About Our Guest- Tony Wrighton – Neuro-hacking
Tony Wrighton is a Sky Sports presenter, NLP Trainer, and Master Practitioner. He has written three books published by Virgin Books, which have been translated into 12 languages, while his NLP audiobooks have sold over 100,000 copies and have been Top 10 bestsellers on iTunes in many countries around the world. He is the host of the top-rated podcast Zestology, where he chats with guests about ways to inspire listeners to find more energy, vitality and motivation.
Full Podcast Transcription
Tony Wrighton 00:00
The risk element was quite high that it would fail but I basically went on and show the day before he was going to fly to Lapland and I pretty much cured him of his fear of flying with this fast phobia cure. And the next day, he flew to Lapland and he said “guys, this is amazing. Tony’s got rid of my fear of flying” after which loads of people came to me about flying.
Diva Nagula 00:39
Hello everyone and welcome to a another episode of From Doctor to Patient. Today, I have Tony Wrighton as my guest, Tony Wrighton is a Sky Sports presenter, NLP trainer and master practitioner. He has written three books published by Virgin Books, which has been translated into 12 languages, while his NLP audio books have sold over 100,000 copies, and have been in the top 10 best sellers on iTunes, in many countries around the world. He is the host of the top rated podcast Zestology where he chats with guests about ways to inspire listeners to find more energy, vitality, and motivation. Tony, how are you today?
Tony Wrighton 01:24
I’m good. Thanks for having me.
Diva Nagula 01:27
Thank you for being here. Now, you’re with us today from England?
Tony Wrighton 01:32 Yea, London.
Diva Nagula 01:35
Yeah, you guys are still in lockdown. As are some parts of the states I live in in the DC area. So
we’re slowly opening back up?
Tony Wrighton 01:45
Yeah, it’s just such an odd time, isn’t it? And it’s a challenge like no other in so many different
ways, isn’t it?
Diva Nagula 01:53
It really is. It really is. It’s changed our lifestyle. And I mean, everything has been changed for us in terms of how we do things. But we do more of these podcasts and other conferences on zoom. So some of the stuff hasn’t really changed. But some of the things have accelerated more for us in the way we do business and the way we do other work.
Tony Wrighton 02:13
Well that’s good. I mean, there are certainly are opportunities out there, my partner’s a yoga teacher, and way more people coming to her class than she ever did now she does it on zoom, which is brilliant. I think a lot of industries have changed forever. I mean, I can’t see myself renewing my gym membership, for example, because I work out every day at home now. And it’s fine.
Diva Nagula 02:37
Yeah, exactly. And that’s more money that you can save and more money into your pocket at
the end of the day.
Tony Wrighton 02:43 Exactly. Yeah.
Diva Nagula 02:44
So yeah, that’s awesome. So Tony, I’m really excited to get into the topic of NLP or otherwise known as neuro linguistic programming. And can you kind of give us a little deep dive as to what that really is and what it entails?
Tony Wrighton 03:00
Neuro lingistic programming is a very long and wordy name for a set of skills that basically describe the study of how people do things. Well, that is possibly a better way of describing it. I always think if it was invented now or if it was created. Now people might call it neuro hacking. Because really, it looks at how we can use linguistics to communicate better with other people and ourselves, how we can program, our habits, and language to be more effective with ourselves and other people is invented in the 70s, when, when computers were getting big, a computer type name, which is why they call that neuro linguistic programming, but you can think of it really as the study of how people do things well.
Diva Nagula 03:53
Can you give us like an everyday example of how it could be effective in a person’s life?
Tony Wrighton 03:58
Yeah, I mean, leave about why I first learned to I used to be a radio presenter, and I was interested in it for my own life. But I was also interested in terms of my professional life. Could I be more persuasive communicator? And right at the start, when I just started learning these techniques, I thought, I’ve got the perfect place to practice these. I can use them on my radio show every day. And I started using them with the idea of being a better presenter, asking people to listen longer and to feel better about listening. And I use these techniques every day, and had done my best. And after a couple of months, there was one day when I lay the techniques on pretty thick and the boss called me into his office and he put his feet up and his hands behind his head and I thought I’m in real trouble here. And he said, I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’re listening figures have gone through the roof. And that was the point I thought, you know what? There’s something in this NLP malarkey as essentially using persuasive language and descriptive language, to get people to listen for longer to attract new listeners and to get people to feel better about listening.
