#726 - Shawn Stevenson - How To Hack Your Sleep With These Habits

27:29How would you prescribe someone's pre -sleep ritual? who we could get the sexiest, juiciest sleep of our lives. If we follow whatever about the share, it starts with dinner. It starts with dinner, that evening routine because the dinner table is potentially the most powerful down regulator of that kind of sympathetic fighter flight nervous system. And this is based on some of the strongest science that we have, period. I'll share two quick studies. One of them was a colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Waldinger. We had a fascinating show. Robert Waldinger, there you go. He is the director of the longest running longitudinal human study on longevity.

28:12And their data indicates that beyond beating obesity, beyond exercise, great diet, all the things, and these things matter, the number one determinant on how long we're going to live is the quality of our relationships. A couple of that with a new study that I highlighted in the East Martyr Family cookbook conducted by research that bring them young university. This is a meta -analysis of 148 studies, 300 ,000 people, and they found that our relationships led to having healthy relationships or what they called healthy social bonds led to a 50 % reduction in all cause mortality. So that means a 50 % reduction in death from everything, prematurely.

28:50And so there's something special about human interaction and relationships. And what it really is, just the sidebar is that our relationships more than anything influence what we eat. It influences our sleep habits. It influences our exercise habits, how we relate to ourselves, how we think about ourselves, how we feel our emotional stability. It's the tip of the spear. And so here's how all of this ties together around the dinner table. the dinner table really functions as a unifier to bring people together. This is something we evolved doing into the evening. Even in tribal constructs and if anybody's been Hawaii for example, they do this kind of dramatization of a luau.

29:31Right? This the. Like the beach have seen the exact thing. Yeah, you go. Like we did this hunt. We've got this food. You know, we're all dining together. We're telling stories. That's really how human in history has passed along before the advent of books. And we're celebrating, right? Through our evolution, we hunted, gathered together, procured our food together, prepared the food, ate together, and celebrated together. That was the time of human bonding. It's deeply ingrained in our DNA. We expect that our genes expect us to do this. And so this is where dinner is the first domino because when we're eating with people that we care about, friends and families, as well.

30:11Family and friends are included. There's this really remarkable switching over from the sympathetic fight or flight to the parasympathetic nervous system. That's what the data is indicating, which is so exciting. One of the reasons is we start to produce more oxytocin. Right? So oxytocin, it's got a couple of nicknames, cuddle hormone, love hormone, but why it really matters in this This context is that it's been found to neutralize cortisol, so to help us to down regulate. And we're very good. We're very, very good at going zero to 100. All right, real quick. Shout out to Drake, but we're not very good at going 100 to zero at all.

30:52Being with people that we love does something for our nervous systems to help us to down regulate faster than anything. So take advantage of that. And how does this play out in the data? Do I have any data to affirm this? you know I do. All right. So really quickly, I'm going to rattle these off. Researchers at Harvard tracked human eating behavior, family eating behavior, and food intake. All right. For years. And when I found this data, I was like, why doesn't anybody know this? And so they found that people who eat together with their family on a regular basis have dramatically higher intake of real whole unprocessed foods.

31:27And by nature, significantly higher intake of vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases and help us sleep better, by the way, and those family members consumed significantly less ultra -process foods, namely chips and soda. What about for kids? Publishing the journal Pediatrics, they found that eating with our children just three meals per week or more, but three is that a minimum effective dose, which I'm a big fan of, knowing that we want change, we don't want to change that much. Eating with our kids three times a week led to dramatically reduce incidents of those children in developing obesity and eating disorders.

32:05What about for us as adults? Tech workers at IBM were tracked, looking at their family eating behavior around dinner, being able to quote, make it home for dinner. Regardless of how much stress they were experiencing at work, if they were able to consistently eat dinner with their families, their stress remained negligible. It was manageable, it was neutralized, work morale and productivity stayed high, stressed stayed manageable. But as soon as things started cutting into their ability to eat dinner with their families, stress levels went up exceedingly high. Work morale went down, productivity goes down.

32:41All right. There's something special about eating together with people that you care about. I mentioned oxytocin. I mentioned the switch over to the parasympathetic. Here's the key word tying all this together. The nickname of the parasympathetic nervous system is rest and digest. Do you hear me? That is the nickname of this part of the nervous system. And this is a binary system. It's either this or that. It's on or off. You're even sympathetic, parasympathetic. And so switching over, being with people that we care about, especially under the context of good food, it is incredibly special. Last part here is the psychological benefits to be able to help to to offload and downregulate.

33:26When you are feeling seen, we have a deep human need for significance. And being able to see your child or your loved one and for them to feel like they matter versus you know what we're doing now is this because not only did we devolve from tribes to neighborhoods where we start to get more separate, but when neighborhoods where they advent of that, we still had extended family in close proximity. Then we started to get isolated to our nuclear family only. And then, in just in the last couple of decades, as we leaned into this whole conversation, we've become even more divided within our own household because of our devices.

34:08Our devices have divided us. And not to villainize these things, of course, but we need to keep them in context. We need real FaceTime with real people. Well, my video guy, before we got started, was telling me there's a meme going around the internet that I haven't seen yet, but that how would guys be able to eat if they didn't turn YouTube on? What you need to do is turn YouTube on in order for you to then begin eating your food. Right? And I remember an ex -girl friend of mine from ages and ages ago told me the story about one of her exes the first time that he'd come around for food with her family.

34:43And he'd sat down and they were all sat around the table. And he took his plate off the table onto his lap to eat it on his lap because he was so conditioned to his family sitting on the couch and watching the TV and eating food from his lap. So he was sat at a dining table with no TV there, had to slide back and put the plate on his lap, which is just such a funny bit of conditioning that he obviously didn't see. But to everybody else sat around the table was like, this is crazy. But yeah, I see it myself. Dr. K. Healthy Gamer, who is a psychiatrist classically trained in Western medicine, but also did four or five years in Eastern medicine too.

35:27So he's got this really lovely holistic view, and he has a fantastic community for young guys and girls that are into gaming. Some of them have got screen addictions, some of them don't, but it's mental health for young people that use the internet a lot. And him and Hamza, another kid from the UK, started doing Zoom calls, daily Zoom calls so that people could just eat food with other people. Interesting. So they would jump on a call and sometimes people would say nothing. They'd just have a scream with a bunch of faces and they would do it together because it's all well and good saying, being around people that you love, being with your family, so on and so or forth.

36:09I moved away from the country that I was born in. I'd love to eat food with my mom and dad, but if they'd have to be up at midnight in order to be able to even face time me, I've got my housemate, so yeah, I can do it with him, but I do think that it's just so interesting to look at the solutions that people are coming up with to try and recreate what it is that you're suggesting that they do. Let's just slow down a little bit.

36:36I'm you have to try and have a conversation in between bites of food, that it's going to slow down the pace at which you eat, which is going to reduce the satiety. It's going to ensure that you chew your food properly, which is going to make it easier to digest. It's going to give you more breath between it, which is going to mean that your digestion has got more time to, you know, all of these different things. It's a full stack of improvement around what you do. And then maybe everyone's sick of spending time indoors and goes, why don't we go for a little walk once we finish up? And the whole family goes for a walk and then you get all the benefits of the 10 minute There's no supplement that can do all the things you just mentioned.

37:09There's no drug that can do all the things you just mentioned. These are things that our genes expect us to do. That's the really remarkable part about it. Of course, we do want to find some transitionary tools like being able to talk on FaceTime or whatever the case might be. But when I walked in here, you're eating with your boys. You guys were hanging out, eating some food, but it's those moments. You know, but of course it might be a little bit rushed it might be this or that but there's something about Taking a moment to pause and just be present eat and Connect with people when it comes to timing here I remember and it's something that I follow just because it's easy to remember a three to one rule for sleep Three hours before sleeping no more food two hours before reading trying to limit fluids and then one hour before I did two hours before sleeping, trying to limit fluids, one hour before sleeping, trying to limit light.

