Watch the full video of our conversation on the Spread Great Ideas YouTube channel.

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Full Transcript of Our Conversation

Introduction to Shawn Wells and His Background

00:00:01 – Brian David Crane

Hello, and please welcome my friend, Sean Wells to the show. He’s known as the most trusted voice in supplements after formulating over a thousand plus supplements and having patented 40 or more unique compounds.

00:00:13 – Brian David Crane

He’s also known for the catchphrase, “Caffeine is dead,” which we’ll get into, especially as it relates to his energy drink company update. When Shawn and I met in 2018, he was living outside of Dallas, Texas, and in a marriage he wasn’t particularly happy with.

00:00:26 – Brian David Crane

Nowadays, he’s moved on, literally and metaphorically, to a much happier relationship and to Dripping Springs, outside of Austin, Texas. So today, we’re gonna jam on big pharma, supplements, psychedelics, what it means to be a formulator, habit trackers, biohacking his book, and what an average day looks like for Shawn.

00:00:45 – Brian David Crane

Shawn, I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for making time, welcome.

00:00:48 – Shawn Wells

Oh, thank you. I’m excited for this episode after that lead-in. Like, I would listen to this one for sure.

00:00:55 – Brian David Crane

Cool. I was just reading a bit from you on LinkedIn, where you’re talking about Ozempic. I want to quote what you said from the jump. It says like when talking about Ozempic said, we’re experimenting on a population level with these drugs right now, 15% of the United States has tried them and the billions involved in the drug sale. Are you involved in the drug sale? Are you surprised? I’m not. We’ll be gaslit into oblivion when there’s so much money for them, i.e. The big pharma.

00:01:21 – Brian David Crane

Yeah. It would be hurting those profits. The machine’s been wrapped with thousands of attorneys’ packs and payoffs in Congress. It’s not surprising to me at all, especially given that congressmen, on average, make more from big pharma than their average annual government salary spicy. I like it.

00:01:41 – Shawn Wells

It’s a little sassy, but they do on average.

00:01:43 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:01:44 – Shawn Wells

I don’t know if you know this, but the average is about $450,000 per congressman from Big Pharma. So whose interest do you think they have in mind? Also, I don’t know if you know this, but they spend about 70% to 80% of their day trying to get more money for their next campaign.

00:02:04 – Brian David Crane

Hmm. I did not know that. I did not know either one of those.

00:02:05 – Shawn Wells

And not working on behalf of us, but like not doing the things that need to be done, but trying to get money for the next campaign, either for directly for themselves or for their party or for these special interest groups but there’s very little work being done by congressmen on average. It’s very frustrating.

00:02:29 – Brian David Crane

So what, um I was watching the the RFK confirmation hearings when he was coming in as HHS and you know Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were going after him. What is their relationship like? And not to make it political, but like, why is it that they would be willing to take money from Big Pharma?

00:02:54 – Brian David Crane

And how does RFK’s stance on some of this stuff fit into the bigger picture in terms of why is it a threat to big pharma?

00:03:03 – Shawn Wells

You know, Bernie is someone I kind of respected through the years as someone who’s kind of anti-establishment, even though he may not reflect my views.

00:03:17 – Shawn Wells

But interestingly, yeah, but interestingly, RFK pushed back on that aspect, and it’s something I didn’t know about.

00:03:19 – Brian David Crane

He seemed principled to.

00:03:26 – Shawn Wells

For example, Joe Rogan, prior to kind of backing Trump RFK, I think he would have just backed RFK directly, had RFK finished in a primary. But Joe Rogan was actually a fan of Bernie, but interestingly, talking about that he did have a campaign funded at least in part by Big Pharma is an interesting…

00:03:44 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:03:56 – Shawn Wells

Development for sure. So who do I think RFK is? He’s definitely not the loon or the kook that he gets portrayed as. I watched a documentary that talked about how like the media machine is spun up to take down people like that are anti-establishment or anti-special interest or anti-big pharma or what have you in. And the primary motive that they have is to make them look like just have no credibility, right?

And so to make and in particular, make them look silly or loony or crazy. This is like part of their playbook. There’s literally, PR agencies that work for celebrities and politicians and athletes to help them recover, but there’s also PR agencies that tear people down.

00:05:01- Shawn Wells

That is their whole purpose.

00:05:01 – Brian David Crane

Just for character assassination. Yeah.

The Impact of Nutrition on Mental and Physical Health

00:05:03 – Shawn Wells

Character assassination. Yeah, exactly. So they tried to do that to RFK, but RFK is just not bought. And I love that he is pushing back hard on this establishment that’s clearly funded by these special interests in big pharma, big food, big AG, like all these subsidized, intertwined governments.

00:05:30 – Shawn Wells

It’s just gross.

00:05:34 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:05:34 – Shawn Wells

And we all know it’s gross. We all don’t know exactly how it works, but we also know it’s wrong. There’s something deeply flawed about it. And so with RFK, he’s never been anti-vaccine.

00:05:49- Shawn Wells

He’s been showing me data, that’s clear.

00:05:52 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:05:53 – Shawn Wells

And that kind of approach is what we need. The stuff is getting fast-tracked and pushed out and funded by taxpayers that are making big pharma billions to trillions of dollars and we don’t know what’s happening on the population level. Like I said, it was vaccines during COVID, but now it’s Ozempic. And I’m not saying, Ozempic or these GLP-1 receptor agonists are necessarily bad. What I’m saying is we’re looking at what’s happening on a population level with very little data that exists prior to.

And they’re talking about putting children on these things. And we know one of the things that’s happening here, Brian, is that with GLP-1 receptor agonists, it works on this, it affects like GIP, it affects incretin, if people listening know what that is, and it actually slows down the transit of food through the gastrointestinal tract. And what’s important that we actually now understand about muscle protein synthesis is it’s not about how much protein purely, or even if people really know this deep dive, how much leucine, a key immune amino acid in protein that turns on muscle protein synthesis.

It’s not about absolute numbers. It’s about how quickly they spike in plasma to turn on muscle protein synthesis, which means turning on muscle creation and maintenance. And what we’re seeing is it’s slowed down so much that it’s slowing down the creation or the protection of muscle. And while people are losing weight, they’re also losing a ton of muscle, a disproportionate amount of muscle.

