Episode 26: Biohacking For Immunity With Nadeem Jiwani
Are you interested in tapping into the highest potential of your mind and body? We’re going limitless in the biohacking world as we discover how to evolve into our highest potential!
Nadeem Jiwani is the Founder of Float Valley, a wellness center located in Markham, Ontario that focuses on float therapy, infrared saunas, and other modalities. Inspired by his own personal experience with float therapy while attending University of Waterloo, Nadeem has since been driven to bring the same amazing experience to others. This has led him to expand his offering to include complimentary products such as CBD (co-creating the product line Flow CBD), exploring many biohacking practices (fitness, yoga, meditation, cold/hot therapy, alternative health remedies, etc.), and co-hosting the BioHKT YouTube channel. Weekly episodes feature practices that optimize mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health.
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Listen to hear:
[04:00] How Anand and Nadeem met
[07:11] Biohacking
[13:13] Nadeem's background
[18:17] Immunity boosting
[27:08] Morning routine
[52:02] CBD
Connect with Nadeem:
1) Follow on Instagram
2) Go to the website www.floatvalley.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Biohacking For Immunity With Nadeem Jiwani
Are you interested in tapping into the highest potential of your mind and body? We're going limitless in the biohacking world as we discover how to evolve into our highest potential. We have an entrepreneur and bio-hacker, Nadeem Jiwani. He is the Founder of Float Valley, a wellness center located in Markham, Ontario, Canada that focuses on float therapy, infrared saunas, and other modalities. Originally inspired by his experience with float therapy while attending the University of Waterloo, Nadeem was overwhelmed by the benefits it delivered and has since been driven to bring the same amazing experience to others. This has led him to expand his offerings to include complementary products such as CBD, cocreating the line Flow CBD. Also, exploring many biohacking practices such as fitness, yoga, meditation, hot and cold therapies, alternative health remedies, and co-hosting the BioHKT YouTube channel. Weekly episodes feature practices that optimize mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical health. Welcome to the show, Nadeem. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. Thank you.
It sounds like you have the same business in Canada that I do here.
It's nice to connect with a fellow float center owner as well.
It's interesting how we met. In the summertime of 2019, I was at a Tony Robbins event. I know you're big into Tony. This one was called Life and Wealth Mastery. There was a lot of free time during the day to get into self-care practices and whatnot. I was sitting at lunch at a table with people that I don't know, but it's awesome because everybody is open to talking about themselves and their stories. They’re very like-minded people. I'm sitting across from this gentleman. He was a nice guy, and he's like, “What do you do?” I started telling about my Om.life because I was wearing my Om.life shirt. I'm like, “We have a biohacking center. We do floating. We do saunas.”
The whole time, he's got this smile on his face. I was like, “Why is he smiling like that and not saying anything?” I felt like I needed to say more because I don't know if he felt satisfied with the answer or whatever. In reality, that was your dad. After I went through my whole spiel of what I do, he’s like, “My son has the same business in Ontario, Canada.” We became close up after that, and your dad's been a wonderful influence. He's helped me out a lot in the financial aspect of the business and getting systemized and whatnot. I met you through him, and we're on the same message boards and stuff for float centers. It's cool to connect and wonderful to see all your progress. We exchange information when we go through some challenges or whatnot. It's always good to have friends in similar situations.
It's cool that you met at Tony Robbins. It's an interesting place to meet people because everyone is hyped up and energetic. We're meeting even though you've never met the person before. Which Tony Robbin’s event was this was at?
This was at the Life and Wealth Mastery.
Have you done a few of them?
I signed up for five of his packages but this one was unique. Normally, at Tony Robbins events, it’s all day long and it’s non-stop. It starts at 6:00 AM and you’re there until 4:00 AM and there are no breaks. Life and Wealth Mastery is different where it's all about self-care, health care, all that stuff. You have a morning session and then you have a three-hour break every single day. It's done on purpose to design yourself to get out and do some self-care. We were right on the beach on the West Coast of Florida. I was hanging out with your dad on the beach for three hours a couple of times. We were talking. We have similar backgrounds. We’re from the same state in India originally. It was cool to hear his story and hear about you and all the things you guys were up to in Canada.
That's awesome that you got to meet that way. When he was there, what were the other types of things that you would discuss that's not related to your business? What else was the Life and Wealth Mastery about?
There were four days of Life Mastery where we did an entire juice cleanse where we stopped eating food and detoxed the body. We talked about life hacking, biohacking, mental stuff, how to rewire your brain, how to get back in alignment with your body through the Adamski method. It was focused on every aspect of health, relationships, mental health, physical health, and spiritual health. The next three days were about financial health and we went deep into that. It was an awesome experience.
Biohacking is integrated into everything because I find that it fills every position of your life whether you’re doing wealth or you're looking at your health or relationships. Biohacking does fit in all the places. That's cool that you brought that in.
Biohacking is another word for self-development. For those self-development junkies like myself and you, we're trying to get better. Biohacking is the natural transition where you're looking at every aspect of your life, whether it's mental, physical or spiritual. How do I make little increments or add supplements, add different routines, morning routines, evening routines, blue light blocking glasses, all that stuff to improve your life on every level? You're making these small incremental changes but over time, you're getting exponential returns in terms of happiness and fulfillment through your body because it's functioning way better. I wanted to talk about biohacking. It has become a popular term. One way to define it is the art and science of self-improvement applied to everyday life. It has many different definitions but what does biohacking mean to you?
