Can You Age in Reverse? Tony Robbins Says YES

In this episode of MarieTV, we do have some adult language. So if you do have little ones around, grab your headphones now.

Tony Robbins:

Now you got an Apple phone and you get it for free with a contract, right? And it’s got more power than the Apollo mission had to take people to the moon and back, a hundred times more. That’s what’s happening right now in our human bodies because of technology that keeps doubling in its power every 18 months and halving in its cost. But people don’t know about it. But billionaires know, and I wanted to bring people access because some of this stuff is free. Some of this stuff is really inexpensive. Most of it is. And if you have a real problem, you got to know what the solutions are. And if you don’t have a problem, you want to maximize the quality of your life.

Marie Forleo:

There are just a handful of people who’ve had a profound impact on both my personal and professional life, and my guest today is one of them.

Tony Robbins is an entrepreneur, number one New York Times bestselling author, philanthropist, and the nation’s number one life and business strategist. Over the past four decades, Tony has empowered more than 50 million people worldwide through his business and personal development coaching programs and events. His new book, Life Force, is available now.

Tony Robbins. Oh my goodness. I am so happy to see you. Thank you so much for making time with us.

Tony Robbins:

Nice to see you too. It’s been too long Marie.

Marie Forleo:

It’s been way too long. I was thinking about it and it was 2019 the last time I had some real Tony time together and I’m going to make up for that this year. But I want to talk about, first of all, congratulations. This book, Life Force, we were just saying… The moment I knew that this was coming out and that we were going to have you back on the show. I told the team, I said, overnight me that book immediately because it’s not going to be a small book. And at 700 pages, I could not stop Tony. I’m not kidding you. I read it every, I mean I kept going and going and going and this little highlighter is practically dead now because I used it so much.

Tony Robbins:

That’s awesome.

Marie Forleo:

It’s extraordinary. And I have to say this before we get into all the content. You are one of the people in the world who anytime I get to spend around your work, whether it’s in person, you know, as colleagues and friends or, you know, through the book, I find myself more me and I just want to say, thank you for continuing at this. You know, you’ve been… You’re such a legend and you continue to up the game and you continue to get even better and better. So thank you for putting in the heart and the soul and the time and the dedication to create something like this. And we’re going to talk about… Yeah.

Tony Robbins:

Thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate that. But that’s the best comment you gave me, that you’re more of you. I really love that. That’s a great way to articulate it. Because that’s what it’s all about, right? It’s about maximizing who we really are, not becoming something we’re not.

Marie Forleo:

That’s right.

Tony Robbins:

And really tapping to our real abilities. Whether it be your finances, your body, your emotions, your relationship, or any part of your life that matters to you, the spiritual part of life, your career.

Marie Forleo:

Yep.

Tony Robbins:

So that’s been my obsession for, as you know, about 45 years. And, you know, now we’re focused on health. I’ve always been focused on it, but at a different level now. Because there’s some breakthroughs that are happening right now that people have to know about. Because if you’re hearing in the COVID world or you’re just here, you hear about standard of care and there’s so much obsession about COVID that we’re missing what’s actually happening right now.

The same technology that’s put… I had one of those original cell phones. That’s how old I am. Motorola, it was like a foot long. It weighed two pounds. It cost 4,000 bucks, it’d be like 10,000 bucks in today’s dollars. And you charged it for six hours so you could get 30 minutes of talk time. Now you got an Apple phone and you get it for free with a contract, right? And it’s got more power than the Apollo mission had to take people to the moon and back a hundred times more. That’s what’s happening right now in our human bodies because of technology that keeps doubling in its power every 18 months and halving in its cost. But people don’t know about it. But billionaires know, and I wanted to bring people access because some of this stuff is free. Some of this stuff is really inexpensive. Most of it is. And if you have a real problem, you got to know what the solutions are. And if you don’t have a problem, you want to maximize the quality of your life.

Marie Forleo:

Well, totally. And I wanted to ask you, you know, you’ve always been such an advocate for us living our lives at an extraordinary level, but what really inspired you to do this book now? What was that spark that made you say, “We have to gather over a hundred of the leading researchers and scientists and people that are on the cunning edge and make this beautiful gift of art.”

Tony Robbins:

Well, you know, when 2008 happened, I’ve always been obsessed with the answers, but when 2008 happened, I was just so upset by seeing people being taken advantage of financially. So I spent almost 10 years on finance. And how’d I do it? Same way. I went to 50 of the smartest financial people on earth. People who started with nothing became billionaires. Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett. But I took the complex and made it simple enough that people could absolutely change their life. And that’s why I wrote two number one New York Times Best Sellers, more importantly people’s lives change. But, you know, there’s an old phrase that says, it’s an Indian phrase that says, “A person with health has a million dreams, a person without it has one.” And I actually start the book with that because if you don’t take care of this area, nothing matters.

So I’d like to go back a second just to give people a reference, because I talk fast, I’m passionate, I’m intense. And some people think I’m indestructible or something. And it’s far from it. My journey around health started early on. Really, I was literally 19 years old. When I was 16, I started doing what I’m doing. At 17 it became my full-time focus, literally, that’s my work. And in two or three years I found myself working with Olympic athletes and I developed skills and I was able to help people. And as a result, I grew very rapidly and quote unquote successor being well known. And I was very grateful and I worked 20-hour days. But some part of my brain, you know, the survival part of our brain, the fight or flight part, I didn’t know how to manage that well.

And I started getting this belief for this obsession that maybe I have this success early on because I’m going to die young. And it went beyond just thinking the thought. And it wasn’t an easy thing like I’m going to get hit by a and die. No, I was going to die slowly of cancer. And I started dreaming about it. And it was so bad that, of course, whatever you focus on, it eventually ends up in your life in some way. And it did end up in my life. But before it hit me personally at first, fortunately, helping outside of me. So it gave me perspective. It was my girlfriend at the time, came home crying uncontrollably. “My mom, my mom.” I’m like, “Your mom, what?” “She has cancer. And they say, she’s going to die. She has nine weeks to live.” And if it’d been me, I think I’ve been overwhelmed.

But because my whole thing is success leaves clues. Jim Rohn taught me that, right. It’s like, if… I said, “Wait a second. She’s not going to die. I mean, she could, but I’m not going to just accept that, she shouldn’t accept that. There are people with stage four cancer who turn it around. Thousands of people have.” I said, “I’m going to read everything I can. I’m going to find out what these people did and we’re going to see if we can do it for your mom.” So I finally came across a book called One Answer to Cancer. It wouldn’t be the book I’d recommend today, but it was the best one at that time I found. It was written by a dentist who was told he was going to die in six weeks. He had pancreatic cancer, which is the most deadly cancer of all.

