Read the show notes and download the episode here.
Michaela Light 01:59
Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Ollie Matthews. And we're going to be talking about a big issue in business which is burnout. So many entrepreneurs are Go, go go until they are like the Energizer rabbit. And then they fall over, they don't have any energy and their health is shot to shit. Oops, am I allowed to say that word on this show? Yes, it's your show. It's my show. So we're going to look at how you can use your intuition to avoid burning out and some of the other related challenges involved in that very important. We'll talk about why it's important. A bit later, we'll also touch on hormones and stress and low energy, weight gain thyroid problems, sleep problems. And we have a story about someone who crashed her business. Was that sad, really. Anyway, we'll talk about that later. If you don't know, Ollie, he is in the United Kingdom. And he used to be, or still is kind of alternative doctor, I think he called it functional medicine, which I'd never heard that expression. We'll talk a bit about what that is in a moment. And he helps entrepreneurs who are on the brink of burnout or maybe beyond the brink of burnout, in order to reach peak performance and grow their business even more than they could have done otherwise. So he's also the best selling author of a book called The One day body upgrade, which we'll put the link in the show notes at intuitive leadership. mastery.com. Welcome, Olli.
Ollie Matthews 03:48
Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
Michaela Light 03:50
Absolutely. Now, why is always talk about health matter to entrepreneurs, some entrepreneurs are gonna be like, well, I, you know, I've got a business run, I can't deal with my health.
Ollie Matthews 04:04
I say what happens if you had to have two free months off and you were sick? Who would run your business? How would your business run without you? That would be my one sentence or two sentences, however many that was to say to them, how important to be is to be healthy. And not just that, how important it is to show up in a high level of performance in your business, because there's showing up and then they're showing up optimally, so your business can thrive. Because so many people are just showing up day in day out, getting things done when they could be actually being more productive and earning more money as a result.
Michaela Light 04:47
So you might actually say your body is your business.
Ollie Matthews 04:51
It is as I've said, this tagline came around. So in an interview, we were in entrepreneurs retreat, it was off the coast of Korea. issues, absolutely amazing place, and then suddenly, your body is your business and is stuck since then because your body is your business. Without a sustainable body, you haven't got a sustainable or scalable business, it's just so true. Because we're just not going to grow our business, you're not going to be the leader for your team, and your employees, you're not going to be the leader and the person, the coach or mentor, you need to be for clients potentially. And it's not just that for family as well. And for friends that and for ourself. I think that's one of the most important things, if we can show up better for ourselves, then we have less ailments and this psychological things that go on with our health as well.
Michaela Light 05:43
I think that's a good point. Sorry, for any background noise going on here. So I want to say that also, not just the entrepreneurs body, but also our staff, I like to focus on my staffs health, too, and to help coach them, Okay, how's your health going? And I like to inspire my clients and audience as well on this, and I think it's sometimes a subconscious reason, people are attracted to work with me, both as staff or clients, you know, when you start radiant health, and you've got this great vibe. It just attracts other people to yours. So you know, there's a business benefit to this. But I think the most important thing is, you know, if you're not healthy, it's very hard to enjoy anything else in life, when you lose your health, I don't know who is listening has ever lost their health for some period of time, either with COVID, or broken something, or they got really sick. But I know for myself, both from my own sicknesses and seeing other people get sick, you just can't enjoy life or your business. So what's the effing point of growing your business if you then can't enjoy it,
Ollie Matthews 07:03
and not just the physically being sick? I had a client that came to me. And he got with this to drop a bit of weight because he was feeling sluggish. She was feeling bloated. And he had got health problems going on, that he didn't show up as the 100% authentic person that he is when he goes on stage and does public speaking. So it's not just being able to be there for your business. What does events like public speaking like podcast appearances? What do these actually bring to your business? And what more can they bring? If you're actually really confident in yourself as well? That makes a difference?
Michaela Light 07:41
Do you feel health affects how your confidence is perceived?
Ollie Matthews 07:45
100% I think I think energy wise, like, I'm very intuitive. Obviously, you are as well. And energy wise, I can send someone's energy and I can send when they're feeling off. And it makes a lot of difference to me that I know I had my most successful year in business ever last year. And one of the reasons because I 100% practice what I preach. And right now I feel the healthiest physically and mentally that I've ever felt. And I'm in my I'm 46 years old, and I've competed in bodybuilding 2012 was my last show and actually feel healthier. It was not healthy to compete in bodybuilding your body did you build a couple of bits. Okay. But competed in a bodybuilding show 2008 to 2012, yes, physically, you might look shredded, and everything like that, but it wasn't about health, it was about a certain look. And I truly feel that the reason I had the best year in business last year, is because I was 100% aligned showing up as myself. And there were ups and downs, don't get me wrong, but I still was open and honest about the downs. Just as I was about the ups and having that confidence when the public speaking events and things like that. You just you're not going to be all closed up. And your body language is different when you're actually when you're not feeling confident in yourself. We just you just turn up and show up as a different person show up differently on lives and team events that recruitment times and everything like that at sales calls. Makes a lot of difference.
