Mark Divine  0:02  

Coming up on the Mark Divine show.

Wade Lightheart  0:04  

The problem with monoculture farming is that the plants began to get bugs and funguses and more susceptible to pesticides. So they started using nitrogen to increase the yield and the plants got weaker. They give up key enzymes and amino acids that were native to the plants and that would protect it that was the immune system of the plant. Well, let’s create herbicides, pesticides and fungicides which disrupt the microbes and microbiome of the plants. In other words, the bacteria cultures that convert the nutrients into the food that they need that protects the plants, etc, etc. So guess what? That went on weakening the plants, creating less nutrients, and those chemicals ended up damaging our own digestive health systems.

Mark Divine  0:49  

Hi, this is Mark Divine, the host of the Mark Divine show. On the show I explore what it means to be fearless. through the lens of the world’s most inspirational, compassionate and resilient leaders. I talk to folks from all walks of life, martial arts grandmasters, stoic philosophers, psychedelic researchers, CEOs, and my guest today is Wade Lightheart, who’s the founder CEO BiOptimizers, a leading nutritional supplementation company, but he’s also involved in education. He’s an adviser to the anti cancer institute. He’s a three time all natural bodybuilding champion. He studied exercise physiology, nutrition in college, and as a coach has helped over 50,000 optimize thier health. Amazing. Nice to meet you Wade, thanks for joining me today.

Wade Lightheart  1:35  

Great to be here. Thank you.

Mark Divine  1:37  

You know, first time I meet someone, and especially since we’re doing this kind of live on air on that live for those listening. But um, you and I just get to know a little bit about your background, like you were a natural bodybuilder, and then you got into the supplementation business. What were the formative factors that led you down that path? What was your childhood, like? Who were your mentors? Was the parenting like? I’d love to get a sense for the matrix of the nurturing that might have inspired you down this path. And if it’s all nature, then what was it that caused you to appreciate that calling?

 

Wade Lightheart  2:07  

Well, thank you for asking. I grew up in rural Canada, South in the cold in New Brunswick, which is out by Maine, and grew up in a small town, just ordinary life played hockey, all that sort of stuff. But when I was 15, three things happen to me that changed the course of my life and set me on this path. One was my parents moved from a little village to a no town. In other words, it was five miles up a dirt road to my nearest neighbor, they were caretakers of a private resort. So beautiful place, not a place you want to be when you’re 15 years old, taken away from your friends, all that sort of stuff. So that was shock number one. Shortly afterwards, my sister who was four years, my senior was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, which is a form of cancer of the lymph nodes. I’ve watched her go through the medical model for the next four years before she died at the age of 22. 

 

Mark Divine 2:56

Uh, that’s heartbreaking. 

 

Wade Lightheart 2:58

Yeah. So that had a very big impact on me, in  the fact that from very early on in my life, I realized that your life is not a guarantee, and your health is not a guarantee. 

 

Mark Divine 3:09

Right.

 

Wade Lightheart 3:10

And I can remember taking the trips from the hospital with her, it’s like 55 miles, she’d have her treatment, she stopped maybe half a dozen times, we have to get out you have to vomit from the treatment. And I remember my naive self saying, I don’t know man, it’s like if I want to be healthy, why is the treatment seem to be making her sick.

 

Mark Divine 3:27

Right. 

 

Wade Lightheart 3:28

And so that was a bug in my head at that time as I wanted to understand why these things were happening. And I didn’t know. Third thing that happened is my sister gave me a bodybuilding magazine on the cover had Mr. California, two pretty girls in bikinis, and this world of Venice Beach, California, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the magazine. He was the biggest star in the world at that time, making all the movies and living the life. And I looked at myself and saw those muscles on that guy and myself and I thought, well, maybe if I get these muscles, I’ll get those girls or maybe I’ll get these muscles and  I’ll be healthy and strong.

 

Mark Divine 4:03

Oh yeah

 

Wade Lightheart 4:04

And I read education of a bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. What was in it? He said three things that changed my life. He said, you can achieve anything in life, if you have hard work, self discipline, and a positive attitude.

 

Mark Divine 4:16

Love it.

 

Wade Lightheart 4:18

I went, wow! Everybody I knew worked really hard, this was like rough country. People did heavy manual labor. That was hard. It was cold. It was tough. It was dangerous. Everybody I grew up around was like that, but no one was talking about a positive attitude or self discipline. So, I constructed a gym in my barn, and I made a makeshift pulley system that was a weight set that it would hit you in the head if you didn’t pull it up right.. and, you know I had two wheelers under tractor tires and saw horses and all this sort of stuff. 

 

Mark Divine 4:55

Classic functional gym. 

 

Wade Lightheart 4:57

Yeah. And I began training. Eventually I went to university studied exercise physiology at the University of Brunswick. And it was a good background, but it was compartmentalized. In other words, it was a bunch of information that showed you how things operated, but there was no synergy between how it can help me achieve my goals.

 

Mark Divine  5:15  

All medical and Exercise Physiology and is compartmentalize. And in fact, to this day, there’s no integrated approach to education.

