance like on the soccer pitch with cleats that are just so tight, or cyclists whose cleats are so tight, you have compromised that great toe, that big toe. And it wants to be out there. It wants to be activated. So if your, if your feet are misformed from whatever you've been doing, putting them in an open toe box doesn't create some automatic wonderful natural splay. I've

[Luke] Learned this to be true.

[Mark] Yeah. Yes. Which is why so many people buy toe spacers, right? Yeah. They go, "I

[Luke] I have some, I have some on right now. "

[Mark] I recognize that my feet are messed Yeah... and so I'll wear toe spacers when I'm sitting at home watching TV." I mean, that's kinda phase one, but why not guide them into individual toe slots which creates a neutral splay like we have, and then allow them to articulate individually so that every time you walk on an uneven surface, those toes are moving separately, individually, and strengthening themselves and the intrinsic muscles of the feet, and building the arch up as a result of this cohesiveness that they have.

[Luke] Right. 'Cause if you're wearing toe spacers, I never really thought about this until now, you're still giving your toes a limited range of motion. They're spread out, but they're still stuck.

[Mark] Sometimes they're spread out too much with toe spacers.

[Luke] Oh,

[Mark] Really? And then you... Well, some people complain that it's too much, and then you take them off and your feet are sore. But Yeah... just like doing a stretch versus going through an entire range of motion with your toes. And what we say, "Relax, realign, and strengthen with every step." So with the Peluva shoes, we tell people, "Look, you don't run in these. They're..." You, I mean, you can if you know how to run and you've trained for it. They might be the best running shoe ever invented, but most people don't know how to run, so don't run in these shoes. Walk, and every step you take is a rep, and every step you take, you feel the ground underneath you. We take people on walking tours sometimes, and we look for cobblestones, and we look for uneven surfaces. We call that foot candy. The feet wanna feel, and they, the feet just sort of delight- Yeah... in the change in texture. I think you've probably experienced this.

[Luke] Yeah, totally. And I talked about on a recent podcast actually how I find it annoying that in all of our modern homes, all of the floors are flat.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] I wish they were like cobblestones. I'm waiting for someone to invent some sort of, you know, tile situation- Yeah... where you actually have some variation.

[Mark] I

[Luke] Have s- 'Cause it actually hurts my feet to walk on flat stuff all the time. Put me out on a trail, I'm golden. Yeah. Like, 'cause there's... You know, as you said, that communication, right? There's just, there's a relationship to the rest of my body and the ground beneath me, and that data is lost when you're on flat surfaces all the time.

[Mark] Yeah. Now, when you're, when you're hiking, again, you're just walking, so we're not talking about massive G-forces like if you're running. If you're running, there are G-forces, and if you know, again, if you know how to do that, great. But we're just saying with walking, if every step you take, especially on a trail with boulders and stuff like that, if you can feel the rocks, and if you can feel the trail, and you can feel the sticks, and every step you take, again, doesn't feel... It's not like, "Oh my God, I'm like what's gonna happen? I'm No, it's like, "I got control of this. I'm in control. I know how to, I know my brain is telling my entire leg muscles, my kinetic chain exactly how to how to land, how much to, again, how much to scrunch that arch around that rock. Maybe I'm stepping off a 14-inch step from a boulder down. I'm descending. I know exactly how much to bend my knee. As soon as my foot hits the ground, I know exactly how much extra to bend my knee just to absorb the shock of that." It's incredibly important information that we bypass with running shoes, certainly with street shoes, and then with hiking boots. These stiff hiking, leather stiff hiking boots that come up over your ankle that never let your ankle do any work because God forbid we roll an ankle when we're hiking, right?

[35:34]

[Luke] Right. It's kind of like a cast.

[Mark] It is a cast. And then you wonder why you tweak a knee because the torque of dropping down on a on a sideways tilted rock that your ankle can't absorb some of the shock, and now your knee twists.

[Luke] Right. That actually happened to me in Colorado last year. Yeah, did a big hike up Snowmass Mountain. It's golden on the way up. Yeah. And I thought, "Oh, I better wear some hiking boots so I don't roll an ankle or something." Yeah. Yeah. It was golden on the way up. On the way down, I trashed my knees, and I had to have someone come rescue me in a car. Yeah. I was, I mean, I couldn't walk. No.

[Mark] Dude, I mean, I mean

[Luke] It was brutal. I had to have, like, an extraction, you know? Like on the survival shows. You It was like literally, I'm, I cannot walk another foot. Even, and I had sticks, and I was just done.

[Mark] You had the exact experience I describe, which is how people can even survive a hike like that without this ground feel. We have some of the top... this is the season that UTMB, this big mountain racing circuit in Europe, is taking place, where they do 30 and 50 mile off-road mountain hikes that take sometimes over a day. A lot of my UTMB guys train in my hiking Palovas with rucksacks on. They're rucking, and they walk, and they're getting their feet stronger with every step, so that when they put on their racing shoes race day, their feet are stronger, their ankles are stronger, and they don't roll an ankle. And I've seen pictures of my guys, like landing sideways on a rock, and you'd look like, oh, that is a, that's a hospital visit for a tweaked ankle there, and oh no, that's the guy who won the race. That's at mile 20, and he just, you know, he was so resilient and so strong, that's just what happened when he landed.

[Luke] All right, you supplement junkies, listen up. If you're spending a bunch of money every month on supplements, I've got a potentially uncomfortable question. How much of that investment is your body actually using? I've spent the better part of three decades chasing the best supplements I could find, then it finally hit me. If my gut wasn't doing its job, I might as well be flushing a lot of that money down the toilet, and I'm sure I did. And this is exactly why Just Thrive Probiotic earned a permanent place in my stack. The dirty little secret in the probiotic market is that most of them never survive stomach acid, so they never make it where they need to go. Well, Just Thrive fixed that. Their stuff is clinically proven to arrive 100% alive in your gut where it can actually make a difference. And something else I'm really excited about that they're doing over at Just Thrive is their digestive bitters. I've been taking them before meals, which has been a game changer. Bitter herbs help your body produce stomach acid, bile, and digestive enzymes to properly break down food. And shocker, better nutrient absorption means getting more from the food and supplements you're already taking. So if your gut's giving you a gut feeling right now, get over to justthrivehealth.com/luke and get free digestive bitters with your first 90-day probiotic subscription, 'cause sometimes the smartest upgrade isn't adding more. It's actually making more out of what you already take. So again, get your free 90-day supply of digestive bitters when you start a probiotic subscription at justthrivehealth.com/luke. Well, speaking of the that G-force, something I've noticed when I wear minimal footwear is if I'm in a airport, I always have my noise-canceling headphones on 'cause we were talking about airports before. Yeah. They're just such a shitshow. And I notice when I have those headphones on and I'm walking on that tile and I have minimal footwear, I mean, I really feel the reverberation of every step to where it's like if I'm not actually being conscious about the way I'm walking, it'll kinda hurt my hips and my back, and it just like every step kind of really lands throughout- Yes That kinetic chain.

[39:29]

[Mark] Yes.

[Luke] And so it sorta forces me to be more deliberate in the way that I walk to ease that, you know, Yeah... ramming that basically bare foot, 'cause I'm talking about really minimal, and that is a good indication to me that, you know, A, I haven't trained to be able to do that, and also that I think some of the footwear that's, like, really minimal is perhaps not so great when you are on a hard, flat surface.

[Mark] That's 100%, um,

[Luke] Accurate. Like, I wish mine had... I'm gonna have to get some of yours, 'cause from what I understand, you have some that have a little bit of cushion

[Mark] And stuff. Yeah, we have enough cushion. look, I was one of the original adopters of the first five-toed shoe. It's a, it's... The only way to go is a five-toed shoe, I think. But it was too, it was too thin. It was minimal to a fault with the sort of assumption that, you know, we're humans, we're supposed to be barefoot, so let's put a little bit of protection against nails and rocks in there. But I think the surfaces that we walk on, there's nothing harder than an airport-

[Luke] Yeah

[Mark] An airport, They

[Luke] All have the same-...

