Human resilience is not only unlocked through sheer will and dedication. One must also know the right science-based approaches to improve their overall health and wellness. Zach Gurick sits down with Cary Reichbach, co-founder of Grey Team Military Community, who explores the science behind advanced healing modalities that extend health span, boost performance, and lead to a deeper sense of purpose. From red light therapy to PEMF mats, they explain how these innovative devices and methods can help you become the best version of yourself. Cary also shares how they use these same approaches at Grey Team to guide military veterans in reintegrating into civilian life and help them deal with PTSD in the most holistic ways.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Unlocking Human Resilience Through Science With Cary Reichbach
We’re diving into a conversation that bridges two powerful worlds, the science of biohacking and the human story of resilience. My guest is Cary Reichbach, Founder of Grey Team, which is an organization that’s pioneering a new model for physical, mental, and emotional renewal. Cary’s mission began with helping Military veterans overcome pain, trauma, and loss of purpose, but what has emerged is something far bigger. A blueprint for human optimization, performance, and longevity for all of us.
Grey Team’s approach blends advanced tools like photobiomodulation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, targeted supplementation, and precision strength training, all grounded in measurable outcomes that restore energy, build muscle, and reverse biological decline, even into our 80s and 90s. In this episode, Cary shares the protocols, technologies, and mindset shifts that are helping people not only recover from the past but reprogram their biology for the future. If you’re curious about how to hack aging, boost performance, and tap into a deeper sense of purpose, then stay tuned. We’re talking about human optimization, resilience, and what it truly means to live fully alive with Cary Reichbach of Grey Team.
Cary, thank you so much for joining us. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I’ve been excited to learn from you myself and excited for our audience to know about the great work that you’re doing, your expertise, and your experience. I love the way that you’re such a mission-minded entrepreneur, and that you’ve devoted your life to helping save lives and transform lives. I think it’s amazing the work you’re doing. Thanks for being here with us.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. Awareness is such an amazing thing, and when you can spread awareness of the fact that we can fix so many ailments that people are living with and dealing with pain. It’s completely unnecessary. I’m happy to share any information that other people might find useful.
Transitioning From Military Service And Back Into Civilian Life
I’m excited to dive into all of that, share some of those things, and give people some things that they can walk away with as well. Making people aware is key. I’d love to start with a little bit of your backstory. I know you made a transition from Military service in the Army back into civilian life. You’ve mentioned that in some places, that’s been a significant, tough journey to make that transition. Tell us a little bit about your backstory. What led you to launch Grey Team and the work you’re doing?
The greatest misconception of Military service is that it’s a job. When you change jobs, you change jobs. No big deal. The issue is that the Military isn’t a job. It’s a complete lifestyle change. I joined the Army right out of high school at seventeen years old. My formative years were spent in a uniform, learning a brand-new language, learning a brand-new culture, and learning about different countries and different everything. Everything changes, and that becomes the norm for you. You are working 24 hours a day, not getting your 8 hours of sleep that everybody recommends as you’re growing up.
The transition when you no longer are part of the Military, you’ve given up that culture, that language, all of your friends, and everything you know. You come into a civilian world where you don’t even understand what’s going on. You’ve never had to pay rent. You’ve never cooked for yourself. You’ve typically had everything provided for you, like your medical and your dental.
You’ve never had, “It’s 5:00. We’re done for the day. Come back tomorrow.” You’ve never heard that before. When a mission is completed, that’s when it’s done, and not before. If that takes 36, 72 hours, or whatever it takes, you don’t go home and sleep. You don’t take breaks. It’s that transition into, all of a sudden, you’re a civilian. You don’t understand the language. You don’t understand that when it’s 5:00, everyone goes home. You say to yourself, “We’re not done.” “We’ll do it another time. We’ll do it tomorrow. We’ll do it whenever,” is an alien concept.
We’re not even touching on post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury, which only continue to elevate that sense of, “I don’t belong here.” Every service member comes back with those issues of, “I don’t know how to get by in this world anymore. I don’t feel like I’m a part of it.” That’s a huge cause of suicidal ideation. That’s something that most people don’t consider when they say, “You transition out of the Military.” I don’t think you ever do. I don’t think you’ll ever become a civilian again. That’s an issue.
Military veterans do not ever become civilians again.
Thanks for painting that picture for us because most people aren’t thinking about it in those terms. That allows us to walk for a minute in your shoes a little bit. Those are some real challenges that lead to a lot of suicidal ideation. That’s a significant problem for our former servicemen and women. Did the suicide prevention and that issue lead you into this work that you’re doing with Grey Team?