38:05When it comes to us going from eating on an evening time, have you got a rough rule that you try to follow between food time and sleep time and then let's continue this sexiest night of sleep of your life protocol all the way up to getting in about. Yeah, that's a great question. So this is going to be situationally dependent. It's going to be unique because there are some folks and now we have the advent of like, you know, continuous glucose monitors where you could track this. If I eat too far out from dinner for myself, I notice that my blood sugar goes significantly low at night and it can pull me out of sleep.

38:44All right, so and I'm talking about like more than five hours before sleep, which doesn't seem, that's not a lot of time. And so for me, it's like finishing my last bite of food, maybe two to three hours before I go to bed is ideal for me personally. Now I've done all kinds of stuff. Again, 21 years, being at this level, I've experimented a lot. So I've done all kinds of fasts, I've done 21 days, I've done all kinds of stuff. I don't want anybody have to go through. But I found it, I found my way to sleep. Your body will sort stuff out. But you got to find what's optimal for you. All right. So in the transition into this from the dinner table, where we left off, and by the way, all of those studies are featured in the new East Martyr family cookbook.

39:26There's over 250 scientific references in a cookbook which has never been done. But then also we talk about what are we eating so that we can get those good sleep nutrients in. And I'll just throw this out here really quickly. I'll share two really quickly. One of them, dark cherries, all right. There are a couple of studies looking at cherry juice as an implement for improving sleep quality. But the sugar can be a little bit, you know, that can be sketchy. But a couple of the studies are sure in the book. First of all, cherries are one of the most dense sources of naturally occurring melatonin of any food.

40:00Cherries are dark cherries in particular, pretty rich in melatonin. On top of that, one of the studies looked at the anthocyanins in these cherries and found that they have the potential to shrink fat cells. And so it's cool, you found this stuff, and I put my emojis next to every kind of benefit. So for the metabolic health, the fat loss is a little muscle emoji. There's a sleep emoji there, then you go back to the associated food like, okay, what do I do to eat this food? And we've got like a couple of you know cool recipes one of them is a cherry frozen yogurt pop that you can have after dinner My kids love it and they're fun.

40:35It's like fun stuff to make to and they're very simple That's another thing about this is making it easy as well I don't want a recipe that's got 37 ingredients like let's just make this simple delicious And there you go, but another food which is really a great kind of nighttime routine and there are many And you don't want to necessarily eat this dish every night, but salmon is really something special when it comes to improving and supporting sleep quality. Salmon's got a moment in the sun right now for sure. A lot of people are aware of some of the benefits, but those omega -3s are one of those things where a deficiency in omega -3s is clinically shown to disrupt our sleep cycles.

41:15All right, so it's not just this like, oh, it's good for your brain. No, no, no, like seriously, your brain needs these omega -3s. They're responsible for creating structural fats in the body, not as energy, but like to rebuild and support your brain cells so they can talk to each other. It's kind of important. And one of the studies used FMRIs and tracked people's, like, actually looked at their brains, which is again, instead of guessing. And they found that people who 8 less than 4 grams of DHA and EPA. These are animal -based omega -3s. 4 grams or less had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

41:544 grams is that minimum effect of dose and you can get that in a high quality wild card, 8 ounce piece of salmon. And every, we've all had nice salmon filet. That's great. I've got a honey suracha salmon in the book, which is great. What about a salmon burger? All right. So that's probably one of my favorite foods right now, these salmon burgers, but like turning these great sleep supporting foods, having delicious food experiences, have all the dinner table benefits, and now we transition into the next thing. And so again, this is going to, I'm going to say generally two to four hours before bed to finish your last meal, ideally for most people, but they're good.

42:36There's going to be outliers. All right. So now what do we do? Do we get off, do we finish dinner? Let's say the goal is to go to bed at 10 PM just in this context and I finished dinner at 7 .30. All right, do I want to go and jump right back on my screen, watch the show, whatever I could? That could be part of my brain's reward. Like I watch 30 minutes of a favorite show, right? Or I go in game with my son, play 2K, Hey, buses ass. You're pretty good too. Right after it, again creating that post meal reward for sitting down and eating together, right? But now you might want to pop on some blue light blocking glasses.

43:21You know, you might wanna do that. So it's starting to think about light pollution three hours before bed. Depends on the person, but I just, that's why I put the word might. Just rough, rough, you and your ass things. You might run about three hours before bed, but stop thinking about the light you're exposed. Yes, exactly. Start thinking about it, at least. And then from there, again, if we're popping back on whatever, for me, I'll just tell you what it is from my kind of light curfew is one hour, it is. And I might be the person who's impressed that in popular culture, because again, I wrote about this almost 10 years ago, at least.

43:56That's the minimum for me. Ideally, 90 minutes to two hours, ideally. I think a lot of people would have a question of, okay, especially now, right? We're approaching winter. You guys are losing daylight savings. That's just, that's getting axed. Evening times get dark pretty early. And the more Northernly you get, I'm from Newcastle in the Northeast of the UK, which is the last city before Scotland. So around about December, mid -December time, it can be sunset at 4pm, right? So it's really dark all the time. It's not sunrise until after 8pm, so it's a very, very short amount of time. How am I supposed to exist?

44:41I don't want to bump into things, right? I've got fear. I'm also, let's be real here, I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be bored for the last 90 minutes of every single day. If I want to, You saying it's probably a bad idea for me to watch a screen, but if I read a book, I need a light to light the book. Is an e -reader going to disrupt my circadian rhythm? Can I use my Kindle? What if it's on warm? What can people do to actually enjoy the last two hours of their day if they also need to be conscious of the light pollution? I love this. This is what really I think is made my teaching of this information more relatable and doable is because we've got to put the neurotic behavior to the side.

45:23And especially when we're working to get healthy and to achieve certain things, we do go through a phase. I think everybody does of being neurotic about these things. We've got a chill. We live in the modern world, and there's stuff. There's stuff going on. And there are certain things that can help us enjoy that stuff even more if we feel better. And so if we can create an evening routine for the majority of the time that works for us, where we still can do some of our favorite things, because that's what life is all about as well. We've got to get that juice. Well, yeah, what's the point in optimizing your sleep if you sacrifice the enjoyment of your spare time in order to get it?

46:00Like, what's the point of getting good sleep? Presumably so that you enjoy life. And if you sacrifice the enjoyment of life to sleep while in the hopes that sleeping well will give you an enjoyment of life, you're short cutting everything. Exactly. You just said it perfectly, you know? So we've got to come into this with some balance with a balanced perspective and give ourselves some grace and some wiggle room and some enjoyment. And if we can do little things like again, throwing on some blue -like black and glasses, we do have a lot of stuff that you prefer. I want to throw brands out. Okay, well, raw optics, Matt Marooka from my office.

46:30There we go, boom. I like raw optics. I know that he's done an awful lot of research. They're not cheap, but it seems like a lot of the blue -blocking glasses that are cheap that don't have a very heavily colored lens. If you can still see all of the normal colors with a little bit of a a blue tinge. That's not really doing very much. According to him, you need to be, it needs to be like offensively colored and you can get them in yellow or red. And I noticed anecdotally, if I put them on, I know this is the same with some of my other friends, any high quality blue blocking glasses. After about 30 minutes, you almost feel this down regulars.

