Episode 221 – Dr. Mike Van Thielen

Hello and welcome back to the show. My name is Richard Matthews, and today I have on the line [00:01:00] Dr. Mike, Dr. Mike, you there?

Yes, I’m here. How are you, Richard?

I’m doing excellent. I was actually pretty excited before we got on the call is one of the first times I’ve had a call with someone who’s so close by. You’re right down the street from me in Florida right now.

Yes. Good. Could have done a live interview, huh?

Just about if only we had known we could come and do an interview on the beach down here.

That’s right.

So, what I want to start off with before we get dive into the interview is let me just give a brief introduction for who you are and what you do. So Dr. Mike Van. Oh man, I’m gonna butcher this.

Thielen is that right?

Thielen. It’s Dutch, man. Everybody butchers Dutch. Yeah, Thielen. But Dr. Mike’s just fine.

Dr. Mike, and you’re the medical director at ClarigenZ Health, an innovative medical company with a new pill providing all the benefits of Adderall without any of the harmful side effects. You’re a bestselling author of two books focused on optimizing productivity and focusing and creating a stress-free life.

And you’re the founder of Health Freedom Movement a sought speaker who’s shared the stage with celebrities like [00:02:00] Les Brown, Brian Tracy, Darren Hardy, and Owner of Success Magazine. So before we get too far into this, why don’t you tell me what it is that you are known for, what it is that you do, how do you help people?

Well well, currently I’m a mentor, so I help people regain control of their health, achieve optimal health, and currently I’m an expert in biohacking. That’s what people hire me for, to speak about is biohacking, which means upgrading body, brain, and life. So that’s kind of a new upcoming field within medicine and health because what we’re trying to do is objectively reverse biological edge.

So the new a hundred will be, the hundred will be the new 30. That’s our goal here. But I help people not just in health. I also help ’em in business, et cetera, because with my backgrounds, I didn’t have mentors, I didn’t have guides in my life. And I feel I’m at a stage in my life where I can be a mentor for people, whether it’s concerning their health or their business or personal life.

So I talk about purpose of life. I talk about planning, strategizing, reaching your goals. You know, [00:03:00] fulfilling your dreams, not thinking too small, thinking big. And so I’m a coach and a guide to make you accountable and make you reach your goals again, whether that’s health, business, or personal life.

So that’s what I’m doing today.

That’s awesome. And biohacking is definitely an up and coming field. I know I’ve looked into it. I got a coach that’s helped me with a lot of things and been surprised how much impact you can have on your own ability to perform and output by making small, simple changes.

Yep. Nope, there’s, there’s, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I was gonna say, why don’t we start off with your origin story, right?

Every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And I want to hear that story. Were you born a hero? Were you a bit by a radioactive spider that made you wanted to get into biohacking and performance stuff for entrepreneurs? Or did you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur?

Basically, where’d you come from.

Well, it was a tough road, but I never give up, you know? I was born in Belgium, probably listeners hear the accent. [00:04:00] You know, Belgium is obviously a small country in Europe north of France, south of the Netherlands, west of Germany. So I grew up there. Single mom, I had a brother, so she worked really hard to provide for us.

And then I went to the university of Brussels. Luckily universities are not as expensive there then here because I never would’ve been able to go. I did physical education first because I was a competitive swimmer, and that was a lot of fun. But what are you gonna do with a physical education degree besides becoming a drug rep, which is the opposite of what I wanna be.

Or a PE teacher, right? So then I decided to go further my studies and I became a licensed physical therapist. And that’s how I actually traveled with the Belgian Olympic swim team in preparation for the Atlanta Games in 1996. Yes, I’m already dead old. And at the time they were short of physical therapists in the United States.

So recruiter called me up and asked, and I was 26 at the time, asked if I want to call my work here. So obviously I said yes. Sure. So I saved $400. Put my jeans on and packed my backpack and I came over to the [00:05:00] United States without any mentor guidance. So, needless to say, it was a difficult time at first but my motto quickly became, I never lose, I win or I learn.

So you know, to many tribulations I am where I am today. I started here as a licensed physical therapist. Went back to school Florida College of Integrative Medicine, became a licensed acupuncturist. Got my board certification in oriental medicine, certified in homeopathy, all the good stuff, and after.

Richard’s treating hundreds and hundreds of patients. I felt that these procedures, which are called alternative medicine, they’re actually the original medicine, but anyways that these procedures were less harmful and invasive than conventional medicine, meaning drugs and surgeries. But I really didn’t get the lasting results I was looking for either.

So I decided to get my PhD in holistic nutrition and look at the animals in the wild and say what they were doing, because Mother Nature always has the truths about health. And so since then, I really feel confident I can help people [00:06:00] regardless their diagnosis, medical conditions or ailments. And so since then I’ve been very comfortable in helping people regain control of their health optimize their health, and then bio and reverse their biological age.