The term that I like to describe biohacking to people is it’s a way to take control of your biology to enhance your physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental well-being. You take all four aspects and try to do different practices that either hit multiple or hit one. Throughout the day, you have a balance between each one of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your life. Things like doing meditation when you wake up that may affect you, mentally and spiritually. You do a variety of these different biohacks throughout the day and try to hit all aspects. That's what I think.
Biohacking Immunity: Biohacking is a way to take control of your biology and to enhance your physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing.
For me, the simplest way to do it is taking autonomy of your body, taking all different data points, and finding out what's best for you and not just necessarily following one track of thought or one person but there's so much knowledge out there. It's limitless in terms of what you can do. We only have a certain amount of time in the day. It’s trying to make the right decisions based on your body type, body structure, and what works for you in terms of your own time. Let me ask you a question. What does living a limitless life mean to you, Nadeem?
Living a limitless life means that you have the opportunity to expand in every direction possible. In terms of biohacking, it's nice that it's something that can be kept. You can continuously keep improving yourself and getting better. The point of all life is to improve all aspects of your relationships with people, the way that you bring love into your life, the way that you operate daily, and kindness. Being able to always evolve, change, and know that there's no end, that's the definition of a limitless life.
How did you develop this mindset? You're a young guy. A lot of times, you'll see biohackers that are older because they realize, “I'm aging. I want to slow this aging process down.” You started in your early twenties. What inspired you to get on this path of becoming limitless and into biohacking?
I noticed that when I do certain things, I feel good. It wasn't necessarily like I knew A plus B equals me feeling good. I tried a couple of different things because I was feeling that I could show up better, be able to accomplish more, feel happier, and have a more fulfilling lifestyle. Choosing to do a variety of these things does affect me positively because it brought me better around people. It made me able to talk to people better and associate more positively with the world. I find that a huge benefit. When I was younger, maybe around grade 10 or 11, I started getting out. I found that it brings more courage, be more positive, and be happier. I jumped on that first and everything followed. Someone told me to try floating and that was a big catalyst for me into a lot of this stuff.
I found some effect with floating that I hadn't found anywhere else in my life. After 30 or 40 minutes in the tank, there was this profound drop of everything. My blood pressure and my anxiety dropped. Everything made me realize that a lot is going on here and people are not realizing that. I tried everything. I did yoga, meditation and red light therapy. I want to see what stuck and what worked for me. At the same time, I was realizing that a lot of these things were working for a lot. Some people had skin conditions and some people had anxiety and mental health. I would suggest a few of the things that I'm trying and I would benefit them. It got me more interested in this field. I didn't have enough knowledge about it and whenever I know something, I want to dive in and do everything.
I know you come from a family of biohackers because your dad's into it. Your mom is a theta healer. Your sister's a yoga teacher. Who was the first person to get into it? Who brought everybody else on the train? Did you all find this on your own and then start doing it at the same time?
My mom was the one that started it. She was more into the spiritual aspect of things before any of us were into biohacking or physical health. I brought more of the physical aspect to it like going to the gym and doing yoga. My sister followed very closely behind. She got her yoga teacher certification and she's a practitioner for breath work and things like that. Everyone has their segment that they're in. My dad's trying to do life and business coaching. It's nice to see that everyone's got their own segment but I think we did around the same time. It wasn't that long ago either.
Let's get into your story. How did you get to this place in life? Tell us about your childhood. What were your interests? How did you start the entrepreneurial journey at such a young age?
I was always technical and entrepreneurship-minded even when I was in grade 4 or 5. Even when I was in high school, there would be a lot of projects that I would be working on the side that was slightly entrepreneurial at the time. That's what got me interested in doing these things. My dad is also an entrepreneur and he's been doing this for many years. That was another thing that inspired me to go in this direction. When I was younger, I experienced a lot of social anxiety. I find that having these practices to be able to communicate better with people and getting across the messages that I’m trying to convey helps to be able to use practices. That's what got me into that because I found that I could be my truest self when I was practicing, following my morning routines and when I was in balance and eating properly. If I see it happen, I follow that. That's my way of learning. I saw it happen to myself and to other people. That's how I learned that I need to continue doing this.
In terms of entrepreneurship, in school, I did take some business. I took economics and psychology. The combination of the three is perfect for floating because you have a business background. Psychology goes so far. You're dealing with different people with different conditions that they're working on and things that they want to deal with. To be able to understand where they're coming from and how the brain works was perfect for me to learn in school. It also made me realize the power of floating because the fact that you can almost manipulate the brain into relaxing quickly is a powerful tool. It’s such a stressful world that we live in.
A lot of people ask me, “Who is your major demographic in floating?” I have to laugh at that question because there is no such thing as that. It's one of the only industries I know that every single person on the planet can benefit from unless you have some rare magnesium allergy or something like that. We have people that come in that are former vets and have PTSD. We have people coming in that are looking for creativity, some people are entrepreneurs and some are athletes. Some older people have bone and joint pain and all this stuff.
