Dr Colby Kash: 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Can Dramatically Improve Your Wellbeing

Often times, especially with remote work, we wake up and don’t get outside until later in the day. Getting exposure to sunlight within the first hour of waking modulates our natural sleep-wake cycle and will significantly affect how you sleep at night.

As a part of our series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Colby Kash.

Dr. Colby Kash, author of The Autoimmune Plague: How to Regain Sovereignty Over Your Body and Life, is a wellness and longevity functional medicine practitioner. A sought-after lecturer on healthcare-related topics and a co-founder of five biotechnology companies, Dr. Kash is dedicated to improving the quality of health for all.

Dr. Kash has a Doctor of Chiropractic and MS in Applied Clinical Nutrition (Northeast College of Health Sciences), and a BS in Applied Physiology and Kinesiology (University of Florida College of Health and Human Performance). He holds additional certifications, including: ADAPT Functional Medicine, American College of Sports Medicine-Certified Exercise Physiologist, and National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Training.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?

I always identified myself as an individual that strove to push my body both physically and mentally. I have memories as a child around the age of 7 with a consistent routine of bodyweight exercises. As an athlete, I wanted to become stronger and gain an edge through diet and supplementation. I was curious. I wanted to know “why,” not just “what.” I devoured every nutrition and fitness book and article I could get my hands on. During my sophomore year of high school, my wrestling coach asked about my plans for training during the off season. I zipped open my school bag and took out a thick kinesiology textbook on periodized sports training, riddled with my sticky notes and highlights. The itch for information is still there today, but in the form of new scientific niches.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

There has been an uber fast evolution of my career, each phase/layer supporting the next transition. Going from a personal trainer and group fitness instructor to a chiropractic and functional medicine doctor; and then co-founding a health technology investment group that forms new companies around exciting therapeutics and devices. This pivot allowed me to scale my passion for health and wellness to millions of people around the world. Most recently, I published my book, The Autoimmune Plague, to similarly spread my knowledge and influence on a larger audience than I could see in clinical practice. Curiosity has always fueled my interest in acquiring new skills and knowledge, which has positioned myself to take these leaps. I am now interested in many skills outside of healthcare that are needed in the development and advancement of healthcare technologies including: mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, deal structure, management, and other valuable business skills.

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

I started out my fitness career as a certified personal trainer and exercise physiologist.

I am formally trained as a Chiropractic doctor and received a Master of Science in Applied Clinical Nutrition. I am certified as an ADAPT Functional Medicine Practitioner where I received foundational training in functional medicine, ancestral nutrition and lifestyle, and practice management.

As a co-founder of five biotechnology companies, I have become wildly fascinated by how therapeutics hit many of the same biochemical pathways as exercise, fasting, and sauna. It is interesting because in healthcare there are two camps: a conventional approach and a holistic approach. I sit at the crossroads between both camps, which I believe can work in tandem, and interestingly enough this encompasses the largest body of evidence for success!

I have also experienced being a patient, as I spent a large portion of my adult life struggling with three autoimmune diseases. One of my top accomplishments is being in remission from my autoimmune diseases because of my own research and methods which I document in my book “The Autoimmune Plague: How to Regain Sovereignty Over Your Body and Life.” . I think it is beneficial to be able to relate to the patients’ situations and give light at the end of the tunnel!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I am so grateful for living in the information era. If I grew up just a few decades earlier, it would have been a much greater struggle for my condition. I’ve read over 50 books in the autoimmune category and listened to countless hours of podcasts within health and wellness. I thank the researchers and discoverers of new insight, the writers and speakers that purport about it and everyone in between. I would not be who I am today without the influence of the work of others, and I hope to contribute to sharing knowledge with others to help them reach their highest self.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

For starters, there are many dopamine distractors that bring us away from our goals. It is not easy to impose your will on the world and yourself. It starts with defining your purpose and loving yourself enough to make decisions every day, every hour, and every minute that bring you closer to it. I always compare my approach to wellness to religion. I am very orthodox in my routines and principals and to break them is a significant violation of my identity. Are you ready to become a health evangelist?

Next after clearly defining the goals, we need to have a clear thought-out plan. Otherwise, you will always lose to convenience. For instance, if you don’t meal prep, in the fast-paced flow of the day you will scoop up a less-than-optimal meal to conserve time. Exercise and meditate the same time everyday so it’s built into a reoccurring routine that doesn’t get pushed back on the to do list.

You need to ask yourself How do I curate my day so I need less will power to make the right decisions? Place cues to trigger reminders until it becomes an unconscious habit. After making certain changes, several months later you may ask yourself how you ever lived differently.