Michaela Light 09:28
I would agree with. For me, you know I like that. I mean, we'll get into where your principles are. But to me the basics of sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress relief. Probably you have a few more things in there, but if I don't pay attention to them, EMI I don't feel as healthy and eventually affects my business. I totally agree with that. Now, we mentioned burnout earlier. What exactly is burnout Build,
Ollie Matthews 10:01
I just feel burnout is when your body is not performing, where it actually should be performing, but to the point where it is seriously detrimental. And seeing signs of burnout is one thing. But when we actually burn out, we physically have to stop. And it takes longer. When we say prevention beats secure, it takes longer to startling get going, we think about a train leaving the station where it slowly builds up. People have been doing that in business, they're building up and building up that speed. And then suddenly that stops and breaks, it then has to take time to then be fixed to get back on the tracks to then build up that speed again. And that's what we're doing in business if we just pushed aside the actual signs that were burning up. And I think it's something where I would say it's the most common thing. I mean, I deal with burnout day in day out with clients. And it's one of the areas I really, really specialize in. But the signs of burning out is they're so common is worrying, especially in entrepreneurs in high achieving entrepreneurs. How many times people will just ignore these with an attitude to say, it'll never happen to me. But then it does. And that's when we just literally get knocked for six how many times we've seen people completely lose their businesses because of health.
Michaela Light 11:24
You, you said you knew a woman who had a really successful business. Tell us a bit about her story.
Ollie Matthews 11:32
Yeah. So listen, this wasn't a client of mine before. She was doing really well. I connected with her speaking and messaging, and really great little roundtable mastermind. And I was talking about the value of what I do for people's businesses. And she said, This is my story of burning out. If you want to know about battle value, you can basically charge what you want if you listen to this story. And she said that her business was doing really, really well, around $70,000 months, absolutely crushing it, multiple staff, and she was seeing signs of burning out. These are signs like she's waking through the night, or not able to get to sleep or she's waking up and her mind is racing in the morning. And she's just feeling groggy, as well. She has afternoon energy dips, she then had problems with hair falling out a little bit. She had times where she would have brain fog, her memory just wouldn't be she'd go into a room and just not be able to remember what she went in there for. But however many times we've gone up the stairs and thought, Why the hell did I just come in those sorts of things, problems, we've been able to drop weight, or maybe not put weight on. These are all signs that people are burning out and she was seeing the signs. Now, again, she had that attitude that this isn't going to happen to me, I'll just build my business and build my business with that deal with it later mentality. She burnt out. And her business went from $70,000 a month to $7,000 a month.
Michaela Light 12:58
Wait a minute, she lost 90% of her income.
Ollie Matthews 13:02
Yep. And not just that she was trying to look for ways to pay her staff. Because she was still very much in her business. It wasn't like she'd stepped out. She was looking for ways to pay a staff and she was looking at her son's bank account to try and borrow the money. At the same time. Her landlord said I want to sell the house, do you want to buy it? She didn't have the credit, right. And so she then had to find somewhere to move to now she's doing amazing now really, really well. And she's built her business up to even higher levels. But it's just when we hear stories of that it shouldn't have been to the point where you burn out. Before we do something about this, especially when we see the signs the most common sign being problems with with staying asleep.
Michaela Light 13:47
I don't want to reveal her personal details. We haven't said her name or business name. So I'm kind of curious, was she using caffeine to help her keep going, for example, or using other alcohol to help her calm?
Ollie Matthews 14:02
I know she was definitely using caffeine. She did like some wine stuff she mentioned about and I don't know what other stimulants if she will be fully open. I don't know what other stimulants she was using. But it's not very uncommon for unfortunately, that was not uncommon for me to hear of people using nootropics for staying awake, getting loads of focus and then using a nootropic to fall asleep using
Michaela Light 14:30
that drug you can buy on the gray market. I don't know. That's, yeah, help. So many times I see people use it next day.
Ollie Matthews 14:39
And I'm someone that's got ADHD. I'm on the spectrum of autism. I would never touch Modafinil. If I need to know my health was not in a position that I needed to be. But we should be able to focus to those levels to be able to get enough work done to thrive. Maybe if you've got a launch that and you want to get An extra 5%. But I see so many people using drugs and stimulants, to Vocus when they're not doing those foundations, I look at health. I have this obsession with Everest. There's a chapter on Everest in my book. And I look at health like climbing Everest, and so many people are trying to climb the mountain without getting cold. But not just that. It's also that when people climb Mount Everest, they have to go to Basecamp, and acclimatized. Now it takes around 12 days to trek to Basecamp. Ironically, it takes eight days to trek back down. So if you fall off Helfer base camp, then is it taking longer to get back there. But we have this foundational health level at base camp. Then when people climb the mountain, they do rotations. So they go up to camp one acclimatized back down and so on, then they go up to camp two, and then back down, up to camp three, back down, and then it can go to camp for the death zone and then Summit. But so many people try and skip this foundation. They haven't acclimatized and ended up just going straight up to camp one camp to camp free. But not just that there's there's a kicker at the end where they have this goal. When someone comes Mount Everest, what is their goal? I'm asking you with that what what is their goal that when they climb Mount Everest?
Michaela Light 16:19
Well, usually they want that Instagram photo or put them somewhere, you know, well before Instagram, okay, well, they want to get the summit. Usually, that's their goal. Well,
Ollie Matthews 16:30
that's one of the problems, most of the deaths on Everest happened on the way down. And we have our goals, but we don't have a goal for after the goal. So people may have this goal, 50 pounds, but what happens once they've dropped the 50 pounds? Well, we revert back to our old habits and not have sustainable methods coming down the mountain is very, very, very, very dangerous. So actually, the goal is to get up summit come back down safely. And I think that's such a powerful thing to take over to our health is that the same when when we have we look at business and we have a launch, the goal is to have a successful launch, but to be able to have that product to be sustainable afterwards. You don't want it to just have this launch and then just fall completely off the cliff. And with our help that so many times people are doing that have this big. So one of the things I don't know whether you've heard of it is this protocol called 75. Hard.