There's no one answer or no one benefit you get. You get an overall benefit, a cascade of benefits. When you're getting into a parasympathetic state, you're lowering your anxiety and you're removing all sensory input. Because we're bombarded every single day with news, fear, and all this stuff going on, there's a nice way to unplug from it all. Floating is the carer for so many people in terms of their mental health. It's beautiful to facilitate that. It's fulfilling to be in a situation where I'm hosting them and I'm sure you feel the same way.
It's such a big thing for me. I enjoy the fact that we're doing an infrared sauna on these services. We are there to set up and hold space for them but we're not the ones doing work. They're doing the work. When they go into the tank or they go into the sauna, it's on them. That gives them accountability in a sense. Sometimes you go for a chiropractor or physio or something like that and you're expecting them to do everything. You may not be in the right state. You may not set an intention before going in. You may have not even been there and you're thinking about something else. With floating and these things, you can't do that. It puts a certain amount of accountability on the person as well and that’s important for health and people's future health is that they know they need to take control of it. It's their way of doing that.
That's a great point. A lot of people go through the motions and they get a massage but they're stressed out. Afterwards they’re like, “I got to do this and that.” You're not getting the healing. You have to set the intention for what you're doing. Sometimes we’re walking in our subconscious and we're doing things over and over. We wake up, we start brushing our teeth, we do the same routine, we make the coffee, but we're not conscious of what we're doing. Every physical act can be a sacred event where when you're setting an intention before going into the float, “This is what I want to release. I want to focus on my body. I want to let go of every single pressure point or tension point. I want to connect deeply with my heart.”
There are so many things that we can do daily, not just floating but for any activity that we do. When we go to work and it's a stressful day, no matter what happens, tell ourselves, “No matter what, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to breathe through any stress. I'm not going to hold on to it after the work ends.” We have that intention and it all begins with our mind. A lot of our immunity resides in having good mental health. What are some of your biggest immunity-boosting exercises, supplements, or mental practices?
Biohacking Immunity: Float therapy helps with skin conditions, anxiety, or mental health issues. It also helps lower your blood pressure and bring you into a state of peace.
I'm a big fan of the Wim Hof Method. I'm sure you're familiar with that. You guys have the cryotherapy at your spot. We do the ice baths here. I find that every morning, I can't go without my cold shower. The whole day feels completely different without that 1.5 minutes of cold, being in a mental state where you can't think about anything else except for, “How do I breathe through this pain?” It's been the best change for me for so long. I find that I have so much more energy. I don't get sick as often. My allergies have seriously reduced. I usually get seasonal allergies and they’re almost completely gone.
I would say that affects me maybe 1 or 2 days a whole year. It's a lot to do because of therapy. The resilience that it brings to the body, mental and physical resilience to the temperatures increased my overall health so much. I like it as well because it's free and you can do it every single day. You can do it at home. You can do it wherever you're at most of the time. It's something that a lot of people have difficulty getting into because it's difficult in the initial phases. Anything difficult in the beginning is something that’s good. It's a little bit of a tester for people to see how far they can push themselves. All the benefits have been amazing.
I've been into a lot of light therapy, red light, UV lights. Getting vitamin D and sunlight is something that I try to do every day. It brings and uplifts the mood but also improves your skin. You can see that your body is also getting more resilient from this. Cold therapy, sunlight and heat therapy. Infrared sauna is a huge one on my list. I try to do that every day for at least 30 minutes to an hour. I find that being able to get the sweat on allows your body to get rid of whatever's in there. It gives me time to think. The float tank is more like a constant meditation tool where there's nothing else going on around you. My thoughts are a lot different when I'm thinking in a float tank versus thinking in a sauna where I'm still blocked off from the world. I don't have access to everything that I usually do but I'm enveloped in this heat. It causes my body to relax in a different way than the magnesium. A combination of these hot-cold therapies and light therapies. I'm floating all the time.
I was doing infrared saunas probably once a week but ever since COVID happened, I've been going in at least 4 to 5 times a week. Right after our chat, I'm going to jump in there. I started early so I can get it a little bit warm. I love the fact that you mentioned cold showers and that's something that we offer cryotherapy at Om.life. It's great therapy. A lot of people love it. They come in every day. For people who don't have access to something like that, doing a cold shower and the mental fortitude it takes to step into an uncomfortable environment is going to strengthen your body. It’s going to strengthen your mind. Anytime something else comes through the day, you're ready, like, “At 7:00 AM, when I took a shower, I already accomplished one of the hardest things I'm going to have to do.”
It's great getting mental strength and exercising that muscle for stepping into the unknown and stepping into uncertainty. If you can do that consistently, it will transform your life. Not only that, it helps your serotonin levels, your brain chemistry. Your body inflammation drops when you do things like that. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to make little increments and who doesn't want to spend any money. You're taking a shower anyways. You're going to save because you're not paying for the hot water.
One thing to add is I find that cryotherapy and cold showers are different experiences. When I do cryotherapy, I come out with a different glow. Having the nitric oxide cooling you is quite interesting. I do enjoy that but differently than the cold showers.