Diva Nagula 05:14
That’s awesome. So it wasn’t anything that you could attribute to marketing strategies, everything, all the other variables were pretty much the same. The only thing that you really implemented were specific programming that you employ during your casts.
Tony Wrighton 05:27
Well, I mean, it wasn’t a double blind controlled study there might well be marketing strategies. But I was on the drivetime show at the time. And most radio stations, the Breakfast Show has the biggest amount of listeners, and I went above the Breakfast Show. And I stayed there for about three years, the Breakfast Show presenter was not very happy about this situation. It’s just the way it was, between NLP and marketing. And I mean, I’m reading this book by James Clear at the moment about habits, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s, called Habit. It’s a very good book, really interesting. And there’s a lot of overlap between that persuasion skills, NLP, how you persuade yourself and other people to do things. And so yeah, there’s plenty of overlap with marketing in general.
Diva Nagula 06:16
And so it’s a basic reprogramming of our body and mind, so to speak. That’s what the the general theme about neuro linguistic programming is. I mean, do you sit with the person through an interview process? Or one on one? And do you put them through like a hypnotic state? Or how does that actually work when you sit with a client?
Tony Wrighton 06:35
It’s interesting, I have to say, I don’t work with any individual clients now. When I first I still first started learning NLP, back in 2004-5. And I would, I’ve been a radio presenter, and then a TV presenter since 2006 here in the UK, so I don’t have a massive amount of spare time. Doing the podcast as well. But I always worked with individual clients, because I wanted to kind of practice the techniques. And I did that for kind of 5 or 10 years or so. And I don’t do that anymore. I don’t have time. And I’m not interested in being a therapist as such, right? Not least because I think there are other people who do it better than me. And also, I think for real deep therapy. I’m not I’m not sure that the skills of NLP work so well. But you definitely can spend one on one time with someone, there’s a cure that is called the fast phobia cure. And I was friends with one of the DJs on the top radio stations in this country. And I went and had to go to Lapland to record a Christmas radio show, and he was terrified of flying. The risk element was quite high that it would fail. But I basically went on his show the day before he was going to fly to Lapland. And I pretty much cured him of his fear of flying with fast phobia cure. And the next day, he flew to Lapland, and he said, “guys, this is amazing. Tony’s got rid of my fear of flying”. After which loads of people came to me about flying. And I still think it was quite a bold move to actually do that. But yeah, so you can definitely use the techniques, one on one like that.
Diva Nagula 08:14
Yeah. For other people, for the masses. Is it through a specific session? Or is it through just specific utilization of language that enables the reprogramming to occur? What’s the mechanism of the reprogramming?
Tony Wrighton 08:27
It depends on the context, you can use it in everyday language context. So for instance, when my radio station listening went up, some of the really simple stuff I was doing was, I was focusing on my language, I was trying to make it more descriptive. So if I was giving away a holiday, I wouldn’t say this is a fantastic holiday, I would try and allow my listeners to connect with the visual, auditory and touchy feely, sensory experience, the holiday, I’d say, imagine the warmth of the sun on your skin, the tweeting of the birds in the trees and the deep blue of the sea, trying to get people to connect with the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experience of going on that holiday. And that would instantly make your storytelling, whoever you are, much better persuasive. And then using a variety of language techniques to to allow people to connect with what you want them to do. I mean, for instance, if you’ve got a seven year old and you want to get them to tidy their room, you might say, will you go and tidy your room? To which there’s really two answers yes or no. You could also give them an either or question so no isn’t really a possibility. You could say, darling, would you like to tidy your room before or after dinner? Which no, isn’t really a kind of linguistically correct answer. They might say no anyway, in which case you’d have to think again, but there’s often ways that you can be more persuasive like that as well. In the case of the fast phobia cure, what often happens with people with phobias is, there’s one instance in their past, often, quite early on when a phobia starts, especially with something like spiders, and it’s very vivid in the mind. And when they think about it, the picture is massive right in front of their face. And what we would do is we would change in NLP terms, the modalities of that memory. So you would shrink the picture, you’d put it way over in the distance, you’d make it black and white, you might kind of ask your client to imagine a volume knob and turn that the sound right down on that says, very small picture with with weak sound, you can hardly hear and you might make it a very grainy picture like a 70s telle. And all these kinds of things help with fear of the phobia. And once you deal with that original instance, often the same fear isn’t quite there.
