Stop Chasing Longevity Hacks What Actually Helps You Age Better with Valerie Orsoni

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And what I see right now, you say you're not alone, but I think a lot of people feel so alone, they talk to their chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever, and they think by saying, Hey, what should I do? Whatever is spat out is the answer, but it is not. And you need to spend more time on yourself. It's often that people spend more time at work than taking care of their health. And I'm like, hold on a minute. If you die tomorrow, your job is gonna forget you within two weeks or maybe three. But your family and friends know. So you have to put yourself first. And I know it's not easy. Again, because we expect quick fixes. We are in this credit card society. I give you the money, you give me health. It doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Welcome back to Not Alone with Melissa Sue. With each guest, I try to find you resources that you may not find on a regular basis with your regular doctors. And it can be really overwhelming where to start. I know this personally with my own journey and my own family, seeing experts and experts. And then who do you trust? So I hope my episodes, my podcast could become this resource of you trying to search for your own healing and root cause of your symptoms. So today we are living in a time when everyone seems to be searching for the secret to living longer. We track our sleep, we measure our biomarkers, we take supplements, we biohack our bodies and search for ways to slow down aging. But I keep coming back to one question: are we so focused on adding years to our lives that we're forgetting how to feel alive in the years we already have? My guest today, Valerie Orseny, has spent decades exploring health, nutrition, fitness, biohacking, and longevity. But what fascinates me most isn't simply what she's learned about the human body. It's what life has taught her along the way. Because longevity isn't only about biology, it's also about how we handle stress, how we care for our mental health, who we surround ourselves with, whether we have purpose, whether we feel connected, and perhaps even what we believe about something greater than ourselves. Today I want to explore both sides. The science of living longer, because I love it. I biohack myself always, and I think of it as a boost for longevity, for our health. I want to grow old and in vitality, just like my grandfather that I always mention. And the soul of living well. What actually accelerates aging? What keeps us mentally and physically strong as we get older? Can purpose, connection, and spirituality influence our health? And instead of fearing aging, what if we could learn to see it as a privilege? Valerie, welcome to Nut Alone. It is such an honor. I know you've had a scare last week and very ill. And so I appreciate your time on here for your wealth of knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Well, thank you for having me. And I would not have missed it. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I got really excited that you are French as well. And it's she speaks very good French, by the way. Yes, with a very strong Canadian accent. Yes, yes. I am French Canadian. So yes, yes. And I love that you are reaching the French as well because I have a lot of French-speaking family, and sometimes they're trying to understand what I'm trying to explain. And actually, that's why I've translated my book in French, my first one, and I'll do the second, because I don't think the French community has these resources. So I love that you're too much the only one, I guess. Yes, you are, you are, and that's why I was really excited. I said, well, maybe I'm meant to meet you because a lot of my followers are French and they try and translate, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Well, if you go to my Instagram, I actually post every day a post in French and a post in English so everyone can get, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I love that. I actually started to do that a little bit, but just put even in the caption where it's translated French and English.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Don't tell any marketing expert. They will tell you do not do that. It's very bad for Instagram. I mean, I don't care. I care about sharing knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, sharing the knowledge, and I love that. And I hope, you know, my audience that is French speaking that they start following you and get all this knowledge, which is very important. But I'd love to start. So before you became the expert people know of right now, and you speak globally, and actually that's how I met you first. I went to a biohack event in California. I heard you speak, and I actually, I don't know if you remember, but I saw you in the expo afterwards, and your talk really touched me. And I went up to you and said, wow, I really enjoyed your talk because it hit home as far as our own health journey with my children and hearing yours. So I want people, our audience, to know what was happening in your own life and health that started this journey for you.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