 

Wade Lightheart  5:25  

So, I began looking for mentors and I worked in virtually every aspect of the health and fitness industry; from working in gyms and being a manager at a gym, to being a personal trainer, working at nutrition houses, just learning everything I could. Well, I continued to train. Now I had terrible genetics, I had no background, I had no business being my parents are basically Smurfs. That’s gonna say, Well, how did you get successful? I said, Well, I was too stupid or too stubborn to quit. That’s really what it is. And fortunately, after about 16 years, with a whole lot of detours, I gotta say, some really lucky moments in my life. To make it. I won the national championship, went to the World Championship, Mr. Universe. After that contest, I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in eleven weeks. And I always say I wait for Mr. Universe to Mr. Marshmallow.

 

Mark Divine  6:20  

I wonder how common is that, by the way, where people just let it all go after hitting that pinnacle? You know, they don’t? 

 

Wade Lightheart  6:25  

Well, there’s a specific reason why that does happen. 

 

Mark Divine 6:27

That’s right. 

 

Wade Lightheart 6:28

And I wanted to find out what that was. So throughout the course of my life, as my biggest obstacle became the foundation for my next step in the future. That’s been across the board from 50 now, and it’s the same thing over and over and over again. So it’s like, okay, yeah, that is what you need to do. I thought, well, this doesn’t make sense. I’ve got the best coach, I could get in the sport. I didn’t do anything that was outside of my range. I’m recognized that the world champs.

 

Mark Divine 6:55

This is all natural, right? 

 

Wade Ligthheart 6:56

That’s right. I did it as a vegetarian and I did it without drugs. And I use meditation and stuff like that

 

Mark Divine  7:01  

that was part of your just internal compass, because I’m sure the allure to take the steroid path, which all the other bodybuilders did and still do was very strong.

 

Wade Lightheart  7:12  

Yeah, I mean, I experimented with that from 1996 to 98. And at that time, Dorian Yates, was giving way to Ronnie Coleman. I became very clear that it didn’t matter how many drugs I was ever going to take, I was never going to beat a guy like Ronnie Coleman. This guy was just genetically superior in every way to maybe any athlete that has ever stepped on that stage. And I thought, Okay, I need to find a different path. I went on a detour. I got into partying. Got into the underground world went all sideways on that and then had a profound spiritual experience that changed my life. I got into meditation, went on a plant based diet decided to come back and do these drug tests that shows

 

Mark Divine  7:52  

by the way, can you talk about that, spiritual experience, and that kind of turnaround? Because that’s interesting to me. And I think listeners, what was that like?

 

Wade Lightheart  8:01  

Sure. I was working like a maniac and came into bodybuilding. I got a contract started a little juice bar, and it was personal training, and everything was going great. In Vancouver, I made a little bit of money. I was working, working, working, working, and a friend of mine said, Hey, you just work all the time. Once you have some fun. He was a doorman at a nightclub. And I was like, I remember kind of just doing my thing. And then another guy was coming to the juice bar that I had, and he ran a strip club. And finally they broke me down. I said, I’d go out and went to the bar didn’t feel what was going on. I went to the strip club. And the guy’s like, hey, these girls want to party with you. And I’m like, What are you talking about? They gave me some ecstasy tablets. And wow, I took those. And

 

Mark Divine  8:38  

Now we know that as MDMA. 

 

Wade Lightheart 8:40

That’s right

 

Mark Divine 8:41

which is a love drug, right opens up the heart opens up that mind

 

Wade Lightheart  8:44  

Right. And a few years ago, I had read Autobiography of a Yogi and he talks about this state of ecstasy in his heart opening experience. And all of a sudden, I experienced it. And I’m like, Oh, this way they make this stuff illegal. They don’t want people to be all connected in your heart and all this.

 

Mark Divine  8:58  

Bingo. That’s awesome.

 

Wade Lightheart  9:01  

Love it. I did that for a couple of weeks. The next thing you know, I’m capping up this stuff. I’m getting it to my friends. I’m like, Hey, man, we’re getting enlightened man, this the way to go. And I inadvertently got mixed up in the underground world as this health advocate who had some of the best products on the street. The next think you know I have this huge fledgling side business. I’m working at a juice bar, I’m partying all weekend, I’m traveling. It’s all crazy. And I’m reading about meditation and doing this and I’m long story short. I did about a year of that. I got into a situation where some people gave me some drugs. I had a bad experience ended up in the hospital, I got out of the hospital need to straighten up my life was mixed up with the wrong people. I had to break away from that that was life threatening. I’m gonna write a book just on the two weeks because it was so far out of people’s reality. And what happened from that is a guy gave me these books. One was Common Sense about yoga by Swami Vivekananda.

 

Mark Divine  10:03  

I know about Vivekananda, he was  great sage.

 

Wade Lightheart  10:06  

Yeah, and  so I went home to kind of straighten myself out because my life got crazy. I went back to the East Coast, my parents didn’t know what’s going on. I was like, Hey, I’m messed up, right? I gotta reset. And I read this book, and it said, if you are doing drugs, or alcohol, or add meditation, or combining these things, without the guidance of a Realized Master, you’re gonna burn out your brain or your nervous system. Yeah. And I’m like, that’s exactly what happened to me. Great. That’s what I need. I need to teacher. You know, I’d read Yogananda’s book, Autobiography of a Yogi, in 1996, 4 years prior. I said a little prayer that night, and  I said, Okay, I’m asking for my master to show up. I haven’t said this too much, it’s funny you should ask.

