Success and Wealth Do Not Matter If You Are Not Healthy with Stephen Seavecki

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like This Old Marketing. Today, we'll be talking about how success and wealth does not matter if you are not healthy. To drop these value bonds, I brought Stephen Saveki into EO Fire Studios. Stephen has been a corporate executive and six-time entrepreneur. His number one bestselling book, The Success Protocol, is a basis for helping individuals and organizations optimize health while also reducing his own biological age by 12 years.

0:35Today, we will be talking about why health matters, reducing your biological age, Fire Nation. We'll talk about bad genes, six things we should remove for our diet immediately, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Stephen and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:09Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for an easier, safer way to manage passwords than a million Post-it notes? Welcome to LastPass, the most accessible and easy-to-use password manager on the planet. Visit lastpass.com slash fire for a free trial and get started today. Every login lives in LastPass. Stephen, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, I would say it's becoming aware of your thoughts because thoughts lead to emotions, emotions lead to actions, and actions lead to results.

1:53Let me say that one more time. Thoughts lead to emotions, emotions lead to actions, and actions lead to results. Now that can be both positive or negative results. Because we have 10 ,000 thoughts a day. And of those, 80 % of our thoughts are negative, if you can believe that. And also 95 % of the thoughts are repetitive. You're on auto programming, you're you continue to go over the same stuff you go over day in and day out, and you never break out of it, you never update that thought pattern. And for entrepreneurs, it's particularly difficult because if they've become successful, they're very worried that if I change, you know, my process of how I'm thinking and how I go about my day, will I be successful?

2:40Well, that's why a lot of them cap out and never reach the next level because they need to get, they need to break out of that pattern to get to that next level. And sometimes coaching, it takes coaching to kind of get them to break out of that, to go to the next level. So I would just ask Fire Nation, do you feel stuck? Do you feel like stuck in a pattern, a thought pattern? Are you ready to go to the next level and become a better leader, a mentor, maybe a better partner in your personal life? So I think that's what drives it. Powerful stuff, Fire Nation. And I hope you can tell we're going to be dropping value bombs all day today because I found this out, Stephen's found this out, some of you have already found this out, but we're going to really dive into just the reality, the facts that success and wealth, they don't matter if you're not healthy.

3:28So let's just start off, Stephen, by really breaking it down. Why does health matter? Well, let me give you this. Steve Jobs died at 56 years old. Sam Walton, the heir of Walmart, died at 53. They had all the fame, power, wealth that you could ever ask for, but it didn't matter because they didn't have their health and they lived a short life. So you really have to start paying attention to it before it becomes a problem. And so some of the critical things, especially in business, are things like quality sleep. It improves your creativity and problem solving skills. It reduces your brain fog. Then physical activity.

4:08It improves your memory and cognitive flexibility. And the studies show that there's a 21 % increase in work productivity for those employees that have some sort of physical activity in their life. Then it comes proper nutrition and diet, which is what we'll talk a bit about today. It increases your energy and concentration. And then on the flip side, poor health. Well, it limits your focus, low energy, lack of mental clarity. and then for a lot of entrepreneurs, we know about chronic stress and burnout. It reduces your creativity, your memory, and then your moods. You get into anxiety and stress that come out of chronic stress.

4:54So Fire Nation and your employees, do you think you'd be more happy and productive if you're healthy? I think so. I'm going to say heck yes, and I've experienced that firsthand. And I don't think I've quite experienced reducing my biological age by 12 years, though. And I've got to be honest, you have. We've talked about it in our little pre-interview chat. And I'm blown away by this because that is so meaningful. That is so impactful. How the heck did you do this? It's also not a random number that I just came up with to sound like it's something amazing. It is a blood test and the test gets into and it tests how efficient and effective my body's performing.

5:36It's at the cellular level. It tests the cellular, your cellular health, how your cellular cells detox, what comes into your body, how it processes energy. So at this point, I've been on this routine, this protocol for about eight or nine years. And right now I'm decreasing my biological age one year for every six months that passes on the calendar. I mean, this is like Benjamin Button stuff, Fire Nation. I hope that you're pretty excited about this. I mean, but let's get to the how. Like, I mean, how are you doing this? Well, there's five things that anybody can do right now that will instantly improve your health.

