Transcript

It's funny because when you're a young kid like I was at 15, you don't really, I don't think you notice it maybe as much. But when I really noticed it was when I went back years later and I was coaching the U.S. ski team and my athletes, it was the only time they ever held a downhill, World Cup downhill race in South America. It was in Las Linas in Argentina.

And, you know, and all the guys, you know, they're coming from summer and, you know, within 12 hours, they're in winter. And of course, they don't dress appropriately. Right. So what happens is everyone gets sick right away. Instantly. Yeah, it's like, you know, they're all freezing and they and nobody really thought about it. You know, it's just. But when you're at that level, you have to be really cognizant of

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:55.734)

Instantly.

Gary Miller (01:09.386)

you know, weather and your environment and what you're stepping into. And yeah, it's always a challenge, you know, and over time you learn these things and it gets better. But it's not easy. It's not easy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:23.054)

It's not. I'm guessing if you get to the other countries in the transitional months, it might be a little bit easier.

Gary Miller (01:32.256)

Yes. Yes, for sure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:34.69)

And of course, and some people want the other seasons. I have some Italian relatives who don't complain when they are suddenly just getting summer all year when they travel.

Gary Miller (01:47.723)

Yeah, mean, you know, we growing up in the Midwest of the U.S., right? I mean, it's our winners were pretty severe winners. They were cold and snowy. And, you know, we were in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. And that's just, you know, from you got to figure from November through February, March, it's it's winter and it's cold. And and most

I wouldn't say most, but a lot of people that are older, they all go to Florida. We call them the snowbirds. And they go down there because they don't want to deal with the cold and the snowy weather. My grandfather was a bit of an anomaly. He was one of these guys. He was a really well-known artist, watercolor artist.

He never minded it. And even into his, he lived to be a hundred, believe it or not. But he felt that living in that environment was healthier. And this man was way ahead of his time. I mean, he was taking cold showers or he would swim in the lake when it was cold. And, you know, he just embraced that. And he said, first of all, I don't believe in retirement because I think it's unhealthy. And

I don't need to go down to a warm climate. And he was a little bit of a maverick that way, I guess, is what you could say.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:24.19)

Even the idea of not retiring, whatever retirement really means, that's now associated with the blue zones, any thoughts about longevity, and people are seeing that. But if you look at some people who retired early in the traditional definition of that, I can understand that so much because my grandparents were like that. They retired in their 50s, but they did so much afterwards. And you kind of need that because

you need to keep the brain alive and you need to stay connected with the world.

Gary Miller (04:00.458)

My grandfather was really unique in that sense. Okay, here's a guy that had polio when he was 12. And he went to a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio for about nine months. And this was back in the early 1900s, right? So the only methods they had to fix his polio, which it couldn't really fix, right? And they didn't have vaccines back then, was they put them on the rack.

then they try to stretch it and they would, and all this, there was a lot of painful stuff that was going on and they couldn't use morphine and things like that on kids. So they did surgery without really any.

sort of painkillers. I mean, was weird. And he really endured some hard times, but it really drove him. And he used very creative methods. They told him that, you know, you're going to be in a wheelchair at 55 and dead soon thereafter. And he just went, no, I'm not going to do that. And he got to a point where he could walk.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:46.413)

Nothing.

Gary Miller (05:15.66)

fairly well, always walked with a limp because one leg was pretty bad. he and my grandmother traveled all over the world. He had a stationary bike at home. He rode that stationary bike every single day, well, I should say five, six days a week for an hour every morning. He must have gone around the world two or three times, right? And we would always have a big celebration when he did.

But he just always felt that that exercise was was paramount. And like I said, you know, he was way out of his time. Cold showers. He ate very healthy foods. He didn't he didn't overindulge. He'd like to have a glass of beer or a glass of wine at night. But that was about it. And he lived to be 100 years old. And in contrast, my father, OK, his son,

He retired when he was 55, I believe. Okay. And he got prostate cancer when he was 60. And, you know, I think it was like 10 years later, he was gone.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:32.866)

That's terrible.

Gary Miller (06:33.085)

And well, and he didn't, but he didn't live like his father. know, he, when he quit work, when he sold the business and quit work, he just would fly his airplane a little bit and he'd ski a little bit and he, but he just never had purpose. He never had purpose. And I think there was some of that. He also, you know, he drank more than he maybe should have and he.

didn't eat that healthy. And I remember him telling me, I don't need to exercise. I did that when I was in college and as an athlete. And that was kind of it. And he just sort of withered away. And yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:18.818)

That's, think the exercise topic is an interesting one and it's great hearing it from you because you deal with exercise all the time. I had a limiting belief like that, but when I was young, I didn't feel coordinated. When I was young, I wasn't the typical sporty type, but it was so much later on that although yoga isn't a sport, I was able to follow something that was physical in some way. And

I really hope that everybody can just find something that works for them. Do you think that some people are more comfortable with some activities more than others?

Gary Miller (07:58.4)

Yeah, I think so. I'll tell you a funny story. OK, so I come from a ski family, right? My parents were competitive and I have two sisters. when I was, I want to say probably I would have been about six or seven years old. OK, my parents wanted to take us all up skiing for the weekend. We drive up to Michigan and go skiing and

I didn't want to go. And my sisters, they wanted to go, so they went, you know? But my parents got tired of leaving me at home with a babysitter. Okay? So my mother was very clever. She hired the biggest, meanest babysitter that she could find. And after two weekends of enduring that old bat, I was like, okay, I'm going skiing.

I was, you know, but I was the consummate, uncoordinated, klutzy kid. I mean, yeah, I couldn't, my father put me in Little League baseball. I couldn't catch a ball to save my life. I couldn't bat. I couldn't throw. I couldn't throw a football or kick a soccer ball. I mean, I was the definition of no athletic ability at all.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:04.514)

Really?

Gary Miller (09:26.483)

And I think, you know, it sort of morphed into this, well, was, as I was started to get involved in ski racing when I was, would have been about 10, I guess. In 10, 11, 12, I sort of, it was a social thing because it was around a lot of my friends. But I started to get a little annoyed with the fact that they were always coming home with trophies and medals and I was coming home with zero.

So this sort of thing just, you know, eventually I got better and I had a mentor from the U.S. Ski Team, a gal who just saw me at a camp and went, this kid's really struggling, I need to help him out. And she turned the tide for me, you know, she told me what I would need to do if I wanted to be at the podium level versus, you know, with everybody else.

And she gave me a physical fitness program for the summer and fall months. I think I was really kind of thrilled that somebody took an interest in me and said, hey, you can do great. Just you need to have a little bit of a roadmap. My father was my coach, but he didn't really push us to do any physical activity per se. And it made a difference. After a year, I was a completely different animal.

I I was strong and my coordination sort of, you know, once my body caught up with itself, but by the time I was probably in my 16, 17 years old, I was winning almost everything.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:11.712)

everything.

Gary Miller (11:12.639)

Yeah. Yeah. Now that was in the sport of ski racing. You know, if I wanted to go out and play golf or play tennis, it wasn't that great. Right. But so I still had some of that. But, you know, over time, you know, some people are really blessed with with, you know, a natural coordination. And and but but now over this long span of my life. OK.

Boy, exercise to me is the ticket. mean, wouldn't, you know, so many people when they have an aching pain, aches or pains, they take medication. Okay, I go out and work out and it's like the best medication you could ever have.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:04.554)

It really does heal and fix things.