And he healed himself with a detoxification program and pancreatic enzymes. And I read the book. He was still alive 15 years later and totally healthy and cancer free. And I went to her mom and I said, her name was Jenny. I said, “Jenny,” she was in her early 40s. I said, “Please read this.” I said, “I know you don’t want to die. Don’t accept what they’ve said to you.” And then I gave her As a Man Thinketh because I want a reminder of the power of her mind.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Tony Robbins:

And she consumed the book and was so inspired by this man’s example, she went full force on this. And within a few weeks she felt so much better. She had a tumor that was protruding out of her back and she had one in her feminine organs. And I don’t know, I think it was with five or six or seven weeks you couldn’t see anything protruding anymore. You couldn’t even feel it.

So at nine and 10 weeks when she’s supposed to die, the doctor started saying, “This is impossible. Maybe we should do exploratory surgery.” And she asked me, I’m 19 years old, “Should I do the surgery?” And I was like, “If I tell you to do it and you die or don’t I can’t do it. You got to decide.” So he convinced her to do it. And when they went in, the only thing they found left in her body was the size of my pinky fingernail, literally. And the doctor said, “This is a miracle.” And she said it is a miracle. But let me tell you what I did. And he’s like, “No, no, no, this is spontaneous remission don’t tell me what you did. It didn’t make any difference. It’s a miracle.”

Well, she’s 80 something today. She’s still alive. And she went around and started speaking at churches and telling people what she’d been done. But it changed my life because it made me go from victim in my health to where I was fearful something is going to strike me down to really being a biohacker. And you know, you’ve been to enough of my events, your audience may not, but I do these events that are four, seven, 10 days. And they’re with audiences of 10, 15, 20,000 people in the stadium. And I got to hold their attention 12 hours a day when most people wouldn’t sit for three hours. So we know I had to do things to my body to get it in this incredible shape to do this, to have this kind of strength and endurance. And we know the impact now.

I have a group of people that have studied me for three years. They do Olympic athletes, the Tom Bradys, people like that. And they’ve measured everything. I burn 11,300 calories on one day on stage. I thought that was impossible. They’ve done it for three years. It’s like clockwork. And they explained to me that… They’re trying to explain it themselves. It’s like two and a half hour marathons to give you an idea or two and a half NBA games back-to-back without a break. You know? They went through all these examples to give me this. They go, but I guess chess masters burn 4,000 calories not moving. And I burn almost 3,500 before I get on stage. So it’s pretty wild. I jump a thousand times on an average day on stage. I weigh 282 pounds. So they explain every time you come down, it’s four times your body weight.

So imagine a thousand jumps times a thousand pounds of what that does to your bone density. So show me my bone density. And it’s like here humans, here’s Olympic athletes, here’s this creature called you. You know, if you’re running, I’m sure you’ve gone running with a friend before and you get to a point where you can’t talk.

Marie Forleo:

Yep.

Tony Robbins:

That’s because the lactic acid has got to level four. I’m at an 18 and still speaking. So when they did all this, they helped me understand what’s going on. But then of course, along the way, cancer entered my life, at least tumor did. And I was only 32. And fortunately I’d done this thing with Jenny, so I wasn’t super scared. But I went in just because, I was healthy as far as I was concerned, I went in because I’m a helicopter pilot. You have to go get a physical every two years to stay current.

And I went to this doctor and I expected he was going to send the report. My assistant kept saying, “He wants to talk to you.” And I said, “Listen, I’m busy. Just tell him to send the report.” And I get home one night and there’s a note on my door. And it says, “Tony, you must call the doctor. He says it’s an emergency.” Well, I didn’t get home at eight or nine. I got home at after midnight. I called and got the answering service, they didn’t respond. And then all those old fears start showing up again. Like, “Oh my God, I take such good care of myself. How could it be? Well maybe because I fly so much. Exposure to radiation. Could I have cancer?” And it’s like the mind can do crazy things.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Tony Robbins:

But I’ve learned to center myself and it’s like there’s an old phrase that says, “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a courageous person once.” You know, and it’s like, “Okay, stop making these stories, go to sleep, wake up and deal with it.” I woke up with foreboding, obviously. Called the doc. And he says, “You have a tumor in your brain.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “At the base of your brain, your pituitary gland, you have a tumor.” I said, “How could you possibly know that?” And he said, “Well, I saw the size of your body and thought you probably have a lot of extra growth hormones.” I was like, “How’d you figure that out, doc? My hands are bigger than your head. I’m 6’7″. I grew 10 inches in a year. I got a size 16 shoe. Well, that’s a breakthrough thought.” He goes, “Well, because of that, I thought you might have gigantism.” And I did blood tests and you do. And that means there’s a pituitary tumor. And so he wanted to put me in for surgery immediately. And I was leaving the next day to go to the South of France for a Date With Destiny. You’ve been to the program, and it’s my favorite thing to do.

And I was like, “I’m not doing this and canceling the event, but maybe I need to do it. I’m open. But tell me how this works. What are the side effects?” He said, “Well, I do have to warn you. You can die.” I was like, “Okay, that’s encouraging.” He said, “But the more likely thing is your endocrine system will not be the same. And so you’ll probably lack a lot of energy that you’re used to.” And I was like, “That’s a deal breaker. There’s got to be a better approach.” So I went off and tried to forget about it. Of course I did a seminar and all I could think about is, “Am I going to die?” You know, in my head. So I went and did the MRI and I saw the look on the guy’s face as I was coming out.

Sure enough I had a tumor. And it’s why I grew 10 inches in my high school years in one year. It exploded growth room through my body, made me grow. But then it infarcted, which means it swallowed up a part of itself. But it was still there, still creating a lot of growth hormone. And so I thought, “I need another opinion.” And by the way, for people listening, it’s really important to note the Mayo Clinic even now tells people, you got to get a second opinion even from their doctors. And the reason is they did a study in 2017. There have been many studies like this, but their study is really amazing. They found that only 12% of the time the first diagnosis is the same as the second one. That means 88% of the time it’s different. And they found if you got multiple people evaluating, you usually refine the diagnosis and got a better outcome. So they recommend it.

So just because of Jenny, the woman I told you about, I already knew we needed a second opinion. So I said, “Okay, he wants to cut me. Let’s go to the guy that’s more biochemically driven.” So I saw this doctor in Boston who was considered the best in the world. Completely different bedside manner. Super loving man. Said, “Tony, listen, you really do have it. It’s really there. But you should not do the surgery.” He said, “Tony, you could die.” And he went through the whole thing. He goes, “That’s cutting. You don’t want to do that.” He goes, “I can send you a place in Switzerland where they can give you a single injection every six months, just twice a year. And it’ll keep your arteries from expanding.” And that’s what makes you die when you have gigantism, they get too big and you have a heart attack.

And I said, “Well, but my arteries are normal size. Aren’t they?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “I have no side effects I can see.” And he goes, “That’s right.” I said, “Then why would I do this?” He goes, “So you can be certain that you’re not going to die.” And I said, “Well, what if I’m already certain?” I said, “What if there’s side effects to the drug?” He goes, “Well, I don’t think there are. They’re using it in Switzerland.” And I said, “Doc, what if I did nothing.” But I wasn’t stupid. I’m not ignoring it. But if I’m healthy, what if I just measured every year or two years? He goes, “Well, you could do that, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” I said, “Well, the other wants to cut me.” He started laughing. He goes, “The baker wants to bake. The surgeon wants to cut. I want to drug you.” He goes, “That’s how it works.” He was the nicest man in the world.