6:19A lot of these people ignore. They don't understand the impact it has on their health and longevity. So let's go through those five things. The first one is, you know, reduce your stress. We just talked about how important that is. And then improving your diet. And we'll dig into a little bit more about what we can do there. Exercise or move your body. I mean, really for me, I never sit for more than 30 minutes because it just shuts down your body because your body's saying, okay, I don't have to get into mode of movement because maybe I'm going to take a nap, maybe something else here. I don't have to keep my metabolism going.

6:56Let me break in here for a second. So what does that movement look like after 30 minutes? Like how much time do you need to spend moving to not get into that mode you just talked about of shutting down? As little as five minutes. Okay. Yeah. Just get up, move around, take a walk. It could be walking around. If you're in work, like my office, like I am, I walk down the hall and talk to somebody instead of sending an email, just get up and go talk to them. Number one, it's better for the social interaction, but number two is it moves your body. Fire Nation, this is really powerful stuff because if you can get a habit of doing these things right on a daily basis, man, the power is there.

7:36But I will say this, and Stephen, I've heard it. I know you've heard it even more than I do, but people blame their poor health on their bad genes all the time, their quote unquote bad genes. But you know that we can overcome bad genes. In fact, 95 % of genes can be modified. So tell us more about that. Absolutely. So today in America, the average lifespan is age 73 for men and 79 for women. But most people don't realize is your DNA is built to last 120 years. It's been scientifically proven. So how do you get there? How do you try to get close to 120 years? And I'm not talking about, you know, you're a cripple or you're in a wheelchair or, you know, you're not living life.

8:19This is healthy you. So the process is called epigenetics. And epigenetics regulates how your genes are expressed or not expressed to deal with all the major functions inside your body. And I actually have proof of this. So my dad died at 99. My mom died at 93. Unfortunately, COVID took them both out. However, my sister died at the age of 40 and my brother, the age of 63. And this was from illnesses, not from any accidents. So if our DNA dictated our future and our lifespan, why did they live into their 90s? It was because their diet and lifestyle were more powerful than the DNA that they were born with.

9:04Fire Nation, I really hope that you're understanding the power of these words, because man, if we can move more, if we can do things that, you know, just allow us to express ourselves in a better way in the health and wellness space, I mean, we can live a lot happier of a life. And let's just call a spade a spade, Stephen. I mean, we eat a lot of crap every single day. I'm raising my hand, brother. I had some Haagen-Dazs ice cream last night, Dolce de Leche. It is literally my kryptonite. But man, I am the happiest person in the world when I'm eating it. Not after I eat it, but when I'm eating it.

9:40It just brings me so much joy. What are six things that we should remove from our diet immediately? Sure. Well, number one on that list is sugar. And the World Health Organization recommends a maximum of 25 grams of sugar, which is about six teaspoons per day. It's about two scoops of Haagen-Dazs, and I eat a whole plate. So, man, I am terrible. Yes, that's true. Per day, that's your allocation. But the average American eats three times that amount, or 77 grams. And that's why 42 % of American adults are obese. It's an absolute crisis. So for me, I try to stay sub 20 grams a day. But you'll find even those energy drinks, one energy drink has 35 grams, which is over your daily allowance.

10:30And that's not even taking into account anything else. But the other things you need to stay away from are artificial sugar and diet soda because it creates dysregulation in your body. Even though it doesn't have regular sugar, the other things that they're using are not good for your body because it disrupts how it performs because your body is not used to those chemicals. next is highly processed foods like snack foods and cereals really highly processed you get so far away from what actually was you know the food that was grown to go into those foods fast foods and fried foods they're really not good for you at all I mean fast foods really for a dollar you think you're going to get something of high quality and nutritional value I don't think so.