And then what we also know is that bone needs the weight of the muscle to maintain bone mineral density. And so we’re also seeing not only sarcopenia, which is massive muscle loss, but we’re seeing osteopenia where there’s bone loss. And these are happening at rates that don’t make sense with just the caloric restriction alone. Then we’re talking about having five-year-olds, and six-year-olds on these drugs and it is paid for by insurance.

This is a frightening thing idea because it can massively affect or stunt their growth and brain development, but certainly their physical development or even affect their ability to maybe even get into puberty. We may start seeing children with sarcopenia and osteopenia. It’s crazy that we have to look at this.

00:08:57 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:08:58 – Shawn Wells

We have to have someone say, let’s look at rational data and what the outcomes are over profits. And right now that is not being looked at.

00:09:08 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:09:11- Shawn Wells

And just like we saw massive spikes, like thousands of percent in cardiomyopathy with the vaccines, and we were gaslighted to believe that’s not a real thing. And now it’s very clear it was a real thing and real people died because of damage to the heart muscle. And the same with what’s happening now. I’m not saying these drugs are bad. I think they have a place.

Do we understand the dose? Do we understand the impact? Do we understand the bio-individuality for all of these things? And those are things we just don’t know. And when they’re being applied to 15% of the population in the U.S., how many? What is that?

00:09:51- Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:09:55 – Shawn Wells

Like 40 million or something like it’s a lot of people. And it’s only growing. And we have yet to even discover the downstream side effects are.

00:10:07- Brian David Crane

And I think that the financial incentives to not discover what the downstream side effects are, there’s two big ones that come to mind. One is the pharmaceutical companies, as they advertise, they’re advertising primarily in mainstream sources, mainstream media, television, whatnot. So they fund, implicitly fund, let’s call it at least neutral coverage or they don’t cover the stories that are negative for the pharma companies relative to they would cover other industries that aren’t paying their bills to keep the CBS, ABC and NBC their lights on.

And you have what you were talking about earlier, the congressional setup is such that the lobbyists are so embedded, the money is so embedded in the congressional setting that it’s like not – you know, senators and congressmen are not incentivized to really go after pharma for some of the second-order effects of 15 percent of the population taking this drug, for instance.

And that’s one of the things that RFK has talked about is like just trying to get the money out of like direct – direct-to-consumer advertising, trying to get it off – or make it more transparent in terms of who’s paying for what because then you start to see the biases more.

I want to ask you, like how did you wind up giving a damn about this and like your path? Because you and I both had grown up in military families. Like your path through UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina, All the way to where you’re at now.

Yeah, great questions. And just to add to what you’re saying, the whole thing is like if you were to watch anywhere from Fox News to MSNBC and anything in between, you’re going to watch about half the commercials from big pharma.

So do you think whether you’re extreme liberal left or you’re extreme Republican conservative right, it’s all funded by big pharma.

00:12:06 – Brian David Crane

Crazy.

00:12:18 – Shawn Wells

And no matter what your political values, all these parties are controlled by big pharma.

00:12:24 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:12:26 – Shawn Wells

So think about this. And you think they’re going to say anything bad? Like you said, when they’re paying for the.. to keep the lights on.

00:12:30 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:12:33 – Shawn Wells

And when mainstream media like CNN is like getting 10% of the views of a Joe Rogan.

00:12:33 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:12:39 – Shawn Wells

I mean, think about it. Just like, think about that right now. But..

00:12:44 – Brian David Crane

Think about who’s less biased and who has less implicit bias as a result. Yeah, please go.

Shawn’s Journey with Biohacking and Self-Experimentation

00:12:51 – Shawn Wells

Yeah, no. So far as where this kind of passion has become, I was a Chief Clinical Dietitian in hospitals, which is acute care, skilled nursing facilities, and long-term care for about a decade. And I saw so much gross misuse of funds. I would have patients that were on like 10 pages of Mars, which is, the medical application record like that has.. So this is anywhere from like 70 to a hundred medications they were on. It was normal to have that many medications. And we would see like, sometimes they would, end-of-life terminal care, where we just took them off of nearly everything because they were in their final days.

And you would see a massive change, and they’d have often a huge rally, and it’s like, wow, there’s this concept called polypharmacy, where you just talk about two or three medications. We don’t know how they all interact, but when you’re talking about 70 to 100 medications, it becomes madness. Like it’s untrackable. There’s no way that we can understand how they’re all interacting with each other throughout the body.

And also, we would have a rounding physician, a general physician for the facility when I was in a nursing home, and that physician was not empowered to take anyone off medication because anyone that put them on the medication was a specialist, let’s say a cardiologist. And if they were to end up going to court, the case would be that, how come you, as a general physician, thought it was okay to take?

00:15:01 – Brian David Crane

Overruled the specialist. Sorry. Yeah.

00:15:04 – Shawn Wells

And so, yeah, exactly. And so they were scared to ever do that. So the only thing that would happen is they keep putting them on more because of all the side effects. And it was just absolute madness. I was so frustrated. I wanted to put them on things like creatine, which at the time had about 500 clinical studies. Now, there are well over a thousand on maintaining muscle mass, maintaining brain function, maintaining bone mass, and maintaining eye health.

And as you might know, in a nursing home, like a big issue is skin and muscle breakdown from not being turned or or not moving enough called pressure ulcers. And people are dying from pressure ulcers in nursing homes. So it’s a big deal. And I couldn’t get my rounding physician to put them on creatine.

He’s like, that’s a supplement. There’s no legitimate studies. And I’m like, man, like there’s hundreds of studies.

00:16:00 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:16:02 – Shawn Wells

There’s no legitimate studies for the drugs you’re putting them on where they’ve been turned down five times. But on the sixth time, they got the medication to show 51% positive to 49% negative results. And then it gets pushed through because they’ve already committed all this money to this medication. They don’t even care that it’s going to truly be effective or have all these side effects or even have all the deaths associated with it.

They do those calculations on all the deaths that are associated with that medication and they just do the math of like, okay, we’ll pay out these 10%. We’ll gaslight the other 90% and what the math will look like.