So he said, “If you really want to do that, go for it.” And by the way, thank God I didn’t do it because he was a good man. But the drug never got imported in the US because the FDA investigated and it caused cancer.

Marie Forleo:

Wow.

Tony Robbins:

So I went to six more doctors. The last doctor says to me, “Tony, you have a huge mental growth hormone. The tumor is there obviously.” But he said “Your recovery, from the equivalent of two marathons, a few days later is insane. I think it’s that growth hormone that’s allowing you to recover.” And he said, “Plus.” He goes, “I know bodybuilders that spend 1200 bucks a month to get what you’re getting for free.” So he encouraged me to just do what I want to do, which was measure.

I was 32 at the time. I’ll be 62 in a couple weeks. And in those 30 years there’s been no challenge. And I have not lived in fear because I got the certainty within myself. And so I tell you the story and your listeners and viewers, especially, because I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to your doctor. You should. But you need to get more than one opinion because doctors today have an unbelievable challenge that no one talks about. And they’re the best people. They work the hardest. They’ll devote their lives. They often give up their own health to take care of other people. I don’t know better people than doctors. So you know where I stand on doctors. This whole book is 150 doctors, scientists, the best in the world, but they’re the best in regenerative medicine. That’s the difference. Not just an average person.

And the problem we have is today that the average half-life of a medical education, according to Harvard, a study done in 2017 also, found this. The half-life is 18 to 24 months, meaning within 18 to 24 months, half of what they learned is out of date.

Marie Forleo:

Wow.

Tony Robbins:

And they said by now 2022, it would be 73 days. So let’s give it the old version, say 18 to 24 months. So how does the doctor know what to do? The pharmaceutical salesman. That’s how they get educated. That’s how the opioid crisis happened. Can you imagine being a doctor, loving your patients, wanting to help them. And you’re told this is the best drug and it’s not addictive and you get them addicted or they end up dying. Poor doctors, because they don’t have the time. The best way to describe a doctor to people is imagine someone who cares so much, they’re walking along a riverbed and they hear someone screaming, drowning.

They don’t care about themselves. They jump straight in, they go save the person’s life at their own risk. Bring them out, give them mouth-to-mouth, save their life. But the minute they save them, two more screams. They go out, save the first person, save the second person. They’re exhausted. Soon as they save two, four more screens. They don’t have time to go upstream and see who’s throwing them in. This book is going upstream with the doctors who have time to show you what’s throwing you in and how to shift that. So that lesson changed me. And then it set me up for why I’m writing the book right now. Which was four year ago I was being an idiot pretending I was 14 years old, going down the side of a mountain, snowboarding against a kid that was nearly a pro.

And I couldn’t do things he was doing quite clearly. And I had a wreck. I thought I broke my neck. The pain was unbelievable. I ripped my rotator cuffs and the pain… I’ve lived with pain, but on the zero to 10, it was a nine nine. And I couldn’t sleep. I slept like an hour and 15 minutes in one night. Kept looking for answers. Finally, I found doctors, one doctor, couple nights in, who taught me about something called PEMF. It’s in the book, Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Frequency. There’s like 3000 studies. It can help you regrow your bones in about half the time. If you break a bone, it helps the nerves. It helps with pain. It’s a device, it’s like you can recharge your body with. I still use it to this day. I don’t need it, but it’s a phenomenal tool to have. And that took my pain from nine nine to five.

And then I’m going to see these docs and they’re all going surgery, surgery, surgery. And I’m saying, “Well, what if it… Tell me how that works? Is it guaranteed to work?” “Well, no, you might not be able to lift your shoulder above this level.” And I’m like, “Oh, this is my life is doing this, right?” And then they’re saying, “Well, it could tear again, even if you do it. And it’s four to six months of rehab.” Well, I can’t go with one arm doing seminars for four to six months. I was like, “There’s got to be a better solution.” So I went to Dr. Peter Diamandis, who’s my dear friend and partner. And he’s a rocket scientist, but he is also an MD for Harvard. And I said, “Peter, I’ve heard about stem cells being miraculous. And I’ve heard other people say, they’re all BS. What’s the goal?”

He goes, “Tony, the best person to ask is Dr. Bob Hariri.” And I met Bob once before. He’s a neurosurgeon, one of the best in the world. But I said, “Bob, stem cells?” He goes, “Yeah, Tony. He did the original studies 38 years ago that made him find stem cells. He took old rats, put young rats blood in them and they got black hair again, strong muscles. They literally became younger. And the old rats got the old blood and they got older.” And so that started this thing you heard about in Silicon Valley of people wanting young blood like vampires. But what they discovered was stem cells. So I go see Bob and Bob said, “Look, you don’t want to do them here right now in the US because you don’t want your own cells because after 40, they drop off the cliff. So if it was for an elbow or a knee that might work, but for your whole shoulder…”

And then one of the doctors, I left this out. The worst one, nice man. But he looks at me and says, “Tony, you’re a good human being. You’ve done a lot of work for me.” I didn’t know he had read my books and stuff. He goes, “You’re a good person, but I have to shoot you the truth.” He shows me my spine and he says, “Life as you know it is over.” I said, “What?” He said, “Let me show your spine. One good hit from a snowboard, one good hit from jumping around on stage one.” He goes, “And you won’t be able to walk.” I said, “Are you se…” And you know if somebody punches you in the gut and you’re prepared for it, no problem. But I got to tell you, it took me out for a little bit.

And then when I recovered mentally, I was like, “This is bullshit. I’m not going to accept this. I’m not going to accept that my life is over.” So that’s why I went, and I talked to Bob. He said, “Listen, you need fresh stem cells. You need four-day-old stem cells that have the force of life. Life force in them.” And I said, “I don’t want to do fetal tissue.” He goes, “No, no, you don’t need to do that.” He goes, “When babies are born, the most powerful force is the placenta and the cord. And now a lot of people save them, but most still don’t. You need to go to this place and do it.” So I go to this place and the doctors give me an IV and a couple shots. First day, I felt tired. Second day, it was miraculous. I woke up from sleep, no pain in my shoulder, an MRI a month later, there’s nothing wrong with it. But also no pain in my spine for the first time in 14 years, no spinal stenosis impact.

And it’s like, it turned me into an evangelist. Then I want to know everything about stem cells. And then I learned, it’s not just stem cells. There’s this regenerative medicine, miracle, this movement that’s happening. And we’re at the base of this explosion that a lot of doctors don’t know about. Most of the doctors said, “Stem cell, oh…” They poo poo them. “It’s not going to work.” Bob’s thing was the right ones can work. You can always go back to the surgery, do this first. And thank God I listened to Bob. But then I got invited to speak at the Vatican. Believe it or not, the Pope, every two years has the largest regenerative health conference in the world. He brings all the best doctors from all over the earth, because he sees them, since it’s not fetal tissue, he sees them as a gift from God that can heal people.