Michaela Light 17:30
Have you heard of that? I have no, what's that.
Ollie Matthews 17:33
So this is a guy called Andy for Sela. It's actually a mental fortitude challenge. But people look at it as a fitness or health challenge, where you do two workouts a day one of them outside. And I believe they're 45 minutes each. And you read a certain amount of pages, like 10 pages a day, you drink a certain amount of water, you don't have alcohol, you follow a diet, do all these different things. But so many people will start doing that. And basically if you fall off one day, you go back to day one. So people complete 75 highs, very strict. But the amount of times I've seen people say I'm going to do 75 heart, but they can't do two workouts a week at the moment. And I think this is where those foundational things of just getting some movement in getting good nutrition getting good routine. Just help people so so much. And I went off on a tangent there with with Everest, but I think it's so powerful to think of. I don't use Everest in a term of actually, it's hard. I use it in a term just thinking about that analogy to climb the biggest mountain to climb the biggest peak, the biggest goal, the highest mountain in our lives. We have to have a certain baseline Basecamp level of health to get there.
Michaela Light 18:51
Yeah, I read a book about climbing Everest called Into Thin Air I forget who wrote it. I'll put it in the show notes. But Bear Grylls No, some journalists do covers mountaineering, but the point was, like you said, they didn't die on the way up, they made it to the summit. And then a lot of people died on the way down there was a blizzard. And yeah, and they were just out of energy was I don't think that's how that relates back to burnout. You know, like, they climbed and they had that motivation to keep on going. They got to the summit, they took the photos, but then coming down, they were knackered and they didn't have a good plan for getting down and unfortunately some of them
Ollie Matthews 19:30
I think you can use the intuition there as well. Because yes, we can look weather reports and know what's going on. But you can see whether this is actually like we start losing our intuition we get what they call that oxygen oxygen deprivation. Yes, like the mountain brain and they can't be intuitive of where they're putting their feet of what ropes they could have been on to and sometimes with entrepreneurs or with anyone was like pushing forgot bowls, that goal can literally blind us. People get Snowblind up the mountain, those goals can literally blind us to the point where that is everything that matters. Maybe it's they're trying to get to seven figures. So their health doesn't matter as long as they get that sale as long as they get that goal as long as they push to that next level. And sometimes it just comes back to bite us in the butt.
Michaela Light 20:24
Now what about emotional issues and mental health? Would that be an early warning sign that you're burning out? Yeah, like you're having anger management issues or getting a bit depressed or
Ollie Matthews 20:35
anger management motivation things that when we look at dopamine, addiction, serotonin addictive tendencies, I do a brain screening, excuse me with my clients and it goes through neurotransmitter Ms. So we'll look about motivational get up and go neurotransmitters, your addiction neurotransmitters, your your dopamine and serotonin to see whether we need to support those pathways with certain supplements or
Michaela Light 21:04
are for those people listening who have no effing idea what dopamine is, well, they've heard the word but they're not sure what it means what is dopamine.
Ollie Matthews 21:12
Dopamine is basically our get up our contentment side of things. And serotonin being the go up and go so dopamine, I describe it as if you've got a dopamine issue, your favorite bands playing, but you know go in there is going to be good for you just can't be bothered. Serotonin issues is when your favorite bands playing, but you just don't even want to go. So dopamine is like we have this release of dopamine, when studies have shown like food will help release dopamine, but it's not eating the food is just before eating the food, we get this dopamine release. So then our dopamine drops, and we have this high, but then we have this dip afterwards as well. Things like caffeine can help with increasing the dopamine hit. But then we have more of a dip afterwards. Things like weight training exercise where people get addicted to exercise can be dopamine is just gambling tendencies. We get the dopamine hit, people addicted to porn, all these things that just gives this dopamine hit. And drugs as well. Yes.
Michaela Light 22:22
Seems like most of human behavior is chasing dopamine. You know,
Ollie Matthews 22:26
we live in a world which is trying addicted like Instagram is trying to get us to scroll and press the like button and check for messages. We have social media apps left, right and center that are fighting for our attention is no wonder that I mean, I was speaking to a client yesterday that he's got a 15 year old daughter and we were talking about their generation. I would be so it'd be stressful to be growing up as a teenager now with all the pressures of society of what they push on you and everything. And when it comes to social media, definitely.
Michaela Light 23:01
I think there's one other addiction we haven't mentioned begins with the letter W. workaholism. Yeah, that's another way people get a dopamine hit. And but unfortunately, it can cover up the burnout.
Ollie Matthews 23:14
Yeah, it's a release. And I think that work, definitely people put it in there. And I've had clients that have turned to alcohol, because of relationship issues, but also staying at work late. So they don't have to go home to their relationships. Yeah. And there's always going to be an underlying reason of our relationship with ourself. But we're, what are we working for? Are we working to prove other people wrong? Are we working because we want to just prove things to ourself. But yeah.
Michaela Light 23:47
So two other things that might be assigned for people burning out are sugar addiction, that's a very common way to boost dopamine. And what you just mentioned there, avoidance of quiet alone time where you don't have a phone in your hand.
Ollie Matthews 24:01
Well, sugar issues is something which I very much look at with clients when we talk about blood glucose and blood glucose management is that I get a lot of clients to test blood glucose, in the most part to see that they have these afternoon cravings, but they're not getting enough protein in their diet, which is going to help stabilize their glucose. And every time our glucose dips, we don't have good glucose management. So when it dips, we have a release of cortisol because one of cortisol, the stress hormones, prime jobs, is to boost glucose. So our brain feels off of glucose. So we want to have that kick. And if we're not getting good steady management, for our diet, and for stress management, so things like meditation, yoga, Nidra breathing exercises can help stabilize glucose that we're going to then have lows and then crave sugar. We're going to end up then being on a roller coaster to need more sugars instead. vicious, vicious circle to be on.