Diva Nagula 11:00
And that’s interesting. So you’re basically reprogramming their relationship with the object that they have a fear of, in this case, it’s the spider. I’ve heard that NLP is very strong. And it’s very useful for people who are in the sports arena. So is that a way to remove a block like in performance, like I’m a golfer, and so a lot of times golf is a very mental sport. I mean, a lot of these professionals, they have the same skills, but what differentiates one from the other it’s because their mental game. So I’m assuming some of these pro guys, they probably have some type of neuro linguistic programming that they employ with each stroke, that they hit them when they were playing the game. And I’m wondering if it’s some sort of NLP programming, or if that’s the benefit of NLP?
Tony Wrighton 11:51
It would certainly be and I can absolutely guarantee you that a lot of these golfers are using a lot of these NLP techniques, although, and I’ve worked with golfers as well. And I know that some of my good friends are sports psychologists. But a lot of them don’t just use NLP. So they might have trained in NLP but they use other stuff as well. They’ll cherry pick whatever works kind of thing. So you’re a pretty passionate. golfer, what’s your handicap?
Diva Nagula 12:20
So I fluctuate between finding time in the year between a 12 and a 15?
Tony Wrighton 12:24
Okay, so pretty. That’s pretty good. I love golf as well. Golf shows here in the UK, too. And, I
mean, there’s one technique that you might want to try or do a version of.
Diva Nagula 12:37
Please, I’ll take any help I can get?
Tony Wrighton 12:39
Yeah exactly. It helped Louis Oosthuizen. And when the British Open. I mean, you might have heard about this technique before. But when Louis Oosthuizen was playing in the open that he absolutely stormed, I think it was at St. Andrews. And it was his first major triumph, he played absolutely brilliant. And on the way around, the media noticed that he had this red spot on his glove. Have you heard about this story?
Diva Nagula 13:05 It’s familiar. Yes.
Tony Wrighton 13:07
This is pure NLP. And this was my mate Carl Morris, who’s a sports psychologist, who’d worked with him the week before the open and essentially got him to anchor some of his best golfing experiences, his his absolute golfing zone, to this red spot, it’s really easy to do as well, you can start to associate with the times when you played particularly well, you might pick your best ever around and see it in massive detail, make the pictures big in front of your face and make the colors vivid and bright. See the green of the grass in glorious technicolor, remember everything you could hear at the time, make the sounds loud and crisp. And remember the feelings as well, how good it felt to be playing that well, maybe some other feelings as well like the temperature of the air on that particular day when you were playing well. And whilst you do this, you get your red spot, and you draw it in your glove and you start to look at the spot, at the moment when you’re associating with those feelings the best. And there might be a red spot on your glove or it might be… you could just write a word on your hand, on your non glove hand, whatever it is, it just needs to be some kind of anchor that brings you back to those feelings of playing particularly well. You know, often as sports men, amateur sports men and women and I know this very well. It’s very easy to associate with the bad stuff, especially if you’re not playing very well. The moment you start hitting a slice you remember all those other times and what my friend Carl Morris did with Louis Oosthuizen, so well, is he got him to associate with when he played his absolute best that is pure NLP.
Diva Nagula 14:58
And so he was able to, even if he hit a errant shot, he would shrug it off and he would refocus his attention on the red dot on his glove. And that would essentially reframe his thoughts because it would associate pleasant memories that he’s had of playing a good game, a good round of golf.
Tony Wrighton 15:18
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s it sounds a little implausible, doesn’t it? But that is the weird and wonderful power of anchors. That was a visual anchor that was set up in the week before the tournament.
Diva Nagula 15:32 A week before? Wow.
Tony Wrighton 15:34
Yeah, in the week before the tournament. But I mean, you’ve heard of the story of Pavlov’s dogs. The basis of anchoring. Pavlov had loaded dogs, every time he fed them, he would ring a little bell. And after a while, he could ring the bell and they would salivate even though there was no food, that is anchoring. And there was a version of that going on with Louis Oosthuizen, I had to tell you, if you put a red spot in your glove, it may well work, but it won’t work forever. And that’s because we get very used to visual anchors, we get used to the anchors that we’ve set up, and then we start to ignore them. So you would need to change the anchor, you need to get different gloves and put a purple spot on there and do do the process. Again. I’ve worked with people sometimes where they they want to kind of associate with a certain positive emotional feeling. And you might get them to put like a blue sticker for calming on their bathroom mirror in the morning, it works very well for about 48 hours, but then they either need to change the color of the sticker or the location of the sticker because it’s not going to work anymore. After that you need to keep these keep these anchors topped up.