You know, I I usually say I started biohacking when I was uh uh 28 in 1998. I'm 56 chronologically today, right? But the truth is I started when I was 16, uh in 86, if you're good at math. Um because at that age I was very overweight, obese. I can use the F word, I was fat. Not because I ate processed food, but my dad was a chef. So I would eat a lot of good things, and I was not moving enough. And guess what? Whether you live in France or America, this French paradox is not real a reality. If you eat too much, you gain weight, right? That was the first thing. At the same time, I was born with a lot of conditions. I had juvenile arthritis, a severe form of it. I had steatosis, I had so many things, and everything came kind of to uh together when I was 16. I uh my dad was obese as well. And we started studying at the library. There was no internet. I sound like a dinosaur, but it's true. So we went to the library and we found out something that no one had talked about before. You're gonna faint when I say that. Something called the glycemic index. It was brand new. 1986, it was been uh pretty much discovered or talked about by Harvard and then some universities in Australia. And I'm like, what contains sugar? Of course, you know, cakes and cookies and candies, but then fruits, oh, alcohol. So I was 16. This is when in France pretty much everyone drinks, you know, you go to parties and stuff. I consciously decided to never have one drop of alcohol. And to that day I've never had it. I well, maybe I can say, Hey, do you want me to try just for people's sake? But they people like to make me say, Oh, I tried it. So I put my lips on that, oh, it's disgusting. I find alcohol disgusting whether the bottle is 20 grand or $2. You know, it's like I find it bad. So anyway, my first act as a biohacker, I would say was 16. I decided to never drink because it's sugar, and sugar is bad, period. I don't care if people tell me the contrary. Uh if you eat strawberries, it's fine. I'm talking sugar, sugar, alcohol, candies, cookies. And I think I started then I've seen what alcohol does to people. I'm not talking about alcoholism, I'm talking regular consumption. It's not good, period. The French paradox, it's not true. The study was really poorly conducted and it doesn't exist. If you eat poorly, you don't exercise, and you drink alcohol, your cardiovascular health is not gonna be good. So it was my first thing. And I think that really saved me from whatever I was born with, it helped with, but also to not develop new conditions later on down in life.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Which would have been hard because culturally, I just went to the south of France, right? Everyone, yeah, so drinking is part of the culture, even smoking still out there.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Smoking, not as much, but drinking, okay. Today, if you are 16 and you say I'm not gonna drink, everyone is gonna respect you. When I was 16, I was the black sheep, the black dog, whatever you want to say. I was the only one. Everyone thought I was crazy. I was ridiculed. Even to that day at big events or big celebrations where you have all these, you know, like porcelain dishes and amazing wine. When I say, Can I have hot water and lemon? They were like, What? You can't appreciate food, you're a party pooper and everything. I'm like, I don't really care. It's not good. But for years I was considered the old grandma. I never smoked, I never drank, I didn't like to go out late at night. They call me grandma. Now, who do they call grandma?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, but you were so, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So just that alone, which is great. I've had a lot of um, you know, people on to say no amount of alcohol is healthy, right? And it what it does to what you're kind of predisposed in your genetics, like you said, what you were born with, removing alcohol altogether, that helped you tremendously.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yes, but to another point, even if you have amazing genes, alcohol is not good, period. There is not such a thing as a small amount of alcohol is healthy. All the studies that have shown that it is, have been somehow financed or funded by parties that have an interest in you consuming. There is not one neutral study that shows alcohol is good, period. Of course, people are gonna write after this and tell you she's wrong, blah, blah. No, there's not such a thing as good alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

No, I I believe in you.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

I believe I'm very firm on that. And it's not a religious people ask me, is that religious? No, it's not religious. It's not, it's not even cultural, it's it's the reverse of my culture. But no, no alcohol. And I think this was my first statement as a pre-biohacker.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

I love that. And then so that was just a 16. You told yourself, I'm not gonna get a drink. And then after that, how what was your next step to learn more? Like you said, you you know, you were obese, your dad was as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

So the the next step was really no alcohol. And I'm gonna surprise you guys. I did something crazy. I ate less and I moved more. Guess what happened? I lost weight. Oh my god, no zempic, no miraculous pills, no crazy Pilates studio. Yeah, I know you guys you move, you move, you eat less. And I know when people say it's not that easy. I know, believe me, I was fat, I know it's not easy, but it works. Now, there's another thing that's important, which does not, you cannot not talk about it. It's a sugar addiction. Some people have such an addiction to sugar, and alcohol is also sugar, that it's not that easy. You can't just stop overnight. You need to have some sort of support, you know, psychological support to stop eating it. But if you are just eating too much of good things, not being addicted, yeah, it's gonna help you very fast to eat less and move more. I know today people want the magic peel, they want the whoop, the ura, everything tells you, but at one point you have to be the one that makes the next step. You have to be the one who makes the effort. No ring is gonna do it for you.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, you're gonna have to find that passion, that purpose. Like, no, I'm gonna make that decision as hard as that is to not eat so much sugar. And those cravings are really strong sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