That’s exactly correct. The actual number of suicide are rarely published. It’s typically under-reported because it goes against the narrative. We want our young men and women to join the Military. We tell them, “We have your back, 100%. We always have your back. No matter what happens, we’ll never leave you behind.” If we don’t honor that promise, and when you come out, and you’re given what’s called a combat cocktail of anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, and sleeping pills, all these things are given to you to try to numb you. It is so that you can decelerate and go back into civilian life.
Many times, that combination of those drugs will cause suicidal ideation. Nobody wants to talk about that. It’s not a recruiting campaign. I’m not here to argue whether or not we need warriors out there to protect the freedoms that this country has. We do, but when you take a 17, 18, or 19-year-old and turn them into a warrior, you’re creating a trained killer, if you will, that will kill without hesitation. When you do that, there’s no transition process back to becoming a civilian.
We go through a process. The Marine Corps calls it boot camp or basic training, but it’s the same thing. It’s an indoctrination into the warrior class where we’ll do what’s necessary or what you’re told. That’s typically 10, 20, 30 weeks, or whatever it is. In terms of extreme, when you talk about Tier I warriors, the Grey Teams, if you will, you’re talking about the Navy’s development group or DEVGRU. SEAL Team Six is what Hollywood calls it. You’re talking about the Army’s Delta Force. Those are super high echelon warriors. We need them. They’ve gone through up to a year and a half of training.
To think that when we don’t need them anymore, we can give them a pat on the back and some prescriptions and say, “There isn’t any program to decelerate you. We’ve accelerated you up to one of the top warriors in the world. Good luck. It’s going to be rough out there. Here are some pills to try and soften it,” that’s one of the problems. Certainly, it’s one of the big causes of suicide. In my personal instance, I had quite a few friends and acquaintances who decided that that was the way out. It was less painful to end it than it would be to continue on and try to make sense out of the world. At one point, you say, “If I don’t do something, who’s going to?”
This led you to your own journey of decelerating, figuring out how to navigate the world as a civilian. How did you discover some of the things that you’re doing and implementing at Grey Team? What led you into the biohacking space to unwind some of this for yourself and for others?
Most of your readers would be aware that the human body is remarkable. If given the opportunity, it will heal itself. We almost go the opposite way with Western medicine in terms of trying to fix things, and we end up breaking them even more. Duke University did a study a few years ago. They said that the government had been under-reporting suicide. It was not, “Do 11 push-ups a day for the 11 soldiers who are going to take their lives every day.” It wasn’t even close to that.
It was between 40 and 44 a day in the Military who take their lives every single day in the United States of America. That’s a staggering statistic. That’s more than have died in the Global War on Terror and Vietnam. It’s every single day all across the country. There had to be a solution for that, and it wasn’t to numb the body down with pills and hope for the best. That’s what led to this journey of thinking, “What did people do before Merck, Pfizer, and these other companies got involved? How did they deal with this before?”
There are natural remedies. We’ve known about them for years. A lot of people think they’re woo-woo. They’re like, “You should do breathwork. You should do trauma-conscious yoga. You should do transcendental meditation.” Those things are very effective, but we can go beyond that. We can even go into what science has developed in technology, which are astounding ways to decelerate the mind and body and allow it to heal itself. Going down that line of thought brings you into pulse electromagnetic frequencies, full body photobiomodulation, transcranial low-level laser therapy, hyperbaric medicine, and infrared detoxification. The list goes on and on.
How Cary Got Into The Science Of Biohacking
I’d love to dive into some of those protocols and things like that. Did you start utilizing those technologies yourself, and that’s what led you to do this?
100%.
You’ve seen the effectiveness for yourself.
We don’t ever want to give anything to a soldier that we haven’t verified that it works. We all know that we live in a capitalistic society. People will make claims that this thing is the most effective thing ever. They can do that until you know the FDA or somebody comes down on them and says, “Wait a minute. You’ve done no tests, no trials, nothing.” That’s not to say that it doesn’t work. It’s to say it hasn’t been proven.
We have that kind of relationship where we know the government has safeguards in place. They don’t want to say something’s effective unless there have been sixteen clinical trials with double-blind studies and things like that. Sometimes, that takes years. In the meantime, there are elements in technology that are super effective, and maybe the developer didn’t have the funding to be able to do all these double-blind studies.