And I met this 11-year-old boy, told a story, made me cry. He’s four years old, he’s supposed to die and 6% chance of living. His sister’s born. They give her stem cells. And here he is 11 years old, totally healthy and fine. I met people that were sent home to die or sent to hospice who then went and got CAR T-cells from Dr. June, one of the breakthrough doctors that was there. And by the way, about four days ago, there was an article, that’s in Nature, saying CAR T-cells, now they call it a cure. They never call anything a cure in cancer. But it’s for like leukemia. And the people 10 years ago that got these, still have these CAR T-cells destroying cancer in their body without them having to do anything 10 years later. So I met these people.

I met Jack Nicklaus there, the greatest golfer of all time. And he talked about, he had so much pain. He couldn’t stand for 10 minutes at a time. Couldn’t play tennis or golf or anything he loved. The doctors told him to get spinal fusion, which doesn’t even work half the time. And I put the studies in there, so people know, 26% of the time people may get back to work. Those that don’t have the spinal fusion, 76% can make it back to work. But thank God he didn’t do that. He did stem cells and now he’s 82 playing golf and tennis again.

So I was like, “I got to get the world to know this. This is my next book. I’m going to…” And so for three years, I’ve interviewed 150 plus of these Nobel laureates, these scientists, these best doctors in the world at what they do and what they all have in common, and I’ll shut up. I know I’ve been talking for a while. I’m so passionate. But what they all have in common is their heroes, almost every one of them, when you read their stories, it’s so inspiring. They lost a wife, they lost a husband. They lost a daughter. They lost a best friend and it moved them to not accept the standard of care and spend 10 or 20 years to be where we are today, where they have these breakthroughs. So that’s what the book is really all about.

Marie Forleo:

I loved all of what you shared. And one of the things that was so inspiring to me and it’s true of you as a human, it’s true of everyone that’s in the book as well, is this decision inside to say, “Hey, I have intuition, not one person out there has a monopoly on medical wisdom. Two, I’m not going to accept what one other person tells me. And I’m going to challenge the system. I’m going to ask more questions. I’m going to go out there and see who else is finding different solutions that no one’s thought of before.” And one of the most, I mean the book is so chock-full, again, 700 pages. Brilliant. I think one of the things that really caught my eye was this hard look at aging itself.

Tony Robbins:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

You were telling the story about, of course, the metaphor of doctors going, “Oh my God, someone’s drowning. I’m going to pull this one out.” And then there’s two more and two more. And it feels like aging could be the root cause of so many other diseases and it feels like as a society we’ve been conditioned to think it’s inevitable. And I loved reading about David Sinclair. One of Harvard’s leading longevity experts and his information theory of aging.

Tony Robbins:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And also the fact that he’s 20 years younger than his chronological age.

Tony Robbins:

Yes, this is…

Marie Forleo:

So, you go wherever you want with this one. But it was just so mind blowing because it felt from an efficiency effective perspective. It’s like, “Oh, if we go up there and tackle that upstream, all of these other things, Alzheimer’s and cancers and everything, we can start to solve this at the root cause.”

Tony Robbins:

Well, David is a total genius and he’s building on many other geniuses’ work. But he’s a good friend now. And I got a chance to meet him because I was writing this book and we became such dear friends. But he is truly brilliant. As you said, he’s 53 chronologically, but he’s 33 in terms of his biochemistry. Not everybody ages at the same pace. And he has these four tools that he uses and I’ve been using for like seven or eight months. I’m again 62, but I’m 51 in my chronology. And I haven’t been doing it as long as he has as well as some of these new tools. So my goal is to see if I can get it into early 40s while I’m in my mid 60s. But the bottom line is, when you think about something like you think what would cause you to have more likelihood to get cancer, eating greasy foods constantly, smoking cigarettes and…

Smoking cigarettes, I don’t remember the exact number I have in the book. So I’m making it up. But gives you four times more likely to have lung cancer. But what’s more likely to give you cancer 500 times more is aging. You fix one thing, another thing breaks down. And think of aging like this. Think of it as like, you’re young and you have this beautiful home. Say you got a mansion and you’re lucky enough to have a bunch of people that take care of it. And they’re all young. And so something breaks down, it gets fixed. Everything always looks new. But as time goes by, the staff gets older. Your resources get less. And all of a sudden now things break down and they don’t get fixed. Well, that process has a lot to do with the loss of stem cells and a loss of… I’m going to give you a technical term so your audience doesn’t have to memorize this, but I want to give you three words that might be worth knowing.

First of all, most people have heard of their genome or their DNA. That’s the plan for your body. You’ve got these letters from your father and your mother, billions of letters. I think it’s 3.2 billion if I remember of each. And it’s kind of the plan of what you’re going to become supposedly. But in reality, your DNA is not your destiny. Because what really matters is the epigenome, epi means above. What’s above your plan? Think of it as like your DNA, your genome is like a piano. The piano player is who makes the music. That’s the epigenome. It turns on or off different genes that are going on. So you can have the same DNA and have a totally different life. And the epigenome is affected by diet, exercise, obesity, sleep, radiation, all these other elements that affect it.

So now I’m going to teach you three things real quick. If you want to listen, you don’t have to remember these words, but there’s something that makes everything work. It’s the basis of it that they found. And it’s called these seven master genes called sirtuins. You don’t have to remember it, but just think of seven master genes. And they do two giant tasks that are very different. And they have to divide their energy amongst these tasks. And when you’re young, they can do both really well. As you get older, you lose the basis of fuel for these sirtuins, which I’ll explain in a moment. And so everything starts to break down like the mansion I gave you. So here’s what they do. Those seven sirtuins, these master genes, turn on and turn off various genes.

Turn on the wrong genes in the wrong place at the wrong time and you’re going to age, or you’re going to have illness. Turn on the right ones and you’re going to heal. When you’re young it turns on the right ones, because there’s plenty of sirtuins and there’s a fuel for them called NAD+. Some people have heard of it already. Okay. So enough NAD+ is there. But when you turn, 50 NAD+ drops by more than 50% and your stem cells have already dropped off. And what these sirtuins do if they have enough NAD+, they turn on and off the different genes. But most importantly also they reduce inflammation, which is the basis of most breakdown in disease. And here’s the most important thing. They fuel your mitochondria, which are the energy packs in every cell in your body. They make something called ATP, which is the battery storage. And if you’ve ever heard about somebody taking cyanide or being in cyanide and they get a little… And they die in 30 seconds, it’s because it stops the oxygen flow. And without oxygen, you can’t build ATP. You can’t build any energy and all the cells just die. It’s that fast.

So it has a pretty important task on those three things alone. Then has a separate task. These sirtuins, these master genes, go and clean up your DNA because as you age, what happens is these clear signals from all these clear cells start to break down from radiation, from metal toxicity, from chemicals you’ve taken in, from bad lifestyle. And so what happens now is your DNA if you’re 20 is going to mean a different shape than if you’re 60 just from accumulation. So those sirtuins, when they’re highly fueled go in and they clean up your DNA, which is critical. So just think about it. Right when you need it most, when you’re turning 50s, what happens, you’ve already lost a bunch of your stem cells that are the regenerative cells of your body.