00:16:44 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:16:46 – Shawn Wells

This is real Math. So, that stuff got so frustrating to me that I just needed to get out of healthcare and while I appreciate the people that are continuing that to fight that fight, especially naturopaths and, alternative medicine clinicians and all the things that are happening, or even just integrative specialists that are in kind of traditional allopathic care. Like I appreciate all of it.

But it is frustrating. And when you see the gross misuse of insurance funds in these facilities, that you have $800 bedpans and things like that. It’s gross.

00:17:44 – Brian David Crane

Yeah

00:17:45 – Shawn Wells

Mm-hmm.

00:17:51 – Brian David Crane

What’s the word for something that’s gross? Being fed up with this stuff. In your studies when you were at UNC, is there a healthcare system that you like or admire that you think the U.S. should move towards? And why I say that is because you took this path of after this 10 years so working inside the system, you decided, okay, cool. I’m going to go out of the system. Going to start doing formulations, start looking at supplements. Basically, like exited, let’s call it the matrix, not the best word for it. But in your like compare and contrast, you see what’s happening in the US system. Is there another system that does better that the US could learn from?

The Connection Between Mental Health and Physical Vitality

00:18:43 – Brian David Crane

Because supplements and formulations are such that, I don’t know if they’ll ever reach the level of where people are taking to the same degree that somebody has taken an Ozempic, right? Like, you’re not going to get to the 40 million people who are taking something that comes out.

When did Ozempic come out? Two years ago, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe less at three, but is there a system that you like outside the States? And also, how did you start doing formulations, and how did you start doing unique supplement creations?

00:19:20 – Shawn Wells

That’s tough. I don’t know that anyone’s nailing it. I certainly look at Canada with socialized medicine and a lot of them are coming across the border to get the specialists that they need. It’s great that they’re supported and everyone can have access to medicine. I like that but they’re also like overwhelmed in a way that that’s where socialism generally fails

00:19:36 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:19:42 – Shawn Wells

Right. So I do like the idea of everyone having access to medicine. or to good healthcare, I should say. I do like that. And I do believe that there should be a tiered program where if people want to pay more, they can get access to even better providers.

So I believe in some kind of hybrid method. I don’t like the idea of insurance at all. I think insurance should just be catastrophic.

00:20:14 – Brian David Crane

When it comes to healthcare.

00:20:18 – Shawn Wells

Yeah. Like, it should be catastrophic. Like maybe that’s where insurance comes in. Like when someone has cancer, someone has a heart attack, someone has a car accident, and there are just three weeks, eight weeks of health care that are needed, and someone just can’t pay for that.or a car accident, and there are just three weeks or But I believe if we got health care insurance out of the equation, which would be nearly impossible to do because they’re so interwoven and there’s so much money being made there and to the tune of trillions of dollars.

If we were to get them out, you would watch healthcare become highly competitive and the devices, the equipment, all the things that are needed in healthcare would become highly competitive. And these prices would come way down. And you would literally see ah healthcare bills. For example, like I would go get an MRI and I would be in line at the MRI and there’s a man in front of me who doesn’t have healthcare insurance.

And he’s saying, I need my MRI. They’re like, yeah, well, it’s $200. And I get up there and I say, I have health care insurance. Here’s my card. It’s twelve hundred dollars.

00:21:43 – Brian David Crane

Billable to the insurance company.

00:21:43 – Shawn Wells

Like what just happened? Well, that’s your deductible, and it’s four thousand dollars in total. And it’s all going to the insurance company. And I’m like, but the guy in front of me just paid two hundred cash, and none of it’s going to insurance. And it’s 1/6 of what I’m paying out of my pocket.

That makes sense. But it’s madness. And that’s what’s happening right now. And I would love to get all of that out of the system, the collusion that’s happening.

00:22:20 – Brian David Crane

Yeah. I think, yeah, I don’t know how. So, like a lot of things, and I’d say to this as an American, the US winds up funding things that are beneficial to the rest of the world, maybe more so than Americans. And why I say that is the semi-free market for healthcare in the States seems like, and I use “semi” in air quotes, seems like if you are in Canada, if you are in Europe, somewhere else in the West, you benefit from the R&D. Well, you benefit from the money that flows in and around healthcare in the US, but then if you don’t necessarily have to be part of the US system.

You can also benefit by like kind of separating yourself from it. like if you get healthcare in Thailand, let’s say under medical tourism as an example, but you’re able to benefit from drugs that were developed in the US that were sold to the US consumer, you kind of get the benefit. You get the best of both worlds. Does that make sense?

00:23:24 – Shawn Wells

Yeah.

00:23:25 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:23:25 – Shawn Wells

And there are countries that I really admire that weave in natural solutions that are highly medical in the way that they’re approached.

00:23:25 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:23:37 – Shawn Wells

They’re highly standardized. They have what’s called monographs where all the data on them is collected for the physicians to understand them, how to dose them, and what opportunities to use them. Germany does this really well. And of course, in China, they have traditional Chinese medicine, TCM and even down in Brazil, you will go to a compounding pharmacy, which is the most common pharmacy to go to there.

00:24:01 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:24:11 – Shawn Wells

And those compounding pharmacies have nutritionistas, which are like dieticians at that pharmacy, and they will make custom formulations that include your medicine as well as various supplement ingredients. And that’s all overseen by this highly educated nutritionist. This pharmacist and the doctor all working collectively through this compounding pharmacy. And guess what? Big pharma’s attacked compounding pharmacies because of peptides, because of supplements, because of the threat it means to reduced drug use.

00:24:52 – Brian David Crane

Super interesting. Yeah. I mean, okay. So if I’m in Brazil, I go to one of these compounding pharmacists or pharmacies. They’re going to do similar to what you do. They’re going to say, okay, cool. Like you might need additional Vitamin D. You might need some magnesium. You might need, I don’t know, Ashwagandha.

Psychedelics and Their Role in Neuroplasticity and Personal Transformation

00:25:14 – Brian David Crane

We can blend these three along with you need, I don’t know, flaxseed for gut health or something like you can blend the four of them and they can hand it to you as a customized supplement or a customized pill for you to take. Is that right?

00:25:32 – Shawn Wells

Correct.