Diva Nagula 16:44
So is that commonplace, like if you start introducing NLP techniques, such as anchoring, is that common place where you have to switch it up around? Because you’ll just get a little bit too familiar with specific anchor that you’re using?
Tony Wrighton 17:00
Well, I mean, listen, most people have some pictures up in your house of nice experiences might be a picture of the family or something like that. And when you first looked at that picture, it would have massively made you think of that great holiday. But now you’re probably quite used to it, and sometimes you’re walking around and you won’t even notice it. That’s that’s the nature of anchors.
Diva Nagula 17:26
It’s a good analogy. Okay. So is anchoring a form of NLP? Or is that the foundation of NLP?
Tony Wrighton 17:34
It’s one of the many techniques in NLP. And it’s one of the kind of first techniques that people tend to learn when they start learning NLP. But that’s because it’s such a powerful one, as well.
Diva Nagula 17:48
Another one that I’ve been told, I don’t know if this is a specific NLP technique, or if this is a sports psychology technique. But when you’re playing a round of golf, you do a little bit of, obviously, you have a routine. And what you incorporate into your routine as a visualization technique. So if you’re trying to hit a ball, 150 yards, but you want to hit it with a left to right, flight path or a specific right to left path, you envision that path in your mind. So you envision that balls path after you hit it in your mind before you go up to hit the ball. And I don’t know, is that NLP? Or is that just a different type of sports psychology technique?
Tony Wrighton 18:29
Yeah, I mean, NLP is a pretty broad umbrella. If you do it, and it works for you, I will happily take all the credit and I want 50% winnings if you’re playing against buddies with money when your handicap goes down. But yeah, might be that might be something else, certainly you would say if it was visualization, try and within NLP terms, you try and make that as I talked about, make the picture as vivid as possible, and work out where the picture is. So if we’re talking about imaginary pictures here, but if it’s like two feet in front of you put it right in front of your eyes and make it a bigger picture, make the colors brighter. Try adding sounds and feelings and see how that works for you as well, because some people have a very finely tuned auditory sense, or a kind of sensory touchy feely sense. And for them, they might find that tuning into how things feel on the course, might be more appropriate.
Diva Nagula 19:31
How about processes of like motivation, like if I have a problem getting myself to go to the gym on a regular basis? Or if I have a problem with, if I’m dieting, and I really have an issue with getting myself motivated to start a new diet? How can I use NLP to change those habits?
Tony Wrighton 19:57
We would say it’s not necessarily goal setting. It’s outcome setting. And I mean, I have to say, since I’ve started training in NLP, I’ve seen this tieational technique employed in lots of different areas, not necessarily NLP. Writing goal as if it’s already happened, I’ve found that is massively successful for me. And in fact, one of the things I did very successfully is, I work at the TV channel now that I was my dream job. And I always used to watch it for about three hours a day before I joined. And it seems so far off that I would never get a job there. But one day, about 18 months after I’d first mentioned it, my agent rang me and said, I’ve got a screen test at this channel, Sky Sports news. And I did all sorts of different NLP techniques to try and kind of get myself in the zone to impress on the screen test. Little did I know when I got there on the day that 60 other people had also been invited for a screen test. I’m glad I didn’t actually because I put everything into it, I got a haircut, I bought a new suit and everything. And one of the things was I wrote down, not the goals, but the outcomes as if they’d already happened. And I dated them with the date by which I wanted to start the job. And it was August. And I think I wrote a date in December. And anyway, as it turned out, I would like to humbly say that I was the only person who got a job that day. And I started in the same week that I wrote the date down in December, on the new job, I had to serve out three months notice that the old job is amazing how it came through with that outcome writing it down, I think you’re subtly kind of programming, there’s a bit of hypnosis in there, which is definitely part of NLP. Going back to what my friend Carl did with Louis Oosthuizen. And what he does with sportsmen, he would say it’s great to write down goals and outcomes, but you want to focus on the little victories as well. It’s all very well saying I’m gonna win the open, write it on a piece of paper. But then it’s all the little things that you do each day that go towards winning.