47:05Yeah. Interesting. Calpable effect that I noticed. And I was using it in the UK remembering that it gets dark early in the summer, in the winter, but in the summer, it really overcooks it. So you can have sunset at 10 .30 at night. So for me, I would pop them on and go for an evening walk, maybe 9 .30 and I would find while I was on this walk, I would get this down regulation. So we're looking at some blue blocking glasses, again, if we're going to be exposed to light. Yeah, I've got, I have some from him as well. and you know, and you just said it, there's gonna be a varying degree of how effective this is, but also part of it can be the neuroassociation as well, to put those on.

47:45And because that's one of the things that I noticed, definitely early on in testing these things, that as soon as I popped them on, I started to get a little bit sleepier, you know. And human, the human brain is always looking for a routine. It's always looking to automate behaviors. And so what's said is that neurons that fire together, wire together. And so that behavior of like I'm having this evening routine. I care about my sleep. I'm giving it some respect. I'm popping these on. I'm still you know, dabbling and you know, watching a show or, you know, doing a little bit of stuff on my phone.

48:14I mentioned playing a video game with my kid, right? Now we have to look at the other part of the stimulation though, right? And so this is where we do want to have, give yourself that screen curfew of at least an hour to just like get off of the screens, do something else. And by the way, there's thousands of other things you could do. All right, but we just like, ah, you know, so there's thousands of other things that we can do. And I'm going to share a couple with you. So you mentioned like reading a book. Yes, we can have some dim light, you know, read a book. There are real books are still out here on the streets.

48:46They still do exist. But even more so, this is a good time to just, if you can chat with somebody, you don't have to stare at a phone or a screen to talk with somebody that you care about if you're not in person. But if you're in a relationship, for example, and you're in the house together, this is a great time for my wife And I just to catch up talk and also one of the chapters in sleep smarter Which it just happened to be on page 69 Was about sex. I didn't know Somebody who bought the book told me they were like Sean is slick. He thinks he's slick But it was talking about orgasm and how that impacts sleep quality and so we've got some kind of of cultural memes about people falling asleep, whatever afterwards.

49:28And like seriously, you're producing a cocktail of different chemicals, chemistry that does support sleep quality significantly. We've got, I mentioned oxytocin before. We've got prolactin, for example. And men, one of the studies that I mentioned in the book actually produce like four times more prolactin when they have an orgasm with their partner versus having one by them themselves. And prolactin is very, very heavy for optimizing improving sleep quality and making people sleepy. That's part of the reason even like the going another round is like the prolactin equation. And so what's so interesting here is that, and by the way, it's like some people like, you know, with the partner, I'll go right to sleep versus like by myself, I go eat a bowl of cereal.

50:16Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so you've been watching me. And so just understanding that the big O is the name of that chapter, does in fact again. In that time gap, maybe you can have sex. That hopefully, hopefully that's better than, I don't know, Yellowstone or whatever else you don't people are watching. But just being able to invest in your relationship, which is again, that pays back so much. And that's just, I'm just throwing out a couple of things. There are so many things that we can do. Have you got any insights, a lot of the people that are listening to this may listen to podcasts when they fall asleep?

51:00I sometimes find, if I'm listening to something that is too cerebral compelling and demanding, that it puts me into a kind of sort of lean -in curiosity state on an evening time, whereas Whereas if I get some nice fiction or some narrative nonfiction, I like stories, a history documentaries about stuff like World War II and bits and pieces like that, that to me kind of puts me into more of a, what feels like a narrative story mode that feels like it primes me more for sleep. If you have, is there any data to back any of this stuff? Absolutely, yes. Fantastic. I knew it wasn't neuroscience. Yeah, specifically fiction.

51:42You know, reading fiction, listening to, this is how we evolved is having those stories in the evening. Like our genes, it's an input. It's something we've done for a long time. And we have this cultural, you know, kind of iconic thing of like reading your kids a bedtime story. We're just big adult babies. If you really bow down to it, but instead of a nice bedtime story, Now we just stressed. Like we're just thinking about all kinds of shit to stress us out. Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to like, let me switch over. Like literally our brain is functioning differently when we are engaged in story.

52:25You know, and so absolutely there's some really cool signs that's already been affirmed on that. But also, you know, this is an opportunity too. As you just mentioned, I love that of listening to a podcast as well because you don't have to stare at a screen to listen to a podcast. The same thing holds true with their people eating lunch right now watching us. Oh yeah. All right. And shout out if you are, leave a comment down below. Tell us what you're eating. Yeah, exactly. Was it from the cook? Was it from the new cookbook? Oh, right. If that part, if you're from eating something from the new cookbook, but the thing is, I've been known especially on a lunch break to like pop on something on YouTube like, you know, Conan O 'Brien clips or something brand of thing, you know.

53:04And so again, it's not to be neurotic. And I've structured my life in a way. I've created a micro -culture in my household where I have real -face time and eat together with the people that I care about on a regular basis. So it's a both -and world. This is the point. We don't have to be either or. We don't have to, you know, like be completely a tech addict or a luddite. It's a both -and -world. What we do need to do is listen to our bodies, listen to our minds, acknowledge where we are feeling this kind of dysfunction or turbulence within our spirit because oftentimes it's like a guidance system because there are certain inputs that we are missing out on and other inputs that we might be getting too much of.

53:55One of the things, it's funny that you mentioned the ancestral disposition that we have, or the evolutionary sort of priming that we have to hear stories around the campfire before we're about to go to sleep. And this is absolutely broscience, but if someone wants to do the study on it, it works for me radio dramas as they're called technically. So a full cast rendition of a story. There's my favorite fiction author, P .S. Brown, who does red rising. It's slowly releasing all of his books in full, unabridged, but with an entire cast. And this is sound scaped with all of the sounds, and it's so immersive.

54:36And there's a different character for each voice. And I find those to be, if I really, really want to fall asleep if I'm on a plane, or if I want to do whatever, if I drop into one of those, it's outrageous. And I wonder whether that almost mimics, in some regards, the typical campfire surrounding. But yeah, I mean, from my side, that sort of falling asleep listening to something, the problem is, as with a lot of the issues of technology, it's so compelling that it can actually start to push that sleep window further and further away. Right, one more chapter, one more whatever, right? So the discipline to be able to say no to it is also again, neither the Luddites nor the addict.

55:21It's somewhere somewhere in between What about this is something I think which is a very very common issue and hopefully earlier in the day people have exercised got sunlight Don't know all of the things to wind down Even having done all of that. I've noticed periods in my life where I struggle to fall asleep if somebody is regularly getting into bed and having, you know, an hour plus of latency before they're able to fall asleep. What are the, what are the first few culprits or places that you would be looking at in order to try and optimize this? All right. It's like the matrix right now. There's, there's a hundred different things that it could be.

56:03Rank order the top fights. It's going to be a situation to pin it. I'll rank some of them. But even with you mentioning that the full cast and the story, the ancient tenet is to know thyself, know thyself. Like that's top tier importance because we're so unique. And so I just want to throw in a little parentheses as well. Like by the way, it doesn't have to be a fiction. It could be a personal development thing. It could be a sermon. It could be whatever helps you to make that transition and to sleep. Whatever works for you, give yourself some space and some grace to to try some different things.

56:40Now we sleep latency. So I'm going to tell you the first thing period and you know this is it encompasses so much but oftentimes it's just stress. It's excessive stress and us not metabolizing that stress efficiently. What do you mean when you say metabolizing stress? So being able to you know cortisol for example has kind of been drug through the mud and given this bad name, a cortisol is not bad. It's, I like to think of it like the incredible hawk. You know, it's like, yes, it can smash them shit and like, but also it can get stuff done. It is powerful. It gets us up and going. And it can get a little bit out of hand, especially if there's a lot of hawk, you know.