Gary Miller (12:07.786)

Absolutely. That movement of any type. And I like to do it early in the morning because, you know, after sleeping at night, you get a little stiff and that's just the way it is. And having a body weight at my age, I don't need to go in the gym anymore. I use body weight exercises and I'm outside in nature. I have a little music going and it's, boy, it takes care of all that. And I've had

I've had, I don't know, seven surgeries or something, you I've had discs taken out of my back, I've had four knee surgeries, you know, it's been all this sort of stuff. And I got friends that walk around like they're half dead, and I feel great.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:52.908)

movement, it makes a giant difference. It's great that you are seeing that at any age and after all these injuries and things. The simple habits make a difference. I can relate to that so much. Someone told me recently that I'm aging backwards. Okay, I'll go with that. And there are things people can do anywhere because I looked at Pilates after yoga and one thing they both do is doing a simple plank.

I was not the type to do something like that, but you could use any floor at home, anything. And so people don't have to be an expert in something. Since you've done so much with movement for the audience to agree that people don't have to do something complicated to get movement.

Gary Miller (13:44.585)

No, and you don't need to go out and buy a gym membership. You don't need to go out and buy a bunch of equipment. literally have, I've got like a, it's not really a yoga mat because it's a little thicker, you know, it's a little softer. And I've got two sandbags that are probably, I think they're like maybe six kilos or something like that. So what is that?

15 pounds maybe or somewhere around that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:17.154)

I normally use Kilos, so we can try to help the Americans convert text if they need it when listening or they can Google it.

Gary Miller (14:21.414)

Yeah.

They can Google it, So anyway, I can use it for like, I'll use it for, you know, some types of squats and I'll use it for curls and things like that. Or I'll go out and I'll do a farmer walk on a hilly trail and I'll just carry him with me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:46.574)

so the farmer walk is that simply carrying things.

Gary Miller (14:52.126)

Just carrying them, just put them in your hands and carry them. you know, it's one until you get used to it, you know, it's it's a challenge, but it's it's really it's good. And and. You know, I do body weight because at my age I don't my my joints aren't as elastic as they were when I was younger. And so I don't put that strain on them, but it's that it's a constant movement. So if I go out and.

typical routine is I'll spend probably 15 minutes getting up onto a trail so I'm warmed up and I'm ready to go and then I'll have little stations that I dream up on my own and one will be the first one is always squats, regular squats and I'll do 100 of

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:43.278)

Literally.

Gary Miller (15:43.883)

100 squats, yeah. Now, when I started this a couple of years ago, I started out with maybe 30 or 40, and I could probably, if I, I'm gonna do it one of these days, I could probably do 200 of them. Okay, and then I've got, but I've got three different variations of squats, so I'll do a total of 300 squats. And then I've got core.

I do standing core in between those squat sets. And then I also do lunges. I'll do normally if I go out, if it's lunch day, I'll go out and I'll do 300 lunges. And I'll do them uphill with a slight grade so you don't put any stress on your knee.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:34.542)

Okay, that's a hint for everybody. So uphill, is there a way to do that? If someone has a normal floor, is there a way to do these things that will be more gentle on the knees?

Gary Miller (16:46.622)

Yeah, like I said, with the incline for me, it's because I don't have any cartilage left on my right knee. So for me, I try not to do something that impacts it too much. with the incline, just a little bit, you've got a little bit of your weight behind you. But it's, body weight exercises are fantastic. I was with a friend yesterday, we went for

for a long hike. He's a pilot for FedEx and he's, you know, he's younger than I am, quite a bit younger than I am. And he's got all these aches and pains and he's, but he's now 57 and he's going to the gym and he's lifting weights, but he's always having problems. And I said, dude, you got, you know, when you hit 50,

That's kind of the magic number. You don't need to lift a lot of weights and just start doing high reps of body weight exercises. And you can't believe how strong you can get. He says, yeah, because I'm having trouble with push ups. And I said, here's the key with push ups. I had to give up on them a long time ago. just I had a disease when I was a kid, so my back didn't grow straight. So it's a little harder for me to do push ups. But I said, I do incline push ups. You can do them against the wall. But instead of doing

10 or 15, do 50, 50 or 60. You'll get strong as an ox.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:23.214)

One client, what do you do just to lean against the wall?

Gary Miller (18:26.461)

lean against the wall or slightly down just a little bit and you're just, and you do high reps and every couple of weeks add another 10. You'd be surprised. It's crazy. if you have, so I've got squat days, I've got lunge days and with some standing core in between there, because your core is your, you can exercise your core every day.

It's just, and people don't realize that you can do that. And then there will be days when it's maybe really miserable outside. I I don't mind going out in any kind of weather. If it's misting a little bit or it's cold, I don't care. It's good to be outside. But I'll do an inside day and I'll do an hour of core. And my God, I've got probably half a dozen exercises.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:14.99)

What do you do for the core?

Gary Miller (19:24.335)

standing core is what I usually start with because it's a little bit easier when you get out of bed and you're stiff a little bit. So that's what I start with. And then I do, you know, I do some arm curls and I do some some over behind the neck press, you know, with the sandbags and and then I'll get on the floor and I'll do another seven or eight variations of floor core. And and

The cool thing about doing core like this with movement, this kind of movement, is you're actively stretching your muscles. I don't need to stretch as much after I do a session like that. That's crazy. mean, it's one of the best.

balms you can put on your body is doing these movement exercises and and even if you wake up and you're a little bit sore, I mean in the beginning, yeah, you get a little bit sore or if I increase my my intensity a little bit or the or the reps. Yeah, I'll get a little sore go out and move. Soreness will go away. Take don't use the pills. I mean it takes a lot for me to reach for the the

Ibuprofen.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:45.4)

Are you saying that a walk will ease the aches that people might have a day after a workout?

Gary Miller (20:51.291)

Absolutely, absolutely. Best thing you could do, go out and move. Don't exercise. Just go out on a trail that maybe has a little bit of elevation and just walk. It's phenomenal what it'll do. And it's hard because the common reaction for people is when they wake up in the morning and they have an ache, they'll put some ibuprofen in their bodies and they don't need to do that.

Go for a walk. Besides, you get the sun, get the, you know, you get the, it's just healthier. Just healthy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:24.078)

and they might.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:31.65)

it is. I'm guessing some people would be using the pills to replace those other things as well. So they might not even be adding the pills onto the good things. They might be just only popping a pill and then sitting on a couch instead of getting out there into the world. Do you think so?

Gary Miller (21:48.414)

Right. Yeah. And listen, I don't want to be preaching the fact that I'm something special, that I've been doing this for so many years, that it's easy. Nothing's easy. But you have to kind of program your mind to do hard things. Because as time goes on, your body just isn't kind to itself. It starts to...

deteriorate, that's life. But you can overcome that. It was interesting because when my wife and I moved to Europe a couple years ago, we ended up in Portugal because it was the easiest place to get residency right away. And we were in the Algarve where it's nice and warm and it was on the seaside. it was an interesting experience. And I really enjoyed

some of the time down there because getting out in the morning and doing stuff and then going for a swim in the ocean where it's cold was great. And that's that's another topic all in itself. But, you know, these types of things just.

I think the real change for me was one night I sat down and watched Netflix and there was a documentary on that, or actually it was a movie on the Purdue Pharma, you know, that had the Oxycontin, the heavy duty, people were taking this narcotic to eliminate pain, but they became so addicted to it. And I thought, why?

You know, I came from a sport that probably is one of the more brutal sports on the planet. mean, you know, when you crash skiing, it's not always that pleasant, right? So we were out skiing and competing in inclement conditions where it's really cold or it's super icy. And, you know, it's not an easy sport. mean, it's tough. I'm thinking, why are these people, why are they popping a pill and sitting on the couch and

Gary Miller (24:03.869)

But then they become addicted.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:06.69)

And this is so deep because this is bigger than the particular pill they are turning to. It seems like people don't know how to accept pain and discomfort.