So, that’s a little bit of my journey. And so I’m here to help people make a shortcut you know, point out the pitfalls and be a mentor for them. The mentor that I never had.

That’s awesome. So you had quite a journey to get where you are now. And I guess I’m curious, how do you go from being a physical therapist to being a biohacker, like how do you turn that into a career?

Yeah. So when I came in as a physical therapist, you know, I traveled with the Olympic team, so, I was exposed to sports performance and supplements and those types of things for sure. But then I started working with somebody who combined physical therapy with acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.

And I observed that the combination gave better results than one of those modalities by themselves. So I went [00:07:00] back to school for three years and got my license in acupuncture, oriental medicine, homeopathy, et cetera. And from there on you know, I got more and more interested in those types of things.

I got my PhD in nutrition. I went to the A4M conventions many times, which is the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. I learned about bio hormones. I learned about all those types of things. And then, you know 2015 became the CEO of a stem cell company because stem cells and regenerative medicine came to the forefront in medicine as popular.

So then we did all that type of stuff, and stem cells is biohacking, right? And so I got more and more interested in regenerative medicine, functional medicine, and now biohacking what it’s called, right? And not only to help people and clients, but also myself, so I’m a world record in 2019 preparing again for the world Championships in Japan.

In August of 2023, like eight, nine months from now. And so my [00:08:00] competitors swim two hours a day. I don’t have time to do that, nor do I have the desire to be in the chlorine water for two hours a day. So in order to compete with them, I gotta do something else. I’m competing in the 50 plus age group, and so I’m trying to biohack my body to be biologically 40.

And that will be my advantage. So, that’s how I’m getting around, not swimming two hours a day.

So here’s my question. Is it working?

Yeah. Yeah. I swam with the world record in 2019 and only swam three times 75 minutes a week.

That’s amazing.

Yeah.

So I mean, it sounds like this is a good lead to my next question is your superpowers, right? Maybe you’ve already discovered some of them with you’re a biohacking, but every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s their fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect or the ability to call down thunder from the sky

It’s funny that today we’re talking about heroes, go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead.

I think it’s great that we talk about heroes and [00:09:00] superpowers today because if you go to my website, BioHackingUnlimited.com, you’ll see Superman, right? Because I start my biohacking you know calls or conferences or keynote speaking, actually asking this question, do you remember the superpower you wanted as a kid, the dreams about who you wanted to be?

And at that time, you believed without any doubt in your mind that you could be that person until somebody, most likely your parents told you it was impossible. And so then we settled for ordinary. But some of us continue to change those dreams and those superpowers. And so the things I do today, Richard, is really, you know, a lot of people, they don’t have a purpose in life.

They don’t know what their superpower is. And so society puts us in this, you know, on this path that we’re all supposed to be, which means is we gotta go to school, then we gotta go to college, then we gotta work for somebody till we’re 65, and then we gotta buy this RV, and enjoy life. But [00:10:00] usually life doesn’t get that far because we got our first stroke before that happens.

Right? So, and then we have our parents, our parents push a certain directions. We have dad that’s a lawyer, so he wants us to go to law school. We have a mother that failed medical school and wants to live vicariously through us and pushes us through medical school. And nobody asks us what do we want in life.

And so I’m helping not just youngsters, but also older people that still are, you know not having their purpose of life, but they don’t realize it. Because I do a lot of work with people with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and all those kinda, you know, mind conditions or mental illnesses as they call them.

But think about this, instead of just putting things in place or going on medications, or even on natural supplements or neurotropics, you know, if you don’t have a purpose in life, of course things are gonna be thrown at you. Of course you’re gonna be not knowing where you are, you’re gonna be depressed, you’re gonna be anxious.

Because you have no guidance, you have no direction, you have no plan. So the first step I do with people is make [00:11:00] sure they have a purpose in life. And many of them don’t know that. So I do exercises with them to identify what their purpose in life is. And once there’s fire and passion and there’s a dream, things become easy because it sets the stage.

So now, when we have a purpose in life, we can set a plan and a strategy, and we can surround ourselves with the people that we need. Because alone, we never can achieve our highest potential. And once we have the team of experts around us, we are not gonna be afraid of obstacles because we know the obstacle needs to be taken to achieve our goal.

So we’re gonna attack the obstacles. We’re gonna wake up with fire in our belly every day. We gonna be organized. We know what we’re gonna be doing. So we fear, worry anxiety depression. All that stuff suddenly disappears once we have a purpose in life and a strategy and a plan. So that’s what I help people to do today.