57:22And so we need hawk to turn back into Bruce Banner. Basically, this is a great analogy. I just came up with that one just now, all right. And so to down regulate actually in the movie the first Avengers movie Scarlett Johansson's character Black Widow she would do this little kind of rhyme like this little kind of Song this little kind of technique to help the big guy to down regulate and sue them and bring him back down All right a lot of times we're just kind of running too hot We've got a lot of adrenaline, you know, epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol is not the only stress hormone, but we've got a lot of that just pumping through our system based on our thoughts.

58:07Our thoughts create chemistry in our bodies instantaneously. And a lot of times, one of my really good friends, Dr. Daniel Aiman, he calls him ants, automatic negative thoughts. And we just get on these loops of these, you know, things that can just weigh on our spirit. We've got to be able to, when I say metabolize, really I'm talking about to neutralize the shift gears over to that parasympathetic, and it depends on you what that's gonna be, what the treatment's gonna be. So this could be a simple change in perception. Sometimes it's just a reality check, and I'm a big fan of that one personally, which is like, I might be thinking about the 10 things that I need to get done.

58:47Like I just did Good Morning America a couple days ago, And I was in with my publisher the day before and she was like, so, you know, are you excited? Da -da -da. And she's like, I would be a nervous wreck. I don't even know how to... Hey, thanks. Hey. Real good pep talk. But for me, it's just like, because I just don't perceive it like she does. And if I was to be like, oh my god, I got to... I have a very short window of time. I gotta get up super early and I need to whatever, da da da da da da da da da da da. I'm just gonna be like, there's nothing I could do about it right now. Chill, just, it doesn't matter.

59:28I'm here in my bed, none of that matters. Just chill. So I could, I know how to speak to myself. You know, and again, it's a reality check for me that these things that I might be pining over, and here's a really cool thing too, is that it's during sleep that so much of our problems are solved. And if we got some really cool data on this, even rim sleep in particular, in dreaming, like dreaming is some freaky stuff, man, you know. And we think we've got some good ideas about what's happening. But during rim sleep, we know that this process called memory consolidation is taking place. So like things from our short -term memory, kind of like for the day of getting converted to a short -term memory and becoming more retrievable.

1:00:13But also, So there's this kind of like, as we're playing, I was kind of like our brain in a way is keeping us entertained while it's fixing shit. And one of the things that I do, and I'm just going to share this tip, another way to downregulate, is if I'm dealing with the problem, I'm not just going to sit there with it and worry about it. And this is from thinking, real rich, you know, pulling hill, and it changed my life years ago and actually the person who introduced me to his Bob Proctor and I had multiple conversations with him. Just like, man, just to even say that stuff coming from where I come from, to be able to share time with people like that is my blowing.

1:00:52But I have a meeting with my board of trusted advisors. So as I'm laying in bed, if for example, it's a challenged with, let's just give an example of if it's somebody with their health. All right. If they're wanting to deal with the health issue, they can pick maybe a table, like a long table like this and there's three people on one side, three people on the other. And who are those trusted advisors that would sit at your table to offer you counsel? Maybe this might be Andrew Huberman. Maybe this might be Dr. Daniel Aiman, neuroscientist. Maybe this might be at the table with you. And then on the other side, maybe it's like your friend who's really into health or whatever the case might be.

1:01:36And then you just go through and you ask them what is their opinion on what you should do to get better or to feel better. Because the thing is you already know what they're going to fucking say. You know what they're going to say. But sitting down and doing this practice and allowing them to speak to you through your mind is so remarkable. Well, the depersonalization of that tactic, right, of removing yourself from being both judge jury, executioner, the evidence gatherer and the person that is supposed to coordinate this entire charade. It's so important. I've got written on my fridge, what would you tomorrow want you today to do?

1:02:18And the reason that it's so useful is it gives you that perspective just a tiny, tiny little bit of distance between what's happening now and what's happening tomorrow and what you would want to do. And yeah, I liked that. Okay, so we've got looking at the stresses, the kind of open loops, as of yet we haven't finding a way for yourself to help to metabolize our stress to downregulate, instead of going into the, you know, the rally. I think that most people, when they're trying to fall asleep and struggling, what's happening is they will ruminate aggressively. Very few people are struggling to fall asleep, while their mind is perfectly peaceful and blank.

1:02:56They are trying to keep the heart rate low whilst doing very intense exercise all mentally. I'm trying to keep myself calm and yet I'm doing the opposite thing if I keep myself calm and very active. Is there anything else that are the other main culprits for this sleep latency issue? Absolutely. So just to put a cherry on top of that again, stress is the number one thing and it comes in many different forms and fashions. So finding something for yourself to process all of that inner chatter. That's why my mother -in -law calls it. She gave me that lexicon. You got a lot of inner chatter. And this could be something.

1:03:34Usually it's actually going to be before you get into bed, by the way. And I want to offer up. So here's another way is to do a form of meditation, even. You know, if anything, because with meditation is one of those ways we can kind of glimpse into theta and delta, potentially, like if you're a really skilled meditator. But this is a way so we can kind of start to tip the scales into more like anabolic, sleep is truly the anabolic state that we're in, but we can kind of tip toe our way into it. Ideally, because of the neuroassociation, you might not want to do that in bed itself, but you can.

1:04:11No die cell. Oh, right. So you're saying the bed is to be reserved for sleeping and having sex rule over again. We're not watching TV, we're not working, we're not doing the thing. Yeah, I like that. But if a meditation in bed, like there's a body scanning meditation, you can go down intense and relax and that kind of thing. You could do that in bed, but know yourself. If doing a meditation in bed might not transition and just sleep the way that you want. And I love a meditation for if we wake up and have trouble falling back asleep to lay and just try to keep bringing your attention back to your breath.

1:04:45All right, but also okay, so what can be another thing with sleep latency? Outside of stress, the other thing which is a form of stress is nutrient deficiencies, period. All right, again, you can have the best sleep routine if you're not providing your body with those raw materials, those building blocks to help with the conversion of serotonin into melatonin, which serotonin is the prerequisite for making melatonin by the way that That all has to do. Most of your serotonin is in your gut. And so what are the things that you're doing nutritionally that could be screwing up that process? What are the sleep super foods?

1:05:27Oh, good question. I mentioned cherries earlier. That's a top tier, good sleep food, salmon, another top tier, good sleep food. And I'm going to share another one with you that, you know, it's one of these foods been around for a long time. But it also has number one the mega threes are there as well eggs great We identified oftentimes for as like a morning food. It's not the fact of any of these foods You're just gonna eat and fall asleep all right, but eggs are remarkable in the the colon Colleen is involved in the sleep process as well and Those are mega threes are really helpful and also just amino acids because when we're talking about When I've said hormones and neurotransmitters several times today These are essentially cellular DMs.

1:06:15It's enabling yourself to talk to each other. That's what a hormone is. And at its core, hormones are proteins. If you're deficient in certain amino acids, you can't even make that shit anyway. So your body will do a patchwork job, but if you provide your body with the amino acids, it needs to build those things. You're gonna be in a much better favor. Okay, another one. I mean, tryptophan. Tryptophan, that's where it gets the association with the, what we call from where I'm from, itis, like being sleepy after you eat food, especially on Thanksgiving and the turkey and all the things. Yes, turkey is a rich source of tryptophan, but there are, you know, certain plant foods as well.