Gary Miller (24:22.876)

They don't, so I'm writing a book about it. Yeah, yeah. And I said, you know what? I gotta write a book because this makes no sense to me. So I've done a lot of research. I've got it now, I'm about halfway through most of the major edits and I'm doing, I've gotta get it to a copywriter. I'm taking those steps. It will be published this year. But I felt it was really important and I dig into, you know,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:25.774)

What the?

Gary Miller (24:52.984)

what our ancestors, going back to the Viking days, what they did for pain and try to educate people on the topic of pain, because I don't think people really understand it. And it wasn't very long after watching that film on Netflix that there was a friend of ours in another town in Portugal.

had coffee with him one day and I was explaining that I saw this thing and he goes, oh my God. He said, I'm a victim of that. He said, I got hooked on Oxycontin. And he said, let me tell you something. The best day on Oxycontin is the first day. After that, it goes downhill. He said, I got to the point where I was almost stupid. He said, couldn't drive my car. I couldn't remember things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:44.162)

to.

Gary Miller (25:49.08)

And he said, I was a mess and I had to get some rehab to get out of it. He was one of the lucky ones. If he would have continued on that, he would have ended up dead like so many Americans have on taking that drug.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:06.04)

dead. So does it mess with the brain and also the body? Do you know what it's doing to people?

Gary Miller (26:14.864)

Yeah, it's just a really, really powerful narcotic that just eliminates pain, but it's so highly addictive. mean, it's like a... It was easier than people getting hooked on heroin or crack or anything like that. I mean, it's awful. I mean, it's really bad. mean, they would find...

you know, a husband and a wife sitting in a car dead because they had taken, they eventually just gone.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:54.03)

That's so sad. And it's for the pain. I'm wondering how these people even got into so much pain because chances are that some of these aches are from not doing the movement to begin with. I can tell you that I was cutting back on my exercises when I couldn't get to a gym for a couple of weeks. And I know you were saying that we can do things at home.

Gary Miller (26:54.108)

Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:20.566)

I put off getting the right mat, I think if there's one thing you need to get, everybody needs a decent mat. But I can feel it so much. I can feel just a line across my back from the aches of not doing the movements I was doing a couple of weeks ago. And if some people are going months or years without doing these movements that we all need, then it would be wrecking the...

Gary Miller (27:45.221)

If you know, if you take the average. I'll take the average guy, right? He maybe he works. At a place where he has to lift some heavy things periodically, maybe it's a warehouse or a building supply place or something like that, and he tweaks his back. OK. First thing you do when he gets home, he reaches for the pill bottle and and.

And of course, it's a compounding thing, right? If you exercise consistently, you become strong enough to be able to do those simple things and not get hurt. Now, that's not always the case because I can go and lift something. Although I've learned over time when you lift, you lift with your legs, you don't lift with your arms and, you know, just hinge at the waist. But

If you're if you're physically strong enough and so many people aren't and it's really it's it's really a problem in the US because, you know, so many people are overweight. They have let themselves go. And and when you do that, your whole body becomes out of balance. You know, if you've got a big stomach in front of you, you're you're out of balance and it puts more strain on your back. But by keeping yourself active and healthy,

You you can overcome a lot of stuff. And you know, if something, if I really get, if I really tweak something, I won't hesitate to take an ibuprofen, but I'll only take it once.

And that's it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:29.522)

I'll you, I'll tell you, there's so much there and I wanted to, I wanted to mention the importance of food because of course if someone eats all the wrong things all day then they will, it would be too difficult to run that off, of course that's a part of it, but you mentioned the pain relief again and I was so keen to, I don't know if I've given this anecdote in a previous recording but when I had that tivule plateau fracture

years ago, 2017, I was in the hospital bed and I didn't understand how things work and the staff told me, so there was a button for some sort of pain relief, I don't even know what was going through my system, but the staff just said whenever I am feeling pain press that button, I kept pressing it until I vomited because I was just doing what I was told. Then I just didn't take that, the tremadol gave me hives, they would

appear in a patch on my arm and then vanish and then a patch on another spot. That was so weird to have hives just popping up and vanishing and popping up again. And so I just skipped those things and just coped. We can just cope without those things. But one thing I assume other people are doing that I did there is I just mindlessly did what I was told until people realized, okay.

this is having this effect. And by that point, we are then recovering from all those side effects.

Gary Miller (31:02.631)

Oh, for sure. Yeah, exactly. mean, it's and you know, there are are societal differences, too. And I don't know enough about Australia and you know, where you guys are. It's like one of the places that I want to go and I have never been yet. I'll get there. But it's you know, it's it's in the US. You can walk into. You know, a gas station, a convenience store.

and you can buy a bottle of 500 pills. Okay? mean, that's normal. Anywhere. Yeah, it's crazy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:40.75)

anywhere. 500. What is anyone doing with 500 pills?

Gary Miller (31:46.568)

They buy a big bottle, you know, that it's over excessive and it's marketing and it's everything else, right? And in Europe, it's completely different. If you want something for pain relief, it's usually ibuprofen. And you can buy it, but you can't buy it in a gas station. You can't buy it in a convenience store. You can't buy it in a grocery store. You can only buy it in an opotech, right?

pharmacy. the only place you can buy it and it might be normally a package will you can get 10 pills in a box or you can get maybe 20 but you don't get more than that which is

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:31.982)

We have that, sorry for diving in, we have that sort of quantity, but it is often available at the supermarkets nearly anywhere.

Gary Miller (32:40.923)

Yeah, no, and over here in Europe, can't do that. And of course, but the society here, everyone's out walking or biking or running or doing something. They're always active. And it doesn't matter. We saw a woman this winter that had to be in her late 80s. She had a walker with wheels and she was pushing it along the trail with some slushy snow below her.

And I'm like, all right, that's fantastic. You know, they just they don't mind. You go up hiking here and you see you see people that are there in their 80s and 90s that are out there when they've got their sticks with them and and they're always they're always moving. So it's yeah, it's a you know, it's a societal thing. And, you know, going back to what you were saying with with food, the diet is so important. If you're eating.

more sugary type foods and processed foods, you will have more joint pain. I mean, they've proven that. That's a, you try to eat really healthy. We tried to do intermittent fasting back in the States. We couldn't do it. You don't have high enough quality food unless you went to Whole Foods every week to get your groceries.

And course, you know, the again, it's a societal thing. People buy groceries for a week. Well, you can do that because most of that stuff is preservatives in it. It'll last a week. Over here, everyone goes to the grocery store almost every day or every two days to buy fresh products or fresh fresh produce anyway. And so we noticed when we got to Portugal, we could exist on two two meals a day.

We would eat at noon, and we would eat at six, seven o'clock at night. That was it. because the quality of food, and we shopped every other day or every day if we had to, and we'd go to the farmer's market or wherever, and you went to the butcher to get your meat and...

Gary Miller (35:02.491)

It's crazy. The simple staple of life, bread, for example, in America, loaded with sugar. Okay, to get bread like we get here, you know, was just, it was so expensive in the States. So I can buy a really nice loaf of fresh sourdough bread, okay? And I can pay one, one euro 99.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:31.022)

Neeloo!