[Mark] Corridor...

[Luke] Terrazzo tile.

[Mark] Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty bad.

[Luke] And there And God forbid you're, like, missing your connection- Oh, gee... which happened to me recently in, You have to run... in Houston, and I, and I had to run.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] That's where... And oh, that's funny, actually. I had the headphones on, I'm running through the airport, and then I can really feel every step. Boom. Yeah. It's, like, rocking my whole skeleton.

[Mark] So to your point, there are companies that make minimalist footwear. They're minimalist in that they're wide, thin, flat, and flexible. Wide enough to have a wide toe box. Again, that does not correct a misshapen foot necessarily. they're thin, so sometimes too thin, so they don't have enough cushioning to cover the impact of landing on concrete. and you can really feel rocks and pebbles when you step on them. Flexible, so again, they can, they can accommodate changes in texture and surface. And and flat. There's no drop from the heel to the toe. So wide, thin, flat, flexible, sorta what defines a minimalist shoe. But a true barefoot shoe, you need the toe to splay outward. You still have to have the toe splay outwardly, especially climbing stairs. If you look at yourself climbing stairs barefoot and you land on the you land on that forefoot when you climb stairs, you don't land on your heel when you're climbing up stairs barefoot your toe splays outwardly. If you've ever sprinted down a beach at low tide on the, on the flat pack sand, and you go back and look at your footprints, that's the widest your feet are ever gonna splay. Your feet are happy. They're laughing. They're so, they're so wide. They're generating power as you're sprinting down the beach. So we wanna accommodate that desire that feet have to splay outwardly and the toes to bend or articulate individually, which then helps create this arch support. Now you're walking through the airport in a minimalist shoe, but you're feeling the reverberation. you probably, if you did it too long, you might get some metatarsal bone bruising or something like that. This was my experience for years and years and years. Yeah. I was the orig-- I've worn nothing but minimalist footwear since 2006. I was one of the original guys telling everybody... there's a, there's a video of me online, probably got half a million views, of me sprinting down the beach in a competitor's shoe from almost 20 years ago telling people how amazing this is, how wonderful it is. So I've only worn minimalist shoes in the last 20 years. But there was a way to do it better, and so that's why I started this company, was I said, "Look, I'm gonna take what I know," which is a lot about footwear about my dissatisfaction with the, every shoe I've ever had up to now and do it better. It's kinda what I did with Primal Kitchen. But-

[43:02]

[Luke] It's like solving your own problem.

[Mark] Solving my own problem. And this is always the genesis of most entrepreneurial ideas, is like I see a problem, and if I can fix it for myself, I'll share it with my friends. So my son and I started Peluva about almost five years ago now. We spent two years just on R&D, just developing prototypes and getting just the right amount of thickness. So the right amount of thickness is still less than a centimeter in the shoes that I'm wearing, for instance, in these, but it's enough cushioning to offset the hardness of the surfaces that we walk on. Yeah. Like, I go to France every summer for, like, two months. I do, I do 20,000 steps a day. I do 10 or t- 10 or 12 miles every day. Couldn't do that in any other shoe. Designed my shoes just to be able to do that for myself. On occasion, over the years, when I couldn't walk a lot in the other minimalist shoes, I would take on regular shoes, some of the cushioned shoes. I thought, "Well, you know, if my, if my metatarsals are starting to really maybe get in a danger zone for all of the, all of the harshness of the surface I'm walking on, maybe I'll put some cushioning underneath them," then my knees would give out because I'm not getting that sensory input that my brain requires for me to take my very strong feet... Like, I have, I have a reflexologist, a foot massage person who comes once a week, does a 90-minute foot massage.

[Luke] Really?

[Mark] If I never get a full body massage- That sounds amazing... if I never get a full body massage again and all I can get is this, I'm happy. Really? It's incredible. It's incredible, and she's one of Wow Best in the country, and she teaches. She's I'll miss her next week because she's in Europe, you know, teaching. She says I have the strongest feet that she's ever encountered. Wow. I'm 73 years old, and I don't do foot exercises. I've just lived my life with these, with these five-toed shoes and gone through every day with every step being a rep. I don't even... like I say, I don't really do the exercises, but yeah. So she's... I forget what tangent I was on to talk about her, but I have strong feet. Yeah. And yet, when I put on regular shoes to go walk in Europe, my knees would hurt because I wasn't getting the information, the proprioception was off. Yeah,

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] And it, and or my lower back would hurt. So I'm such you know, I'm my obviously my own best disciple, but I'm so passionate about the fact that I think so many people, pretty much everybody could benefit by looking, re-ev-evaluating their relationship with their feet and understanding that this is one of the most important aspects of your connection with Earth, your connection with other people your connection with the universe, with whatever, and your performance, how you, how you walk with injury free, with strength and balance how you go into your later years with the kind of strength that then decreases your risk for tripping and falling and breaking a hip and dying. I mean, that's a real thing. When I say-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Mark] When I say foot health is the lowest hanging fruit in longevity, over the age of 65, people who trip and fall and break a hip, 30 to 35% of them die within a year. Another 30% of them are incapacitated in some way for the rest of their lives. It's a big deal, and it doesn't have to be that way. You know, when you're 20 years old and you trip, or you're 12 and you trip, you know, you catch yourself, oh, goofy me, I oops. you know, and into your 30s and 40s, everybody trips all the time. You I trip on stuff all the time. The difference is your response time, how you, how responsive you are. Yeah. Well, first of all, if your balance is horrible, you're gonna trip more, but if you, if you're, even if your balance is good, you still trip on stuff, peripheral vision, stuff like that. If you catch yourself, end of story, it's all over. It's done. It's the, well, you go on with your day. If you don't catch yourself, then you fall, maybe you put your hands out, and now you break your wrists, right? Because, or you break a hip, which is the classic scenario. And you break a hip because you have low bone density. You don't have to break a hip when you fall on a in your home. That's not a common kind of thing to do unless you have low bone density. Why do you have low bone density? Well, because you stopped moving decades ago. your bones depend on you moving. Your bones go, "Hey, we, you know, we're structural. We don't wanna waste resources building strong bones if this clown's not gonna leave the house ever and never gonna go to the gym." Huh. So your mobility is really defining so much of your longevity in that when you're able to, when you're able to use your feet, when you're mobile, you can go to the gym, lift heavy weights, you can go to the gym and do the StairMaster, you can walk a lot, and when you do all these things, when you do exercise, it builds muscle, it causes the heart to have to beat stronger. So now the heart gets stronger or stays strong over time. It causes the lungs to have to take more air in, so you inspire more as a result of the work you're doing that started with the feet. Now your liver has to keep up by maybe creating some ketones, maybe burning some fat, maybe producing some glycogen or some glucose, maybe clearing some metabolites. Your kidneys have to function better. And all of these organs that you have, what we call organ reserve increases with exercise over time. If, now the converse, now you don't exercise. Now the heart says, "If we're not gonna do anything, I don't have to beat hard, and I just, I'm just gonna pitter, pitter. I don't even have to beat forcefully, just pitter, pitter." The lungs go, "You know, there's no requirement for extra oxygen, so we'll just breathe little shallow breaths all day long." and then, you know, the muscles atrophy because they consume energy. If you don't have muscles that need energy, the muscles atrophy. If the muscles atrophy, the bones go, "Hey, we don't need to be structural for anything because we're not doing anything." So now you have low bone density, you have low muscle mass, you have low organ reserve in your heart and lungs. It's no wonder that when you trip and fall and break a hip, you wind up in the hospital, you get pneumonia, and you die of congestive heart failure, or you've, die of pneumo- pneumonia or whatever it is. Maybe 'cause you can't cough enough to get rid of the stuff in your lungs, or your heart hasn't worked forcefully for decades because of... Or your liver whatever. It's, or your kidney fails. All of these things come back to your willingness to wanna walk and be strong and connected to the ground and work out and maintain bone density and maintain muscle mass. Have I made my point?