Lastly, make these lifestyle changes with someone else, so you can hold each other accountable. Or better yet, find a community of people making a similar change to you or already have. Remember, the Standard American Diet and lifestyle is not normal! Humans do not thrive on it, and it goes against our evolutionary biology. There are many groups awoken to these ideas.

Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)

1. In the last 140 years, artificial light rapidly proliferated into society. The new input of bright light into our eyes at late hours of the night shift hormonal signaling and the circadian rhythm in our bodies. This has a number of effects, including increasing evening cortisol and decreasing melatonin and human growth hormone production. To avoid this, begin dimming lights two hours before bed and swapping regular bulbs for red light bulbs in the bedroom.
2. Humans didn’t always have 24/7 access to food; rather, it resembled more of a feast and famine cycle. Digestive symptoms often improve after going through periods of abstention from food. One strategy is intermittent fasting, the practice of abstaining from food for a minimum of 12 hours, so, for instance from 8 pm to 8 am. Intermittent fasting is not generally intuitive because we are wired to start producing digestive enzymes when we see, smell, or think about food.
3. Cold water submersion: this can be done by taking a cold shower or filling up a bathtub with a mix of water and ice. This practice releases endorphins to help with associated pain; releases endogenous antioxidants to stimulate detoxification pathways; and decreases inflammatory markers. Cold exposure should be gradual, slowly decreasing temperature and time under exposure as the body adapts over time. Most people will find benefits between 40–60 °F. The recommended prescription is 2–4 sessions a week of 1–5 minutes of cold immersions. Water temperature should feel uncomfortable, but not unsafe.
4. Often times, especially with remote work, we wake up and don’t get outside until later in the day. Getting exposure to sunlight within the first hour of waking modulates our natural sleep-wake cycle and will significantly affect how you sleep at night.
5. Journaling and tracking your thoughts is another game changer. Thoughts are bundled as neural networks in the brain. Every time you think, nerves fire in the brain and produce chemical signals as a result. Negative thoughts produce chemicals/hormones that turn on gene expression for disease and positive thoughts do just the opposite. Journaling every morning is an effective way to remind yourself which thought loops you want to eliminate and which thoughts to replace them with. Curating a brain that feels gratitude, love, and optimism is an important step on the road to healing.

As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?

I never look at health and wellness from the scope of weight loss because when you create an evolutionarily consistent environment and lifestyle, the body’s hormonal singling, immune function, and other systems fall into homeostasis allowing for a healthy organic body composition. Part of this environment includes daily physical activity or exercise. Many hormones in the body will optimize, such as an increase in human growth hormone and testosterone, both important for recovery, youthfulness, and longevity. You will feel an immediate release of endorphins and dopamine, which means feelings of well-being and motivation. Another benefit over time is an increased IQ most likely from an increase in blood flow and production of antioxidants in the brain.

For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?

On a conceptual level, I wouldn’t recommend the three same exercises to everyone.

However, three domains I would recommend is zone 2 cardio, resistance training, and mobility exercise. Zone 2 cardio is the zone where our heart beats at 70–80% of its max capacity for 45 minutes or more and stimulates and builds up mitochondria health. A generic strength training routine can include 8–15 repetitions (moderate to lighter weights) and 2–3 sets per exercise (3–5 exercises) with approximately 90 seconds rest between sets 2–3x per week. Lastly, mobility is important for increasing the range of motion of your joints. Focus on your greatest deficiencies.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. He was a physiatrist who was in a concentration camp during World War II. He experienced the horrors through his clinical lens and eventually was able to accurately predict who would not make it beyond another day. After surviving the Holocaust his professional work focused on the meaning/purpose of life. The following is a key take away from his book: “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” This principal is something we must adopt to our worldview. A higher power presents us with challenges to overcome and grow to new spiritual heights we would not have achieved without such a unique adversity. Without suffering life cannot be complete.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It would be a movement to normalize living an evolutionarily consistent lifestyle, in the modern world! A surplus of restaurants absent of processed foods and additives. Entertainment that is interactive rather than sedating. And an emphasis on exploration instead of comfort.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

“Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions lead to your results. Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.”- T. Harv Eker

Carefully programming the right values and principals will lead to your manifest destiny. On my journey to healing from autoimmune disease, I made it my highest priority over many other areas in life. I sacrificed many types of foods, social events, staying up late, etc. because it had already been programmed what needed to be valued in order to achieve results. This can be mixed matched with different goals.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Mark Cuban! To seek wisdom and insight from one of the best minds in entrepreneurship.

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/colby-kash-ba6a3b58/

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!