I used to be so addicted to chocolate. Listen, when I was um 17, I lived in Greece for a year. And I remember I was still addicted to chocolate at the time. It was that kind of temperature, like a hundred something on the island. And I was craving chocolate so much. I walked three miles in the sun to get my chocolate fixed, which was, by the way, disgusting and melted. And I ate it like a pig. And I remember having chocolate on my face and telling myself, I was only six, seventeen, like, what is wrong with me? Like, now I have to hike three miles back covered in chocolate because there was no water. I was like, this is not okay. And I was still young, but I understood something was wrong about it.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

That irridic. Now, I've heard that sometimes certain parasites could be craving that.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Could you believe that it's a maybe uh an imbalance sometimes that we've I think uh I don't know if I talked about this when you were at my uh my talk at Biohackers World Conference, but um I found I've had parasites in my body all my life because I travel a lot in crazy places. So I had Girardeia, Salmonella, Morganella, you know, all these bacteria are happy here. It's like the third world, you know, the third uh world war here. Um so I believe some of them do crave, some of them are fed also by supplements, like if you take too much calcium, for instance, you can really feed pseudomonia bacteria and and you don't know about it. So yeah, I believe very often actually an imbalanced gut can lead to addictions or to a lowered capacity to fight your addiction. So I think you cannot just hey stop smoking. It doesn't work this way. You might want to look at the entire picture.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, that's seeing kind of your your body as a garden, right? And seeing where do you have imbalance? So would you recommend somebody that wants to start avoiding alcohol and avoiding uh sugar? You're gonna have those cravings being really strong. Would you recommend them to do maybe some fasting or uh parasite cleanse? Or, you know, what would you recommend them to help? So I'm not a doctor, so I don't give any medical advice.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

But uh, if it were someone I know and I'm helping in my family, I would say before doing anything, let's do a full-day checkup of your body. Not only blood tests, but urine test, uh, you know, um uh gut stool analysis, everything so that we have a full picture of who you are right now as a body, how how it works, what's wrong, what's right. And we build on what's great and we fix what's wrong, as opposed to saying, oh, go to that 12-step therapy something. Yeah, but maybe something is so wrong that's gonna make it almost impossible for you, or it's gonna be a high suffering. So I really like to analyze numbers and then help people understand. And we're so different. I mean, we have trillions of bacteria there, so you and I will never be the same, so we don't have the same needs. I would really say take the time. Uh and also don't expect a quick fix. Again, I I I love using Ozempic as a quick fix. People think, oh, it's gonna fix obesity. And people are expecting as well, it's gonna fix uh addiction. By the way, no, they thought at first, but apparently 18 months down the road, Ozempic or semaglutide does not fix addiction anymore. So you really have to be careful and understand it. And the big thing I like to say if you follow biohacking, longevity influencers on social media, it's not because that person has one, two, three, four, five million followers, very often half of them are actually fake, that their advice applies to you. You have to do your homework, you have to listen to podcasts like this and then do your homework. Chat GPT is not gonna spit out an answer for you. You have to dig. You have to it you have to spend hours on your own case. And what I see right now, you see you're not alone, but I think a lot of people feel so alone, they talk to their Chat GPT, Claude, Jim, and I, whatever, and they think by saying, Hey, what should I do? Whatever is spat out is the answer. But it is not. And you need to spend more time on yourself. It's often that people spend more time at work than taking care of their health. Yes. And I'm like, hold on a minute. If you die tomorrow, your business, your job is gonna forget you within two weeks or maybe three. But your family and friends know. And so you have to put yourself first. And I know it's not easy again because we expect quick fixes. We are in this credit card society. I give you the money, you give me health. It doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yes, yeah, people I see that a lot is like, well, it takes time. Your body has it has a power to heal itself, but it has to find safety, so a lot of nervous system regulation. And so I would do breath work with a lot of people, and and and I'm finding that a lot of the clients they are in the sympathetic, and the body is just living in a state where it can't heal. Surviving. Yeah, just surviving, which you know causes so much stress in a body. And as a dental hygienist for 17 years and a big advocator for biological dentistry, we're also noticing the airway narrowing, which is not allowing the quality of oxygen. And I know you talk a lot about stress and you know, your sleep markers. So just with your own practices, what do you do on a regular basis? Just, you know, you look very youthful and you've taken very great care of yourself. And I know it hasn't been an easy road. It's never easy. Yeah, in other words, what's the point? Yes, yeah, because I mean you are a global traveler, and like you said, there's different bacteria. I know I was a traveler in my early 20s too, and I've had food poison, all the different bacterias, and and finding that balance again. And so, what is your protocols right now for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So, as much as I know stress is usually the number one cutprit in a lot of things, you don't fix a lot of things just by meditating or breathing right. And I think people they like to go from one side to the next, like they've never done breath work, and all of a sudden they think they're gonna solve the planet situation and their body situation by just breathing right. And I'm like, you have to plan everything and and be um regular about it, but not expect one thing again, the one thing that's gonna fix everything. Yes. I'm gonna give you an example. Last week I had a terrible, severe anaphylactic shock. I thought I was gonna die. I couldn't breathe, right? We don't know to that day what caused it. Except I do a lot of scuba diving, like hundreds of dives, and sometimes I go deep and sometimes I get stung by strange animals. We maybe we don't know them. And over the course of the years, my reactions to those exposures have increased. My hand swells, and then you know, so we think this was it, right? So many people said, Oh, it's because you work too much. No, working too much will never create an anaphylactic shock. Now, recuperating from it, doing breath work, totally it's gonna help my body calm down because I was in this crazy level of stress. But I think also it's a question of education and culture, and people again like the one thing. So it's either you've never breathed right, then you listen to you, super Melissa. Oh, she looks beautiful, she does breath work. Wow, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm like, no, you have to do everything else. Yes, measure yourself, do the fitness part, the nutrition part, the sleeping part, and then the breath work, and it works hand in hand, you know. Yes, and mindset. Mindset and mindset.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

