EFR 513: How Psilocybin Improved My HRV by 40%, Mental Health, Resting Heart Rate and Total Recovery in 30 Days

*please note timestamps are not accurate for this episode

[00:00] Hey, what's going on everybody, I'm your host Chase Chewning and in today's solo episode of Ever Forward Radio, I am breaking down for you exactly what I did, and why and the results that I got of one month of using psilocybin, this is my one month protocol of using magic mushrooms. Hey, what's going on everybody, welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in here today. If you're tuning in for the first time, this is a little bit of a rarity, I normally do interview style, I have a guest on my show and we talk all things fitness, nutrition mindset, a little bit of entrepreneurship, a little bit of military with my background and I don't do solo episodes that often. Honestly, I would love to get back to them and I would really appreciate your feedback here if you find my personal experience, my kind of testimony here of what I'm going to be talking about of using psilocybin in for a month. If you find this valuable if this interests you, if you'd like to learn more about the things that I do the things that I'm testing in my diet, my nutrition, my supplements, my workouts, my relationships, if you would like more of my personal insight and experience, I would be more than happy to come back on here and share more of these longer format episodes. If you want to kind of get a daily dose of what I'm doing, how I'm training, how I spend my days, my sleep habits, my supplements, my nutrition, a lot of these things, I go into great detail and you can see a lot of in my Instagram, really. My Instagram is kind of just my digital journal, it is what I use to share things that add value to my life that helped me feel my best, perform my best but also you're going to see things that deviate that and I'm going to get into it here in the episode but some of the biggest deviations from me in terms of my overall wellness come from when I do not prioritize downtime, when I do not prioritize my mental health or when I have a significant life event, and how it kind of just really, really intervenes like it often does, but more specifically, how it kind of deviates my physiological state, my mental state. I am all for paying attention to the body and that qualitative state that qualitative feedback of truly how do we feel, and what makes us feel better what makes us feel worse in life, but I love to track things. I've been using the boot device the whoop 3.0 activity tracker for about two years now. I am on my third Apple Watch. Actually, I've been an Apple Watch wearable user for pushing five years. I have logged My Fitness Pal, I don't normally I don't really do this anymore, but I have a food log going back to like 2009. So data, quantitative data, logging things, tracking things you know, having wearables to give me back information on top of paying attention to my body, my mental state, my physical state have really allowed me to kind of marry these two worlds together and just guide pretty much every daily decision of my life. I'm not obsessed with it. I don't keep myself married to one modality, one paradigm one belief system, one workout, one diet. I am I'm just open for the journey because I'm 35 years old and I have gone through a lot of things I've gone through a lot of mental health issues, a lot of physical health issues. I've done pretty much every diet you can imagine. I've trained every which way you can imagine and now 35 years later, really, I'd say about 15 years later into my health and fitness journey I'm just in the place where I'm very happy. I'm very in tune with my body. It lets me know what it likes what it doesn't, but I still appreciate some tracking and kind of just measuring certain things so that I can really double down on things that work and know why and then you know, leave the things off my plate quite literally sometimes when they don't serve me and that's what I would encourage you all to do here today is to just hopefully pull out some of the information here that I'm going to share with you that worked for me, me and my body and my lifestyle and my everything, but just know that there is some anecdotal experience here, but also some clinical evidence, there are things that just can work when applied in different ways for you and if you just pay attention for the short term and long enough, you might, you might get some similar benefits. So that is my goal here today with this episode and if you would like to learn more, like I said, simply just follow me on Instagram @chase_chewning, I will make sure to link that down in the show notes for you if you want to get more of my day to day interactions of my health and my wellness. And then if you enjoy this one, and you want more of this long format stuff, like I said, I'd be more than happy to hop back on here and go into length on specifics like my sleep routine, sleep, health, diet, training, anything and everything. I would love your feedback and let me know what would be a value to you.