And so, you know, when we’re talking about those superpowers, it’s very important that if we don’t have one or we don’t know what it is, that we go search for it, and find that passion and fire that we are put here for on this planet, right? And so when you [00:12:00] ask me what my superpower is, well, you know, in a swimming pool.

You could say I’m a pretty good swimmer, but you know, I feel the fire and the passion inside of my body not swimming really is helping people, whether it’s that regaining control of their health or finding their superpower in their life. And so that’s my superpower, is help people find their superpower.

What about that?

You’re, you’re like a superpower discoverer. You help people uncover the

That’s right.

Superpowers that are already there. That’s wonderful. So, over the course of your career, we’ve sort of discovered that there’s always the flip side, right? You’re. Superpower is if it’s helping people discover their superpowers.

You know, every Superman has their kryptonite. Right. Or Wonder Woman can’t remove their bracelets of victory without going mad. What is a flaw that’s held you back in your business? Right? Something that you’ve struggled with. For me, I struggled with perfectionism for a long time before realized it was a terrible goal to set.

Cause it’s basically nothing. And I struggled with self-care for a long time, which is how I actually got into biohacking. But, you know, I had terrible relationships with sleep and with time and with [00:13:00] client boundaries and stuff like that. And so, what I wanna know, I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so you can continue to grow in your business?

Yeah, I think, I never really surrounded myself with the right people initially. And so that’s why I take it a priority. When somebody has a goal, we need to identify what type of people or what titles that we need, and then put names on them, and form a team, because she need mentors.

She needs people that have been there before you, people that can guide you in the direction so you save a lot of time and agony, right? And so I went through all the agony. And so you know, that certainly was a downfall that I never had a mentor, didn’t realize I really needed those people either.

And so now I’m surrounding myself with the right people you know, that have achieved things I have not achieved yet. So they can show me the way saves all of time. So that’s certainly one of the things. Next, I think the reason why I’ve always been persistent is I have to take that to swimming.

Because you know, I started [00:14:00] competitive swimming at age eight, and so with swimming or with sports especially, I think you really learn that even if you’re not in the mood to go to the training, you have to go. And so you learn quickly that it’s not all about what you like to do. Sometimes you have to do things.

And so I think that really shaped me and really got me into a working mentality that it’s about reaching goals and getting things done even if you don’t like to do them, you know, and so, like I said before, my motto quickly became, you know, I never lose. I win or I learn. And so every time something goes wrong, I’m not even getting upset.

I just, okay, what went wrong? What was my fault? How can I do better tomorrow? And just implement that knowledge and try again, you know, till you get knocked down again. But you get up stronger and stronger until you make it. But all of the things can be prevented by having a plan, having a strategy.

Most people have a vague plan in the back of their mind, but you really gotta, you know, [00:15:00] write down a plan and make a solid plan and surround yourself with the right people. That’s what a lot of people don’t do, and that’s why they don’t get the results that they’re looking for.

Yeah, I like the mentality of not you either win or you learn something. I always tell people, you know, it’s like I either win or I get a story, right? You get a story to

Yeah, well, yeah, that’s so true, right?

Because the stuff that doesn’t work out well, they always make good stories.

Afterwards. Right afterwards. They’re funny.

Yeah, absolutely. So, not having a mentor, not having a team was a downfall. And I’m curious, how did you discover that? How did you sort of come to the conclusion that what you needed was you needed to have, you know, your Gandalf to your Frodo, or you know, your Uncle Ben to your Spider-Man.

How did you discover that you needed to have a mentor in your life?

Well, because every time I started a small business, you know, there was always a problem. I either didn’t have the financial funding to sustain it or to start it properly or to do the proper marketing. Right? [00:16:00] Or again, I’m a leader, but I’m also a risk taker. It’s my personality. I will spend the last dollar on trying something.

And so things go wrong, right? Until we started the Neo Matrix Medical, uh, geometrics Medical, which was our stem cell company in 2015. We actually had a team, so it’s the first time that we actually had some investors, some board members, a CFO, they made me the CEO, but I was just a leader and the one that conveyed the messages and did the seminars.

But when I wanted to spend X amount of money on marketing, the CFO and other people say, no, we can’t do that because we need to have so much in reserve. And so, People that specialize in certain fields, which are my weaknesses, and they balanced me. You know what I mean? We either, we either were seeking for more funding, or they told me, you can’t do this right now.

We need to do A, B, and C first. If it was by myself, I wouldn’t have had that guidance and wouldn’t have had a solid business plan. I wouldn’t have the people to support certain aspects, so, what you learn is you [00:17:00] learn what your weaknesses are, and it’s very important to learn those because you fill those weaknesses in with people that have your weaknesses as their strengths.