I think you I listened to one episode and you were talking about because you know, I was Melissa gratitude, all about gratitude, but you said the word compassion. Yeah, is it compassion was actually a stronger reaction? Can you explain the study that you did?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

It's it's a very N-1 study on myself, so it's not studying. Yeah, yeah, no, but I know, but only on the on the med finding the number or something, there's no reverse study. No, but I use um heart math a lot, you know, the sensor for cardiac coherence work where you do uh, you know, inhale five, exhale five. And when I met the founders a year or two ago uh at their uh uh lab, we're talking about some words that impact your whole system. And I was very skeptical at first. I'm usually a skeptic, I don't believe in things easily, but I I tested myself. And so when I look at my coherence, if I think I'm gonna give you my secret mantra when I uh inhale five, exhale five, I usually take someone like you with a big smile. I visualize someone, doesn't have to be my family or best friend, someone I've met who has an amazing smile and makes me feel secure and happy and just good in that moment. And as I visualize that person, I think I'm sending that person, that's Melissa, love, uh, gratitude, energy, and compassion. And when I exhale or whatever, I think she sends me the same. So it's kind of a virtuous circle. I send you, you send me, right? I've tried different words. For some reasons, compassion works way better than gratitude. Don't ask me why. I am super grateful of everything, but it doesn't impact my nervous system the same way. And I've done it hundreds of times. I have a hundred 500 sessions on my uh heart math, so I've a lot of data. So if I use the word compassion, love, energy, longevity, wow, my cardiac coherence goes all the way to six, seven, which is very high. If I think gratitude, it's good, three, but it's not the best. So that shows that maybe for you, gratitude is gonna be huge. Or maybe you thought it would and it's not. So you find out what words because words hold so much power. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Say that and you have your brain mind. Yes, it hears you, and I do a lot of like the affirmation, and it's interesting because compassion is how I work through you know conflicts with others, right? Like when you're trying to understand them, I try to just really lead with compassion and understanding. It's always easy. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I mean, sometimes you don't want to be compassionate, you want to be angry. How do you handle that? How do you handle that?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Well, it takes time, it's with time, right? You start noticing their patterns and go, okay, well, where is it rooted from, right? And having compassionate, and and I usually just kind of pray for them, send them light, love, and having compassion. So I could see how powerful that can be in that mindfulness. So, you know, and that could lead into spirituality, you know. Do you notice for yourself, believing that we're truly not alone, whatever your beliefs, you know?