 

Mark Divine  10:47  

Nah, I love it. By the way, I’m a big yogi. And I got my start. First through Zen, but then when I read Yogananda’s has book in 1999. So three years after you, it completely changed my life because it fused my own martial arts training with the yoga philosophy, and also my philosophical, deep dive that I’ve been doing. And it all just made sense suddenly, in the way Yogananda does explicates and brought yoga to the west. And I lived right down the street from his Self Realization Fellowship. So I did all his lessons and got all the way up to the point where you know, they were going to indoctrinate me into their kriya yoga and I was supposed to choose Yogananda as my guru even though he had died, that I said, Okay, that’s enough there. Let me just, you know, make sure that I explore all avenues before I go down that path, which I never did. But I really honor his contribution. That book was the only book that Steve Jobs would carry on his iPad. 

 

Wade Lightheart 11:37

Yeah, 

MArk Divine 11:38

Yeah, that’s right. Incredible. Anyways, back to your story. But I just wanted to share that connection with you because I have a deep yogic practice informed by Yogananda as well in his lineage. Extraordinary.

 

Wade Lightheart  11:49  

So he appeared really, in my room and said, you need to do kriya yoga. 

 

MArk Divine 11:56

Awesome. 

 

Wade Lightheart 11:57

Now, a couple months later, I went back to Vancouver back to the West Coast again, where I was, had been doing this crazy life and extricated myself away from the dark forces that were surrounding me. And that involved a drive in the back of a Lincoln Navigator with a gun to my head, and all that sort of stuff. So you get real clear about things at that moment, I guess, studying Yogananda and he said, if something is your innate desire, and it’s right for you, and it doesn’t exist, it’ll be created for you. If someone tells me something, I’m like, Okay, well, who am I to say that that’s right or wrong? Let me test it and see if that is true. So I thought, well, I wanted to go to the Mr. Universe contest. And I never got to because, you know, I didn’t want to go all the crazy drug route. I didn’t want to do all that sort of stuff. So it’s like, well, now they started this drug tested path to go and I thought, well, maybe I can go and I can do on a plant based diet, and I can practice these yoga things. And now it’d be kind of cool. 

 

Mark Divine 12:55

Yeah. 

 

Wade Lightheart 12:56

Two years later, I was on stage at the Mr. Universe. And here’s the ironic part. Year before I competed in the western Canadians, and I went against the guy, who I think was the best natural bodybuilder ever competed against he beat me that year, I came back to the nationals, we’re going to be in the same category. I got a shot to take him out. And for the first time in 56 years, the IFBB split the category into two different weight classes. He was in one way class, I was in the other we both won our divisions. We went on heavy competed against each other, I think he would have beat me. So I got lucky. And so Yogananda words were true.

 

Mark Divine  13:30  

Yogananda was the one that was, you know, push them to split that weight class. 

 

Wade Lightheart  13:35  

And the contest was in India.

 

Mark Divine 13:37

was it, oh, my goodness.

 

Wade Lightheart 13:38

And I met some kids couldn’t afford to go to the show. They saw them outside the hotel, I built a little friendship with them. And I said, I’d come to their gym after and do a little lecture because they couldn’t afford to go kind of reminded me myself when I started.

 

Mark Divine13:48

Right. 

 

Wade Lightheart 13:49

And every day there was more and more kids coming to see if I was gonna go so after the show, I went out there and I took to where Slumdog Millionaire is and ended up in this crazy place.

 

Mark Divine 13:57

Cool. 

 

Wade Lightheart 13:58

There was like hundreds of people to come see me at this gym. And I gave the lecture and I realized it wasn’t about being the Mr. Universe. It was about being a teacher to help other people use these principles to advance their own health and well being. I came back, I had the health crisis but found a doctor he taught me about digestive health. And my business partner today, Matt Galandt said, hey, you know what, Mr. Universe, no drugs, vegetarian. We could Market this online. 

 

Mark Divine 14:30

Right? 

 

Wade Lightheart 14:31

We started a little company with $200 bucks. We ran the company, we’d money right away. And it’s like two or three months in we paid ourselves the first time and I bought a computer so I might be the only person in the world I had an internet Marketing company, right and didn’t computer.

 

Mark Divine  14:42  

Yeah, but you weren’t supposed to be the computer guy. You were the talent. Totally.

 

Wade Lightheart  14:47  

He was the brains on the Marketing side and I was the voice and you know, I was right in the pocket that time about blowing the doors open of what’s in magazines, abuse of drugs, what the real story is.

 

Mark Divine 14:59

Qhat year are we talking about here? 

 

Wade Lightheart 15:01

We started in January 2004. That took off. We ended up moving to Panama a year and a half later, he met his wife down there.

 

Mark Divine 15:10

Like what was that all about? 

 

Wade Lightheart 15:11

Well as Canadians, it was the tax benefits of living in Panama.