Sometimes, we’ll have a product donated to us. We will sit down with it, have a talk with the engineers who came up with it, and figure it out. A lot of times, they don’t even know what it’s capable of. They know they came up with something, and they think it’s going to be amazing, but they need a little bit more data collection.
We can sit down and try it on our own team. When we prove it effective or ineffective, then we pass along that information. A lot of times, it doesn’t go to the veterans who are running through our program yet. We will sit down, speak with the engineers, and have something improved. Eventually, the final product, whether it’s 2nd or 3rd generation, will come out that is better than anything they came up with by themselves. That’s what we’ll begin using in our protocols.
This is so our audience can understand. The Grey Team is veterans who have come out of the Military. They’re trying to become civilians again and are going through those challenges. They find Grey Team. You’ve built a center with all of these protocols, technologies, and biohacking modalities. You’re helping them decelerate their mind and their body back into a healthy state. Is that a good summary, or can you explain that for us a little bit more about how Grey Team works?
Typically, any soldier who has served or is serving, male, female, or what have you, any branch, or any conflict there is, has the ability to come into our program for free. They can apply online at GreyTeam.org. They can sit down with our people after they apply and do a full evaluation. Every program that we come up with is customized because there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to therapy. Everyone has different issues. Everyone has a different way of dealing with them. Not all therapies work for everyone. We probably have over 35 different modalities of therapy at Grey Team.
An individual would apply online. They can be anywhere in the United States of America. Our program is typically 90 days, but it can be longer or shorter depending on the extent of what needs to be repaired. At that point, you have a full fitness facility. They get one-on-one personal training. On top of that, they get nutritional guidance, supplementation, all the way through to all the advanced modalities like transcranial and so on and so forth.
That’s amazing. There’s an assessment at the front end where you can determine. I’m assuming you have some nutritionists, exercise physiologists, or other people who wrap around and create a program for each person.
Wrapping around is a good way of looking at that because so many times in our society, we will separate different parts of the body. If you have something wrong with your nose, you go to an ENT. That’s a specialist in that particular area. That’s not the way things work. Everything is tied together. You can’t heal the mind without healing the body and the gut.
You can’t heal the gut if your hormonal balance is off, or you have post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury. It’s going to show inflammation in other parts of the body, so it has to be taken as a whole. That’s critical to what we do at Grey Team. We examine each individual as a whole entity, not, “We’re going to fix your shoulder.” There’s so much more to us than just body parts.
There is so much more to a person than just body parts.
The Many Benefits Of Red Light Therapy
I love that approach. You’re treating the whole person with a very holistic approach there. There’s the fitness facility, nutrition, supplementation, and then stacked on top of that are the advanced modalities. I’d love to break some of those down and talk through some of the things that you’re seeing that work well, as far as some of the basics with fitness, nutrition, supplementation, and then maybe some of those advanced components as well. This is for our audience to be aware of what’s out there, what’s available, and what they can do as well in their lives.
One of the most effective things that helps everyone is what the media calls red light therapy. It’s not the best term for it because it’s not just red light. There are specific wavelengths of light. Without going down that rabbit hole of why these specific shades of 680 nanometers of red up to 940 nanometers with a frequency range of 2000 Hertz do anything to the human body, the best explanation and the shortest one I can think of is that mammals, like humans, do not respond to ultraviolet light the way plants do.
Most of us remember in high school biology photosynthesis. Plants can grow in the air as long as they have sunlight. They can be powered purely by light in a process called photosynthesis. Mammals don’t respond the same way, but we do respond to light, and we can be powered by light. It’s at the other end of the spectrum.
While ultraviolet is coming from the sun, on the other end of the spectrum, you have infrared. Infrared is a non-oxidizing ray. The human body can thrive on that, along with these shades of red through evolution and through the atmosphere being a certain shade of red after the Big Bang. I know that, for whatever reason, and no one has come up with a definitive conclusion, we can be powered by this. The mitochondria and every cell, and we have millions of them in our body, will react to this specific light and create ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate. That’s the fuel that runs our whole body.
We can’t get enough of this. We could do it every day. 20 or 30 minutes of it will power up the whole body. It’ll wipe out pain and drop inflammation. It’s a fantastic tool. I would urge any of your readers to look into that because there are specific centers that do offer real photobiomodulation. Not to be confused with gyms that’ll have a little booth that you stand in with red sleeves over fluorescent bulbs and call it red light. Unfortunately, that wastes your time. It doesn’t do anything whatsoever for the body. If they do look into it, they’ll find a center that does offer photobiomodulation. There are a lot of them out there. It’s something that everyone would benefit from.