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Um, I'm gonna stop you. I don't believe in anything like that. No, and we have a common friend who is really strong in this, Leah, right? Yes, Leah, I love her. Yes. I love listening to her when she talks, I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing. And as soon as she's out of the room, I'm like, no, I believe in that thing when she's with me, somehow she irradiates this power, this energy, these things which I can't put a word on. But somehow it's not my culture. Uh, I was raised by an atheist father, which I think re-ingrained early on things in my brain. I I believe I don't want to believe in extra outside external things. I believe in humans. And so maybe some people would say, Oh, that's some sort of spirituality, maybe. But I don't have this belief that something is bigger than me or us and will either save or kill us or do harm or something. I don't have that belief. But I believe we can send love. To someone, I'm not saying it's gonna cross the ocean and reach you physically. But I think is my my brain hears me thinking positive thoughts, it can only be good. I can see it actually from this actual you know product and I'm using. I also believe that if I think, oh, this is terrible, the world is close to an end, uh, the war is starting, I feel bad, my body is terrible. I think my brain hears it. And I I I believe we produce hormones in response to some of our thoughts. And that's not hocus pocus, that's science. Yes. So I believe that I don't have the spirituality that you and Leah would have, I think.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Yeah, no. But I'm still alive, so I think we can still survive without it. You know, there's ever any judgment for me. It's like I've felt it, I've seen it. And of course, with my husband passing, you know, I do believe he'll give us a sign, and he's very much spiritually here and just in my practice of prayer. But in the same way, that's why I need to fix with you and Leah regularly, just something, you know. Yeah, and then but that's why I love I've studied many different religions. I've traveled the world so I can have compassion in what everybody's, you know, you live in vitality. And this mindset has given you life and energy, and you continue to inspire so many people. So that's your gift, right? And bring in that energy for everyone. So if you had some listeners, they'd love to start biohacking themselves. They start to see what I can do and where do I start? Because, like you said, it's you get a lot of noise, you got a lot of influencer. And like myself, I am not a doctor either. I'm just here to be kind of like a friend, sharing my experience with uh you talked about giardia, you know, our well water in Alaska had giardia, and we had mold toxicity. And so we have dealt with my children to try and detox mold, um, parasites, and and a lot of it was actually deeper layers of trauma, right? And their fathered passing with six and eight. So deep emotional fascia maneuver and understanding that these emotions was keeping their gut issues kind of uh on fight and flight. Yeah. So addressing all of these has not been easy. It hasn't been a quick fix. We're still it's never a quick fix. Yes, yeah. And it's, I think for someone that wants to get started and might be overwhelmed with the noise, what would you you know?

SPEAKER_00 24:32

It's a very um, it's a recurring question because people see me doing I have a H bot at home, hyperbaric chamber at home. I have all these crazy clinical level machines, and they're like, oh, like quote unquote, I'm rich, I can afford it. I'm like, no, you cannot H bot away a life of uh no fitness, no good food or whatever. First, and I know it's so boring, but first get measured. Um, if you can afford it, uh I usually go once a year to Germany at a place called the Years Clinic, like a year, two years. Okay. Uh they do full day, a full day of measurement from like, oh my god, this is very long, like 7 a.m. to like maybe 7 p.m. But then you have a benchmark. You have something to work on. Now, if you're not there yet, you can ask a doctor for regular blood tests, and you can already see your lipid panels, your metabolic panels, and see where you are standing. That's already a good start. But even before that, I'm pretty sure you know if you're sleeping enough or well, if you're partying, drinking alcohol, being super stressed, not eating properly, all this. I you don't need an app for that. You know it. But sometimes we hide behind an app, it's behind a whoop, a rural. But you know. So the first thing would be take a piece of paper and make sure no one is watching you and write down everything you think is wrong with you. Physically, spiritually, mentally, work-wise, whatever is wrong. Like it could be anything like I'm the only one who takes the baby to daycare. That bothers me, and you've never said it to anyone, and that eats you alive. That could be stress level number one. It could be, I don't have time to eat, I eat on my keyboard at work. That's not good because your shoulders are gonna be like this. And so you can write this, and then you can say, Oh, I watched Netflix in bed every night until midnight. All of that you know it's not good. You don't even need Melissa or Valerie to tell you, you know. Then you can write, hey, what are five things I can start now? Usually it's easy, yeah? Stop Netflix or watch it. I don't know. Well, you don't you for me, I only watch Netflix on my rowing machine or on my bike. That's it. Well, not in the street, obviously, in a stationary bike. But I never watch TV ever. I don't have time. We don't have time. Our time is limited, so I want to enjoy it. So that could be your first thing. It could be, you know what, at work, you do not schedule meetings at 12 or 1 or when it's time for food. You do your best for yourself. You and then you talk about what bothers you. But five, no more. Because if you do too much, it's called the honeymoon thingy. So the honeymoon is you do everything perfect for two weeks. You run around and then you're exhausted by this biohacking and you stop. So just five easy, even three. Yeah, starting simple, like simplify it for yourself. And I know it's boring, and I know it's boring, but you will thank me if you hold on to that like. Okay, we're fun.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