The shower is a wet cold. You can only get to as cold as it gets. In the wintertime, it's way colder than in the summertime. The pipe water only goes out a certain amount but with the cryo, you're getting a dry cold. It can get anywhere from negative 249 degrees for us all the way down to negative 321. It's colder than the coldest place on the moon outside of that chamber at night. It's wild. It's an amazing experience. It's three minutes but it's bearable for people who make it a consistent practice. People have seen tremendous benefits from it through post-surgery, athletic performance, and recovery through depression. A lot of people come in, they're doing the cold therapy and it will help with your mental performance, more blood flow, and lymphatic fluid system drainage.
Another one we talk about is the target market to narrow in on.
Do you have any supplements that you take or anything that you like to use daily?
I don't do too much supplementation. I am big on CBD for sleep and relaxation. In the morning, I usually do lemon water and some basic stuff. There is nothing that I purchased or anything like that. There have been times where I've tried supplements on and off. I finished a cycle of peptides. Have you heard of BPC-157?
No. Tell us about it.
BPC-157 is a peptide. A peptide is a building block for an amino acid. Amino acid is a building block for a protein if you didn't know. What BPC-157 does is it's a great healing compound. A lot of people are using it for gut healing and a lot of people are using it for injury and wound healing. It's derived from human gastric juice. If you're taking it for gut healing, you would squirt a small amount of the BPC into your mouth once or twice a day. It helps realign and rebuild the lining of your gut. For people with IBS, IBD, and pain issues in their stomachs, it is a powerful tool. It works very quickly. I did this cycle for about a month with awesome results. I liked that. I did it specifically for gut healing but I have found a lot of friends finding benefits from doing it for wound healing or injuries. You inject a small amount into the site where the injury is at. It's supposedly able to heal it six times faster than usual, which is pretty awesome.
The gut one is where you take droppers instead of an injection or they're all injections?
That one is a dropper. You do it yourself with a needle but then you squirt it in versus injecting it, which can be easier for some people.
One of my friends is a physician and he does peptides. He was recommending Thymosin Alpha, which is another peptide. It’s popular for immunity and helping with protecting yourself against COVID. I took a couple of cycles of that early on and I felt great. My energy levels and my ability to move my body and everything like that was great. Peptides are the future of medicine maybe before the whole stem cell opens up. There's a peptide for virtually every need in the body.
It's a matter of doing enough research on the new peptides and the ones that haven't been researched enough so that people have the education they need to be able to start.
Gastric issues are a huge problem for everyone. There's so much contamination in our food, GMOs, sugar, wheat, and all these things that damaged our gut lining. A lot of people have some gut issues going on. As a biohacker, you’re going to try as many things as you can. Some things work and some things don't. Tell us a little bit about your journey in terms of, maybe early on, you tried some things and did it for a while. It didn't work and then you shifted into something else. What have you settled into in terms of your morning routine and throughout the day as your everyday go-to biohacking? It's going to be different for everybody but we want to learn about yours.
I start with a cold shower. Once I've done my cold shower, I do some form of movement. Either I do a little bit of yoga or stretch or some pushups or something like that to get the blood flowing. I do my light therapy at that point while I'm still at home. I try to do my morning routine at home in a small period of time so that I can get out and get moving. I find that if I'm doing it in the morning and get out of bed, it slows me down for the rest of the day. Having that morning routine with a lot of energy and I usually play loud music. I find that helps. It gets me amped up for the day and that energy will carry throughout the day.
I leave the home after doing the light and I come to Float Valley and open it. I try to do a sauna as the first thing. I find that's nice because I like to get my sweat on early or I'll do a workout and then a sauna. I'll start working and I will try to do a work period after that. I find having all of that preamble to the work gets my mind in a good flow state so that when I do my work it's a lot more effective and efficient. I don't have to work as long. It's hard work for those hours. If I have time, I try to do either yoga or float towards the end of the day to slow things down a little bit. If I ramp up that much, I also have to take the time to ramp down.
You have that much energy but you want to be able to get a good sleep at night to be able to do the same thing again the next day. Giving myself at least 3 or 4 hours before bed to eat, stretch, relax, maybe watch some TV to get my mind off of things and then have a nice bedtime is important for me. I try to keep into that routine as much as possible. Even for days that I'm off, I find that I still am that much happier. Even if I'm not going to be doing that work period in the middle of the day, I still like to have that morning routine and it keeps me in check.
I look at morning routines as you're building momentum to crush the day. When you own your morning, you start feeling like, “I'm empowered at this point. I already got some of the hardest things I needed to do out of the way.” It dovetails you into going to that mode in terms of work or whatever you do. We're lucky we get to facilitate floats and saunas. A lot of people come in a very relaxed state but it is a lot of hard work and we'll get into that. Slowing down, you have a morning routine and evening routine. You also do the CBD at night to relax. You mentioned red-light therapy after working out. Is there any specific reason for the timing of that? When you do red-light therapy, is there a suggested time of the day or practice to do after something? Is it in terms of what works through your schedule?
It depends on the intention. The red light does have a variety of benefits. If you're using it for skin healing and blemishes and things like that, I suggest any time in the day. I like to do that in the morning. Doing it post-workout does help with recovery and muscle recovery. You could do it right after your workout. The infrared sauna helps with the delay of muscles. This will also help with the recovery. A lot of times, people combine the two and they do the red light while they're in the sauna. We don't have that option here yet but that would be interesting to eventually add.