[49:45]

[Luke] Absolutely, man. Well, I think, you know, I'm, as a guy who's getting up in years, I guess midlife would be fair to say these are things I didn't really think about when I was young. I think most people when they're young, because you have the experience of being resilient, yeah, you do trip, you fall down a couple steps, and you skin your elbow, and you get back up and keep it moving. These kind of events that we have of accidents and whatnot, they're not debilitating, and so you don't really think it forward into the future. Right. But if anyone listening thinks about your grandparents or if you had great-grandparents, I mean, this is so common, right? Is all, elderly people always have the bars in the shower- Yeah To hang onto so they don't slip. Yeah. It's like, well, why are they slipping?

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] You know? So that makes a lot of sense. It creates kind of a grim picture, but I mean, it's just the reality Well, it's the

[Mark] Reality... you know? But so that's been one of my biggest challenges, is to get young people... Because selling prevention is a tough sell, and it has been in the health world for years and years. and it isn't until people, you know, sort have the fear of God put into them by a illness or an injury or something, they go, "Oh my God, I have to really address this now." But you know, even I, as a 73-year-old guy who's pretty fit, I still manage risk. You know, I stopped riding a bike on the roads outside because an accident that I might have had when I was in my 20s and fallen down and gotten up and the first question I ask is, "Is my bike okay?"

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] You know, now becomes life-threatening.

[Luke] Totally.

[Mark] So what I do is I ride a fat tire bike on the sand in Miami. It's safe. The only way you really hurt yourself is you're going so slow, you'll fall over sideways-... into the soft sand, and so you don't need a helmet. So I've tried to mitigate my risk, but that point is that, you know, as you get... If you get injured in your later years, now it becomes instead of two days to heal or two months to heal in your 30s, now it's six months to heal, something like that. And I, you know, my whole thing is I wanna, I wanna have fun, I wanna play, I wanna be active as long as I can.

[Luke] Yeah. one thing I've noticed over the years of my experimenting with different minimal footwear is that I've gotten quite used to it, you know, different styles and whatever. But especially the wide foot box and, you know, that what do you call it? No drop, where there's no heel. Yeah, zero drop. Yeah. Zero drop. The funny thing is, every once in a while I'll be craving the comfort of the big puffy shoes again, and it's like, I don't... It's, you know, it's like a easy way out kind of cheat thing. But what's happened for me is if I get back into puffy shoes now, it actually hurts my feet.

[Mark] Yep.

[Luke] After, not while I'm wearing them, but afterward or after I'm wearing them for a while. So it seems like there's kind of this tipping point of no return if you've gone minimal. At a certain point, it's actually, it's tempting but difficult to go back. Have you seen that with people? Good...

[Mark] No it's good news, bad news. It's very common.

[Luke] Okay.

[Mark] One of the hate- '

[Luke] Cause I still have my puffy sneakers, you

[Mark] Know? Some of the hate mail we get Damn you, Mark. These shoes are so amazing, I can't wear other shoes again ever. Like like, and we have people buy multiple pairs because it's changed their life so much. It's interesting to see the response that people have from being resistant to trying these on and having a tough time getting them on, because if you, if you... Most people can't get their toes into the, into the slots appropriately the first time, which we say, "Look, if your feet slide right into these shoes, you want these shoes. If your feet don't slide right into these shoes, you need

[53:16]

[Luke] These." You need these. Yeah.

[Mark] Yeah,

[Luke] Totally.

[Mark] And it, we call it toe awareness, foot awareness. Like, if you're unaware of where your feet are in space that's a real problem. You know, that's the beginning of an issue. but it's not dissimilar from when you clean up your diet, right? You've been eating crap your whole life. You're used to it. You don't know how bad you feel. Now you clean up your diet, you start to feel better, you lose weight, you have more energy. you know, all of these things are working in your favor and then you slip up and you go back onto a bad diet. Now you really notice it.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] You know, now the difference becomes profound- 100%... even though you were used to it beforehand.

[Luke] You know what I noticed with that phenomenon? two things come to mind. One is you know, toxic blue lighting- Yeah... artificial lighting. It's been so many years now. I, you know, I'm very particular about the lighting. We got red lights in this room, and incandescents everywhere. There's no weird, like, blue light. Yeah. And I'll go into a hotel or Target or whatever, and it's like, "Oh my God, how do people do this?" Yeah. You know? It's, like, so obnoxious and so destabilizing. The other one is with fragrances.

[Mark] Yes.

[Luke] You know, it's been, I don't know, 30 years or something since I've used any kind of, anything with a smell on my body or in the house or anything like that, and I just get used to not smelling those things. And then if I sit next to someone or hug a woman that's got perfume and it sticks on me, I mean, Yeah... it'll literally make me nauseous.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] But there would've been a point I wouldn't have even noticed that, or I would've worn cologne or something, you know? Yeah. So it's very true. We do, we do have a way to kind of, an ability to acclimate to things and get used to things that are really not good for us. We don't notice-

[Mark] Yeah... '

[Luke] Cause we're kind of the boiling frog until we jump out of the pot and into a new, nice clean pot, and then there's no going back without paying the price for it.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] But I didn't really realize that with footwear until we started having this conversation. I go, "Yeah, you know what? I can't really wear..." I mean, I've known for a long time if I try to put on a pointy dress shoe or something- Yes... for a wedding-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] I mean, it's like I'm counting the minutes until I can get out of them. Yeah. You know? But even, I'm kinda past the point of no return with the puffy, cushy shoes now too, you know? Right.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] That's

[Mark] No, I have, I have some wide dress shoes that I wear on occasion on rare occasions, and I cannot wait to get them off when I'm wearing them. Right. And it's not just a, you know, it's not some bias necessarily that I have. It's a real thing. In my case, it's the metatarsal heads of my, the midfoot that feels scrunched when I'm doing this

[Luke] I used to think burnout was just the price you had to pay for being productive. Then I found something that helps me stay focused for as long as I need without feeling smoked afterward. It's called NuCalm. It uses a neuroacoustic software to help shift out of fight or flight and into deep recovery in, like, ten minutes. And the cool thing is there's no gadgets to buy or haul around. You just throw on headphones, open the app, and within minutes, you start to downshift or upshift if that's what you're looking for. I've been busy writing a book for the past couple years, and it's one of the most mentally demanding things I've ever done. I'm talking hours and hours of deep focus, revisiting old memories, and organizing a ton of ideas. So before I start a writing session, I'll use one of their Flow State tracks to get me into zen. Then I'll lock in with a focus track for the next few hours of writing. And I'll tell you what, my wife can attest to this. When I have those headphones on, it's literally impossible to distract me. I'm like a machine. Then afterward, I'll use Recharge or Rescue to help my brain and body recover from hours of intense work. Just twenty minutes of that feels like a full nervous system reset, and NuCalm science supports that. I highly recommend you check out NuCalm, and here's how you do it. Go to lukestoryy.com/nucalm to start your free seven-day trial. That's free seven-day trial, folks. You'll also save fifteen percent off your subscription. So whether you need better sleep, sharper focus, or a fast reset, NuCalm has a track for it. And again, here's the link, lukestory.com/nucalm. That's N-U-C-A-L-M to get that fifteen percent off. And whether or not you buy it, I highly recommend you at least give yourself seven days for free. with the, with the five-toe shoes like your Peluvas, you mentioned something interesting that caught my attention, and that is, okay, with... Well, let's just start with anyone listening or watching. Picture the shape of most modern shoes, like a dress shoe. It's pointy. Yeah. It's like a pyramid, right? Yeah. And then picture a naked foot, maybe not of a modern person, but of Yeah... you know, an indigenous person, right? Yeah. I mean, their feet are spread out. Yeah. The, it's the exact opposite shape. Right. And that was the first thing that kind of got me, the visual of that. Like, yeah, wait a minute, why am I wearing pointy shoes? My foot is not pointy. But you mentioned something about, you know, the toes having the ability to articulate if they're put in a five-finger shoe versus just a wide toe box. You know, as I said, my toes are totally jacked up. But it's not really helping them to regain strength or that proprioception by putting them in a wide toe box, 'cause they're still just kind of hanging Exactly... in their deformed shape in there.