[05:50] So that being said, I'm going to jump into I'm going to be talking about I'm let me backtrack real quick. What I'm not going to be doing in this episode is I'm not going to be sharing my first experience with psilocybin, I'm not going to be sharing why I waited so long to try anything like this and how but I'm going to save that for another episode. Just know that going into this protocol, I'm gonna be talking about my psilocybin protocol. My two day on one day off usage supplementation with psilocybin for a month; why I did it, how I did it exactly what was in the dose that I got, what were the ingredients, my experience, mostly my physiological experience, but also my mental one as well. I have known just know this that I have tried before this month long protocol, I have tried intentionally and recreationally psilocybin many, many, many times before this. I am a little late to the game here and this is psychedelic world. But for me the use of psychedelics, the use of psilocybin and other psychedelics started about late last summer, I would say fall actually, we're close to fall 2020 so I'm just now barely not even a year into this as I'm recording this live here in middle of August 2021. So that's my timeline. That's my background. And now this is exactly what I used in the results that I got with my psilocybin month long protocol. 

[07:53] Okay, all right, let's talk all things mushrooms. And just so you know, there are so many different varieties of mushrooms there are, I'm not even gonna pretend to know to be the expert there but I am going to list down basically everything that I referenced here on the show, I'm going to list down in the show notes. So if you go to the show notes on whichever platform you're listening, you can scroll down and under episode resources, I will have all of this linked. Now I'll probably have that it all consolidated into one link so you just need to tap the link and go to the episode's main website. So it's going to be actually I should probably know this by now let me go to I'm gonna go to my website here right now as I'm recording this live and the live link that this will be is going to be in go to www.chasechewning.com/podcast/episode/513. Now I'll link this down in the show notes. Like I said, I will have on the main website on all of this clinical evidence, all the links all the references, I'm going to be talking about whoop, because that's what I use to measure my biomarkers particularly to HRV I'll have that all linked down in the show notes for you. So if you want to dive in more to the research there, that's what it's for. And before I get into the psychedelic aspect, I want to highlight just mushrooms in general, functional mushrooms, adaptogenic mushrooms, just mushrooms have been a part of my routine, my supplementation, my diet for pushing wow maybe six years by now. I have been using them ever since discovering them from one of my friends and mentors in the podcasting space in the health and fitness space Sean Stephenson. He hosts the model health show. And he would always talk about lion's mane and Reishi and cordyceps and I was just like, what is what is that? What are you talking about? What do you mean you take mushrooms like with salt on the side of your steak at dinner? I don't get it like Portobello and little did I know there are so many different classifications of mushrooms. There's culinary, they're psychedelic, there's functional. And so I started using functional mushrooms because I just I honestly I trusted him, I was looking more into the research and I just was blown away of the incredible studies I was seeing of how is helping people with cancer and immunocompromised nation and inflammatory markers and even being looked at as a possible way to prevent and thwart and slightly even reverse things like Alzheimer's and dementia. And so I was just like, wow, this science is irrefutable. And then I tried them. And whoa, one of the most immediately noticeable things I've ever done in my life, there are certain, you know, foods or practices or even supplements that you'll take in, like, okay, I'm feeling it, or I think I'm feeling it, or you kind of take because you know, the science is there and just having it in our bodies for longevity is very, very good. But I promise you, I'm telling you, I haven't met anybody that has had a different experience than me, when it comes to particularly Reishi, when it comes to Lion's Mane when it comes to cordyceps. These are three functional mushrooms that I take daily, and I've been using them for years, and they are just so noticeable right away, and they do exactly what they're gonna say. So before getting into psilocybin, I have been very used to my body has been very used to using mushrooms. 