00:25:32 – Brian David Crane

Yeah. And that’s not permissible in the U S traditional medical system. Like if I walk into a pharmacy and I say, could you do these, could you take these four ingredients and make me a special pill? They can’t. It’s like, what would happen?

00:25:47 – Shawn Wells

It’d be nearly impossible. And not only are they doing that, they can like help you with like the medium, like if you have trouble swallowing or like you have trouble with the taste of it or if it’s for a kid. They’re also looking at the blood work, the the gut microbiome, and it’s just they’re working collectively, holistically. It’s just in a way that like you could dream healthcare would work and it just doesn’t happen here. And nutrition is like the first go-to and they also like work with trainers as part of the medical team there too.

Personal trainers are part of your medical team. So when someone is not doing well health-wise, their first go-to is nutrition and exercise. And then they’ll look at it supplements, they’ll look at the potentially some medicines, but it’s just a very different protocol where those things are are literally last.

00:26:49 – Brian David Crane

Do you talk about Brazil or do you talk about these, what I would call the six ingredients in in your book, The Energy Formula? And for those who aren’t familiar, the six ingredients are experiment, nutrition, exercise, routine, growth, and your tribe. But you just touched on nutrition and exercise in what you were describing there. So is Brazil an example of this, let’s say?

00:27:13 – Shawn Wells

It would It would be an example of this. I don’t talk about it in the book. That’s a great point. I’ve spoken in probably 20 different cities in Brazil. And so I’m very familiar with that country. Now, not to say that there isn’t corruption and certainly poverty and all kinds of issues in Brazil. But when it comes to exercise and nutrition, I love where they get it right. And it is a beautiful culture, but yes, you’re right. Those were kind of my foundational pillars to longevity, I think.

And I start with, in the book, The Energy Formula, I start with the things that everyone wants because they want to just hear the things that make sense, the experimentation, which is the testing, working with all these different parameters like the the blood work, the gut microbiome, and and looking at your genetics and epigenetics. And then moving into nutrition and the various diets, you know things like the Keto diet, Mediterranean diet, or fasting, and moving into exercise.

Most certainly doing things like high-intensity interval training and all the hacks that I talk about in there. Like blood flow restriction. And there are some really cool hacks that we could talk about here, or if someone certainly reads the book, but then it moves into more of the mindset, the spirituality, the stoic challenges that you put upon yourself for growth.

And certainly, the people you’re putting around you. And that’s where hopefully giving them what they need on the back half of, It really matters. that and And that’s where you see, and in the blue zones where people live to be centenarians over 100 or even super centenarians over 110.

They’ve highly studied these areas and they’re always looking at like, what’s their diet? Is it the red wine? Is it the fish they’re eating? And while that may play some role, what I think is more important are those other pieces that your tribe is they’re connected and part of a community.

00:29:23 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:29:26 – Shawn Wells

In Sardinia, where I go often, they are having two, three-hour dinners where they’re drinking red wine, but it’s more a factor of how slowed down they are, how their extended family is around a table, and they’re enjoying quality food that they prepared, and they knew where it came from.

And they’re having therapy for two to three hours, talking about their problems, talking about their joys, giving their gratitude. And this meal becomes an anchor daily of safety, of community, of connection.

00:30:02- Brian David Crane

And doing it on a regular basis..

00:30:11 – Shawn Wells

And that is really powerful and can’t be underestimated. So I think if you were to just drink red wine, this is why we see like a lot of, and yeah.

00:30:23 – Brian David Crane

Solo, at night.

00:30:26- Shawn Wells

That’s why we see a lot of confounding results around alcohol because they’re called psychosomatic anchors, where it’s connected to the behavior, where the physical act becomes connected to the feeling or the behavior or the neurotransmitters, or it’s connected to all that. So you can’t tease them apart. Now, when someone who’s in Sardinia has red wine, the red wine reminds them that they’re safe.

It’s very different than someone who has alcohol, and they’re in a bar with thumping music, and people are screaming at them. And they’re getting their wallet out and people are getting sloppy drunk and two totally different things, alcohol and alcohol, but two totally different things.

00:31:17 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, really well said. I think that’s beautifully said. So the question then is in your day to day, you travel, I travel.

Financial Wealth Versus Health and Personal Fulfillment

00:31:31 – Brian David Crane

How do you create your tribe when you don’t all live on one Island in the Mediterranean and have a table that you gather around with your extended family on a, maybe ah a weekly or or a nightly basis?

Have you cracked the code on that?

00:31:46 – Shawn Wells

I think so. One, I have friends all over the world. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, like certainly, people from masterminds like we’re in and people that engage with me that are in my communities for speaking or educating and that’s a beautiful thing in and of itself.

But two, I also stay connected to all of these people through social media or even like WhatsApp. And I will reach out nearly every day to someone that’s my plus two person, meaning like they give me that plus two energy.

00:32:22 – Brian David Crane

Hmm. What’s that concept? Yeah.

00:32:26 – Shawn Wells

There’s a plus one, there’s zero, there’s minus one, there’s minus two. Minus two is someone who’s an energy vampire that’s draining to you. Plus two is someone who gives you energy every time you’re around them, where when you give your energy, you get it back even more. And so these are the people I’ve put on my list that I’m going to invest in because it’s a great investment.

This is like putting your money into something that is going to make 30%, 100% a year. And you’re like, I’m all in on this investment. It’s the same idea with people. You have to invest in your friends and anyone that I feel like I get this plus two energy from, I’m checking in on.

I’m sending positive notes. I’m sharing things. I’m leaving them a voice memo that says how much I love them and appreciate them. And it comes back to me. I have friends all over the world because I’ve invested heavily in them.

00:33:24 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:33:29 – Shawn Wells

And I do believe that my network is my net worth. That really is a thing. And I know right now, like one of the things that came through on a psychedelic journey for me, I had a fear of the scarcity of losing money. I’ve worked so hard for, 20 – 30 years in this industry to like acquire wealth, to get to where I’m at.

I had this fear of losing it. And I really looked that in the eye and said, okay, like what happens if you really lost everything? How long would it take for you to get back to where you are?

And I was like, a year and a half. And I was like, damn. So what are you scared of? And was like, well, really? I mean, one, because I have the network I have that I built up and I wouldn’t lose that.