 

Mark Divine  15:16  

Okay, kinda like Americans going to Puerto Rico now.

 

Wade Lightheart  15:19  

That’s right. And so he met his wife there. And I didn’t care for Panama too much. I made three runs that living there just the culture didn’t work for me, but he loved it. I left and lived all around the world and did different things and ran the laptop lifestyle. And eventually we rebranded our company as biooptimize. We were focused on bodybuilding had whole kinds of breakthroughs. And then we started working first and fixing people’s digestion, we got really well known in that. And then we started working on nervous system regulation with magnesium and then personalized cognitive enhancement systems with another brand that we built called Utopia.

 

Mark Divine  15:53  

That’s incredible story. Wait, wow, dang, you know, I love it. When an entrepreneur like you is build a business that is around their life and their passion and their purpose in the business is almost secondary, right? The story really is about the trials and tribulations and the lessons and the insights. And what an incredible story you just told. You gotta write that book, anything I can do to help because that’s cool. Especially, you know, the intersection between spirituality and drugs is coming back into the culture now that they’re talking about legalizing psilocybin and MDMA for therapeutic and post traumatic stress. But there’s an awful lot of recreational use of psilocybin and MDMA and even Ayahuasca these days, that is dangerous. 

 

Wade Lightheart 15:37

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 15:38

Because, as you know, and I know that without being curated with a really, really responsible and knowledgeable third party, and we used to call that a shaman, right?

 

Wade Lightheart 16:47

Yep

 

Mark Divine 16:48

Right, then people can go off the reservation pretty quickly. And the same thing with like Kundalini and the breath centric yoga.

 

Wade Lightheart 16:55

Correct. 

 

Mark Divine 16:56

The reason Kriya worked, and the reason they taught it as a secret practice was because they understood this, right? Kriya is energy activation, if you activate energy without the stabilized mind, guess what happens? You destabilize the mind further, when taken out of the context of being done with a competent teacher, you know, have blown up a lot of brains,

 

Wade Lightheart  17:14  

I went down that pathway myself and found out where it ends, it’s not pretty. And you know, I was lucky, and that I had a strong physical constitution. And I had good patterns of mental discipline and stuff that pulled me out. But I went to the edge. And I know a lot of people that that didn’t work out for them. I also feel very lucky and fortunate to speak on the other side of that, and I try to do so as much as I can. It’s it’s like guns, anybody can go buy a gun. But when you actually go get specific training, I’ve been training with various special forces. My first observation is like, I don’t want to carry a gun on me.

 

Mark Divine  17:52  

Yeah, unless you have the capacity to make sure that no one’s going to take that gun from you and use it.

 

Wade Lightheart 17:57

Yes

 

Mark Divine 17:57

That should be number one. I’m all for people owning guns, if they know how to use it, and if they’re capable of holding on to that gun and not letting anybody else touch it, including their kid, their brother, their cousin, their uncle, or someone on the street, who happens to want to take it from them. And very few people meet those three requirements.

 

Wade Lightheart  18:13  

Almost no one and I’m a big believer in gun ownership and able to protect yourself. And I think like a driver’s license, you should be licensed and you should be able to demonstrate that you are competent in the management handling of a lethal weapon. You know, traditionally we had lineages of shamans or spiritual teachers, and they were acknowledged after they were able to hit a certain amount. But now I call shamans are the new drug dealers. And people are making money out of these kind of things, and whipping up concoctions out of their backroom that they read on the internet. 

 

Mark Divine 18:46

Right? 

 

Wade Lightheart 18:47

The results are disastrous. So that’s a whole minefield. But anyways, you know, it’s part of the human condition, I guess, we have options and you can destroy yourself, you can enlighten yourself, you get the whole enchilada here at Planet Earth. 

 

Mark Divine 18:58

The whole enchilada, we know that from the spiritual practices that you’re always going to have the drama, it’s part of what it means, you know, that kind of illusion of reality is out there. Or finding meaning out there. And the more we look out there, the more variety there is, the more opportunity there is to mess yourself up. But also you might just stumble upon and legitimate path or legitimate teacher if you’re ready for it, right? And that’s why they’re saying if the students ready, the teacher appears as Yogananda did for you. And as Nakamura did for me with Zen, that then becomes the journey inward when you stop looking outward for happiness, success, peace of mind, you know, etc. And then you journey inward. And that’s the path back home, home being your center. So then the journey back outward is to bring that center out into the world in service, right to bring that calling that dharma out into the world and service and I love that you’ve done that. And it’s probably been a lot of twists and turns and maybe you didn’t even realize that’s what you were doing BiOptimizers but that’s what you’re doing

 

Wade Lightheart  19:54  

I actually consciously engaged in that process. 

 

Mark Divine 19:58

Excellent. 

 

Wade Lightheart 19:59

You know, that’s been a flow always through my life, I’ve always felt the most joy in connection when in service. There is always service to be given. And it becomes an unending source of joy and happiness and meaning.

 

Mark Divine 20:14

Right 

 

Wade Lightheart 20:15

..and connection available through that. So why not stream that through your work, something you’re passionate about. And I think, especially in a very competitive world, the internet’s made the world in many ways more competitive. And you’re never going to be great at anything, if you don’t really love it. 