Michaela Light 25:04
But so many entrepreneurs are on one of those little or many of them. Yeah, circles because they, they push themselves and they use these substances or whatever devices to push themselves.
Ollie Matthews 25:20
It's just a roll.
Michaela Light 25:21
And you can do it for a while maybe years. And I think the other factor in here, you're naturally speaking, most humans have more health and energy and vitality when they're younger. And typically, I don't think this is necessary, but typically it degrades over time. And so what what happens is in their 20s, they're used to doing all nighters and taking caffeine and drinking wine and what have you, and nothing bad quotes bad really appears to happen? Behind the scenes, yeah, their health is degrading. And then they hit a brick wall when they burn out. So you're here to help people avoid that burnout brick wall.
Ollie Matthews 26:00
And if they hit the brick wall, then come to me quickly, because it takes a while to get back to that back from that, but you can do it.
Michaela Light 26:11
Now, there was a question I wanted to ask you earlier, I totally spaced out on which is why is burnout. So important now this year?
Ollie Matthews 26:19
I think, given
Michaela Light 26:20
by this year, I mean, as opposed to 20 years ago, you know,
Ollie Matthews 26:25
I think even in the short term this year compared to 2020, and 2021. So we had a growth year last year and 22, where most things economy was getting back to where well, I say economy. Businesses were getting busier after COVID. And now people are trying to make up for lost time. I had two years of potential slowness. Some people thrive during it. But chances are a lot of people weren't able to travel now. They're trying to make up for lost time and catch up. They catch up all the time. We're trying to do 25 hours in a 24 hour day.
Michaela Light 26:59
And I think they're still living on a different planet. That's impossible.
Ollie Matthews 27:02
Exactly. And then, as we know about, we keep getting told about recession coming and everything like that. So we're trying to deal with that. The cost of living all these sorts of things. There's a lot of things going on. But I think we've touched on when we spoke about youngsters nowadays that social media 20 years ago,
Michaela Light 27:28
didn't exist.
Ollie Matthews 27:30
I think MySpace was about about it. I made maybe MySpace, MSN Messenger, something like that. But I just Yeah, I was I was at music college, and I think MySpace was was around the thing that was going on. But you could build your business, then? No doubt, yeah, there was some very successful entrepreneurs. But the market is very, very saturated. So we've basically got all these quick fixes coming along, all the stresses were exposed to more news outlets as well. And bad news is the thing that sells good news doesn't really sell as well. So we're just constantly just bombarded with this 24/7 lifestyle as well, that light exposure when we're told that we need to work later, we're told we need to work earlier. We're on different time zones, like you're in Peru right now I'm in the UK, that yes, we've got businesses that I've got clients, one client in Taiwan, one in Australia, and then we go to America, Canada, South America, but there's different time zones because of technology, which is an amazing thing. Yeah, we still have to create our boundaries.
Michaela Light 28:51
Well, a lot most of this technology really is only I mean, electric light was only invented in the 1890s and only became common in the 1920s ish. Yeah. I mean, I can remember my grandparents, they had gas lights still in places in their house, basically like a candle, but with no gas supplying it. And I guess the point I want to make is a lot of this technology only has appeared in the last 100 ish years. And they say it's accelerating on an exponential curve. In other words, the new technology that happened in the 90 years prior and in the last 10 years is probably about the same amount of technological change. Yeah, which sort of implies the amount of change we'll get in the next year as as much as the last 10 years. I might have the numbers off but the point is, it's accelerating. You know, we've got all that chat GPT AI staff coming in like crazy. People are either embracing or freaking out about adding on their personality. And the point I want to make is human beings did not evolve, to have 24/7 News and social media and always on and on. artificial light late into the night, you know, human beings used to go to bed when it got dark, you know, and get up when it got light with the sun, not with you know, and they didn't have you know, if you were i This is the story. I don't know if it's true, but I sort of feel if there was a loud noise blaring in your career, it was probably a wild mountain lion trying to eat you, if you were a cave person back in the day. Now, it could be your alarm clock to wake you up. And what a stress reaction that puts on the body. You know,
Ollie Matthews 30:31
I use a Lumi lamp alarm clock, which just wakes you up with a line over five minutes. And it's amazing. He's kind of one of them. They're great. They're great. Absolutely great. So only time that I've needed the actual alarm was when I had to wake at like 3am to get to Heathrow. So funny
Michaela Light 30:46
thing is I do when I have a flight, I will put a backup alarm on but I just set the intention. I go to bed early the night before externally. So I can get in the sleep. I want. But I just sit in my mind. It's like okay, wake up at 3am or whatever the number is, I usually do. It's quite amazing. We have an intervals a
Ollie Matthews 31:07
lot when we say intentions. I was talking to someone about sickness, how when people weren't when a parent has kids and they get sick, we all do partner gets sick that you automatically assume that you're gonna get sick because you're sharing a bed, you're sharing the house. But actually if you set the intention, like the law of attraction manifestation and stuff, and your immune system is good, then you should be all good. All okay?