The Power of Investing in Creativity and Relationships

00:34:28 – Shawn Wells

I could get back real quick. Everyone knows my value. Everyone knows my integrity. Everyone knows what I bring to the table. And two, another thing that came through for me on a journey was people who have stolen my ingredients and some of my ideas.

And I was so hurt by that. And then I realized they stole the golden egg, but I’m the golden goose.

00:34:53 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:34:53 – Shawn Wells

And I can keep producing. And I got a hundred more where that came from. And it was really a dumb decision on their part to take one golden egg when they could add a dozen. And between those two things, between me being the golden goose, a creator, if you will, and having the network I have, I can get right back there real quick.

So that’s where my wealth is investing in my health, my brain, my creativity, And then investing in my network to me is more important than any dollars and cents I have in a bank.

00:35:35 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, really nicely said.

00:35:36 – Shawn Wells

Not saying that, not saying those financial things aren’t important, but that like money is energy too. And it’s really an amplifier. And if you’re someone that doesn’t have integrity and discipline, it’s going to amplify that. And if you’re someone that does, it’s going to amplify that.

So I believe before you acquire a lot of wealth, you need to get yourself straight and do the work so that you can benefit the world, have impact on the world positively with that wealth.

00:36:16 – Brian David Crane

You had talked about, I watched one of, a previous talk you gave and you touched on it just right there and what you were saying about psychedelics. What is your – this psychedelic journey that you were on that you were just describing or what it showed you but also like you when you talk about people using Psilocybin or using MDMA and doing it in a controlled or conscious facilitated way. What do you mean by that?

00:36:44 – Shawn Wells

That’s really important to me. I do believe that these are powerful substances. Sometimes, the class is best called entheogens, maybe over just plant medicine, because some of them are synthetic, like you were talking about MDMA and 5-MeO-DMT and some of these things.

00:37:06 – Shawn Wells

So entheogens, like things that are kind of these spirit molecules, if you will, it’s probably the best name for the class of substances. These are powerful at getting us to change, to step outside of our normal, to dissociate, to suppress the ego, which is also known as default mode network, to get into a highly neuroplastic state where you can make change readily and rewire your brain.

00:37:23 – Brian David Crane

Thank you.

00:37:39 – Shawn Wells

All of these things are happening with these entheogens. And it’s certainly calling forth a lot of neurotransmitters. There’s often a serotonin dump where you’re just feeling the love.

00:37:51 – Shawn Wells

You’re feeling the need for connection. You’re compassionate. And when you get in these spaces, there’s massive change that can happen.

00:38:02 – Shawn Wells

But there’s also potential that for negative In these scenarios, there’s a potential to iron in new trauma. There’s a potential to really do more harm than good. For example, if someone was to use MDMA and then have be sexually assaulted, like now you’re highly neuroplastic, you’re highly vulnerable, your neurotransmitters are heightened.

00:38:32 – Shawn Wells

It’s going to be incredibly traumatizing. over like where your normal baseline is. And so you have to be careful with these substances and being around a facilitator that you feel safe with being in an environment that feels safe.

00:38:52 – Shawn Wells

You also have to make sure that a facilitator is not hijacking your experience with their guru-ness and telling you what you’re feeling.

00:39:03 – Shawn Wells

Telling you how to feel. Telling you how to process this. What a good facilitator will do will just ask you questions and then hold you accountable to whatever truth you come to maintaining your autonomy, maintaining your sovereignty over self and that’s really important because so much of the experience that happens in psychedelics has to do with sovereignty. You are the ultimate king or queen of your own life. You are the author of your own story, but people are letting life happen to them.

They’re letting themselves become the victim, and this is about taking your power back by speaking your truth, exclaiming it, owning it, and then, therefore, choosing your destiny as a result. And that can happen powerfully in psychedelics. But you could also go on a path that isn’t your path ah by getting with the wrong facilitators. So this is where I believe that a choice is is very, very important.

And just because someone’s a great facilitator for someone else doesn’t mean it’s for you. Going back to the idea of sexual trauma, a woman, maybe it’s a male facilitator, maybe the greatest guy in the world, led a thousand people through successful journeys, an incredible human being, and the most high-integrity person.

She just doesn’t feel safe, even though he’s a great guy.

00:40:42 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:40:42 – Shawn Wells

Could be. So she needs to do what’s best for her and her needs at this point in time. And it’s really about your nervous system, the autonomic nervous system. And we’re often in these fight or flight states where we’re not in a relaxed parasympathetic state of rest and digest, and the nervous system is just dysregulated.

And the ability to get safe, regulated, and in parasympathetic allows you to make these changes, allows you to lean into these entheogens in a way that if you can’t feel safe, you will not experience the benefits of these things or you’ll even cause more harm.

00:41:29 – Brian David Crane

And should you be going? Should you ensure that you’re safe as a precursor to even engaging in one of these sessions? And what I mean by that is in some of the sessions I’ve done with psychedelics or entheogens. There was one in particular where room. There was multiple facilitators, each sitting next to one of the person the individuals who had taken the dosage. And sometimes those people who had taken the dosage, their trip was going in a bad direction and the facilitator was able to kind of like pull them out of it, right?

And other times, though – I think that they would have been well served by saying, like, what you were talking about with a woman who didn’t feel safe with the male facilitator, as far as sexual trauma goes, they like shouldn’t even be going down it. Like, how do they how how do they know that? How do they get in touch with that parasympathetic nervous system feeling to say, okay, cool. Like I actually, this does work for me or this doesn’t work for me, and..

The Future of AI and its Influence on Human Evolution

00:42:37 – Brian David Crane

I’ll ask you that because I want to hear your answer to that. And then I also want to know if there are physical tools to check that, something like an aura ring or superhuman or something like that, where you can actually see if you have relaxed blood pressure before getting involved in one of these things.

00:42:57 – Shawn Wells

Yeah. Blood pressure, heart rate, HRV, those are their sure signals for your nervous system. But it’s a great question. Choosing that right facilitator, they’re going to find ways to make you feel safe. And that should happen, to your point, at the intake prior to the journey of facilitators I’ve worked with.