Gary Miller (35:32.037)

Yeah. And when we were in Michigan in the U.S., that same loaf of bread was ten dollars U.S.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:40.45)

think it's like that here a lot and it's interesting you bring that up. If I was going to go to a sourdough bakery somewhere that makes the properly, I would say it would become 10 to 12, maybe 8 to 12 Australian. So what's the American dollar? I'm going to guess off the top of my head 1.5 times that just wild guess. Maybe not.

Gary Miller (36:09.199)

Yeah, probably. I can actually look it up, but I know what you're saying. I wonder if I have Australian. OK, so. It's a U.D. right. I think that's what they go by.

Gary Miller (36:30.695)

would be, okay, so Australian dollar, one Australian dollar would be 0.72, not quite a US dollar.

Right, 72 cents. Just a little bit lower.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:45.902)

Right. So if I tell the internet, I'm just checking convert a, let's call it 12 AUD to USD. So that's, it's complicating this.

Gary Miller (37:01.383)

12 would be $8.80. 860. 860. Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:08.398)

So basically for the Americans listening, a good loaf of bread over here is around what they would call $8. But if you're saying it was around the $10 mark in America, then it's pretty similar. seriously, then looking at the bread in the supermarkets, I like how as watching the guy who does the Blue Zone, Stan Butener, I think his name is, and

And at some point he got the bread and just squished it up in his hand and said, if you can do that, then it's not decent bread. I get so worried, but even the cheap bread is not so cheap here now in terms of price because everything is becoming expensive. But I find that I just can't even eat that. I'll just skip it until I can get real bread. But if you are going to the places that don't have options, then that's all there is. And it's not the same.

sourdough is so different

Gary Miller (38:06.289)

Sourdough is really different and we couldn't, in Portugal we couldn't get.

kind of bread we really wanted to get, right? I mean, I'm a little spoiled because I used to spend more time in Central Europe and, you know, between Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, you get France, you get phenomenal breads. So I started making our own bread. And then that was really simple. It wasn't sourdough because I didn't get into the whole sourdough starter and all that stuff. But to be able to make a fresh loaf of bread every two days was

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:30.99)

You have to.

Gary Miller (38:41.946)

really economical and it was kind of fun actually. But it's those simple things and you consume fruits and the vegetables and eggs. are, what we buy eggs here in Germany for is, you pay in the States eight or nine dollars for a carton of eggs. I mean it's gotten so expensive, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:08.418)

Really?

Gary Miller (39:09.988)

Yeah, the US is really out of control right now. mean, what obviously, you know, with the whole the whole thing, the whole political thing is just an absolute disaster. And my my two of my sisters, they've been here, they visited and they couldn't believe how inexpensive the food was. My sister the other day wrote me, she said, I bought a small bag of groceries and she lives in Maine. And it was it was one hundred and ten dollars US.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:15.501)

apology.

Gary Miller (39:39.78)

Small bag of groceries. I can go here to the Lidl and I can buy the freshest fruits. This stuff all comes up from Spain and Italy. I bought a big bag of groceries and it might have been 30 euros.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:58.05)

That's better and people need to get to the basics. I will add again that I don't eat eggs but just hearing that price that really stunned me because here in Australia we are hearing that there are there are war events going on. The thing we kept hearing about was the fuel prices. So Americans will say gas, we say petrol, whatever you call it.

Gary Miller (39:59.547)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:22.324)

that was becoming the big fear and people were doing the joke memes to emotionally cope, all of that. But food is an interesting one because I think that's creeping up slowly or at least even if other things are chewing into the budget for everybody. I believe people always forget how affordable food can be because it sounds like even the basics are out of control in America but I'll tell you the very simple meal for example that I had tonight

because if we're talking about salad dough, I impressed myself. I impressed myself. I, I fried up the finely chopped onion and some fresh tomato and some brown lentils and tossed in some olive oil and taco seasoning. can tell you those simple ingredients. I used half of the onion. I used half of the tomato. This is barely any food.

At least over here, you can get a can of lentils for a dollar. I don't know what it's like in America now. And it was, it's seriously enough food for two dinners. And it was so simple. think people don't realize how simple food is. People think they need, you know, I think the ingredients list has missed, it has messed everything up because people are looking for a particular products that might've had.

Gary Miller (41:24.889)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gary Miller (41:30.48)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:47.534)

nutrients, you know, something is processed and then, you know, or people are checking the grams of the protein or that stuff instead of just checking is this real food. I hope that everywhere in the world people can at least go and get the simple things like potatoes, whatever, and just at least eat something real to start.

Gary Miller (42:06.467)

It's member during COVID. OK. I was always blown away by. Going into the grocery store and seeing. Seeing all these aisles with. Boxed and canned foods. That were completely empty. In addition to the. Toilet paper. I'll was completely empty, right? That one still baffles me. It's like OK.

Something's weird about that, during things like that, they all rush to buy toilet paper. Whatever. So, so, but anyway, if you continue on and you get to the produce area, it's completely full. And they were even throwing that stuff out. People, you know, we're going to be stuck at home. So we're just going to make boxed macaroni and cheese, or we're going to do canned jar of pasta sauce. Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:42.673)

yes.

Gary Miller (43:06.822)

And that's what we'll eat that. And it's like, no, you don't need to do that. Life is food is simple. And you can you can do things that are really cool. When my kids were young, they love pasta, right? But I wasn't going to give them the spaghetti owes or whatever they they they have in the can. Right. I said, there's no way I'm going to do that. You can you can buy

I really got into it big time. So I would buy Roma tomatoes. I would blanch them. Okay, peel the skin off and take the seeds out and then I would press them and I would make my sauce that way. Well, you know, I don't really need to do that anymore because here, especially being so close to Italy, you can buy a box of the crushed tomatoes that don't have the seeds and all that sort of stuff in it. And it's pretty

pretty similar. And then it's just, you know, some garlic and some olive oil first, pour the tomatoes in there, and I add salt and pepper and I use a, I use a like a, like a pink Himalayan salt and maybe some Italian herbs. That's it. Then you throw the pasta in the water and you got a phenomenal healthy, and we can get two days out of a, you know, when I make a batch of pasta.

We use a like a porcelain, they call it a Dutch oven, I guess, or a crock, it's like a crock, you know, and with a lid on it. And all you have to do is put in, slice up some potatoes, some carrots, onions, celery, plop a chicken in there, put some, we use just curry, we cover it in olive oil, and then we put some curry powder.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:45.331)

that's...

Gary Miller (45:06.469)

some brown sugar, a little salt and pepper, and you've got a phenomenal meal. Okay, you've got your chicken, which is great, and you've got your vegetables. And then I go and I strip the chicken down, either my wife or I will strip the chicken down, add some bouillon to it, some of the water in a bouillon cube, and we have chicken soup for two more days.

Gary Miller (45:37.347)

And you're eating pure food. I have a little bit of a thing for dark chocolate, but it's the lesser of a lot of the chocolate evils. But those kinds of things, they're affordable if you do it this way, but people inherently, I think, are lazy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:49.165)

Then

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:00.598)

To some extent, laziness is a part of it. And I will clarify, also, so I, I don't eat dairy eggs or meat, but I think if everybody starts with real food, it's a great start. And I was reminiscing today that I am just bursting to roast some potatoes. And again, how difficult is it to just, especially the tiny ones, you barely have to cut them, make sure it's clean enough, throw it in an

oven, you don't have to do anything. But you mentioned the laziness. I wanted to comment on how people sometimes do end up with busy lives. And although there are ways with technology to make our time more efficient, things happen. People, families work, things get busy. But I've been looking in different areas. So I'm at the coast, but I'm close enough to Sydney. And when I first started exploring Sydney again, I thought,

Every place has pastries. It was pastries at all the coffee places. And I was trying to figure out, okay, where is the quick healthy food? I can tell you it's the unexpected places. If I go to the nice coffee places, it's perhaps a big refined white bread with something in it, whatever.