[11:33] So let me highlight a couple ones real quick that I love that I use the most. So when it comes to wanting to boost my energy, and when something rich antioxidants, when I want to just, you know, perform and feel my best and even aid in recovery there is one in particular that I'm reaching for, and that's cordyceps. Cordyceps has been widely studied in use for its cardiovascular benefits for its endurance benefits and what it does, it's a natural vasodilator, meaning when you take it, it helps your blood vessels naturally expand. So it's a vasodilator, it helps them open up more fully and so what does that mean? Well, if your vessels are opening up more fully, that means it has more surface area really more and more area in there for blood to flow. So if you can have more area for blood to flow, that means you get more blood to flow. And more blood flowing means what well, that means a lot more transportation of nutrients of blood of oxygen in particular, this is also a natural nitric oxide booster. So think about this if you're reaching for a pre workout or honestly as a pre workout or even a recovery agent because when you're recovering from training or hard day or a workout or whatever you want increased blood flow increased oxygen to all those muscles you just trained. So I love cordyceps as a pre workout. I love it as a post workout and honestly just for its overall cardiovascular benefits. It's caffeine free, but it is a very, very noticeable energy booster. That coupled with Reishi is something that I take honestly throughout the day now. Reishi has a lot of known benefits for calming it helps naturally, it's clinically proven to lower cortisol levels in the body so it helps lower stress in the body. I love taking a higher dose of Reishi in the evening, to help lower my stress from the day, to help me calm my mind and my body so that I can ease into a great night's sleep. And then my third favorite one is going to be Lion's Mane. This is another one that I use pretty much every damn day. Lion's Mane is a natural nootropic Lions mane mushroom is one that actually crosses that blood brain barrier and you feel it just lights your neurons up like a frickin Christmas tree. Talk about improved memory cognition focus flow, it actually has been clinically proven to lead to neurogenesis, when in consistent use. Neurogenesis means the creation of new neural pathways, the creation of new neurons. So not only does it enhance the connections in neurons that you already have, but over time, it will create new ones. So think about this. Think about your you're sitting down to do your work, you're going to do a workout or you're just you want to do something that you want to be very, very present for you want to have energy for you want to be very focused and in tune. Well imagine doing that and that process becomes easier, you will get more in flow, while at the same time your body your brain in particular is able to lay down new connections to make every time you come back to that activity easier. That's exactly what happens when you do something your brain if it has never done it before. It is having to lay down the connections. It has to lay down new neuro pathways to direct your body, your limbs. You need to know how to navigate that and if you've never done it before, if you've never experienced that experience before, it seems foreign, right? It's like when you pick up your toothbrush to brush your teeth with your non dominant hand, or you think about it this way, when you just drive to and from work or a common place you visit every day. You don't really have to think about it right? Well, it's because your brain has already done that so many times, it just goes on autopilot but imagine this, there's construction and you get detoured. Well, you have to pay attention a lot more you find yourself like, oh, my God, what's going on? Where do I go? Where do I turn? And that's because your brain has never laid down that connection before. So imagine having something in your system having something in your brain that would make that experience smoother, you would be more aware all throughout you have more clean sustained energy without the caffeine without a central nervous system debt to pay later. And then in doing so, your brain is doubling down on those connections so that if you need to do that again, it's like hey, you know what, we got it. We've been here before we got you bro. So cordyceps, Reishi and Lion's Mane are three functional mushrooms that I take and I use all the time. They have phenomenal just holistic and longevity benefits for our total health and wellness but also when taking taken acutely and taking specifically for pre workout for energy in the afternoon for brain boosting power for calming down in the evening or honestly you can take Reishi anytime and help you just calm down and lower cortisol throughout the day. That's what I'm talking about. I love mushrooms. I love these three in particular, and all three are found in three of my favorite products from Organifi.

[19:47] Okay, all right, let's talk magic mushrooms. Let's talk psilocybin. I want to preface this by saying first and foremost as of August 12 2021 when I'm recording this psilocybin is federally illegal. It is federally illegal, but in many states it has been decriminalized. Now, before we go any further, I want to just make that statement that psilocybin is an illegal substance. So however you want to go about your pursuit of psilocybin whether that's studying it researching and trying it yourself, just know the ramifications just know your parameters here before diving in. To my knowledge, Portland up in Oregon is the only state and only city I think that has made it legal it's federally, I should probably let me double check this real quick. It is Oregon has become the first state to legalize magic mushrooms that is correct. And they did so honestly, not that long ago, this was like late 2020. So other than that, certain states have decriminalized it meaning there are just lower, lower prosecution rate there are lower penalties for if you have it, if you are consuming it, selling it, buying it growing it all of these things. I'm no expert here. This is not a legal breakdown of psilocybin just know that. Just know that know what you're getting yourself into here. Okay. And so especially if you are going to be trying psilocybin in any way, shape or form to absolutely make sure you are doing your due diligence, doing your research, you have a very, very trusted resource should you choose to go down that route. Just know that it is a legal and probably just decriminalized one depending on your state.