[58:28]

[Mark] Exactly.

[Luke] They're not being retrained. They're not being smashed anymore.

[Mark] No.

[Luke] But they're not, they're not getting better, per Exactly. Exactly... just from having more room in the shoe. Right.

[Mark] Which gets me back to this notion that if you really want to optimize the strength and health of your feet in a way that is predictable and pain-free, it is... It can really only happen with, I think, with a five-toed shoe. you can, again, walk around the house with your toe spacers on and do some stuff, do some foot exercises. That's great, and we're big fans of people regaining foot strength using some of the blocks and the, and the, you know, the lacrosse balls and the bands to move your toes. I got a

[Luke] Drawer full of that stuff. Yeah. I never do it.

[Mark] No, I... No, but so-

[Luke] I wish I was better at

[Mark] That. By the way, I don't either, because I know that by doing a 45-minute walk every night with these on, feeling every single step, not necessarily consciously, but subconsciously appreciating the full strength of the gait that I've developed for myself, walking upright with, you know, shoulders back, chest high, head high, more parallel. What you see over time with people who have worn again, restrictive shoes, is their feet tend to get more duck-footed. They tend to move out more because again, that big toe wants to be the last point of contact.

[Luke] Mm-hmm.

[Mark] And you can't, you can't do that with most regular shoes. So then we see feet suffering as result, a result of that, and knees and hips and everything kind of falling out of alignment. And again, without the input from the bottoms of the feet, the sensory input, the brain can't even figure out how to do this. It's just guessing the whole time. The

[Luke] Brain's going, "Where is the body?"

[Mark] Yeah, it pretty much... No, it pretty much is, it, is what it is. Yeah. Now, thank goodness we're so resilient, and many of us go through life with minor, you know, aches and pains, but I want no one to go through life with that. I wanna, I wanna have everybody experience the joy of movement.

[Luke] I... Another barrier to entry here into this new world of footwear that I think is important to address is the fashion element of it. Oh, yeah.

[Mark] That's the biggest barrier.

[Luke] I I worked in fashion for about 15 years when I lived back in LA, and so I'm very familiar with that world. And when the five-toe shoes first came out, I would have friend, friends that wore them, and we'd go out together, and people would stare at them and make fun of them. You know, they're... It's... We're so conditioned to seeing footwear in a certain way that the five-toe shoes look really weird to most people, which is frustrating to me because- The shoes you're wearing should be what is normal and pointy shoes that deform your feet -

[Mark] Yeah

[Luke] Should be the thing that we laugh at. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's funny. It's like I wish we could fast-forward the social acceptance and fashionability where you don't feel, you know, as I'm sure some people do, self-conscious about them wearing some shoes that are gonna look really weird to most people.

[1:01:28]

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] I mean, I guess it's just a matter of time before people get educated on the things that you're sharing today, where we go, "No, actually, this is the most fashionable because I'm going to live the longest, healthiest, happiest, be able to be, you know, your age, 73, and be totally mobile and living your best life."

[Mark] Yeah. I

[Luke] Mean, Like, what's cooler than that?

[Mark] No, I know, but imagine we all walked around with mittens on our hands all the time in a world that requires dexterity, manual dexterity, you know, all the stuff we do with our devices. But we had mittens on our hands because that was sort of the way, you know, that's how we grew up, with mittens on our hands, and no one had invented a glove yet. And then someone invents a glove and said, "Oh, you can, you know, you can, you don't have to just use your thumbs when you're doing your phone. You can, or your type." You know, it, I... We feel, like, the same way. Like, we should be using our toes. We should be employing all the muscles of our feet to move through this world. So in my mind, this is, every shoe should be built this way, and then the only other potential thing would be a fashionable shoe that you wear once in a while because it's pointy, I guess, and has, you know, is making a statement in the other direction. But we've, in the past three or four years, the tide is already shifting a little bit, and now I get people coming up and saying, "Man, those are cool. You know, are they comfortable?" I'm like, "Yeah, they're the most comfortable shoe you'll ever wear." And people say, "I would wear those. I like those. I mean, what do you mean?" And I'm like, "Nah, come on." You know what I'm saying? No, and they would and this is usually guys now, will say, "Yeah, I would, I would, I definitely like the style of that. Like, that's a new thing. Like, I could see being a trendsetter in that thing." last, a couple days ago in an elevator in Santa Monica, two 30-something year old guys came and said that to me. I have a lot of young women in tights and lulus and, you know, in gym clothes who understand the importance of that big toe activation and, you know, glutes are the big thing with the ladies these days. Yeah. Yeah. So A lot of women wearing these for their workouts in the gym all the time and thinking, and you know, "Don't don't I look cute?" And you know, so that's where I'm headed with this is not just, "Yeah, I think I could pull that off," to, "Yeah, I feel really like I'm put together in this. Like, my feet look cute." And we make, you know, red ones and pink ones for the ladies and-

[Luke] Well, you definitely have brought the five-toe shoe to a new level in terms of aesthetics. I was looking on your site this morning to just kinda get caught up on it. I'm like, "Oh, they've come a long way." Yeah. I mean, the old ones, yeah, how they No, they

[Mark] Were ballet slippers for MMA fighters

[Luke] Rubber pieces and Yeah... they're, and they're just huge and bulky. Yeah... yours are at least, like, fashionable and Yeah... key looking now, you know? Yeah. You got the, you got the five toes, but they're not, I don't know, big and bulky and kind of weird like some of the early- That's how

[Mark] We feel

[Luke] The early-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] The early you know, companies that put these things out. for those that wanna check out the Peluvas, before I forget, you can go to peluva.com/lukestory, P-E-L-U-V-A, and there's a code there for 10% off, which is Lukestory. Peluva.com/lukestory. We're gonna put that in the show notes, by the way, at lukestory.com/barefoot. I'd like to ask you a few other unrelated questions- Totally... unless there's anything we missed on this topic.

[1:04:43]

[Mark] No, I think, I think we've made our point.

[Luke] Yeah, it was pretty solid. Yeah. I feel like that's Yeah... about a good 45-minute-

[Mark] You're either in or you're out at this point.

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah. and I'm gonna get some, and I'm gonna give it a real fair trial. Yeah. I'm making a commitment to myself. You heard that here, Brad. Hold me to it. The issue I've had when I've tried the five fingers is, you described it earlier, it's difficult for me to get my toes in it. Yeah. You know, my toes are so deformed for... It's like Chinese foot binding- Yeah... from wearing my cool rock and roll boots my whole childhood or whatever. I'm like, "I need an assistant to come help me separate the toes to get them in the goddamn things," but I'm committed to trying. I'm convinced. I'm gonna do it.

[Mark] Good.

[Luke] What's your take on cold plunges? I know Yeah... you've been in the scene so long. I'm Yeah... you've seen these trends come and go, so I'm curious about a couple of these-

[Mark] Right

[Luke] You know, things that are so widely practiced and widely known now.