So that’s what you need to do. It’s pretty simple actually. Once you put that ego to the side and you can figure out where you need help and put strong people in those positions, then you’re obviously gonna be unstoppable.

Yeah. That’s where I remember learning that lesson myself and thinking, you know, what I needed to do was work on my weaknesses and turn them into strengths. And you realize a lot of fricking work..

Yes.

But what work significantly better is to just focus on your strengths and find other people who are strong, where you’re weak and you can accomplish so much more together that way.

A hundred percent agree, yes.

Absolutely. So I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about your common enemy, right? Every superhero hasn’t parched nemesis and that they constantly fight against in their world. So in the world of biohacking, I’m gonna put this in context of your clients, people that come to you, and it’s a [00:18:00] mindset or a flaw that they have, that you constantly have to fight to overcome so you can actually help them get the result they’re coming to you for to get that.

You know, 30 year old body. When they’re a hundred, when they’re a hundred, what is the common enemy that you are constantly having to fight against in this world?

Well, in this world, I would say it’s obviously our conventional medicine system, the big pharma, the lobbyist, the government pushing us vaccines, pushing us all the unhealthy, manmade foods in the store, you know, all the drugs you know, all, everything is about profiting greeds and so, you know, so you are always pushing up against the doctor’s advice, right?

Because people still go to their regular doctor and usually health is exactly the opposite of what the doctor’s advice is. That’s how simple it is. So maybe, maybe it’s a little bit a crude statement, but I can give a hundred of examples of the doctor’s advice is usually exact the opposite. And I tell people, just look at animals in the wild and see what they do.

And usually that’s where the solution lies. And it’s always the opposite of what we’ve been told. [00:19:00] And so, of course, big pharma, our conventional system here is the big enemy. However, right now, Richard it’s the people that respond are the people that come to biohacking conferences or the people that are interested in getting help are already people that are no longer going to a regular doctor.

Those are people that experienced the floss of drugs and surgeries and injections. Those are the people that had a flawed back surgery. The people that, you know were on drugs that had severe side effects and kind of got away from the conventional system.

And so, right now it’s mostly our inner circle that’s helping each other, you know, the people that already have an open mind about, you know, natural medicine, biohacking, functional medicine, and getting away from mainstream medicine. So, it makes it easy because people that we come in contact with are already, you know, kind of stepped away from conventional medicine, but when we look at the [00:20:00] bigger picture, it’s always been scary because every time a certain part of medicine is rising just like stem cells.

You know, I’ve been a CEO of a stem cell company for almost five years. You know, as soon as we gain traction, as soon as people start getting real results, meaning we eradicate the cause of a condition or we actually repair something and they no longer depends on medicines. You know, the governments and the big pharma step in and tighten up the regulations and ban certain things.

And it happened with stem cells too. You know, there’s all of procedures that can be done with stem cells because they work. And so, you know, it’s gonna be the same thing with bio hacking probably is once this gain traction and people start, you know, telling their stories and their testimonials and how they feel there will be restrictions coming.

Just like, you know, every time something gains traction, they will try to knock us down. So that’s always the enemy. That’s always the big bell. And so within our inner circle, we do what we want and we get great results. Unfortunately, [00:21:00] it’s very hard to bring these messages to the average person, and the mainstream person because we get knocked down when we do that.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So why don’t you tell me the top two or three pieces of advice that people are given that the exact opposite is actually true.

Yes. Well, you know, I mean, there’s many, but let’s go with a few fun ones too. Right. So for example when people have swollen lags or ankles the doctor puts you on diuretics to get rid of the water, right? Now, why is the body holding onto water? I ask those people. It’s holding onto water because you’re not drinking enough, right?

It’s holding on the scarcity of water. So why would you get rid of it with a diuretic? You actually gotta do the opposite. You gotta drink a lot more water so the body can let go of that edema and things like that. So that’s something that’s total opposite. You know I mean, there’s many things, but for example, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Well, I never have breakfast because it’s by far the least [00:22:00] important meal of the day. If you look at all animals in the wild, they only eat once a day. If you look at Moses and the Romans and the Greeks and Jesus, they only eat once a day. If you look at the physiology and biology of our digestive system, it’s only designed to eat and absorb one meal a day.

And so, you know, breakfast is the least important meal of the day. Ideally you eat early evening, and that’s because of our society, right? So what’s the best time to eat? It’s early evening because digestive efforts will take based on what you eat, four to six hours. You don’t want to be digesting while you’re sleeping because then you can’t sleep deep.

And during sleep, we repair, recover, renew, and regenerate, right? It’s like when you are a supermarket overnight, you need to restock. If you don’t restock a few nights in a row, you won’t perform, you won’t sell. There will no publix’s supermarket anymore. So during sleep we need to replenish, regain, restore.