[21:29] So here is exactly the protocol that I use using my psilocybin. I'm going to read you off the ingredients than the doses and then I'm going to get into how I took it and the results that I got. Alright, let's go. So I used one that the protocol was two days on one day off and it was 20 capsules. So about a month, I would do one day on one day on one day off, one day on one day on one day off, and the ingredients here in each capsule. And my product here is organic, it is vegan and gluten free. And it contains 200 micrograms of vitamin D3 50 milligrams of oxitriptan which is also known as 5HTP, 50 milligrams of shilat I'm probably butchering some of these names I'm sorry, guys. It is known as a Himalayan antioxidant. Also, it has one milligrams of longlac. This is used for stress management and lowered inflammation. It has 100 milligrams of Lion's Mane extract. There's that Lion's Mane again, I was telling you this is used for clarity, focus and immunity. 100 milligrams of cordyceps, see what I am talking about these mushrooms they live together harmoniously functional mushrooms, psychedelics, they want 100 milligrams of cordyceps used for energy and athletic performance. It also has 100 milligrams of acoppamonllari extract, this is used for focus and cognitive balance. And then the psilocybin, this is the key ingredient here in this little guy, this has 165 milligrams, we're calling golden magic, the golden messenger is a strain of psilocybin here, and this is the flow state guide. This is the psychedelic aspect and I wow let me just tell you, from the very first dose, the very first day, I knew that my body was in for a wild ride, and I knew that I was going to be experiencing things that were just profound. And with micro dosing, it is such a small, small dose, and I wonder I'm gonna make this disclaimer, I wonder if my micro dose experience would have been a little bit more profound through the lens of the psychedelic aspect of like maybe, maybe, maybe mild hallucinations, or maybe just a little bit of just the visual aspects that come with higher dose of psychedelics if I had never before taken psychedelics, if I had never before taking higher doses of psilocybin, it's just like, the first time you take anything, right, your first cup of coffee ever hits you pretty damn hard, because you've never experienced it before. Your body has no association to what is going on. How do I metabolize this? Is this going into my gut? Is it crossing the blood brain barrier? You're making new neural connections with this experience. So I do wonder if I had never taken psilocybin before if I would have had a little bit more of that heightened elated state, so to speak from psychedelics from this micro dose protocol, but I did not. And I don't have this exact data. Actually, I'm gonna make this note on my next protocol. I will be doing this again. But I wonder if there would have been profound difference if I taken it the exact same time of day every time that I was on, if I taken it on an empty stomach versus with food? Now I did play around with my protocol here within the first week, just like you know, I treated this as any other supplement, right? I did pay attention to if I take this on an empty stomach, does it bother my stomach? Do I take it with coffee with or without caffeine? Do I take it in the morning in the afternoon? Do I take it on days when I'm going to work out? It was there were a lot of new variables but I can tell you looking back that pretty much consistently I was taking it within the first probably, I'll say two to four hours of being awake my morning routine. I pretty much I'm waking up and nothing goes into my body other than water and like electrolytes and my super greens within the first hour, I don't have caffeine for the first hour, I'm awake. So I would normally wait until I was ready to go for the day and then I would take it with you know my breakfast and or my multivitamin the morning and on my first cup of coffee. Taking it on an empty stomach did not bother me at all this particular product and I did find that the way that I loved it the most the most sensation I got was actually after I had kind of my go to coffee if I'm not having strong coffee, strong Coffee Company, if I was out of a strong coffee at the time, which is organic coffee, packed with collagen, hyaluronic acid L-theanine, coconut water extract. So it has a little bit of some calories in there. So it's not just like a pure black cup of