There'll be the places that are doing the burgers that are extra oily, whatever, but the supermarket will have a salad with some falafels in it. It's simple. I, a few times I went to the supermarket when they had some clearance things at the end of the day and got the simple salads then. So you look for the basics. I keep my eye out for a, an avocado sushi roll.

It's a few ingredients, I know what's in it, and I can eat that on the go. I passionately believe people need to at least look for the real food, even if they are getting busy.

Gary Miller (48:05.003)

Absolutely. And it just takes, it takes a little bit more effort. It doesn't take a lot. It takes a little bit more effort. You know, it's like...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:13.646)

No.

Gary Miller (48:18.31)

I mean, it goes into a little bit off topic, but it's a little bit like, you know, you're home with the kids, right? And, and, and, you know, we would trade off cooking. Okay. I would, I would cook some nights. My wife would cook some nights. We take the kids out and do something active. And, and, and today there's too much of this. Give them this and keep them occupied. Right.

Really? That's not helping anybody. so, yeah, mean, it's just keeping...

I know people with two people working, it's really a challenge, right? And they come home from work and they're tired. I understand that. I've been there, done that before. But it's going back to what I said, do hard things. dig a little bit deep. Don't let that dictate your life.

Still, you have to prepare good food and good meals. And then after dinner, go for a nice walk. then you'll sleep much better at night. That's kind of it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:44.042)

It's, think the do hard things wisdom that's going to encourage people who don't have someone who can carry the load with them because you two are such a team and I hope that all couples can be a team and just alternate with duties, things like that. That makes a difference. And I, I feel excited to know that I won't always be just juggling everything alone, but

to those people who are juggling everything because either they are alone or their other person just isn't doing the things, or maybe they are both working. This is a simple facts of life of things will be difficult. We just have to do it. And you are coming from, course, a professional background where you help people to do great sport as well and reach goals. So,

We've barely even talked about the human charger yet, so we'll get to that in a second. But every topic was just golden. I forgot just how diverse this is. But absolutely. You need to just find the bravery. And it's great that you're saying that. It's one of those moments when a podcast guest tells me what I need to hear. Because I think we also need to do the things that feel impossible.

Everybody had something that felt like the limit at some point. But I'll tell you in terms of doing hard things, okay, because a pivot is better late than never. I have, I don't know if anyone else uses the human charger for ears popping, but I just found that maybe it's, maybe half of it is just putting those little earphone rubber things in. For those who haven't seen it, it's just like if you get earphones to listen to music and it has the rubber things on that.

I don't know if that's contributing to it or also the light, but just popping those on when my ears are going weird on a long trip, it has seriously made a difference.

Gary Miller (51:52.727)

I listen this this device is is probably one of the the crazier things. And and to to lead into that a little bit. Doing hard things. Is something that I talked to athletes about right. But you you have you you have you have the athlete the elite athletes that are up here and you've got the ones that that are here that that want to be up here.

right? And that's always the tough one because you get kids that are in our sport of ski racing and I think it's pretty similar with with other sports too. You get these kids that are in that 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, probably that 16 to 20 more into the probably 19, 20 years old. They've been in it long enough. They want to get to the top. They want to do this. They get they plateau.

because they do not understand the value of doing hard things. So what I do is I try to reframe it for them. And there's a lot of keys here, but, I won't go into all of them. That's for maybe another topic or another discussion. But, you know, I try to frame it like this. Your goal should be a one percenter. And this goes across the board for everybody. If you make it a goal,

To be a one percenter, that means you're special. You're better than 99 % of all people on the planet. Just be a one percenter. Do those extra things. Do the hard things. And it's get up every day. And it's simple stuff. When you get out of bed, you make your bed. Make it the best that you can make it.

Do whatever you need to do, get your clothes on, whatever, and hydrate. Drink, you know, two 20 ounce glasses of water, have a little fruit, and then get out the door and walk around the neighborhood. If it's only as simple as a 15 to 20 minute walk around the neighborhood, you've done, you have become a one percenter because you're doing what most people will never ever do in their life. You're awake.

Gary Miller (54:15.001)

You've got some movement. Some of those aches and pains will go away. Have a little bit of a breakfast. Then you go to work. You're ready to go. You're tuned up. so it's I'm always looking for those things to help people become a one percenter. And with that human charger, that's exactly when I saw the thing, I didn't know really anything about it.

Okay, and I'm a little bit embarrassed because as an elite coach, maybe I should have paid more attention to the body's circadian rhythm. mean, God knows, we fly all over the world, right? And we suffer jet lag. So we had, I still laugh about this because, okay, I've got my downhill ski racers.

back in the 80s, okay? This was a long time ago. And we're flying to Europe and we're, God, driving to your destination after you've flown across the pond, you're jet-lagged to the hilt, and yet I gotta make sure these guys get to their destination. we had a guy by the name of Dietrich Matichitz. I don't know if that name rings a bell, okay? He's the founder of Red Bull.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:43.625)

Nice.

Gary Miller (55:44.716)

Okay, so Dietrich became a good friend. He was a great guy. He loved us and we would get cases of Red Bull. And that Red Bull was what we used to keep ourselves bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they would say. And, you know, it never dawned on me, right, that, wow, this is a really cool product, because I would bring cans of it home to the U.S.

And my buddies would be like, you got to bring more of this back to the States. They didn't go into the US till the 90s. And I never thought to go to Dietrich and say, I know a distributor back there that would love this stuff. I buy it and import it? Never thought about it. But that's all we had. That's all we knew.

You you'd suffer for three, four days, you'd get over your jet lag and then you'd be fine. But it has a dramatic impact on you physically, emotionally, mentally. And, you know, but that was a, that's a different era. And so when we found the human charger, which is this simple little headset, right, I didn't really know.

much about seasonal depression. My wife knew about it because she does suffer from seasonal depression. I'm lucky, I guess. I'm kind of a ready-set-go guy when I get up in the morning. you know, we just got used to that. And I'm not much of a... Even though I like to have a can of Red Bull once in a while, I know it's an energy drink and they're not that great for you, right? There's too much sugars in them and they're...

Kids are consuming way too many of them today. But I didn't know much about light and how it would impact our biological clock, right, our internal clock. So we started to look into the science of the human charger and found that it was developed in Finland by a scientist and an engineer from Nokia, the phone company.

Gary Miller (58:09.38)

And it was at a time when Nokia wasn't doing very well because Apple had come out with the iPhone. so these guys broke off. And because Finland is obviously way northern latitude and dark winters, they had a lot of people that were suffering from seasonal depression. And the only thing that they had at the time was a lamp. You'd stare into this lamp for an hour. they wanted to come. Yeah. And you have to be close. And you have to stare at it for an hour because

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (58:32.376)

this call.

Gary Miller (58:38.947)

You can't get anything more than that. But not many people have the time to do that, or like staring at a light. You know, it's not only great for your eyes anyway. But that's the way that light goes through your optic nerve, triggers the options, the proteins that affect your hypothalamus that deliver the cortisol to wake you up in the morning. You know, and then obviously,

melatonin kicks in in the evening when it gets dark. So, you know, we just, you know, that's all that people knew. And these guys broke off and they did some experiments and they found, number one, that light would penetrate a skull.