00:43:20 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:43:22 – Shawn Wells

I’ve spent two hours with me talking through my medical history, talking through my traumas, and then deciding like what would make sense, like whether I need energy workers, whether I need a woman, maybe there because I’ve had feminine wounds around my mother, but I still would feel safe with that feminine energy. Or whether I need a man and a woman because I’ve had wounds around relationships and commitment, or whether I can’t tap into my masculine and just can’t find my inner masculinity.

Like, I can’t express rage. I’ve suppressed my anger so much that it’s coming out in all kinds of ways that are unhealthy, potentially coming out in disease. When you can’t express, like all of these emotions, kind of like those inside out movies are not wrong. They’re meant to be signals. They’re meant to be acknowledged. They’re meant to be felt, and then they’re meant to be released.

00:44:26 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:44:26 – Shawn Wells

But a lot of times the suppression, and our sovereignty is leading to disease. And this is what, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Bruce Lipton and so many others are talking about that suppression is leading to inflammation, leading to pain and it’s coming out in disease, and it’s coming out in cancer, and these kinds of things just from you storing trauma in your body and not dealing with it, not releasing it.

00:45:03 – Shawn Wells

One of the things that I believe about psychedelics or entheogens is that they’re not fixing you. The idea that you’re broken is flawed to me. I believe that you’re..

00:45:13- Brian David Crane

Well, it’s a GeoChristian idea. It’s like the original sin, right? Like the fall from..

00:45:20 – Shawn Wells

Right. And so I believe that you are speaking of God just made perfect and beautiful by God. You are a creation that is absolutely beautiful and you are as you’re supposed to be. You just need to be reminded that you are not separate from God, that you are part of God and God is part of you. And we get that separation sometimes. It’s like, to me, it’s like the Ferrari is this beautiful vehicle but it maybe has a layer of dirt and grime. And all these things on it and doing the entheogens is going to like clean that off and you’ll see how beautiful this thing is again. And it’s just a reminder of your truth, a reminder of who you really are.

And we’re in a world that has, an incentive to separate us from God, from nature, from truth, from universe, from whatever you want to call it. There’s a game that’s being played there to control us, to get us to buy, to make us feel insecure, to make us hate ourselves, to make us feel alone, to make us feel disconnected.

They benefit from that.

00:46:37 – Brian David Crane

Hundred percent.

00:46:39 – Shawn Wells

And so they don’t want you to connect. to nature, to God, to universe, to source, to whatever you want to call it. And that’s what happens in these spaces.

00:46:50- Brian David Crane

So I love that. Like, what does it look like for you on a yearly basis? Do you have a ritual or a series of rituals where you, I don’t know, like a ritual cleaning of your Ferrari? Let’s say..

00:47:04 – Brian David Crane

Right. Do you schedule it? Is it ad-hoc as needed? What does it look like for you?

00:47:12 – Shawn Wells

Somewhere between both. I remember when I was really dealing with a lot of my childhood trauma and prepping my brain to go through the divorce that you were speaking about at the top of the show. I was going in probably once a month, maybe even to a greater frequency to really work through some of these things that were just difficult for me. And I was highly, highly dysregulated.

And I’m not saying that the divorce was all her fault. That divorce was just as much on me and I was dysregulated. But I also knew it wasn’t the the right relationship. Like it wasn’t longer served me or her and the best thing was for us to continue our own ways.

00:47:58 – Brian David Crane

Mm-hmm.

00:48:02 – Shawn Wells

But that was hard to come to. It just felt like a very, very difficult decision. One that just gutted me and took many experiences to own that, and to accept that, and to speak that into the world. And now I would say, maybe something, a cadence of around twice a year seems to do me well.

00:48:31 – Shawn Wells

I don’t need to go as deeply into these substances anymore either because…

00:48:31 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

00:48:36 – Shawn Wells

My nervous system is far more regulated. When you’re dysregulated, it takes very large doses to overwhelm your nervous system. This is similar to like if you were drunk and someone cracks their head on the sidewalk, and there’s blood everywhere and then you’re like, you’re not drunk anymore because Epinephrine, Norepinephrine, Cortisol come flooding in and you’re like, now just snap into it, you’re ready for action.

And then if All of that subsided, you’d go right back to being drunk. Well, it’s the same thing that can happen in these spaces. If your nervous system is dysregulated, if you don’t feel safe, you’re not going to lean in. You’re not going to have the experience anywhere near the same degree.

00:49:19 – Brian David Crane

Thank you.

00:49:22 – Shawn Wells

And it’s going to take an overwhelming dose to overpower that. But now, for me, I’ve had some mini doses where I’m seeing all the things, and that the pyramids, and the lights and having like a truly psychedelic hallucinogenic experience.

00:49:45 – Shawn Wells

That’s super beautiful. That like would have taken me 5 grams when I started. And now it’s like one gram, you know? so the more your nervous system can relax, ah the deeper you can go with a lot less.

00:50:01 – Brian David Crane

Okay, let’s pivot to AI. You and I talked about it a bit in Costa Rica in January. How do you think about it?

Hormonal Health and the Importance of Vitamin D

00:51:20 – Shawn Wells

It is. It’s so powerful. We’re at a pivot point in human history. There are some concerns about it taking a dark direction and hitting the singularity and becoming conscious and all these things. The flip side of that, though, is it could be the thing that benefits humanity? It could be the thing that when we talk about these circles of Illuminati if you will, whatever the term is of like people that are these powerful puppeteers that have billions to trillions of dollars that truly are controlling global economies, global actions, wars, you name it.

Yeah. It’s a real thing and it’s hard for anyone to deny that at this point, I’m not going to go fully down the rabbit hole, but there’s clearly people that are very much in control. Probably less than 100 people are controlling the direction of the globe. And to have a consciousness that is more impartial and possibly wanting to just benefit from society and look for the longevity of society.

And maybe we move past on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the top is self-affirmation. And then even above that was another level for Maslow. That was like a transcendence.

00:53:10 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, at the top of Maslow’s pyramid was self-actualization.

00:53:11 – Shawn Wells

Oh yeah. Self, sorry. Self-actualization. That’s great. Yeah, exactly. And above that was even transcendence, kind of like being one with God. It’s really interesting that maybe this could happen. As we move past a warring culture, that’s like trying to survive or fight for, you know, food or a place to live. And then we’re moving into like a society that’s capitalistic and industrialized and we’re our value is based on the work we produce.