And now the driving force for your genome and for your fuel has been cut in half. And so now it has to decide, is it going to focus on your DNA cleanup or giving you enough energy to live? In fact, COVID goes in and it starts to take some of that energy from the mitochondria in your body, from this energy source. And that’s why people are so fatigued. So here’s what’s interesting. So you need sirtuins to be strong, they need a fuel source, NAD+. Many people have heard about it, but it’s a certain molecule. But for NAD to get in the cells, it needs a precursor. And one last term, NMN, never mother never. And that is the secret. And you have plenty of it initially, but like everything else, it drops off. So it’s a natural ingredient in your body. It can be supplemented. That’s the great news.

You go, “Oh my God, that sounds like bad news, aging…” No, it can be supplemented. And David does it. But you got to be so careful because our company went out and we looked at… Our labs took six products. They were NMN products. They sell from 30 bucks a month to 120 bucks a month. It didn’t matter the price. None of them had any NMN in it, zero. So I went to the lab guys. They were like, “Are these people all thieves?” Most of it comes from China. And they said, “Well, some are, but what’s more likely is NMN breaks down in 30 to 45 days. And so by the time it gets from there to you, it’s pretty much worthless.”

Marie Forleo:

Wow.

Tony Robbins:

Here’s the really great news, there’s some NMN that does work, but there’s something even more exciting.

So David, he gave this NMN to his father who’s in his 80s who hadn’t walked or worked out or anything else. Now he, I think he walks two miles a day. I put it in the book and he outlifts David in the gym. I mean, it’s like, he’s like a whole new person. His cognitive capacity has come back because the brain needs energy. Some of the most largest amount of energy is the brain. But there’s a company called MetroBiotech and I put it in the book. So it’s in the book you don’t have to memorize all this. Just understand for a second, the problem with NMN is the breakdown. This group of doctors created a crystallized form of NMN that doesn’t break down. And here’s what’s interesting. It’s not available yet. They’ll be available in 18 to 24 months. You can still use good NMN now, but here’s what’s coming.

This has been used on top secret use for the special forces for the last two years. And it got revealed. In fact, a week ago, it was in the Daily Mail and about a month and a half ago, it was revealed in Boston, in the newspaper there because the commander got so excited with the results they blew some of the beans out, so to speak. And here, I can’t tell you the details because I’m now invested in the company myself. And so I can’t reveal that as of now, but I can just tell you this. With mice, when they give them normal NMN, an old mouse like a 70-year-old mouse is like 20, 24 months old. So the equivalent of a 70 year old person, old breaking down. They can run on a treadmill about a quarter of a kilometer before they’re completely exhausted.

A young strong mouse can run four times that, a full kilometer. When they give NMN to these mice who are old, in 14 days of putting in their body, they run two to three kilometers. 200, 300% more than young mice and multitudes more than any old mouse will ever be. And their cognitive ability changes. Their ability to go through mazes. The whole thing shifts, because it’s the basis of energy and your DNA. And so you go, well, I always say you’re a mouse study. That’s interesting, but not all of them translate to humans obviously. But what’s happened with the military? All I can tell you is they’re out of their mind. These are the strongest people on earth, right? These are your special forces people. Their energy levels have exploded. Their endurance has exploded. Their muscle development from the same workout has exploded and their cognitive capacity has exploded.

So now the FDA is going to do a parallel study and they hope to have this out in 18, 24 months. It won’t be a nutraceutical. It won’t be an… It’ll be FDA approved, an actual, not a supplement but a drug. But it will literally provide all these changes to your body. And there are these genes I’m talking about. There are some special ones called the Yamanaka factors they’re named after a Nobel Prize winner who was able to show these giant changes. And David Sinclair’s group took what they learned from the Yamanaka factors. And they took mice who were blind, who had glaucoma. So the nerves are gone. You can’t grow back nerves in the eyes. It’s never happen in history. And by giving them this basis in the NMN and and cleaning up their DNA, they literally got younger and regrew the neuron so they can see.

And now they’re using gene therapy. There’s a kid who was, I wrote about them in the book, that was on America’s Got Talent who can now see again with gene therapy. We are living, again, in the most incredible time to be alive. But that’s literally their hope is not just to stop aging. Their belief is they can start to reverse aging and thus far it appears that this is going to work, but we’ll know more over the next 24 to 36 months. I try to tell people the next 24 to 36 months, say the next five years, there’ll be more changes in your health because of the way technology doubles in power and housing costs than the last 200 years combined.

Marie Forleo:

It’s miraculous. And y’all, if that wasn’t enough to go get your hands on this book for everyone in your family, I don’t know what is. I want to shift gears and talk about something that I think is so important for people to hear. I want to take you back just a few years ago, 2017, before you knew what was happening. And you were experiencing a loss of energy.

Tony Robbins:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

Inability to retain a thought, which again, anyone who’s watching this interview, Tony’s a master at being able to explain extremely complex things in very simple ways and do this for 50 hours at a time. I’m so curious, Tony, because I know a little bit about the story, but I often get messages. “Marie, you always seem so happy. It seems like everything is great. How do people like you or Oprah or Tony Robbins, do ever have down times and do you ever have down days?” And obviously I would never answer for anyone else besides myself, but I’m wondering if you can speak to what that personal experience was of having those two years before you understood what was happening. And then I think we can talk about the importance of diagnostics.

Tony Robbins:

Well, let me tell people what that came from, because it’s part of the diagnostics. I was the kind of person who’s like, “I don’t need to go do all that stuff.” Again, physical, coughing, looking at my throat. Stuff that was done 80 years ago. I wouldn’t use a phone from 10 years ago. Why am I going to do that? But I’ve learned the power of today’s diagnostics. And one thing I didn’t know about was I’ve been obsessed with high energy. So my meals were really consistent. I was a vegan for 12 years. And then I just… When you’re a vegan, you start eating pasta and things. There’s not a lot of choices. And I was wilting away. So I needed more protein. So I decided to eat fish. And I was disciplined, salad and fish, salad and fish every day, multiple meals. That’s all I have.

Big salad, small amount of fish. But I would have tuna or I would have swordfish as my favorites. And what I didn’t know is they live 75 years. They eat all the smaller fish. They absorb all their mercury. And mercury is devastating to the body. And so I found myself being on stage and you know me, I don’t have any notes. I’m up there 12 hours at a time and changing what I’m doing on the fly. Feeling people, seeing what’s needed. Right? That’s my skill set.

Marie Forleo:

Yep.

Tony Robbins:

And all of a sudden I’d be on stage and I’d be like, “Why am I telling this story?” Or, “Where was I going after this?” I’d never had that in my life. And I was only at the time, 53 years old. So it’s like, it couldn’t be dementia. I mean, this is insane.