coffee. Other than that, I would have a double espresso with a little bit of honey, a light bit of, of honey, and some MCT oil powder. And I would normally have that before any meal. And I would take that with my micro dose. And I can tell you that combination of waking up getting some morning physical activity like always my morning routine, taking the dog out getting some sunshine getting like 10-15 minutes, ideally at least have sunshine. Then chugging water, I have 32 ounces of water every morning. And then after that I have my super greens powder. From Legion athletics, I use their Genesis, I use element coupled with that I use that is sodium, magnesium, potassium, I take a prebiotic powder, I use the Organifi reds. What else goes in there oh and Chaga mushroom as well for antioxidants in my immune system. So as the only thing goes into my body, and then after that about an hour to two hours later, I'm having caffeine, like I said strong coffee or I'm having that cortado having that double espresso honey and MCT oil powder and a little a little bit of almond milk. That for me was the shit; that was the best time I would take my micro dose and I was just on. I was cranked up to 11. But it was so wild because it wasn't, it wasn't like I've had too much caffeine or I've had you know too, too much of something to just give you wired, it was just a very, very heightened state of cognition and I was so in control the whole time. I felt as if I could I could shift up or I could shift down, I could downshift into just being cool, calm and collected and just present with my mind and my body and feel so many different things. Or I could shift up and just you know, I need to crank out these emails, I need to edit a podcast, I need to plan my next month, I need to just you know be in flow, uninterrupted flow from my work and productivity. And I could just go pedal to the metal or I could easily choose to shift out and just chill and relax and be present and just be in tune with my body psilocybins. And for me that was the experience I had damn near every single dose. It allowed me to just I said this on my Instagram, I was going through the protocol I have never in my life never in 35 years of being alive have I felt more in tune and more present in mind in body in my entire life than I have on this psilocybin protocol. I have never felt more connected to what my body is feeling how I'm feeling where I'm feeling it in my mind, my head and my heart have never been so connected and in tune and in sync then this month. And the best part about it for me and I've heard this from a lot of other people as well is that it didn't go away. I was two days on one day off and then I stopped for a month. And as I'm recording I'm wrapping up my month off and those benefits have stayed with me. I have I have had such neurogenesis. I've had such an ability to be present with things and my thoughts and what I want to do and what I want to create and how I'm showing up in relationships and how I'm showing up in the world and just ideas that then allow me to be present with them. But more than that allowed me to implement the change that I wanted right away so that I didn't just have a change date. I laid down new connections, I didn't just create a construction site in my brain or in my heart in my body, I actually started laying new foundation. And that has stayed with me. I am still so present. I am still so just in tune with my head in my heart. And I also which I'm going to get into in a second, the physiological benefits have been profound. I have not have, I've not had these levels of biomarkers, these high levels of biomarkers in my entire life. I don't care how long I was training how consistently how meticulous I was, with my diet and my training and my sleep, I have never had this level of consistent low resting heart rate, this level of high heart rate variability, this consistent level of high recovery rates in my entire life. And if you've been following me for any time period, or you've been listening to the show, you know that the vast majority of my day in my life is very routine. So this psilocybin in is one of only very, very few, if any other new variables in my life that I can look at as correlation and causation. So much of my life is routine, and very consistent. And I did so on purpose, especially during this protocol, because any other changes that happened during that month, I wanted to know was it the psilocybin or not and it was. 

