A young actor opens up on the PrimeCast program with “Punpun Sutatta” as the host for the first time! A program that will take everyone to change themselves into the most awesome version. In this EP.2, meet “Son Yuke Songpaisan” from a strong hero to the day he almost collapsed! Revealing the turning point in life that started him to take an interest in taking care of his health with the Biohacking concept, along with sharing his experience of treating vitiligo himself, dealing with stress, and breathing control techniques to help him sleep easier.
What was the starting point and inspiration that made you interested in health care?
Son Yuke: It started when I was a kid. I was an athlete who liked exercising and winning. In the past, I competed in running races with my friends. I’m someone who likes challenges anyway. When I grew up, around 17-18 years old, I started going to the gym, started building muscle, started seeing changes, saw that I could do things with my body. As I got older, I started seeing declines in my body, like getting tired more easily, not being as strong as before, why was my immunity dropping? Just imagine if your muscles are tense, your body is tense, why is it tense?
So what can we do to keep moving or have the same energy as when we were kids? That’s why I’ve become so interested. To be honest, I started to get interested in health-related things before, building muscle because it looked beautiful. Now that I’m over 30, I’m starting to see that I have to do something to keep from aging. So I feel like there’s a lot to do, a lot to study, and it can really be done. It can really slow down the deterioration of the body.
Is this the beginning of body biohacking?
Son Yuk: My word Biohacking is like a concept, a method of practice to make our body work better. For example, Ice Bath. I do it regularly. If you look at IG, you will see it regularly. About 1-2 times a week, the longest is 7 minutes.
This means that you are a very calm person?
Son Yuk: Actually, I think it can be trained. At first, I couldn’t do it. I could do it for a minute or two. But as we continued, we got used to it, we could live with the fear, we started to know that our body could handle it. So the fear of, “Hey, my body is so cold, am I going to die?” disappeared. After that, it was like training your mind.
I heard that Phi Son used to have vitiligo and took care of himself by using his mind to recover from this disease?
Son Yuk: I want to tell you first what vitiligo is. If anyone doesn’t know about it, have you ever seen vitiligo on people whose skin color is uneven? Mine has a lot of it. Some people have it on their hands, like cows.
Is it an autoimmune disease?
Son Yuke: Yes, it’s an autoimmune disease. When I first got it, I was probably around 22-23. At that time, I was very stressed because it also spread to my face. Actually, it spread around here, all over my neck. At that time, I was just starting out in the industry. I had to film a lot of dramas, so I had to use makeup to cover it up. So, what should I do?
I was afraid that if it got worse later, it wouldn’t be able to be covered up. At that time, I saw a doctor and did many things, including lasers. There are lasers that can make the white spots and pigments even. I did a lot of lasers and everything. It went away, but in the end, it came back. It came and went. It was like this for about 4-5 years when it was really bad. At one point, it covered my entire neck.
At that time, I was a bit embarrassed. It went away, but what should I do to stop it from coming back? At first, I talked to the doctor. The doctor said that this disease can’t be cured. We might have genes, be at risk for this. My relatives didn’t get better or anything like that. But I didn’t believe it. There must be some triggering factor. Shouldn’t the body be able to repair itself?
Because it wasn’t there since birth, and then one day it popped up on its own?
Son Yuke: Yes, it popped up, so I did a lot of things. I stopped eating fried food. And stress makes people sick, right? So during that time, I left toxic society and made myself have better mental health. I think these two things were important things that made the autoimmune disease that the doctor said wouldn’t go away, suddenly go away. I went to the doctor, and the doctor was confused as to how it could go away. I didn’t take the medicine. The doctor forced me to take medicine. The doctor told me to take it regularly, but I refused to take it.
How long does it take to recover from the fact that we start removing toxic substances and taking care of ourselves more?
Son Yuke: Actually, it disappeared immediately. That is, when we stopped eating fried food or vegetable oil, anything that destroys the body, which we already know, anything that stimulates bad things in the body, stimulates inflammation, eats less dairy or lately doesn’t eat much anymore, and reduces stress. But what I feel is very likely to be true is stress. This is very obvious. When we don’t stay around these groups of people who are only stressed, it disappears. It’s amazing, and it was the starting point that made me want to study how to heal myself.