I’ve had a couple of guests who have a red light therapy bed. Companies, for example. I’ve had the CEO of the Trifecta Light bed. It’s a full-body bed. Is that what you guys use? Do you use a full-body, high-quality red light bed?
Ours was donated by a company called Aspen Laser. Theralite 360 is the model, and it’s super effective. It’s very comfortable. You’re being bombarded by light rays, so it sounds scary. If you have claustrophobia, you don’t want to get into this tube that’s shooting light all over. The truth is, it’s a slight warming sensation. Typically, I would fall asleep. There’s no pain. There’s nothing. In twenty minutes, it’s over, and you feel fantastic.
I’m assuming you still use these modalities yourself, right?
I do, but not as often as I would like to. I’m a volunteer at Grey Team, but we have vets and active duty guys and women who need care so much more. What we’re taught in the Military, and it carries on into the rest of our lives, is that you take care of the other people before you take care of yourself. That’s probably one of the biggest obstacles that we face in treating these individuals. They joined the Military because they wanted to make a difference. They wanted to help out and elevate their fellow man. That doesn’t go along with a selfishness to take care of yourself.
In the Army, we have a lot of gear that we’re wearing. We wear plate carriers and body armor with layers of different gear over that. After a while, you can’t attach things and adjust things anymore on yourself, so you do it to the man next to you. Everybody takes care of everyone else around them. That’s ingrained in us. When we need help, we’re very hesitant to ask for it.
It goes to an extreme, even. When you come back from a deployment in a third-world country or what have you, you might have experienced post-traumatic stress or been involved where explosions were close by, or you caused some of those yourself. Even firing a machine gun close to your head will cause traumatic brain injury. Over time, it’s cumulative. It’s proven, not something that the recruiters are going to tell you either.
You’re going to have this buildup of things going wrong in your head where you’re not going to be able to think as clearly as you used to. Even neurocognitive, linguistic scores, and everything is going to slowly drop because of this inflammation in your head. Post-traumatic stress is a chemical inflammation of the brain. Thinking the same dark negative thoughts over and over causes a release of cortisol and a bunch of other hormones that are going to inflame the brain, versus traumatic brain injury, which can be caused by blunt force trauma or blast wave trauma.
It’s a swelling. It’s an inflammation of the brain. It’s going to cause behavioral changes. That swelling is not going to allow us the blood flow to go through into these microcapillaries, so you’re going to have brain cells that are going to be starved for oxygen. That’s where the transcranial low-level laser is super effective, like the big beds will drop inflammation. They can’t penetrate bone, but a helmet that will shoot lasers directly through the skull into the brain can drop inflammation instantly. It will get rid of headaches and pressure up there. There are incredible devices on the market that are very safe and effective.
That, in conjunction with hyperbaric medicine, where we’re able to compress the oxygen molecules down so small that we can push them into the plasma. That can squeeze through those little inflamed microcapillaries and begin bringing oxygen to those starved tissues. We’re healing the body, but it’s healing itself. We’re not using it with pharmaceutical drugs. We’re not doing anything. We’re allowing the body to drop inflammation so it can begin to heal.
We are healing the body, but it is healing itself. We are just allowing the body to drop its inflammation levels so it can begin to heal.
Where To Get Medical Devices For Preventive Wellness
This is super fascinating. You have the full body red light therapy or photobiomodulation bed and then the transcranial laser for headaches, pressure, and inflammation caused by PTSD or blast waves. Blunt force trauma causes inflammation as well. You combine that with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. That’s compressing the oxygen to force it into the plasma. It gets through those microcapillaries. It’s that microcirculation. Where can people find some of these devices for themselves if they want to do this for preventative wellness, or they have a family member who’s struggling with some of these things, or they want to extend their health span? Where can people find some of this?
That’s a great question, and I wish I had a better answer. There are some therapy centers that will carry photobiomodulation and hyperbaric medicine. In larger cities, those are probably going to be available. In smaller places by the coast, you’re always going to have hyperbaric chambers located near water. That’s how we treat divers who experience the bends. We’re going to decompress them in that chamber.