And they looked at the ear canal because the ear drum is translucent and the bone structure around the ear is very thin. So they started doing therapy, what they call transcranial light therapy, and they would use, you know, a device like this that had 10,000 lux, which is the same lux as a sad lamp, and they just put them in the ears.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (59:52.078)

And by the way, so for those who can see the video, if you switch off the light and people can see the actual ear part that goes in your ear, people will see it's seriously, it's that simple. looks like earphones. So that's significant because it's that simple. can tell you, I was at a place where I was getting support and being with people and I just sat on a couch and paused after a bit of

coffee, stopped my coffee for a moment, just popped the headset on. It's what, 12 minutes? Does it stay on? 12 minutes out of the day, not that much time. You just sit there, it's so lightweight. It's so much thinner and compact than, you know, people go around with the big headphones. It's not even like that. It's so small. You just pop that in.

Gary Miller (01:00:27.043)

12 minutes.

Gary Miller (01:00:45.943)

Yeah, so the original version was actually more like an iPod. You know, it had a little handheld device and it had the cables that went up to the earbuds. These are called earbuds. And they're just little LED lights in there that provide 10,000 lux of a full spectrum, UV free, which is really important because, yeah, people are going to say, well, I can go out and I can look at the sun and I can, yeah.

Sure, you can do that and you should do that but you got to be careful of that because there's all the other things that we know about with Sun today So this is a really really really safe Quick and efficient way that when you get up in the morning You know you can you can throw this device. It's like the old JVC Bluetooth headphones, you know, you just stick around your neck and you click the button once you've got the light you pop them in Look at your clock

Okay, it's 1106, so 12 minutes from there at 1118, I'm able to... it'll just automatically shut off. You just pull it out and you go, it's off now. Okay, then you... Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:01:51.534)

And.

You put it around your neck. I was putting that part on my head like a headband. Sorry, that looked weird the way I just did that. But I guess you can do either. But around the neck is even easier.

Gary Miller (01:02:05.867)

Yeah, around the neck is probably the simplest. And no, it's really clever. It's so simple to use. you know, so we, the more we kind of got into the thing, you know, my wife is like, God, I gotta try this thing because I'm not very good about getting up in the morning. You know, I always struggle to get up in the morning. so she was the first one that started using it within a week. She was like, I've never been able to get up regular in the morning.

So it sort of reset. You know, she was working at a retail store that was more of an in a basement, so she didn't get a lot of natural light. So this really helped her a ton. And and then the more I dug into it, I'm thinking, you know, God, I know what I know what I felt like on a really nice sunny day at a ski race. Right. Everyone's happy. Sun's bright. You can see everything's clear and

And it's really nice. But you get a day that's cloudy and it's snowing and it's gray and it's, you know, you just don't wake up with that same feeling. Right. And I'm thinking, wow, that could that could really help. Because I'm a I'm a little bit odd, I'm a ready, set, go guy, get up in the morning, go and I'm fine. But when I noticed it was, you know, when we were talking about my exercise routine, OK.

that's when I noticed this thing the most because when I used it I was really sharp. My focus was better because I do some mental exercises as well. You know I've got music going, I've got you know I've got some counting things that I'm doing, I've got visual images, I do all this sort of stuff and if I don't use it I'm a little bit drifting you know I drift a bit. If I use it I'm sharp I'm just like

tunnel vision. That's where I noticed it. So I thought, God, well, my athletes, this could be great. So I got it out to some of the athletes that, you know, I'm not actively coaching the athletes anymore on the national team, but I got it out to some of the national team athletes. And, you know, they know the biggest thing was jet lag. That was huge. That's a game changer that I wish we would have had years ago.

Gary Miller (01:04:33.376)

because with jet lag, okay, and to give you a little bit of a background, the circadian rhythm, okay, our body's biological clock, I like to say that we are, as a human being, we're running 21st century software on a thousand year old operating system, okay? Our bodies haven't evolved enough to be able to overcome jet travel.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:04:56.364)

in what way?

Gary Miller (01:05:02.434)

across six time zones.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:05:04.364)

Right, we haven't evolved to flick between time zones.

Gary Miller (01:05:08.13)

Right. Yeah, we can't. We have gotten better over time. I mean, over the last 100, 200 years, you can look back and go, yeah, we've really evolved as human beings, but not enough to overcome that because jet travel has only been around for 40, 50 years and you arrive and there's no way you can just arrive in feeling great. So what the human charger does

is that when you arrive at a destination, so if I'm flying from the US to Europe, I arrive in the morning, I use it at eight o'clock in the morning, and then I use it every two hours after that for two days. So I use it at eight, 10, 12, two, and maybe even four p.m. And all it's doing is resetting my circadian rhythm every two hours. So I don't feel that groggy, sluggish feeling.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:05:52.419)

Okay.

Gary Miller (01:06:07.97)

Okay, and then I'll sleep really good the first night, which is always a little iffy. And then second day, I do the same thing, eight, 10, 12, two, and four. And then you're normal, perfectly normal.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:06:21.43)

And that, that answers the question that I emailed to you because I found myself using the device twice. found my ears were popping into that a few hours later. I just, felt so stressed. Maybe it's partly the seasonal change and life, anything. And I just pop this in and then it's, it just got me away from all of that.

blurry, you said that you get some alertness from it. I sent that as well. even doing it twice, was wondering is this fine, but you do it every couple of hours when you need to.

Gary Miller (01:06:54.146)

Well, for jet lag, especially, but everyone's a little bit different, right? My wife will use it in the afternoon instead of an espresso or something like that, because with this, you don't have a caffeine crash, right? You can go get your coffee in the afternoon and you'll have a good spike for an hour so. And then all of a sudden it's like, I'm back to my normal sluggish feeling. I've got coaches that are using it.

OK, that after a long day of training, everyone jumps in the van. They drive back to their to their hometown or their their base. And it might be an hour drive, hour and a half, you know, because they like to go to a lot of different ski areas around Europe. And and I said, you know, instead of stopping for a coffee, pop that thing in. This coach calls me and he goes, my God, this is weird. He said, I'll put that thing on in 15, 20 minutes later. I'm wide awake.

I have no, I'm not dozing off again in the afternoon. So it, and he tried it on his first, the first time in the fall season, they went from Germany up to Norway and it was like 30 hours. And he was dying. He said, those trips are long, but he said it with the human charger was fantastic. He said, I'd use it whenever I needed it. And it was great. And I slept well and such and so forth.

So for athletics, the scientist and the engineer did some studies at the University of Finland, and they did them with the Finnish pro hockey teams. And they found that because in an arena, like it would be for basketball, volleyball, hockey, the light, overhead light, is only about 1,200 to 1,500 lux. So it's not very, which is about,

the amount of light you'd get on a cloudy day. On a sunny day, if you look at a light chart, a sunny day can be upwards of 75 to 100,000 lux, which is bright. you get, you you just feel different on a sunny, bright, sunny day, right? So they did these studies and they found that the hockey players, their psychomotor speed, which is what we call reaction time, was sped up.

Gary Miller (01:09:23.75)

And for athletes, I go back to that 1 % thing again. So many sports, not so much the team sports, but the individual sports, somebody will win by 0.01.