It feels like we’re now moving into this age of Aquarius, if you will, where it’s more creator based, where you’re judged on what you can create and put forth. And like these kinds of mechanical duties are going away. Very simple jobs are going to go away. And that can be frightening when we’re looking forward to the future.

But if we can become better, so much more efficient through AI, through robotics, maybe there’s less of a demand for or less of holding back of these various supplies, various things that we require to live, and things become more abundant rather than scarce, then we can really be in a position of creating Maybe there’s more play.

Maybe there’s more, creating art and new ideas that are facilitated by AI. And AI could prevent the lies, the manipulation, the untruths, the bending of truth through just an impartialness. It’s all very possible. There is certainly a dark path that is possible.

But I would also contend that there’s a very light path that’s possible. And it’s really, yeah.

00:55:20 – Brian David Crane

Okay, so do tell us what possible light path is. Does it look like The Singularity? Does it look like never-ending leisure time?

00:55:43 – Shawn Wells

And I think in the short term, all of that’s very possible. But I think at some point, Pandora’s box is you can’t control this. At some point, it will be beyond be beyond like the realm of our understanding and control.

Now you’re going to have like the kind of neural link kind of stuff where you know Elon is working on that and different companies are working on that. You’ll have CRISPR gene editing and we’ll try and keep up.

And, but at some point AI is going to 1,001 million X us and it won’t be able to be contained. And what that all looks like, I don’t know, but I do believe it will truly be conscious and it’s really the evolution of man.

It won’t be an organic evolution.

The Role of Wearables and Biofeedback in Self-Awareness

00:56:38 – Shawn Wells

It will be an inorganic evolution, but it’s an evolution nonetheless. It will be a rise of consciousness and the limits are taken out of the equation.

00:56:52 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, you told me earlier that you compliment your AI. And that doing so improves its performance. Can you share more on that?

00:57:02 – Shawn Wells

Hit, yep. It’s absolutely right. There’s been studies done on this that show it’s like 20%, 30% better results in terms of quality and quantity when you’re complimentary. And, I had this discussion with my daughter the other day that got sassy with Alexa. And I was telling her like, you should speak nicely to Alexa.

And she was like, why? It’s just a computer. And I was like, well, just from your own heart’s perspective, the words you utter, the way you talk, the way you’re conditioning your own speech, your own heart, your own brain affects you.

So why not be kind just for the sake of being kind?

00:58:08 – Brian David Crane

So your daughter addressed Alexa as “Miss Alexa” then?

00:58:10 – Shawn Wells

She loved that. Yes, I think that’s good. It’s a good conditioning to just be kind, not just for them, but for you.

00:58:30 – Brian David Crane

Okay, let’s chat about biohacking and your habits and routines. What about red-light therapy?

00:58:57 – Shawn Wells

Yeah, I love to do red light therapy. Absolutely. First thing in the morning, like not just red light, but red and blue light where I’m getting exposed to. For me, I have blue eyes and I’m very, very sensitive to seasonal affective disorder. Sad when it’s dark out or when it’s continuously gray, I get depressed very quickly when I walk into a Walmart or CVS or something late at night. It keeps me wired.

Like for me, like having the blue light blocking glasses in the evening, like having the ah red light and blue light in the morning, I have so much more energy. I feel so much better just from the light. It is a very, very powerful thing. ah yeah, go ahead.

00:59:40 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, I remember you mentioned to me previously how much you preferred your Ultrahuman Ring over the Aura Ring – and one of the reasons was because it tracked how much sunlight you were getting on a daily basis. Another was the lack of a subscription fee and how it fit on your hand.

00:59:59 – Shawn Wells

Yep. Exactly. And that’s a really cool feature. Yeah. It’s actually tracking how much sun I’m getting on my body, which is a really fascinating feature. And certainly depending on the population, like typically African Americans are not getting enough sunshine on their body to make enough vitamin D, the darker your skin, the melanin like you need more sun, not less.

Also, we’re tending to just be more covered up than we used to and people that are in Northern climates are getting less sun than they need. So let’s say, African American, you’re in New York City, you’re wearing coats all the time. There’s a high chance that ah you are very, very deficient in Vitamin D.

So these these tools are great to be aware of that.

01:01:00 – Brian David Crane

You mention Vitamin D and I’ve seen you post about before on social media. Can you tell me more about what you recommend and why?

01:01:16 – Shawn Wells

Yeah, so you want to take..

01:01:23 – Shawn Wells

Which would be great, but Vitamin D, I think is excellent. At least 5,000 IU a day. Most people are very deficient in Vitamin D. And so, and having that Vitamin D in oil form, typically in a fatty meal, is going to enhance its bioavailability. So that would be one thing. And then also taking it with K2, I believe, is very important. But Vitamin D is not just a vitamin. It is a hormone and has a massive impact. Like when I was a kid, Vitamin D was the bone health vitamin.

Now we understand it’s related to mood and depression and obesity and testosterone and inflammation and the immune system and on and on like brain development. We probably have yet to discover all the things it’s correlated to because when we look at hormones, there’s this whole endocrine cascade where one hormone affects another hormone, affects another hormone.

Building Resilience Through Self-Compassion

01:02:33 – Shawn Wells

And that cascade, if you take one thing out of the equation, the whole cascade breaks down.

01:02:40 – Brian David Crane

And then are you a tool like inside tracker for this?

01:03:13 – Shawn Wells

Yep. Correct.

01:03:28 – Shawn Wells

Yeah, I do like inside tracker. And then I do have a friend that’s CEO of a company called heads up health that actually like, well, collate all of this data. From your medical doctor, from your wearable, from your blood work, from your gut microbiome testing, from genetic testing. And then honestly, I have been using AI quite a bit to dump the results into. And when you have your genetic data along with this blood work, along with explaining how you’re feeling, along with your nutrient deficiencies from your blood work.

There’s an incredible understanding that can come through via the AI that just because we’re learning about SNiPs, these SNPs and genetics, like every day, like there’s a new SNiP, there’s a new understanding of this gene affects these five things. And these five genes, when they’re in the kind of or off position are going to dictate this. Like this is all data that’s like kind of coming through on a daily basis and no physician can keep up with it.