 

Mark Divine 20:28

That’s right. 

 

Wade Lightheart 20:29

So why not do something that you love. And besides, even if it didn’t work out, like if I never won a show or my business didn’t go, or all these things didn’t happen for me. Success happened today, I went down that path. It’s not an outcome. It’s not a milestone, it’s not a title. Those are signposts, the second you set course, in the direction of your heart’s desire in alignment with your mind and your soul’s purpose. You are successful. 

 

Mark Divine 20:53

That’s right.

 

Wade Lightheart 20:54  

That’s it. 

 

Mark Divine  20:55

And it’s just a matter of time for the outer measures to kind of show up in a way that’s appropriate for you. Yeah.

 

Wade Lightheart 21:00

Exactly. 

 

Mark Divine 21:01

We could take this conversation in so many directions, but I talk to a lot of leaders and CEOs, and spiritual people. So I don’t need to go there. But it’s very rare that I talk to an expert in Nutritional Science, especially kind of the internal nutrition. And um, you probably are aware of this, but you’ve been sponsoring my podcast, this show. And I’ve been reading ads now for a couple of years on your enzyme product masszymes and on your digestion product. Oh, that’s the digestion product, which is the enzyme product, which is probiotics

 

Wade Lightheart 21:30

Probiotics, right.

 

Mark Divine 21:31

As well as your magnesium product. I don’t really understand the science behind it. And I don’t think many listeners do although a few will. So can you talk about the nutrition of supplementation, and what’s real and what’s not out there, because there’s so much garbage out there. But like you’ve zeroed in on various specific regions, and you seem to have good understanding of what works, what doesn’t based upon your experiences. And now what I’ve read about magnesium, and about probiotics, and gut health, it seems like you are like a pioneer in those two areas. So let’s talk about those two.

 

Wade Lightheart  22:04  

It stems from an historical aspect. And if you don’t understand the history, you can’t understand where we’re at. I love history, and I love learning about how things happen and how we got here, and you can oftentimes predict the future by what’s happened in the past. So after World War Two, the world changed dramatically. And we moved from an agricultural society, 97% of the people had some sort of farming practice in around their house, to well over half the people moved into cities, there is a baby boom, and an explosion of a population and a requirement to increase the yield of food production at farming sectors. 

And we moved from crop rotation, which was practiced my mom still does crops like that, you grow potatoes here this year, you grow right cabbage there, the next year, in one year, you let it go fallow, and you maybe grow hemp and plow that back into the ground and take a year off. And this is practiced for 1000s of years, as to replenish the soil. 

But with all this food demand, governments came in and said, hey, you know what, we need to make certain models, and we got to make sure we make the yield. And so they brought in agricultural boards and created commodity set prices, and they got into monoculture factory farming to meet booming demand. 

So they didn’t have to make any conspiracy about it. This is just what happened. And it worked. The problem with monoculture farming is that the plants began to get bugs and funguses and more susceptible to pesticides. So they started using nitrogen to increase the yield and the plants got weaker. They give up key enzymes and amino acids that were native to the plants, and that would protect it that was the immune system of the plants. 

And so then, well, well what else can we do? So the plants, they lose crops. So we said, well, let’s create herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides, which disrupt the microbes and microbiome of the plants. In other words, the bacteria cultures that convert the nutrients into the food that they need, that protects the plants, etc, etc. So guess what? That went on for a number of years weakening the plants, creating less nutrients, and those chemicals ended up damaging our own digestive health systems. 

So that’s what got me into the digestive health industry. But I coached 10’s of 1000’s of people online and we started to notice patterns, and one of the most common patterns was magnesium deficiencies. Well, I thought, why is that? Well, it turns out that North American soils, very deficient in magnesium. And magnesium is involved in over 300 processes inside the body. And without it, it’s kind of like the American mineral and we’re taught so much about calcium in North America for healthy bones, but calcium and magnesium exists in a two to one ratio, and if you don’t have enough magnesium, your body will start dumping calcium and that’s actually what creates the bone degeneration.

 

Mark Divine 24:47

Interesting.

 

Wade Lightheart 24:48

Magnesium is also involved in forming of neurotransmitters, vasodilation the opening of your arteries, it offsets cramping. So people have restless leg syndrome or gets cramping from dehydration. Oftentimes it has to do with deficient levels of magnesium, we find that out in bodybuilding, constipation, contraction, again of the smooth muscle tissue doesn’t relax. Magnesium is used in all these different functions. And I started looking at people who had all sorts of deficiencies. So I started taking magnesium myself. 

However, about five years ago, on my mission of service, I bit off more than I could chew, I was running three companies simultaneously living all around the world, going from morning to night, and eventually lead to burnout. And hooked up my brain to a Neurofeedback system, and I had the brain of a 75 year old man, I’m like, This is crazy. To be healthy, what’s going on? I did a Spectracell test to determine if not what’s in your blood, it’s actually what’s absorbed and utilized by yours cells, and if you cross correlate that with a DNA test, you’ll have patterns of some vitamins and minerals, you’ll be able to absorb easily, some that you won’t, some your tissue on. And so you can learn all this stuff. And so I realized even though I was taking magnesium, I was deeply deficient. And that was disrupting my sleep from all the anxiety and stress, just going and going, you know, where your brains racing. And I was like, okay, you know, you have those little moments or you remember something. And I remember attending a lecture with Charles Poliquin, the great Olympic gold medalist coach, he coached Olympic athletes and 27 different sports is insane.