So, you know, that’s why we need to eat early evening and don’t snack before we go to bed. And so when we wake up, [00:23:00] we should have all the nutrients available to us that we need to get through the day. So if we would eat breakfast, we basically would burden our digestive system and waste all the energy that we build up during our sleep and from the digestion of the first meal.

So, you know that’s another example.

I have a question about that one in particular cuz it’s something that I’ve learned a lot. I accidentally discovered that I do what is dubbed intermittent fasting cuz I skip breakfast and lunch frequently and that’s just something I’ve always done. And I have found, or at least I found when I started working with a bio hacking expert myself, that I still wasn’t getting enough calories, right.

I was not actually eating enough when I was eating. So how do you balance the one meal a day that you’re designed to do with making sure you’re getting enough actual food and nutrition during that one meal?

Well, yeah, it’s very individual, right? How much energy do you do you need? What do you do during the day? Are you, I mean, how much do you work out every day? Or what do you spend? So what do you need? Because you don’t [00:24:00] wanna, like yourself, lose weight and take not in enough calories to sustain daily life.

So that’s very individual how much you need. But first of all it’s not about how much because calories, again, it’s a measure of they say energy, right? But your body needs essential nutrients on a daily basis. So if you give your body the essential nutrients during that one meal, and I’ll give you some other things that I do.

If you give your body all the essential nutrients, it’s not gonna send out a hunger signal because if it gets all the nutrients it needs, there’s no need to eat more. So even though I only eat one meal a day, I’m never hungry cuz my body gets what it wants and therefore it’s not gonna ask for you to eat more.

So that’s one aspects for people to understand. The other thing is that what I usually like to explain is health on a cellular level, it only gonna take a minute. We have about 75 trillion cells, right? That’s more than we can really understand. It’s more than the stars in the entire galaxy, but each and every one of those single cells performs a few million chemical reactions per [00:25:00] second.

So if you wanna know how many chemical reactions there occur in your body at any given second, you simply have to multiply 75 trillion with a few million. So next time somebody asks you, Richard, if you’re busy, you say yes, extremely right now. Anyways, each and every one of those cells. Each and every one of those cells has a hundred thousand receptors on its outer membrane.

And the RNA or the messenger in the cell tells those receptors constantly what it is that the cell needs to repair, replenish, and renew itself. So let’s say the cell needs vitamin C, so those receptors stick out a neck in the extracellular environment to look for vitamin C. But what if due to our standard American diet, SAD, that vitamin C is not available?

Then our cell and our body has to settle for incompatible less potent nutrient, and so what happens is we get degeneration and mutation. It’s like when you have an original piece of paper and you take a copy and then you take a copy of a copy. If you do that a few times, you can’t read it anymore. It’s the same [00:26:00] happens with the body.

If you don’t get the right nutrients and you get less compatible less potent nutrients than the cell’s gonna degenerate, which means disease and it’s gonna mutate, which means cancer. Okay? But what I wanna show with this example is that we don’t have to be health freaks either. All we need to do is to make sure that our body gets all the essential nutrients it needs on a daily basis so that it can repair, replenish, and renew itself.

And if you do that, it’s okay to have your taco on Tuesday or have two beers on Saturday, believe me. But the problem is that 95% of us Americans here, we do not get those essential nutrients. We only eat the bad stuff, and then the body is forced to replace itself with less potent nutrients, and that’s when we get disease and that’s when we get, you know, cancer.

And so, the goal here is from a health perspective because get all the essential nutrients. So yes, I’m having one meal a day. But if I get my essential nutrients, I won’t be hungry. I won’t be starving. What are those essential [00:27:00] nutrients? Right? Of course, it’s your vitamins, your minerals, your amino acids, and all the biohacking compounds that are available today.

But what I wanted to say is I juice a lot. So even though I don’t eat a meal in the morning, I juice a lot. So I have my juice with me during the mid-morning and lunch and I juice. And so that juice is a concentrate of like 10 salads, which impossibly could eat, physically eat, but I got a lot of nutrients and I take high quality supplements because in today’s day supplements or high quality supplements do become an insurance policy.

Cause even if you eat wholesome organic foods, you cannot get all the nutrients that you need on a daily basis.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to call it, I ran a supplement company for a while and I used to call it eliminating the nutritional gap, right? Because even if you have a healthy diet there’s a gap between what you can get from a healthy diet and what your body actually needs. And so supplements help eliminate that gap.

Absolutely.

That’s correct. Yeah.

So [00:28:00] I wanna talk then about the flip side. So if your common enemy is the, you know, modern American medical system and you know the powers that be that are there that’s what you fight against. The flip side of that is you’re driving force. It’s what you fight for. So, right, just like Spider-Man fights to save New York, or Batman fights to save Gotham, or, you know, Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information.