Unfortunately, putting this in a nice way, this isn’t recognized as a real use of hyperbaric medicine. It’s typically used for the treatment of decompression sickness. It has amazing wound healing capabilities, also. Let’s talk about individuals who have diabetes, because that seems to be very prevalent in today’s society. With diabetes, you’ve got so much sugar in the blood that the circulation is so sluggish. Extremities in the body begin to die. They’re not getting enough blood flow.
If you have a wound, and you’re diabetic, on one of your toes, feet, or fingers, a lot of times, it won’t heal because it’s not getting enough blood supply. For those individuals, they would be prescribed hyperbaric medicine because in that chamber, the oxygen will be compressed, and it’ll speed the healing process. That’s considered medically necessary.
For what we’re talking about, does it have an anti-aging effect? Absolutely. It has been proven that it’ll lengthen telomeres. Whether or not that’s medically necessary is a matter of opinion. Is it necessary for us to live longer or healthier lives? Not according to the pharmaceutical drug industry. They want us to be dependent on pills. Once you’re fixed with this, there’s no money in it. We always have to weigh that out.
Most hospitals will have a hyperbaric chamber. Whether or not your readers can use it is another story because it’s not considered medically necessary to lengthen telomeres, do anti-aging, or fix certain things. Unless they have a wound that won’t heal or something, or they have a decompression accident while diving, they typically won’t authorize use of it.
What about exercising with oxygen therapy, where you have the mask, and you’re doing some exercise? That’s the same idea. You’re overloading a lot of oxygen. You’re getting a huge dose of oxygen in a short period of time. Is that going to at least move things in the same direction, then, as a hyperbaric chamber or not exactly?
No. It has to be done under pressure. You have to compress the oxygen down.
To get it into those microcapillaries.
To be fair, it doesn’t have to be compressed that far down. Typically, the hard chambers that are in hospitals, where you’re slid in on a gurney, will go to two and a half atmospheres of pressure. They do make units that you can purchase for your home that have a soft shell. They inflate. They’re not that expensive. An individual can buy that along with an oxygen concentrator.
I’ll explain the difference in a nutshell. The big units at a hospital are going to feed you pure oxygen inside this chamber. That means they have to have huge oxygen tanks to store that. Unfortunately, there’s a risk of fire or explosion when you’re keeping oxygen. When you go into one of those chambers, you can’t wear any jewelry. You can’t have anything metal. You can’t wear clothing that might have polyester or any synthetic fiber because if there’s a static discharge, it can cause a fire or blow up. Typically, you’re going to have to wear 100% cotton. All jewelry is removed. You can’t take your cell phone or any electronics in there because one little spark is deadly.
The good thing about a soft shell is its compressed air. There’s no risk of explosion whatsoever. There’s no special handling. You don’t need to purchase oxygen. You can put this in your home, plug it in, and create a 1.3 atmosphere chamber, which is very good for anti-aging. You can buy an oxygen concentrator. That’s going to feed oxygen through a mask to you, so you’re going to be breathing pure oxygen inside. It’s under that 1.3 atmospheres of pressure, so you’re going to get all the anti-aging benefits, everything you want in the privacy of your own home.
That’s a more accessible option, then.
That’s a great option. There are companies like OxyHealth that are among the leaders in creating home units. It doesn’t wear out. It’s a great thing. It’s relatively inexpensive, and it doesn’t take up much space.
That’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. What about PEMF? Are you using mats for that? Do you have other devices that you use for PEMF treatments?
PEMF is fantastic. We use that to speed the healing process also. It provides pain relief. It does everything. The best analogy I can come up with is that most of your readers probably have a cooktop in their house that doesn’t have burners anymore. You can set it on the glass, and it’s going to heat up without causing the burner to heat up or the surface to get hot. What PEMF mat does is it’s charging the body on a cellular level, the same exact way as you would set your cell phone down on a charging pad without plugging a wire in. PEMF will do that to the human body.
There are various settings that you can use. It’s very effective. It’s completely painless. You don’t want to do it if you use pacemakers or things like that. Other than that, there are no contraindications at all. Probably the best company that I can tell you about that works would be a company called PureWave Technologies. They make an amazing system that has a multitude of settings, and it can fix anything.
That’s great. I love that these things are accessible on the market, and they’re not outrageous to acquire either in terms of cost, size, or things like that.
Especially PMF. You get what you pay for, so there are certain ones that are more effective than others. There are some that are not effective at all. It’s buyer beware. You can look up reviews and find the ones that work the best. We’re happy to point people in the right direction, too, because we have gone through so many. We know exactly what works and what doesn’t.
