Salim Najjar

Najjar claims a sports agency told him its Hall of Fame athletes had much higher HRVs than its regular athletes, and argues the clutch gene can be trained.

“we've noticed in every one of our Hall of Fame athletes, insanely higher HRVs than our regular athletes”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 58:18

Najjar defines an HRV baseline as the 30-day average and recommends judging the daily morning score against it.

“I define HRV baseline as your average score over the last 30 days”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 25:26

Najjar says science has not published a normal HRV range because it is highly individual, so people should not compare their scores with others.

“they have yet to publish a range for this biomarker because they have proven it is so unique to the individual”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 24:16

Najjar recounts that after his lecture to pharmacy students, the faculty wanted to add nervous system content to their curriculum.

“I gave my first lecture to 200 first year pharmacy students”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 42:09

Najjar argues that humans are not meant to be regulated all the time, because dysregulation builds the nervous system's capacity and resilience.

“if we're regulated all the time, we actually can't increase the capacity and resilience of our nervous system to go handle more stress”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 6:12

Najjar uses smoking Okinawan centenarians to argue that a person's relationship to a habit matters more than what others say about it, while stressing he is not endorsing smoking.

“their relationship to the cigarette is very different than mine”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:10:22

Najjar views vagus nerve stimulators as a useful ally but warns that relying on them without addressing root causes builds up unfelt emotion.

“utilize it as an ally, but then actually bring curiosity to why you even needed to use it”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:06:56

Najjar says the best HRV wearable is whichever one a person will use consistently, since major devices fall within a few percent of each other in accuracy.

“They're all within three to 5% accuracy, but it's not the accuracy that matters because again, they're not even taking your real time”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:03:50

Najjar argues that in early childhood, unprocessed experiences such as a caregiver yelling cause the nervous system to freeze emotions in the body.

“The nervous system doesn't know how to process a caregiver yelling or traumatic experience. So it freezes”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 52:11

Najjar explains that intense training lowers next-day HRV, but proper recovery raises the baseline through hormetic stress.

“But if you properly recover, then your baseline will start to go up because you're literally, I call it hormetic stress”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 34:54

Najjar advises hydrating with electrolytes before caffeine, because cortisol already spikes on waking and adding caffeine leads to fatigue later in the day.

“the best thing to do when you wake up is hydrate the body”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 22:25

Citing Arthur Brooks, Najjar recommends avoiding phones for a half hour to an hour after waking and before sleep, and while eating.

“First, no phone time. during these hours when you first wake up for at least a half hour at or ideally an hour”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 19:25

Najjar believes the nervous system is the root of all biomarkers, and that ignored signals eventually manifest as disease.

“my belief is that the nervous system is the underlying root of all biomarkers”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 13:45

Najjar asserts that cellular inflammation is the underlying cause of aging, disease and death, and that chronic stress is its leading cause.

“Unless you die in an accident, the underlying cause of your mortality can be traced back to cellular inflammation”

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast: Episode #178: What a 100yo Japanese Smoker Taught Me About Stress? - Featuring Salim Najjar (Nov 3, 2026) · Listen from 11:38