1:06:56But yeah, turkey, we'll just put throw that on the list there. So chicken, turkey, as a song that has that in it. But those are gonna be a couple of other ones because trip to fan, amino acid, all right, and it's deeply involved in our sleep process. And so what is that, is that four of them? Five cherries, salmon, trip to fun, and turkey. Okay, we said turkey already, nice, yes. Let me give you a drink. There's so many here, again, we're not talking about guzzling a pint of water, We're talking about like a serving of like a teacup. We know about chamomile for downregulating for relaxing. We know about kava kava.

1:07:42One of my favorites is Rishi. Rishi T, a dual extracted Rishi T. So this study was published in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior and the researchers found that Drinking Rishi just part of bedtime. We could say an hour before bedtime 30 minutes an hour or maybe a little bit longer, was able to, number one, improve sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster, it improved overall sleep time, and it improved the quality of test subjects sleep, namely improving their non -rhym deep sleep time. All right, so that's pretty remarkable. And Rishi's been utilized for thousands of years.

1:08:23Do you have a brand that you prefer for them? For sigmatic. My guy's for sigmatic. It's a dual extraction of the Rishi. that's why, primarily. So that means it's an alcohol extract and a hot water extract, because different things are going to pull out of the mushroom based on the extraction method. And if you're just getting one, you can be missing out on the hot water extract to get a lot of these antioxidant components, beta, glucose, things like that. But the alcohol extract can get some of these more hormonally pointed compounds. You've mentioned the window, the how important is eggs. Does eggs have to be later in the evening?

1:08:56Does salmon have to be later in the evening? Does it's just throughout the day we can create the building blocks that are good for some. Exactly. Your body knows what to do to store things away when it needs. Cool. Okay. So we've looked at stress and we've looked at nutrients. I think that those are two pretty big move as we've already touched on some of the new work that you've done your book came out this week. Congratulations. Talk to me about the current state of American adults health from a metabolic and a weight perspective. All right. This was published by the CDC in 2022. So just about a year ago, as of this recording, they determined that 60 % of American adults now have at least one chronic disease, at least one, and 40 % have two or more.

1:09:41All right, so just a kind of overarching perspective look at this. Now, one of our top tier journals that's looking at metabolic health recently published in data and it's been making the rounds on the internet, and they established that only 12 % of American adults are metabolically healthy. So 88 % of adults are not metabolically healthy. And this is looking at certain biomarkers, you know, whether we're talking about hormones, whether we're talking about the role of insulin and leptin and the list goes on and on. And so now, what does this look like in the real world? Like, what do we see? Well, prior to pandemic related shutdowns, we were at about 42 .5 % of American adults being clinically obese.

1:10:27And it was projected to reach 50 % by 2030. But when things shut down, there was a mighty jump. The data hasn't come out yet completely, but we're probably very close to that 50 % already. And if we're talking about overweight and obesity, then And we're looking at about 75 % of population right now. Something dramatic has happened because, and also, I can't leave out kids in this conversation by the way. There was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and it looked at 200 years of diabetes as a title of the paper. And essentially type two diabetes, which used to be called adult onset diabetes because kids didn't get that shit.

1:11:10But now a lot of kids younger and younger and younger populations are getting heart disease are getting Diabetes are developing obesity and so but it was Within about a 40 year time span just like in the last 40 to 50 years rates of type 2 diabetes Essentially quadrupled in the US population and Along with that childhood obesity just in the last 30 years has tripled All right, let alone us as adults. Like this is trickling its way down to our little ones, which is incredibly abnormal. And so just a couple of other quick stats. I mentioned earlier about the sleep deprivation stat, but right now our number one, our leading cause of death is still heart disease.

1:11:58And I got to throw this in here as well. A lot of people don't know this, but Alzheimer's is number six. It is just charging up into the top five leading causes of death in the United States. It's an epidemic and it is scary. And a lot of times we don't think about like how is that killing people? Like loss of our cognitive function like that. Man, like that is such a terrible way to die. And researchers are now calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes because it's so related to insulin dysfunction in the brain. That's literally what Max said. Yeah. That's literally what Max said. Yeah. And so I want to mention that, but heart disease being the number one killer.

1:12:36Now, according to, again, published data, about 60 % of American adults have some degree of heart disease onset already, like that can be tracked, simple blood tests. We could see, okay, you're on your way to die from a heart attack. Is the most common precursor to heart disease obesity or being overweight? That's a great question. There's definitely some interplay. Here, let's talk about obesity because right now we're living at a time where people are, there's a framing around obesity and working as a clinician and working with real people who are struggling with their weight for many years, a lot of people are trying, they are trying very, very hard to lose that weight, but they're existing in a culture that is fighting against them.

1:13:29And so we placed a lot of judgment cognitively if we are healthy or of a healthy weight and don't understand the struggles of people who are really trying hard. Now there are some people who don't give a fuck and I'll tell you what, even with that, even as I'm joking about that, I've never met one person who doesn't want to be healthy. If they had a choice, the person who apparently doesn't give a fuck and they're 350 pounds, if they had a choice, they would be healthy. They will be of a healthy weight. They would have an ideal body and energy and all the things that they want What happens is we develop something called learned helplessness On top of that We have these stories like sometimes it's literally about Worthiness it's about what's possible for me.

1:14:16It's about access. It's about money. It's about all these things My mother for example, you know I grew up in a low -income environment a lot of times like my mom would sell her blood She'd go to the blood bank sell her blood get $20 and get us some fast food a lot of times and she you know We got food from charities, you know There's a place called the Hosea house we get we get food, you know government assistance all the things But she was working she worked overnight at convenience store and one of those nights Somebody tried to rob the store and she was stabbed multiple times But my mom is different.

1:14:52She's alive and well today. She actually detained the guy and he ended up getting arrested. Yeah, I mean, I'm not kidding at all. I'm not kidding at all, man. Picked on the wrong mother. Like, listen, I'm not kidding. I got so many stories. I'm, listen, I'm trying to hold back and tell you some of the crazy shit she's done. But here's what I'm sharing the stories that, when she went in for surgery, get the stitches in all the things, afterwards the physician was examining her and he said that if you were not overweight, he said these, these were his words, if you weren't a heavy -set woman, you probably would have died.

1:15:29Because the depth of penetration of the knife would have been closer to vital organs. So her story is, my fat is my safety. Yeah, I can see how that's a double edged sword for one of a better time. Damn. So here's the thing too. Again, we have these stories. And for some people, that excess that they're carrying is protection. Maybe it's protection from an assailant, maybe it's a protection from a family member, maybe it's a protection from attention, unwanted attention. There are so many different reasons why folks are in the state that they're in. And And I want to remove the judgment and just talk about the biology.

1:16:15Fat cells are phenomenal. It's enabled us to be sitting here today is because of our ancestors and these badass fat cells. We evolved our capacity to utilize stored energy in times of famine. And something a little fun fact about our fat cells is that our fat cells can actually grow and contain about like a thousand times their own volume. Like the size of it itself, a thousand times its value we can hold energy essentially. We didn't evolve containing that much, however, but today, because we never have a famine, we just keep filling and filling and filling these fat cells and what happens is we start to have this unwanted immune response because that the stress of that fat cell getting expanded unnaturally and never getting a chance to offload is essentially sending out a false distress signal to our immune system that this cell is infected essentially.

1:17:18You know, there's something abnormal happening here. And as this is happening, this is contributing and we saw this even during pandemic related things with a significantly higher incidence of severe outcomes, hospitalizations, and death when we venture into obesity. And a part of that is the dysfunction that happens with our immune system. Now on top of that, with the immune system dysfunction, what about cancer?