We're toying with that idea. I have it at my house. Usually, I do red light therapy at night but I'm going to start trying it right after my workout. That means I'll have to wake up twenty minutes earlier so I can fit that into my morning routine.
I do like it. I do find that the red light does give me a little bit more energy but that could just be me.
Tell us a little bit about the journey into the starting Float Valley. What was your inspiration? Why did you choose those particular modalities?
When we started Float Valley, the main thing we started with was floating. That's what we fell in love with when I was in school. I used to work at a float center when I was in 2nd or 3rd-year of the university. They had opened. There was a guy that had a float tank in Waterloo, in the university town that I used to go to. I used to float there. He would allow me to float as long as you go in and they don't set a timer. It was a great experience doing it with him but it was more in a residential place. He told me, “They're opening a float center. You should try to get a job there so you can get free sessions.” I was like, “Yes, that's exactly what I need.”
I got a job there. Luckily enough, they’re willing to teach me everything because I was helping them open the place. We set up the systems together. We put the tanks in. I got a lot of learning experience through that process. Once they were open for eight months or so, I finished school. I moved back to this area that I'm in now and there was nothing here at the time. There were maybe 1 or 2 downtown. It was about 30 or 40 minutes from here but there's nothing in this area. It seemed like the next opportunity.
As I said, my dad is an entrepreneur and had an entrepreneur mindset. We did our due diligence and looked around. We found somewhere that was a good location and then set it up. At that time, I wouldn't call myself a biohacker. I would say that I was starting the journey at that point. Floating catapulted me into a lot of directions because of the type of people that would come into the center. We get people that taught yoga and a variety of different kinds of yoga and meditation. All these different niche modalities started getting me excited about trying things. I was starting to have all sorts of powerful experiences through doing these modalities. It pushed me to keep going forward. I wanted to bring that to more people. We also have a lot of space here.
The next step was to bring in more float tanks. I quickly realized that people want more of a holistic center rather than a float center. It quickly helped that we put in infrared saunas and that quickly picked up. That showed us that we need to start doing more of a variety of things. Floating doesn't work for everyone but I'm sure that everyone can benefit from it. Sometimes people are claustrophobic or they can't find a way to relax in an enclosed space. We have something else for them. Eventually, they did the sauna a couple of times, and then they would try the floater.
We were able to bring people back for what we wanted them to try by bringing in other stuff that made it a little bit more relatable to them. Sauna is a popular thing worldwide. A lot of people are like, “I would like to try that.” Even if they haven't done infrared sauna, they realize that there's a benefit to doing this. They try it out and that gets them into this whole biohacking world. From there, they could try a variety of other things. Having that group of things allows us to have a much wider customer base and deliver the floating to more people.
It’s a similar story to what we do. We've had clients that were with us since the beginning. They started in the sauna. Sometimes it took them three years of saunas, “Try our float.” They get in and then they're liking it every single week. They're like, “What was I waiting for?” A lot of times, we have these apprehensions about, “I can't spend an hour by myself in the tank. What am I going to do? I'm going to get bored.” Is the claustrophobia issue thinking that it's going to be way smaller than it is? In reality, it's pretty spacious inside there when you go inside these tanks. It's finding the comfort level for people and offering a variety of services. Healing comes in many different ways. It's not our job to force anyone down a particular road but to offer as many things as possible. Maybe something resonates with our community. What is your favorite aspect of owning a business like this?
It's the ability to be able to take care of myself as much as I can. Being able to have that morning routine that I spoke about is not an easy one for a lot of people to be able to do. It took me a long time to get there too. The first couple of years of opening a business is stressful and hectic that you don't feel you have any time to be able to take for yourself. I slowly realized that I can do better at this and I could better as a person if I take that time in the morning. People can get there. I know there's a way to do that even if you're not in the self-care or float business. My favorite part is being able to keep this place as work but it's also a place where I can take care of myself. It's become everything. That's why I enjoy it.
What are some of the challenges that you find having a business like this?
There are a lot of moving parts, honestly. There's a lot of things that are constantly changing. Sometimes it gets difficult to keep up with the number of things that are changing because you always do want changes to be there. A lot of the time, I’m the one that incites the change. Some days, you're like, “I need to take a second or take a break.” Things are still moving and you have to still either move with them or say, “This day is a calm day. Tomorrow, I have to work hard to be able to catch up.” Having a lot on the go is difficult. It’s a lot to keep your mind constantly talking to many different people. I'm more of an introverted person myself, so I find dealing with people is a little bit more of a task. Even though there are all great people that I'm dealing with, it's not how I usually function. Being able to step out of being an introverted type person to doing a variety of things with a variety of people is a bit difficult but I enjoy it. I can't complain.
Biohacking Immunity: Cryotherapy is a good way to boost immunity. By being in the cold, your mental state forgets about everything else and you’re only thinking about breathing through the pain.