11:19Gluten and breads, which are gluten and breads, pastries. And then you hit the triple crown, which are donuts, which now you have gluten. It's fried and it's got a lot of sugar. So that's really bad for you. And then the last one is dairy. And, you know, there's other ways to get calcium. And we really, you know, we don't need dairy in our lives. We don't need something from another mammal other than what we get from, you know, when we're young and we're nursing. So there's other ways to get calcium. But, you know, I go by the 80-20 rule, which you should probably like because of your ice cream.

11:57Oh, yeah. Which is 80 % of the time, I'm good on my diet. I stick to it. You know, I'm healthy. But 20%, you know, you got to enjoy, you know, the things you enjoy. And for me, that's usually when I go to restaurants because you don't know what they're putting in the food. But also, maybe I have a glass or two of wine. You know, there's other things that I'm going to enjoy life. I'm not going to strip everything out and just get so barren that I think, like, you know, I can't enjoy life or the food I eat. So you're basically saying one day a week I can kind of go to town? Yes, absolutely. Fire Nation, we have so much important stuff to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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14:29Every login lives in LastPass. Visit lastpass.com slash fire for a free trial and get started today. That's lastpass.com slash fire. Stephen, we're back and listen, 100 % of humans have toxins, period, end of story. Tell us why that's the case and how it impacts our age. Sure. Well, let me just give you a little heads up on everybody has toxins, but here's the percentage of people with specific toxins. So 93 % of the population have BPAs, which come primarily through plastics. 95 % have phthalates, which also come primarily from plastics. Lead, 99%. Mercury, 89%. Pesticides, 90%. Arsenic, 80%.

15:20Cadmium, 85 % of the population has it in their body. And each of these toxins can reduce your life by three to five years at high levels. So remember, again, our bodies are designed for 220 years. Toxins and other reasons are why we get diseases that die in our 70s. Fire Nation, this is critical information just to understand so that you're aware when you're walking around day to day that this is the world that we live in. We need to accept that. But now it's what can we do to minimize the impact? And I'm not going to say everybody's going to be like Steven and drop 12 biological years, but hey, we can start in that direction.

16:01But it's also going to start with inflammation because that's the cause of literally every single chronic disease. Tell us more. Okay, let me just drop back a second on where we get these toxins, because I think that's important. It's in the air we breathe, in our home, our work, in our city. It's in our food. It's in our water. The U.S. Geological Survey states that 48 % of city water is contaminated with forever chemicals. So please don't drink your tap water without a filter. It's like$100 to put an under sink filter. It's cosmetics, skin care products, prescription drugs. But let me drive in that one of the things that toxin creates is chronic inflammation.

16:46And chronic inflammation is a major problem and drives all major diseases. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, brain diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia, autoimmune diseases, respiratory diseases, gut disorders like leaky gut, chronic pain. So we must do whatever's absolutely possible to drive down inflammation in our bodies. So let's really talk about some things that we can do to drive down that inflammation. Great. So the first thing is we talked about is your diet. You know, the things that were listed before are what creates inflammation in your body. Obesity, which also comes from a poor diet.

17:27Chronic stress creates inflammation. I know my daughter or my sister died at age 40 from chronic stress. infections and injuries that don't heal, environmental toxins and pollutants we just talked about, sedentary lifestyle we mentioned, poor sleep, which we're going to get to in a minute, and smoking and alcohol. And my brother died at 63 for abusing those substances. I want to now talk about sleep and stress management because like you, I know that these are critical. Most people know that they're critical, but they don't know how to get it right. So how do we get sleep right? How do we get stress management right?

18:0840 % of the population doesn't get enough sleep, and they create massive issues with our bodies. So heart disease, obesity, and weight gain. That's one thing people don't realize. Yes, you get weight gain from poor sleep. Diabetes, weakened immune function, anxiety and depression, neurogenitive diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia, hormonal imbalances, chronic inflammation, poor cognitive function and memory issues, brain fog, all of those things stem from having poor sleep. So what are some things that we should be doing to improve both of these areas? Well, the big thing is consistent sleep schedule, relaxing before bedtime.