[Mark] Right. I mean, I started talking about cold plunges in 2005 and 2006 when I first started my blog. I had been a triathlete for a hot minute, but I hated Even a public pool, I hated cold water. So a public pool at 81 degrees was, like, too cold for me to get in. It was like, I don't know. I had a thing against it. So at some point later in my life, 15 years later, I'm like, "This is ridiculous, my point of view about cold water. I gotta get over that." So I kept a pool in Malibu where I lived unheated all winter long, and every night at

[Luke] 10:00-

[Mark] That would get cold. No, it'd get down to 47, 48 degrees. Yeah. And every night at about 10:00, I'd walk, you know, out of my house naked through 50-degree breezy you know, Malibu wet weather, walk slowly into my pool just to overcome this hatred I had of cold water, and hang out for a couple of minutes. Then I'd finish off in the jacuzzi, mind you. But it was just part of my experiment of getting over my fear and hatred of cold water. It morphed into sort of a cold plunging, protocol that I did on a regular basis, and then I started writing about cold plunging, and then other people started writing about it. Clearly Wim Hof had been doing it for years and years, but it became a thing. and then it, then the science started to accumulate about activating brown fat. You know, you get in a cold plunge and it activates this tissue, this brown fat, which ramps up your metabolism and your thermogenesis, your ability to create heat, which burns calories, and I think everybody was looking for another way to burn calories.

[Luke] If cold plunging got rid of all your fat, I wouldn't have a gut, put it that way.

[Mark] Yeah, so we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk a little bit about that.

[Luke] I've been waiting for a few years. Yeah,

[Mark] Yeah. Where's that six-pack without

[Luke] Doing the work

[Mark] To get it? When does it kick in? Yeah. and the other was, is the anti-inflammatory nature of cold plunging, so there was a bunch of research done on that it reduces inflammation. Well, look, if you're an NBA player who has a game tonight and then has a game tomorrow night, sitting in a, in a whirlpool, in a cold bath after your game tonight is a good idea if you wanna go play again tomorrow night to reduce inflammation. If you're somebody who's coming out from the gym and you purposely underwent inflammation, an inflamma- inflammatory process to create a stimulus for your muscles to get stronger or more robust in some capacity by upregulating enzyme systems and and gene responses, then sitting in a cold plunge to reduce that inflammation negates the effects of that workout.

[1:07:57]

[Luke] Totally.

[Mark] So now you did two hard things.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] You did a hard workout and you did a hard cold plunge, and now they negate. So long story short, after the last couple of years, I've stopped cold plunging at all. At some point it just became like a, you know, it's a contest to see who could stay the longest in a cold plunge. Look, a cold plunge is a, is a hard thing to do. Nobody chooses to do a cold plunge. Like, if you say, "Hey, we could do a sauna or we could do a cold plunge. What do you wanna do?" I think most people would say, on balance, "Let's do a sauna."

[Luke] I mean, I might be 50/51. I've really grown to love the cold plunges.

[Mark] Well, that's good. I you

[Luke] Know, But I was just booking a hotel last night in Arizona, and I had AI, like, find me a hotel with a cold plunge. Like, that's how-

[Mark] Yeah...

[Luke] Addicted I am to it.

[Mark] Well, that's, I mean, and that's good, and I'd ask, like, why, you know, what it is about the addiction. Do you like the way you feel when you get out?

[Luke] Yes

[Mark] Okay

[Luke] There you go. Okay. Yeah. So the, It's the getting in, not so fun. Yeah Being in gets to be quite relaxing and meditative, but I think for me, I mean, part of it's living in Texas. Sure. It's hot as hell here. Yeah. it's like a good way for me to just completely have spontaneous state changes. Yeah You know? I'll go I, and I don't sit in there long. I got over the ego-... competition of... Once I stayed in for like 25 minutes, I couldn't walk. I might have been hypothermic, and I was like, "Okay, gotta let go of that." But I might stay in there 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Yeah. But I do it a few times a day.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] And it's as if I just took a nap. Yeah. That's the kind of feeling I have.

[Mark] That's fine. 30 seconds

[Luke] To a minute. And I, and then I dunk my head in, I dunk my face in, and I'm just like, "Wow, it's a new day," you know? If I'm kind of getting burned out or stressed out, it's Yeah... it's like a pattern interrupter.

[Mark] I get that, and I appreciate that, and I can do that. That's, that is different from a cold plunge where you're inducing a hormetic stress that has real accumulative effect.

[Luke] Mm-hmm.

[Mark] So if you're, again, stressing yourself in one area, and then like you've, you woke up and you had a fight with your spouse, and then you went to work, and you're under pressure to get stuff done at work and it's not going well, and then you go home and say, "I'm gonna take a five-minute cold plunge," those are stresses later layered upon stresses. It's probably not a good idea. A 30-second dunk, maybe that's a great idea. But if you're doing it for the purported effects or the benefits of this longer term strategy, that's where it gets out of hand. Yeah... I kind of agree with your strategy. I don't do it anymore. It's not interesting to me. I only did it for the hard man effects. And once I got past that, I realized, you know, I got other stuff I could be doing. Yeah. Again, I much prefer a sauna.

[Luke] Yeah. I prefer both, you know? Yeah. This morning I did a, an ice sauna, and then I had a medium length cold plunge, you know, and to be my best self for this conversation. Oh,

[Mark] Good.

[Luke] But yeah, I thought about that what you were saying, how, you know, athletes will do it. I mean, guys that are really trying to put on muscle, and they work out really hard, and then take an ice bath. I intuited that, and I know very little about fitness, to be honest, in terms of, you know, the real science behind it. but that always seemed counterintuitive to Yeah... to shunt the inflammation. Yeah. 'Cause the inflammation's the thing that helps you build muscle.

[1:11:05]

[Mark] Exactly.

[Luke] So when I was in more of a workout phase, I would do my cold plunge before, and then I would do like resistance training. And,

[Mark] And that's a good way to do it.

[Luke] I felt, I've always felt too if, and I still do that sometimes with my resistance bands, I'm stronger when I'm cold than if I'm warm.

[Mark] Mm-hmm.

[Luke] Does that make any sense, or am I imagining it?

[Mark] Sure. No, that's, that makes sense. Yeah.

[Luke] Okay.

[Mark] Yeah. I mean, they have now they have hand devices that cool, that cool your brain down. They think it's a brain function of brain body heat and brain that allows you to do more Either quicker or more, or more intensely with a cooling effect. And because the hands are the quickest thing to cool. They're also the quickest thing to heat. Oh. So if you do a cold plunge and you leave your hands out-

[Luke] Yeah...

[Mark] Feels like it's five degrees warmer.

[Luke] Yeah, totally.

[Mark] You gotta keep, gotta keep your hands under.

[Luke] Yeah, you put your hands in, it's a different game. Yeah,

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] Your body has somehow been managing to heal cuts and scrapes your entire life. But somehow we got duped into thinking we need disinfectants that sting or burn to make the process work better. It's crazy, especially when you find out the body already produces one of the most powerful tools for supporting damaged skin. It's called hypochlorous acid, and it's what your white blood cells make as part of your natural immune response. It fights pathogens, calms inflammation, and supports tissue repair. So I'm thinking, why not put that same biology to work on the outside? And that's the whole idea behind Active Skin Repair. Their medical-grade formula helps cleanse, soothe, and support healing without discomfort or disrupting healthy tissue. And this stuff is ridiculously versatile. I'm talking cuts, scrapes, burns, breakouts, bug bites, rashes, irritated skin. You just spray it on and let your body do what it already knows how to do. So to get your skin issues fixed up, here's what you do. Go to lukestory.com/skinrepair and use the code Luke at checkout to save 20% off your order. 'Cause sometimes the smartest health technology isn't about overriding your biology. It's about working with the intelligence that's already built in. So again, hit up lukestory.com/skinrepair, and don't forget the code Luke to save that 20%. How has your approach to training in general changed as you've gone through your 60s and now into your 70s?