Michaela Light 31:32
You are all okay. Yeah, the human spirit and intention of mind. I, my personal belief is we are all, you know, part of God, we are all creative beings. And we can set intentions and manifest things in a life through, you know, having a clear intention with a strong emotional force by and this comes back to why having excellent health, which is what you help people with helps you have a more successful business. Because when you have great health, you can set more powerful intentions, you can climb higher mountains. Exactly, yeah. Because you can put out that vision into the world and inspire other people to come along with you on the mountain climbing. Right. Yeah. So I think this is probably the most important secret hidden skill you can have in your business to get your health really good. And not good by pumping it full of chemicals like caffeine, and this that and the other but I
Ollie Matthews 32:32
always say with caffeine is boring energy from tomorrow to fuel today.
Michaela Light 32:37
You know, you can do that occasionally.
Ollie Matthews 32:39
Yeah. Don't get me wrong. I have caffeine. But what I find with caffeine is that when people wake up on caffeine, it stops them sleeping properly in the evening. Yeah, nicotine to is another nicotine is a very, very high amount of stimulants. And even with things like vapes and stuff like that the chemicals in there are causing issues. But there's a lot of chemicals that we get exposed to and are toxic. Our detoxification systems are just overloaded.
Michaela Light 33:13
That would be the liver and kidneys, liver
Ollie Matthews 33:16
kidneys. Yep. And lymphatic drainage and stuff where, especially when we add alcohol into the mix. It's a very big thing that is impacting a lot of people.
Michaela Light 33:28
I just see you as like, well, you know, those Shakespearean three witches stirring the big pot full of potions. It's like, oh, let's let's add some alcohol. That's our 24/7 news. we'll sprinkle it all in. Yeah, Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble stress and burnout come out now.
Ollie Matthews 33:47
Something like that.
Michaela Light 33:47
Yeah. Something like that. Now, we've talked a bit about some hormones here, which I think it's dopamine, a hormone or it's a neurotransmitter transmitter. Yeah, you're that means it talks to the brain. And, of course, we have that fairly brain down in our intestines that also deal with the same neurotransmitters. But what about how do hormones know people? I assume everyone's listening has hormones racing around their body. Does that okay? This? Yes, literally.
Ollie Matthews 34:19
When we look at hormones, and I deal with a lot of women going through the menopause, I do have a lot of guys that have looked into testosterone replacement for because they've just got low, low sex drive, they're struggling with weight, and they're just
Michaela Light 34:34
fucking stressed. They considered that. But here's the thing. Any guys listening or having trouble getting their body part up? Or getting excited? Maybe you're just a bit stressed? Yeah, you know,
Ollie Matthews 34:48
well, not not just that. But when we look at the mechanics of how things work in the body. The hormone issue is an outcome. Uh, it's not the input, usually the reason, thyroid problems, and we use thyroid for energy creation and metabolism and all these different things, usually, and one of the frustrations I see is that doctors are prescribing thyroid hormones, or medication, specifically for underactive thyroid, or overactive thyroid or whatever it is that they're doing. But they haven't actually looked deeper into what is going on. Seeing the stress, seeing previous trauma, all these things that have happened. Now, we have a thing called our hypothalamus, which in our brain, which sends out signals to our pituitary to release a thing called thyroid stimulating hormone to our thyroid gland, which then releases T four and T three, and we have to go through conversion and stuff like that. We won't get into that part of it, but hormones as well, we have HP, hypothalamus, pituitary gonad axis, which are going to be sending signals to our testes or ovaries. So hypothalamus pituitary testes to release testosterone, hypothalamus, pituitary ovaries to release progesterone and estrogen and so on. But, or to release that luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone to release the certain amount. One of the big problems we have is that cortisol, first off, impact this feedback loop to change the actual first signal from the hypothalamus signal in our pituitary. So first off, we may get the signal to release too much or too little of whatever's going into the hypothalamus are the wrong types, then we get the signal from our pituitary, which again, we know is impacted a lot by cortisol, which then tells the thyroid to release the wrong amounts or the testes to release the wrong amount and so on. And not just that there's also the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, which links with epinephrine. And cortisol, again, has that feedback loop, which should tell us to stop. But when we're too stressed out, that cortisol message gets muddled up, gets mixed up, and we just get mixed signals. So we see people haven't thyroid problems, we see people having problems with the menopause, where high levels of
Michaela Light 37:13
prior to menopause, women have heavy periods.
Ollie Matthews 37:18
Not going through periods, menstrual cycle, irregular, heavy as we say. And then we lead to problems with iron, and red blood cell issues, all these different things that can happen as a result of too much blood loss, which can then lead to more problems with their for GE anemia, all these things that can happen, when actually if we dealt with stress, and which let me
Michaela Light 37:42
give an analogy that came to me here, if you had a car and it was burning oil, and you had all this smoke coming out the back. The western medicine solution is well, let's just kind of cover up the smoke. Yeah, yeah. But really, you need to like, look at why is the car burning oil. And maybe you've been putting your foot on the accelerator in the car and burning, you know, destroying the engine, in effect, she's burnout. Yeah. And you can get away with a car of like, you know how some people drive foot on the brake foot on the gas. And it's kind of very jarring. And eventually it destroys the car and one day you're going to be on the freeway or the motorway, as you call them in United Kingdom. And the car actually breaks down, you know, you have an accident? And I think, no, I don't think anyone listened. Well, not maybe some people listening wouldn't take care of their car, right. But most people, most entrepreneurs are happy to spend 1000s of dollars, getting their car preventively maintained. Right? Why not doing the same thing for your body?