Owning a service business never stops. You always have to be showing up fully for your clientele and making sure all the rooms and everything is ready for them. When people come in, they want to feel like this is a healthy place, it's clean. They feel good when they talk to the people over there. It takes a lot of effort to maintain such an immaculate place and a place for healing. For me, it's anywhere from 30 to 50 people per day and giving your heart, being open to them, and sending them love to help them heal in their journey. It’s a lot of energy. After COVID, especially with reduced staff and things like that, it's been challenging to work so many hours. The fulfillment that I get from the guests that come through and my staff that are engaged in what we're doing and the mission that we're living here is a lot more important to me than the hard work, the long hours, and all that stuff. We get the best biohacking facilities to use on our own, so that helps as well. I don't know what I would do without the float tank.
There's so much stress that the float tank brings and so much peace that it also brings. Dealing with the salt and maintenance but it is all worth it.
When I first started, any time I was doing training and talking about the float center owners, you’re like, “Salt gets everywhere.” I come home and there's salt in my pockets and it falls over my house. I couldn't sleep some days, especially early on. I'm like, “What if the filter breaks and the salt is going to spew everywhere.” Maybe there are three times where there was a little bit of leakage. It took me four hours each time to clean it. Other than that, it hasn't been too bad. One of the things with this business is you have to be on top of everything because if you let things go and you don't clean all the salt everywhere, it will build up and it'll overrun your center. It's important to maintain the functionality, cleanliness, and proper functioning of all the filters and everything like that. There is a lot of work involved in maintaining these tanks. A lot of people are like, “It's easy. Why would I pay to sit in a bath?” You have no idea what it takes to get this thing ready.
I tell a lot of people it's comparable to having six pools there and the pools are not filled with chlorine but they're filled with salt that damages all of the parts constantly. People are going in the pools and they need to be cleaned after each person and they do their own things in the pool.
When I was talking to my builders who created my store, who built out the space, I was talking to the architects, I had explained to them, “The room has to be slip-proof, salt-proof, and soundproof. We have to have a shower in there. God forbid, all the water drains. There has to be a drain that collects everything.” They're like, “What do you want to build Fort Knox?”
They're telling me, “This is more difficult than a custom home.”
You are involved in your business in Float Valley. You also have a couple of other projects. You started a biohacking YouTube channel. Tell us a little bit about that and why you wanted to get that out?
The YouTube channel is BioHKT. This was something I wanted to do. A friend of mine started a YouTube channel and it was all centered around dieting and working out. I liked what he was doing with that. He started to get far. He's got quite a few subscribers on his channel. The goal is to have as many biohackers as possible as part of our community and people taking care of their health in terms of themselves rather than getting someone else to help them with it. We need to have something that allows us to showcase all of these different biohacks.
I have a BioHKT Instagram account where I post once in a while about biohacking tips and things you can do to leg up your day, but I found that it only goes so far because there are so many posts on Instagram. They don't get much. I found that having videos is powerful because people would watch 2 to 5 minutes, and they'd get so much more content than they could get by scrolling through a post. Luckily enough, one of our homeopaths here is like, “Let's do a YouTube channel. We work really well together. We could talk all about health. We could find a variety of businesses in the area and help them grow as well. We can all grow together.” I liked that.
We've been doing that since. Every week or so, we have a video. We go to a different business or we do it here at Float Valley. We hit a different topic. Our last was fascial stretch therapy. It's a type of stretching and massage. The next will be breathwork, which my sister is a breathwork facilitator. We featured her on our channel. It goes to the hack. What is breathwork all about? How does it work? We show them an entire breathwork session sped up as to how people do the breathing and what people are going to expect during their session. After the sessions are over, we come on camera and talk about the benefits that we experienced and how it was different from the other biohacks that we've done. We have a little bit of dialogue discussing and introducing that thing.
We found it to be beneficial for people to understand what we do here more and what people in Toronto do more. The goal eventually is to get more subscribers and get more people interested in this channel so that they can grow their knowledge and hopefully enjoy the services that are around and make their health better. It's been a lot of fun. We get to meet a lot of new people. I was at a cryotherapy place in Toronto. The guy there worked for Tony Robbins. He set up his cryotherapy. He traveled around with him to do that.
It was interesting talking to him and seeing where he was at. When I go to these other businesses, I get so many ideas for my business and how we can enhance it here. He was affiliated with an electrolyte company. Electrolytes are a great thing to do after the sauna. I’ve been working with an electrolyte company and we stock their stuff here at the store. It's building and growing this community so that everyone can benefit from it. At the same time, we get a lot of good content for Float Valley through this. There are lots of benefits from doing it.
You said it's like anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes each episode.
We keep them short and sweet.
It's compact. In this day and age, people don't have a big attention span. Getting them all the juice in that short amount of time is a great way to do it. What were some of your favorite interviews that you've done so far?
I enjoy doing interviews with people that I've worked with already in the past. It's a fun dynamic to work with them on-site and build the relationship a little bit further. My trainer at my gym, my session with him about calisthenics. Calisthenics is a type of workout where you're doing a lot more stuff that is body-oriented and a lot more isometric hold. You're not lifting weights. You are doing a lot of positions. We're doing pull-ups and pushups. You're holding these positions for long periods of time, doing a lot of gymnastic-style movements that are combined with yoga.