1:17:47Because part of the ability of cancer to progress is an abnormal relationship with our immune system and being able to catch things early in our immune system to basically take out rogue cells that, you know, I've reached the hayflick limit, they're not supposed to replicate all the things and take that, take them out. What we see in the data, we see about a doubling, doubling of the risk of breast cancer, doubling of a risk of prostate cancer, five times greater risk of colon cancer, seven times greater risk of endometrial cancer when we develop obesity. It's crazy. And so this is not about vanity.

1:18:33This is about a state of our biology, a state of our physiology, a state of human health that is subjecting us to all manner of disease and dysfunction. So I'd like the input of trying to remove the moralizing from this. It's what I learned from Max when I first spoke to him last year. And he reminded me that there are lots of different ways that people can get fat. A good example of this, Robert Plowman, the guy that did the largest ever twin studies in the world, every single pair of twins born between 1991 and 1994 in the UK was contacted about being enrolled in his study. He's the father of behavioral genetics.

1:19:16And he was talking to me and he was saying that he has the predisposition to be fat. And he said that when he walks past a bakery, some people aren't that bothered, but he smells bread and his grill in response just goes through the room. But it could also be that you don't really like exercise that much. And it could also be that you don't really enjoy eating foods that are a little bit leaner. And it could also be, you know, there's lots of different ways to get the kai kou equation to work against you from an obesity perspective. And just because I come from, I have a background where I would be, I'd be like 63 kilos if I'd never been to the gym, that's not the same disposition that everybody has.

1:20:01That being said, there is an awful lot of agency. Like, ultimately, if you don't put it in your mouth, it doesn't go into your body, right? So finding this balance between empowerment and reminding people of the sovereignty and agency that they have over their health and fitness, whilst accepting that the base that people are working from is not the same, the difficulty. Some people are swimming upstream and some people are swimming downstream, right? And I think again from Max, I'd be interested to know if you agree with this, that as far as he's concerned, the current world that people find themselves in, if they want to eat foods that do not cause them to be obese, if they want to not eat beyond satiety, they're finding it harder to do now than ever before because of how ultra -process foods are hyper -palatable, they're more calorie dense, they're quicker and easier to put into your mouth and get into your stomach, they're more readily available, you're able to graze throughout the day, all of the things, again, that get this kai ko equation, and the balance to just lean more and more and more and more toward surplus calories, it's never been more difficult to be underweight, right, or to be of a healthy way.

1:21:16Exactly. And also, even with all those things you just shared, we have this new category, huge list of obesigents. So these are obesigents. Obesigents. Obesity -causing agents that are firmed in particular, they're riddled with obesigents. in ultra -process foods. So it's similar to a carcinogen, a cancer -causing agent, which, according to the WHO, for example, glyphosate, which has been on a lot of people's conversation list recently, glyphosate, according to the WHO. The long killer? The weed killer stuff? Yeah, yeah, Monsanto. I'm from St. Louis, home base. I went to work there after college.

1:21:51And so glyphosate, according to the WHO, is classified as a Class IIA carcinogen. That means that it probably causes cancer in humans. That's why there's so much unrest about it, but this has been known for quite some time. And by the way, this is in the East Marta Family cookbook too. Because what does this translate to? And our really getting exposure, well, the environmental working group took a bunch of the most common grain products on US store shelves and analyzed them for glyphosate content. They found 80 to 90 % of conventional grain products were contaminated with glyphosate, a probable human carcinogen.

1:22:31Again, carcinogens, obesigins, these are going to be things that are often found in significant content in ultra -process foods. Yes, the obesigin thing is that just a component of food which makes it more likely to be overeaten? So these are synthetic chemicals that literally alter our metabolic function and contribute to the process of weight gain. Give us something on their own. One of the most ominous sounding obesogins that we're all getting exposed to pretty much every day is bisphenol A. All right, so this is in food packaging. And so this is a plasticizing chemical. So plastics are made from fossil fuels and I see plastics every I mean you can't so much of this is Made from plastic is made our lives, you know, it's the the material You know, it's like the look the feel of cotton the fabric up the look the feel of plastic the depth The killer of our lives Sorry Plastics are awesome in their own right but in regards to their interaction with our food is a serious problem problem.

1:23:45I just had a conversation with a board certified toxicologist who worked in the flavor and fragrance industry. And she shared with me that, you know, even for example, when we go to a coffee shop, you know, you get that to go cup, and it's a paper cup. Why is that hot liquid not like melting the cup or like breaking the cup down? It's because the inside has a certain type of plastic. Oh, God. And the data now, she shared a study with me that you're consuming from any given cup of coffee regularly serving size of coffee, at least 25 ,000 microplastics, 25 ,000. And there's microplastics and there's nanoplastics.

1:24:27And she shared with me that these microplastics again, bisphenol A is just one plasticizer chemical. There's bisphenol S. There's so many, but we can get tricked because it's health washing saying this is EPA -free. But she said that they can interact with ourselves directly and function sometimes as like Xeno estrogen compounds. So activating estrogen pathways, this is why we see the correlation with breast cancer. We see the correlation with Garon -Mestia with breast tissue development with men. And so we've got that aspect, but she said the primary thing that's happening we're seeing in the data is that it's contributing to inflammation.

1:25:04And so I'm saying all this is say with our food supply, it isn't just the food itself. It's also what the shit is packaged in. Wow. So you're saying that even if I avoid the soy when I go to Starbucks, there's still other Eastergins floating around in the thing that they give it to me. And even with soy again, soy has been utilized for thousands of years by humans. When you look at the data, and I used to again, because as soon as I heard Zeno estrogen with soy, I immediately put it on the do not disturb you. You know, And the reality is, the way that it functions in the body is not quite like we kind of create that superficial term of a zeno estrogen and like all these bad things messing up testosterone.

1:25:49That being said, traditionally people were not guzzling soy milk and eating soy dogs and having a tofurkey for Thanksgiving. I'm gonna guess then that the storage of food, especially if someone, a lot of guys listening to this will be Jimbrose, they'll be doing their food prep perhaps on a Sunday or perhaps each morning. They need to be looking very carefully at what it is that they're storing this food in especially hot food. Yes. Taking it from the plan into the Tupperware container. I blitzed all of mine and pivoted. They do this. So a tupperware do glass -based storage containers. So you can do that, but even that has a plastic lid.

1:26:36So I'm trying to find a solution now, if anyone knows one of a all -glass storage container, would probably need to be a liter and a half, I think liter and a half to two liters seems about right, because you get some spinach and throw that on top and do all the way, you want room. But yeah, dude, for a decade, I thought that health was, and you know, stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, it's probably better to be eating good food that you've cooked yourself that you know. Yeah. And being like, oh, maybe there's some BPAs in this tupperware as opposed to, oh, while I'll just go and continue to order on Uber Eats each day or whatever it might be.

1:27:13But yeah, even if you're cooking your stuff at home, what are you storing that in once it's done? It's hot. It's going directly on the pan straight into, so what's your solution? You must prep food, your entire new cookbook is all about this. What's your solution? You're on the road, you want to make sure you're eating well. How are you storing your food and taking it with you? Yeah, I mean, a simple thing if you don't want to throw all your plastics away, by the way, for your food storage, which I haven't, we still have some stuff. We're cycling it out over time. Big phased out. You know? And you do at least let your food cool down, because we do know that the heat interaction, so a recent study was just published.

1:27:48And they, the researchers put food into a, quote, microwave safe plastic container in microwave to for three minutes. And they found that in a three -cinometer space of that container released literally 50 ,000 plus microplastics and we're talking millions of nanoplastics into the food. And that's just from a three -cinometer space of it. So just we're not can we're not heating our stuff up in the microwave in a three centimeter thing It's it's a large is a lot. So this is real. It's a thing We don't want to be too neurotic, but if you can avoid it avoid it Don't make hot food don't put your hot food in there.