Ollie Matthews 38:42
Yeah, I think if we look at it, like that person who dropped $63,000 a month? How much would she have actually put in to make that not happen? So when we talk about what is the cost of a client acquisition, if you're gonna get 20 grand from that client, and it costs you five or 10 grand to get it, but you're up. So you're going to be making profits, right? So well, depending on what your cost of actually fulfilling that client is. But, but if you're gonna make 20 from a client, and it cost you 10 To get that client, you would do it. So your body is making you money all the time. It's amazing. And I have a
Michaela Light 39:24
clean we we talked about women hormones issues, men often have similar issues. They just come out in different ways. Yeah.
Ollie Matthews 39:31
And I think one of the things we see with guys is that testosterone replacement isn't as common as hormone replacement. So whilst and again, we should be able to deal with it before we get there is by women in menopause, our adrenal, their adrenals should be able to create enough progesterone to actually function effectively without the need of HRT, but the stress level stop that same with guys that testosterone does go down on 30 around 1% a year, testosterone can go down, really, with good lifestyle, like on average. Now that's a good lifestyle. So if we think from 30 to 40, you've got 10%, less testosterone. We've really good lifestyle, we can slow it down a little bit. But how's my plastic go down with bad lifestyle? Exactly. There was a study done on people that got six hours or less sleep for two weeks, just two weeks, their testosterone went down on average, 10 to 15%. Two weeks was like aging 10 to 15 years. Wow. Now, I don't know what the study was what brought that back up afterwards, because it didn't continue on with this study. But it's a very well known study that has shown it was multiple subjects. So it wasn't just like five people there was like probably about 50 subjects that were shown this and on average, 10 to 15% 10 to 15 years, based on sleeping six hours or less. I usually construction
Michaela Light 41:02
is very important for radiant health. And also, it helps detox the body of stress, helps the hormones rebalance helps you clear trauma from the day. I mean, it's a great investment. People think sleep time has been a waste, quote, waste. It isn't.
Ollie Matthews 41:21
I always describe sleep as if we think of a big airport. So think of Heathrow through the day, you've got planes coming and going every minute, 90 seconds, two minutes. It's really busy. And that's just like our body. But in the evening, even though the planes have stopped, there's admin, there's refueling, there's restocking, there's maintenance work going on. There's all these different things, there's organization, that admin are all going on. That is vital to the smooth running of the airport. During the day. Our body does that as well. The detoxification, cellular regeneration, all these things happen. New hair follicles or lay down all these things. Hormone balances through getting good sleep. Now there's a new
Michaela Light 42:07
business idea. What's that? Sorry, new business ideas sometimes.
Ollie Matthews 42:12
Exactly. When you wake up, wake up, I get some crazy ideas sometimes. But like, people will then use alcohol because they say it helps them sleep. There are no studies, as far as I'm aware. And I geek out on studies that show that alcohol is beneficial for restorative levels of sleep.
Michaela Light 42:35
It will knock you out or make you unconscious. It might cut down the amount of worrying you're having. But it doesn't lead to deep sleep. And I think people who know who drink any smoke from them, which I used to do drink enough alcohol to get a hangover the next day they know the sleep when you're drunk is crappy.
Ollie Matthews 42:52
Yeah, I think deep down people know it's a case of where we go into using your intuition and self love that you love yourself enough to warrant improvements of your health.
Michaela Light 43:04
Yeah, I I gave up alcohol. It was just I have a bit of an addictive personality. And I was fine. I was learning how to do magic at the time, which is setting intentions in a ritualistic way kind of thing.
Ollie Matthews 43:18
Okay. Hmm. Magic with a CK.
Michaela Light 43:22
I never really went into spelling it that way. But yes, magic CK is hunkering correct magic. But you know, setting an intention and making it manifest in particular, I wanted to make my business make more money. Now, I went to a conference, it was actually a you know, wake camp or whatever. But I found I couldn't get my magic to work when I'd had one glass of wine and wasn't even drunk. I just had a glass of wine. And then so I was slightly buzzed for an hour. And then I had the slight come down for another hour off, which you might call a hangover. And I just had difficulty getting that part or working on like shit, I'm going to stop doing this because I, I really, really want to grow my business. And part of that was getting the magic to work. Anyway, what I can't remember the name of the book, when I read some book about alcohol, it really does mess around with your sleep and your body chemistry and and there's all these toxins, you're now your liver and other body bits need to clean out it's
Ollie Matthews 44:22
remember as well, alcohol is still has still got calories in seven calories per gram. But the labeling doesn't have to show that. So actually, your body isn't able to use them for energy it has to burn them but it can't use them physically as energy like it can carbohydrates, or proteins and fats and things. So like even though there's conversions there, it has to burn them before those other things so that literally when people say that dead calories they are we stuffed to get rid of them and it gets rid of them from trying to detoxify, trying to push them out of the system and literally feed them rubbish also dehydrate you as well. inhibitions drop when you have All
Michaela Light 45:01
right. Yeah, there's a lot of I mean, you know, if
Ollie Matthews 45:05
there's not 100% against alcohol, I don't drink so I don't like the taste of it. It's what we call
Michaela Light 45:11
a poison. Yeah. There's no I mean, I, I had the expert when I first started drinking, I did find the taste, you know, when it was 14 or 15. In the United Kingdom when they started letting you drink. I did find that tastes a bit disgusting. And I only kind of persevered because it was like nothing to do, you know? Yeah. And I will say, after some really bad experiences with some Dutch gin, I couldn't touch the stuff. It is interesting, it's over anyway, let's not delve into the alcohol as a whole, we've delved in a little bit, we stuck our toe into the bath of alcohol is just one factor here. Now what about your you mentioned weight gain, might be a sign that someone's going towards burnout or difficulty gaining weight, you know, either either way, they haven't good footing having a healthy weight.