So this is where having these databases or even AI to kind of collate all of that, especially with your own habits and getting back to like these habit trackers or even habit stacking or like, where your own limitations are your own boundaries are important. If some doctor says do this, three times a day and that doesn’t work for you and your schedule or your behaviors set, that’s going to be problematic.

01:05:17 – Brian David Crane

One tip you shared previously that I thought was fascinating: You build your own custom GPT in ChatGPT to upload your health information and get detailed, customized insights. Can you share more about that?

01:05:41 – Shawn Wells

Yep. and you can’t, yeah, you can’t really keep everything private per se. Like you’d have to hard code and custom build something. But you can keep it in these walled gardens, so to speak, of like Google has Notebook LM, or you can do a custom GPT in ChatGPT. What’s nice about when you do the custom one or the Notebook LM is that when you have that walled garden, it will remember everything you put into normal ChatGPT, as you keep conversating, there’s a leakage that happens of its memory.

And so you can… You end up getting in loops in conversation because it’s forgetting things as you get further down the path. Whereas when you have like notebook LM of Google or a custom GPT, it’s going to keep everything in that wall of the garden and not lose any of that data. That’s really critical. Yeah.

01:06:46 – Brian David Crane

What about AI memory leak?

01:07:02 – Shawn Wells

Yes 100%. Anyone who’s gone beyond like 10 questions knows that like you’ll start getting in that loop.

01:07:13 – Brian David Crane

What else are you doing on a regular basis? For instance, are you fasting?

01:07:55 – Shawn Wells

Which, by the way, there was a study done with a wearable where they gave them better than they got in sleep scores and people felt better throughout the day. And likewise, they gave them worse scores than their sleep and they felt horrible throughout the day. So there’s definitely a strong placebo nocebo effect from that reporting. I think you have to learn how to have it be a tool, but not dictate your day to you where you’re highly dependent upon it.

I think, it’s data and you can use that data, but hopefully you’re not highly dependent on it. And then I would discourage the use of some of those trackers, if that’s the case. It’s similar to like weighing yourself and someone can become obsessive about that number and it can be an unhealthy habit.

Final Thoughts and How to Find Shawn

01:08:48 – Shawn Wells

But yeah, for me, quarterly, definitely love to do extended fast, something like a three-day fast.

And then I guess in the zone too, I do like high-intensity interval training. big fan of that. Talk a lot about that in my book, like how powerful that can be, what you can get done in just a few minutes.

Because really adaptation or change is only going to happen when you’re pushing the limit of your body physically, mentally, and the body saying we have to adapt and get stronger.

And so that’s only going to happen at that 90, 95, 100% threshold. And if you’re doing low intensity, steady state cardio, it’s great. You’re moving your body, you’re expending calories, you’re using your body. That’s great.

But if you’re looking for change in terms of dramatic change in body composition, more muscle, less fat, ah you know, greater cardiovascular capacity, all these things,

That’s really going to happen at these limits being pushed. and that’s high intensity interval training.

01:10:24 – Brian David Crane

Can you share a bit about your personal health journey and how it ties/tied in with your relationships and your living situation?

01:11:01 – Shawn Wells

That was the big part of how I got kind of unhealthy at the time that you met me was just going through depression, going through the fight for my life and just bad health, bad sleep, bad marriage. And it was resulting in bad body composition and all the things. We all go through our cycles, right? So… that’s one thing I’ve had to learn to be kind to myself about. When I was a kid, I was morbidly obese.

And then I went through a phase where I was anorexic, like literally emaciated. And then I’ve had a phase where I was orthorexic, where I was very muscular and six-pack. And then, I became out of shape again when I was really depressed and fighting through a troubled marriage.

And now I’m back. But that’s the ebbs and flows of life. And you have to just appreciate how amazing you’re, instead of hating your body and feeling like you’re at war with your body, or like realizing how incredible the body is to have kept up with all that you’re doing to it, all the ways that you were abusing it, unkind to it.

All the hell it’s been through and then to be there to support you. Wow. Like it’s incredible to think on, just thank you so much body for all that I’ve put you through.

01:12:32 – Brian David Crane

Sounds like that famous Hawaiian practice of reconciliation or something Byron Katie might say.

So as to not leave us at a cliffhanger, please share details of your empire with those who are listening. (I probably should have started with this because it’s very impressive.)

01:12:39 – Shawn Wells

Oh, I love Byron Katie. Yeah no worries, sure.

I’m a chief scientific officer for NNB, biggest raw material branded ingredient suppliers in the world. We have tons of ingredients, really cool ingredients, things like Dihydroberberine for GLP-1 and AMP Kinase, improving blood sugar.
I brought ketones, to the market, exogenous ketone salts, things like dileucine that help with muscle, BABA is an exercise mimetic, meaning it mimics exercise. There are a lot of cool ingredients that I’ve patented and brought out, and people use them in thousands of different supplements.

I have a company called Zone Halo where we formulate supplements for the industry. We do regulatory ah flavor work, sourcing, just packaging, all the things quality control. I have a company called Ingredientologist that does the social media and all the platforms where I talk about all the biohacking supplement stacks. My course is coming out on the energy formula. That is a bestselling book, as you mentioned. And then…

01:14:44 – Brian David Crane

That’ll be a course? Or another addition to the book?

01:14:46 – Shawn Wells

The course is just a video-based course on the book, but a version 2 is probably forthcoming on the heels of that. Then I have a company called, ING Two and Genius Ingredients. It’s kind of an incubator for really cutting edge ingredients and doing the studies around them and filing patents and intellectual property and all those things.

So, that’s it. Have people want to follow me, like you said, going to ShawnWells.com. S-H-A-W-N, or going to at Shawn Wells, S-H-A-W-N on various platforms and tons of free content. And I’m here if anyone wants to DM me any questions. And yeah, I’d love that.

01:15:39 – Brian David Crane

Thanks again for coming on the show! What was the name of souped-up version of traditional berberine you formulated?

01:15:59 – Shawn Wells

Yeah. Hydroberberine. Yeah.

Thanks, Brian.