I like to go to bed early.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

You catch me like early morning. What about dinner tonight at 5 30? A friend of mine here says, Do you want to have dinner? We met in Antarctica when we were skiing to the South Pole. We haven't met since then, like four years ago. And I said, Well, it has to be a biohacker's time. So how about 5 30 tonight? Yes, I like it. And if you like me, you meet me at 5 30. And if you don't, you're bad. I mean, I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Yes, you're charging these habits, which your circle starts to change. But it's funny, in my circle of friends here now, a lot of them have start or stopped drinking, you know, and we joke around. Oh, we go to bed early. And but of course, not everyone's kind of there, but it starts becoming, you know, how you feel, right? Start listening. I'm all about start learning about your body. Exactly. You just be so present into journaling as to how do I how did I feel when I went to bed too late, woke up the next day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

And you don't need, again, you don't need a machine or a wearable to tell you how you feel. As a matter of fact, if I can interject. In this study that came out a few weeks ago, very interesting. They took two groups of people. One group, uh, both of them slept, no, actually, one group slept well and one group slept poorly. That's documented. But they don't know because they don't have their watch. Maybe they do. We lied on the results. So we told the group that had slept well that your sleep your sleep was terrible. You only slept four and a half hours, you were awake. If you don't remember, it's because whatever. Uh no REM sleep, no deep sleep, whatever. The people who started feeling good when they woke up were fed an information that they should not feel good because they slept poorly and they started feeling bad. Now the other group that actually for real slept poorly was told you had an amazing night. And you can see, you have a video, I you could find it on the internet, but you see them the first half hour, they're like exhausted because the night was truly poor. We tell them you slept well, and you start, you see their bodies start, started, I don't know, kind of becoming straighter, like they were collapsing on a sofa, and they start saying, Yeah, I actually had a good night. And then the end of the morning, the poor night people actually feel better than the other people. So it shows you how powerful those wearables are. And that's why I tell people, do not start by your hacking by buying a wearable. First, understand who you are, what works for you by just doing the regular thing. Then use that to improve, but really improve, not to change things first.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, I like that. Because sometimes I don't always wear mine as well, because I start just knowing how I feel. But it was, I was just more curious. I don't think, how am I sleeping? But then I also notice that's why I don't even wear a watch on a regular basis, because I see people with their Apple watch and it's constantly that nervous system thing. And I don't want one. Yeah, I don't have one for those. Yes, I have the same one actually. But a watch, I feel I see it. I go work out. And and then oh, they're looking at their ding ding.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

But even worse, you're having dinner with them or lunch with a girlfriend. I have lunches like this constantly. I mean, she's gonna get some shoulder injured at one point. But I mean, like, can you be in the now? Like, it's you and me. Who cares if you got three likes on Instagram?

unknown 30:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

I mean, do you need to know that? I don't think you do.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

No, you don't, and it actually affects your nervous system. I mean, you don't even recognize that having this device that keeps dinging on, and then your phone and you're always available. Allow to not be available.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

You know, my phone does, you know, Melissa, if you call me and I don't pick up, my phone is always on a ringer of position. Always for everyone, even my closest people in life. I assumed that nothing should happen that if I don't see it right away, should change the course of the planet or something.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Which is maybe I'm wrong. It's a hard habit to do. You know, I try and be mindful of that too, because as we're on social media, you gotta balance, you know, how do you even balance that for yourself? You know, you you know, I see the purpose of me being on social media and sharing my story. Sometimes it is exhausting, right? And it takes a lot of your energy and you put yourself out there, but I also see how it benefits so many people and it inspires, right? And having this information is kind of hard to find sometimes. So, how do you balance that yourself?