Ollie Matthews 46:01
I think that's linked more when it comes to thyroid issues. So if people got right to fibroid, they'll end up where they're just not able to keep weight on, because they're just totally stressed, literally be eating some sugar and stressed, then we will look into glucose management as well, because I've seen people that just aren't overweight, that are diabetic, because of glucose management. And the same with like trying to drop weight. If your body isn't able to know basically, if you've been pushing yourself and you've been stressed out and your detoxification systems are overwhelmed. Now you're also exposed to daily toxins in the air, diesel fumes, mold mycotoxins from mold from from environment, BPaaS, plastics, then all these things, if you're overweight, they get stored or the toxins get stored in fat tissue. Now, it's safe there, because fat tissue most fat tissue doesn't have mitochondria, which is the basically like the brain cell of the cells. As a result, the body sees it as safe, that we basically can't have any issues with that, so we're not going to release it. So when we actually try and lose weight, and our detoxification systems aren't working. Now, this isn't to say go on a juice fast or anything like that. I'm not trying to sell any shakes or anything. This is literally, if we can improve our detoxification system get our liver function and better methylation function and better systems around around the liver, kidneys and everything. We're going to be able to then mobilize those toxins and get rid of those toxins. So if people haven't
Michaela Light 47:42
been reading about this, I think it's called niacin flush, that flushes out toxins, but the what the warning that was given with it is need to be careful because you've got a lot of toxins stored in your body and you start flushing them out whether it's through using a protocol or going to the sauna, or whatever you need to, you know,
Ollie Matthews 48:00
well a lot of times, women more than guys have historically a harder time to go through what we call stage two detoxification actually getting rid of toxins. So we tried to mobilize go from fat soluble towards soluble can do them. But basically like a toxin from one arm is like it's been taken over to the other arm and just stood there. And now it's released again and can do more damage, we're not actually able to sweat it out. Like take a leak and piss it out. When it comes to tears, crying it out breathing out all these things that we just relocated, like what we call that chelation it just basically like translocate to another part of the body. And that's very, very detrimental. So when I see people going on these detox diets, they want to do this really long, fast. So they go on a detox diet, they end up doing themselves more damage, there's more harm than good. Rather than building the foundations supporting their health, their liver, looking at their kidney function, maybe doing like a complete blood count to see what's going on in their body and getting a practitioner like myself to read through that and just advise accordingly. But the quick fix this marketed is definitely especially this time of year, have this 14 day detox, have this juice diet, and people want these quick fixes but end up having to do them. The quick fix is the longest.
Michaela Light 49:29
Yeah. I think there's several levels to detox things, the things you talked about, well also reducing the amount of toxins going in, which means removing I know a mutual friend of ours, Dana, he kind of went on this he was getting rid of plastics in his you know, normal plastic bottles of water, what have you and I must admit I've done a fair amount of that for quite a long time. You know, looking at the ingredients in bodycare you know, shrimp, what's the shampoo gone and all these chemicals don't look too healthy.
Ollie Matthews 49:58
Well that people look at Sometimes what they're putting in their body but forget the skin is an organ as well.
Michaela Light 50:03
So do organ it's
Ollie Matthews 50:06
exactly right and we look at surface area but I have there's a brand I use called green people which no affiliation to him but it's just all natural stuff it's a little bit more expensive but I look at how further down the line that it's actually cheaper yes that's a deal with it further down the line but yeah and chemicals again can affect your sleep and everything like that can affect hormones can fill out
Michaela Light 50:33
that can be beauty care products, shampoo, it food, water, the air we breathe, it could also be the clothing we wear or you know
Ollie Matthews 50:46
of all this stuff like even so down to like living in Norfolk it's a farming County and there's a lot of pesticides and things there so you actually ride in the countryside. I love cycling in the summer. Right in the countryside. There's the air quality,
Michaela Light 51:00
yes, diesel I had a local he he died recently but a few years back but he had an exposure to chemicals in his job when he was in his 30s and then he was super sensitive and he went they moved from London to Cornwall in the countryside but the farm was spraying was pesticide all over his crops and he would he'd like breakout from you know from exactly so I think paying attention to the environment you know if you're able to spend some time outside your way I mean in England that would mean the Lake District or Scotland or Wales or some other
Ollie Matthews 51:40
and don't get me wrong like I think going in the countryside not all the fields are going to be there so if you spend loads of time in London in the center and then you go to Norfolk it's it's an improvement if you live in in Norfolk then go into the Lake District is going to be an improvement once you take like five hours to get out in Norfolk bays
Michaela Light 51:59
or go to the ocean you know you've got the North Sea next year Exactly. So I mean although the seas are somewhat polluted, you know the air quality over the seas probably.
Ollie Matthews 52:10
And you look at like grounding yourself and everything and getting me rambling.
Michaela Light 52:13
I love grounding. Yeah, I've got one of those what he called it sheets with a little fill but things through plugs down.
Ollie Matthews 52:21
Meditation to go on. I keep like toying with getting the actual bedsheets and stuff I haven't clicked by so I need to click Buy and just grab the bed sheets and pillow not that
Michaela Light 52:31
expensive. Yeah, and I have a mat onto my computer as well. Yeah, some people got their into walking barefoot, you know, grass or sand or whatever.