What is it you fight for in your business, your mission, so to speak?

Well, you know, I call it health freedom, right? Health freedom is the freedom that all of us have to either choose to be sick and sad or to be healthy and happy. But I try to educate people that it’s not in the hands of your doctor, it’s in your own hands. You are responsible. We can blame the FDA, we can blame the CDC.

We can blame the big pharma. We can blame the propaganda on the fake news. We can do that. But ultimately, just take responsibility, and educate yourself or get yourself. Like you did, hiring a a biohacking expert or a functional medicine doctor to help you in the guide direction, and be responsible and take care of your own health and the health of your loved ones.

You know, you are responsible for what you drink, [00:29:00] what you put in your body, what toxins you expose yourself to, and what you do to mitigate those toxins. It’s all you. So, you know, stop blaming others and take responsibility now. That’s a Spider-Man movie, right? With great responsibility, comes great. With great power, comes great responsibility.

responsibility.

With great power, comes great responsibility and responsibility symbol, the ability to respond. See, that’s what separates us humans from animals. Animals have an instinct and they act according to the laws of mother nature. That’s why they are in perfect health. We have an awareness, which means is we have the freedom to choose our response and that, exactly, that power has put us in ill health because we have become slaves of choosing the wrong response over and over again.

However, we have the same power. Our awareness, our freedom to choose our response to any stimulus. We have that same power to turn things around and become superhuman.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, I love the idea. I used to tell people, you know, you [00:30:00] can choose to be fat, sick, and nearly dead, or you can choose to be a healthy, vibrant, full of life, right.

Perfect. That’s really well said. Well put.

Yeah. Yeah. And the health freedom is a really interesting thing cuz my business, like my actual LLC for my business is called Five Freedoms.

And sometimes I feel like I missed one cause I was like, you know, you have, the big ones are Spiritual freedom, religious freedom, time freedom, location freedom, financial freedom. And the last one I call, and I call it the sixth, freedom is health freedom. Right? And the, all of those are each freedom is generally, it’s a restriction on your ability to make choices, right?

So like, the reason you want financial freedom is you don’t want your finances to restrict your choices. And location freedom is, you have the ability to choose where you want to be and where what you wanna do. And time freedom is you get to choose what you do with your time and political freedoms.

It means you can do and say what you wanna do without a fear of, you know, political retaliation, right? Being put in jail or whatever those kind of things are. And health freedom is the same thing. It is your health is not the limiting factor to your choices, right?

No. And in our society, of course, [00:31:00] we work, we have health insurance. We’re limited by our choices because of our insurance. I mean, we don’t have much health freedom unless we take control of our own health. We can save ourself a lot of money, and we don’t have to go about what the insurance company says to which doctor we can go, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And to what you just said about the sixth freedom, you know, I even want to add to that, that, you know, without health freedom, in other words, if you’re sick and sad, you cannot exercise the other five freedoms. What if you have extra time? What are you gonna do with it if you’re sick? Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, it’s the.

It’s sixth people don’t think about.

And it’s the fable of the goose and the golden eggs. You gotta take care of yourself, otherwise you cannot take care of others. Yeah.

Absolutely So you fight for what I call the sixth Freedom, health Freedom. I wanna talk a little bit about something that’s just very practical, right? You know, I call it your hero’s tool belt. And just like every superhero has their awesome gadgets like batarangs or web slingers, or their magical hammer, they can [00:32:00] spin around and fly with.

I wanna talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without to run your business. Could be anything from your notepad that you take your notes on to your calendar, to your marketing tool, something you use for your actual delivery of your services, your clients, something you think is essential to getting your job done on a daily basis.

Well, you know, I guess the way I get people interested at it, I take complex topics and I explain ’em in a very easy way. I make ’em aha moments. Just like I did, for example, with the cell. You know, I make something very complex, easy so the average person can understand, but also has a paradigm shift or aha moments.

A way of them thinking about something that they’ve been so thinking about and brainwashed about in one different way is just create a high experience. So my ability to simplify things and create high experiences with those two abilities, I always hope tohelp people, you know, [00:33:00] initiate their critical thinking because everybody has it in them, but a lot of people don’t want to think about things.

So, I think I always write down analogies or try to simplify things, and I use those to really get people considering, you know, taking the path of health freedom. So I think that’s always important and that’s always helped me to get people’s attention, whether that’s during a webinar or whether it’s during a podcast or whether it’s during a life event, is creating those paradigm shifts or aha moments.

From a tool, I mean just recently, of course I’m going on many podcasts and I have to applaud people like yourself that taking the time to spreading the word, because, you know, maybe I have a certain method or a certain service or something that can help people. But without people like yourself, Richard, you know, we can’t reach many people and that’s where you are the expert.