Because when we have this experience, we believe. Okay, I actually went and read about it, but deep down I secretly believe that our bodies are designed to heal themselves. We just put ourselves in a state where it’s not ready. It can’t heal. It can’t be repaired. It’s like, let’s say we want to repair our car, but we don’t have any spare parts. It’s like you make the environment of our garage ready for repairs.
Finally, it secretly links to things like Mindfulness and Dhamma practice. When we remove ourselves from toxic stress, our symptoms improve and our body improves because we’ve overcome it. We want to continue learning so that we can perhaps help people, perhaps give them advice. We’re not doctors, but we’ve accumulated experience. When I read deeper, I came across the term Epigenetic, a condition beyond genetics. If you try to observe, if you talk to many people who have cancer,
It is a non-contagious disease that suddenly occurs without any reason. Many people may blame karma. For us, we see it as more of a behavior. The word Epigenetic is the study of gene expression. The more we talk, the deeper it gets. Let’s talk about stress. Stress can make our genes express themselves in a good direction or a bad direction. Have you ever heard the word Fight of Life? The fight or flight state occurs when our body is stressed. Our body is divided into 2 sides: the relaxation side and the stress side.
If you have a lot of stress, how do you cope?
Son Yuke: In the end, all stress is not external stress. It’s in our own heads. We have to find ways to talk to our minds. Now we’ll get to religion or living in the present. Actually, I’m a person who places a lot of importance on this because I’m also a person who thinks a lot. There were times when I thought a lot and couldn’t stop thinking. My body started to deteriorate and my immunity dropped. I have an indicator that I know when I’m stressed. I get hot when I’m stressed.
When we have canker sores in our mouth, we know that our body is stressed and our immune system is down. But when we are healthy and in a good mood, the canker sores won’t exist. This is a way to really cope with stress. We’ve found many ways, including Biohacking, Sauna, and Ice Bath, because when we go down, it’s very painful and we don’t have time to think about anything else, about things that distract us, because right now it’s more important than whether I’ll die or not. It hurts a lot, it’s very cold, because it pulls the mind back to the present.
This is also a kind of Biohacking. It’s a way to stop our minds from thinking about things that they shouldn’t. Meditate, control our breathing, and so on. If we are aware of our bodies, try to notice when we feel relaxed, such as when we sleep in and out very slowly. This is also a kind of Biohacking. It’s a way to trick our bodies from the outside. It’s like we control our minds strongly enough to control our breathing, and then we breathe more slowly and relax.
So does that mean that breathing exercises play a role in relieving stress?
Son Yuke: It plays a big role in relieving my stress. There is another problem that I have had since I was a child, which I just recently understood, which is sleeping. I am not a good sleeper, I have a hard time sleeping, and I think a lot. Let me tell you first that this is my personal experience. Whether it is true or not, you will have to study it yourself. I have observed myself a lot that when, for example, I am sleepy now, my body is sleepy. But when I have something stressful right away, like reading a chat about work or something that requires a stressful decision to make me think, I suddenly wake up from being sleepy.
When we think about work, stress hormones are released, making us alert. Then I found out that in order to sleep well and easily, it is actually when we suppress stress hormones to the lowest level possible. There are many ways. Let’s talk about meditation first. While sleeping, these days, when I started to meditate, practice focusing on a single point for a long time, I felt that it was something I had never had before, which was the ability to think or stop thinking about anything. For example, these days, if I want to fall asleep quickly, I will see myself immediately whether I am distracted or not. I will be conscious of whether I am thinking about something else or not. If I think about something else, I will bring myself back to my breathing.
Don’t think about anything, just meditate first. Let’s say sit with your eyes closed, or you can turn on some music. Just focus on the sound. Do this for 10-15 minutes, and then you have to talk to yourself that you will really focus on the sound, not get distracted by thinking about work or anything. Observe yourself that all of a sudden your mind will be still and not distracted. But if some people’s minds are not strong enough, have not trained enough, they may have flashes. But let’s say in the beginning, do it for about 20 minutes, stay with the sound, be able to do it, and then we will stop thinking. When we stop thinking, there will be no stress, we will get sleepy, and relax.