1:28:31I don't heat it up in there if you can What do I do? I love stainless steel stainless steel containers for food with a silicon lid is great Do you have any bronze the ease? I put some in the bonus resource guide for the cookbook. And actually I talk about this in the cookbook, like food storage. Yeah. As well. Glass is great as well. These have been used traditionally for a long time for food storage. And... Stan Effeding, vertical diet guy. His solution for his favorite meal, monster mash, is a thermos. So he gets a cylindrical thermos and like scoops his food in. and you get double benefit from that, that you can do it from hot.

1:29:15It'll go straight in. It will stay hot for 10 or 12 hours throughout the day and it's just staying the steel all the way up. So that's a whole sum. That's a potential. You can also just, I guess, drink your food potentially. Although he did say, he did talk to me about how he gets some strange looks both going through TSA when they say a thermos, they presume that there's liquid in there when they look more closely. It's beef and rice and other stuff. And then also that he's got a special long fork that he uses to get to the bottom of this thing. So if he is on a plane and he says, he's like 260, 280 pounds, super jack dude, big bald head.

1:29:51And I can't imagine what it's like to sit next to him. You're already like this up against the window and this massive guy pulls out a thermos and just starts letting daddy long legs for. Yeah, yeah, it starts eating meat from it with this like special flight safe super long fork. Yeah. So that's a, I mean, people have kind of really got obsessive over the BPA stuff. And I'm always cautious, even though it's like, it's interesting and it's something that could be hiding in plain sight. And it's an easy change. Like you use the storage that you have. So if you change the storage that you have, it's now no longer a problem for you, right?

1:30:26So it's a single time decision that pays off downstream. But how big of a problem is this? Is this a penny or is this a dollar when we're looking at this from an obesijun perspective? I think it's in the middle tier. Okay, 50 cent. Shout out to Curtis Jackson. But because it's so pervasive, it's so pervasive in our food system, and nobody stopped to ask, is this a problem for humans? I didn't even think about the fact that the inner coating of disposable coffee cups would have this. I'm going to guess that if someone that's listening is a big coffee person and they enjoy their Starbucks or Costa or whatever it is that you would say get yourself a good quality steel stainless steel lined thermos type coffee cup of some kind take that and give it to them they'll do all of the fancy stuff that you want but do not be using the disposable cups if you can.

1:31:23Ideally yes if you can again we don't want to be in here this is a little interesting fun story I haven't shared this but I was with my wife and we had like a little staycation and usually I bring my four -sigmatic and I make coffee in the room and they didn't have coffee mugs in the room at that moment. And I just, it was a little bit of a time crunch we had something to do and I was like, they only have these reusable paper cups with the plastic lining and I was telling my wife like, babe, they only have this, whatever. She was like, I don't care because she doesn't care. But when she listened to my guest, the board certified toxic colleges shout out to Dr.

1:32:04Yvonne Burkhard. My wife just happened to listen to that episode and she was talking to me every five minutes. I was in the other room just trying to do some mobility work like relax. It was a long day and she every five minutes, babe, did you know all the plastic, the paper cups like you were right and because it came from somebody else, you know. So, dude, you and Max, it doesn't surprise me that you guys are friends. He was telling me that when his mum was still with us that she wouldn't always listen to the advice that he gave her if he told her directly. But if he went on Dr. Oz and said it, she would be accepting of it as long as it was through a more like highly credentialed delivery mechanism, even that's still him, right?

1:32:57It's still the sun. It's just not the sun on FaceTime or set -ups at the dinner table. A lot of people deal with this. I talk with Tony Robbins not too long ago and he said that there's a statement. It's been said for a long time, but he said it and it just like really jumped out of me that you can't be a prophet in your own land sometimes, right? And so the proximity with people that know you sometimes especially if they change your diapers for example It might not land the same way. And medium is the message exactly is if Dr. A has said it and so Fortunately, I happened upon that insight when I was working with people running in office working as a nutritionist day in and day out that you know a lot of times when people are wanting to again make a change If it's coming from that person and they're going back to their household, right?

1:33:46So they want this behavior, they want this result. I'm giving them the science -backed behavior change to do it. Then I'm sending them to a culture that's fighting against them. Yeah. Yeah. If they were to come in and just, they just start spouting off the stuff, it would be a challenge. So one of the things that happens so much when people come up to me, a lot of times they would be like, you know, my wife or my husband or my kids or, you know, my mother is always He's talking about you and we've changed so much because Sean says it's like a thing in the household because it's that it's that external voice.

1:34:20Yeah. Of course, back by science and also it's most of the stuff that we're talking about makes sense. It's how many how many guys do you think are going to listen to this today and say to their wife this evening that they should have sex before they go to sleep and then finish it up with because Sean says. Let's go because Sean said the shirts because Sean say the shirts with the arrow pointing down. Let's go

1:34:52Fuck yeah Fuck yeah, I um, I think You know, we've moved it's interesting. We spoke about culture right at the very beginning and this Again, we're trying to play this game if not moralizing of bringing people along for the ride of not you know pointing the finger and accusing people of stuff. And yet, there is a, like, making health normal again seems like such an odd pivot. We do almost have to reverse this, accounting for and acclimatizing for poor health outcomes, whether it be changing the size of plainseats or whether it be all of the different changes that people are looking to do with menus, with accounting, all of this stuff, it's very strange to think about, okay, what would a set point healthy society look like?

1:35:56Krishnamurti said that it is no manner of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly Only six society. My man, yes, yes. That's what we're experiencing right now. It is normal to be unwell. We are living at a time, this is the first time in human history, where if you are healthy, you are not normal. And this is a fact. But our definition of normal, of course, is very complicated. We want to normalize health. We want to create a culture that makes it easy to be healthy. And that's what's possible. I spent many years, again, I've been in this field for 21 years, trying to address the larger culture.

1:36:37And I've made a remarkable impact coming from somebody who, when I went to college, I lived in Ferguson, Missouri, a glorified food desert of the highest order. And I grew up. I had multiple chronic illnesses myself, chronic asthma, hospitalized every year. I had an arthritic condition, an advanced arthritic condition diagnosed when I was 20 years old. My spine was breaking down. I broke my hip at track practice. Like, that's crazy. That shouldn't happen to a child. To come from that, to write the firstly wellness -related book to become an international bestseller. I think we've got maybe 25 separate foreign book deals.

1:37:15Like, it's crazy. It's like in libraries in China. You know, it's crazy. It's crazy. But that's what's possible. I have made a dent in the bigger, in the bigger culture escape. but that is a tremendous task. It's heavy, it is life sucking and energy draining to do that and it's very, very difficult. It is a, like, I get, right now, conjuring up an image of Atlas. All right. Or sissifus maybe. Right, yeah. Yes. Now with that being said, let's address that. But let's first and foremost address. I just had this great conversation with a man named Greg Hardin. And man, I'm so grateful to have met this man.

1:38:03He's really the first mentor in college for Tom Brady. Michael Phelps, Charles Woodson, the list goes on and on. He's like a super power for them. Meeting him changed the course of their last. Tom Brady was like fourth string when he met Greg. What Greg said to me, and he said that when he said it again, it hit different because we've heard this before, control the controllables. Control the controllables. Tom was so concerned with trying to change things that he couldn't control. What he could control was the way that he was training. What he could control was taking advantage of the opportunities that he was giving no matter how small they were.