[Mark] I largely train to to stay uninjured. That's

[Luke] Smart.

[Mark] No, we talked about this already. That's a good start. Yeah, but I train to stay uninjured in the pursuit of some of the things I like to do that are more fun for me. So I stand-up paddle in Miami, in the bay once a week do a long-ish hour and 10-minute stand-up paddle. pretty rigorous. I'm alone. I don't let anybody come with me because it's meditative and I don't wanna wait for anybody.

[Luke] You don't wanna wait for the 35-year-old buddy.

[Mark] Yeah. and then once a week I do a fat tire bike ride on the sand. I have a crew we call the Sand Crew, and we go out, and it's a chance to... And we're working hard. It's in the heat, usually 80-plus degrees, sometimes 90. and it's a tough workout, but we, you know, we're telling stories, and we're sharing the week's, you know, wins and losses and things like that. So it's it's a collaborative effort among guys who are like-minded. I'm in the gym twice a week just lifting heavy things, but only to do the work, not to... I'm not necessarily having fun doing it, but I'm in the gym because it's my cheers. It's my kinda... I can visit with friends that are in the gym. I walk every night. I walk 45, at least 45 minutes every night.

[1:14:42]

[Luke] Really?

[Mark] Oh, yeah. That's my

[Luke] Baseline. This is inspiring, dude. I

[Mark] No, that's my baseline... I needed to

[Luke] Hear this.

[Mark] I... It is, it is the best thing I do all day. It's the thing I look forward to. So when 6:30 rolls around at night, it's not like, "Oh, geez, I gotta go walk." It's, "Oh, wow, I get to go walk." And again, it... I'm gonna you're gonna love it. You know, I can tell you're gonna love Pelovis. It makes you want to walk. It makes you want to feel every step and understand the power that you're generating as you plant the center of the heel and push off the big toe and feel all the muscles in your legs engaging. In a way that you don't do if you're just clomping along Yeah... or rockering off a heel and rolling through a soft cushion thing and then, and then off the big toe. So every night when I'm home I do my walk. and even when I'm on the road, like yesterday I was flying out of Santa Monica so I did my walk in the morning, but it was fabulous, and a new location. So I walk a lot. I And that's my baseline for everything I do. That's my baseline for my leg strength, for my aerobic fitness, for my... And then I sprint once a week, which is the other end of that. So you do a lot of low-level aerobic stuff- Mm-hmm... which builds, you know, capillary profusion and mitochondrial biogenesis and all the things that burn fat. And then once a week I work on the VO2 max, the high-end stuff with a sprint if I'm, if my knees are letting me do that. I mean, I'm at the I had a hip replaced almost two years ago because of the miles I put in as a runner. And one of the reasons I talk about running-

[Luke] And when you were wearing crappy

[Mark] Shoes. And I was wearing the shoes that drove all the G-forces up the kinetic chain to the hip. And we see this in the lab all the time now. Seven Gs in the hip from wearing cushioned, padded shoes-

[Luke] Wow...

[Mark] Versus one or two from wearing, either running barefoot on concrete or with appropriate minimalist footwear because it forces you to run with good form.

[Luke] Interesting. You know? I need to get on that 'cause I got a, I got a bum hip, and I would like to not have to have it replaced someday. Yeah.

[Mark] I mean you know, it's the best thing I've done in the last couple years. Once they had it replaced, it was like, great, now I've, I bought myself another 10 years of concentric, balanced, measured, bilaterally symmetrical movement. Mm-hmm. And that was, that was a great thing for me.

[Luke] So you were one of the, you know, definitely biggest voices and early pioneers in the, in the paleo and keto space and whatnot. what's your current take on, you know, the keto diets and paleolithic diets and this kind of thing? I mean, yeah. Have your views or personal practices evolved over the years?

[Mark] They've evolved, but they've stayed pretty much... They evolved from you know, understanding the benefits of protein 30 years ago to understanding the benefits of healthy fats 20 years ago to understanding the detriment of a high carbohydrate diet 20, 25 years ago to the point where that got me to paleo and the primal blueprint, which was essentially an ancestral type diet. And then up to keto, which I experimented with and I still do on occasion. I'm a, I'm a keto-ish guy, so I'll have keto-ish days, not by design, but by happenstance. Like if I'm on the road and all there is a steak and nothing else, okay, today's a keto day. Because I've developed metabolic flexibility. And that's really the holy grail of any way of eating is to develop metabolic flexibility. This is the body's ability to burn your own stored body fat in the absence of another meal or in the absence of having huge glycogen stores. If you can become good at deriving energy from your own stored body fat, certainly at rest all throughout the day, but even at low levels of aerobic activity, even at relatively high levels of aerobic activity, if you can derive most of your energy from stored body fat, then you can, um... This flexibility gives you the ability to then go into the gym and do high-end glycolytic work and burn glycogen out of the muscles, and then not fall over and faint because your, you know, your brain doesn't know what's going on. Your brain, if you're metabolically flexible, your brain works on ketones. So over the years, I've used a keto diet to reset my metabolism, and that's why my first... My New York Times bestselling book, Brad and I wrote this book called The Keto Reset Diet, and it's how to use a ketogenic diet to reset your metabolism. Like, I'm not advocating that anyone spend the rest of their lives eating a keto diet. You can, but I like food too much. I like the taste of vegetables. I Pretty

[1:19:13]

[Luke] Restrictive.

[Mark] It's quite restrictive. Yeah. And I like fruits and I like vegetables and I like... You know, I do all the things I do to enjoy my life, not to, you know, constrain it and restrict it on the hope that I will live to be 150 or whatever. I... you can have that. Yeah. I just want to enjoy day to day.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] I want every bite of food I put in my mouth to taste great. I want some variety. I want to, I want to, you know, I want to have the energy I need all throughout the day. I want to maintain lean body mass, and it's a little late for me to be putting on muscle at my age, but I want to maintain the muscle that I do have. I want to look good naked. I want to not get sick on a regular basis or ever, you know? And most importantly, I don't want to be hungry. So if you, if you're able to figure out metabolic flexibility through either Restricting carbs or a ketogenic diet or timed, time-restrictive eating or a combination of all of those with lots of low-level aerobic activity and some occasional high-level activity. All of these help to develop metabolic flexibility in a way that then you don't have to be so dogmatic about what is, what's on the menu that at this restaurant. I can't eat at that restaurant. It, you know, it doesn't have this or it has too much of that. Yeah,

[Luke] Yeah. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. what about exogenous ketones? Is that something you ever mess around with?

[Mark] I do on occasion. So I had a swig before our talk today.

[Luke] Yeah. Because- I'm out. I love drinking... There's this company called Ketone, K-E-T-O-N-E. Yeah, I know. They make a powder.

[Mark] Yeah, the powder. Yeah.

[Luke] I mean, 'cause I was doing the liquids before. I Yeah... I can drink just about anything. No, it's

[Mark] Rocket fuel.

[Luke] They're

[Mark] Rough. It makes rocket fuel taste like a Mai Tai.

[Luke] Yeah. They're, theyYeah... they're rough. Yeah. but yeah, I use that powder, man, and I love doing it before podcasts. I find I'm much more clear mentally- Yeah... more articulate. I happen to be out of them right now, but I don't, I don't do it for any kind of dietary reasons. To me, it's more like a nootropic. That's how I kind of think of ketones.

[Mark] Same, and the reason I use them is because I'm keto adapted. I mean, a lot of people maybe who haven't been in this metabolic flexibility world yet and who are carb-dependent might not, you know experience the same effect. But because I'm keto adapted and fat adapted and metabolically flexible, I'll take a swig before, I'll take a swig before an ultimate Frisbee game sometimes. You Ah... I've been playing ultimate for-

[Luke] Unfair advantage.