That's it's nothing. That's that's a that's a pinky finger or something. You know, I mean, that's crazy. And and if you had something that was holistic, it wasn't a drug that wasn't something that would show up in doping control. You're going to have an advantage. It's just the way it is.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:10:06.581)

the it's a natural solution. And this is going to be so relevant to anyone who is getting into a winter renowned for those who are not in Australia or on the other side of the world. Winter will arrive when it arrives. So it's still relevant anyway. And and like I said earlier, the difference is so significant because say someone is doing a nine to five back in the summer time, someone might have had

daylight and some sun and at least perhaps getting some brightness until what seven maybe eight at night and there's a good few hours and so for those who do have those standard nine to fives there's literally less time in the day to get that light so that will help everybody to to just get that alertness but even the

circadian rhythm, although it's more dramatic when you have a long flight, I can see so many applications to this because over here, look, we have daylight savings where the clock changes by an hour and some people are not affected by it, but some are just totally thrown. For me, I have a very kind social group online that's based in America. I don't have it, I'm in it. And

Because of their version of daylight saving and mine, I went from it being 7am to 5am and that's a big leap. So I'm thinking, well, you know, in this day and age, so many people will have calls with people in any part of the world for work, things like that. And then you do have to be really switched on at different times. So this is going to really help people because even

We've all heard someone out there saying, I'm not a morning person. You're either a morning person or you're not, but it sounds like this could help people to just get more alert and get on with the day sooner.

Gary Miller (01:12:14.018)

It will. it's it's I mean, my wife has proved it and, you know, tens of thousands of other people have have proven it as well. And we know we're humans. We're all different, right? Some people, it works fantastic. Some people, it works great. Some people, maybe not as much. You know, I found a different way that that it sort of helps me. But for the average person,

And it's across the spectrum. mean, we've talked about jet lag. There's the other jet lag, the social jet lag, which are shift workers. Those are the people that are working at night. And again, I go back to back in time where we didn't have such a fast paced world and people just operated. We didn't have mobile phones and computers and all that sort of stuff. Right. Everyone sort of

followed a nine to five schedule and whatever. You didn't have that many people working at night. But now you've got warehouses and you've got data centers and you've got...

financial trading houses and you know, it used to be where you know, the stock market was during the day. Now you got night traders. We ran into one this winter. One of these athletes that uses the product, his father is a night trader in Boston and he goes to work at nine o'clock at night and works till five in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's crazy. And he says, I know it's unhealthy for me. He's

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:13:47.107)

Seriously? my gosh, I can't imagine.

Gary Miller (01:13:55.393)

We finally were able to reconnect again. And I sent him one, and I said, try it. I wanted to see what you guys, you know, and we have a protocol designed for that, okay? If you have people that have jet lag, and I don't know if I, did I send you our jet lag protocol?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:14.413)

You sent that, I looked at the emails before recording and you sent that in a PDF. Is that bundled with the product or if you want me to simply put it on the podcast website, I can do that.

Gary Miller (01:14:24.93)

Yeah, yeah, I would. mean, it's eventually what I'd really like to see is to have an app that people can just look at their phone and, you know, and figure it out from there. yeah, yeah, there's a new company called Base 44, okay? And they'll design an app for you. I mean, they can do it quickly and easily and fairly affordable.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:38.607)

I can make an app.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:54.127)

These days, Claude code can make an app. I started small. I'm revealing my secrets on the podcast here. So Claude code, I don't know if you've used Claude, but it will tell you how to. So I wanted to gradually get off my Squarespace subscriptions. I, I pay so much money every year for my websites. And so my main Melanie website, I told Claude.

Gary Miller (01:14:54.303)

the kind of money I want to spend on it right now.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:15:24.015)

I grabbed screenshots of the old site and I told it I want it to look like this. Now the coding, it looks like those old fashioned, look, I'm so not technical. If you remember the olden days when computers had just a black window with all this text on it, it's the from scratch stuff. I'll tell it, this is what I need you to do. And then it will tell me, okay, paste this code into this thing. I just paste it in.

And then it is made the site. And if I, I'll have a conversation with the robot and I'll say, look, did you realize that the menu is working on the Mac book, but not on my phone. it said, that's because it's not doing this thing for the mobile version. And so you need to paste this in and it's your own personal nerd at a drop of a hat. And it can do that for apps as well. So.

If you all want to chat, just, feel like haven't given you all enough favors, but it's like, I think that people need this information and you know, I'm trying to get more info into the members platform for the podcast as well. But this device and the jet lag, you know, people need to have access to these things. And in terms of access, I was going to mention from what I remember, the device isn't expensive either, it?

Gary Miller (01:16:50.024)

No, it's not. mean, in the US, we sell it for $179 US. And you know, this thing, it's about as simple as you can get. It's got a lithium ion battery in there that will, I don't know what you've found, but normally if I use it once a day, it'll last almost a month before I need to recharge it again. And you just plug it into any USBC and it's charged up. People are out there with...

These devices, they've had the human charger for six, seven years. it's, know, outside of maybe, you you can lose your earbud periodically and you do have replacements for that. So people can, obviously you can get replacements. But it's pretty simple. The original one that I was telling you about that was more like an iPod, it did have music. Okay. But the problem was is that

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:17:45.304)

Nice.

Gary Miller (01:17:48.276)

when you only need it for 12 minutes. Okay, it's kind of an expensive upgrade because everyone has their own music choices and their own AirPods or, you know, I use the meta glasses, which has amazing sound. my God, best thing I think I've ever had. My wife bought me a pair a year and a half ago. And honestly,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:18:04.664)

Really?

Gary Miller (01:18:15.519)

Well, and I use it as a teaching tool too, because if I'm doing, if I'm working with an athlete or something, it has 4K video in it as well. So I can film them, I can ski behind them and I can film them and then I can critique them later, which is fantastic. But they have speakers in the bows, right? And it just envelops your head in music. Yet I can still hear the birds. I can still hear traffic.

I don't have something that's going to fall out of my ear. I mean, best thing, one of the best technological pieces I've ever had in my life. It's pretty amazing. Now, in some places they're outlawed because you got those whack jobs out there that'll use the camera to photograph stuff they shouldn't be photographing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:19:08.911)

And I'm guessing people wouldn't know when someone is taking a photo.

Gary Miller (01:19:12.608)

Exactly. Yeah. And that's why they've been banned in some places. it's like, but when it comes to, and I originally thought this would be a phenomenal Apple product and apparently they are coming out with something like that, but it ended up coming out of Meta and with RayBan and it was, it's really kind of a game changer. But, you know, I digressed here. So in order to do it with music,

They would have had to, you've got to the speakers, you've got to add the Bluetooth, which has, god, I think the licensing, every year you got a licensed Bluetooth, right? So it's $15,000 or something crazy. And so they didn't want to pay that, they didn't think for 12 minutes, keep it simple as possible.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:19:52.11)

Really?

Gary Miller (01:20:07.381)

But yeah, mean, it's one of those things that kind of in our microscopic world, you know, mean, it's our world is complicated and we're running at a high pace all the time to have something that just gives you a little bit of an extra edge, whether it's athletics, whether it's somebody working the night shifts. And that works the same as jet lag, right? Because it will

reset your circadian rhythm the first couple nights. So that's what I told, you know, Neil at the Night Trader. He said just use it the first couple nights and it'll reset your rhythm to night. And then on the weekends, you go back to using it during the day and it resets your rhythm for the day. So it's pretty simple for that. But we have not, and you know, they, because Europe is...

It's so close. You you're only crossing a time zone or two. Jet lag wasn't a big factor. But from the US or even Asia and Australia, you know, those are long flights and they're hard. They're hard on the body. I mean, we have a there. He's not. He might be a night trader as well, but he there was a gentleman that. He was going from L.A. To Manila.

and he was working in the Philippines for a week and he said, I got to work at night. And he, he bought one for his boss at Christmas and the boss loved it because he was flying back and forth from LA to Taipei. And, and then he said, I've never seen a product like this. He said, this is, it's fantastic. It just keeps me completely normal. And, and, you know, for the average traveler, it's really a game changer.