You have thousands of followers and I don’t, and so I think this is a great team effort to get messages like this out there is about our [00:34:00] freedoms, so you are the tool, Richard, you are a great tool to get the message out there.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, metaphors and analogies are a fantastic tool for teaching and educating and helping people understand complex concepts. Like, you said, like cellular regeneration, how it actually works. You have to have the stories, analogies for people who aren’t medical experts to understand those things.

So it’s a powerful tool and what you’re doing, you know, with the podcast is, you know, being a guest on podcasts, I always tell people, if you want to build an audience, or you want to have access to an audience. There’s only three ways to do it. You can buy audience with ads and you know, billboards, and things like that.

Or you can borrow audience that’s like what you’re doing. You come onto my show and borrow my audience. Or maybe you get on the Today Show and borrow their significantly larger audience, or Oprah or something like that. Or you can build your own audience, which is what I’m doing, right?

I build a show like this to build an audience and so you can buy, borrow, or build, and all three of those are effective. But yeah, the borrowing audience is such a interesting, leveraged, powerful form of getting access to audience, is to borrow someone [00:35:00] else’s because today you can decide, I would like to borrow an audience. And if you have a powerful message, there’s lots of audiences out there that you can borrow.

No agree. That’s good. Buy, borrow, or build.

Buy, borrow, or build. Those are the

I’ll learned something today. Buy, borrow, or build. Yeah.

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So I wanna talk about your own personal [00:37:00] heroes, right? Every hero has their mentors. We talked about this earlier. Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi-Wan, Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad, even Spider-Man had his uncle Ben. Who are some of your real life mentors? Were they speakers or authors?

Peers who are a couple years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplishedso far?

Well, I got a few, I got a swim coach when I was younger. I was at University of Brussel and he actually was an Hungarian guy who spoke English because he was the swim coach of the English speaking NATO team. So, you know, a lot of families lived in Brussels, but they were not from there because one of their parents worked for Nato and so they had a swim team and he asked me to help out, become an assistant coach to help out a little bit and go on a training camp, and he set me down one time.

Because I just was, you know, reading books and going what other coaches said, and he kinda set me down and said, look, you cannot just blindly follow things that are written down, or you cannot just blindly copy things that successful coaches are doing. You gotta start thinking for yourself. And he gave me a few examples of what other [00:38:00] people were doing and why it was wrong.

And so he was the first person in my life, and I probably was 19 years old, that basically set me down and said, look, you know, you’re a smart guy. Just don’t accept everything that you hear or that’s written down, and start thinking about, you know, these basic, even basic principles in swimming that everybody just blindly accepts over the years and copies, and continues to implement and they’re wrong.

And so from that moment on, it really opened my eyes. And that’s when I really started not only to do practice critical thinking, but also stepping out of the box and look from things from a different perspective. And so that was number one. Number two, I think early on, Stephen Covey’s the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was one of the first books that really helped me, especially habit number five, listen to understand, then to be understood, because when you are young, you’re opinionated, right?

And you think you’re always right. In my twenties, But that really was something that I had to work on. And so when you listen to [00:39:00] people, you understand where they’re coming from, even though their opinion is totally opposite to yours. But if you try to understand why they have that opinion, you’ll probably learn something.

Because you can only learn when you listen. You never can learn when you talk, right? So I think Stephen Covey initially was one of the books that really helped me, you know synergize with other people and understand that you need a team. And those types of things.

And then you know, recently it’s just people that are successful in the area that I wanna be successful in, such as Dr. Fab Mancini, which is the doctor of Dr. Phil has been on all the major news channels and he’s actually, you know, getting the message out to millions of people. So, it’s something, somebody that I look up to because he already accomplished where I wanna be, and so I hang out with him a lot.

Yeah.

Oh, those are my heroes.

I like the understanding of critical thinking. I remember having that revelation myself here, like, Hey, I have to actually think about things. I can’t just assume you know [00:40:00] everything. And then the older you get, the more you realize, like the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know anything.

Exactly.

So that’s definitely an important lesson. And especially the second one you mentioned about understand ing when you listen. And I know early on in my life I remember thinking, you know, you could talk a lot, right? And it sort of goes right along with the that first thing about critical thinking is that critical thinking happens when you learn.

And, you know, so those two things tie together really well, is critical thinking and learning to listen to others because you know, well, you don’t know everything.

Yep. No, and you don’t have to agree, but you even learn something from, you know, understanding why they think that way. That’s learning experience there, so you understand why they think that way, even if you don’t agree.

Yeah. And if you don’t agree, it forces you to understand why and to think about why you don’t agree, and you can articulate your own beliefs better.