[Mark] Yeah, I know. They don't test for it.

[Luke] You know what the ketones are really good for, too, is for air travel, I find. Yeah. You know, we were talking before. Yeah. Like, it just, it's so exhausting. I usually hit the ketones pretty hard when I travel. It's very helpful for that too.

[Mark] Yeah. Yeah. So it's a, you know, this ketogenic diet was a... It's a great concept, and there's a way to use it as a tool, as a strategy to adapt your own metabolism to become more metabolically flexible and burn fat in those many hours that either you got forced to not eat, like traveling.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] A lot of times when you travel, it's like, "I'm not gonna eat that crap."

[Luke] Exactly.

[Mark] So what I'll Yeah... is I'll swig some ketones.

[Luke] Yeah. You know? That's another good point about the traveling too. Yeah. It's like I've yet... You know what's funny? In Austin Airport, there actually are a couple decent places where you can eat. Yeah. But that's my home airport, so I'm Street food. Yeah, so I'm never hungry when I'm, you Yeah... coming or going. By the time I fly in, it's usually night and everything's closed. Yeah. But yeah. what about are there any supplements that are staples for you at this point? No. I mean, Or do you just mostly do food?

[1:22:32]

[Mark] Yeah, I mostly do food. I was, I had a supplement company for 30 years. And I made some of the world's highest potency full-spectrum multivitamin, multi-mineral antioxidant supplements. And I took them for... And then I realized I wasn't necessarily getting the benefits that I thought I was conferring upon myself largely because there was-- I'm-- I operate at such a high level of my capacity anyway that trying to extract another couple of percentage points is almost unnoticeable to me. What I do is I take collagen supplements. I I'm a big... Because I work out hard, and the one thing I do is I do TRT. I've been t-taking testosterone for ten years. That's the one, you know, supplement that I use. I don't use a super physiological dose. I use the dose that my doctor prescribes. But I wanna keep on as much muscle mass as I can, so I have a high protein diet. and then I take on, I take in collagen because when you lift weights you're working the muscle tissue, but it's, in my case, it's the it's the connective tissue. It's the tendons, the ligaments, the cartilage that's sort of the weakest link when I'm, if I'm doing, you know, ten repetitions of two hundred and sixty pounds on a hex bar deadlift, it's the, it's the joints that are gonna be the weak link. So I wanna supplement that, and all of those, all that connective tissue is largely collagenous material, so the collagen peptides is something I'll take for that. I take vitamin D once in a while if I feel like I'm low on it, although I spend a fair amount of time in the sun which is a vitamin D you know, producer. And that's about it. I just don't do supplements anymore. I've pulled back on my viewpoint of life largely to just uncomplicate it. You know, we talked about minimalism and my minimalist footwear company. but I look at what's the minimum effective dose of anything that I need. What's the minimum effective dose of working out in the gym that I need to maintain muscle mass and mobility and resilience and strength? What is the minimum effective dose of protein I need in a day? I don't need a hundred and seventy-five grams. It's... I think nobody does. What's the minimum effective dose of actual food? And I found for me, it's two meals a day, and the first meal's pretty small. So I don't even need that many calories because I'm metabolically flexible-

[Luke] Yeah

[Mark] And metabolically efficient So I don't, I don't burn, I don't rev at a high rate anymore. I think that's not a good idea. When people brag about having, "Oh, I have a fast metabolism and I wanna build a fast metabolism," I'm like, "I don't think that's a good idea for you. I think, I think you oughta wanna operate at the minimum effective dose of whatever it is to get you through this life." Which isn't to say I'm lowering my standards. It's almost the opposite. It's what is the minimum effective dose of all these things that lets me live my life to the fullest without putting all my eggs in one basket? You know, they say VO2 max is the big predictor of longevity and, you know, all of the pundits are saying a VO2 max in the top 2%, you know, outlives those in the bottom quintile four to one or whatever. I'm like, "Okay, that's great, but if you're in the top 2%, you are so focused on VO2 max, you're probably running a lot or cycling a lot or a triathlete or whatever. You're giving up pickleball and side-to-side movement and playing basket- pickup basketball with your friends and hanging out with your grandchildren and doing all the other things that comprise a fun enjoyable life in pursuit of one metric that some guy like Peter Attia said, 'This is the one metric you gotta go for and you'll outlive everyone.'" I'd rather be in the top 10% of VO2 max, but also be in the top 10% of of dead hang from a, from a bar. how long can you hold a plank? How long can you stand on one foot with arms crossed and eyes closed? you know, how fast can you run the mile? how many how much can you deadlift 10 times? Can you deadlift 10 times your body weight or more? All these different metrics to me you know, create more of a decathlete approach to life.

[1:26:41]

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] And give me the ability to play ultimate Frisbee or race my seven-year-old daughter across the lawn and still be able to beat her now. That won't be for long. Or just dance, you know, in a, in a dance setting with, you know, EDM or whatever your thing is, to be able to play at life rather than be so focused on the metrics that the research shows, you know, if you do this, you decrease you'll decrease your risk of heart attack by 24%, and if you do this, you'll decrease your risk of cancer by... You know, these are not additive decreases in risk reduction. They're just little data points on a study that was done.

[Luke] Well, I like that approach. It sounds like you have a really holistic approach with the goal being you wanna enjoy your life.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] I think, and I'm definitely guilty of this myself over the years, with the, with the obsessive nature of biohacking and optimization, I mean, so much time and energy can go into just your daily routines that there's not a lot of space left to go live your life and have fun. You know what I mean?

[Mark] Isn't that just bizarre? It's like-

[Luke] How many hours a day do some of us spend trying to be healthy? To do what?

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] To go live later? It's kind of like the, you know, the old model of working until you're 65. You work your ass off, and then by the time you get there, you're too smoked to actually go enjoy your life Yeah You don't know what to do with yourself. And your kids

[Mark] Hate you 'cause you didn't spend any time with them. Exactly, yeah. Your wife left you and, yeah. But now you have all this money to go spend time with kids and yeah. It is you know, it's what we call digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows. Like-

[Luke] I never heard that. That's great.

[Mark] Yeah. So

[Luke] That's a good one. You

[Mark] Know, we,

[Luke] That's a tweetable. Take note, Jim. We gotta... If no one follows us on Twitter, but if they did, that would be a great thing to post.

[Mark] Yeah. It's all of this... And you know, Bryan Johnson's a great example of someone who's just living his life protocol to protocol to protocol all day long, trying to live to 160 years or whatever the number is, without living today. You know? Right. Without enjoying the moment or without flaking out for a couple of days and going, "You know what? If I go off my protocol for a couple of days, and I, and I just, you know, hang around and do nothing or, you know, binge watch Breaking Bad or whatever your thing is," he that's not allowed in this new sort of biohacking world. I call biohacking the day trading of health. You know, when you wanna build wealth- You do the research, you invest, you're patient, you know what you're looking for, you're able to make small adjustments over time to kind of reallocate and rebalance your portfolio. When you're a day trader, you're not investing. You're a day trader trades dollars with other day traders, and that's all they do. They're looking for a quick hit, like how-- what's a shortcut to wealth? What is the way I'm gonna get rich tomorrow by picking a stock that I'm gonna steal money from somebody else who's in the same stock? That's all it is. There's no investing in day trading. I look at biohacking a little bit like that. Like if you're building health, it's an investment. It's a long-term strategy. It's understanding how the body works. It's the willingness to do the hard work. It's the willingness to lay the foundation, to get your sleep dialed in, to get your diet right, to get your movement patterns right, to get your stress under control. And then once you do that, if you say, "I wanna extract a couple more percentage points because I'm I'm engaged in an activity that claims I'll get the benefit of a forty-five minute bike ride in six minutes, or I'll get the benefit of forty-five years of zen or forty years of zen by wearing a headband," you know, knock yourself out. But too many people, too many people That's

[1:30:20]

[Luke] Funny...