But we've really pushed the jet lag thing because we have not found anybody yet that has said it didn't work for jet lag. Nothing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:22:09.069)

Wow. So for everybody, it works.

Gary Miller (01:22:15.124)

Yeah, because light is the only thing that can reset your circadian rhythm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:22:24.303)

significant. And I wanted to really acknowledge here that although this is technology, it's a fancy device, you are still being holistic. And I actually like that for most of the conversation, we talked about the essential habits, and we'll wind up in a moment. It's what you could call common sense. And this is simply adding to that to say when the world is derailing us from those common sense things and

the basics when something is getting in the way like travel or odd work hours when the modern world isn't letting us get back to what we were built for. This thing is helping in a very natural way.

Gary Miller (01:23:10.171)

It's really important. I can't emphasize enough the holistic side of it, whether it's the average person who doesn't want to be on medication. I mean, there are a lot of people that... I'll give you a good example. In the athletic side, Iga Svajtek, Polish tennis player, right? She's number three in the world, one of the best tennis players.

And it was probably a year, year and a half ago. She took some melatonin. Melatonin people, a lot of people take melatonin, right? It gets asleep at night. It was tainted. So she went to a tournament. You got to pee in the cup and she got flagged by doping control. And of course, then she has to hire a bank of attorneys to go fight the WADA, the World Anti-Doping Association, because they wanted to suspend her for.

a simple product like melatonin that was tainted somehow. Maybe it was made in a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility that had another product that was banned by the anti-doping association. That's a huge hiccup. Then, of course, she has to deal with the fallout of, is she doping? Is she taking stuff that she shouldn't be taking? And it traced it back to this melatonin.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:24:37.997)

The image cost, there are so many costs to that.

Gary Miller (01:24:38.047)

Simple. Oh. Terrible. Terrible. OK, here's another one. Jet lag. When I went back to the women's US ski team in 2014 and I was coaching the ladies tech team, is which was Michaela Schifrin, the best ski racer in the world. We are in Copper Mountain, Colorado in November.

And the first race of the year is usually the third weekend in November in Levi, Finland. Okay. And Levi is north of the Arctic circle. So it's dark by that time. It's dark. I mean, the sun comes up at about 10 cruises along the horizon and it drops at about two. So it's, dark and it's cold and it's, it's typical Finland, right? So the head coach, I worked under the head coach.

He wanted to leave three days before. And I said, that's not enough time. I said, we got to go five days. He goes, no, we can't afford five days because with trainings too good in Colorado. I said, this isn't about the training. It's about the race. can't go that short a period of time in the winter months where you have issues, right? Sometimes with travel. No, I lost the argument because I'm not the head coach. So we fly to Boston and what do you have? A blizzard.

So we get delayed by weather. And by the time we ended up in Levy, it was the night before the race. And she was hammered. This is a race she's won now, I think.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:26:15.567)

Darn.

Gary Miller (01:26:22.452)

By now, I think it's eight or nine times. But she was hammered. And then the other two girls that were with us were hammered as well. And nobody performed. I think it was the worst race she has had in that event, the slalom event, since she's been skiing. And I think she was seventh or something like that. And she was really upset about it. And her parents were upset about it. And I said, you just don't have enough time to, you can't, your body can't catch up.

and you have a high performance level. And of course, for her, being the best ski racer in the world, she's a highly paid athlete. That, that race and not ending up on the podium probably cost her six figures.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:27:10.251)

It's significant. So we need to listen to the energy and the patterns that we need to perform well.

Gary Miller (01:27:11.763)

significant.

Gary Miller (01:27:20.935)

If you knew the numbers, and I wish I had them in front of me right now, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars that are lost due to a lack of productivity from jet lag. They've done studies on this. It's staggering. So if you're a business executive and you're flying anywhere, whether it's to Asia, whether it's to Europe, Australia, it doesn't matter.

If you're gonna fly that distance and you're gonna go into the boardroom the next day, you're not gonna be at 100%. I will guarantee it. It's not possible unless you plan ahead, use this, even if you were in the boardroom and you used this every two hours, you're gonna be way ahead of everybody else.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:28:07.321)

That's the thing, do the things to get ahead. And we talked about doing the hard things. We can use what's available to step up.

Gary Miller (01:28:18.291)

Yeah, can drink yourself, you can drink like a fish with coffee and energy drinks in the boardroom, but you're gonna crash big time and then you're not worthwhile the next day. Stuff like this is so simple. Okay, it's so easy to use and it's affordable and it fits in a little pouch that you can throw in your purse, your backpack, your pocket.

It doesn't matter. And here's the kicker, Melanie.

The sad lamp business globally is $500 to $600 million a year, and it's growing at 6 to 8%, which tells you that, people are struggling with, whether it's jet lag or it's long working hours or night shift or just a winter depression. OK, that's how big the market is. And yet, this is the modern day answer.

You know, that's it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:29:22.985)

People don't know. And they want it, they need it. So when I, sorry, when I mentioned to people, and we'll wind up, it's been an hour and a half, and I don't normally do podcasts for hours on end, but it's like, there's so much to talk about. We almost need a fourth and fifth episode. But when I mentioned light therapy, people assume that I mean those, do you know those masks? I don't even know what people do with them. The mask you put over your face. People assume it's that.

And so a few times lately I've pulled out my device and I'm showing people it's literally just this little thing. People don't realize, yes, that there's a solution. And also people don't realize just how compact it is.

Gary Miller (01:30:07.495)

It's the perfect solution. I mean, it's like going back and saying to your car dealer, I'm buying a new car, but can you wire a phone in for me? You know, where the phones used to be in the center console and it had a cord and you, or going, remember the Motorola brick, right? You had this big brick phone, you know, it's like, wait a minute, that's like buying a sad lamp.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:30:24.344)

Yes!

Gary Miller (01:30:34.919)

No, you buy the modern day version of this. It's so simple. It's, you know, now, and of course the sad lamp market has grown, right? Because they're coming out with, you can do it on your iPhone or you can do it on a little thing like this that doesn't have enough power to have any effect on you at all. It's a scam.

Simple. Yeah, it's just, it's crazy. And, you know, people are always willing or wanting to save a buck here and a buck there. But at the end of the day, of all the things I've seen in my lifetime, it's probably one of the more remarkable things because it's just, it's so effective and it's so efficient to use. you know, it's just, and thanks to you to doing podcasts like this, hopefully we can spread the word and...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:31:00.003)

Interesting.

Gary Miller (01:31:30.226)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:31:32.463)

Absolutely. And I'm keen to tell more people about it. It's so great that you have been detailing what this does and how you are genuinely approaching this from a holistic perspective of valuing health and wanting people to use resources wisely instead of using excessive painkillers beyond what's healthy, beyond... Instead of people using loads of sugar and so on,

You're finding a responsible way for people to help themselves. So thank you for that.

Gary Miller (01:32:04.862)

Yeah, you're welcome. That's the key. you get, I don't know, for me, you get to this point in life and just giving back so that people can understand how to live a healthier life is so important to me. It's not the, obviously I'm selling a product, but I get hit up by a lot of AI marketers and they're like, oh, we can kill it. It's not a matter of.

just money. This is about somebody's well-being. And there are so many bad things out there. You've got to have something good that can really have an impact, for sure. That's key.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:32:52.015)

Absolutely. Thanks for being on the show again.

Gary Miller (01:32:55.794)

Thank you very much, Melanie. It was a pleasure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:32:58.969)

I'm so glad. I'll click stop.