1:38:42The starting quarterback was getting 20 reps, back up 10 reps. Tom was getting like two. He was like, make those two the greatest two human he's ever seen. He reframed it like that. He put some power back into his hands for him to control the controllables. What do we do in this context with a larger culture scape that is unwell? Focus on your micro -culture. Intentionally create a micro -culture around you that makes makes health easy, that makes movement easy, that makes good sleep easy. Right now, again, stepping out our door, it's very difficult to control those things. But within under our own roof, and by the way, I want to make this clear, we are products of our environment.

1:39:30We can't help it. We are influenced by the things in our environment all the time. But humans are also creators of our environment. We can create an environment intentionally. That's what makes us so remarkable. We can create an intentional environment that makes this stuff easy. With that said, the environment starts with us, the culture starts with us. We are representation of our culture. Got a shout out Gandhi in this one, did be the change. Like people say that shit like seriously. We want everything else to change outside of us. The truth is, it's an inside job first and foremost, because here's the cool thing.

1:40:10When you take yourself, like you're from across the pond. When you come here though, your representation of your culture, you can't help it. It's beaming off of you. The swiveness, the accent, all the things. It's just coming off. Please come on. All right. When we show up anywhere, we bring our culture with us. It's infectious. We have this, we attribute contagious things to just negative things, but wellness is contagious as well. And we've got data affirming that too. The Framingham Heart Study, for example. And so let's focus on creating a micro -culture in our household. What does that look like?

1:40:53I shared for me the core of that which is community, family and friends because it's the biggest leverage point. It feeds into itself. When you can focus on creating healthy relationships, especially in close proximity to you, which is something we're never, we're not taught about how to have good relationships, which is the most impactful thing on our lives. We go to school and we learn about like,

1:41:19times tables or whatever, you know, like, that's cool. That's cool. But that's not going to impact my life more than how do I learn how to be a good listener? How do I become a person of value so that people want me in their relationship? Right? So For me it's focusing on controlling the controllables and be the type of person of value who can have great relationships That's part of listening to this right now. What you've created is helping us to be better people right? So investing in that, you're already winning. You're already starting the process and building on that process. Also in your own micro culture with your with your food, know thyself.

1:42:04If you can't have Cheetos in the crib without having orange fingers, definitely don't bring them in. And we don't have to villainize snickers. If we want to, if you want to dabble in that, I got snicker bites in the cookbook. higher quality ingredients, real food ingredients. We've got, I mentioned the cherry frozen yogurt pops. If you want to sweet frozen treat, right? Let's upgrade the ingredients. We know our culture, we like that stuff. We like popsicles, you know, we like burgers. We like chocolate. Let's just, okay, that's cool, because the processed food industry are the ones that really fucked it up for us.

1:42:41All right. Humans we innately are driven to eat things that taste good to us. I know the top guys in all the different diaphragm works. One of my guys is the eat to live, don't live to eat guy. I couldn't be any further from my perspective on that. Not based on like that doesn't sound good, but because of biology, we have this really immaculate intelligent flavor receptor system that's the human nose and our palate. the interface there is so cool. We can taste things that are just mind blowing. With that, like Gary Vee in the fucking wines. Like it's a hint of like a hot wheels car and like dirt.

1:43:28Like there are all of these subtle flavor notes that we can identify and that helped us to survive because we can taste whether or not that food was good for us. And there's this phenomenon called post -injustive feedback. Have you heard of this before? No. Now, post -injustive feedback is essentially whenever we, through our evolution and today, if we were to eat a food, ourselves, our biology would take notes essentially on what it just got from that food. And flavor is the language, it's like the label. It's a flavor label. So, for example, the cherries that I talked about earlier, we eat the food, okay, we get some bioavailable melatonin, we get these antioxidants, we get these particular amino acids, we get this vitamin C, your biology is taking notes.

1:44:11That flavor is attached to those nutrients. So when I become deficient in those nutrients, I'll develop a craving for that flavor. That's how we're hardwired. Food scientists have fucked that whole thing up. One of the inventions of gas chromatograph can isolate flavors based on the chemistry. Like this cherry flavor, here's the chemistry to make it. Now we can take that flavor and add it to ice cream. We can add it to soda, we can add it to candy, we can add it to all this shit that is not cherries. And so it muddies up these metabolic waters. I learned today about mountain dew flavored hot dogs.

1:44:47Yeah. Frankenstein is here. Walking around. Walking around, that's the form of a wiener. All right. It's real. It's real. Like this is where we are today, where our biology doesn't even understand or recognize real food anymore. So we've got to take back control because the lie is that that shit tastes better than real food. That's not even close. Our most memorable meals are often times the ones that are prepared by somebody that loves us and they're made from real food. They're quote made from scratch. Real food meals. We don't often have very like super memorable moments with a bag of cool ranch Doritos.

1:45:29Speak to yourself. Okay. Shout out to Jay Leno, who was in the first commercial for that. This shit was good, all right? and with that being said, you know, this is what we're talking about here is my guy, Mark Schatzker, you know, in the Dorito effect. And looking at again, being able to take the flavor of a taco and putting it on a chip. But now you're not getting the potential veggies, the grass fed meat, the whatever else might have been in the real - Even the conversation with the guy in the food truck that made it. There you go, we're missing out, we just go right straight to hand in the bag.

1:45:58Mmm, mmm, you're jacking that bag off. Yeah, all right. Again, speak for yourself. All right, so here's the bottom line. We want to take back control of our palette and to do that Food isn't just food its information When you're bringing in more of these real foods and in ways that are Absolute delicious should be a no -brainer, but in ways that are fun that create incredible like food Memories and experiences like taking the salmon and having a delicious salmon burger, right? Now, we're getting in all that vital data from those foods. It's changing what's happening with our genes. We normalize that in our environment because instead of whatever the fuck else we were going to have as far as a burger was concerned.

1:46:42Now we've got this. I made a batch of them. Got them in the freezer for whenever I want. Like, we start to create an environment, again, that makes it easy to make healthy choices. So know thyself. If you can have some cheetos at the crib and not go ham on them when you're stressed, that's cool. for most people, don't bring that shit in anymore, but treat yourself, treat yourself good. Make sure, if you know your, if you're a sweetie pie, like my wife, she's a sweetie, she loves sweets. Knowing that, we make sure that we keep a stash of the good stuff for her. If she ever has that inclination, that she wants some chocolate, whoever we got a higher quality chocolate bar in there, we've got a higher quality, the sneaker bites.

1:47:23We've got this super food chocolate bark. You know, we got all these different things that she can have to address that desire. So focus on the microculture. Hell yeah, Sean Stevenson, ladies and gentlemen, Sean, I really appreciate you, man. Why should people go? You got brand new book out, you got loads of other stuff going on. Where should they go? Yeah, so the book just came out. I'm so grateful this week. And as of this recording, and it's available nationwide at bookstores, and of course at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, all that good stuff. I actually just saw today that because the book was number one cookbook in the US on Amazon.

1:47:57Oh, yeah, they dropped the price So it's 50 % off right now on Amazon for people if they pop over to Amazon. Thank you. That's the business Yes And so it's the each smarter family cookbook as I mentioned is over 250 scientific references in this cookbook and Most importantly though we identified about 40 of the most science back foods for improving metabolic health see quality the list goes on and on and how to make delicious foods with them, delicious meals with them. So, you pick up the eSmartr family cookbook, invest in your family and your health, great gift to give as well. And people can find me where they're watching or listening to this.

1:48:34My show is called The Model Health Show. And I'm grateful to say it's been the number one help podcast in the country many, many times. And we do master classes there on every subject matter you can imagine myself. And I bring on the very best people in their respective fields as well. and it's just a special place and it's all free, you know, just click play and you're going to get something special. Damn right, Sean, I appreciate you. Thank you, man. Thank you for having me.