Ollie Matthews 52:42
In the summertime, I do that rather than the sheath. I go outside. I have my wife Bush tea, and I meditate just on the girl, making sure the dog's mess is cleared up first. I don't want to get that into my
Michaela Light 52:55
bed or not to do that. And that does help with sleep. I find I sleep deeper. The deepest I sleep is when I get away from all the electronics. I'm in countryside somewhere and it's quiet. I go to bed when the sun goes downhill. And there's no like noise of the city goal or
Ollie Matthews 53:13
the best night's sleep I had last year we had done an event in managing and then we went to the rain forest. And we whitewater rafting that you couldn't get trucks there or anything. We got a truck to the top of the mountain trek down whitewater rafting to a campsite and we're literally camping in the middle of nowhere. That was the deepest night's sleep I've ever had. I got like 97 sleep score on my aura ring. I only said like six seven hours, which is crazy.
Michaela Light 53:40
Yeah, but it's a higher quality sleep. I mean I went on I've got a goal to go on a take a break from business once a quarter for a week and totally disconnect. And last year some vacations I didn't totally disconnect I was kind of checking messages a bit. But I took off during Thanksgiving week which because my clients are in America Thanksgiving is a big thing for them they're not around and I was near the ocean and the way I could just falling asleep listening to the waves. Oh my god, I've sleeping 1112 hours for the first few days. I think I needed to like catch up. I mean, I know you can't catch up on sleep but
Ollie Matthews 54:21
no, but like, if your body needs sleep then getting some extra isn't going to be detrimental. Really, unless you get it near when you want to have it again. Right? Yeah.
Michaela Light 54:33
So you know, do the best if you're if you can't live in the rain forest 24/7 which maybe is difficult. At least make your bedroom quiet. Don't have your phone near the bed. Take your phone
Ollie Matthews 54:46
out as much blackout blinds but there's a company called Manta sleep and they do sleep in fact one of the guys a DCF mastermind Were part of, and I have the manta pro mask. And he actually gave me the first mark like the original one in 2018. And I used it pretty much every night which has these kinds of pads around the eyes. And then on those not touching your eyes because I hated that about sleep masks. And from the
Michaela Light 55:19
female perspective fucks up with your eye makeup if you're taking a nap as well. I bet not the Man's mask does not match with your eye and makeup, you know, taking what's called a disco nap or something before you go out. You put all the clothing on there. Exactly.
Ollie Matthews 55:37
So I've used I got the pro one last year, which side sleepers as well. So it's got like a little bit of a divot at the side. And I love that. It's absolutely awesome. I highly recommend getting a good sleep mask. And that's, that's the one that I use, and things like breathing as well getting I have a nose strip that I use just to open your airways a bit on the nose. I've done things like mouth taping, but I've done mouth taping in the past. So you always breathe through your nose that historically that we should breathe through our nose, most people the mouth Grievers. And, yeah, why is that? I think just how we've evolved. And then we look at allergies and people having a lot of food that don't agree with them, we bang up our nose, now because of sign of apes my mouth to go to sleep, which is weird at first. So I'd recommend doing it by sitting down for a while and then build up to it. I don't need to do that my mouth just stays closed. And like I just have this tape on my nose. Which is really, really powerful.
Michaela Light 56:41
Well, that opens up the nostrils, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that relates to the brain because when we breathe through the nose and the speed of breathing and the depth of the breathing affects all those neurotransmitters. Exactly.
Ollie Matthews 56:57
Oxygen. If we're getting good off oxygen, then we're going to have better brain function. And brain function we're going to have that's the signaler for so you the
Michaela Light 57:08
hill as a whole oxygen. I mean it's those type of bionic Byronic chamber or have you pronounced the word where you you go in a chamber with high pressure and you get extra oxygen. I did that I felt great afterwards. You know, and there's all the ozone treatments, other things you can play.
Ollie Matthews 57:29
I'm not used to hyperbaric oxygen chamber, although sun cast is not in Norwich, but it's going to be some in London. Yeah, everything somebody invited me onto their podcast who's got one in her business so my well maybe the podcast in person should get the train down there. And we'll do sorted
Michaela Light 57:50
I you know, I mean it's pretty harmless. You're just going you're raising the air pressure 30% or whatever the amount is and you know, it's very slow it builds up slowly stay in there but the the biggest fear I had was claustrophobia, like but they have a quick release mechanism in case you freak out and yeah, so lots of cool things we can do to improve our health and hence improve our business. If people are interested in chatting to you more how can they find you online one of the best ways to
Ollie Matthews 58:23
my main website on my website is OJ a Why health.com and all information you
Michaela Light 58:29
better spell OJ because it has a funny spelling. Yeah. Oh, J A. Why? Health zactly see, if you were thinking of OJ Simpson, you'd have misspelled that. No, but
Ollie Matthews 58:38
it is my initials. Oliver joy. I get it. Yeah, so OJ health.com. And there's information on there of I've got things like a health screening. I've got my one to one work. But I also have a group program called the revitalization blueprint, which is lessons every couple of weeks live Q and A's and just over two years worth of a library of videos that have bought for the intersections and really, really helpful for people but that's revile you can get directly to that revitalisation blueprint.com And that's revitalization with a Zed with a Z
Michaela Light 59:12
one we'll put all these links in the show notes on the links section. You can find them on intuitive leadership mastery.com And always adding them in now into our
Ollie Matthews 59:28
were some typos with subtitles. Now,
Michaela Light 59:33
we better on typo that one
Ollie Matthews 59:37
night, so it's all done. It's all good now.
Michaela Light 59:40
Oh, good. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Ollie Matthews 59:43
My pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.
Michaela Light 59:45
You doing great work with helping people improve their health on a fundamental level, not with a quick fix, but like really helping them heal out and then help them you know, that helps them change their business so much so.
Ollie Matthews 1:00:03
Definitely. Thank you, thank you for having me.