Why You Should Stay On The Move And Be Functional
That’s great. You’re trying them out yourself and then moving on from there. I’d love to shift gears for a few minutes and talk about the fitness center that you have, maintaining muscle mass, and changing our physical bodies through exercise. I’d love to hear a little bit about your dad’s story, too. I’ve heard a little bit about that. Could you share a little bit for our audience to be inspired in that way?
Sure. My father is a Korean War vet. United States Army, 101st Airborne Division paratrooper. He will be 96. He still works out three times a week and drives daytime and nighttime, it doesn’t matter, across the country several times in his car by himself to go visit his children who live in California. He drives from Florida and back again.
It’s all about movement. The best analogy I can equate to that is if you were to park your car and not drive it, everything would go bad with it. The battery would die. The tires would get flat. The seals would fail. It wou;d drip and leak oil. It would fall apart from disuse. The human body is the same way. It needs to be moved. It needs to be functional.
The worst thing we can do is sit. I feel bad saying that because both you and I are sitting during this interview. The truth is, sitting is a horrible thing for our bodies. In our society, we do it all the time. We sit when we drive. We sit when we fly. We sit at work. We’re typing on a keyboard. We’re not moving. A few years ago, they came up with standing desks, which everybody thought was going to fix the sitting problem. It doesn’t because standing is almost as bad as sitting.
The idea of movement is getting up and down, and walking. We do less and less of that all the time. The key to longevity, as you pointed out when we started it, is not about lifespan. It’s about health space. Nobody wants to live to 100, be in a wheelchair, and they can’t enjoy their life. If you’re training to live to 100, like a marathon or anything else, you have to train for it.
It is not about life span but health span. Nobody wants to live to a hundred and get stuck in a wheelchair.
If you want to live to 100, that’s a goal. If you want to do a marathon, that’s a goal. You don’t one day enter the Boston Marathon or the New York Marathon. You train for it. You should be training every day to reach that goal of living to 100. Knowing full well that there is no cure for aging yet, every year, you are going to lose a certain amount of muscle mass and bone density. That’s going to happen. You can let that happen, or you can reverse it by doing strength training and basic movements or patterns.
It’s very important that people come up with a routine that they can do and fit into their lives. No matter how busy you are, it’s super important that you move. That could be as simple as waking up in the morning and catching that blue light. That is going to be coming as the sun is coming up. The sky has a beautiful blue color. That’s a signal to our brains to begin producing cortisol and wake us up. It’s much better than caffeine, although coffee tastes great, but that’s beside the point.
That blue light is essential for brain health. The best way to do that is to go for a walk as soon as the sun comes up, or as it’s coming up. Unfortunately, our screens that we are all addicted to put out blue light. When we’re looking at that in the evenings, watching television, binging Netflix, playing with our phone, or what have you, we’re sending a signal to our brain to wake up and produce cortisol when we’re getting ready to go to bed. Our sleep is going to be disrupted.
With fitness, we can’t isolate it. There’s sleep hygiene. There’s nutrition. It’s all tied together. You’re not going to have the energy to exercise if you’re not eating properly. If you’re smoking cigarettes or abusing alcohol or other drugs, whether that’s pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, or what have you, you’re introducing toxins into your body. No amount of exercise is going to alleviate that.
It’s an all-inclusive approach. You have to, at some point, take a stand and say, “I’m in my 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. I can’t continue to go straight anymore.” The road doesn’t work that way. You can’t coast anymore. At my age, it’s going to divide. I’m either going to go towards improving myself, or I’m going to get worse. There’s no more coasting. It’s like a salmon trying to swim upstream. He can’t stop and rest. He’s going to end up going back. That’s the only way I can put that into words. If you want to be healthy, bounce your grandchildren off your knee, and be able to get up off the floor, you need to start training for that now rather than when you’re already in your 70s or 80s.
Thanks for sharing that. There is one other detail about your father’s story. It’s amazing. He’s 96, and he’s working out 3 times a week. I’ve seen a video of him doing leg presses and things like that, and not just little weights. He’s strong. If I remember correctly, he didn’t start weight training until he was much older. He was in his late 70s. Is that right?
That’s true.
It’s never too late, right?
Yeah. He was an educator. He felt that walking without doing any strength training was enough. He was never overweight or heavy, but strength training is something that we have to do. In fact, they’re able to link your mortality based on your grip strength. That’s important. When you start to lose that strength, it’s not just about you can’t open a jar of pickles anymore. It’s more about that’s indicative of everything starting to go down the drain.