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Yeah, so first half hour of my day, I do not check anything. Like I don't even look at the phone, I don't know if I slept well or not. I don't know if I have received a call from um whomever. I don't know. And I don't care. The first half hour of my day is my half hour. I do my tea, I do stretching, I do cardiac coherence, things like this. But I don't know anything outside. It could be a war started, I have no clue. I could have gotten the Oscar for a movie in which I didn't play, but I don't know. And then maybe sometimes it's even longer than half an hour, it could be two hours. And then at one point I'm like, oh shoot, I forgot to check. At first it was hard. I was like, and now I forget to check, which is amazing. It took me six months to get to that point. Wow. And uh today I did not check for maybe the first hour. I just did a tea and I meditated somehow. I don't know what I did. I just you know, I read. Um and uh but yeah, I think the first half hour of the day to me uh kind of sets the tone for the day to come. So if you start by checking on your beds, oh my god, please do not keep a phone on your side table. This is so bad for your brain. Also, it's bad for your um rest because mentally, you know, there's something. So you might when you wake up at 3 a.m. to go and pee, you might think, oh, let me check if something happened. You don't need to know. You really don't need to know what happened at 3 a.m. You just need to go back to sleep. Uh so first half hour, I don't do anything. Every morning, unless I'm on the plane, obviously, I walk outside um for like I don't know, at least 15-20 minutes. Uh, no sunglasses, nothing on. Um, and I'm not talking to people as I'm walking, I'm just looking around. Even if it's ugly, I look around.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, it's so important. I start my day like that. I know the sunrise and I walk my kids to school, and it's so important to have that time. I leave my phone away and try not to check it as well. I think that those are simple, these are simple tools that everyone can can use.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

And it's boring. I like to use the word boring because because of social media, you expect crazy things that's gonna change your life when you wake up. Well, actually, what's gonna change your life when you wake up is to do nothing. It's first stay in bed and think, hey, it's a great day starting, a few stretches in bed, don't go crazy. And and and it will change your day, actually.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

It will change your day. Yeah, it sets the tone, like you said, of your mindset and how these simple tools can make you know your life more calm or at peace. And you know, I know for me that's why I've had this time before I even wake up my kids for myself. You know, it's so important, then go right into the grind or going into work. And so it's been so important. There was a few questions that I didn't want to miss because I know you have you've written 57 books. I'm actually I'm writing the 57th, right? 57th, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Before I want to insist on that before AI, because now people press a button and the book is written. Yes, yes, exactly. The if we look at dates, my first 50 or 52 books were written before AI really existed. So it's it's it's me, the pen and a piece of paper or the keyboard.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah, which is important. I know my publisher, Kira Brinton, that's what she, you know, uh JOA publishing is all about that not using AI is through, you know, we actually prayer and write our books and in complete stillness, right? And unfortunately, that's not the era we're moving in.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