 

Mark Divine  26:18  

Holy cow, that is insane. 

 

Wade Lightheart  26:21  

And the who’s who of professional sports and I got out my notes on him talking about magnesium. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. He used four different types of magnesium, because he discovered magnesium was taken up by different parts of the body, different types. I went, okay. Well, so what types? I went and bought every magnesium there was, I began doing orthomolecular nutrition dosing out, which is basically you take a supplement, and you keep increasing the dosage until you get the runs. That’s called breaking gi tolerance, you can’t absorb it anymore.

 

Mark Divine 26:51

Wow, what’s different about these magnesium. Like why are there different magnesiums?

.

 

Wade Lightheart  26:55  

So when you have a magnesium and has to have a bond, so I would say it’s magnesium, what the heck alate. You say kilate or bisquinate or oraater, or whatever? Or sukasoner. All these different things.. It’s really is how it’s bonded, which changes the molecular size and weight, and how it gets absorbed and utilized by the body. What organ will take it up and what one won’t. 

 

Some will cross the brain barrier, some won’t cross the brain barrier. Some will be taken up by your nervous system, some will be taken up by the bone, some will take enough for your heart. And the research shows that different magnesiums have better effects for different parts of the body. So Matt and I, in our infinite wisdom decided we would just try and figure out if we could make the best magnesium possible. 

 

And we started charting what worked what didn’t and putting this all together. And then we got our research team at Birch International University and they’re able to help us and we concocted up what we feel was the best magnesium in the market for ourselves. And it worked, corrected my magnesium deficiency and my stress went down. I changed my life. I got rid of one of my businesses, I was like, Okay, I had to make a lifestyle adjustment and felt great. We produced the product that had all seven of the best magnesiums in it, in specific formulas. And said, well, we’ll see what happens if we sell this to people. We didn’t anticipate the feedback that we got from we kept getting testimonials and testimonials the product quickly began to outsell virtually everything else we had done in the company in a very short period of time. 

 

Mark Divine 28:14

Wow. 

 

Wade Lightheart 28:15

And it turned out that a lot of people had magnesium deficiency and neurotransmitter formation, anxiety, aggression, or like fight anger kind of response, all of these things could be offset by high levels of magnesium in your diet. So it’s been a great seller ever since. 

 

Mark Divine 28:32

What’s the product called? 

 

Wadelightheart 28:33

Magnesium Breakthrough

 

Mark Divine  28:34  

Magnesium Breakthrough. And use that sleep angle to sell it, right? Y

 

Wade Lightheart 28:37

Yes.

 

Mark Divine 28:38

Because that’s one of the biggest challenges facing burnout, is sleep. 

 

Wade Lightheart 28:41

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 28:42

But that’s just one of the benefits, right? Because then your body comes back into balance, you’re able to sleep better, but really is a whole lot of things happening.

 

Wade Lightheart  28:48  

Oh, yeah, I mean, everything from high blood pressure, type two diabetes, blood sugar management, migraine headaches, production of serotonin that helps people offset makes themselves feel good. enzymatic energy production, removing aluminum from the body, improvement of memory, cardiovascular health, that your heart regulation, PMS, bone health, and the list goes on and on and on.

 

Mark Divine  29:13  

When we first hooked up with you guys, your team sent me a bunch of that stuff, the Mag Breakthrough. I wish I’d had this conversation because I would have been taking it ever since. I think I ripped through that. Make sure that we connect after this. So your team can send me some more, or I can order some more.

 

Wade Lightheart  29:28  

We’ll send you some more. Have you done your genetics and epigenetics tests and all that stuff 

 

Mark Divine  29:34  

long time ago, but I’ve never done it for like a nutritional perspective.

 

Wade Lightheart  29:39  

We wrote a book called from sick to superhuman. And we got another one coming out next year major publishing house is publishing it. And our goal is to eliminate dietary tribalims. 

So, based on how you metabolize food, vitamins, minerals, nutrients, your microbiome, your genetics, your epigenetics, your historical aspects and your lifestyle. You can determine why there’s so much variance in dietary selection and supplementations, so you can narrow down to the specific things that’s perfect for you. And what it does, number one, offset your genetic risks. So maybe you have a risk for heart disease, or blood pressure or cancer, whatever. 

You can plan out for that, you can also check your burn rate, your lifestyle is going to determine your burn rate, how much you’re going to burn out on various nutrients, because maybe you have trouble absorbing it. So for example, if you and I did a test, I use Vitamin C extremely well, my body manages vitamin C very well, but doesn’t handle B12 very well. So, I have to really take a lot of B12, but I don’t need as much vitamin C. Another guy, he might need five 6000 milligrams of vitamin C and doesn’t need any B12.

 

Mark Divine 30:48

Interesting.