I enjoy calisthenics. I enjoy working with him. He's an interesting dude in the sense that he's like Spider-Man. He's always jumping around. He's doing all these tricks on the bars. It was fun to work with him. I also worked at a yoga studio in Stouffville, which is about fifteen minutes from here. It's on a farm. She owns a greenhouse on the farm. You do outdoor yoga there. We got to go there. We got to practice yoga with her. She took us through. It was all outdoors. It makes you feel good to work with people that have helped. When my business was starting, I reached out to them and they were supportive. They were referring people to Float Valley, giving them free floats, and coming in for floats themselves, and then spreading the word about it. We built our community together. What I enjoyed is being with them.
In my community, everybody’s supportive, all the wellness and the fitness people. We all help each other to promote each other. We are the health bearers in this community. When we're all working together, there's enough for everybody to make a living and to thrive in our business. Especially now after COVID, everybody had to pivot and adjust. Some people have had to close down their businesses. It's important for everyone to focus on their health and wellness. It's a blessing to be able to do that for other people at this time.
It's good to be in this industry because it's similar to that, even more closely knit than the general health industry, where everyone's supportive of each other. Even if you're close competition, you're not competition. You're still someone that can help the other person. Having that mindset that the pie is getting bigger rather than trying to get a piece of the pie has worked out well. It's something that a lot of people can learn from too.
What are some of the most promising technologies out there in terms of biohacking? What is the future of what we're going to be seeing in the biohacking world?
I'm seeing a lot of units that are utilizing electromagnetic frequencies. I find that electromagnetic frequencies are powerful. If you can have a unit that's able to alter the frequencies in your body, you can pretty much alter anything that goes on in your body without even having to go inside the body. It's noninvasive. There's a company called ONDAMED. I don't know if you've ever heard of that before.
No, I haven’t.
ONDAMED is a tool. I call it the doctor in a box. What it's able to do is it’s able to diagnose you. You wear a variety of apparatus around your neck and on your wrist. There's a practitioner taking your pulse while this is happening. What they do is cycle through thousands of different electromagnetic frequencies during the assessment and the assessment goes on for maybe 30 or 40 minutes. During those different frequencies, the practitioners write down when the pulse jumps. When the pulse jumps, it’s signaling that there’s something that the body is working on or that it's doing well. They’re writing down codes and numbers that the machine signals.
Afterward, there's a gigantic booklet that shows you what the numbers mean in your body. It recommends programs for you to then run on yourself to then fix those issues. For example, I was dealing with a skin issue. I was having trouble sleeping at one point. I didn't say anything to the person who was doing it. He hooked me up to the ONDAMED and different codes came through. Two or three of which are directly related to my skin condition and sleeping, which was pretty impressive. The next step is to continue wearing the apparatuses. Turn the box to a different setting and it starts to treat you with those frequencies.
It's a pretty amazing tool because it does work and it works quickly. It is quite an expensive tool. That's why I'm saying that it's closer to the future because they're around $50,000 or something. It does work. It's quite amazing. You don't have to take any supplements. You sit there and it fixes you. These electromagnetic frequency tools are getting popularity and in size. There's a variety of ways in which you can experience electromagnetic frequency. There's a mat that you can lay on that mimics the Earth’s vibrations and things like that. It's pretty cool to see what it's able to do. That will probably be the future. Even for personal use, there are necklaces and different apparatuses you can wear in your body that are able to give off these frequencies and make you feel better. I'm sure you've read some of them.
I've done a couple of things like this a while ago, back when I was in Vegas in 2014 or something like that. I went to this lady and you put your hand on a metal plate and then you have your other hand holding this rod. It's going through the entire magnetic frequency of your body. Every node, there's a healthy frequency for it. If it's out of alignment, it's going to show up. It’s exactly what you were saying, probably a different name. It’s like bio-magnet therapy. I was there for almost 3 or 4 hours scanning. They did a whole healing cycle where it pushes the right frequency through the body. I was standing there and she's playing music and tears were coming down my eyes. I don’t know what exactly it was. I felt in such an elated state. Afterward, I felt great for several weeks and several months.
Tesla said that the secrets of the universe are energy, frequency and vibration. When we can get ourselves in the right frequency, in terms of mental, physical, every which way, when we're aligned with what we want to manifest most, it's going to be drawn into us like a magnet. I've noticed that in several various fields of my life, whether it comes to abundance, wealth, business, relationships, and all that stuff. If we get ourselves into the right frequency, then everything becomes available to us. Tell us a little bit about your CBD line. I know that you started a CBD line. There are many different ones on the market. Tell us a little bit about your particular line and how it is a little bit different than the rest of the stuff on the market?
I started this CBD line years ago. The reason being that we curate CBD here at Float Valley. We found it to be a popular tool to use alongside floating. A lot of times, people will take CBD before they go into the float tank and find that it gets them into a much deeper state of meditation. They’ll take CBD after the float. They'll take it home with them and use it for pain, stress, or anxiety throughout the day when they're at work and things like that. It quickly became one of our most popular products here at Float Valley because of its effectiveness. It does work well. It's good for people that are using other medications that they would like to get off of that have harmful side effects on the body.
Biohacking Immunity: Sometimes, people are claustrophobic and can't relax in an enclosed place, so there are different therapies for different people.