[31:26] So let me share with you now some of the insane physiological changes that I had in my body. And what I did to use to measure these was I wore an apple watch the whole time, like always and a whoop. Now whoop is what I use predominantly to measure these changes since being on the psilocybin protocol. And predominantly, I'm looking at resting heart rate, overall recovery rate and HRV heart rate variability. And the reason why HRV is so important to look at here is because so many studies now are coming out and have come out about how the when looking at heart rate variability, it is truly the common thread it is truly the common denominator in so many other indicators for increasing or decreasing all cause mortality. Do we have comorbidities, centenarians, people that are living 100 plus years old, we are seeing a strong correlation there in terms of having a high HRV. So are they old because they have a high HRV? Or do they get a high HRV and then stay old, we're still looking at that data, but a consistently high and improving and consistently higher HRV we see has so many carryovers and correlations to what it means to just be in a more optimal state that have true wellness, mind and body. Also, it is looked at in high performing athletes, I mean, they have some of the highest HRVs in the world and that's usually looked at as a strong indicator of athletic performance, cardiovascular performance recovery, and it's something that they look at meticulously, especially for recovery in athletes and you know, people who train you know, very, very aggressively, you know, when the HRV is drops, they take that as a huge indicator of like, hey, I need to Deload now I need to take a day off or I need to lower my intensity, lower my frequency, lower my strain, it's a very, very strong indicator of how the body is adapting to change in stress. And for me, and I'm going to be sharing all this information, like I said, down in the show notes. I need to pull up here. Okay, so I have my personal whoop data up and when I look at the month of July, when I was micro dosing compared to the month of June, in the month of May actually let me backtrack a little bit here and I'll just give you show you just how my body was progressing all along. So I micro dosed in July now, back in May my average HRV was 44. Yeah, 44 Excuse me, I'm having trouble reading my own graph here and now for me a high HRV was in like the, you know, the 50s ish and no matter how hard I trained or how light I trained or my recovery, so May my overall average was 44. And that was up 7% from April. Now we look at June 2021 my average jumped up, it was good jumped up to about 55 and that was up 25% from May. In July, my average jumped up 40% my heart rate variability increased 40% to an average of 77 in July, and now that is first of all 40% increase in HRV. From one month to the next is incredible. But I was getting highs were like I said before a high HRV for me before was like 50s maybe low 60s. I am now getting HRVs consistently and I'm going to pull up right now while I'm recording this. I'm going my whoop, as of today, here, August 12 2021, my HRV today is 114. Now, the last two days before I had a very, very low HRV, mine dropped actually down into the 50s, which is very, very low for me now, but back then would have been a high, see what I am talking about adaptation. And that's because which I won't get into here at length. But I actually would say for another full length episode, my mental state, my mental health whenever that whenever I have like a hard mental health day, my emotions are just all over the place, or I'm just, you know, emotionally mentally a wreck my biomarkers dropped significantly, my body physiologically responds significantly, to my mental state. And that is because unfortunately, I lost a friend. I lost a friend of mine passed away the weekend before, and I was just very, very distraught over it and so that was indicated here, in my HRV. But before that I was having HRVs of 102, the day before that 90 for the day before that 117. Before that I was in the high 80s, 103, 92, 145, 107, 127 and it just goes on and on and on. So not only did I have significant increase a 40% increase in my HRV, the month on psilocybin but now the full month off, it has not only stayed high, but it has gotten higher. What's up with that? That's crazy. And what is so interesting to me here in preparing for this episode, I actually was trying to find on Pub Med and Google Scholar, some studies about psilocybin and HRV. And you know what i found? Absolutely nothing. Now, please, if anybody's listening and has any studies or resources on studying psilocybin, and its effects on HIV, please let me know, I'd love to look at it. But literally nothing came up, it was a no search results found, which is very interesting to me. I'm wondering if that's gonna be something soon that we can get into. So that was my experience. And I'm going to share with you a dive into more of like the science behind HRV. And just why this is so important, we're going to define our terms here. 