Strength training, while it’s more difficult and a little bit more dangerous if you don’t have the right instructor or someone to teach it to you, walking on a treadmill, especially in the morning, is great, but it’s not going to increase bone density. Either we have a family member, or we know of someone who has tripped and fallen when they’re of advanced age. When that happens, and the bones are not robust enough to handle the impact, a hip can break.
The hip is a major joint in the body. Sometimes, that can be a death sentence because after that hip breaks, you’re going to be confined to a wheelchair while it heals. Since you can’t move in a wheelchair, the rest of your health will continue to decline. It’s super important that you keep that bone density up. Naturally, as people age, their bones become more brittle.
If you do strength training, however, the pressure that you’re putting on those bones will cause them to attract more calcium molecules, and you will make that bone denser and stronger. You won’t get that from cardio. You won’t get that from anything else, but you will get it from strength training. Progressive resistance training has to be a factor in that longevity program.
Thanks for sharing that. It’s also good for your brain because you’re releasing BDNF as you’re strength training. It’s good for brain health and cardiovascular health, too.
They’re all connected. You can’t have a healthy brain by having an unhealthy body. You can’t have an unhealthy brain and have a healthy body. It doesn’t work. You need to look at the body as a whole unit and allow it to heal itself.
A Glimpse Into Cary’s Own Fitness Routine
Could you share briefly about your own routine? What does a day or a week in your life look like? What protocols are you personally following as far as nutrition, supplementation, fitness, and some of these other more technical modalities as well? What does your protocol look like?
I have a rescue Belgian Malinois. For those that don’t know, that’s the dogs that the Navy SEALs have moved to from German Shepherds because they’re very light, intelligent, and super athletes. They’re amazing dogs, but they require a huge amount of exercise. They’re incredibly prey-driven, and they love to work. I don’t recommend this dog for anyone unless they’re active.
The upside of that is that if you have any dog whatsoever, you’re forced to walk them. For me, every morning starts with a 1 or 2-mile run with my dog. I try to get it right in that beautiful time when the sun is coming up. It’s still nice and cool. You have that gorgeous blue light to start your circadian clock running. We’re all programmed to wake up when that blue light comes. We’re also programmed to go to sleep when that amber light comes on in the evening, and you see those beautiful sunsets. We’re supposed to go to sleep. We’re not supposed to sit in front of the TV for two hours, but that’s a whole other story.
After that, I will typically come in and do my supplement routine. That does take a little bit of time, but I know by now what my body needs. I will put supplements together that I’m going to need for the rest of the day. I’m going to drink coffee with MCT oil in it. I use C8 or Carbon 8, not Carbon 10 or C10. There is a difference. MCT oil is a highly refined version of coconut oil. C8 is one that goes directly to your brain. You get caffeine and brain energy. That’s typically breakfast for me.
I then usually go to work, and I don’t eat until about 2:00 in the afternoon. I’m practicing intermittent fasting, which probably most people are familiar with. I stop eating at about 6:00 at night, and I don’t eat again until 2:00 the next day. I drink lots of water. I have dinner around 5:30 or 6:00. In between, I’m going to do at least 45 minutes to 1 hour of weight training. I break my body into five segments. I train my legs on Monday, my chest on Tuesday, my back on Wednesday, my shoulders on Thursday, and my arms on Friday. The weekends are for fun, like hiking, swimming, or what have you, but I don’t weightlift. I don’t weight train on those days.
That’s pretty much my schedule. I try to avoid screens an hour or so before bed. If I have emails that have to be answered or I have to write something for a presentation, I will use glasses that block blue light. I’ll try to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep. I track my sleep with the Oura Ring, which is a biometric device. I’m always trying to improve it and increase the deep sleep and the REM. During the day, if I have the time at Grey Team, I will do some of the therapies, like red light and photobiomodulation, probably not often enough, but at least once or twice a week.
Get In Touch With Cary
That’s great. Thanks for sharing. It’s always interesting. You understand all these different protocols and have access to things, so it’s helpful to see what that can look like in a day-to-day life. It’s achievable. It’s not outrageous. You can squeeze all that into your day and make that work well. How can people find Grey Team? You mentioned at the beginning that it’s a free program for any active or veteran service person, which is amazing. It’s a nonprofit, then, right?
Yes.
That’s the structure. How can people connect? If there are readers who themselves are or have family members, loved ones, or friends who need your help there, how does that work? You’re located in Florida, right?