Diva Nagula 22:11
Right? That’s awesome. Is that how you started your podcast series?
Tony Wrighton 22:17 With sports psychology, or?
Diva Nagula 22:19
With having the visualization that you were going to start a podcast show? Did you use NLP to
do that? Or what was the genesis of your podcast show?
Tony Wrighton 22:29
Yeah, yeah, actually that was a little bit different. I got very ill with a virus. So kind of quite relevant to what we’re all going through at the moment. Not only that, it wasn’t just viruses that haven’t been the modern medicine just hasn’t really kind of diagnosed. And I went through loads of tests. And they said, look, you’ve been to a tropical area of the Philippines, you’ve caught some kind of virus, we don’t know what it is. But we do know from your red blood cell count. We do you know, from that, that you’ve had a virus, and therefore, I was suffering all sorts of post viral symptoms, I had to go and see a neurologist five times, I spent about three months in bed, I wasn’t going to work. And I honestly didn’t know if I would ever have the energy again to do what I used to do. And that’s why I thought he created a podcast about energy, use a few of the NLP techniques that I’ve kind of learned over the years. And also the fact that I’m a presenter, so I felt like it would play into my skill set, and go on a bit of a personal journey, try out everything kind of weird and wonderful, and find the things that give me more energy. So that’s where that came about. There’s definitely some NLP in there. But there’s lots of other stuff as well.
Diva Nagula 23:40
That’s really interesting. So you’ve kind of used it to recover from viral ailments, so to speak. I mean, you just kind of visualize yourself having more energy, when you were struck with the virus? Is that kind of how you were able to get through the viral?
Tony Wrighton 23:56
Not really, I mean, visualization is one of the many techniques. I seem to remember at the time actually, when I was very young, l was using stuff like visualization anchoring, and it wasn’t working, because, well, it just didn’t. But one of the things that worked very well is… we spoke at the start about working out how people do things well. And that applies to you as an individual as well. I’m a big fan of data, I’m a bit of a geek actually. I work in these kind of creative industries, but I do love a spreadsheet as well. And I started keeping data on what worked for me, so every day I’ll kind of track my energy levels. And then I would also kind of track the things that I did. Now it wasn’t particularly scientific. It wouldn’t pass that double blind controlled study threshold. But then I started to see trends. I started to see when I took a certain supplement. I would feel better that day and the next day, I decided to see when I went to bed at a certain time and I exercise, especially meditation, I found that yoga works very well, found that particular foods affected me quite badly and so I started tracking all these things. And that was certainly a kind of a study of how people do things well. There’s one thing that when I didn’t do it on a particular day, affected my energy levels I think I was about was about 20% lower. And it was if I had scheduled enough fun in my day, it was just scheduling playtime. Today, go throw a frisbee or hang out with some mates. When I didn’t do that my energy levels were 20% down. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it, but that kind of thing was very personalized to me. But that’s a real life example of how you could apply an opinion to your own life, writing things down, keeping a diary, or maybe even like me, getting involved in the good old fashioned spreadsheet.
Diva Nagula 26:48
Right. So I have a lot of people that listen to the show that are really interested in optimization and biohacking. Is there anything that you can share with us on the show to help people like this to help me feel more confident in their day? or help them to feel more relaxed? And they go through their their daily rituals?
Tony Wrighton 27:27
Yeah, I mean, definitely the first thing is, in data terms, that tracking idea is utterly brilliant. And if you don’t want to set up a spreadsheet, I mean, I’ve actually done it with a kind of Google form that feeds into a spreadsheet. If you don’t do that there’s an app called Dailio that will kind of collate all your data and put it alongside your moods. So it will say Oh, on the day that you were feeling great. You’re 3% more likely to feel good on the day that you ate brussel sprouts or whatever it might be. I noticed are you wearing an Oura ring?
Diva Nagula 28:07
Yes, I am. It’s one of my addictions of the last two years. I can’t wake up in the morning without looking at my phone’s data that it’s stored from the night before. So yeah.
Tony Wrighton 28:20
Yeah, me too. The biohacking world is one that absolutely fascinates me. I’ve interviewed Dave Asprey a few times on my show, and was lucky enough to go and do 40 years of Zen, which kind of a week long training course based around sticking electrodes to your brain. And I think the Oura ring is also a wealth of interesting data. And actually, you can combine that with your other tracking. I’ve certainly noticed that when I eat meals early in the evening, my heart rate variability is a lot higher overnight. Which you’ve noticed as well?