[Mark] Are looking for the shortcuts. And the term biohacking, hacking is a, you know, it's a term that derives from the computer industry, where people were looking for unauthorized or inappropriate access to a system. They would hack into a system. And so the original biohacking concept was, "How can I get unauth- authorized access to my physiology? How can I hack my physiology so that I don't have to do the hard work? You know, I can get a I can take a pill, or use a device, or a headband, or an infusion, or a transfusion to, you know, to somehow achieve immortality." So that's the... Anyway, that's my spin on biohacking. I'm like, um I helped create the movement Yeah... this ancestral approach to lifestyle, but I think the pendulum has swung. Actually, I think it's swung so far, it's starting to swing back. I, Yeah... starting to see people realize that it's

[Luke] Gone too far. I know myself, I've gone through a lot of the phases that you just discussed, and I think just out of, I don't know, the running out of road with some of that stuff, it's like I do much less of any of that than I ever have, and I feel healthier. Yeah. You know, also just mentally. Yes. I think there's a real trap in just the aspect of control, right? Of just, like, wanting to control the body and having this sort of dominionistic relationship with it rather than actually listening to it Yeah... treating it as a living, intelligent organism and forming more of a partnership rather than this, you know, tyrannical, "I'm gonna make the body do what I want it to do" kind of thing. The body doesn't... The body, I sense, doesn't want that. The body wants, like, cooperation.

[Mark] Well, the body is, it, you know... Our human nature is to not expend necess- unnecessary energy, you know, which is why when we go back to persistence hunters that Chris McDougall talked about in Born to Run, that book that prompted everybody to get minimalist shoes- Yeah

[Luke] And start running.

[Mark] The book that broke my knees. he, his thesis was that we were, we evolved as these hunters of large animals through persistence hunting, which was a two or three-hour event where the the people, the men of the tribe would track the animal with a spear and they'd, you know, be willing to spend two or three hours tracking it over long distances. And because we had sweat glands and we didn't overheat, and because we were able to run because of our, you know, nuchal ligament in our, in our neck and our long Achilles, and we could sprint, and we could do this activity, that we'd wear the animal out and eventually just walk up and jab a spear in it. Great. But What wasn't covered there was the idea that those ancestors didn't do that every day. They did it once in a while, and then they lived on the beast for a while, and then they'd go for a hunt you know, not... They, on a relatively infrequent basis. And the day after a hunt, you'd think they'd say, "Ah, what are we doing today? Let's go for a 10K." Yeah. You know, "Let's train for the next hunt." Yeah. No, they were conserving energy the entire way. So the human body is designed to conserve energy, and our... One of the great benefits we have with this prefrontal lobe is the ability to decide we're gonna take action against the malaise, against the ennui, against the willingness or the unwillingness to get up and do something, and we overcome that. The danger is, and it happens a lot in running, where people go, "Ugh, if I don't run, I feel guilty. I beat myself up on a day that I don't run." why do you do that? The body is telling you it's time to take a day off. "Doesn't matter. I told myself I'd run every day. I'm an obligate runner. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna run no matter what." And we have people who've run, have these running streaks that last 30 or 40 or 50 years, where, you know, they... Like, one guy just had an appendectomy and had to run two miles that day just to get his streak in. I mean, the stories are incredible for no good reason other than You know, overcoming some made up adversity in your brain. And, you know, you know, if you've hung out with drug addicts, you know

[1:34:16]

[Luke] Oh, I certainly have.

[Mark] Yes. I'm just saying, Luke. If you have, you understand that one of the greatest uh, not cures, but switches from an addiction is to go from an opiate addiction to a running addiction. And people say, "Well, that's really healthy." Well, it is, it's healthier, but you're still addicted to the, to the opiates you're creating in your own body.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] So, you know, it's-

[Luke] I'm very familiar with that phenomenon. Yeah.

[Mark] Yeah. So there's a, there's a way to take a step back and just say, like, "I wanna enjoy my life. nothing bad's gonna happen if I take a day off. In fact, something good will probably happen if I don't train today. I will recover from whatever hard work I was doing, and I'll be better prepared for the next time I decide today's the day I'm gonna hit it hard."

[Luke] Beautiful. What a great conversation, dude. So fun. You know, you were on my list when I started this podcast in 2016. I made a document with, you know, my top 50, 75 people that I wanted to have on the show and you know, you were one of the big players on the scene at that time, and I, you were on my target list. I probably still have that in Evernote on my computer. And I'd see you at events and stuff and just, "Oh, hey." Yeah. And we might've met a couple times here and there, but I was so shy in the beginning, you know, of like walking up to people, "Would you be on my podcast?" You know? I maybe still am sometimes a little bit. I'm a little more known now, so it's not as embarrassing. but yeah, it's just funny to think, like, all those years later, it took me 10 years and here I am sitting with you, so it's been a real pleasure today. No, it's great

[Mark] To finally do this. Yeah.

[Luke] Yeah. It's been a, it's been a really, a joy for me today, and I can check one more off my list. who have been three... This is my last question. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have impacted your life that you'd like to share with us?

[Mark] Let's see. I would say Richard Branson was someone who really I picked up a lot from, you know, obviously vicariously and over the years as a guy great in branding. Sylvester Stallone as a guy who believed in himself tremendously and fought against all obstacles to make something happen and became, you know-

[Luke] The Rocky story's crazy.

[Mark] It's an it's a It's amazing... it's an incredible story.

[Luke] Yeah.

[Mark] And then I would say, you know, my original mentor, Art Devaney, who really let me feel that this space was a viable space to build a following in and to be a thought leader in, and I feel like I've you know, accomplished that over the years.

[Luke] Damn straight. You sure did, man.

[Mark] Yeah.

[Luke] Well, thanks for being a thought leader here today. I appreciate it.

[Mark] My pleasure. Great to see you.

[Luke] All right, Lifestylist Nation, big ups to each and every one of you for joining this conversation. Wherever you're listening or watching, hit those buttons. You know what I'm talking about. Like, follow, subscribe, 'cause I know you don't wanna miss what's coming. And if you enjoyed this episode, please drop a rating and quick review. This podcast has always been and will always be free and unfiltered, and dropping a quick rating and review is a powerful way for you to give back without spending a penny. 'Cause here's what's up. With tens of thousands of new podcasts constantly hitting the airwaves, it's tough for us to reach new people. The reason is because the podcast platforms are ruled by algorithms, and the only lever I have to pull is your ratings and reviews. So pretty please with organic cane sugar on top, take 60 seconds out of your life and tap that review button. It not only keeps the show from disappearing, it's also the only way I can know what topics and guests you want more of. Our new episodes drop every Tuesday, and on the last Friday of the month, I release an AMA where I answer your very own questions. And I put those calls for questions out on all my social media accounts, so you gotta make sure we're connected. You'll find over 600 podcast videos and long-form product reviews on my YouTube. That's youtube.com/lukestory. I'm on X @MrLukeStory, and my brand-new TikTok handle, fresh from being banned for the third time by the CCP, is LukeStoryOfficial. And of course, I'm still active on Instagram @LukeStory and on Facebook @MrLukeStory. But you'll need to follow to see me, thanks to four years of heavy shadow banning. And I know that was a lot, so I'm gonna let you know you can find all of those links at the bottom of my homepage at lukestory.com, which is the mothership for everything I do. Oh, and if you enjoy your content raw-dogged and uncensored, you're gonna wanna join my Telegram channel at lukestory.com/telegram. But be forewarned that my Telegram feed is for adults with open minds only. Things can get pretty racy in there. Okay. That's it, and that's all, folks. Thank you for your attention to what matters. I'll close by sending blessings to you and yours and to your journey. See you next time.

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