[37:13] So I have a few studies and references here, I'm going to link down in the show notes like I said, on the main website link, there's gonna be coming from the American Heart Association and their medical journals, also directly from whoop and I'll be linking all this down there like I said. I also have a study about the potential therapeutic effects of psilocybin coming directly from like, is from NIH here the study is from where's this guy yeah, not that long ago, 2017, in the neurotherapeutics journal. So the science is there and now it's just up to us for the personal application. So let me let me kind of slow down a little bit, catch my breath and let's dive into HRV and help you understand exactly what it is and why it's important to monitor. So, heart rate variability, or HRV, for short, is a measure of your autonomic nervous system and that means your ANS, your autonomous nervous system is just the system running in the background. It is your heart beating on its own, it is your organs functioning on their own, it is your body knowing to inhale and exhale without you having to consciously be like, inhale, exhale, okay, it is automatic. Your autonomic nervous system is widely considered one of the best objective metrics for physical fitness in determining your body's readiness to perform. So what it is, what is heart rate variability? Heart rate variability is quite literally just the variance in time between the beats of your heart. So for example, you know, a good resting heart rate average is 60 beats per minute, well, it's not actually beating 60 times per minute, like exactly on the second every second, there are little micro fluctuations in there. So within that minute, there may be you know, like a .5-.9, whatever, you know, a millisecond, a point second between those beats. And so the greater this variability is, the more ready your body is to execute at a higher level. It is really, really just a good measure between your heart, your body's adapt, adaptation, adaptability, that's a word to shift from parasympathetic, to sympathetic to shift from rest and digest, to fight or flight to be in a heightened stress state ready to go, go, go or down regulate, so you want that very variability to be as high as possible. That means if it's not, if you don't have a high HRV that typically means typically your body is actually staying in a higher stress state is wanting to just be way more boom, boom, boom that because it thinks like it needs to go it thinks it needs to perform it thinks it's being chased by a tiger or you're having so much life stress, stress, life, stress, physical stress. So the more time you can have in between there, it allows your autonomic nervous systems, your parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous systems to like be in balance with each other, so to speak. 

[40:24] so let's break down a little bit more of HRV in the autonomic nervous system. So although HRV manifests as a function of your heart rate, it actually originates from your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, which controls the involuntary aspects of your physiology, like I said, your organs, your breathing and everything, it has these two other sections, these parasympathetic and sympathetic sections. The parasympathetic nervous system, handles inputs from internal organs, digestion, all these things that your body just does on its own that you don't have to sit here and think like, okay, hair grow, okay skin heal from that cut, you know, liver break down the alcohol that I had last night, whereas the sympathetic nervous system reflects responses to things like stress and exercise and increases your heart rate. So then heart rate variability comes from these two competing branches simultaneously sending signals to your heart. If your nervous system is balanced, your heart is constantly being told to beat slower by your parasympathetic nervous system and beat faster by your sympathetic system. This causes a fluctuation in your heart rate viola HRV. 

[41:56] So what is a good kind of range? What is a good HRV? Well, first of all, let me let you know the HRV it is highly individualized, it's very, very unique, depending on your age, your weight, any pre existing conditions, your conditioning, your recovery. So just know that it is very individualized. But we can get a lot of great ranges and metrics when we track it like I said, through whoop, and I'm pulling a lot of my references and a lot of my data here from whoop. So when we look at whoop users, the same age as me, I'm 35, the typical average was about 40. And then the range was like 40, all the way up into about like slow 70-72. So when I was using whoop and tracking everything and being as healthy as possible, and living my life, my HRV according to other whoop users my same age was honestly on the very, very low end of the range. Like I said, a high for me would be 50s. A couple times I think I got in the 60s. Now, my HRV I have the HRV of a 20 year old. The 20 year old range for HRV according to whoop users here are about 62 up to about 107-108 now I was just sharing with you from a few moments ago, my HRV is in the 121, 117,100s, 90s my HRV after using psilocybins for a month, and now a month off has just changed so much I am now I'm going to make this statement here. My HRV has dropped by the age of about 15 years. I'm 35 now and I'm in the HRV range of 20 year olds. Ain't that some shit?