Diva Nagula 28:55
I guess the first thing I noticed when I implemented a hack, so to speak. If I eat three hours or less before I go to bed at night, then I know that it affects my heart rate variability and affects my deep sleep. The biggest thing for me is that affects my deep sleep is if I drink like alcohol, if I have more than one drink of alcohol, my HRV and my deep sleep is totally shot. And so it’s evident on my ring every time it’s very consistent.
Tony Wrighton 29:29
Yeah, honestly, like I’m the same. It is shocking how little alcohol you need to have to massively affect your heart rate and your heart rate variability. Not that I’ve completely given it up but it is pretty shocking.
Diva Nagula 29:44 I know right?
Tony Wrighton 29:46
But the one of the hacks that I absolutely love, and I’m pretty deep into the whole biohacking
world we’re always trying out different stuff.
Diva Nagula 29:54
New things. Sometimes it’s a blessing and it’s a curse having this data that’s collected on my ring. Sometimes in the mornings, if I have a really good night of sleep as recorded by my Oura, and I have a good readiness score, I’m like, thrilled, I can’t wait to get through the day and get through a really good workout. So, but on the flip side, if it’s a really bad readiness score, or my HRV, the night before was really poor. It almost like programs myself to think, oh, this is gonna be a really hard and grueling day. Right? So I guess in a way, that’s sort of an NLP program. So I need to like look at it and reframe that whole process, whether the readiness score is good or bad.
Tony Wrighton 30:36
Yeah, that is not actually that helpful. Is it? And I mean, one of the things that is, most people have their phone in their bedroom with them. And there’s all sorts of reasons why people might do that. I have been one of those people for many years. And just recently, I’ve moved the phone out of my bedroom. And I’ve got a very simple alarm clock with a red display. And it’s funny, because if you don’t check your aura stats first thing in the morning, it kind of loses its power. And you also then tap into your instinctive feel for how well you slept. If you feel like you slept well. But your Oura tells you you didn’t, I would still be inclined to trust that feeling a little bit too. You know, ultimately, the Oura is not the most sophisticated, I interviewed Dr. Matthew Walker and he was saying, it’s nothing like the accuracy of the kind of stuff he’s got in his lab in Stanford or whatever.
Diva Nagula 31:36
I agree with that. Yeah.
Tony Wrighton 31:39
It’s such an interesting world. I mean, even little things like I found when I eat red meat in the evenings, my heart rate variability is lower. So I’m going to give up eating red meat, but it tells me something about what that’s doing to my body.
Diva Nagula 31:52
It’s causing inflammation, right. So I mean, that’s where it really goes back to is these things that we’re doing that reduces our HRV overnight, is something that increases our inflammation and our body’s processing of foods. Alcohol is an example, red meat might be an example. I mean, that’s how I’ve learned to figure out what foods to eat and what foods to avoid. So it’s been really interesting for me playing with this ring. But you know, I recently told myself that I need to have my phone shut off at night and put it in airplane mode because I don’t want it to be emitting all that EMF stuff. So I’ve been putting on an airplane mode, and I’ve turned off the connection to my bluetooth, my ring to the to the phone. And so it forces me not to actually look at it in the morning, until I actually get out of my bed, start my day and get my cup of coffee. And then I look at it when I sync the two. And I’m like, oh, no big deal now, because I’ve read I’ve reprogram my routine.
Tony Wrighton 32:50
Brilliant, yeah, that’s great. And actually, what you said about reacting to food, I think is so interesting. I mean, this goes back to the NLP thing. You are using NLP to work out what works and seeing how food reacts with you. And I always have problems with a bad stomach. But it’s concept called histamine intolerance, which is pretty complicated situation. When I started looking into it, and followed a low histamine diet for three days, I felt so much better. When I followed it for a couple of weeks, my heart rate variability shot up and my heart rate shot down. So firstly, my feelings, I felt good and instinctively I felt good. And then I had the data to back it up. And now I’ve gone deep into it. I’ve even launched a separate website called histamineintolerance.net where people can take a test and written a few blogs on there just because it’s changed my life finding this stuff out about histamine intolerance. It’s been brilliant.