Correct.
Do they come to you for those 90 days, or do they come back and forth? How does that part of it work?
Those are all great questions. They can reach us at GreyTeam.org. They can apply for services online. Since we don’t receive any federal, state, or local funding, everything is supported by fundraising galas. We do two of them a year. We have one coming up at Mar-a-Lago on December 11th, 2025. That’s completely sold out 3 or 4 months ahead of time. We have another one coming up in Boca Raton, Florida, on April 11th, 2026. We still have tickets available for that. If somebody’s interested in supporting the organization, they can donate online, but we would rather have them come to one of the galas to see how their donation is being used to save lives.
The truth is, while we talked about 44 a day taking their lives on average, since our inception in 2016, we’re the only organization that I know that has never had a suicide in almost 10 years. We have over 1,100 service members through our program with 100% success. We’ve won every accolade and award for that. An answer to your question is that if they’re out of town, we can shorten that 90-day protocol. If they’re coming here, they’re probably not working.
Typically, if they live in the area, they come here three times a week, and we’re able to do everything we need to do in that 90-day period. If they’re coming from out of town, we can see them five days a week because they’re probably not working. We can cut that down to a little over a month, maybe a month and a half. We can find them a hotel room. We’ll take care of all that for them. They just need to have transportation here. If they can’t handle that, we can even take care of that for them, too.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
That’s fantastic. You said 100% success rate. It works. There are no adverse side effects. All the things that you’re doing are so effective. 1,100 people, and it worked for 100% of the people. That’s amazing. Thank you for the amazing work that you’re doing. It’s fascinating and also inspiring to meet people like you and to be inspired by the work that you’re doing.
Thank you so much for dedicating your life to this and giving your time, your energy, and your effort to it. Hopefully, more and more people will become aware of this. Thank you for sharing your message with us and our audience. Thanks for the amazing wisdom and experience you have, and for sharing that with us as well.
I appreciate it. Thank you for allowing me to share that because I truly believe that information is invaluable. Nobody has a monopoly on it. There are good ideas coming from everywhere. Our whole society and culture would be so much better if people openly shared and truly wanted to help each other. That has been our goal here from day one.
Our whole society and culture would be so much better if people openly shared and truly wanted to help each other.
While we are only open to the Military, that’s not to say that civilians can’t learn 100% from what we do because their problems, in most cases, aren’t as severe as those who’ve overcome 12 or 20 years of Military service. We feel like if we can fix these hard cases, we can take that information and help civilians as well.
Thank you so much for joining us. You’re super inspiring. I appreciate you. Thanks for being here.
My pleasure.
Have a great day.
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What an inspiring conversation with Cary Reichbach. I hope that you were inspired and maybe challenged in some ways as I was. These were some of the things that hit home for me as we were talking. The Military isn’t a job. It’s a lifestyle. As people come out of the Military, they have this sense of, “I don’t belong in the world.” That leads to what Cary was talking about, which is suicidal ideation. They’re fed this combat cocktail. That compounds and leads to a crisis of 40 to 44 per day Military veterans committing suicide. What a horrible thing that we need to solve.
He’s doing that. The work that they’re doing is 100% successful. What kind of organization has a 100% success rate? That’s unbelievable. Check it out at GreyTeam.org. You can sign up for their galas, donate online, or get help for you, a friend, a family member, or a loved one who needs the services of something like Grey Team.
Beyond that, we talked about some of the technologies and biohacking modalities that they’re using that we can all incorporate into our own lives to prevent and to optimize our own health. We talked about red light therapy beds, some of the devices, and photobiomodulation. You can find those centers all over the place. We’ve had other guests on the show. You can check out some earlier episodes on red light therapy.
We talked about the hyperbaric oxygen chambers. There are ways to acquire those devices for your own home, such as the soft shell. He mentioned a company called OxyHealth that creates those that you can have in your own home. That could be a great thing to check out. We also talked about PEMF mats and PEMF devices like PureWave Technologies. We’ve had others on the show before. You can check out another episode with Mark Fox. He has a device called the VIBE. That’s a similar idea to PEMF.
We talked about the basics, such as fitness, weightlifting, nutrition, and supplementation. This was a very fascinating episode. I hope that you can take away some nuggets from this one as well, be inspired, and maybe find something that is your purpose, your calling, and your passion as well. Thanks so much for joining us and tuning in. We’ll see you back here next time. Have a great day.