And then my energy. But I didn’t make the two connections because I was exhausted. But I was doing… Every year I do 15 countries, 10 to 12 countries minimum, some of them two and three times, like Australia. I do 125 cities. I mean, literally every two or three days I’m in a train, a plane, a helicopter. You know Billy, you’ve been traveling with me all over the world. It’s a completely different experience. And so I thought, well I’m just exhausted because I’m working hard. But what happens is mercury destroys the ATP in your body. Again, the source of energy. So I’m exhausted. My mind’s not working. I didn’t even tell my wife. I just didn’t want to scare anybody. But it scared the hell out of me. Now, I’m so good at what I do that no one knew. I could pick it up in my head and boom, run with something and make it work.

But finally it got so bad. I did a seminar in London. I flew home and I didn’t understand what was going on with my body. I thought I’d just been given some peppers or something, I had this burning. And I walked into the jacuzzi and got out and collapsed, literally everything spun. And it turned out that I had mercury poisoning and it burned a hole in my esophagus. And I lost a third of my blood supply like that. And of course I fought going to the hospital and my dear friend, Billy, who’s here around the corner, you’re listening in. Who you know really well. My trainer and my dearest friend. Billy’s like, “You got to go to the hospital.” So I went down. I was like, “No, we’ll figure out what this is. I don’t want to overreact.” And then it happened again. So we went to the hospital and found out what was going on. And I made it through that only to go do Date With Destiny in Australia.

And on the third night, I’m in the hospital again. And they told me like, “Okay, you’re going to be here for the next four days.” I said, “No, I’m in the middle of a seminar.” He goes, “Tony, you can’t walk, you can’t jump.” I said, “Give me a wheelchair.” And I literally finished the seminar in a wheelchair. So that’s how bad it was. And so now I’ve recovered from it. But I found out on a zero to five scale where five is super toxic. I was 123. It was so bad that the local health department here in Florida came and interviewed all my staff. Because they thought maybe my wife was trying to kill me because I have a large life insurance policy. And of course that wasn’t true. And they can find the source of it and it was the fish.

So one of the things I tell everybody, it’s inexpensive. You need to do a blood test. If you’re feeling brain fog, if you’re feeling exhausted, if you’re feeling tired, what you’re calling aging is often metals. And there are many metals you can have. About at least one in three of my friends that go get tested, they have aluminum, which is affecting them or they have mercury or they have cadmium. And you want to catch it when it’s little. I didn’t catch it when it’s little, it accumulated at such a high level. And I’m still, it took me three, four, five, six years, I guess almost six years. I got it down on a zero five scale to like 8.5. But it flared up again just recently. And it had an impact on me, nothing like before. So I’m still detoxing it. That’s how, you don’t want to…

Mine was the most extreme, it’s the most they’d ever measured. And I don’t methylate, which made it more difficult. But the point is you want to do a test. And I want to mention three other quick tests if I may because, when I went to write this book, I really want to serve people. And I have my own ideas of what serves them. But I went and did a bunch of surveys. People in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. What I couldn’t believe was how many people, the majority of people in their 30s are worried about cancer or even Alzheimer’s because they’ve had a parent or grandparent who’s had it. And cancer is so scary and Alzheimer’s takes away your identity. My father died of Alzheimer’s, he didn’t know who I was at the end. It’s pretty horrific. So I did a diagnostics chapter because as I said, today, if you go to the right place and know what you’re doing, you can find out things before they’re ever a challenge.

So let’s start with cancer. With cancer, the National Cancer Society did a study of a hundred thousand people and they came out with this fundamental statistic. People die of cancer because they catch it too late. If you catch it, stage three, stage four, they say, overall, you have an 80% chance of dying. Now my view is you got a 20% chance of living. Let’s focus on that, but it’s much harder. If you catch it at stage one or two, you have between an 80 and a 99.9% chance of curing it or getting rid of it. And sometimes it can be an outpatient approach. So there’s, in the past we’ve had MRIs that can go through your body, look for solid tumors. But the reason that people get in trouble is we have mammograms for women. We have colonoscopy, we have these various tests that we can do.

And a lot of people do them, but the ones that get us are the ones that we have no test for. So we only find them when the symptoms are so bad, but that’s changed. So the whole book is filled with these stories that’ll make you cry or laugh. I mean, there’s just these beautiful people. These doctors, these scientists, again, who’ve spent 10 or 20 years of life because they lost someone and created these breakthroughs. And one of them is a new test called the GRAIL test. It’s a gentleman who was with Google, brilliant man, lost his wife to cancer, went through two years of agony. And then created these breakthroughs where they can give you a single blood test and they can find 50 cancers before you even have the symptoms. Which is incredible. We have a group of centers called Fountain Life across the United States and we’re opening one in Abu Dhabi.

And so I get to see the results of these types of tests. So we had a guy just recently that was brought in. His wife pushed him to be tested. He went on his physical and even did his urinalysis and so forth and he’s, “I’m totally fine.” But his wife harassed him enough. He came in for the test. Sure enough, we do the test on cancer. He has bladder cancer. Didn’t show up on urinalysis because it was so small. But here’s what’s cool. A 20-minute procedure and he was out and he is done and he doesn’t have cancer. I used to be like, “Don’t tell me, I’ll do this when I die.” Now I’m like, “No, give me the data so I can solve this thing before. It’s big.”

Another one is this CCTA test, this heart test. So again, today, if you want to know the number one killer of men and women is heart disease. And what do you do? Maybe you go get a CT scan. Most people don’t even do that. And the CT scan is looking to see, hey, how much calcium buildup or what’s the buildup inside your arteries and veins to try and prevent a heart attack. But it’s really hard to read. It’s very gray. If you’ve ever seen one, doctors can misinterpret it easily. A lot of people end up with surgeries they don’t need. There’s all kinds of challenges with it, but it’s the best we’ve had. My partners at Fountain Life called me about, I don’t know, maybe six months ago.

And they said to me, he said, “Tony, listen to me. There has been a breakthrough in cardiology.” And the doctor who’s telling me is Dr. Cap, he built 12 hospitals. He’s Mr. Understatement. He sold this hospital so he could go into preventative care and this type of advanced precision medicine. He said, “Tony, this is the greatest breakthrough. You gotta…” “What is it?” He said, “They use AI and they can literally open up all your arteries digitally. They send the AI in and it can see is the calcium hardened, which means you’re totally healthy and it’s healed. Or do you have some of this that’s still loose or fleshy that can break off and create either a stroke or heart attack.” And he said, “Tony, they can predict now a heart attack five years in advance and then tell you what they do to prevent it.” And I said, “I’m in. Why not?” At this point, I’m in, I want to know.