Diva Nagula 33:53
I’ve actually read about that. And I need to look into it more because I know that there are some foods that people can have reactions to just simply because of the histamine release that’s occurring when these foods are interacted in your system. What’s the high histamine sensitive food?
Tony Wrighton 34:09
Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned alcohol, the absolute number one histamine is alcohol. I used to really suffer with red wine and it’s got worse over the years as well. And if anybody does fail particularly bad off the red wine and fail they get an extra bad hangover. Well, it’s a sign that you might want to look at the histamine intolerance situation maybe and that the thing is, is a great way to test it. Testing for histamine intolerance is quite hard. But you can do a test simply by just following a low histamine diet for three days and seeing if you get a lot better. I feel unbelievable, especially in lockdown is we’re eating most of our meals at home and we’re not going out drinking
Diva Nagula 34:52 It’s huge.
Tony Wrighton 34:53
Yeah, so my diet is a lot lower histamine. I feel great.
Diva Nagula 34:58
I think I have to look into That’s site, histamineintolerance.net you said?
Tony Wrighton 35:04
I’ll send you a link afterwards. I’d love to know what you think. I have been writing loads of blogs about it. And I love it. Because it’s made such a difference to my life. One of the really disappointing things is that yogurt, I love yogurt, and yogurt is out.
Diva Nagula 35:21
Yeah, it’s the casein and it’s the dairy. Right? So yeah.
Tony Wrighton 35:25
Well, yeah, but even coconut yogurt, it’s still fermented. However, I have started, this is how sad I am. I’ve started making my own yogurt by using an instant pot. Put some coconut cream and milk in there and emptying probiotics that are histamine friendly in there and leaving it to kind of gently cook on a yogurt setting for 24 hours. It’s fantastic taste just like stuff you’d get in the store.
Diva Nagula 35:50
That’s awesome. I gotta try that one, too.
Tony Wrighton 35:52 Yeah, it’s good.
Diva Nagula 35:54
Well, Tony, how can people find more about NLP? And more importantly, how can they find
more about you?
Tony Wrighton 36:00
Thanks. Well, it’s at www.TonyWrighton.com. All the stuff is there. I’ve written an article called what is NLP. And if anybody’s interested in the histamine intolerance stuff, they can go to that other site, which is www.histamineintolerance.net. And if anyone’s got any questions, I’m very happy to answer I do like talking about this stuff. It’s a bit of a passion project. Really, I just decided to start it on the side. I know, it’s not for everybody. But that’s something that interests me. So I thought it would interest other people as well. And yeah, it’s great. It’s great to chat to you. When you let me know how you golf gets on.
Diva Nagula 36:33
I will, I’m going to try some of those strategies that was taught and see if that works for me,
because I’m playing tomorrow morning, and I’m going to do something different.
Tony Wrighton 36:41
Oh, great. Great. I’m excited for you. Just one more thing on the golf. It’s a very simple technique. But it’s very hard to access our emotions. When we look down. We tend to think about thoughts and feelings when we look down. So when you hit a bad shot tomorrow, and you’re walking down the fairway keep your eyeline above the horizon. So you’re only looking outwards you’ll find it very hard to access just how furious you are about that bad shot when you’re looking upwards.
Diva Nagula 37:11
Can I apply that to like regular daily stuff? I mean, if I’m looking down in general, is that going
to trigger like poor emotions as opposed to looking upward?
Tony Wrighton 37:19
It tends to. You tend to look downwards when you’re accessing emotions. It’s as simple interesting in NLP we would say you look up words when you’re accessing visual cues, something that is remembered or something that is imagined. You look to the side left and right when you’re thinking about sounds, remembered sounds or imagined sounds. And you look downwards when you think about thoughts and feelings and when you’re accessing your internal dialogue. So both of those things can get seriously ramped up when you’re in a stressful situation. And you might find looking upwards for a few minutes will make you look very foolish. Full stop you accessing those thoughts and feelings really delving into them in quite the same way.
Diva Nagula 38:04
Awesome. Thank you for the tip. I’ll let you know how it goes. When I after my round of golf
tomorrow.
Tony Wrighton 38:08
Yeah, when you shoot like 150 don’t sue me.
Diva Nagula 38:13
I won’t blame you at all. That’s something else. That’s definitely not me. It’s not the clubs. It’s something else. Well, thanks again, Tony, for being on the show and look forward to checking out those those sites that you recommended.
Tony Wrighton 38:27
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. Take care.