 

Wadelightheart 30:49

So, when you know this about yourself, now you can target your supplements and get like 10x the value out of them, because they’re specific for you and what’s right for you. And that’s our that’s the whole thrust of our new book that’s coming out. So, so it is explaining how to do that.

 

Mark Divine  31:04  

So what’s the test to do that?

 

Wade Lightheart  31:07  

There’s several tests, and I’ll run through these really quickly for your listeners and input listeners. Number one, I would take a pulse test, which is a folded protein to check out your risk for heart disease. It’s kind of the gold standard on that, I would take a homo IR test, which is your blood sugar and glucose response test, I’ll take a Dutch test to see where your hormones are, see what hormones can be picking on you. A GI map to look at your metals, a genetic test, a DEXA scan, of course, because you’re gonna see your body fat, your lean body mass, and your bone density. And then if you do a gut map, or any one of the vast array of microbiome tests, you can see what bacteria have been from that you can look at all that information, and you’ve got a roadmap of what your risk factors are and how to offset them exactly specific for you. I can connect you with someone that runs all the tests where she’s great. You spend an hour with her and you’d be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, here’s what you need to do. And it’s like, what!

 

Mark Divine 32:05

That’s cool. That would be valuable. 

 

Wade Lightheart 32:07

Technology is so great now, so great. 

 

Mark Divine  32:11  

Yeah. So we talked about magnesium. Now, the other big one is biome and digestion. And that seems like that was one of the big issues after you had your success on stage. And then you said you gained all this weight afterwards was that the digestion, the Gi, not the Gi, but the biome?

 

Wade Lightheart  32:27  

I was following a performance based diet. And so there’s three different styles, uh, people get into the nutrition and health. Aesthetics, you want to look a certain way. Performance, you need to perform for your job, your life or whatever. And then eventually, you get to health. Usually when you’re younger, you’re focusing on aesthetics. As you get older, you look on performance. And then finally, you’re just trying to stay healthy. That’s usually the battle.

 

Mark Divine 32:51

Awesome. 

 

Wade Lightheart 32:52

Now, for me, aesthetics, and performance went hand in hand, and I was following traditional style bodybuilding mentality. At that time, we didn’t have availability of genetic tests and things like that. It turns out that we didn’t understand the microbiome and my diet, although it made me look a certain way destroyed my microbiome. The way it needed to run properly, and I couldn’t detox after so I just kept gaining weight, gaining weight, gaining weight. I found out later, there’s a genetic component to my ability to detox my gut. But anyways, I built a digestive health company to fix all that. Then found out 17 years later, I guess it was I found out tha.

Oh, good thing I built a digestive health company, I’m probably dead otherwise. So I worked out. But basically, there’s five stages to digestion, you how you chew your food, if taste tests smell food, food goes into the upper cardiac portion of the stomach, when it gets your esophagus, that’s where enzymes break it up. Hydrochloric acid comes in that changes the pH kills all the bugs. And then you go into the digestive system, which when you have anywhere from 200, to 500 strains of probiotics. 

And I always say there’s 10%, good 10%, bad 80% opportunists, and it’s a symbiotic relationship, we didn’t have these inner guts, we’d all be dead. So the food in order to digest has to be converted to something that the bacteria can eat. And then the bacteria build the building blocks of the energy units, and modern food production. Chemical Ionization has led to a condition where our microbiomes don’t function the way they used to. And that’s why we have 13% of emergency hospital visits today are gastrointestinal related issues. A third of the population has some sort of digestive stress on any given day. 25% of those people are taking prescription or over the counter medication for digestive health issues is because the system’s not right.

 

Mark Divine 34:45

Right.

 

Wade Lightheart 34:46

And so we fix that. And we came to fame by you know, our tagline for years is we fix digestion. And we did, and we built a whole series of products on it. And of course, the most powerful one was probably our p3 OM,  which we call the Navy Seals of probiotics. And the reason we do that is you take a strain of El Plantera. And we put it in a toxic soup that would kill most people. So it’s like BUDS training or whatever. And it’s like, somewhere between two and 3% survive, and the ones that survive have mutated, and that they have characteristics and abilities, and we have a patent on what that strain is capable of doing. And the big thing is, it’s proteolytic, it breaks down undigested proteins, which are the biggest cause of dysfunction inside the body. And then now we have a research facility in Sarajevo. Over there, we have 15, PhDs, and microbiome experts who now look at all different families of probiotics, what makes them work, what precursors make them work better produce all different sorts of nutrients and stuff. And next year, we’ll be publishing some patented series of probiotics, because we’re actually headed about we’re 10 to 20 years away from a post antibiotic world. In other words, all the antibiotics that are being used today will have no effect at all. And so we need to cultivate new super strains of probiotics to combat these rampid bacteria. And so we’re on cutting edge research on that and spent a lot of time and energy on that. 

 

Mark Divine 36:18

Wow, that’s fascinating. 

 

Wade Lightheart 36:20

Yeah, it’s fun.

 

Mark Divine  36:22  

Yeah, I can envision a world where we finally get back to Integrative Health and Integrative Nutrition and away from the pharmacological giants, crazy manipulation of our medical system and the information that we’re being fed. 