And my father-in-law, he was here with me, Sage’s daddy. And he was just turning 80. And he had his own business. He’s self-educated man. He worked in the lumber business, really strong man. But as you get older everybody starts telling you arrange your affairs and all that stuff when you’re heading towards 80. And I could see the drop in him. And so I said, “Hey dad, tomorrow I’m going to go down to this place and I’m going to do this test.” I explained how it worked. And I said, “You and I are the age where we’re going to have some of these soft plaques. That’s just part of the process, but they’ll know how much, where specifically in the body. And they’ll have a plan to show us what to do. I think we should do this together.” And he said, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

So we go, and my father-in-law doesn’t have any soft plaques on his entire body. This guy, lumberjack man, he’s totally healthy. And his entire mindset changed. And then in case that wasn’t enough. And by the way, I was better than five years ago and I’m really clean, but he was perfect. And so then the second thing is, there’s these incredible breakthroughs for injuries. We’ve worked with some of the greatest athletes in the world with this. They use ultrasound and they see where your connective tissue has locked up. And there’s no fluid. There’s no circulation, often nerves get trapped. And so I had an ankle that I torqued on stage years ago. And it was so bad that if I get a massage, I say, “Don’t touch the ankle.” Because the nerve pain would shoot up through my body like somebody shocked me.

And so I went down there and they went in, figured out what the problem was, took five minutes, put some of this amino fluid, same thing you were born in, in, opened up the tissues. The nerve popped back into place. Now you can smack the side of my… I don’t feel nothing. After all these years of agony. So my pop has a… Father-in-law has this hip problem. So he can’t walk quite right. That also makes you feel old. So while we’re there, they do a 20-minute process. They find out where it’s in his hip, they make the… And now he is walking smooth as silk. So the best part of the whole story is I get on the plane with him. And I’ll never forget. He’s got his arms crossed like this and he goes, “You know, Tony. He goes, “These guy is talking about living 110, 120. I don’t know if that’s true or whatever, but I could live another 20 years. I mean, my heart’s perfect. I’m walking perfect.”

He goes, “You’ve only been married to my daughter for 22 years. That’s like a whole nother lifetime.” And it’s like his entire psychology changed. So you want to know, and these kinds of tests are so easy to do. And then you really can take control of your life. I’ll tell you one more you got to do. Women already know hormones, but you wouldn’t know at your age, when and women are getting older they think about menopause and they think about hormone replacement therapy. And there’s a lot of confusion. By the way there’s a whole chapter in the book for women on women’s health. I did not write that. I brought in three of the best doctors, females in the world and have them write that. I didn’t want to have any delusions that I was going to interpret that properly. I want it to be written from a woman’s perspective. But there’s a lot of confusion about it.

But the right hormones, hormone replacement therapy is old school. Now they have what’s called hormone optimization therapy, which is you don’t wait till there’s a problem. You do these small changes that massively increase the quality of your life. So I’ll give you an example, even with a man. Guy comes in, he’s 36 pounds overweight. He’s tried everything, his wife complains he has no energy for the kids or anything. He complains. And we go in and he said, “Well, I’ve already done my blood tests. And I’ve done my hormones and we’ve retested.” And his hormones I think were 225 or 210 or something. Well, doctors will often not tell you you need anything until you’re like one 150 when you got a real problem. He’s already got problems in the quality of his life.

Most men don’t feel good unless they’re at 700, 800, 900 in their testosterone. So they changed his testosterone and he lost 36 pounds. He got a new life, feels like he’s 10 or 15 years younger. So people need to also test their hormones. And so you want to do that, especially when you’re 35, 40 and certainly beyond 40, it’s something you want to know, because it can so change the quality of your life. So today we’re in a revolution of diagnostics that can give you answers that we’ve never had before and help you. You want to catch the monster when it’s little, you don’t want to wait till it’s Godzilla eating your life. Then eating the whole city.

Marie Forleo:

One thing that I thought was so fascinating, we could go on forever about all the different places we can go in this book. But near the end, I found it striking when you and Peter were in the Vatican. And you’re talking and you’re amongst all these researchers.

Tony Robbins:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And all these people who entire livelihoods and missions are invested in longevity. And I think it was Peter who asked people, “How many folks in this audience would be interested if it was possible to live to 120.” And that two thirds of the audience had no desire.

Tony Robbins:

Did not raise their hands. Peter was crestfallen. I was there and I was like, “Peter, I could have told you that in advance.” People don’t want to live old because their idea of old is drooling, I have no memories, I have no physical wellbeing. I don’t look good. I don’t feel good. So you asked the wrong question. The oldest humans have lived to 120, so it’s more than possible. But I said, “You got to talk about quality of life. That’s why you talk about healthspan versus lifespan.” It’s like, I want to live the longest life possible, as vibrant and as healthy as humanly possible. And that’s what this book is full of. But yeah, most people’s idea of living longer is no quality of life. And if that’s what it was, I wouldn’t want it either. I understand that completely.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah. And I love that where we get to is really about the power of our mindset.

Tony Robbins:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And so I’m wondering, again, there are so many different things that we can explore that we can understand that we can go research that we can try, that we can implement that are in this book and how critical it is to understand the power of our minds as it relates to our health. So I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit on that.

Tony Robbins:

Sure. I told people if you pick up this book and you feel like you’re intimidated. Most people think they’re going to be intimidating. Like you, they read it from cover to cover. But I divide it into five sections and the first section will give you some of the orientation, show you why we age, what to change, stem cells, things of that nature. Then the second section is these heroes who have these tools. Like these gene editing tools and like people that got Parkinson’s or they can cure it less than an hour and people are walking free. So you walk through those. Then the next door, all the simple things you can do, like sleep. I used to think I’ll sleep when I die. And then I found out the truth about sleep. Here’s the things you can do with your diet. That radically, it costs you nothing, takes nothing.

Then the fourth section is the six big killers. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, et cetera. And I show you the breakthroughs. But the last section is just two chapters. And it’s really about the mind. Because if you do everything great with your body, but you don’t manage your mind and your emotions, you’re not going to have a great quality of life. And so I start with placebos. And so everybody’s heard of placebos, but what, they’re only recent. They came from World War II where they were discovered because a doctor was there and they ran out of morphine. And if you don’t have the morphine, the pain levels goes through the roof. But also people go into shock and die. And the person who discovered it was actually a nurse. She didn’t tell the doctor. She just said, “Doc, here’s some morphine.”

And she gave him saline to inject. So he believed it was morphine. That the people saw him said, “In a few seconds the pain will be gone.” Pain disappeared in the people. They didn’t go into shock. They lived. And then he learned it was saline solution. And so when he went back after World War II to Harvard, he decided to start studying this. And he became the father basically of the types of studies we do today, where you compare a drug, obviously, to an inert substance, the placebo. But what no one talks about is a lot of times placebos are more effective than drugs, but no one talks about it because you don’t make billions of dollars by telling people to take a placebo. But here’s what’s interesting about placebos. First of all, they’d even get people drugs that say placebo and it still works. If the person has so much certainty when they give it to them.

But the bigger the intervention, the more your brain believes and the more rapidly you heal. So if they give you a small pill versus a bigger pill, they can measure the difference. If they give you an injection, the results go through the roof. They even do fake surgeries. The Veterans Administration took people doing arthroscopic surgery on their knees and decided to do an experiment. Over a third of the people, they gave a placebo surgery, meaning they just cut them and sewed their knee up. Didn’t do anything to their knee. And a year later, when they went back and evaluated, who was out of pain, who was… The ratio, I got in the book and can’t remember the exact percentage, but it was so overwhelming. The people that did nothing but thought they had a surgery, no pain, most mobility, most everything compared the people with surgery. So they no longer fund that surgery. That’s how powerful it is.