It is on the system. I've never met anyone that's allergic to CBD. It's an easy thing for people to get their heads around and start using. That's why it became popular. At the same time, I do have a lot of friends that are involved in the cannabis and CBD industry already. The next good step was to move into that industry slightly because we already have the infrastructure here at Float Valley to be able to support this business. I already had the connections to get the supplies and things like that. It's been going well. It's called Flow CBD.
The difference between Flow CBD versus a variety of other brands is the type of CBD that's used. It's a broad-spectrum CBD. There is CBD isolate, which is a completely pure version of CBD. It’s 99% CBD or whatever. There is full-spectrum CBD that has all the cannabinoids that are found in the hemp cannabis plant. The most common ones that people know are THC, CBD. There's a variety of others like CBG, CBN, CBDA, etc. CBN and CBG are popular and it will be something that we start seeing in the next couple of years.
CBN is powerful for sleep and CBG is good for things like cancer, glaucoma in general. I feel like once enough research comes out and enough experimentation on the new cannabinoids, we'll probably see something new there. For now, CBD is the big craze because it doesn't get you high. A lot of people are averse to that and it is effective like THC is good for pain. It's good for anxiety, stress, depression, and a variety of things. People are using it for seizures and there's a whole list that people go use it for. Broad-spectrum CBD is a CBD with a few other cannabinoids like CBN, CBG but no THC in it.
It allows people to make sure that they don't have that in there because sometimes people are competing and people don't want THC in their system at all. This allows them to get this entourage effect. When you have CBD by itself, it only goes so far on how effective it is. If you combine it with a little bit of CBN, CBG, the entourage of these other cannabinoids helps the CBD become a lot more effective and more useful in the body. We switched from Calyx, which CBD isolates, to this broad-spectrum CBD. It was starting to become a lot more effective for them. This is why we took off a little bit faster because people prefer this product to what's usually out there.
This particular broad-spectrum strain has no THC, are you saying?
No THC. The spectrum has a little bit. The full-spectrum has no THC with the other cannabinoids and then the isolate is just the CBD by itself.
People won't be afraid to get drug tested or anything like that if they're taking the broad-spectrum. That’s wonderful. What a great unique selling proposition. Tell us a little bit about the future for you in your entrepreneurial journey. What else do you want to do? You've accomplished so much at a young age. You got three major things going on. What do you get going on next?
I want to continue what I'm doing and expand it because I do find that it is working in this area, in Markham but I want to expand and take it to different locations. In downtown Toronto, there are a few centers. I'm not exactly sure where to go next but I would like to take the whole biohacking idea and replicate it in a variety of places. Keep in mind when opening the next one that this is not going to be a float center. There are going to be a lot of different opportunities and different modalities that we can put into here and do that right from the get-go. That way, the community knows right away what we're planning to do. We can also get so many more people interested faster. Ideally, my goal is to create a larger community of biohacking people. One of the best ways to do it is by creating more of these centers. When people come to a city or they have a variety of them in this one city, they know that this can take care of my health in fifteen different ways.
Why did you come to Earth in this life? What did you want to particularly accomplish?
What I'm here to do is to build these centers. I'm someone good at building systems and doing the background stuff to let people then take care and do it themselves. I'm here to build more of these systems and get more people excited about their health, and keep spreading it that way. It is working. It's making me happy and I can see that it's working for a lot of people too.
The last question, what does God or spirituality mean to you? What role does it play in your life?
I've been reading a book called Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. It's an amazing book that has shifted my views on what spirituality and God are quite a bit. In the book, they talk about God not separate from you or me but that we all come from the same place and are the same people. With that stipulation, it changes a lot of the ways that you operate and thinking that you're separate from others and then thinking that now we are all the same. Whatever I do to you, now, I do to me. Whatever I do anywhere in this world will continue to affect me.
When I have that thought in my head, it makes me happy. It's exciting to know that if I'm not doing something for myself, I'm doing it for something else. It's still helping everyone. If I'm still doing something for myself, it's also still helping everyone. Everything that you're doing that's helping is helping it. It’s that change in what God is. A lot of people can think of a God as a religious figure or some entity that is separate from their own and that starts to slowly change a lot of the ways that you operate around God, the fear of God, and love of God. When I think of God, as not different from myself, the fact that we are all Gods and Goddesses has changed and benefited people.
If we look at everyone as a mirror, then it changes everything. The people that trigger us, upset us, we start treating others differently when we look at them as ourselves. Would you want to hurt yourself or would you want to hurt your best friend? If we start looking at everyone in those terms, then it forces us to level up to become better as people because we're affecting not only ourselves but other people and the world at large.
When we get triggered, it lets us know what we forgot. Otherwise, who can tell us? By seeing what makes us angry, upset, fearful, etc.
Self-awareness is the key and continual growth. I want to thank you for coming on, Nadeem. It was enlightening to hear your story. Thank you for sharing all the knowledge with us. How can we learn more about you?
My Instagram profile is something that I keep up to date. I try to spread as much knowledge and stuff about biohacking as I can and all my businesses. If you want to go to my Instagram, which is @BiohackDeem, then you can keep in touch. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.
Is that the best place?
I would say so.
Thank you so much. Have a great one.
Thank you for having me. You too.
Important Links:
BioHKT - YouTube
BioHKT - Instagram