[44:22] So what does this all mean? Like why is this a good thing to track? And also, more importantly, why is it a sign of fitness? Why is it a sign of conditioning? Why is it a sign of your body's complete readiness to take on the day to take on your workout to take on stress? So when you have high heart rate variability, it means that your body is responsive to both sets of inputs. There's that parasympathetic and sympathetic we're talking about. This is a sign that your nervous system is in fact balanced and that your body is very capable of adapting to its environment and performing at its best. Let me say that again, very capable of adapting to its environment and performing at its best. Psilocybin has hands down for me been the greatest training aid, the greatest life hack, the greatest supplement, the greatest routine thing I have done to contribute to increasing my body's ability and capability of adapting to its environment and performing at its best, the data is irrefutable here, my personal experience is irrefutable. On the other hand here, if you have low heart rate variability, one branch is dominating, usually the sympathetic and sending stronger signals to your heart than the other. There are times when this is a good thing, like in fact, if you're running a race, and you want your body to focus on allocating resources to your legs, that's sympathetic, if you want to be very, very specific with I need to go I need to just suck it up, I need to embrace the suck, so to speak, I'm training, I'm racing, I'm performing, I'm gonna just high stress state and you know it and you're conscious and you're, and you're choosing that, well, that's a little bit different. Okay. So however, if you're not doing something active, if you're not choosing to be in that state, a low HRV indicates your body is working hard for some other reasons. Like you're dehydrated, you could be just fatigued, you could be overtraining, you could be overstressed, you could be sick, and not know it and more importantly, all these things can be happening in you're not giving your body enough time to recover. If you're having all these things happen, and you're not like downshifting, you're not taking training off, you're not taking time off work, you're not getting out in nature, you're not focusing on your breath, focusing on your sleep, your body needs to recover and this is where it's going to stay dominant if you don't let it recover. So to look at it another way, the less the one branch is dominating the other, the more room there is for the sympathetic. So this is why a high HRV suggests that you're fit and ready to go and there are so many studies, like I said, I'm gonna have all this link down in the show notes. I'm gonna begin to wrap up here, but just, I was just blown away, and I'm continually continuously blown away at my body's profound changes after being on psilocybin. My resting heart rate also has dropped. Now my averages stay between, like 50-52 to like 55 ish. I'm in like the low 50s. Whereas before, I'm just scrolling back through my data, actually, I was in like the high 50s and even 60s, actually, wow, yeah, I'm scrolling back to early July, before I started my protocol, and even June, I was, like 58-60-60-57-57-56-60-61. Now I'm in the low 50s. So if someone were to objectively look at my whoop data, just on my resting heart rate, my recovery rate and my HRV alone, I would be willing to bet that they would bet that this is a highly conditioned, highly trained, high performing athlete who performs at high levels, but also prioritizes, rest, recovery, sleep. Now, I would not say that I am a high performing athlete. Here's what I train three to four times a week, and I currently am going to F45 and I'm doing functional fitness for about 45 minutes you could say high intensity interval training, a couple of the sessions are more cardio based. But I've been doing that from earlier this year about February. And that did yield a few different changes in my biomarkers, of course, I went from being kind of sedentary from COVID to F45, functional fitness, it's pretty intense sometimes and so that did give me a little bump in HRV. It helped my recovery. But I am not an athlete, I am not just doing I'm not doing two a days, I'm not pushing myself, you know, to the limits because I don't need to and I don't want to. I do prioritize my sleep and lately, through whoop data, I have been very, very guided to prioritizing more of off time and rest days for my mental health. The only significantly different variable here has been psilocybin. It has been this protocol of psilocybin of cordyceps of lion's mane and all these other amazing ingredients that have just profoundly changed my brain and my body and so my whole point in sharing with you all this is just total transparency, total honesty, in what I'm doing in my life. I have found such immense value and sharing my experiences and my health and my wellness, on this podcast and on social media and the whole goal beyond that is to just be a resource to help you extract information and things maybe that you want to consider that you want to further study and maybe even try for your own self. If you have any questions whatsoever about psilocybin, about my protocol, about any of my experience, please DM me on Instagram @chase_chewning I will link that down in the show notes or you can email me, I'll put this out here as well chase@everforwardradio.com and I will gladly make time to explain more of this. I am going to again link all of these studies and information in my whoop data down in the show notes and you guys can see for yourself, this has changed my life. And what I didn't get into here particularly is the immense mental and emotional change states that I have, that I have had since being on psilocybin. It is just I think, honestly, that's a whole other episode. So much just new awareness and revelations and feelings and past traumas and just how I'm showing up in the world. I could do a whole other episode about like the mental emotional state but I was just so blown away at the numbers here and I'm so grateful to whoop for having this technology to help me track this information. It's just it's just incredible. So that is a wrap. Thank you so much everybody.