 

Wade Lightheart 36:34

Exactly. 

 

Mark Divine 36:35

We’re heading the right direction. Thanks so much for being part of that. And, um, you’ve inspired me to get back on track with the probiotics and the magnesium. That’s exciting. How would you characterize your mission?

 

Wade Lightheart  36:47  

You know, the good news is BiOptimizers, is well positioned, we’ve got people way smarter than myself running the key aspects of the company, who are far more skilled and ability. And my primary mission was to set the mission and the parameters of where that direction is going, and how to engage in that in the future, and to ensure that the service base mentality goes through every aspect of the company. And basically, the idea was to optimize human beings and to end physical suffering and bring the cost of that down. So it’s available to everyone on Earth. That’s the company’s mission, which will outlive me.

And then I have a secondary mission, which came in recently. And that is, I’m working on creating a school project that’s based on the Yogananda created a boys school. And he also worked with Luther Burbank, and Rabindranath Tagore about what is the proper way to educate kids. And primarily was teaching them how to manage themselves once they knew how to manage themselves, and than academics, and everything came. And well, and they created a system for 50 years that had been practiced. And that fell into my lap recently. So my next project is to begin working on the school system that will bring that out in the digital age, because there’s a lot of people having challenges the current education system, and the system’s already there, I’m going to use my business skills and my Marketing skills to bring it out to a broader audience, for parents, who are struggling and don’t  know what to do with their kids, with what’s being fed to them right now, which I think is horrific. And to be able to allow them to be adaptable in a very technologically challenging and changing world. That’s my new mission. So I’m really excited about that.

 

Mark Divine  38:24  

That’s awesome. What’s that called? Was that school? Or was that project called?

 

Wade Lightheart  38:28  

Education for life, is the foundation of it, I’ll be running a foundation that I’ve working on forming, to bring forth that in a broader spectrum outside of say, the ashrams setting. So people have access to it.

 

Mark Divine  38:41  

Yeah. demystify it and take away the cultural trappings that people will shy away from.

 

Wade Lightheart 38:46

Exactly.

 

Mark Divine 38:47

I’m thinking the same thing, like, you know, my generation, I’m in my late 50s, our generation, we talked to people who are our age, you know, but in order to impact the next 100 years, we really have to be involved in education. I applaud that effort. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I mean, I’m obviously very passionate about education. I’m passionate about Yogananda. So there’s an intersection there if I can provide any..

 

Wade Lightheart 39:09

Yeah.. 

 

Mark Divine 39:10

If I can provide any mental or spiritual or advisory capital, then let me know.

 

Wade Lightheart  39:11  

That would be great. Probably down your way in September, so maybe I could mee you.

 

Mark Divine 39:14

Yeah, I’d love to meet you in person. Definitely. 

 

Wade Lightheart 39:16

Tha would be great. I’ll have my team reach out to you.

 

Mark Divine 39:19

Yeah, please.. Wade, thanks so much for your time to learn more about Wade and to get involved in his 84 days to awesome health program, go to biooptimizers.com. And you can learn everything you need to know about him and get on track to get your magnesium fixed and your digestive tract fixed with some of his great products. So check it out. Also, you get a discount as a listener. And all that information will be in the show notes. But I believe it’s BiOptimizers.com/divine.

All right, that was a fascinating episode. It went in a direction I had no idea it would go I mean, who knew that Wade would be a fan of Yogananda and Eastern meditation principles. And what a fascinating conversation we drill into the unique needs of the human body because of what’s happened over the last 50 to 100 years with industrialization and the destruction of the nutritional supply chain. Let’s just call it that. 

And we drill into why magnesium, and digestive health are really, really important. Phenomenal interview, I’m super stoked to have had Wade as a guest show notes and transcripts are on our site at MarkDvine.com. The video will be up at our YouTube channel, MarkDivine.com/youtube. If you want to follow me on social media, or you have a recommendation for a guest or you want to ask questions, you can hit me up at Twitter @Mark Divine. And on Instagram and Facebook @Real Mark Divine and or at my LinkedIn profile. My new newsletter Divine Inspiration comes out every Tuesday, where I present you my blog, or a summation of the weekly podcast, other information that comes across my desk that I think is inspirational and important. So if you’re not on that newsletter list, consider going to MarkDivine.com to subscribe. I really appreciate my amazing team of Geoff Haskell, Jason Sanderson, who find these incredible guests and help produce this podcast bring it to you every week. Thank you so much team.

Reviews, and ratings are really important to help keep the show at the top. So if you haven’t rated us or reviewed us, please consider doing so at Apple or wherever you listen, world is changing fast. And it’s important that we stay on top of the positive news and the positive things that are going on in the world. So this is one of my missions, to bring more positivity into the world. But also recognizing that change starts with ourself, and to be whole, we have to take responsibility for our lives, for our training. And we have to courageously go forward every day and become the best version of ourselves that we can. And that’s why I do this work and that’s why at my company Unbeatable, we have a peer group coaching and an incredible program. If you want to work with me directly, then go to unbeatablemind.com. Submit an inquiry or learn more. Until next time, this is your host Mark the mind

 

Transcribed by Catherine Divine and Otter AI 🙂