You may shift your thinking or you may shift your opinion yourself, which is good. That means you’re [00:41:00] maturing, you are evolving your self-development. You know, if you still have the same ideas and opinions than 20 years ago, you didn’t evolve, I guess, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. So we are, I think getting near the end of the interview here, I wanna talk about one of the things that makes heroes heroic, which is their guiding principles, right? They live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever puts them in Archem asylum. So as we wrap up, I wanna talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you live your life by that maybe a principal that you wish you had learned earlier on in your entrepreneurial career.

Huh. Well, very interesting. Well, you know, principles is just you always stick to your beliefs, right? Even though beliefs may change a little bit, but you gotta just stick to your beliefs. And I’m, you know, I’m a fighter that way. Even though, you know we talked about our enemy in the past, right?

So all my social media are postings that I know family, friends, and other people are not gonna appreciate, but [00:42:00] especially during Covid, right? Covid, all of controversy. But you know, I feel being in the health field and being in this position, I gotta take my side and I gotta fight for it.

And so, even though you know it’s gonna create adversity and you’re gonna lose friends or you know, create more opposition, you know, that’s what you need to do as a fighter, as a superhero. You cannot back down no matter what it takes. And so I think that’s one of the, you know characteristics that you have to have superhero.

It doesn’t matter who your enemy is. It doesn’t matter how much you’re gonna get hurt. You just gotta stay the cost, right? You gotta stay the cost. So I think that’s you know, the most important one right there.

Yeah, absolutely. So you when once you know the truth, you have to continue fighting for it no matter what the cost is for it.

It’s your purpose in life, so you cannot beg down. It’s, that’s what you’re here for, is to help fight that fight. Just like you’re fighting for those five, six [00:43:00] freedoms right there, you’re not gonna beg down, you know, no matter what it takes, even if you come to your house and the FBI raids your house and gets in your van and takes you, it doesn’t matter.

You just gotta stay the calls until it’s all over. Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Otherwise you’re really not a believer. I guess otherwise you’re just a fake, I don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you don’t believe anything, right, you will believe anything.

Well then if you’re no purpose in life, then you’re just walking around here and that’s why you get depressed and stressed and you don’t have any fire, you don’t have any passion. You’re sick. You know, there’s no positive feelings, right? If you have a fight, if you have a passion, that’s when you’re happy.

That’s when you feel victory. That’s when you have, you know, positive emotions. You’re joyful when you accomplish something or you tackle or you take another hurdle to watch your goals and dreams. That’s what life is about, making a difference and feeling good about it, and be passionate about it.

That’s perfect, and I think that’s a great place to put a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge that I [00:44:00] call the Heroes Challenge. And I do this to help get access to stories that we might not otherwise find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network who you think has a good entrepreneurial story?

Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you.

Well, I would say Dr. Fab Mancini just because he’s been there before me and he used the mainstream media to get where he is, which is kind of funny because the mainstream media is usually the ones that shut you down. But he used that tool to get his message out. You know, who else?

That’s fine. We’ll see if we can get an introduction to him, maybe we can get him on the show.

Yeah. Sure.

So yeah, thank you for that. And you know, in comic books there’s always the crowd of people who are at the end cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. So, analogous to that here is where can people find you if they want your help in biohacking, right?

Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak and say, Hey Dr. Mike, I’d like to get the health freedom in my life. And I think more importantly than where is who are the types of people to reach out, who should be lighting up that bad signal?

Yeah, just go to my [00:45:00] website, BioHackingUnlimited.com or M V T, those are my initials, Mike Van Thielen, MVTOnline.com or BioHackingUnlimited com. It’s the same website, but right now I actually have a 20 minute free Zoom call. Everybody can go there. You know, make a appointment in the calendar right there on the website and schedule a 20 minute free Zoom call.

What we do is we’ll see where you are health-wise or business-wise, or in person life, and initiate a plan of action and a strategy. And I’m one of those mentors that will stick with you until you accomplish your dreams. You can check out my books. You can check out my speaker bio over there, you can check out my mentorship programs.

There’s three different levels of programs and so yeah, check out the website. That’s the only place from which you can look at my credentials and everything else and contact me also. So BioHackingUnlimited.com.

Awesome. Thank you very much, Mike. I appreciate you taking the time to come on to our show and share your story today. It’s fascinating and health freedom is one of my favorite topics and I love that you’re doing what you do. So [00:46:00] thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button.

Yeah. Well I just wanna thank you to Richard. As I said before, without you, this word doesn’t come out and at the same time, you’re finding six freedoms. So I appreciate all your time efforts to keep our country sovereign and keep our freedoms alive.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Mike.

You’re welcome.