But it’s even more than placebos. Harvard’s done studies where they give you a barbiturate. Not a placebo, a drug that slows your butt down and they tell you it’s an amphetamine that’s going to speed you up. And your body speeds up in spite of the drug, it overcomes the drug and vice versa. Dr. Ellen Langer is a friend of mine from Harvard. She’s the one who… One of the first people came up with a mindfulness approach. And she’s taken people and shown how they heal based on expectation. She’s got so many studies, but one of the cool ones is she took these people in their 70s to the Adirondacks and had this facility revamped so that everything was from 35 years ago. And they had TV shows on videotape, but it was from then. The radio show from then.

And she told everybody there to talk in first person as if it was that year 35 years earlier. I think if I remember right, 10 days or two weeks, whatever it was, it’s in the book. But what was amazing was not only did they have no aches and pains and so forth while that’s happening, but when they came out, their eyesight was measurably better. Their blood pressure went down. Their blood sugar was more balanced. I mean, they had these… And they looked younger. So much is about the expectations that we have inside our own heads. And here’s the final one for you, the CDC. Well, first let me tell you. I interviewed Norman Cousins when I was 25 years old. It was a privilege. If you don’t know who he is, he is the father of psychoneuroimmunology. At UCLA, there’s a building named after him.

He was diagnosed with this deadly disease. He didn’t want to do the drug route. The pain was unbelievable of his particular disease. And so what did he do? He decided he was going to use laugh therapy. And then when he felt pain, he was going to heal his body by stimulating his immune system through laughter. And he would watch these old movies and laugh his ass off, the pain would go away. But eventually he was actually told he healed. He wrote a book that’s very famous called the Anatomy of an Illness. So he was the kind of the father of psychoneurology. So I interviewed him at almost 24 and he said to me something even more. He said, “Tony, we make ourselves sick with our minds as well.” And he gave me an example that it’s also viral, not viral like transfer, but he said, “You know how somebody yawns and you find yourself yawning that kind of viral or someone laughs and it’s not that funny, but you find yourself laughing because they’re having such a good time.”

He said he was at a football game. He gave me a dozen examples. But the one that stuck with me, he goes, “I was at this football game in LA. And it was a college football game and a person got extremely sick and I guess started projectile vomiting and the doctor on staff came and was trying to figure out what caused it. And there was nothing different in their daily routine except they bought a Coca-Cola just a little bit before from the vending machine. So he theorized maybe it’s poisonous. Maybe there’s a connection in there that’s getting copper or something in there. So he announced it publicly saying to everybody during the game, ‘avoid the Coca-Cola machine. It may have toxic substances.’ Well, it was like a movie,” he said.

Suddenly all over the stadium people start projectile vomiting. And so 12 ambulances come and take people back and forth to the hospital. This is happening in mass. About 45 minutes later, they do the testing. They find out there’s nothing wrong with the vending machine and they announce it and everybody’s well, nobody has a problem. They all get well.

So people’s reactions to fear can have a giant effect in the body as well. So in the book I teach you the things you can do to get out of that fear, because the decision made from fear, not always, but is usually the wrong decision.

Marie Forleo:

Absolutely. Before we wrap up, I just want to emphasize also when folks get the book, 100% of the profits are going to Feeding America.

Tony Robbins:

That’s right.

Marie Forleo:

And also to further research to combat cancer, Alzhimer’s…

Tony Robbins:

Yeah. 20 million meals are going to Feeding America. I’ve been doing this for seven years. I’ve fed a hundred million meals a year. And we’re at 850 million meals. So we’re ahead of schedule. So 20 million meals will go there and the balance is going to Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease. I’m not taking anything from it as I’ve done with all three of my last books, I’ve donated 100% of the profit. So while you’re changing your own life, you’ll be helping other people as well during these tough times.

Marie Forleo:

Tony, is there anything else that you want to leave folks with today? I know we’ve covered a ton and you’ve done it so brilliantly. But as folks are thinking about this, they’re thinking about their own health. They’re thinking about what they can do to make a difference in their own life. What would you want to leave them with?

Tony Robbins:

I would say you got to become the CEO of your own health. It’s like doctors are great people, but you need a second opinion from someone who has expertise and has got a successful track record. Someone who’s really done well. And it’s what I’ve tried to do for you in this book is bring you who those people are like. Not everybody’s got access. Billionaires have access. They all know. People in the field know, but I just try to bring it. So this is like a guide book and I didn’t just write it for you. I wrote it for the people you love. Again, I get these calls all the time. Somebody’s got cancer. Somebody has Alzheimer’s. And so now I can show them exactly what to do, what their options are. And there are things that people never imagine. Like Alzheimer’s, I’ll give you one last one, Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s there’s some really weak drugs that don’t really work very well. One just got approved, it’s very controversial. It’s not selling well, it can cause bleeding in the brain. But I want people to know, even on that one, there’s some gigantic breakthroughs that are happening. And one of those breakthroughs, there’s a multitude in there. But just one, one of the deepest things everybody’s believed is that neuroinflammation in the brain destroys your memories. You can’t remember. But at least with mice, they’ve done this with mice and they’re now going to humans. This group that Google funded has found that neuroinflammation is keeping the communication between the nerve cells. So you don’t have the memory, but the memories are still there. And they’re taking these mice and restoring their memories. They’re able to go through mazes and so forth like they were 20 years younger.

There’s a NeuroRacer, it’s called. It’s a game played on an iPad that you can take an elderly person with. And after 14 sessions, they can multitask as well as a 20-year-old. So I just want you to know whatever you think is impossible, there are solutions that are either here or coming in the near future. So take care of yourself now so you have time to catch up with the things that are coming. But there’s so many available right now that you just probably don’t know about. I try to put them in one book for you to help you change your life.

Marie Forleo:

Tony, thank you so much for being you.

Tony Robbins:

My pleasure.

Marie Forleo:

Thank you for doing the work that you do. I’m sending you such a huge hug until we can have some in-person time together and my best to Sage.

Tony Robbins:

Thank you so much, honey.

Marie Forleo:

And your new daughter as well.

Tony Robbins:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on Life Force. Get a copy for you and everyone you love. Tony. Love you. Thank you so much. See you soon.

Tony Robbins:

Love you. Thanks for having me on. Take good care.

Marie Forleo:

Oh my goodness, was that not amazing? I loved it. I loved every second of it. And I’m curious, what is the biggest insight you’re taking away from today’s conversation and how can you put that insight into action starting right now? Leave a comment below and let me know. And if you’re not already, please subscribe to our email list and become an MF Insider. Not only are you going to get an amazing free training called How To Get Anything You Want, but you’ll also be inspired and motivated each and every Tuesday when I come into your inbox. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV and The Marie Forleo Podcast.