I have nothing, by the way, I have nothing against AI. I mean, I use AI a lot in what I write because I do research with it, it helps me format my uh my thought process sometimes. So you have too many data points coming at you, and you're like, oh my god. Um, I'm studying at Stanford in their longevity lab right now, and they do actually encourage using a smart usage of AI. So I have nothing against it. But what I have against is people who say we look at longevity and biohacking and even spirituality from a monetary side uh standpoint. I want to make money out of it, and I don't want to spend time on it. So I'm gonna press a button, and ChatGPT is gonna create a marketing plan, how to be rich with longevity, how to make quick bucks with a book. That drives me a bit crazy. Not too much, it's bad for cortisol, but you see what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yes, I do, I do. And some of your books have all been about biohacking and what you've experienced around like you know, fitness, nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Um, one of them is called Strong Her with an H uh for women, obviously. Um, but it's it's a very thick book. It's very I think it's my best book ever, but it's super in-depth. And I think maybe our market now is not ready for this type of book. I it was not the best uh sales ever, but it's my best book ever. I did a lot of research on what makes women stronger or not, how we've been crushed over the past millennia and how we can rise. And it's not a feminist book, it's a book about how women can become stronger and stop uh belittling ourselves, which really often we do. Yeah, uh I've realized when I came to the States 26 years ago, a lot of women say sorry all the time. All the time. I have a friend. Like, it's okay, nothing happened. And they say sorry as I don't know if it's to deflect, to protect, I don't know. But but to me, that's not a sign of weakness, but that's a sign that we've been told that we should be sorry for pretty much everything that happens in our life, which I don't think it is true. And I actually at one point I found out I was saying sorry all the time. Like I would arrive two minutes late to a studio like today and say, Oh, I'm so sorry, it's okay, it's two minutes, you know. And so that book is not only about that, but it's about how we can grow um as women. Again, if we talk about women until '93, you know, all the medical studies uh validated by the FDA in the US from 1977 to 1993 did not have women in the samples because our hormonal changes uh were making too much noise. And this is actually written in 1977, FDA says we have to exclude women. And I think maybe people of color, we have to check that. It was a crazy document written in 1977. 1993 they changed. Guess when they changed in Europe? 2024. Which means today in Europe, if you are prescribed a medication, chances are 99% that the studies were made on men. And in 93, do you know why they stopped? Do you know ambient sleeping days? The studies were made only on men. And they discovered after numerous accidents involving women going to work in the morning that women require half the dose, even at equal weight, for some reason. I can't explain you why. So they would be prescribed the same dose as a man, but in the morning they'd be like zombies trying to drive to work, thinking they were depressed or tired. No, they just had the lingering effect of the drug. And that was one of the reasons. It's not the only one there were a few drugs like this, but it's just mind-boggling. That's they were treated like men. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

I've heard that actually. I was a documentary in cons for the documentary uh Shield. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She Healed, and and that's what it was. It was all about we've been treated like men for so long. And so I love that that's what you bring light to and have.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I'm gonna talk about it Saturday actually.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Is that one of the no, it's one of the points, yeah. That you'll be talking about is that how we've been treated like men and what um to be aware of right now.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

And the thing is, the color of your skin does impact the treatments you should get. Some bodies do not function the same way. And up to today, not only we had this male-female, but then we had the the color, the the the origin, like people from India do not react to certain drugs like people from Africa or Europe. And it when you say that, people are shocked. I'm like, yeah, I've never heard that. So and and there is a reason for that. So that's why now, thank God, in the new studies, they include people from all you know different different origins. And um, for instance, in France, when you're born, they check your hips. There is a region in France, it's Brittany, it's a small region in France where uh babies have issues with their hips. Now, if you do not know that some regions have specific problems, you don't check, you don't heal. So if you look at what happens in a small country like France, can you believe at the world level it's important we look at every single different things, you know?

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yeah, yeah, like more individually, yeah. Like you know, gender, age, color, everything. Everything. So I love I if people wanted to start following you and uh you know have your books, how they can get hold of you.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

So Instagram, Valerie Orsoni, uh, and then valbiohacker.com is my uh platform where I share all the knowledge. I write articles, in-depth dossiers on you know, biohacking and longevity topics.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Yeah, I love that. I I'm very excited to share with just the French speaking community as well, to where they can learn about biohacking, about how you want to do a podcast in French? Yeah, I was actually thinking that. I was like, oh, we should do one in French too. So maybe we'll have to on because I have some. Someone getting me behind is not gonna understand a word. Yeah, no, you won't, yeah, exactly. But I think it is important. I think for the French community right now, uh, and that's why I've started translating my books too. And do you have you translated your books as well?

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah, five languages. Five languages French, English, um, Portuguese, Serbian, and Italian. Wow, excellent.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Okay, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

But I didn't translate them myself.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

No, but I think it's important. I think it's important to have this information globally, and I'm so honored to have you on. So for anyone listening, deciding to uh create an environment, a healthier environment in your body, it doesn't have to be buy everything altogether. Start simple. Like she Valerie mentioned, maybe five things that you can change today. Start journaling. So if this inspired you, please like and subscribe. And thank you again for listening.