18:52What is your sleep environment like? It should be cool and dark. You need to limit caffeine and screen time before bed. exercise regularly and taking supplements to help you sleep and there are particular few supplements that really help i mean i took ambien for over two decades until i was just worried about the addictive nature of it and also the side effects it was doing on my body and so there are things like melatonin magnesium glycinate l-theanine gaba l-tryptophan ashwagandha and passionflower are the ones that I use. And everybody has to kind of test out and see what works for them because there's two things, falling asleep and staying asleep.

19:38And they can be very different for everybody. Fire Nation, you can hear that Stephen's starting to talk about a couple interesting supplements that can kind of benefit us on a day-to-day basis. You have some that you actually live by, Stephen. Let's really do a deep dive into those. tell us more. Well, magnesium glycinate is number one, magnesium operates over a hundred functions in your body. And what it does is it also calms your nervous system and magnesium glycinate in particular has a calming effect. And so it's really good to take it at night. L-theanine is the same way. It starts down-regulating your body and your emotional system so that you can help relax.

20:22And passionflower is probably my number one go-to. It's a natural substance. I take it in a tincture. I take a little squirt from the bottle. And it, again, just starts relaxing your body so that you can fall asleep, but it also helps you stay asleep. And so those are really my go-to that I use. So Steven, you shared so many valuable things today for us about health, about wellness, just about how it doesn't matter if we're successful if we're not healthy. So if you wanted to leave Fire Nation with one thing, what would that be? What is your final words of wisdom to our audience? I would say you have to test.

21:06Find out what's going on inside your body. Don't wait until some disease or chronic ailment takes you down or really gets you where you don't have energy and you don't have the ability to do the things you want to do. I take a blood marker test that measures 113 markers. And that test even includes a test for cancer cells in my blood. And you can do it once a year for 500 bucks. I mean, mine includes twice a year for 500 bucks. So it's not extremely expensive, but you can get a baseline so that you know, and you can focus on those things that are going on in your body and correct them before they become a major problem.

21:46So Stephen, if Fire Nation is really liking what they're hearing and they want to connect with you, they want to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Well, I'd like to offer a free copy of my book for every listener and their employees, because I want to help people understand and get effective solutions for their physical and mental health. And they can email me at asksevecki at gmail.com. And, you know, if you want a copy of the book or have comments about this podcast, or even any other questions you might have, and I do publish all of my health tests on my website, mypuppethealth.com, they can go there and just see the kind of tests that are available that anybody can get access to.

22:29But I really want people to proactively take control of their future and their health before they come sick and that that forces them to do it. So I really appreciate your time and the listeners time to hear this important message about your health. It is so important, Fire Nation. It is critical. I love the phrase that, you know, the healthy person can dream and can think and can want and can do a thousand things. The unhealthy person can only do and think and dream about one thing, and that's becoming healthy. So let's just be healthy and then dream big about a thousand things. And it starts now, taking care of yourself before you get down that path.

23:12So Stephen, do two things for us. Share the email address again and spell it out for us, please. And then the URL one more time. We're going to have both of those linked up in our show notes page, Fire Nation, but I want Stephen to break it down one more time. Absolutely. It's S-S-E-A-V-E-C-K-I at gmail.com. And my website is mypuppethealth.com. And that's puppets like the puppets. Yeah, like the puppet. We are all, we want to be our own puppet master rather than let somebody else controlling our strings. So that's what that's all about. I love that. And Fire Nation, like I mentioned just a second ago, We're going to have both of those things linked up in the show notes.

23:55So go to eofire.com. Just type Stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N in the search bar. And that show notes page will pop right up. And Stephen, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Stephen for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs are great at three things. productivity, discipline, focus. That is why I created the Mastery Journal so that you can master those three things in 100 days. And we're talking step by step.

24:30Visit themasteryjournal.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The next wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for an easier, safer way to manage passwords than a million post-it notes? Welcome to LastPass, the most accessible and easy to use password manager on the planet.

25:09Visit lastpass.com slash fire for a free trial and get started today. Every login lives in LastPass. Thank you.